Does fish and chips really go with foie gras?

In the second week of January this year historians were shocked to learn that before the creation of the European Common Market in the 1950s, the political leaders of France and Britain had discussed the possibilities of merging the two nation states. The young Queen Elizabeth II, it was suggested, could also be Queen of France.

The idea seems incredible today; but of course centuries ago, England's monarchs also ruled great chunks of France. Henry V went to war with France over disputed territory across the Channel.

Just think of it: General de Gaulle and Harold Wilson enjoying beer and foie gras at 10 Downing Street; Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre taking tea in The Philosophical Café; Johnny Halliday and Paul McCartney singing Autumn Leaves and Thank Heaven For Little Girls.

But which currency would have been common to the two countries? The design and construction of Concorde and the Channel Tunnel were as near as France and Britain ever got to a post-war working relationship; even then we conceded the additional e' to the name of the aircraft.

Richard North, Bradford-based political analyst and co-author with Christopher Booker of The Great Deception, an analysis of the history of the evolution of the European Union, believes that the French were playing games.

"They wanted to push the West Germans into agreeing to the Common Market. The merger proposal would never have got through France's National Assembly nor Parliament.

"The real turning point was 1956, Britain's decision to pull out of the Anglo-French military campaign against Egypt to liberate the Suez Canal. Suez was the most important event in Britain's post-war history.

"We left the French, our co-conspirators against President Nasser, high and dry. They were absolutely furious. It is arguable that without Britain's unilateral withdrawal from Suez there would not have been an agreement on the Common Market," he said.

It was France's President de Gaulle who said "Non!" to Britain's application to join. At the time this was interpreted as an example of gross French ingratitude for all that we had done during the war. De Gaulle's reasons for rejecting Britain, however, were thoughtful and profound. He said we valued our maverick independence too much ever to be happy as a member of a European economic (and political) alliance. He was right.

The trusting British people accepted the assurance that the Common Market was simply a club of independent trading nations; selling into it would do our economy no end of good. Little was made of the reciprocal opportunities for European manufacturers to sell into our markets. The reality was different. Right from the start the intention was to evolve a single sovereign European state.

Edward Heath, the Conservative Prime Minister who took us into the Common Market, was fully aware of the deeper intention of political and economic union; but he also knew that he would never be able to sell the idea either to his party or the nation. This masquerade was maintained by successive governments as the suspicious British people watched the Common Market's several metamorphoses as each phase of the plan was dropped into the structure like systems-built concrete slabs - the European Economic Community, then the Economic Community, then the European Community and now the European Union.

The Commissioners of Brussels seemingly became the de facto rulers of Europe's expanding empire (now 27 states) with its Parliament alternating between Brussels and Strasbourg at inordinate cost.

Although political and economic union under a single currency is the ultimate goal, the written constitution proposed for this modern version of the Holy Roman Empire has been given two fingers by France, Holland and Germany, as Richard North explained.

"For the French the Constitution didn't go far enough in certain directions and was far too full of market liberalisation (which would have militated against hard-won trade union conditions of work and pay).The Dutch were more nationalistic and thought the Constitution favoured big nations at the expense of small ones. The Germans accepted the Constitution in their Bundestag; but the Constitutional Court blocked it and is still blocking it until the European Union's other 26 members states have ratified it. So far only 17 have. To become law acceptance has to be unanimous by all 27 states."

At present the EU is a federation of states that stretches from Malin Head on the north-west coast of County Donegal to Varna on the Black Sea: more than 500 million people. Since 2004 the Union has expanded by 17 states. Further expansion is expected. Switzerland, Turkey, Albania, Ukraine and Norway are just some of the outsiders looking in. By 2017 the European leviathan could have grown to 30 members.

The question to ask is this: is this necessary? Of course! reply the Europhiles. Europe must be big enough to withstand the market penetration of the United States, Russia and increasingly China. Trade supplies the material wherewithal for free democratic institutions.

Richard North disagrees. He makes a distinction between being pro-European and pro-Union. He is the former but definitely not the latter. The European Union, he maintains, is irrelevant.

"The EU is an unnecessary middle-man, promoting its political agenda, which is political union, when what we need is administrative union. Most of the things it does that we need are duplications of things being done by other bodies such as the World Health Organisation and a little known body called UNECE - United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

"The EU has 27 member states; but ENECE has 39. Because so much trade is trans-global - cars are imported from the Far East, for instance - standards are set by ENECE and then are ratified by the EU. The European Union is simply an extra layer of bureaucracy that we could do without," he said.

One of the consequences of European Union expansion over the past couple of years has been then influx of more than 400,000 European migrants into the UK, more than 265,000 of them from Poland. Bradford Metropolitan District has seen the arrival of more than 7,000 Poles; at least 1,000 Latvians and Lithuanians and another 1,000 from the Phillipines, many of whom work in the NHS.

The Government says this trend has invigorated the British economy, which has fewer labour restrictions than, say, France. Others say mass immigration is driving up prices, crime and the cost of the welfare state. The effect in Bradford is likely to be more interesting than alarming; the city urgently needs new blood, new ideas, a fresh impetus, if it is to capitalise on future development opportunities.

Another consequence of the EU has been the adoption of proportional representation, which allows minority parties to gain representation in the European Parliament. The accession of Bulgaria and Rumania to the EU in January has seen an increase in right-wing minority representation. There is now a bloc of extremist nationalists from France, Germany, Bulgaria and Rumania under the banner of Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS).

Coincidentally, Scottish Nationalists are talking up nationalist separatism north of the border. Not content with a Scottish Parliament and Scottish Mps having a say in the governance of England, they want a referendum on the issue of separation from perfidious Albion. Along with independence in a greater Europe, the Scots Nats want to replace the pound with the euro.

Extreme nationalism was the very reason, allegedly, why the Coal and Steel Union between post-war France and West Germany was formed and why it became the six-member Common Market. Trade, not war, was to hold the European mainland together. But no one foresaw what would happen if nations outside the European club dissolved in a bloodbath of competing nationalisms.

European Community commissioners and Ministers were paralysed by the violence of the internecine savagery among the former states of Yugoslavia. Even the United Nations looked on helplessly as its blue-helmeted peace keepers were ignored at Srebrenica as conquering Serbs rounded up thousands of Muslims for systematic massacre.

But for military action by NATO the genocide would have continued unabated. Professor Tom Gallagher of Bradford University's Peace Studies Department, said: "The European Community, as it was then, failed to recognise the gravity of the crisis or even the primary responsibility for it of leaders like Slobodan Milosevic, who used hate-filled propaganda to license violence on a grandiose scale.

"The United nations also came out of the Bosnian conflict badly discredited. Its inability to organise effective international action in time to forestall tragedy, was laid bare, due to manifest shortcomings within its own sprawling organisational ranks."

These international problems aside, has membership of Europe been good for Bradford? Yes!' answer the Europhiles. At least £200m has come the district's way from European social and regional funds; the refurbishment of the Alhambra and the improvements to the city's flood-prevention system are indicative of that.

But Britain, and therefore Bradford, is a net loser, paying far more into Europe it gets back; and the gap is set to widen during the EU's budget cycle up to 2013.

According to UK Treasury figures, from 1973 to 2003, Britain paid £238.7 billion to Europe. We received rebates totalling £58 billion and grants £105.4 billion, leaving a net deficit of £75.8 billion.

Richard North said: "Britain's average net payment to Europe over those 30 years has been about £2.5 billion. But in future that will go up to between £6 billion and £8 billion net a year to pay for European enlargement."