Despite the spate of negative results in referendums on aspects of the European Union, the EU Commission and its heavyweight political supporters have not given up on their main aim: to convert the EU into a single country.

The currently proposed constitution — now called the Lisbon Treaty — would turn a grouping of nation states into a legal entity in its own right with the power to sign international treaties on behalf of member states and the right to overturn any nation’s laws. It includes an embryo army poised to requisition the forces of any EU country worth having, a flag, a “national” anthem, a passport system and the beginnings of a diplomatic corps with its own embassies around the world.

All it needs is a name.

The European Union is largely operated for, and on behalf of, Germany and France, the two original founders. What they want, they tend to get. In the treaty after next, assuming they find a way to browbeat Ireland into accepting most of the Lisbon Treaty, the question of the name of the new country of Europe is sure to figure. What might it be?

It would have to satisfy the egos of the Germans and the French and be mildly acceptable to the rest. One obvious name stands out: Frankia.

France was originally named after the Germanic tribe, the Franks, which gave us Charlemagne and other worthies of the “Holy Roman Empire”. It’s a name that would flatter both Paris and Berlin, and emphasize their status as joint controllers of the new European empire. The former French currency, naturally, was the franc.

The British would hate it, of course, and, assuming Labour governments are a thing of the past by then, would probably withdraw.

But would, say, a David Cameron government have the moral force to renegotiate Britain’s terms along the lines of an association agreement? Matthew d’Ancona has an excellent “testing the waters” piece in today’s Telegraph on what Cameron can expect on becoming PM in two years from now. One of his most important points is that serious challenges bring massive opportunities for radical change.

Cameron will certainly be faced with the kind of economic reconstruction that Margaret Thatcher tackled so fearlessly in the early 1980s. She succeeded in transforming Britain from basket case to Anglo-Saxon Tiger in less than a decade.

I’m not going to recite my own shopping list of what a new British government needs to do, as it’s way too long. But lancing the European boil is absolutely essential for British independence and for unity in the Tory party. It would also allow the country its familiar role as a freebooting trader again, free from the paralysing regulatory environment and toxic cost base spewing out in all directions from Brussels.

Frankia, in any shape or size, is no longer in Britain’s national interest. David Cameron may just become the saviour of the nation, a Winston Churchill for the 21st century.

Syntagma tries always to bring you the best one-liners around. The master, in my view, was Winston Churchill. #

Here are a few choice quotes from him :

1. This is for Gordon Brown.
We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

2. For Brown and the European Union.
If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

3. For George Bush.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.

4. For Tony Blair.
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

5. For blog network owners.
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

6. For George Bush’s successor.
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

7. Consolation for Americans.
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

8. For everyone.
Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”