By Nathaniel Mawson
Europe and the United Kingdom have a very strange history often marked by love and hate, by unity and separation. Like a married couple that long ago outgrew each other we rarely see eye-to-eye, we don't communicate very well if we communicate at all but still somewhere under all that history we probably still love each other. Don't we?
If one takes the Conservative Party as the representative of the UK then our relationship with Europe is what Facebook would term "complicated". If we took the Labour Party then our relationship would largely be "like". However, it wasn't always that way, quite the opposite in fact. The Conservative Party is the party that initially signed us up to Europe while the Labour Party campaigned against it. Now in 2013 we have a Conservative party seemingly foaming at the mouth to do something about it.
David Cameron has been talking openly about his plans for renegotiating our terms of membership to the Union. Ed Miliband has criticised the stance the Prime Minister is taking as "the same old Tories: a divided party" and David Cameron is declared "weak". The Conservative Leader has refused to deny claims that he has, for now at least, let collective responsibility slip whilst seeming to allow colleagues the freedom to campaign for what has been termed a Brexit - a British Exit from the European Union.
Mr Cameron was not the politician avoiding the issue though, or so he claimed as he reversed the focus onto Miliband's own supposed avoidance. The Labour Leader was told "If you want to stay out of the single currency vote Conservative; if you want to join the Euro vote Labour. If you want to take back powers from Europe you vote Conservative; if you want to give away powers to Europe you vote Labour" ouch. So big is the issue that literally is on our doorstep that all of Mr Miliband's six questions at Question Time were used on the subject.
The Prime Minister reminds us "Millions of people, like myself, want Britain to stay inside the EU, but they believe there are chances to negotiate a better relationship. Throughout Europe countries are looking at forthcoming treaty change" though this did not stop the questioning as backbenchers took up the issue too. As we get closer and closer to the Prime Minister's speech on repatriating British powers we are hearing more and more about the EU, something that probably will continue long after Friday and the speech have been forgotten.
