Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: does the EU club have a future?
Simon Tilford from the Centre for European Reform says British Euro-sceptics like to have their cake and eat it: “Euro-sceptics appear to believe that a Britain outside the EU would remain part of the single market, but that it would be freed from the need to abide by EU regulation. In short, Britain could enjoy all the benefits of access to the single market but none of the costs. This is incoherent. A retreat would achieve nothing but impotence.”
Mr Tilford is right. There is a lack of rigour and often a defeatist assumption that Britain never gets its way in Europe, never has allies, and is forever at the mercy of Franco-German villainy.