Are we better ruled by non-elected bodies overseas than those we elect ourselves?

Does a trade group require a president, a parliament and a foreign minister?

How do we vote this ruling authority out if we disagree with their policies?

Will we be given a referendum on the name of our province when the stated aim of the European Union to ultimately unite as a single country is acheived?

Just asking.

Of course not, you support their policies and are actively agitating for their return (despite the fact we’ve never truly lost them, in the UK at least). You care not for the people who will be hurt by this, because you believe in the myth of people “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” – which, to stretch an analogy, is kind of difficult when the people you’re talking about can’t afford boots because the industries that sustained them for nearly a century were destroyed by the big sell-off of the 1980s to make way for the current obsession with consumerism and managerialism. Thatcher’s biggest conceit was that she could wish away an entire social class.

Everything that’s wrong with the West today is directly traceable back to the Reagan/Thatcher years.

I think I’ll just say that I disagree with this analysis, and leave it at that. A discussion that starts from this premise is unlikely to generate much light.

I know we’re off-topic here, but regarding Reagan, did he not specifically break the law of the country he was supposed to be running by authorising covert weapons trading with Iran to shore up right-wing thugs in Nicaragua, undoubtedly contributing to thousands more deaths than there otherwise might have been?

I’d have had a centre-left government working hand-in-hand with Mitterand and Kohl in the ’80s over being run by a right-wing ideologue cosying up to another right-wing ideologue for the best part of a decade, is all I’m saying.

Everything that’s wrong with the West today is directly traceable back to the Reagan/Thatcher years.

I see your true colours, shining through

Not at all. I was just responding to your childish and inaccurate description of Reagan as a war criminal with a childish and accurate description of Kohl and Mitterrand (unless you can prove otherwise). That’s why I described it as pointless and puerile, making the point that two can play at that game.

The idea that someone being sceptical about the idea of harmonisation between two extremely different political and legal systems is racist is, of course, too ridiculous to be worth countering.

Further, why is the left jumping up and down about this? Or the liberals?

When the lisbon treaty was making its way through the Houses Of Parliament, the Liberals did not support the motion for a referendum, which was made by the Tories. Then both the labour and the lib dems were looking for the commas and full stops to differentiate between the EU Constitution and this so called Lisbon Treaty.

When it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck – it is a duck but no its not the constitution. And Labour and Liberals questioning Cameron’s integrity. And I am no Tory. That’s just hypocritical.

I must admit I’d been entirely unaware hitherto that he held this position.

Perhaps it’s just me.

They’ll be dead by the next election.

“And it *always* seems to come back to WWII with the ’sceptics and ‘phobes – which, by the by, started a gnat’s chuff over seventy bloody years ago! Surely it’s time to stop letting that period colour our views of the Continent.”

No it doesn’t *always” come back to WWII – only with the UKIP crowd, many of whom are an embarrassment to the Eurosceptic movement. I’m still waiting for Europhiles to explain how we benefit from the CAP, CFP, common external tariff and the fact that our social and employment laws are governed by Brussels rather than Westminster.

One could make a respectable argument for certain technical regulations relating to the standard of goods being made on an EU level but I don’t see why Westminster can’t decide on matters such as the social chapter orworking time directive (which I suspect we will soon be asked to adopt again) or why we should be forced to put trade barriers up against countries outside the EU.

Your statement seems to imply that if someone is europhobic and middle class, they are racist.

And it *always* seems to come back to WWII with the ’sceptics and ‘phobes – which, by the by, started a gnat’s chuff over seventy bloody years ago! Surely it’s time to stop letting that period colour our views of the Continent.

Oh, and by any objective measure, we lost that conflict almost as badly as Germany and France did – the only winners were the US and USSR, and that latter came at an unimaginable human price.

But it has its positive side-effects too, which is hopefully to foster co-operation with our neighbours and hopefully put the snide WWII triumphalism that still plagues us behind us for good.

Oh, and to prevent us from becoming the 51st state of course.

But that is all you trolls do.

Cameron is just following in the footsteps of all the Tories who have gone on and on about Europe and then done nothing.

The Tories have never let the British people have a say on Europe. They took us into Europe, they pushed through the European single act on a friday afternoon when most Mps had gone home, and then Major had to use a vote of confidence to get through his little bit of European legislation.

The truth about Europe is the giant global corporations want us in Europe which is why we stay. The moment they want us out, we will be out.

“Wehrmacht Kohl and Vichy Mitterrand”, eh?

I see your true colours, shining through… [/cyndilauper]

And if by “on our side” you mean being their early warning listening post for ICBMs, and allowing us to sportingly be nuked to glass a few more minutes before them for the privilege, then you have a very different definition of the term than I do!

Hey pesto.

In truth, I am not really bothered whether he is right or not.

In the current Sodom and Gomorrah that is the political scene in the UK, it is refreshing to find someone who expresses views that he actually believes in and is prepared to sacrifice personal advancement by having some principles that he will stand by.

Try to name some more.

Tony Benn, Frank Field, David Davies…..I’m starting to struggle.

(if we’re going to indulge in pointless and puerile finger-pointing)

I think it’s pertty much impossible for the French language to seem anything other than blunt when translated – it’s one of the more refreshing things about it. And by its very nature the EU these days is a very different beast from what it was even ten years ago, let alone the days when Mitterand and Kohl basically ran the whole shebang while Maggie ran across the pond to snuggle with war criminal Ronald Reagan.

It’s now very clear he wants an in-or-out referendum (which Cameron, under questioning, has hinted might happen in five years’ time) and he’s now free to lobby for that from the back benches as the shoutiest Tory voice in the room.

I can recognise Hannan’s sense of principle (from his own perspective) – it still doesn’t mean he’s right

“That’s a reasonable point. Although Lellouche did accuse the Tories (rather than their policy) of having “a bizarre sense of autism”.”

The problem here is that quote is taken out of context – it was not necessarily perjorative, but a description of how he perceives the behaviour of Hague et al, which he claimed consists mainly of repeating the same talking points over and over* rather than giving substantive answers to questions on the subject of Tory EU policies.

The Atlantic Bridge lot scare me though – they’re not only slavishly devoted to the US, but to the neocon/Friedmanite businessmen and politicians in the US who were recently turfed out of power as a result of completely screwing up the country and making themselves filthy rich at the expense of most of the populace in the process.

* – condensed version – “I will *die* for our miserable, shitty existence!”…

As far as the electoral impact of the European policy is concerned, I’d have thought that Cameron’s announcement would have minimised it rather than anything else. Even Sunny is reduced to pointing at Roger Helmer (ffs) as evidence of the extreme ideological splits in the Conservative Party.

It’s not to his credit that he couldn’t work out he was playing straight into Dave’s hands last night.

“Daniel Hannan MEP has resigned.” From what exactly?

Maybe we deserve the liars, cheats and dissemblers after all.

He was the ECR spokesman on legal affairs, ISTR.