The following article was published on Sunday, 5th June on the Liberal Democrat Voice Website.

Yesterday, Nick Clegg made a keynote speech at the National Liberal Club outlining the reasons Britain should stay in the EU. He tore the Leave campaign apart for its false figures and assertions. One widely quoted line is that Boris Johnson is “Trump with a thesaurus.” But that’s not all he said. He was very clear that the EU, including the single market, had had British influence at its heart. It’s not something that was imposed on us. We helped create it – and it’s been good for us.

And in the modern era, being in the European Union has also helped us to flourish. Britain today is a major world power.

We are one of the world’s most powerful economies;

we are a cultural powerhouse;

our capital is one of the world’s most popular destinations;

our universities are among the very best on the planet;

our businesses lead the world in everything from computer games to wind power.

If being part of the EU was such a drag on our prospects, as the Brexiteers claim, how come we have achieved all this whilst being part of the European Community and the EU for the last 41 years?

He argues that we need the safety in numbers that the EU provides to cope with the challenges of the 21st century:

The 21st century world is one of profound global challenges: climate change, extremism, mass migration, the globalised economy.

The European Union gives us the strength in numbers that we need to meet those challenges.

All over the world countries are responding to the challenges of a globalised economy by coming together to form trading blocs – from Nafta to Asean, from Mercosur to the Pacific Alliance.

In the EU we are part of a single market with the enormous clout that 500 million consumers gives us.

That clout allows us to go toe to toe with the Americans, the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians and everybody else on the global stage.

Going it alone would mean we are trying to compete in that landscape with the much smaller clout of 60-odd million people.

Here’s the speech in full:

As a pro-European, I’m sure it won’t come as any surprise to you that there are many things I don’t like about the Brexit campaign:

There are the exaggerations, half-truths and downright falsehoods…

like their spurious claims of how much Britain pays to the European Union, or the scaremongering over Turkish accession.

There’s the ridiculous, over-the-top vilification of anyone who has the temerity to disagree with them.

When President Obama speaks out it is because he is ‘part-Kenyan’.

When Christine Lagarde does she is bullying the British people on George Osborne’s orders.

When Mark Carney does he should be sacked.

There’s the naked self-promotion by those who see this as a dress rehearsal for the next Conservative leadership election.

There’s the almost comic inability to agree among themselves what sort of future beckons for the United Kingdom after we leave Europe.

Will we be like Canada or Norway, Switzerland or Albania?

And then there’s the extraordinary rewriting of history.

Recently we have had Priti Patel claiming that the suffragettes were fighting ‘for the same cause’ as the Brexiteers…

something that earned her a sharp rebuke from none other than Emmeline Pankhurst’s great-granddaughter.

Similarly, Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames had to tell Boris Johnson that he was ‘totally wrong’ to invoke his grandfather’s memory to attack President Obama.

Worst of all, Boris Johnson even resorted to citing Hitler as an argument for leaving the EU.

I don’t know what it is about City Hall that makes these ex-Mayors of London so keen to bring up Hitler, but it does make you worry a little for Sadiq Khan.

Perhaps Boris has looked across the Atlantic at the Republican presidential frontrunner and decided that with enough bluster and bravado he can get away with ignoring the facts and saying whatever he wants.

But this debate is too important for it to be decided by Boris acting like Trump with a thesaurus.

Worst of all – worse even than their shameless rewriting of history – is the Brexit campaign’s careless elitism.

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and the rest might be happy to treat this campaign as if they were in an Oxford debating society, using every trick in the book to try and distract and distort their way to victory.

But it is not their livelihoods that are at stake.

In fact, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are probably the only people who think their job prospects might actually improve if we leave Europe.

Yet, if they get their way, it is millions of ordinary people who will pay the price. Just look at what is at risk:

Jobs – of course exactly how many jobs are at risk is subject to claim and counter-claim, but with more than 3 million British jobs linked to our trade in Europe it is beyond doubt that many people’s jobs across the country are on the line..

Household incomes are at risk – the Treasury has said leaving the single market will cost families £4,300 each.

Even if you think the real figure may end up being lower, that still represents a huge hit to the household budgets of millions of ordinary people across the UK.

Investment is at risk – just ask the hundreds of companies of all shapes and sizes that have lined up to warn against Brexit…

especially those major international investors, from car manufacturers to global banks, who put their money into the UK precisely because we can export effortlessly to the rest of Europe.

Growth in our economy is at risk – so says everyone from the IMF and the World Bank to the Bank of England and the OECD…

which means lower tax revenues, which means less money available to be spent on our schools and hospitals.

There have been warnings of untold damage to our universities, massive uncertainty for British farmers and even for our thriving creative industries.

There will be fewer opportunities for young people to study and work in Europe.

There will be fewer opportunities for British pensioners to retire to the sun.

No one – not a single authoritative economist or institution – thinks the result of Brexit will be better than what we have now, and the vast majority believe it will make us poorer and economically more insecure.

So, Brexiteers are happy to risk mass economic hardship in pursuit of an outcome they can’t even describe or agree upon, whose consequences they will all be shielded from themselves.

Yet they have the nerve to describe themselves as anti-elitist.

They are the real, careless elitists of this referendum campaign.

And they justify this gamble with the future of our nation by rewriting history, claiming that the UK has somehow been a victim of European history rather than a prime mover, a key author, of European history and of the modern EU.

It was a Brit – Lord Cockfield – who was the chief architect of the Single Market, which was supported and signed into law by Margaret Thatcher in what remains, by some distance, the greatest ever pooling of sovereignty by a British government.

It was us who pushed for the expansion of the European Union into Central and Eastern Europe, balancing the dominant influence of the French and Germans.

And it was us, Britain, that led so many of the efforts to improve cross-border policing and judicial co-operation across the continent, exporting our expertise and ensuring that our standards for law enforcement are enshrined in European institutions.

We are also one of the most assertive states in the EU and get our way nine times out of 10 in the Council of Ministers.

English is even the default language of EU institutions – much to the chagrin of the French.

And when European Union countries wanted big things that we did not want to be a part of, we have stayed out of it.

That’s why we are not members of the Eurozone and it’s why we are not members of the borderless Schengen area.

By exercising our influence in Europe we have shaped it to our own ends, we have bent it to Britain’s will, and when we have wanted to take a step back we have been able to do so.

Our historic relationship with Europe

In fact, our relationship with the European Union is very much in keeping with our relationship with our European neighbours going back centuries.

From the Spanish Succession and Seven Year’s War right through to the World Wars of the Twentieth Century – Britain has long used its influence in Europe to ensure that no one power dominates on the continent.

If the French or the Germans got the upper hand, Britain would intervene to keep the balance of power.

The history of Britain has been intimately linked with our continental neighbours since Roman times.

We have had Danish kings, Norman-French kings, one Dutch King and a succession of German kings.

We have been allied with the Dutch against the French and the Spanish, with the Spanish and the Prussians against the French, and with the French against the Germans.

Britain became an imperial and global power in competition, first with Spain, next with the Netherlands, and then with France.

We have been a cosmopolitan nation for centuries – long before modern trends of mass migration.

No doubt the Libyan auxiliaries who guarded Hadrian’s Wall intermingled with native Britons.

Retired legionaries from across the Roman Empire settled in Britain.

Viking settlements shaped many of our place-names, Norman settlers shaped our language.

Huguenot refugees colonised East London – among them the ancestors of Nigel Farage.

Germans migrated to England during our industrial revolution.

Russian and Polish Jews fleeing Tsarist persecution transformed first our clothes manufacturers and then our retail trade.

Enterprising Brits also flowed the other way.

There were Scots Generals in both the French and Russian armies.

Donetsk, now caught up in the troubles of eastern Ukraine, was originally called Yusovska, after the Welshman – John Hughes – who set up the first iron smelter there.

And the modern British values we now cherish were developed alongside European values.

The English Reformation was closely linked to reforming ideas in the Netherlands; the Scottish Reformation to preachers in Geneva.

The 18th century Scottish Enlightenment interacted with the French Enlightenment; David Hume and Adam Smith both spent time in Paris.

The growth of scientific and technical education in the 19th century drew heavily on the German model.

And in the modern era, being in the European Union has also helped us to flourish. Britain today is a major world power.

We are one of the world’s most powerful economies;

we are a cultural powerhouse;

our capital is one of the world’s most popular destinations;

our universities are among the very best on the planet;

our businesses lead the world in everything from computer games to wind power.

If being part of the EU was such a drag on our prospects, as the Brexiteers claim, how come we have achieved all this whilst being part of the European Community and the EU for the last 41 years?

If you listen to the mix of sepia-tinged nostalgia and warped history from the Brexit campaigners you could be forgiven for thinking the EU itself was responsible for the end of empire, as if it was the fault of Brussels that Britain lost its colonies;

or that we have become some puny weakling, subservient to the French and the Germans and reliant on scraps from their table.

The truth, of course, is completely different: Being in Europe has not held us back, it has thrust us forward.

And if we want to remain as world leaders, I believe it is vital that we remain at the heart of Europe’s decision-making. That way we can continue to shape our own destiny and influence the world around us.

The 21st century world is one of profound global challenges: climate change, extremism, mass migration, the globalised economy.

The European Union gives us the strength in numbers that we need to meet those challenges.

All over the world countries are responding to the challenges of a globalised economy by coming together to form trading blocs – from Nafta to Asean, from Mercosur to the Pacific Alliance.

In the EU we are part of a single market with the enormous clout that 500 million consumers gives us.

That clout allows us to go toe to toe with the Americans, the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians and everybody else on the global stage.

Going it alone would mean we are trying to compete in that landscape with the much smaller clout of 60-odd million people.

We would still carry weight, but it would be nothing like the influence we can exercise as part of a vast 500 million strong marketplace.

And while the Commonwealth is a club of friendly nations of which we should be proud, let’s not pretend it’s something it is not: it is not and will never be a trading bloc to rival the biggest single market in the world on our doorstep.

Our membership of the EU is about safety in numbers.

The fact is we are stronger together and weaker apart.

Just as that was true to say in 2014 when Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom was at stake, it is just as true today for our membership of the European Union.

And that really is, in a nutshell, the central reason why I believe it is better for my children to grow up in a Britain that is an active member of the European Union.

Safety in numbers.

We live in an uncertain and fast-changing world.

We are better placed to face the challenges and shape that world if we stand together than if we go it alone.

Ambitions for Britain in Europe

The crowning tragedy of the Leave campaigners’ careless elitism is that they want to deprive future generations of the capacity, the power, to shape the world around them.

Instead of engaging with our neighbours and working together to meet the challenges of the 21st century, they would rather our children and grandchildren are left as little more than onlookers, watching passively as events unfold around us.

Europe is what it is because Britain has helped to shape it – and by exercising leadership in Europe we can continue to shape it in the years and decades ahead.

During the referendum debate, the Remain campaign has, rightly, emphasised the reasons why we should not leave; but it has not spelled out as clearly what the purpose of remaining would be.

For Remain, it will not only be important to defeat Brexit on June 23rd, but also establish a mandate to exercise British leadership actively after the vote.

And that requires a clear statement of what Britain’s ambitions in Europe are.

In my view, we should be looking to lead Europe in three areas in the years ahead: economic reform; security; and the environment.

On economic reform, we need to build on the huge success of the single market.

Modern trade is about much more than just selling goods to each other.

We need to take the principles that have made the single market so successful and apply them to the many other areas where British and European companies do business with each other.

That means completing the single market in services, energy and digital.

To give you an idea of what that means in practice, a British exporter of goods can trade freely into any EU country, with the same rules applying across the board.

However, a British law firm cannot currently sell its services in other European countries without clawing through different regulations and professional standards in each one.

Likewise, a British tech firm might operate in the borderless online world, yet it faces different rules in every one of the 28 states in the EU where people might want to buy their products and services.

Completing the single market in these areas will allow British companies to compete on a level playing field in all 28 countries of the European Union – and estimates suggest completing the single market could be worth as much as an extra 7% of UK GDP.

But economic reform also means maintaining our influence as the Eurozone is reformed.

The fact is, Europe is changing, whether we like it or not. The deep economic tensions in the Eurozone must be – and I believe will be – resolved.

It is clear that the Eurozone core will need to tighten further: rules governing greater fiscal discipline will be demanded by the strongest members and the weaker economies will expect sustained Eurozone support in return.

Eurozone countries will also need to face up to the fact that they will have to find a way of either sharing the burden of debt or changing the way money is transferred between stronger and weaker countries.

You cannot have a monetary union in which one country saves, exports and invests and another spends, borrows and consumes without some mechanism to make it all add up.

However these issues are resolved, Britain, by definition, will not be a part of these single currency arrangements. But that does not mean we do not have a vital national interest in them.

However the chips fall there will be big implications for the single market as a whole – and we need to make sure that the EU that emerges at the other end continues to serve all of its members, not just those in the Eurozone.

On security, European leaders need to raise their sights in order to tackle a huge crisis brewing on our doorstep: the Mediterranean is now a region in acute distress.

The Med may be the crucible of European civilization, but it is now the source of many of the ideological, economic and social problems that our continent faces:

from extremism and political turmoil across the water in North Africa and the Middle East, to the refugee camps on Greek islands and the economic hardship in southern Europe.

But we have risen to huge challenges before.

At the end of the Cold War, a vast and overwhelmingly successful international effort was assembled to provide billions of pounds of economic support…

create new institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London…

and support fledgling democracies in a string of countries left traumatised by decades of Soviet rule.

Europe desperately needs to rediscover a similar ambition towards the Mediterranean.

We need to treat this crisis as serious and urgent and we need to think and act big in order to solve it.

In short, we need a Marshall Plan for the Med.

If we do not make a concerted effort to bring political and economic stability across Europe’s southern flank then we will all pay the consequences in years to come.

It will take a decade or more of determined, consistent leadership to pull the Mediterranean back from the brink, and it will cost money, but it is in all of our interests that we make the necessary effort to keep our European hemisphere as stable and safe as possible.

And then there is the environment.

As we have seen in relation to the security threats, we live in a world where the big problems we have to grapple with are no longer neatly contained by national borders.

And this is especially true for the biggest existential threat of all: climate change.

But I am cautiously optimistic, because when we work together across borders, we can find solutions.

Take the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic for example, which caused so much panic in the 1980s.

Now, thanks to the Montreal Protocol signed by 24 countries in 1987 to restrict the use of CFCs in aerosol sprays, the hole is actually getting smaller.

Scientists now reckon that if the Montreal deal had never been implemented, the hole would have grown by 40 percent by 2013. Instead, it is expected to heal completely by 2050.

And only last year we saw 195 counties sign a breakthrough international deal in Paris to limit carbon emissions so that global temperatures don’t exceed 2% above pre-industrial levels.

So when we face a daunting challenge like the re-engineering of our economy to reduce and do away with carbon, we have to work with others.

Collectively, the EU has the money, the organisational clout and the scientific and engineering expertise to put us at the forefront of the low-carbon revolution.

This is an area where Britain has shown real leadership and we must continue to do so…

whether it is reforming the failing Emissions Trading System in order to boost investment in low carbon technologies;

or pushing to make electric cars and other low carbon vehicles the norm on Europe’s crowded roads;

or improving energy efficiency standards for household appliances;

or providing financing for the research and development that will lead to the next wave of scientific and technological breakthroughs.

To be ambitious for Britain we must be ambitious for Europe too.

Together we can meet the big challenges that face us and the many more that will test us in the years to come. Alone we are less equipped to do so.

By leading in Europe Britain can remain one of the world’s strongest economies and most influential nations.

Remain is the patriotic option

If you believed everything the Brexiteers said, however, you would think Britain was some weakling, forever being pushed around by dastardly foreigners.

But it isn’t. We are not a bulldog in a muzzle, unable to bark.

We are the world’s fifth-largest economy.

We sit at the top table of world affairs, from the G8 to Nato and the UN Security Council.

Our companies lead the world in a range of industries and our cultural impact is felt in every corner of the globe.

It is no coincidence that we are both world leaders and leading members of the European Union.

When Boris Johnson and the false patriots in the Brexit campaign rewrite history to their own ends they are doing Britain down.

They may cloak themselves in the language and imagery of patriotism, but it is a means to deeply unpatriotic ends.

Isolationism is not British.

Turning our backs on our neighbours and allies is not British.

Wilfully diminishing our influence in the world is not British.

There is nothing patriotic about deliberately creating economic insecurity and risking the jobs and livelihoods of your fellow citizens in pursuit of your own ideological agenda.

We have always been a proud, outward-looking, internationalist nation.

That is why remaining in Europe is the patriotic option.

Remaining an open, dynamic country is the patriotic option.

Showing leadership in Europe to make our economy more prosperous, our country and our continent more secure and our planet more sustainable is the patriotic option.

Britain is at its best when it shows leadership in the world.

By leading in the European Union we can shape Europe over the next four decades the way we have shaped it in the last four decades.

A vote to remain on June 23rd is not simply a vote for the status quo – it is a vote to keep Britain at the forefront of world events, leading rather than following, shaping our own future and controlling our own destiny.

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