Guardian Unlimited: Peter Mandelson's speaks on a new consensus for Europe

Guardian UnlimitedPeter Mandelson's speaks on a new consensus for Europe

When anti-Europeans in Britain say, "we like a free trade Europe but we don't want Brussels", they gloriously contradict themselves in a single sentence. You can't have the single market without Brussels - end of story. Europe must press ahead with painful economic reforms. But reform is for a purpose: not to Americanise Europe but to make our European model of society sustainable for generations to come. Essentially we need a new social consensus for economic reform as New Labour has achieved in Britain, based on a social justice argument, which is capable of uniting mainstream opinion in France and Germany as well as Britain and Holland and the rest of the EU 25. The fact that the British people have three times in succession returned to power a New Labour government demonstrates that British share the wider European vision of a social justice economy. Those both in Britain and on the continent who believe that there is a fundamental and irreconcilable difference between an "Anglo-Saxon" model and the continental view create a false antithesis.