Why the UK’s system of government is vastly superior to the European Union

British governments can survive only if they enjoy a majority in the Commons. In the EU, by contrast, executives are appointed by governmentsThis article summarises the last of three lengthy essays about the European Union by the historian Perry Anderson, published in the London Review of Books.

Perry Anderson's case against the European Union

How the European Union has always preferred power grabs to democracy

How all-powerful institutions keep Europe in gridlock

Why the UK’s system of government is vastly superior to the European Union

Perry Anderson’s third essay on the European project, ‘The Breakaway’, traces the history of the UK’s involvement, from non-participant to rejected supplicant to member for 47 years and then to fractious departure.

The UK was an uninterested spectator as six European states formed the European Coal and Steel Community, the 1950s ancestor of the European Union. Neither was it involved when the Treaty of Rome in 1957 created the European Economic Community (EEC), superseding the Coal and Steel Community.

Later, national economic decline and foreign policy upheavals such as the Suez crisis and decolonisation led the two prime ministers named Harold – Macmillan and Wilson – to each seek membership of the Common Market, the European free-trade zone. The French president, Charles de Gaulle, vetoed both bids. Only when Georges Pompidou succeeded de Gaulle did a Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, manage to break the logjam, joining the six founding member states in the EEC alongside Denmark and Ireland in 1973.