Author Archives: Dominic Rider

Britain needs Europe. Europe needs Britain. But not as they currently are.

This thought began by watching the current US administration’s repeated disdain for European allies—the transactional contempt, the treaty ambiguity, the suggestion that decades of partnership count for nothing. Liberal internationalism is under threat. The transatlantic order that underwrote European security for seven decades is fracturing visibly. That creates a vacuum—and a question the Liberal Democrats are uniquely positioned to answer: what should Europe become, and where does Britain fit?

No other party will ask this. Labour has calculated that silence on Europe costs less than clarity. The Conservatives remain captured by their Brexit coalition. The Liberal Democrats—consistently internationalist, consistently proved right—have both the standing and the freedom to lead.

What follows is a proposal. A confederated Europe—sovereign democracies choosing deeper partnership without dissolving into a superstate. Britain rejoining not the arrangement we left, but something reformed and stronger.

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The European Union’s current structure has real limitations. Unanimity requirements mean a single state can paralyse collective action—Hungary vetoing Ukraine support, for instance. The single market for services remains incomplete, disadvantaging Britain’s core economic strength. Defence cooperation exists but lacks the integration that genuine strategic autonomy requires. Democratic accountability is diffuse; citizens struggle to know who decides what.

A confederation would address these. Not federation—no European government overriding national parliaments. Confederation means sovereign nations pooling specific functions while retaining authority over everything else. The EU already operates closer to this model than most people realise; the question is whether to make it work properly.

Three reforms matter most. First, replace unanimity with qualified majority voting, so decisions actually get made and member countries’ voices carry weight proportional to their populations. Second, complete the services single market—genuinely opening European economies to British expertise in finance, law, technology, and professional services. Third, integrate defence properly: pooled procurement to reduce duplication, coordinated command structures, and Franco-British nuclear cooperation providing a genuine European deterrent independent of Washington’s whims.