Sir, - Paul Gillespie rightly observes (Opinion, September 23rd) that our Continental partners' domestic politics treat the integration/sovereignty and left/right axes as largely separate; and goes on to exhort us not to muddle them for ourselves. Does he fail to recognise that here - and in the UK, where there is actually a left/right axis in the first place, and therefore a more active correlation between the two - such a muddle is inevitable?
The rest of our partners already operate on the European social democracy model; further integration, greater homogeneity will, for them, have little or no domestic impact. Here and in Britain, however, the left have two chances of getting their way. The first is to persuade the electorate of the advantages of the European model on its merits. The other - having failed to persuade us or, having succeeded but fearing that we will not enjoy the experience and dismantle it at the next election - is to involve us ever more deeply in a European state with the capacity, ultimately, to impose its model whether we want it or not.
It is, at best, naive of Mr Gillespie to insist that we may safely disentangle the two issues. He goes beyond naivety, however, in attempting to allay fears of a developing European super-state by, again quite correctly, observing that "nobody makes such a proposal." Of course nobody does, and of course nobody ever will. If it were proposed to us we might reject it. So much better that it just happen. - Yours, etc.,
William Hunt, Harold's Cross, Dublin 6W.