No to insecurity. That’s what the banners say and the demonstrators in Paris are demanding. And it’s hard to disagree. Everyone wants a bit of certainty and a bit of confidence, but I’m not sure that opposition to some simple labour market reforms is the way to get it.

It is a simple fact that youth unemployment in the UK, which already has a system along the lines of that proposed in France, is much lower than that across the channel. And it is another fact the biggest obstacle to getting a job is not having a job already.

But having got that liberal free-market prejudice off my chest, why does this subject belong on this blog? Because the real way to fight insecurity in Europe is create a stronger and more effective European Union.

The biggest economic news right now is the rise of China and India: only together can the countries of Europe form any kind of counterweight. The threat to our physical security arising from terrorism and failed states needs a collective response. And if we’re to make any dent in the rise in greenhouse gases to give us some kind of environmental security, we’re going to need a new collective approach.

All of these are tasks for the European Union. These are the reasons why it needs to be stronger. That is why the halt in the constitutional treaty is such a problem. I can’t help but wonder how many of those French demonstrators today voted No in the referendum last year.

Tony Blair’s speech to the Australian parliament earlier today deserves reading. (You can read it here.) It got most attention in the press for its remarks about anti-American feeling in Europe (“madness”) but I am more interested in what he said about the battle of values.

“Ranged against us are the people who hate us; but beyond them are many more who don't hate us but question our motives, our good faith, our even-handedness, who could support our values but believe we support them selectively.”

And that’s right. There’s a lot of hypocrisy and double standards waged in the so-called war on terror. The defence of human rights that involves Guantanamo Bay. The freedom in Afghanistan that does not include the freedom to convert to Christianity. The government clamming up on the rendition flights through British airspace. I’m not sure this is what we fought for.

But the important point is to reflect on what else can be done. Sacrifices have to be made sometimes in the name of a greater good, and any military operation will inevitably have some adverse consequences, but how to tell the difference between sacrifices made in the name of a greater good and sacrifices made of any other reason? That’s the problem.

Tony Blair has simply left himself unable to establish unambiguously his motives and purposes. He can only ask us to trust him. And that’s quite hard these days.

The founders of federalism understood this problem and sought to solve it through the creation of shared institutions under the rule of law. Public confidence should be based not on the individual judgement of transient political leaders (and they are all transient, whatever else they might like to have us believe) but on lasting institutions, acting in a transparent and accountable manner.

The World Trade Organisation cements progress towards free markets, for example, making it harder to slip back into protectionism again. The European Commission polices competition policy within the EU; the Court of Justice holds national governments to account for implementing the decisions they have taken in the Council of Ministers. The success of the WTO and the even greater success of the EU arise because of the institutions and law upon which they are founded.

In Blair’s speech, though, he is silent on the subject. The only reference to his belief in the rule of law is to say that other people don’t trust him on the subject. And rather than institutions, he talks in terms of a “global alliance”. Well, the notion of a global alliance is exactly the problem. Far better to have institutions in which everyone can participate on an equal basis.

Tony Blair’s approach to government has consistently valued ends and disparaged means. By doing so, though, he has forfeited public trust, both at home and – as he now acknowledges – abroad.

Jean Monnet understood the importance of institutions: "Rien n’est possible sans les hommes, rien n’est durable sans les institutions". That lesson remains true today.

I took part in a debate with leading anti-European John Redwood on Thursday evening in his parliamentary constituency, Wokingham. (You can read my speech here.)

We started off a little at cross-purposes. He turned up expecting a debate on the regionalisation of England; I had been given the title “The future of Britain – are the European Union plans for Britain the best way forward?”

The reason for the confusion was that the organisers of the debate, the local branch of the UK Independence Party, had assumed that regionalisation was an EU plan. Of course, that’s nonsense. There is a programme of regionalisation in the UK and within England, but it is a British decision, not an EU one.

The evidence for European Union involvement in this process is a map published by the EU which shows the English regions but not England as such. The fact that the EU has printed a document showing the regions is cited as proof that the EU created them. That same map shows the river Rhine. Are we to believe that the EU created that, too? That Brussels hired some industrial diggers and dug a trench from Switzerland, along the Franco-German border to the sea? The idea is preposterous, but that’s what we are supposed to believe.

The European Commission famously published a book with Wales missing from the map on the front cover. God knows how the graphic designers did that but it’s surely not evidence of a plan to dig up the entire country and extend the Irish Sea.

One could enquire a bit further and ask, in response to the points raised about regional funding, which are the regions that receive this money? The Objective 1 regions are places like South Yorkshire and Merseyside, which may be recent creations but which are Whitehall creations, not Brussels ones, or Cornwall, which is as old as England itself (and probably older).

The fact is that there are good reasons for setting up regional government in England. In many ways, it would make for better administration of policies. However, politics isn’t just about better administration of policies, it is also about the public identification with that better administration, and in England right now there seems to be no demand for regional government. The failed referendum in the north east of England saw to that. I suppose that regional government is one of those things that might in principle be good to have but, like the euro, is simply not on the agenda.

And, also like joining the euro, it’s a British decision, not an EU one.

As an aside, John Redwood spoke in the debate of the moral authority of the United States. I didn’t rise to the bait of asking whether this was the moral authority exemplified by Abu Ghraib or whether he was referring to the Guantanamo bay version of it.

A vote was taken at the end of the evening, and I lost by 51 votes to one. As the debate was organised by the UK Independence Party, I think I did pretty well to get one vote.

The person who did vote for my side of the argument was a late arrival: if normal practice had been followed of taking a vote at the beginning and a second one at the end to see how opinion has changed, I might even have won.

A very fine speech this evening by Chris Haskins, giving the second UACES Lecture on the future of Europe, on “CAP reform: a watershed for the European Union?” Chris Haskins is chair of the European Movement, a farmer, and was a very successful chairman of Northern Foods, so he is in an ideal position to comment on the subject.

Trying to summarise, he suggested that the recent reforms agreed while Franz Fischler was commissioner for agriculture will have a deeper impact than is generally understood at present. They mark a definitive move away from payment to farmers for production to payment for farmers for other reasons, which will in turn provoke the question of why farmers should be paid at all. The future of the CAP, he said, lies in national funding policies for farmers to achieve such social and environmental objectives as national governments might wish to pay for. Much of the reason for the CAP has been superseded by the subsequent creation of the single market: there is no reason to treat farming differently from other industries.

In turn, removing agriculture from the EU budget will create more space for investment in infrastructure in the new member states and for spending on research and development. Both of these two areas are popular with the public and also clearly things that can only be done at the European level. They can be part of the new purpose of the EU, something which is certainly needed. Farm spending does not obviously need the European level and so undermines the credibility of the EU in the eyes of the citizen.

A reform of the CAP would therefore be good both for the agricultural sector and for the EU in general. If I can get hold of the text, I will post a link to it as it deserves to be read in full rather than just in my abbreviated version.

An important question put from the floor was why the CAP has been so hard to reform. How come the farming lobby is so powerful? There were various answers forthcoming.

First, from Chris Haskins, there was the urgent need to develop European agricultural output in the years following the second world war. This was a need felt throughout the EU – the UK included – and established a strong culture of financial support for farmers, which the farmers themselves became well-organised to defend.

It must be noted that in many parts of the EU there has been a considerable move from the countryside to the cities within living memory. The general urbanisation of the population may have taken place in the UK in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it is much more recent elsewhere – post-war in France and Italy and in Poland, it is yet to happen at all. Even though the majority of people live in cities, they still feel connected with their recent rural origins.

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, who was chairing the meeting, added another and important comment. Agriculture ministers, meeting as the Agriculture Council in Brussels, were able to escape some of the confines of national politics and reach agreements that their cabinet colleagues back home might not have supported. However, once the decisions are taken (and they are a package, don’t forget, where everything is connected to everything else), they are hard if not impossible to unpick. The system of government ministers meeting behind closed doors does not do justice to national political interests. (That last sentence was my comment, not Lord Kerr’s.)

A third comment from the floor pointed out that farm spending is the only example of the financial entitlement from the EU belonging to citizens rather than to member states or to regions. For this reason, farming interests have felt much more keenly the impact and significance of farm spending, whereas for those who pay for it, it is lost in their tax bills and in their supermarket till receipts.

I would say that this last point is an illustration of the power of federalism in uniting Europe. A payment from the EU to a farmer is effectively a federal instrument, giving the citizen a direct connection with the supranational level of government. It is so powerful that it has now become a victim of its own success, hence the need for a debate on the subject of the CAP this evening. The irony is that subsidiarity – another principle of federalism – now points in a different direction, to the return of the competence for agriculture to the member states.

A previous entry in this blog – which you can read here – commented on the debate about how to develop this reform process. No doubt there will be much more to say in future.

Professor Andrew Strauss addressed a meeting this evening on how to set up a global parliamentary assembly. He was speaking at a meeting organised by the One World Trust, so he didn’t need to spend much time on why to set up a global parliamentary assembly. Most people present, I guess, were already convinced about democracy, that it doesn’t just stop at national borders. An elegant example of this, that Professor Strauss quoted, was the border between the United States and Canada, which was rather arbitrary – it was the same kind of people of each side of the border – yet somehow they were divided into different countries. The things they had in common ought to be recognised, not ignored.

On to the how. First, things will be slow and gradual. Partly because there is no sign of any universal agreement on setting up a parliamentary assembly, so it will only involve a few countries at first; partly because it is hard to persuade national governments to give up too much power at once, so the assembly would start with consultative powers only. In effect, they will be asked to give up the powers of their successors, which might be a rather easier request to meet.

National governments meeting together amounted to a “mafia” system of governance, with the threat of force always loitering in the background. Asking made men to leave the family immediately was hard to imagine, better to bring them to better ways by stages.

Another criminal metaphor: the system of international law has to be mandatory and not voluntary as at present. Individual countries can pick and choose which aspects will apply to them. You would not ask bank robbers to decide whether they should be bound by the law against robbing banks.

Secondly, the system should be set up outside the existing global institutions. Some of the proposals for reform of the United Nations had failed, Professor Strauss argued, because they were too unambitious and not the contrary. Trying to pick a path through the present institutional maze was never going to lead to a satisfactory solution. A clearer and more dramatic approach was more likely to succeed.

Read the whole pamphlet here: http://www.oneworldtrust.org/documents/taking%20democracy%20global.pdf. I don’t agree with all of it myself, but, as Professor Strauss himself said, no-one can be sure right now exactly what the next steps should look like but that thinking and talking about them is the way to find out.