When it comes to trade, the EU isn't that good at it

I was going to launch a fresh broadside against the new Vote Leave campaign, but it looks like it's fallen flat and I'm not alone in thinking that the website is dismal and the campaign material is equally lamentable. That's what you get when a campaign is hijacked by self important Tory bubble dwellers who delegate all the work to their part time hired help.

Instead, I thought it worth pointing out this story from last week, with France threatening to pull the plug once more on TTIP. We've long suspected there was a very real chance TTIP would fail and this really underscores the perils of deep and comprehensive agreements. There's too much to bicker over - and in the end we lose out on forging our own unbundled deals. We're subject to France's protectionism and petulance.

Thus far, the EU has only ever succeeded in one bloc to bloc agreement (EU-Carricom) and for all the fanfare, and years of negotiation, it has largely fallen flat, produced few results and because of the asymmetrical nature has given the EU a prime advantage in primary imports and a place to dump surpluses, but is using the lack of implementation of global sustainable development accords in the Caribbean as an excuse to not deliver what was promised prior to the financial crash. The result being a much watered down agreement that has done little to help the Carribean diversify exports and has had little impact on their respective economies. To a large extent, the agreement exists in name only.

In this regard, the same could happen with TTIP where it may yet pass, to much celebration and fanfare, but in real terms will literally not deliver the goods. Looking at the history of such bloc to bloc negotiations, they are prone to many collapses along the way on the back of comparatively small sticking points - put forward by more influential economies inside the EU - namely France.

It is said that without the EU, Britain would be isolated and that to get the best deals and to execute any fundamental changes to the status quo, there is a need to cluster together, pool resources and form alliances to leverage collective strength in negotiations. That's fine if your agenda is also their agenda, but Spain is having a tough time trying to push forward an EU-Mercoser agreement that would harmonise trade with Spanish speaking nations in South America. The EU has limited diplomatic run time and a full plate, so Spain will have to wait its turn, delaying a deal that could open up a hugely beneficial trade triangle until TTIP is finalised.

That leaves us looking for an alternative model. One which deserves exploration is the type which does not involve formal, geographically-anchored country agreements. Instead of portmanteau deals between nations, we need to look at sector or product deals - in which temporary or industry alliances can be formed for the purposes of tailoring an agreement to the most favourable and most achievable outcomes. The best examples, for the moment, come with the deals brokered through the UNECE-sponsored World Forum on Vehicle Regulation Harmonisation, a process we've labelled "unbundling".

The latest development here is the international agreement on tyre standards for passenger cars, where a new system for certification has recently been adopted for product certification, known as Global Technical Regulations (GTRs).

This, as the name applies, is actually a global agreement, aimed at providing uniform regulation for an industry worth $200 billion a year, employing over 600,000 people globally. Currently, it is producing 3.3 billion units annually and the industry is expected to grow to $220 billion by 2015.

The point here is that, while TTIP could - in theory - produce a boost to the global economy of $500bn annually - over a wide range of products - it is unlikely ever to come to fruition. A deal on tyres - just one product - could, potentially deliver about $40bn, which has a much better chance of being achieved. Do a series of deals, product-by-product, and you will get to your TTIP target, while the negotiators for the "big bang" are still talking about what sort of coffee should be served at the conference tables.

As global trade is expanding at an unprecedented rate, with highly agile corporates being able to rapidly shift bases to take advantage of favourable trade agreements depending on their sector, Europe is well behind the curve. It increasingly looks like we are isolated from the world within the EU as we are prevented from acting in the interests of our own emerging industries, where new innovations must wait in line - often decades to be recognised as priority EU concerns. All the while the EU is engaged in stamping out brushfires in its own back yard.

The bottom line is that the EU is outdated and locked into an obsolete paradigm while the world overtakes. If there were to be any reform of the EU worth having it would be that all nations would have some if not all trading autonomy returned so that nations would be free to pursue their own interests, more in line with their cultural alliances, and then lodging them with the EU so that all EU states may take advantage by way of using the instigating nation as a proxy. After all, that is how Norway accesses EU trade agreements without being an EU member.

That of course is not going to happen. Such a proposal would threaten the very basis of the EU as it contradicts the EUs own statehood ambitions. Moreover, the next EU treaty is likely to want more, not less control over the affairs of Eurozone nations, effectively becoming the economic administrator in the way it has imposed itself upon Greece. Such a treaty would not only marginalise us further in terms of EU priorities, it leaves us locked out of the emerging global single markets.

We could be joining a global automotive trade alliance, which would have all the benefits of a single market in terms of tariffs and and regulations, without the need to cede everything else to a supranational authority. We could then expand it to other sectors to create a multi layered single market where those industries not seeking favourable terms can opt out of the process entirely thus streamlining it.

In the final analysis, the EU says we need it most of all for trade, but it's actually not very good at it. It's large enough to be a massive influence, but by way of its own mentality it is actually holding back global growth and preventing nations with specialist industries benefiting themselves and the wider EU economy.

Indeed we do need a reformed EU, but few can really define what that means. They make pronouncements on the need for greater competitiveness but what's required to do that is anathema to their ethos and an existential threat to Le Grande Project. The dream of a one nation Europe blinds them to opportunities and the realities at play. They cannot possibly conceive that it is they who are the regressive nationalists.

In the end though, I do not believe we will leave the EU just yet. The campaign has been hijacked by know-nothings from the SW1 claque, and nothing you have read here will make itself apparent in any mainstream sources, simply because it is beyond their comprehension. Our media is incompetent and both sides are locked into an old Eurocentric paradigm, fighting old battles and wholly oblivious of just how fast the rest of the world is catching up. It's very much two bald men fighting over a comb. In the end, the well worn fearmongering will win out because our side will fail in framing the question about what the EU is, and it will fail to convey a complex message like the above and instead live in its comfort zone, bleating about regulations and membership fees.

In the end we will leave the EU, not through a considered and negotiated settlement in the wake of a referendum. It will be a seismic global event that slaps us in the the face with the cold hand of reality. We will be torn from the EU, if not ejected under worse terms than ever and we will be in a much poorer position to leverage a deal on the global stage because of the damage such a Brexit process will do. We will have lost our global competitive edge by the time it happens.

This may be another thirty or forty years down the line, but one way or the other, the EU cannot survive under its own weight, it will never reform in any meaningful way and it has an untidy and unfortunate end. Thus I say to all of those campaigning for us to stay in to think carefully about what you're inflicting on us. We can either leave now as we have always been destined to, under amicable terms with an ally, or we can do it the other way, in acrimony and regret.

The EU is never going to be what you envisaged it being. It is overextended in the East, it has gone as far as it will ever go and the new treaty will be the EU's high water mark. The Eurozone will be the closest it will ever get to that completed European Union - with us on the outside of it. Being that the reality, it just makes sense to leave so both the EU and Britain are free to get what they need.

It doesn't mean the end of cooperation nor does it mean we will never act in an alliance to get the best for Europe, but it does mean Sometimes, we can join in alliances to say no to the EU. Brexit isn't the end of the world, it isn't a disaster or economic suicide. It's just a pragmatic recognition of the reality we face and there is no reason why it should be bad for anybody. Since we are leaving the EU anyway, and the EU is certainly leaving us, I would prefer we do it now and that we do it right.

The EU is really about the elimination of democracy

I've spent much of the day looking into yet more dimensions to the labyrinth of global entities that permeate government at every level. Conventions, committees, accords, agreements, forums - all of which have at least some legal standing in the fabric of global governance. It's difficult to know where one begins and the other ends - often with policy areas overlapping so we have WHO conclusions enacted by UNECE/FOA/UNEP/CODEX along with interjections from various UN climate forums and treaties. Everything from low emissions zones, tobacco, plastic bags, sugar levels in food, banking regulation - just to name some of the more visible aspects that intrude on our daily lives.

And that's just the visible government. So much of what government does is completely invisible not least because it works and extends liberties rather than encroaches on them. But it's that thing sat in the middle that I can't make sense of. The EU - the machine that seems to exist primarily to remove democracy from the process.

That said, the eurosceptic cry of "making our own laws" seems ever more unrealistic. When there are global problems replicated in every major city around the globe, there is every advantage in establishing global functions and sometimes giving way in the common good works to our advantage, not least in terms of the political capital it stores up for when we really want to protect our own interests.

I recently concluded that there can never truly be proper parliamentary scrutiny in this process in that parliaments can only ever deliberate over the finished product. But in that respect it, in the interests of advancing convergence, it requires that there is better consultation in the process so that such agreements do not fail.

Secondly, agreements must be piecemeal in order to increase their chances of success. This is not happening because the EU has an agenda and something to prove in honouring the promises it has made. Political expediency and vanity always come before getting the best results.

Consequently it is better if we take the EU out of the equation. What that gives us is agility in choosing which sectors we prioritise and with whom, also affording us the ability to block that which does not improve our domestic conditions. After all, who wants worse air quality regulations or less safe cars?

But again, it comes down to better consultation and greater transparency. If we examine some of these global groups, we find they consult those parties that are too large to ignore - global NGO's and corporates. They form alliances between themselves, often including smaller nations. One such example is the Cairns Group which is an amalgam of different institutions separate to the UN mechanisms. They wield great influence over technical regulations and removal of technical barriers to trade.

What's lost in this is the voice of the little guy - the people who can't afford to comply. In that, what we could do is make it a legal requirement to join a trade guild, as indeed Germany does, so that such institutions acting in a similar function to unions at the International Labour Organisation, so that they collectively produce better regulation that doesn't require a veto on the basis of protecting national interests.

In that regard, we can reduce the necessity for governmental intervention in that all parties are fairly represented. Much of this can happen by way of standards adoption without the need for the EU to rubber stamp them on our behalf.

The aim should be to create that global single market and in the process, shorten the chain of accountability. In this the EU is both and obstacle and an inhibitor in that it acts as a barrier between interest groups and those international organisations at the very top of the chain. It controls who speaks to whom and under what conditions. Kind of like a prison guard at visitor time ensuring there is no physical contact.

The delay, procrastination and gold plating that occurs inside the EU is not necessary and adds no value to the process. The conclusion of Trans-Pacific Partnership, if ratified, demonstrates that independent nations are perfectly capable of of creating alliances without the artificial edifice of the EU. Alliances are always better than bloc treaties in that they allow nations to change allegiances according to the industry they are regulating so that the best deals can be made without unfavourable compromises.

The europhile refrain is that the rest of the world are rushing to create and join trade blocs in the image of the EU, but these are free trade agreement areas rather than the surpranational entity that the EU is, with statehood ambitions. This is their fundamental dishonesty in pretending the EU is something that it isn't.

Consequently the rest of the world is free of the dogmatic idealism and hubris that has brought the European economy to its knees. While the EU is locked into a mentality of creating the grand project it can never give way to pragmatism. Meanwhile, the world is overtaking it, we're left behind and end up implementing what the rest of the world decides with neither adequate consultation or outright veto.

The reason it survives is because it bribes special interest groups with our own money, farming out rights and entitlements as though there were no unintended consequences, and the result is slower growth, fewer opportunities and less secure contracts as Europe struggles to compete. But you won't find an academic in a cosy sinecure who's opposed to receiving EU funds, nor activists in EU funded NGOs and influential think tanks. That is how they control the message and that is how they dominate media opinion.

The bottom line is the EU is the fabrication of a fictional demos to impose on a people who wouldn't want it if they were told the truth about what it is and why it exists. Had it never existed, as things stand today, nobody would bother to invent it, unless of course they wanted what the EU wants - the elimination of democracy and the end of the nation state. 

Setting the stage for the Cameron deception

The Guardian reports that the European Union’s most senior court has ruled that it is lawful for countries such as Britain to impose a voting ban on prisoners convicted of serious crimes. The "unexpected" ruling by the European court of justice upholds a ban on a French convicted murderer who was serving a sentence of more than five years from taking part in the European elections.

The European judges ruled that the ban on him voting did represent a breach of the EU charter of fundamental rights but that it was proportionate “in so far as it takes into account the nature and gravity of the criminal offence committed and the duration of the penalty”.

That has most definitely shot Ukip's favourite fox. Further to this we see moves toward an accord with Turkey to take more of a role in stemming the flow of refugees from Syria. It is far from any kind of solution but it is likely that by the time the referendum is upon us it will resolve the more visible symptoms of the crisis and the summer of outrage we saw this year will be long forgotten by a bored and fickle electorate.

One by one the petty complaints will be nixed by the EU in conjunction with our own government - doing those basic housekeeping things that should have been done some time ago.  While The Telegraph is playing silly games by misreporting a statement by the Advocate Generals opinion that Britain can discriminate against EU migrants with regard to in work benefit, there is a likelihood we will see a concession on this peripheral matter. 

All of this is part of an elaborate set up to convince the voting public that Cameron has indeed successfully negotiated with the EU and got a better deal for Britain. Against a backdrop of a "looser relationship" as part of the new EU treaty, putting us into second tier membership, Mr Cameron will have little difficulty pulling the wool over our eyes with the assistance of a woefully inept media with no ability to analyse what is in front of them.

Thus the referendum hinges on public confidence in the Prime Minister and whether he is deemed trustworthy. With immigration off the radar and many of the classic Ukip foxes shot, the carpet will have been pulled from under a cack-handed Leave campaign that will still be bleating about the Commonwealth or something equally asinine. It becomes a choice between the quiet confidence of an apparently victorious prime minister and a rabble of incoherent ranters with an alternative built on a foundation of intellectual sand represented by a handful of tedious and largely repellent spokesmen. 

We will see countless mandarins saying that "eurosceptics need to present their vision of what Brexit would look like", with a concerted effort by both sides of the campaign to exclude and influences not native to their gilded circle. Distortion by omission being their most reliable tool.

The risk for Leavers is that we will be too caught up in the comfort zone of bickering over trade figures to notice that we're being outmanoeuvred, having many of our key arguments eroded and nullified, leaving us standing naked with neither a vision or a coherent strategy.

Our task is to sell our alternative but also discredit the Prime Minister. In so doing we must be mindful of not sounding like rabid shouty leftists or kippers, because even by 2017, Cameron will still be more popular than any of the other leaders. That will not be easy. A failure to capture the right tone will most certainly lose us the contest. 

Of course, Tories will be mealy mouthed in attacking the PM and some have suggested that this tactic puts the campaign firmly in the hands of the Ukipists. It's true, it does. But actually, what option is there when Tories cannot be trusted not to turn on a sixpence and support the Cameron deception?

Again this underscores the need for the so called "people's army" to be supplemented by special forces who will have no loyalty to the official campaign, Ukip or the Tories. Over the last few months I have engaged many europhiles who gear their arguments to the message of Ukip and nothing knocks them off guard and out of their comfort zone like entirely original arguments grounded in fact. In that respect our thesis that we can have a global single market among a community of equals is far more appealing than subjugation to the Euro. 

As much as we have the better vision that is more in touch with the reality of global trade, it gives us the upper handing painting the europhiles as the ones stuck in the past, fixated with little Europe. More than that, Flexcit is our ace in the hole in that it gives us a credible way out of the EU with multiple fallback positions. If we work inside that message, holding to our message and hunt in packs on the internet, we can shape the debate and show leadership by way of having original material that cuts through the white noise. This is why we need innovative and creative bloggers to take our message and sell it to their own consistencies. 

Effective campaigners will need to be willing to defy the message of the lead Leave campaign, willing to disassociate with their preferred party and be ready to ditch the traditional eurosceptic arguments. Not least because few will stand up by the time the entire weight of the EU has been thrown at cutting them down. In that regard it is important not to lower expectations of Cameron. Superficially they will do just enough round the edges to throw him a bone. If we say he'll come back with nothing and then end up with a raft of seemingly comprehensive measures then we are out on our own and looking foolish. 

The game is very much afoot, and Cameron's PR team are no slouches. They have some of the finest minds in the business. They have seen eurosceptics and know exactly how to make us play to our weaknesses. It's inevitable that the lead campaign will give them what they want so that leaves just me, you and whoever else you recruit to take care of business. Campaigning and bickering with europhiles at this point serves very little purpose, even though we all enjoy it and it's in our comfort zone. Right now we need to be preparing for the endgame, defining what it looks like and recruiting good people who can see the game at play. If that is you, make yourself known!

Remaining in the EU is a gamble we cannot afford

Heavily paraphrasing an Economist article here, but this is key to a lot of what we've been saying on this blog. After more than five years of negotiations, representatives from 12 countries in Asia and the Americas finally struck a deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious and contentious free-trade pact. It is the biggest and deepest multilateral trade deal in years, encompassing countries that account for 40% of the world’s economy. But it might prove even more important than that if it succeeds in its ambition to “define the rules of the road” for trade in Asia, as Michael Froman, America’s lead negotiator, put it.

Mr Froman’s office estimates that TPP will see more than 18,000 tariffs on American products reduced to zero. But tariffs, which have already been greatly reduced among TPP’s members, are not the most touted bit of the treaty. More important are the minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property (WIPO), workers and the environment. All parties will be compelled to follow the International Labour Organisation’s basic principles on workers’ rights, for example.

The full implications of the deal are not yet known, however, since TPP has been negotiated under a thick blanket of secrecy. This was intended to make it easier for the signatories to offer concessions without being pilloried at home.

Lawmakers in the 12 participating countries must now approve the agreement. This should be straightforward in places like Japan, where the ruling party has a commanding majority. But Canada faces a knife-edge election on 19th October. One of the three main parties is campaigning against TPP, arguing that it will kill farm jobs.

The biggest row will be in America, where Congress has 90 days to review the deal before putting it to an up-or-down vote, with no amendments. Although Republicans, traditionally the party of free trade, have a majority in both houses of Congress, they are divided on TPP’s merits. Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year, has described it as “an attack on America’s business”. Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential contender, has also refused to endorse the deal, albeit not quite so flamboyantly.

What we see here is a "trade deal" which is less about dropping tariffs as it is about forming a single regulatory environment for key sectors. Note that the building blocks are WIPO and the ILO - those bodies that define international standards and form the basis of much of the EU's own regulation. In essence the rest of the world is creating its own single market, but TTP differs from TTIP in that it is must be ratified by signatory states and put before national parliaments. Y'know, that democracy thing.

Where TTIP is concerned, there is no such cumbersome democracy in that national parliaments are excluded from deliberations and the process is entrusted to the European Parliament - where we have no independent right of veto and in negotiations we must always adopt the common EU position. The benefit of multilateral agreements in a community of equals is that the whole thing does not fold if two blocs do not agree. Nations may opt out of TTP, but EU states have no such autonomy.

The disadvantage is that ratification can be stalled for petty political reasons and thus nations could be held back from enjoying the benefits. That though, is that democracy thing. What it spells out is the necessity to be approach the creation of common trade areas one industry at a time so that there can be proper scrutiny with a higher chance of succeeding. The ILO conditions alone could be considered offensive to America, depending on who is in charge. Without American approval the deal is a dead duck.

The clear lesson for Britain is that we can independently adopt international standards, and probably already have, which gives the UK all the scope it needs for mutual recognition to join in this global single market - but only if we are free of the EU. We can try and possibly succeed in going all in or one industry at a time which may actually be accomplished faster than horse trading in order to pass a comprehensive agreement. But more than anything, a parliamentary veto is enough of a reason to leave the EU more than any other concern.

We might even ask if we can afford the risk of staying in the EU, exposing ourselves to whatever the EU concocts while missing out on the global opportunities. We have already observed how we are presented with rules on banking, through to plastic bags and sugar taxes without a national debate or a veto, and we cannot say for certain what else is in the pipeline. The question must be asked as to how much more law are we going to allow to be adopted on our behalf without the means of influencing them at the top tables?

In no way does the EU represent democracy, and as it continues to raise the bar for market entry we risk losing our global competitiveness while being on a tight leash to the new model EU, subjugated to the primary mission of preserving the euro. By staying in the EU we expose ourselves to whatever the EU signs up to as a matter of expediency while cutting ourselves off from a revolution in global trade. It is a gamble we cannot afford to take.

An absence of democracy

So we've seen the new rules on plastic bags. Next up is the Sugar Tax. Some councils are already looking to pre-empt any specific regulation, but you can be sure specific regulation is on the way. A new WHO guideline (4 March 2015) recommends adults and children reduce their daily intake of free sugars to less than 10% of their total energy intake. A further reduction to below 5% or roughly 25 grams (6 teaspoons) per day would provide additional health benefits.

They are written in conjunction with the WHO Department of Nutrition for Health and Development and the UN FAO/Codex. Such "guideline" hook into the international prestige of a number of contributory organisation, and being the rubber stamped experts on such matters, it is more than likely that such "recommendations" will be transposed verbatim into EU law and by coincidence, while the ignorati are muttering about "Brussels bureaucrats", we will see oddly familiar initiatives rolled out across the the US and Australia - just like when we saw those warnings on washing up liquid (a UNECE measure).

There will be no significant public debate about it, it will just pop up one week as the new law (just like the carrier bags). Since food producers will have been involved at the global level we will see marketing initiatives that attempt to sell us the idea they are doing it of their own accord, but they will be modifying their production regimes in anticipation of it becoming law. This is how the corporates paint themselves as self regulating and conscientious global citizens.

What we'll then see is various domestic "experts" opining, long after the legislation process has had the door slammed shut. Even on this thread, if anyone bothers to comment it will be an irrelevant comment as to the substance of the law rather than the origin of it. It seems folks are just not equipped to handle this dynamic of being ruled by a remote technocracy.

If I had to pass an unqualified remark on the substance of this particular measure, I would say that the refined sugars and recopies that do not occur in any natural state most likely are in some way carcinogens or at the very least not very healthy and so there is a function of regulation in preventing harmful produce entering markets. Food companies do use marketing psychology to design produce that people will consume in excess and so regulators need to be mindful of that to prevent them abusing human frailty to do harm.

But in that regard, the global organisations are in the grip to a deeply meddlesome agenda, often married to climate change issues - and because it is so closely linked with "scientific consensus" and institutional prestige it becomes law without any real scrutiny - and without the power to veto. Whether we would veto such measures had we the chance I do not know. Probably not, but the fact is, as things stand as members of the EU, we do not have the capacity to veto it. This, we are told, is "global influence".

The ability to veto at the very top tables, bypassing the EU gives us the opportunity to punch at our weight at the global level and show leadership in holding the global governance matrix to account. The EU has proven that it couldn't even if it wanted to.

It's this simple...

Broadly the public vote will follow this dynamic hereabove. The public believed Cameron used the veto in 2011 to much public approval. They are easily fooled on EU affairs. Thus the Cameron strategy will be to shine up the status quo and call it gold. The end phase of the campaign will not be a furious battle over the respective merits of the EU. It will be a detailed debate as to how credible Cameron's "reforms" are. Cameron will use his prestige of office to present associate membership as EU reform and will make it look like a diplomatic victory. If we want to leave the EU, we will have to attack the PM and his credibility and damage him personally. That is why the Tory SW1 claque cannot be allowed to run the referendum campaign. They are not to be trusted. Tribalists always put the tribe first.

Radical as far as radical goes

Councils in England will be able to keep the proceeds from business rates raised in their area under plans unveiled by Chancellor George Osborne. Councils will also be able to cut the rate and some will be able to raise it. Mr Osborne said councils would hold on to £26bn, calling it the "biggest transfer of power" in recent history. They currently keep up to 50% of the rates - the rest goes to Westminster. The Local Government Association (LGA) said the move was "good news". But Labour warned it could start a "race to the bottom" with councils competing to cut their rates the most.

This move is actually extremely good news. It does mark a transfer of power of a sort. But since councils are still overly large regional development agencies running to a very tight set of proscribed parameters, usually from way up in the chain, it merely marks a transfer of power of execution rather than self rule and freedom to innovate. It still cannot be considered devolution. For sure it's radical as far as radical goes within the current paradigm of governance, but we have no greater say in what it gets spent on. 

The Labour notion that it could lead to a race to the bottom is an amusing thought though. The notion that councils could ever contain their rampant greed is comical. But they say it could happen as though that were a bad thing. I can't think of a better means of regenerating the North and taking pressure off London than incentivising businesses to leave the capital. I have been saying this should happen for many years along with giving councils complete control over corporation tax too - but that can only happen on the proviso that we see an inversion of the power triangle where councils maintain central government rather than the other way around.

Ultimately it is the top down nature of government that stifles real democracy and while this is a move to be celebrated I doubt that we will see many councils exercising their powers because they still have statutory obligations set by Whitehall on behalf of the EU and global entities. Until we have freedom in that regard - and freedom from the EU, I suspect this move is largely symbolic. The gesture is right but there are no moves to improve accountability.

The British political debate on the EU is an empty charade

Unintentionally I'm acquiring a reputation as having some expertise on international trade and global regulation. I've been getting technical enquiries via direct messages on Facebook at Twitter. At this point I confess to having precisely zero expertise on any of it. I just have an apparent expertise when contrasted with the majority of those involved in public discourse just by way of acknowledging it exists and having a basic idea of what it does. I'm only just sliding off the other side of "Mount Stupid".

Just the mechanistic interactions in one industry sector between the WTO and the EU regarding subsidies is something that would take two lifetimes to acquire expertise in. On that alone I only have a passing familiarity with the terminology.

Knowing how little I now know about so much, I find myself unable to comment on whether somesuch regulation is good or bad. I can only pass comment on roughly where it came from and the mechanisms by which it became law. The only immediately apparent thing about it is how little democracy is involved.

We may have had a national conversation at one point about plastic bag charging, and the debate that rages this week is largely shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. It didn't matter what you thought of it then and it matters even less now. It was decided at the international level by way of global accords and passed to the EU inside a block of regulations which automatically become law regardless of whether there is an act of parliament.

There might have been a vote in the European parliament, but by this stage, the technical standards are already decided and agreed upon thus the parliament can only stall or delay by voting such measures down. They are often bundled into a raft of measures like the US Stimulus Bill that no individual or deliberative body could ever have given it the proper scrutiny. There is no possible way this process could be described as democracy.

I often speak of journalists not having the intellectual architecture to comment on EU matters, but it's not some gift from the gods. All you need is an inherent sense of curiosity. When it comes to regulations and rights supposedly coming from the EU, I start off with the assumption that the EU lacks any such competence, largely because I know roughly what the EU is made up of.

Beyond that I look for the international body most likely responsible and search their own databases. Nine times out of ten I find most of what the EU does in relation to the so called single market begins life elsewhere. It is assumed by most in the media and in the house of commons that these bodies are merely advisory, but their productions are usually transposed into law verbatim because corporates, NGOs and governments have agreed to them at the very top tables.

In this process we have no independent right of veto by way of being in the EU and must always vote for the common EU position - where we are structurally outnumbered.  

Meanwhile, it's astonishing how few people know what the WTO is and what it does. All of these threats as to what the EU will supposedly do to us if we leave look increasingly implausible when you look at the international law by which the EU is bound. If the EU does want to play dirty tricks we can give the WTO a century of casework just by looking at French agriculture alone.

The EU doesn't so much have skeletons in the closet as neon skeletons hanging outside the front door with giant arrows pointing to them. It will get a crash course it just how little of its own law is attributable to Brussels and that if we can be held to account, so can they.

Once you are aware of such interrelations and how the EU is bound by WTO rules, where we actually find that the basis of even the EUs own internal single market is governed by the WTO, virtually all politicos and hacks pontificating on the subject look like they're on another planet. If I know little then these people know nothing.

If you've been following any of my work over the last few months then you are now somewhat familiar with the rich tapestry of international agencies that govern everything from banking rules to plastic bags - and yet we still have party conferences to decide on what governmental policy is supposedly going to be. Given the latitude available to them, all they can really do is design their reactions to various problems bad international law creates - and even then, only within a narrow set of parameters, assuming these ignoramuses are even capable of understanding the source of the problems.

Throughout the refugee crisis, there has been barely a mention of the Geneva Convention on Refugees, just as during the debate on zero hours contracts made no mention of the Agency Workers Directive - which itself is a product of the International Labour Organisation.

Consequently if you get the vibe that British politics seems like an empty sham it's because it is exactly that. There is a long regulatory chain that operates as if in secrecy. You could call it a conspiracy except they publish their findings and intentions in full on their own websites only nobody bothers to look. Both the europhiles and the sceptics have little clue as to what's going on thus the Brexit debate between the self appointed campaign organisations on both sides is an empty charade also.

Consequently if you find my contempt is spread equally among Ukip, the Tories, Labour and the media then it's because they are all equally worthless in terms of their contribution to public discourse and politics in general - and because of the vast egos involved in perpetuating this circus, were our betters in the SW1 bubble made aware of how little they know and how little influence they have, they would move heaven and earth through the media vessels they control to conceal it. But while our media is as lamentable as it is, they have no possible cause to.

The task at hand...

The face of the real enemy

When I migrated to this blog it was with the intention of breaking with persistent attacks on Ukip. I think this blog has achieved that. After all, it is now unfair to single out Ukip when the entire eurosceptic edifice is woefully underperforming.

More to the point, the election is over and Ukip has ceased to be important. Some have asked why I do not attack Labour now that Labour are manifestly worse than Ukip. Put simply, I don't need to. I never had any expectations or demand of Labour. I never wanted them to perform better because they have never represented a proposition I support.

The ferocity of my attacks on Ukip we stepped up toweard the election because it became clear that Ukip was not going to moderate its own behaviour or improve its conduct and so it became a matter of necessity to damage Ukip's prospects. Had they had more MPs, there is a goodly chance they would be taking a much more prominent role in the referendum and that could not be allowed to happen.

That is why I campaigned hard on the internet to furnish anti-Ukip people with all the information they could use. It's interesting now that select anti-Ukip bloggers and Tweeters can offer a better commentary on the inner wrangling of eurosceptics than the so called experts like Matthew Goodwin. I would like to think I had some part in that. I know my little blog caused a many to think twice about Ukip and help set the tone against them and if I am in some way partially responsible for Ukip failing to make a Westminster breakthrough, then I wasn't wasting my time. I know that since the election many Ukip activists have quit the party on the basis of things I have said.

I will admit, some of my posts on the Complete Bastard blog were flying close to the edge and unfairly tarring some good people, but there is a huge difference between the Ukippers you meet in person and the kippers they are when they get anywhere near an internet connection. In that respect, for me, it was open season. The worst elements of Ukip needed to be held aloft as a mirror for those activists who were still under the misapprehension Ukip was a moderate party with a sensible approach. In that regard, I make no apology. I still think anybody wanting to have an active role online in the coming referendum serves the cause best by having no visible links to Ukip.

Now that the Ukip threat is contained, I'm not going to turn my guns on Labour since the entire media machine is focussed on Corbyn and his motley crew and the public will see them for what they are. I have no love of the anti-Ukip mob either. They shouted all the way through the election about Ukip's bigotry, but in the end, these people are also bigots. Show them the truth about the EU and they fall back on the usual hackneyed memes about the EU, persisting in telling a lie they know to be untrue. Many of them are Cornbynites and a Labour government run by Corbyn is every bit as unpalatable as a referendum run by Ukip. But since neither is now going to happen, I'm content to focus on other things.

In this respect, I'm not going to expend too much effort attacking the other campaigns. They are just another obstacle on the battlefield. The witless prattle from eurosceptics will at least keep the opposition campaign busy - but I will be focussing most of my attention on the real enemy in this. David Cameron. Ukippers are keen to point out that we wouldn't have a referendum were it not for Ukip, but in the end we have a referendum because people voted for a Conservative government. I was one of them. Now that we have that referendum it's open season on Cameron and it all hinges on painting Cameron as the dodgy used car salesman selling us a lemon.

They are going to sell us a new relationship with the EU. We must point out that it's exactly the same master-slave relationship with a smaller influence in EU policy. To that end, Business for Elliot, Leave.EU, British Influence, Ukip and Business for New Europe are all completely irrelevant to the battle. Lemming like calls for unity with any of the Leave campaigns must be resisted. I have found that online skirmishes, I have the upper hand by letting people attack the decoy campaigns, and then agreeing with them and taking a line they have no preprepared arguments for. They don't quite know how to handle free thinkers. In that, I welcome any Ukip refugees who want to pitch in fighting the real battle. Your former tribe is now spent and though a hindrance to the effort, only a minor one because they were defeated at the election.

Our success depends on a core of campaigners who won't wait for the main campaign and do not seek leadership. This will be won by a small band of coordinated people working to promote a particular message who do not feel duty bound to uphold the stupidity of our own side. There is no harm in attacking the Brexit main efforts and we'll look more stupid if we don't.

We will have to pick our battles selectively, wasting little time on pointless or unwinnable battles and focus on the main objective. That hinges on undermining the credibility of David "Phantom Veto" Cameron. In that we will find we have many sympathetic ears on the left and right. As much as the Tories won the election, 76% of the public did not vote for them. Thinking of it in those terms, we ought to be embarrassed if we don't win this.

Little Europe is retreating from the world

Our friends British Influence​ are crowing about the EU's creation of a capital markets union. It aims to make create deeper and more integrated capital markets in the EU. Eurosceptics will invent many reasons to hate it just because it comes in EU packaging, but it's actually no bad thing in principle. The removal of technical barriers to investment can never be bad.

That said, as with most initiatives we see from the EU, it is in fact replication of a global effort as a means of assuming ownership of it. What it amounts to is the implementation of a number of policy reviews since 2007. Namely MiFID2. Various financial instruments will be subject to these "new" rules but again are largely Basel 3 and EMIR requirements - the global conventions for banking regulations.

The House of Lords report on the "post-crisis EU financial regulatory framework" – only published in February said it is likely that the UK would have implemented the vast bulk of the financial sector regulatory framework had it acted unilaterally, not least because it was closely engaged in the development of the international standards from which much EU legislation derives.

As with all such developments there is good and bad, and in some cases regulation that supersedes other regulation is actually deregulation in essence. The authors of much of these conventions are in fact the banks themselves and large consultancy firms like KPMG - with consultation all through the chain.

If anything it is the banks who are leading the way because they like regulation, they like standardisation and they like global networks without technical barriers. In many respects they are way ahead of downstream lawmakers like the EU in terms of creating a global single market in banking. But that's never good enough for the EU. The EU always attempts to claim such initiatives as their own. In any other sphere it would be considered plagiarism. It is born of this myopic little Europe mentality, where Europe breaks away from the global effort to focus on its own back yard, further complicating what is already fairly good regulation.

As if the wasn't bad enough, and at a cost to the City, the EU will naturally take many years to implement it, taking into account the foibles of all the EU member states when really London should be forging ahead without waiting on the EU. As it happens, we have far more of need to develop a single market for investment with Canada, Africa, the US and India. When I think of expanding the reach of our global investments, Bulgaria and Romania are not the first nations that leap to mind.

Consequently, by creating a technical barrier to trade with the rest of the world, it means is that the rest of the world will suffer "the Brussels effect" whereby any nation that trades with Europe will adopt the EU standard by default because compliance with the most stringent is usually the cheaper option in the long run and less hassle than running two concurrent regimes. But that's only for the big boys who can afford it. Smaller operations and start-ups will simply ignore Europe and seek investment opportunities with less developed states who use the global default standards. Rather than being free market, once again we see "little Europe" putting its head in the sand and protecting its own internal economy at the expense of doing business with the evolving global markets.

What is of more concern to us is that because the EU intends to reform as a two tier Europe, with the Eurozone states acting as a single financial entity, we will be a second rate influence inside the EU with no outright veto over measures that may harm the City. If that is the cost of being in the EU then we are better off opting out of the European capital markets union and joining the global single market instead - where the banks are driving down barriers years ahead of the Strasbourg talking shop. The subsequent boost to our economy would give us the economic clout to maintain access to the EU market on special terms by way of a mutual recognition agreement.

More than anything though, I don't trust the EU in any such undertaking. The EU's first priority is always the taking of more powers by means of the beneficial crisis doctrine - and its supranational ambitions always take priority over what is in the common good. In a system where we are structurally outvoted, and when the City has the most to lose. At best we'd be looking at a form of economic hibernation and at worst the hollowing out of our main global asset in the square mile - which could be used as a slush fund to prop up the EU's currency of perpetual crisis. And they say it's us Brexiteers who are gambling with Britain's future!

Referendum ruminations

I've wasted some of the morning bickering on Twitter with europhiles. What's striking is that they are so uniformly tedious in spouting the same tired old talking points. It also highlights how pointless any such bickering is. We're not having a referendum on what the EU is now. We're having a referendum on what Mr Cameron expects our relationship with the EU will be, which has yet to be defined.

All we know is that it will probably be something along the lines of associate membership, which changes very little, but formalises our status as a second class nation in the EU, still with no voice at the top table and no independent right of veto. It is that vision we have to define and attack. Generic griping about the EU isn't productive.

To that end, the flurry of activity from TheKnow is not actually constructive campaigning. All Mr Banks's operation is doing is filling the airwaves with incoherent memes, some of which make all the classic mistakes and isn't particularly helpful - and in some cases damaging to the image of the broader campaign. The last thing we want to be doing is banging on about the Commonwealth yet that is exactly what The Know is doing this weekend.

While I have offered some constructive criticism of Bank's campaign, I have held off outright condemnation in that it is early days and Banks has given us assurances that his operation will improve and that he has taken on board what we have said. Sadly, there is no evidence of this and I'm pretty much resigned now to the fact that Leave.EU will run an awful campaign and like Ukip before it will not heed good advice.

Mr Banks has set upon the US strategy of capturing the base by tapping into the Ukip vote - mimicking the crass populism. This is a mistake. Any Leave campaign will automatically "capture the base" and Ukip support by way of it being a leave campaign. By fashioning it after Ukip, it can only head up the same cul-de-sac Ukip went up and rapidly bang its head on the glass ceiling. From that there is no return.

Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, if Business for Elliot does win the nomination we can say with some confidence that there will be no official campaign at all. You see, you need money to run a campaign and if it's all going in sinecures for Elliot's think tank mates and on "data services" run by Elliot's chums, then there's not going to be much in the kitty to do anything useful. For sure we'll see some idiotic billboards and the obligatory leaflet stuffed through letterboxes, but in terms of an effective and coordinated campaign we won't see anything of the kind.

Meanwhile, it's clear that the media can only see this in terms of an SW1 scrap of personalities and the real conversation will be happening without them. The media is as clueless as ever it was and our politicians are lamentably out of their depth. Certainly Barney the Talking Dinosaur knows more about the EU and trade than your average back bencher. If we want to win we will have to condition our own activists to ignore the main campaigns and what the politicians say and do. In this vote, they don't get a say, we do. We have to undermine the credibility of the media, which should be fairly easy on current form.

Anyone who seriously wants to campaign to leave the EU will have to get serious about building their own online constituency and generating original content of their own. Nothing from Banks or Elliot will be reusable or credible and original material will always be more effective in reaching the audience you have. As far as my own Facebook account goes, I now post more independent bloggers than any legacy media articles. For years now the mainstream media has been freezing voices out, squeezing out alternative ideas and more informed sources. We should now turn the tables on them and cut them out of our referendum. It is a conversation over our future, not some tawdry plaything for them to fill airtime with.

This referendum is not going to be about their voices. It will be about ours, talking directly to the people, ignoring the noise and shutting out the parasites who would take it as their own. Between now and the referendum, our task is to build up a stronger understanding of the the issues that goes beyond the typical eurosceptic memes, and producing original content that adds to the debate. More than that, we need to make sure our side knows which battle it is fighting. It won't be a scrap between the Leave and Remain camps. Trading statistics and infographics wins no votes. What matters is that we attack the real target. That will be David Cameron selling us his second class status sell out. In that we cannot rely on Tories in that tribal allegiances and careers always trump principle,  

When it comes to The Know, Business for Elliot and Ukip, I just think to hell with them all. If we wait for them to get their acts together we will be waiting a very long time. That is time we do not have and we cannot afford to let them waste our time. They are best ignored. We are effectively going into this fight without a coherent campaign organisation - we can expect nothing of it except that it will make a lot of noise, waste a lot of money and cause us some embarrassment. We should treat it as a distracting sideshow and focus our attention on winning without them. I don't actually think we need them at all. If what is on offer is the only choice, I would sooner the Electoral Commission just gave us our money back via a tax rebate.

There is no good reason to stay in the EU

It's a Sunday morning and I'm reading "Behavioural Response to Plastic Bag Legislation in Botswana". It is the product of a long chain of international governance measures aimed at tackling plastic pollution. The prattle from the party conferences seems a million miles away. Their fringe meetings serve only as tribal posturings. This document shows that policy is decided elsewhere - far from their reach.

If anything, modern politics is about designing our reaction and policy response to problems created by that layer of invisible top tier of global government. It is wholly reactive. Nobody talks about actually solving the problems because the power is not within their gift.

We could talk about reforming the Geneva Convention on Refugees, but that's not in our power, we could talk about scrapping renewable energy targets and various eco measures, but again that is not within our power. For sure, leaving the EU would be a step in the right direction but as Australia shows, resisting the march of globalisation is no easy task. Political realities mean that very often nations end up giving way in the greater good. Government by consent is almost a thing of the past. We are slaves to the embedded and immovable groupthinks of the global elites.

The prevailing orthodoxies of the "international community" are what dictates just about every strata of law. Cars all look alike these days because they are all built to the same safety specifications, food is largely prepared in the same way and anything that can be standardised and homogenised either has been or is in the process. Much of it is motivated by environmentalism. Cars must be safer and cleaner, we must waste less food, use fewer polluting resources and as a species clean up our act and make things work better.

From legislation from plastic bags, to diesel emissions on cars, these are all global standards aimed at tackling global problems. Soon we will see global accords on how to deal with Uber since every major city runs a taxi system - and global conventions on disability rights means developed nations will always have a regulated requirement for size and type of vehicle and that system must be protected from unregulated threats. In the latest instance we have seen local action by the London Assembly but I don't see that level of subsidiarity surviving.

The problem is that for an increasingly connected world, standardisation is a good thing. It's better if things all work the same way and economies of scale means everybody gets more for less. When global regulation works, it works well and the benefits are many and multifarious. The problem is that they don't happen overnight. The latest regulation on plastic bags is more than ten years in the making - and still only a partial solution. That's a problem.

Many threats to health and wellbeing cannot wait ten years for global accords. Similarly changes in technology that give rise to Uber mean trends and markets and opportunities evolve faster than the regulation can keep up. Bad regulation tends to stay bad for a very long time - and things have to get particularly bad before they are once more addressed by the global matrix of regulatory agencies.

It's not that we need fewer regulations. We need better regulations and a more responsive means of implementing them and where necessary removing them. Nowhere is this more visible than in UK energy policy where global accords translate into policy, which must then go through the EU mill, where they pretend they are in charge, gold plate such accords and them translate them into directives. In that regard, the EU is a forum for making global accords worse and more damaging. A little injection of vanity and hubris can turn bad law into disastrous law.

Moreover, as we have seen with carrier bag regulation in the developing world, such laws from the top tables are implemented well in advance of the European Union. Far from solving environmental problems (assuming such policies are a solution) the EU is a huge block to their implementation. Even if you favour the conclusions and orthodoxies of the international community, it should be apparent that the major stalling factor is the EU. Sometimes conventions are strengthened, other times weakened to the point of redundancy.

Regulations in other areas have also overtaken the EU and so there is a global regulatory single market evolving that is waiting for the EU to catch up. Thus we must ask if we can actually afford the EU. We could be losing out as new global markets emerge. More importantly, the EU does not give us the right to say no. Unlike the international forums, it is not a community of equals and we are structurally outnumbered in any vote.

Given the way that global governance is evolving, that right to say no is essential to defending those things that require our protection. Farming is a good example. Norway does not want the EU because it wants its agricultural protections. Without such protections Norway would simply not have an agricultural sector - which is vital to managing the landscape and vital to food security and defence.

Meanwhile, law made to suit the vast tracts of open prairie in the US or Ukraine is not going to be appropriate for the precious landscapes of Cumbria and Yorkshire. Yes, we must maximise crop yields and pursue optimum land productivity, but there are other concerns that add to our distinctiveness and diversity - and without the right to say no we risk destroying those facets of British life that are sacrosanct.

We have already seen what uniform policy can do to fisheries and as much as we have in the end reached a system that works better for the modern world, much was destroyed along the way - and that pooling of sovereignty we are told is a good thing lead to compromise, delay and vacillation over an unfolding ecological emergency.

Whichever way you look at it, the world has outgrown the need for the EU, it frustrates the process of globalisation while at the same time removing the essential protections we need to make it work for everybody. Time and again it has shown that it cannot respond adequately to emergencies and we have seen industry after industry fold while we wait for Brussels to do something. It's good at gesture politicking but it is short on solutions for the problems it creates. It's an expensive "luxury" we can no longer afford.

Looking to the future we see a global single market emerging and the offer on the table is that there will be a global community of equals with nations like Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, New Zealand, India, Canada and Brazil each having their own voice and their own veto, with a newly minted Eurozone nation sitting at those top tables. Curiously because we are neither in the Euro nor independent of the EU it means we have a voice at none of the top tables.

When Mr Cameron presents the new EU treaty establishing a supreme government for the eurozone and the associate membership as his own reform initiative - he is offering us even less than the status quo. He's offering us the once in a lifetime opportunity to have no regional or global influence with no voice at any of the top tables and for us to be on a leash to the Greater EU.

Cameron is offering us the choice of being a second rate power in choke-hold relationship where our voice is not heard on the international stage. Try as I might, I just don't see what's in it for us when we can be part of a global community of equals, trading freely and choosing our own alliances.

The dream of a united Europe under one flag has long since reached its high water mark. It cannot meet its existing commitments to the latter members, it can do little to advance the Eurozone and the UK is never going to be bounced into becoming part of the new European state. Thus this is a question as to whether we want to be a slave to that entity or a nation in our own right. We are at an historical fork in the road and the fate of the EU is divergent to our own. We can either choose to leave amicably now or be forced by circumstance in the future to do it under less agreeable terms.

In the final analysis, should we vote to remain in the EU, we will be entering a period of national stasis. We will enter a long sleep as the world goes on without us and we will retreat from the international sphere. At some point in the future that will have consequences and we may well be forced out. There is no strategic advantage in this, there is no economic benefit and if we don't leave now, we're only delaying the inevitable at great cost. The bottom line is there is no reason to stay in the EU - and we have much to gain by leaving.

Unexpected item in the bagging area.

The plastic bag charging story is fascinating to me. It exposes all the fault lines of governance local and international. It's interesting because measures like these are usually never domestic in origin. You can trace this particular measure to an amending act to EU Directive 94/62/EC made about this time last year - and though I have not yet traced the origin of the exact measures, they almost certainly begin life in the UNEP.

What's interesting is the zeal with which such measures are adopted - with the Welsh government wasting no time in implementing it, before it even became EU law - with overwhelming public approval. It made me wonder if they know something I probably don't.

Given that the vast majority still watch the telly they are probably exposed to more environmentalist propaganda than me. I tune out of popular culture specifically to avoid it. But carrier bags are a problem, and a big one - and nobody quite knows what to do about it which is why we see such questionable measures.

What's interesting though is how the West is lagging far behind in the rest of the world. These measure have been adopted by Kenya, Tanzania, and China and international standards on thickness pertaining to promoting re-use have been adopted by these countries as well as Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Botswana, India, South Africa and Somalia. As much as it presents huge threats to maritime habitats, the billions of discarded bags blocking gutters and drains in Africa and India cause pooling of stagnant water which is a breeding ground for malaria and is a threat to livestock as well as humans.

You have to laugh out loud that a nation ravaged by war and famine where the writ of government doesn't reach the rural outback and tax collection is virtually non existent has standards on carrier bags. But actually, it's not funny.

What it shows is that on a very micro level, international governance is an unstoppable force for those nations dependent on Western aid. Developing countries are the petridish for the international NGOcracy to test out their agendas since there is no real democratic opposition. It is all waved through under the World Summit on Sustainable Development accords. Developing countries lack the governmental departments to scrutinise any such regulations and lack the bargaining power to reject them. The fact is the standards are decided well in advance of them becoming domestic law - and a full six years before they became an EU directive.

If we wanted to block such standards, we were never going to be able to block them at the EU level since MEPs would vote such measures through in that oh so bovine way, and really if we wanted a veto, we should have been in at the top table many years ago. But the irony there is that we wouldn't have vetoed any such measures since you can bet your ass the authors of such standards would be graduates of Leeds Polytechnic, funded by the EU, working for Oxfam with the full support of DfID.

There are plenty of studies now of how effective such measure s are. I've read three of them this morning. I'm still none the wiser, and it seems without any effective public surveillance of such measures, we cannot say for a fact if they are effective. One recent report has it that consumption of plastic carrier bags in Scotland is down 80%. I don't know if that's true. It sounds like a massive lie to me. What would effective public surveillance even look like?

The most recent measures compel supermarkets to report to local authorities which is halfway effective but still doesn't account for their use in the rest of the economy. It only gives a partial picture. It looks like the inconvenience is just one of those regulatory impositions in the hope that it will trigger either a change of behaviour through public awareness or some other innovation. Regulatory impositions are rather good at prompting human ingenuity in getting round them. Just ask the Securities Exchange Commission.

This is actually a massive area of study that brings little resolution to nearly forty years of forelock tugging and is not likely to be resolved even in my lifetime but the political dimensions to it highlight just how domineering the international regulatory juggernaut is and how little democracy is attached to it. As much as our own parliaments do not have a voice, the EU itself has only a peripheral role and if you want to know where the real power is, the various international bodies and NGOs are where you would look first.

What this shows, once again is the media's complete inability to analyse law and politics and what we are seeing here is a symptom of a global regulatory industry which is not held to account because neither parliaments nor journalists are even aware such exists - and the horizon is obscured by trivial irrelevances such as Westminster and the European Union. It's the unexpected item in the bagging area.

Definitely maybe...

Former chancellor Lord Lawson has announced he will lead a Conservative campaign to leave the EU. The Eurosceptic peer said he has taken the role as president of the Conservatives for Britain and will lead a cross-party exit movement ahead of the EU referendum, "due to take place by the end of next year".

Writing in The Times, he stated "We are setting out the principled case that Britain should definitely maybe leave the EU if the sun is shining, the wind is due east and if Cameron can't secure a bag of Mint Imperials from Mrs Merkel. To settle for less than a full unopened packet would make us look weak. We intend to mount a full and active campaign as soon as we can reach Matthew Elliot to find out why there's only £7.49 left in the campaign account. It keeps diverting to voicemail. The voicemail message assures us "the money is just resting in my account".