“Our destiny is Europe.”
– Then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, 1988

On Jan. 23, British Prime Minister David Cameron laid out a road map for a more independent Britain.

Cameron wants Britain to hold a referendum within five years on its continued membership in the European Union. His comments drew criticism from the United States, France and Germany and, in his own country, from the Liberal Party — his coalition partner — and the Labor Party.

Cameron wants the E.U. to establish the following principles as a basis for a new union: increased competitiveness, more flexibility, power flowing back to the member states, democratic accountability and justice.

He criticized the E.U.’s slow bureaucracy and meddlesome edicts and called for free-trade agreements with the U.S., India and Japan. He noted that Europe’s share of world output is projected to fall by almost a third in the next two decades.

“It is time for the British people to have their say,” Cameron declared. “We have the character of an island nation — independent, forthright, passionate in defense of our sovereignty. We can no more change this British sensibility than we can drain the English Channel.”

The announcement signaled a new course for Britain, a nation that has sought for years to heed Winston Churchill’s adage and be “with Europe, but not of it.”

Although Britain has maintained its own currency, the pound, it has nevertheless remained a full member of the 27-nation E.U. while it has worked to build the world’s largest integrated economy, governed by common laws and open borders.

Many of Cameron’s Tory colleagues feel that the rules in the Eurozone favor the manufacturing power of Germany over British financiers and trading expertise. Germany has supported a transaction tax on the trading of equity shares. This would be bad for Britain, because almost 30 percent of its gross domestic product derives from the financial-market business in the City of London. And some British “globalists” believe Britain’s future prosperity is linked with Asia, not the sclerotic Old World.

Britain’s two other major political parties wish to remain in the E.U.

Labor leader Ed Miliband said he’s opposed to a popular vote as planned by Cameron.

“No, we don’t want an in-out referendum,” Nick Clegg, Britain’s deputy prime minister and the liberal democratic leader told Sky News television. “Years and years of uncertainty because of a protracted, ill-defined renegotiation of our place in Europe is not in the national interest because it hits growth and jobs.”

A poll by YouGov for the Sunday Times suggested that the British are divided about E.U. membership. The survey this month found that 40 percent wanted the U.K. to remain in the E.U. and 34 percent wanted to leave it.

Renegotiating the E.U. treaty to accommodate British interests appears unrealistic because treaty revisions require unanimous approval of all 27 member states, a positive vote in the European Parliament, and a positive vote in the European Commission.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin that “you have to keep in mind that other countries have their own wishes and we always have to come to a fair compromise in the end.”

If Britain did leave the E.U., its global banking could be hurt. A British exit would also be a setback for the E.U., depriving it of Britain’s economic and military power.

But there’s another reason to keep the E.U. intact.

I am teaching a course based on William Shirer’s book, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”

The lesson of World War II, in which some 60 million people died, is that Europe needs to remain integrated to avoid the destructive repercussions of xenophobic, nationalistic policies implemented by political leaders courting their domestic constituents.

The costs to Europeans of being part of a bureaucratic European Union pale in comparison to those of military conflicts.

Originally published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune