If we opt into any of these measures and they are justiciable by the European Court of Justice, we are, through that act itself, ceding sovereignty to the European Union, because it is part of building up a single state.
What does a state have that makes it a state? What is the essence of a state? At least an important part is the ability to control law and order. We are opting back into the things that are most clearly creating the powers of a federal state of the united states of Europe—a single state that is the European Union. That will mean that we are no longer a member of an international organisation like any other, such as the United Nations or NATO, from which it would be easy to withdraw, should we wish, although I am not suggesting for a moment that we do so.
Of the 35 areas that we are asking to opt back into, three illustrate the fundamental importance of the sovereignty issue. The first of those is the European arrest warrant. The decision over who can arrest a nation state’s citizens must be an essential right of that nation state in determining this exceptional power that it gives to its police officers. In our case, the power that constables who hold the Queen’s warrant have to restrict somebody’s freedom comes directly from the Crown as part of the expression of the power of the state. To decide that an arrest can be determined abroad without any of the necessary British legal procedures involved is a move very firmly towards a federal state. Crucially, the question of who is or is not arrested will no longer be determined by a British court but by the European Court of Justice, over which we have no absolute control. We may have one justice there, but it is not a court to which we send ambassadors; it is a court that is independent in its exercise of European law as opposed to British law.