Britain suffers delusions of weakness not grandeur Towards the end of Skyfall, the latest and most acclaimed of the James Bond films, Judi Dench invokes Alfred, Lord Tennyson to capture British stoicism in the face of decline. "We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven," she accepts. That which we are, we are. It is a lyrical skewering of the most popular myth about the UK in foreign capitals: that it suffers from delusions of grandeur. In truth, the loss of imperial greatness has come to be borne with a grown-up shrug by voters and elites. The caricature of neurotic Britons hankering after global clout, and sometimes believing they still have it, is not just wrong. It is the opposite of the truth. If anything, the UK suffers from delusions of weakness. Its citizens habitually refer to their "small island," which, at least by population size, ranks in the top decile of nations. You would not know from its parochial political culture that the UK has nuclear weapons, a permanent place on the UN Security Council, the ultimate global city as its capital and, according to an annual survey by Monocle magazine, more "soft power" than any other nation. Nowhere is the UK's imagined irrelevance more volubly lamented, and less true to reality, than in its dealings with the EU. At the core of British euroscepticism is the sincere belief that the country is a helpless subject of a club largely shaped by its other members; that the EU is something that happens to the UK. This downbeat take is not entirely wrong. "Ever closer union," the essence of the European project, is not a British objective. European laws that go against the UK's wishes and interests intrude upon its labour market, justice system, agriculture and much else. But the defeatism is overdone and increasingly pathetic in tone. Recent weeks have seen two reminders of British power in the EU. First, the proposed increase in the organisation's budget fell to opposition from the UK and like-minded countries. Then, last week, the British secured safeguards against the prospect of the banking union imposing its will on the rest of the EU. But these fillips should not have been needed to expose the lie of British powerlessness. There are bigger examples of what the UK can achieve through political leadership backed by diplomatic tenacity. The two great achievements of the European project over the past 30 years - the single market and the inclusion of former communist countries to the east - were largely driven by the British. Indeed, many in Brussels raged at the UK's position on the budget precisely because the proposed increase was meant to look after an expanded membership that the British themselves insisted on a decade ago. In Germany and especially in France, which favoured a smaller and less liberal EU, there is bafflement that British euroscepticism has soared during an era where Europe has been moulded by the UK as much as by any other country. It negotiated an opt-out from the euro and saw its language become the EU's dominant tongue. Its diplomats are, along with the French, regarded as the most effective in Brussels. Its determination to complete the single market has supporters in northern Europe, the accession countries and the European Commission itself. The ultimate mark of the UK's clout is that it won all these victories without ever giving the EU its full attention. For France and Germany, asserting their interests in the EU accounts for the bulk of their foreign policy. The UK - even under Tony Blair, perhaps its most europhile prime minister - has been only spasmodically attentive. It tends to intervene late to mould regulations instead of getting involved before they leave the commission. It fails to spot potential alliances. Its politicians are bored by the institutional mechanics of Brussels. The veto brandished against last year's fiscal pact by David Cameron, the prime minister, was a case in point. His demands for assurances for the City might have been granted had they been aired earlier and accompanied by diplomatic effort. The UK is influential almost despite itself - a measure of its size, wealth and liberal appeal to countries put off by the French vision of Europe. Eurosceptic pessimism about British power would be more respectable if it were consistent but the clamour for renegotiation of EU membership shows that it is not. According to much of the Conservative party, including members of the cabinet, the UK is a helpless and isolated vassal of a foreign-led EU but somehow mighty enough to secure a fundamental change to its terms of membership. Reality lies somewhere in between each eccentric claim. The UK wields power and has used it to make the EU a bigger and more liberal entity. But persuading other members to allow it to remain in the single market without the concomitant regulations is another thing. Mr Cameron's strategic goal should not be the fanciful repatriation of powers ceded long ago but the preservation of British influence, and the integrity of the single market his country helped to build, as the EU comes to be dominated by an integrating eurozone. Last week's safeguards were a small start.