Did You Know Tangier Is Closer than Bucharest?

Did you know Tangier is closer to London than Bucharest? Of course you did. Why then is Roumania our 'neighbour' - that is to say, eligible for membership of the European Union - while Morocco is not?

In the 1970s, the rationale for joining the European Economic Community, the EU's predecessor, was that 'Britain is part of Europe'. And so it is. But should sharing a continental plate determine our economic, social and diplomatic relationships?

Roumania and Bulgaria emerged into the modern world as provinces of the Sultanate-Caliphate, which they remained until 1878, when they were given 'independence' at the Conference of Berlin, a period on which one of our erstwhile Islington Council Leaders, Derek Sawyer, happens to be a world-expert. The two states failed first as nation states and then as part of the general failure of European communism. When they acceded to the European Union, last year, there was dancing in the streets to celebrate what I am sure the majority of people in both states hope will be the permanent end of nationalist-isolationism.

Ghana is currently 'celebrating' 50 years of isolation. For Ghana, the success of 'national independence' is an economy that is 1/35th what it was in 1957. Most of the population survives on $2 a day.

West Europeans, Portuguese, English, Dutch and French, have been involved in the Ghanese economy since the early decades of the 15th century. It was 1482 when Diogo Cão planted a stake at the mouth of the Congo to claim it - whatever 'it' might be - for John II Bragança.

No west European state has ever had any deep or meaningful relationship with Roumania or Bulgaria. Yet we are to believe that they are our 'neighbours', while Ghana and Congo, on whose resources we built our industrial wealth, and with whom we have traded for over half a millennium, are apparently not.

Why can Ghana and Congo not apply for membership of the European Union?