European Security Co-operation

Today, the European Commission President suggested that EU nations needed to integrate their security services to tackle the menace of Islamist attackers such as the fanatics behind the Brussels outrage.

But Ukip last night rubbished his idea as "literally mad".

My analysis is that Jean Claude Juncker is ultimately correct. Without integration of services, and standardised protocols, with full intra and inter-service co-operation, there is little chance of decreasing anti-Humanist terror in Europe. The experience of the UK is instructive - where it took decades of dealing with Irish Nationalist terrorists to force the silos of the various security services that operate in the UK to be broken down and replaced with systematic security co-operation between forces and services. This has yet to take place within the individual European countries - so it is a long, long call that Juncker is making - as the internal intra-national problems with European security co-ordination need to be addressed first. Only after that can the next, inevitable step towards a truly Federal Europe be taken.

The question is, does the UK want to be part of this European Superstate To Come?

The UK can engage in effective intelligence sharing with the EU, without belonging to it. Israel currently does this, as does Turkey, and the other states beyond the EU that border the Mediterranean.