Italy calls for EU Army - proving Brexiteers absolutely right, says Michael Heaver

Why? Perhaps they realised that outside of the sort of diehard Europhiles who wanted Britain to adopt the Euro, the prospect of an EU Army would be regarded as completely barmy.

As with so much about the EU project, they sought to play down the power grabs being made by Brussels that turned EU membership into something way, way beyond just trade.

Nick Clegg famously declared the push for an EU Army as "a dangerous fantasy that is simply not true" during a debate with Nigel Farage in 2014. That was after Farage slammed the European Union's expansionist ambitions.

Since then we've seen French President Emmanuel Macron call for a 'true European army' in 2018.

He was joined by then German Chancellor Angela Merkel who spoke out in favour of an EU Army as well.

The likes of Jean-Claude Juncker also talked up the prospect of the EU having a joint military capability and Ursula von der Leyen has spoken in favour of the bloc finding the political will to build its own military.

So clearly not a 'dangerous fantasy' as the Liberal Democrats wanted you to believe, then.

Some of these calls are now becoming even more blunt. We've now seen Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani make a full-fledged demand for a European Union Army.

This past weekend he was quoted as saying: "If we want to be peacekeepers in the world, we need a European military.

"And this is a fundamental precondition to be able to have an effective European foreign policy."

The Foreign Affairs Minister went on to argue that: "In a world with powerful players like the United States, China, India, Russia - with crises from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific - Italian, German, French or Slovenian citizens can only be protected by something that already exists, namely the European Union."

EU membership inevitably involves further centralisation of power away from national governments, with an agenda of expansion, increasing budgets and yes even an EU Army to join the Euro currency.

It is those who argue otherwise now proven to be living in a fantasy, not Brexiteers.