Did he really say reform the EU sometime in the future?

Not just two or three years ago, not five or six years ago, not even nine or ten years ago but almost fifteen years ago the then prime minister Tony Blair declared that he would place Britain at the heart of Europe.   I have no idea where he thought we had been before then.  By my reckoning, we have always been one of the major economies of the EU, have always been a net contributor to the EU budget and have always implemented EU policy even when we did not agree with it or indeed even when it damaged our own national interest.  However, there we are; perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps we were always just a minor character in the great EU theatre.   

What puzzles me about David Cameron’s idea that we should stay in Europe and seek to reform it, is just what does he think we have being trying to do for more than thirty years?  Did the UK not urge the EU for years to reform the Common Agricultural Policy?  Did the UK not try to reform the common fisheries policy?  Did the UK not advise against a common currency?  Did the UK not urge the EU to strive for great democracy?  Did we not advise the EU to improve financial controls so that the auditors would sign the EU accounts?  Something I might add that has not happened for at least twelve years.  Have we not just committed £12.5 billion to assist the bailout of a currency we declined to join?  That is by the way, more than twice the savings being made from government cuts.

The question is not really what does he think the UK has been trying to do for thirty years.  The question is not even, why he now thinks we might achieve something at some unspecified date in the future that we have clearly failed to achieve in over thirty years.  To be quite blunt the question is; exactly what planet is he living on?

Best Wishes
Will