A CALL to arms to Britain's pro-Europeans has been made by Charles Kennedy, who warns the recent wave of hostility towards the European Union and the threat to the UK's membership of it is "dangerous and short-sighted".
The former LibDem leader, who is president of the European Movement UK, has used its regular euroblog to decry David Cameron's recent speech on Europe as causing a "sense of uncertainty and insecurity" among those in favour of Britain's continued membership of the EU.
Mr Kennedy claims the PM's promise of an in-out referendum by November 2017, should the Tories form the next UK Government, has resulted in many people expressing concern at the possibility of Britain leaving the EU. "His speech has focused public attention and forced frontline politicians and business with pro-European sentiments to come out and join organisations like the European Movement in defending Britain's membership of the EU," writes the MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber.
He claims the public's attitude to Europe is now changing after years of "euromyth-infused anti-EU arguments" peddled by the tabloid press thanks to the growth of the pro-EU coalition and its articulation of the "advantages of membership".
He insists it is imperative pro-Europeans explain what the benefits of EU membership are to counter-balance the negative image projected by the tabloids, Ukip and some Tory MPs.
He warns that a British exit from the EU would have "undesirable consequences" with the UK losing "massively in economic terms".
He insists: "Britain alone, adrift in the Atlantic, squeezed between the US, the EU, China, Brazil, India and other global powers will be relegated to a bystander of world events, unable to shape history and influence its own destiny.
"Membership of a strong, confident, effective, outward-looking European Union should be an absolute priority for all European nations. Playing games with something so important is dangerous and short-sighted."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article