Fighting the EUSSR: what will the Conservatives do?

The EU proposals for financial services regulation must put Kenneth Clarke and Peter Mandelson in a very difficult position. They supported more powers to the EU as the way of facilitating a liberalised economic system, financial services being an example. Not easy either for David Cameron's vision for Europe or William Hague, or anyone who hopes that our European partners will be on the side of British interests. The Charlemagne blog discusses Cameron's managerialist approach and the different face he shows to the British people - without committing himself of course.

UKIP show clarity on the issue, as Nigel Farrage says:



See also Peter Oborne on the "Blair/Cameron" pact and Clarke's support for the treaty. Expediency seems to be everything for the leader of the Conservative party.

What a waste. Labour implodes and small-time political organisers have suborned British conservativism.

Germans trying to recapture EU asylum

Three hundred cheers for Angela Merkel, who has stood up against the failed politics of Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy, not to mention the whole stinking EU bureaucratic machine. Angela Merkel, you will remember, is the leader of Germany, a country with an export-driven economy, a balance of payments surplus, a banking sector not discombobulated by its own greed, much tigher credit controls than debt-addicted Blighty: in short a successful country not a failed one. Not only has she and her colleague, Peer Steinbruek questioned the new fiscal orthodoxy that we the best way to rescue ourselves from insolvency is to spend more, but they are resisting the economically destructive Poznan Climate Change agreement. Is there any coincidence in the fact that those countries without a creditable industrial policies are the ones who support the Climate Change Targets?

One silver lining is that the Germans are becoming more euro-sceptic. After years of financing the EU, they are beginning to grumble at underwriting habitual failure.