Leaving Europe to join the world is really the North Korea option, out in the cold with few friends, no influence.
Gordon Brown
In a recent speech in support of Ed Miliband, Tony Blair focused on the dangers of leaving the EU. He said that secession would leave us “diminished in the world, do significant damage to our economy and, less obviously but just as important to our future, would go against the very qualities and ambitions that mark us out still as a great global nation”. This is the central line of those seeking an “in” vote (or wishing to avoid a referendum altogether): that Brexit would not only leave us poorer financially (something that, at least in the short term, even Eurosceptics concede), but it would also mark a kind of moral failing, a sign that we were in retreat from a golden age of British internationalisation.