2012 has been an extraordinary year for our country. We cheered our Queen to the rafters with the Jubilee, showed the world what we're made of by staging the most spectacular Olympic and Paralympic Games ever and - let's not forget - punched way above our weight in the medals table.

The EU must be able to act with the speed and flexibility of a network, not the cumbersome rigidity of a bloc.

The best chapters in our economic history are those that embrace the many, not the few.

Taken as a whole, Europe's share of world output is projected to fall by almost a third in the next two decades. This is the competitiveness challenge - and much of our weakness in meeting it is self-inflicted. Complex rules restricting our labour markets are not some naturally occurring phenomenon.

I mean UKIP, I mean it's just a sort of, you know, bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists, basically.

I want completing the single market to be our driving mission. I want us to be at the forefront of transformative trade deals with the US, Japan and India as part of the drive towards global free trade. And I want us to be pushing to exempt Europe's smallest entrepreneurial companies from more EU directives.

Because I'm a democrat! The will of the people is sovereign.