EU politics: simply not true

"Members of the European Parliament have paved the way for hundreds of millions of pounds of subsidies to go to Europe's tobacco farmers — even though Brussels spends huge amounts on anti-smoking campaigns", write Edward Malnick and Robert Mendick for the Sunday Telegraph.

However, this is a carry-over story from last week, when Andrew Gilligan wrongly asserted that the European Parliament agriculture committee had "passed" reform provisions for the CAP – one of which was the restoration of tobacco subsidies. 

This latter claim is being attributed to Owen Paterson, who is concerned that there is pressure in the Council of Ministers to reinstate production subsidies, reversing the so-called MacSharry reforms. He fears that, with the European Parliament offers amendments to like effect, a combination of Parliament and Council could overturn the Commission's proposals, and set the CAP back two decades. 

He thus condemns the amendments as "disappointing, retrograde, backward-looking" and in some respects "ludicrous", but it is a very far cry from there, to claim, as Malnick and Mendick have done this week, that MEPs have "voted to amend changes in the Common Agricultural Policy".

To claim this is simply wrong, but that two weeks running the Sunday Telegraph has published exactly the same erroneous claim tells you a great deal about its journalists, their research capabilities and their concern for the truth. 

What the journalists have done is mistake the procedural role of the European Parliament agricultural committee, where on behalf of the Conference of Presidents, it has approved the tabling of amendments to be considered and voted on by the full Parliament, in plenary session – probably some time in March. 

There is a huge difference between this procedural function and the approval process. The committee itself has no powers to approve or reject amendments tabled. It simply acts as a processing body, to present them to the Plenary for a full vote. It is the full parliament that then approves or otherwise the amendments and, as we pointed out last week, there are still many hurdles before any amendment becomes policy. 

In fact, most amendments are rejected at the first reading. As here, they are usually grandstanding by MEPs for domestic purposes, to show their constituents that they have been active on their behalf. Each amendment is worth a press release, with the hope of favourable headlines back home. 

With these proposals, though, there is an additional hurdle, the EU budget. With agreement stillevading EU leaders, that is a considerable problem. If the funding is not there, the entire proposals will have to be withdrawn and rewritten by the European Commission. 

That deal has to be reached by Thursday, so we will know pretty soon whether there is another crisis in the offing. 

In the meantime, the Sunday Telegraph insists on parading its ignorance, adding to its errors with aneditorial telling us that it is "puzzling" that "the EU's representatives should even be considering reintroducing financial support for the growing of tobacco, which was withdrawn in 2004".

Bizarrely, the editorial ventures that, "It is possible that the MEPs who voted in favour of the amendment were not fully aware of what they were doing", when in fact no MEPs have yet had an opportunity to vote on the amendment. The people who are not aware of what they are doing, it seems, are Telegraph journalists. 

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: power equates to size

The rationale for Europe is not peace … it is about power, says Tony Blair, who equates power with size of population. 

 You would think, after all this time, this man would know something about the nature of power and its distribution. But, unless he is being deliberately disingenuous (which is quite possible), he clearly has learned very little from his experience as prime minister. 

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: that Norwegian fax machine again

Approval of those horrid GM crops is, as we saw earlier, is part of the Single Market acquis, which means that the EEA would appear to be involved – and indeed it is.

But, if legend has got it right, the moment that dreaded fax machine started chattering with the regulation approving BASF's Amflora GMO potato, all those little Vikings would instantly have been living in GM potato-land. 

For some strange reason, though, nobody told the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management about this fabled "fax law". Thus, when it was told that the Amflora product had been given market authorisation, it rather irritatingly published a web page telling us that the EEA Agreement only obliges Norway to "consider" all GMOs authorised in the EU. 

Being good little Norwegians, indeed, they have considered Amflora. And, having done so, the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management decided that "the cultivation and use of the genetically modified potato Amflora in feed and food should be prohibited in Norway".

That, it seems, is as far as they got. Unless you know different, the product was never approved for use in Norway and now that BASF have thrown in the towel, it does not look as if it ever will – all of which is rather peculiar, because Mr Cameron says that Norway "has no say at all in setting its rules: it just has to implement its directives".

And, as we all know, Mr Cameron is never wrong.

COMMENT THREAD

Fisheries policy: amateurs' corner

Hire a girlie reporter who did her basic training on the Hello Magazine and takes pride in having "exclusively covered the Strictly Come Dancing aftershow party, reported on the Brit Awards". Such are the proudest professional moments of the new Sunday Telegraph fisheries expert.

Make sure she is badly-briefed and then send her off to Reykjavik to cover an issue about which she clearly knows nothing, put the result in front of an ignorant editorial desk and the result is a badly-framed mish-mash, of which any reputable newspaper would be ashamed.

The lack of coherence, however, is not confined to the Sunday Telegraph girlie. The Sunday Expressdoes just as badly, also inventing a biff-bam Iceland vs Britain story on the lines of the Cod War.

Thus to frame the story is completely to misunderstand (and misrepresent) what is going on. This is a four-way fight which has the EU and Norway on one side, and the Faroe Islands and Iceland on the other. The fault lies almost entirely with the EU and Norwegians, both having behaved in a disgusting fashion. They have demanded 90 percent of the North Atlantic mackerel quota based on historic rights (track record), even though the fish have moved north into Faroese and Icelandic waters.

What we have, therefore, is a situation where the EU/Norwegian licensed fleet is continuing to fish its traditional grounds within established national boundaries. They are not in any way encroaching on Icelandic waters (or Faroese for that matter), which was the basis of the Icelandic Cod War. 

The dispute arises from the EU and Norway effectively seeking to prohibit these two countries from fishing in their own waters, after the mackerel have moved into their territorial zones - even though not to fish them may harm indigenous stocks of herring and blue whiting, and deplete food supplies. 

From our perspective, though, the really interesting thing about the whole dispute, is what the ignorant hacks have completely missed. The UK – although having two dogs in the fight (holding 60 percent of the EU mackerel quota, while also processing fish from the Iceland and the Faroes) – has no seat at the table.

Negotiations are being carried out between parties to the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, of which we are no longer members. Our seat has been taken up by the EU which negotiates in our place.

Thus, while girlie Harriet and her counterpart on the Express can go trotting off to Reykjavik to discuss matters with Iceland's chief negotiator Sigurgeir Thorgeirsson, that is the one thing that British ministers are not allowed to do. Negotiating rights are reserved to the Fisheries Commissioner, Maria Damanaki, a Greek leftie politician, who seems more concerned withpropagandising than ending the problem. All the Brits can do is seek to "influence" the Commission is a so far vain attempt to resolve the dispute.

Despite this, the Espress consistently seeks to give the impression that British ministers are directly involved in negotiations, which they are not. Even the girlie is woefully behind the times. There is pressure, she chirps, "for the European Union to impose sanctions on Iceland – threatening to block imports of other fish – unless it dramatically scales back its catch of mackerel, in a variation of the infamous Cod Wars in which navies were summoned and fishing boats rammed".

Yet, as we saw from the Council meeting last week, the prospect of sanctions being imposed isremote. As we reported at the time:

One of the conditions required is the obligation under WTO Rules for both parties to demonstrate that they are open to negotiation and their willingness to engage in "sustainable fishing". By claiming 90 percent of the stock (even if it is in the framework of an overall quota reduction), the EU does not really seem to be demonstrating a willingness to negotiate, and is on a perilously weak footing.

Despite this also, the Express - which bases its whole story on the prospect of sanctions -writes that "the mood among many fishermen is for tough sanctions now". The paper does not even beginning to explain why they are not going to happen.

If it was just the girlie getting it wrong, we might suggest she goes back to the Hello Magazine where she clearly belongs. But that would be unfair if it also left James Murray of the Express in place. Neither are use nor ornament, which just about sums up the legacy media which employs them.

I don't know how often we have to restate this, but here lies yet another example of the old adage: you may be uniformed if you don't read a newspaper (or a blog), but if you rely on a newspaper, you will end up misinformed.

COMMENT THREAD

EU regulation: "uncertainty in the regulatory environment"

In the days when newspapers had specialist agriculture correspondents, the news the German chemicals giant BASF had dropped attempts to market genetically modified potato varieties in Europe might have merited more than a passing reference in an obscure corner of the BBC website, under a trivialising headline.

And had such correspondents been active, and those self-same newspapers still took any interest at all in agriculture, more than just the Guardian might have reported on the Oxford Farming Conference back in early January, a political highlight of the farming year which used to be widely reported in the popular media. 

With the two events in the public domain, one or other of the correspondents – having the time and background knowledge to explore such things – might have linked the two reports and noticed a startling incongruity which has profound implications for the current (albeit lacklustre) debate on the European Union. 

Crucial to this is that the star speaker at the Oxford Conference was Defra Secretary of State Owen Paterson, his first address at the Conference in his elevated role. And the link which screams out when you put the Guardian report side-by-side with the BASF news is that, on the one hand, you have Mr Paterson actively promoting the use of GM while, almost exactly a month later, we get a major player pulling out a key developmental sector. 

"The British public should be persuaded of the benefits of genetically modified food", the Guardianreport had Mr Paterson saying, making his statement, "a key signal of the government's intent to expand agricultural biotechnology and [to] make the case for GM food in Europe".

Ostensibly, therefore, we have a classic example of the impotence of a British minister in the face of a multinational company reluctant to pursue the technology he favours. And the reason in this instance is, according to the lamentably inaccurate BBC, that: "The genetically modified potato project gained approval at EU level but was a commercial failure".

This BBC report (by environment correspondent Matt McGrath) does not even begin to do justice to the issue. It presents a grossly distorted account of the situation, having omitted the all-important sentence in the original BASF press release (dated 29 January). This reads:

The company will also discontinue the pursuit of regulatory approvals for the Fortuna, Amadea, and Modena potato projects in Europe because continued investment cannot be justified due to uncertainty in the regulatory environment and threats of field destructions (my emphasis).

Field destructions have certainly been a factor in the ongoing struggle to gain wider use of GM crops, but there can be no doubt where the emphasis lies in the BASF press release. The main reason for them pulling out is, quite simply: "uncertainty in the regulatory environment".

Regular readers of this blog – who are far better informed on such issues than those who rely on the pap dished out by the legacy media – will be aware that approval of GM crops is an exclusive EU competence. Therefore "uncertainty in the regulatory environment" relates exclusively to implementation of EU law. 

Furthermore, readers will also be aware that, applications for marketing approval of GM foods, if contested by Member States, go through the comitology process and that one of the BASF potato products suffered from this process in 2006 before it was finally approved in March 2010, after a delay of 13 years. 

But, since BASF seems to have mastered the approvals process, and has achieved some success in have one of only two products (the other being GM maize) gain market authorisation, one might ask why the company has thrown in the towel after so much time and expense. 

Part of the reason is undoubtedly due to the European Commission failing to enforce its own legislation. A weak Commission has allowed Member States to conduct what amounts to a low-level guerrilla war against GM, in a bid to prevent such crops being sown in their territories. Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and Poland have all used loopholes in the law to block its exploitation. 

The key, though, is in the comitology process itself, and in particular the amendments brought in with the Lisbon Treaty. In an attempt to "democratise" the process, Articles 290 and 291 gave powers to the European Parliament to block, under certain circumstances, comitology decisions. 

As a general rule, the European Parliament tends to be hostile to GM crops and the additional hurdle of gaining approval from this institution has clearly proved to be the last straw for BASF, as the chances of gaining approval for any new product under the amended regime is next to nil. 

Thus, BASF cannot justify the investment in new products if there is no certainty that, at the end of the long and expensive approval process, there is no reasonable expectation of being given a market authorisation. It is thus pulling out of the European market for these products altogether, and concentrating on the US – an ironic situation for a company founded – and still headquartered – in Germany. 

The greater irony though is the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz telling us that the "EU needs to prove its own importance", arguing that the EU has to become "more democratic" , which "implies strengthening the European Parliament".

Under the original, "less democratic" comitology system, it was already virtually impossible for individual member states to influence the process, but under the new "democratic" system administered by an already strengthened European Parliament, it is beyond the reach of individual Member States – and reason. 

Thus, we find that Owen Paterson, member of the British government, is powerless to intervene and promote the use of GM crops in the UK, even if that was the democratic will of the Westminster parliament and the entire nation. Still less is he able "to make the case for GM food in Europe". The Lisbon Treaty has put paid to that. 

Piling irony on irony, however, latterly we have besieged by europhile scaremongering about the supposedly crippling "uncertainty" arising from Mr Cameron's referendum announcement, and its effect on the Single Market. 

Yet the GM approval system is part of the Single Market, and it is the "uncertainty" in this regulatory environment that is causing a major player to desert Europe and concentrate on the United States. As so often, claimed effects and reality are opposites, not that you will ever learn this from the BBC. 

COMMENT THREAD

Booker: MPs plumb new depths

I don't think anyone I've spoken to about that debate has been in the least bit impressed by the performance of our MPs. Witterings was so depressed that he had to take a break.

It is not surprising therefore, that Booker – in and amongst a nightmare week that had BT scrambling his telephone lines – should find space in his column to remark on the vacuity of our MPs. 

His piece starts, however, with the Ken Clarke show on Radio 4's Today programme, a more vacuous item it is hard to recall. This was the 12-minute interview last Thursday in which that battered old Euromaniac was excitably egged on by John Humphrys to explain why it would be "a fatal mistake" for Britain to leave the EU.

Constantly talking over Clarke, Humphrys himself even went so far in betraying his bias as to compare those calling for a referendum to the "hangers and floggers" of yesteryear.

The most dismal consequence of David Cameron's promise that we might one day have an in-out referendum has been the eruption on all sides of Europhiles suggesting not just that it would be disastrous for Britain to leave the EU, but that even to talk of a referendum is creating such a miasma of fear and uncertainty that it is already imperilling the future of Britain's economy. 

But the most dismal spectacle was the week in the House of Commons, writes Booker. This began on Monday with Speaker Bercow's support for the idea that MPs should get a 30 percent pay rise, just as the rest of us are facing years of austerity. 

On Tuesday, we saw Nick Clegg's Lib Dems vengefully refusing to support those promised boundary changes that might give their Tory Coalition allies 20 more seats at the next election. This prompted that admirable parliamentary commentator Quentin Letts to a wonderfully contemptuous threnody on the depths to which, in the past 20 years, he has seen Parliament sink. 

This was followed on Wednesday by a six-hour debate on "Europe" in which, without exception, MPs regurgitated to an often largely empty House nothing but equally empty cliches, most so ancient that they were already familiar decades ago. 

Not a single MP, Europhile or Eurosceptic, seemed to have the slightest grasp of how the EU actually works or the rules it lives by. Not one knew enough to spell out why Mr Cameron’s proposals are no more than wishful thinking. 

Not one, for instance, was aware that for Cameron to get his "re-negotiation" would, under the Lisbon Treaty, require a new treaty, involving procedures so lengthy that they would last way past his 2017 deadline. 

The only way he could get the negotiations he says he wants would be to invoke Article 50 of the treaty, which not a single MP seemed aware of – and which Mr Cameron has already ruled out, because it would require him first to declare Britain’s intention to leave the EU.

Concludes Booker, one of the heaviest prices we have paid for handing over the running of our country to this system centred in Brussels is that our MPs have lost all ability to think for themselves, or to do enough homework to allow them to relate to the real world.

All these sad people can think about is how they should be given a pay rise, for serving us more lamentably than any MPs in history.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: a word on the beach

A bizarrely complacent Nigel (now Lord) Lawson told the Financial Times last week that David Cameron's plan to negotiate a better deal with Europe was likely to fail and the British people would see through any "make believe" new settlement.

Quite reasonably, he observes that other EU member states would not reopen treaties because they feared that would lead to a fragmentation of the club. They would never reverse the EU's "theology" of ever closer union, he says. 

But then Lawson goes on to express a belief that the British public would not fall for a minimal renegotiation of terms, similar to the limited concessions won by Harold Wilson before the 1975 referendum. "The British public is much more sceptical", he says. "I don't think they're going to be taken in by Wilsonian make-believe".

There lies the complacency, for the sham of the negotiations was as transparent then as any deal that might be offered in 2017, or some time never. But the fact of the transparency did not stop 249 Conservative MPs voting for the deal on 9 April 1975, as opposed to the eight who voted against, and the 18 who abstained. By contrast, 137 Labour MPs voted for, and 145 against, with 33 abstentions. The Conservatives carried the day.  

I don't accept the comfortable fiction that people were somehow deceived into believing that this was about a trading arrangement. The above cartoon in the Guardian of the time (27 February 1975) perfectly illustrates the mood. People (and especially Conservative MPs) believed what they wanted to believe, and "Europe" was seen as a refuge from otherwise unresolvable problems. 

The capacity for self-delusion has by no means changed and if, in 2017 (or whenever) the whole of the establishment and the media is urging acceptance of whatever "deal" is on offer, the British public will just as readily vote to hold onto nurse. Lawson drastically underestimates the electorate's fondness for make-believe. 

Thus, in a competent piece on politics.co.uk we see its editor Ian Dunt argue that: "No real eurosceptic can support Cameron's referendum". 

The premise here is that prime ministers only call referendums when they are fairly certain they will win. Cameron's course of action is aimed to keep us in the EU and, should he win – as he is most likely to, if there is ever a vote – it will kill off Britain's chances of leaving the EU for a generation. 

That much would have been true, but increasingly it is looking uncertain that Mr Cameron and his Conservative Party will be elected to office at the next general election, in which case the prospect of referendum is remote. The chances of Ed Miliband offering us one is zero. 

The more I think about this, though, the more I am drawn to my original view that an in-out referendum would be a bad idea, simply on the basis that, under any of the circumstances currently anticipated, I cannot see us winning it. 

Developing the theme I was exploring earlier, one has to concede that a referendum alone is not enough. For us to have any reasonable chance if winning, we must also have the government enthusiastically supporting an exit, and prepared to campaign for it. 

The essence here is that leaving the EU is not simply a matter of "tearing up our membership card", but of completely changing the way we are governed, and our direction of travel as a nation. 

In exploring our transition from a post-war independent nation to a supplicant, seeking entry to the then EEC, the official historian Alan S. Milward writes of the "rise and fall of a national strategy". He points out that it was not until the existing strategy of maintaining independence collapsed that the government could countenance joining the European treaty organisation that was to become the EU. 

Similarly, it is not until the current strategy of engagement within the EU collapses that we will see a successful attempt to leave. A change in strategy must come first – the action then follows. We must go through much more trauma before we get to the desirable situation where a government is prepared to do this.

Most of all, what we need is the vision of where we are going. The Guardian cartoon shows so aptly "Europe" as the safe haven for the survivors of the sinking ship "Commonwealth", but if we were now to show "Europe" as the foundering vessel, what word or words would be written on the beach? 

Until we can answer that question convincingly, the terrors of leaving a sinking ship are as of nothing compared with fears and uncertainty of embarking on a journey into the unknown. There is our task: to put different words on that beach. 

COMMENT THREAD

UK politics: this explains a great deal

We (or, at least, I) tended to think Mr Cameron was being deliberately untruthful (aka lying) when he so often claimed that government debt was going down. It never occurred to me that he really didn't understand the difference between debt, as in national debt, and deficit. He couldn't be that ignorant, could he?

Well, it seems I owe Mr Cameron an apology. He hasn't been lying. He really is that ignorant, across a wide range of subjects. And, when you realise who writes his speeches, the (poor) quality of what he delivers should come as no surprise. 

But then, bad politicians hire bad advisors, and cut themselves off from corrective sources. That is one of the reasons why Cameron makes so many mistakes, and will continue to make them. 

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: little change in the polls

The Lord Ashcroft has made the Press Association with his commentary on the effect of the Cameron speech. 

Based on a recent private poll, he concludes that the speech "has cheered Conservative supporters, but done little to improve the party's chances of success at the next general election". It has not, he says, "unleashed a desire for an overall Conservative majority".

Thus, Labour is still in the lead, on 38 percent, the Tories get 33 percent, the Lib-Dems 11 percent, UKIP nine and "others" nine. A small increase in the Tory vote is attributed to an increase in those who voted Conservative in 2010, coming back to the fold.

As regards "Europe", the noble Lord observes that the upsurge in debate about the EU in advance of the high-profile speech appears to have bolstered pro-European sentiments.

That conclusion is based on a question about sentiment on the EU, with 22 percent feeling "positive" about EU membership, up four points from the Populus poll in December 2012. Those who feel negative about EU membership, but feel we should remain in account for 19 percent (down one), and those who feel we are better off out score 26 percent (down eight). Those with no strong views either way account for 33 percent of the poll. 

There is no question on renegotiation, but if one assumes that the first two categories would go for that option, we are looking at 41 percent – against 26 percent wanting out. That is not an untypical result, very close to the 42-34 percent finding in the July 2012 YouGov survey.

Why the speech should not have had more of an impact is perhaps explainable in terms of people simply not believing that the referendum promise is real, oir a feeling that it is completely undeliverable. We seem to have a perverse situation where, in order to enjoy a sustained surge in the polls, the Tories need already to be ahead, to give the promise credibility.

On the other hand, now that we are seeing an upsurge in europhile propaganda, the likelihood is that sentiment will harden against the "EU-out" proposition. And give also that the europhile attack is focused on the referendum itself, we may even see the strength behind calls for a referendum diminish.

Add to this the boundary vote, and the prospect of a Conservative win at the next election begins to look so unlikely that the referendum promise will have little immediate traction.

However, there is a wildcard here. Consistently, Cameron is scoring much higher in polls than is Miliband. If we see a firming up of the presidential-style of campaigning, we could have voters choosing between a (relatively) popular leader of an unpopular party, and an unpopular leader of a (relatively) popular party. In such circumstances, the polls may find it hard to predict a winner.

Nevertheless, if the Tories do drag themselves out of their mid-term rut and begin to show a lead, the referendum promise may start to have a real impact, reinforcing the lead. In those circumstances, Miliband may feel inclined to neutralise the effect, by also promising a referendum.

While it is thus difficult at this stage to see Cameron's promise materialising, we might not get any serious indicators until after the euro-elections next year. Certainly, the game is not yet over – and nor will it go away.

COMMENT THREAD

Media: a perfect FUD

For anyone who might have thought that the Daily Telegraph in general, and Ambrose Evans-Pritichard in particular, was going to be in the side of the angels during any referendum campaign, today's article is the wake-up call. It combines the straw man technique with scary headline to produce a "perfect storm" of FUD, guaranteed to send all the City wuzzies scurrying to their bunkers to count their bonuses. 

Classic of its genre, the hook on which Ambrose bases his scary movie is Athanasios Orphanides a former member of the European Central Bank's governing council.

Orphanides is a member of the euro-elite and just the sort of person one would go to for a dispassionate account of Britain's prospects outside the EU. This is the man who served as Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, the country with a banking sector equal to 835 percent of its GDP, so large it is threatening to destablise the euro.

Greek-Cypriot bankers with such impeccable backgrounds are just the people to tell us that membership of the EU single market, "is the UK's only legal defence against an onslaught of regulations aimed at forcing banks and fund managers to decamp to the eurozone".  They are so well-equipped to tell us that, "It would be catastrophic and suicidal for Britain to leave. The UK would lose the protection it currently enjoys as the eurozone's major financial centre".

Yet this is a man who presided over a system of which it was said:

... it was clear there was a lack of substantial regulatory control on the banking system. Loans were often issued based on a network of personal relationships, starving those in the real economy – small and medium businesses and farmers – of access to finance. This is the evolution of a system that was functioning according to its connections with the political and the economic power, and in the end reached a point of even being above it.

Nevertheless, he is Ambrose's main source for his scary movie. You can just imagine Ken Clarke salivating over that one and Mr Orphanides will be a welcome guest in the halls of British europhila, featuring prominently on the BBC to warn all the wuzzies not to let go of nurse, for fear of their bonuses.

The gist of Orphanide's little gems is that the ECB, "is already clamping down on payments, clearing and settlement systems conducted in euros outside its jurisdiction, a move deemed necessary to head off future crises". Thus, he says, "The only thing stopping regulation that would shift all such activities from London to the eurozone is the legal protection the City enjoys in the EU".

This, of course, is moonshine. So huge is the London market, as one of the hubs of the global banking system, that if the ECB tried on predatory policies, it would be buried. Already fragile, the euro would be shattered by the onslaught of hostile trading, and the euro-wuzzies would be cleaning toilets for a living the following day.

Not least, we would see intervention by the Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS), formerly known as the Euro-currency Standing Committee, currently headed by William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. An assault on London by the ECB would be seen for what it is, a move to destabilise the market – the financial equivalent of a suicide bomb, and it would soon be seen off by the global financial system.

But then, the scary movie is only a figment of the imagination of the europhile FUD factory. While Britain is in a "very strong" position now as an EU member outside the eurozone, this would evaporate the moment the UK tears up its membership card, says Orphanide, unveilling his shiny new straw man.

Needless to say, Britain would never "tear up its membership card". Only the lunatic eurosceptic fringe advocate that. No sane British government would ever countenance leaving other than through a carefully negotiated exit, with alternative treaty arrangements in place before the knot was finally cut. That is the essence of Article 50.

But the Telegraph is not into sensible reporting. "Legal guerrilla warfare is already under way", writes Ambrose, then citing the paragons of impartial commentary, anonymous "EU officials".

These anonymous officials obligingly tell Ambrose, "privately", of course – so that what they say can never be checked, or attributed to any one person - "that the struggle for control over the financial industry is reaching a critical point, with Britain rapidly key losing allies". Well, they would say that, wouldn't they.

Needless to say, this assertion need a bit of bolstering, so off Ambrose trots to Rodney Leach's boy, Mats "renta-quote" Persson from Little Europe, to put more "F" into the FUD. "This is a very real threat", says Mattie, "what's the question?"

Lining up the skittles, Ambrose then adds Dino Kos, a former head of markets at the New York Fed, to say "the City is more vulnerable to a regulatory squeeze than people realise".

Then we get Graham Bishop, billed as "an expert on EU regulation". That is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Graham Bishop is a self-styled consultant who openly admits to tailoring his services "to highlight my personal commitment to a deepening of European financial and political integration". There's "expert" for you.

But even this rabid europhile is not enough. To finish off this euro-wuzzie wet-dream, Ambrose recruits Giles Merritt, the head of Friends of Europe in Brussels, a temple of europhila if ever there was one. Predictably, he warns that EU leaders "could become vindictive if Britain's in/out referendum degenerates into a slanging match". "If British eurosceptics turn it into a sneering campaign against Europe, then the Europeans will play hardball", he says.

Well, you don't say. EU leaders vindictive? And this is a reason for staying in the EU?

COMMENT THREAD

EU regulation: another single market success

There were, we wrote just over a year ago, 113 alerts issued by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) about medical devices the previous year. The products ranged from hip joints to surgical instruments, but the agency had no power to check devices until a failure was reported.

This was in the wake of the PIP breast implant scandal, when we were shouting from the rooftops about the failures of the EU regulatory system. 

And now the Daily Telegraph has "revealed" that the health of British patients was being potentially put at risk by European regulators "who were prepared to license potentially dangerous medical implants for sale in this country".

These are ASR hip joint replacements, produced by DePuy Orthopaedics, a subsidiary of the American firm Johnson & Johnson. They are metal-to-metal hip implants, launched in 2003, which have now been shown to be faulty. Problems were reported as early as 2006, the product type was withdrawn in 2009 from Australian and US markets, but was still on sale in Europe until 2010. 

Approximately 40,000 patients have received an ASR replacement in Europe, 380 of them in France, but more than 10,000 in Britain, before they were finally withdrawn in August 2010, 

All of these hip replacements were authorised in conformity with EU legislation under the aegis of the Single Market. Market surveillance and vigilance rules were also specified by the EU.

One should note that the fabulous Single Market which has brought us these great successes is the very same that Mr Cameron so enthusiastically supports, and tells us is so necessary. 

The rules are now undergoing revision, and have been going through the process for four years, with further revisions also proposed. But, the relevant directives have already been amended many times. There is no guarantee this time that the EU will get them right this time. 

Even then there will be little comfort for the thousands of people left in agony, despite every single one of the hip replacements used being fully certified with the EU's CE mark, a mark of quality that is about as reliable as anything else the EU has on offer. 

One wonders therefore, what it is going to take before people finally realise that the EU is not only driving us to ruin though weight of regulation, but also that the quality of its legislation is so poor that it fails completely to achieve its stated aims. 

And when that day comes, what will we do then?

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EU regulations: our masters speak

The picture above is not particularly dramatic but,  by clicking on this link, you might think you were looking at Commission spokesman Frédéric Vincent delivering yesterday's midday press briefing to journalists.

In fact, though, what you were looking at was a representative of our masters handing down their judgement on what things are to be or, more accurately, how they would wish them to be. 

The proximate issue here is neonicotinoid insecticides and their effect on bees, about which we wrote in November last. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. What matters here is not so much what, but how – and whom. 

The thing here is that this group of insecticides may or may not harm bees – the jury is out on this, but it does mean that there are calls for the products to be banned. If we were an independent nation, the decision would be made by our own Secretary of State for agriculture (Defra). But it is a long time since we enjoyed that status. 

Clues to our second-class status abound, one in a sequence being the press release issued by the 3,216th meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels on 28 January. 

And yes, dear readers, there have been 3,216 meetings. Assuming they take one day each (and some go much longer), that is nearly ten whole years, as close a description of purgatory as can be imagined – a ten-year council meeting. 

Anyhow, the press release tells us that, at the request of the Dutch delegation, the Commission reported to the Council on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) about the risk assessment of neonicotinoid insecticides with regard to bees. This request came in on 24 January, with the Netherlands asking the European Commission to take action on a "community level".

As it happened, EFSA had reported on 16 January that it had identified a number of risks posed to bees by three neonicotinoid insecticides. Crucially, though, it reported that there was "a high level of uncertainty in the latest evaluations", which meant that EFSA's scientists "were unable to finalise risk assessments for some of the uses authorised in the EU".

With nothing specific to go on, at the Council meeting, "many" member states nevertheless supported a suggestion from the Netherlands to initiate an action at community level "where high risks have been identified or could not be excluded in relation to certain aspects of the risk assessment for honey bees". 

This latter phrasing shrieks of "precautionary principle" and it will come as no surprise that some member states – our own included - considered that further scientific advice should be sought before taking any action. 

Taking no action, though, is not something for which the Commission is famed. It blandly informed the Council that it would "shortly" present proposals to apply "both the precautionary and the proportionality principles" to the issue. 

Sure enough, on Wednesday, the Commission gave early warning that it would present a discussion paper to Member State experts at a meeting of the standing committee on pesticides, aiming "to exchange views on the range of policy options available". 

Said Tonio Borg, Commissioner for Health and Consumers, "we now need to carefully assess all the policy options that are available to us before bringing forward any legislative and harmonised proposals".

And so it was yesterday that we had M. Frédéric Vincent telling us that the Commission proposed that the Member States suspend for two years the use of these pesticides in seeds, granulates and sprays for crops which attract bees; sunflower, rape, maize and cotton.

Vincent acknowledged that the issue had been on the table of the Council on Monday and it was true that some delegations expressed the view that it was necessary to pursue further analyses. Some big countries, he also said, "didn't express their view" but there was to be a "discussion". Member States would react and if there was a regulation, it would be before March.

This has now been processed into news by the assembled hacks, a typical result emerging in EU business, with the headline: "EU urges two-year ban on 'disturbing' bee insecticides".

Interestingly, the copy tells us that, "the EU urged national governments on Thursday to ban pesticides deemed dangerous to bees by scientific experts in a bid to prevent a disastrous collapse in colony numbers for an insect considered vital to the integrity of the human food chain".

We also learn that "major EU states Germany, Britain and Spain", amongst others, indicated serious reservations about the plans, but the decisive meeting is set for 25 February. The chemicals then to be discussed are clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, produced by pharmaceutical giants Bayer, Syngenta and Cruiser OSR.

Cut to Bayer CropScience, which believes that "the Commission's overly conservative interpretation of the precautionary principle is a missed opportunity to achieve a fair and proportional solution". It wants the Commission to refer back to "solid science" before making any proposals.

The Company was a little more robust to the House of Commons environmental audit committee recently, having its Dr Julian Little telling MPs that the EU was in danger of "enshrining some sort of museum agriculture".

"I personally absolutely support very strict regulation, but not to the point where we believe you are taking out major advances in chemistry and major advances in agriculture with no discernible improvement in bee health", he said.

Defra rejected a ban late last year saying the scientific evidence wasn't clear, and have commissioned new studies that will look at the impacts of neonicotinoids on bumble bees in field conditions. Unfortunately, the results of those studies are not yet available.

But what Defra thinks doesn't really matter. We are one voice in 27. The "experts" of the standing committee will do the deed, using the comitology process. Rumour has it that there are only three people in the world who have understood the process – one is dead, the second is in a mental asylum and the third exiled himself to a desert island. But whatever the committee decides, we will comply.

That is how our government works.

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