Denis MacShane: Why I am an unashamed enthusiast for Europe

What a pity that we did not have a Scot in 10 Downing Street 50 years ago. Instead we had the oh-so-Eton-English Sir Anthony Eden. He is best known for Suez. Yet his enduring foreign policy blunder was to veto Britain negotiating and signing the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

Just imagine if the six had been seven. No Common Agricultural Policy on French terms. A Common Fisheries Policy fairer to Scotland. And Britain having been present at the creation would have avoided its decades-long sulk over Europe. Labour was as anti-European in the 1980s as David Cameron's Tories are today. Of course, Tony Benn protested then and William Hague declares today that they are the true internationalists and not really anti-European at all. But is it not time for Britain's politicians to grow up about Europe? A quick glance at the five decades that have elapsed since 1957 would explain why.

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Then, as a small boy, the first bit of Europe I got to know other than the Lanarkshire where I was born or the London where I grew up was late 1950s Ireland, a nation then still so poor cattle were driven through the streets of its big towns and every second Irish male had to find work overseas.

As a student at the end of the 1960s, hitchhiking to Tuscany or the Peloponnese was to enjoy dusty unmetalled tracks and dirt-poor villages in which a handful of super rich from England could enjoy their villas amidst a generalised poverty.

In the 1980s democratic, prosperous Europe was so near and so far to the brave Czech and Polish organisers of Charter 77 and Solidarnosc. They wanted to learn how the prospect of EU membership obliged Spain and Ireland to shed the nastier aspects of clerical authoritarianism and made France abolish the death penalty.

The 1990s saw the re-entry of central and eastern Europe into the family of European nations. To be sure, some EU nations stagnated under the dead hands of a Chirac, a Kohl or a Berlusconi, unwilling to learn the lessons of the new global economy.

But Ireland and Spain, Sweden and Austria, Slovakia and Finland blossomed and the euro overtook the dollar as the world's most-used currency. Last year, 21 out of 27 EU member states had as good or better an economic growth record as Britain, after the long decade of Britain being the star performer in Europe.

Of course, there are endless irritations with the European Commission. Many believe that the statutory four week's paid holiday in Britain was a gift of a Labour government. It was but only because Labour signed up to EU social rules. The previous government preferred to keep its citizens without holiday rights and without other European ideas like the minimum wage.

As a loyal minister I knew, of course, that the good that happens in a country is due to the brilliance of its leaders. The bad is always the fault of the European Commission. That's life and Eurocrats should understand that no good deed in politics goes unpunished. Europe is a good thing and will just have to live being knocked around as national politicians need something to blame for their own failings.

When people climb on board easyJet or Ryanair to enjoy the renaissance of Europe's cities thanks to the open trade policies enforced by the EU, they should read a sign saying: "No EU. No citizen-friendly flights." It is only thanks to a bossy European Commission and a European Court that tells proud national administrations to get lost that we have an open Europe and not one carved up into protectionist little blocks so dear to our own Eurosceptics and isolationists.

We get this for around 1 per cent of Europe's income. The total EU budget is less than a quarter of the Pentagon's and, while I am as much pro-American as I am pro-European, I reckon the EU's modest budget delivers a lot more for humankind than does the Pentagon's squillions.

Peter Mandelson and the EU Commissioners earn about a third of the pay of the BBC's director general. With fewer on the payroll than the BBC, the European Commission delivers a lot of added value to the 27 nations and half a billion people who have decided to share some of their sovereignty to make a different Europe from the one our ancestors fought about over the centuries.

Talleyrand's advice to politicians was simple: "Pas trop de zèle" - Never be too enthusiastic. Sorry. I am enthusiastic about Europe, warts and all. Our lives would be poorer without the EU. It is a pity that so few politicians are prepared to tell that simple truth and instead let the anti-European myths and lies have so much currency.

The author is the Labour MP for Rotherham and was Minister for Europe until 2005