EFTA And EEA: A Deliberate Deception?

We noted in our previous post regarding an article in Telegraph on the EFTA and EEA that it was not very reassuring when Icelandic and Swiss MPs are themselves seemingly unaware how their own country's agreements are made.

All is not what it seems however and delving in a little further shows that far from ignorance both authors of the piece Thomas Aeschi and Guthlaugur Thor Thordarson must be fully aware of the differences between EFTA and the EEA.

In the picture above second from the left sits Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, as the EEA JPC ( Joint Parliamentary Committee) President. With him are Nora Skaansar, EFTA Secretariat to his right, Pat the Cope Gallagher, EEA JPC Vice President and Tarvo Kungla, European Parliament to his left. It's safe to say that Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson is in the thick of the EFTA/EEA action as it were.

We can see further confirmation of this from his profile on Althing, the Icelandic Parliament's website which lists the committees that he is a member of:

Present committees

• Member of the Icelandic Delegation to the EFTA and EEA Parliamentary Committees since 2013 (Chairman since 2013) and 2003-2007 (Chairman 2005-2007).
• Member of the EU-Iceland joint Parliamentary Committee since 2013 (Chairman since 2013)

Thus it's utterly inconceivable that he would not know that access to the EU market is via EEA agreements (or bilateral treaties) not by EFTA membership alone.

The second author of the piece is Thomas Aeschi of Swiss People's Party. A member of the EFTA Parliamentary Committe and as part of EFTA/ EU Parliaments delegation he is invited as observer to the EEA Joint Parliamentary meetings" (click to enlarge):

Not participants but observers. EFTA's impotence in EU trade relations made clear. In February of this year David Campbell Bannerman MEP hosted a conference on ‘Alternatives to EU membership, where Thomas Aeschi was a speaker (my emphasis):

Ruth Lea, representing Economists for Britain, Heming Olaussen who led the anti-membership campaign in Norway in 1994, Thomas Aeschi of the Swiss People’s Party, and Bill Cash MP all said that the European Economic Area (EEA) is not a good option (democracy by fax, against national sovereignty and so on).  

Clearly then Aeschi knows EEA and EFTA are not the same. A point emphasised further when he argues, in this speech below, that he is not particularly fond of the Swiss bilateral treaties:

Revealing at the end of his speech (14mins 10), Aeschi puts forward his preference for a UK exit - "EEA lite" or "EFTA plus". This is also the preferred option for David Campbell Bannerman, and it is a deeply flawed and unworkable option that Scribblings from Seaham (under his old guise of WfW) took apart last year.

It's understandable to be cynical as to the intentions of this article as Douglas Carter was in a comment on my previous piece. It's apparent that the misleading conflation of EFTA and EEA is very likely not to have been born of ignorance but a less than candid attempt at promoting a free-trade agreement for the UK.

Interestingly Daniel Hannan who has long advocated a position similar, tweeted this:

It's also worth noting that Guthlaugur Thor Thordarson is a member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR), who argue that the UK should seek a trade-only deal outside of the EU, which could provide the foundations for a greater economic union. And via AECR's official twitter account we see this:

And the secretary-general of AECR is...Daniel Hannan.

We guess international interventions in our referendum are going to be inevitable,and at least with the EU we can see the enemy coming. However with friends like this who confuse the issues and propose unworkable solutions...we will lose the referendum.

The Euro And Greece: The Empty Trojan Horse

It is remarkably curious that Greece, a country of relative insignificance, whose economy is smaller than Volkswagen's, has dominated the UK media agenda with much frenzied anticipation of a eurozone meltdown. Leading economists began predicting 'Grexit' including the economist who is credited with coining the phrase, as did other 'experts';

"Grexit is inevitable, it’s an absolute certainty"

And not just economists, this what Daniel Hannan had to say on July 6th:

It's interesting that with a Greek deal looking increasingly likely when we went to find the above tweet last night we found Hannan has now deleted it. Thanks to the internet though it can be found elsewhere. I guess the deletion speaks for itself.

Among other predictions, such as the 'European project is dying' there has been ill-disguised Anglo-saxon gloating and praise for "little democratic Greece standing up to the bullying EU". Greece though did not vote to leave the Euro or indeed the EU itself. They had instead voted to keep spending Germany's money without the inconvenience of paying it back. It's worth noting that the UK is owed around £10billion by Greece.

Whatever the referendum was, an exercise in democracy it was not. Called at the last minute, the referendum was rushed through with no time to debate the complexities of the bailout package, there was an absence of a proper "yes" or "no" campaign, the government put the "no" option (which it favours) above the "yes" on the ballot paper, the Greek media have been accused of bias and breaking the law leading up to the poll and it now appears that the result has been ignored anyway.

In that sense the referendum cannot be fair, or be considered a reflection of a true democratic decision. Instead it was merely an exercise in trying to bluff the EU using the Greek people as pawns. We can only be grateful in this country that we have an Electoral Commission to help negate government referendum stitch-ups like this.

So rather blow apart the eurozone, instead Greece is capitulating. It has proposed and is accepting a deal far worse than the one which was put to its people in a referendum. It will crawl away with a whimper.

The reason of course, as we noted last month, is that the current crisis, and the Euro in general, has less to do with economics and more to do with politics. The current crisis has not come about because Greece ran out of money - there was a deal on the table - but due to Tsipras deciding to do politics, and he has not come out of this well. It would seem he has been rather naive when dealing with the EU and we venture as far as to say "out of his depth".

He had a much weaker hand than he seemed to think - Greece economically and politically is insignificant - and he played it badly. By calling a referendum he thought he would frighten the EU into a better deal by the threat of political contagion to the likes of Spain et al.

Instead the markets largely shrugged off the referendum result and the only consequence has been that he has annoyed just about every leader in the eurozone. Annoyed to the extent that the ever increasingly robust language coming out of the EU indicates how fed-up they are with Greece. Fed-up to the extent that Greece was given an ultimatum on to agree a bailout package or leave. Tsipras backed himself and Greece into a corner. He's had no choice but to climbdown.

And the reasons are two-fold. For all the gloating by the UK media, they have largely overlooked two key points. They can deal with the economic part of EU membership but uttlery fail to acknowledge the more important political aspect. For Greece to leave would be contrary to "ever closer union". The EU cannot politically afford Greece to leave.They will paper over the cracks until the "English Question" is resolved and then we will have a new treaty.

Secondly, despite "preaching" by British" commentators that Greece would be better of out, their own experience suggests the opposite:

When it comes to money, the Greeks learned a lot of lessons the hard way over many generations. The drachma has always been seen by them as a way for the series of corrupt governments to steal from the people through devaluations and inflation.

This is what monetary theft looks like from the Greek point of view, and why they don’t trust their politicians and central bankers in managing a currency. They’ve learned the hard way and won’t forget the drachma’s 82% devaluation against the euro in two decades.

Greece simply does not want to leave. So ultimately Greece's gestures were empty, they capitulated as we expected they would. If nothing else this saga demonstrates once again how badly served we are by our media which doesn't bode well for our own forthcoming referendum.
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EU Referendum: Media Bias

During the 1975 referendum all the newspapers bar one – the communist Morning Star – supported EEC membership. Such positive support in the media for staying in the EU would be almost identical today, liberally sprinkled with FUD, as illustrated above, with possibly the dubious exception of the Daily Express. Even the likes of the supposedly eurosceptic Daily Mail has made it clear, in editorials, that it supports EU membership:

Let the Mail lay all its cards on the table. This paper has no desire for Britain to pull out of Europe — and particularly not at a time like this, when withdrawal would add immeasurably to the uncertainties threatening our recovery and rocking the confidence of the markets.

The economic FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) has already started in earnest. Courtesy of the BBC across it's broadcasting outlets we have this from Bank of England governor Mark Carney:

[He] has said that the UK should hold its EU referendum "as soon as necessary".

"We talk to a lot of bosses and there has been uncertainty whether it's for the election or the referendum," said Mr Carney on the BBC's Today programme.

Analysts fear businesses may delay making investments while there is uncertainty over Britain's future in the EU.

"FUD, FUD glorious FUD" means that if we are to win a referendum, it is essential to negate it by making it clear that the UK will remain in the Single Market post exit for the time being as to make it economically neutral. It remains our only hope of clearing the first hurdle required to ultimately win.

But it’s certainly obvious that it will be a significant challenge in trying to overturn the message of the establishment, media and FUD, all of which will be heavily funded. Not least because the eurosceptic movement is so divided with no coherent message.

Certainly this was the experience of the early 1970's with our entry into the then EEC where pro-market lobby groups were co-ordinated under the umbrella of the European Movement part funded by the EU Commission to act as an integral part of the government campaign.

Efforts were made, by the Heath government, to bring the media on board particularly the BBC where eurosceptic presenters were dismissed in favour of more sympathetic ones. Less competent or more divisive spokesmen were chosen by the media, and the BBC, to represent the "out" campaign for negative effect.

We are, therefore, in danger of being greatly damaged by FUD, and currently we are losing the FUD war - it's being created faster than can be responded to by various media outlets including blogs. Richard North notes:

Talking yesterday to a senior politician, he observed that the "out" campaign should already have a rapid rebuttal unit up and running, to deal with this sort of thing. To my mind, it is an indictment of Ukip, which should already be equipped to handle false claims.

Thus the "out" campaign is going to have to establish its own permanent rebuttal units to monitor and counter media FUD. This was a tactic very successfully adopted by New Labour in the lead up to their landslide victory in 1997. Peter Oborne's book on Alastair Campbell observes (page 134):

[Campbell] put into effect the new electoral technology which New Labour had imported from the United States: the giant media war-room, the 24 hour monitoring of television, radio and press outlets, a rapid rebutal serivce, a savage clampdown on MPS and Shadow ministers who spoke out of turn...Labour's ferocious internal discipline was the key to its success.

In stark contrast to the [Tories]...Labour MPS were prevailed upon to limit their public utterances to the bland platitudes imposed upon them by the party machine.

...what gave Labour complaints the edge was that they were inevitably well-researched and sensibly focused. The vigilance was extraordinary. Roger Mosey, then the editor of the Today programme, recalls: 'If you had a line that Labour didn't like on the 6.30am bulletin you got called instantly. Often Labour complaints had some substance...if there was a glimmer of an inaccuracy they were onto you.'

This gives an indication of the ruthlessless required to win a referendum, particularly if the odds are stacked against us. The internet and social media becomes the key.

In addition with newspapers we have a complaints procedure, which obviously anyone can use. Post-Leveson what was the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has now become the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and we will address the significance of this with a subsequent piece.

Here we will concentrate on television broadcasters. The 1975 referendum, being the first nationwide poll of its kind in the UK, presented broadcasters with hitherto unknown dilemmas of balance and responsibility. Up to that point, in general elections, broadcasters used the existing strength of parties in MPs, or in votes, at the last election as a guide in establishing the priorities of the coverage.

The White Paper of February 1975 offered no particular formula or solution, instead its 'advice' was one of hope rather than one born out of regulatory oversight (page 19):

4.9 The Government are confident that the IBA and BBC will exercise editorial discretion designed to ensure that there is a fair balance between the opposing views in news and feature programmes. The broadcasting authorities may also decide to run a series of short "referendum broadcasts" analogous to party political broadcasts. In this way an equal number of short periods of television time would-be"made available to the main campaigning organisations in the two or three weeks before polling day.

The Government would welcome such an initiative.

Whereas in 1975, the government was "confident", hardly an endorsement of rigorous oversight, now we have regulatory authorities in place regarding the impartiality of broadcasters.

With the establishment of the Ofcom under the Communications Act 2003 and the establishment of the Electoral Commission under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 the broadcasting oversight is more structured which means that crucially it is an avenue where we can complain. Ofcom provided examples of this oversight during the Scottish referendum.

With regard to Ofcom, broadcasters should ensure that they comply with Section Five: (Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions):

To ensure that news, in whatever form, is reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality. To ensure that the special impartiality requirements of the Act are complied with.

And broadcasters also have to comply with Section Six (Elections and Referendums) of the Code:

To ensure that the special impartiality requirements in the Communications Act 2003 and other legislation relating to broadcasting on elections and referendums, are applied at the time of elections and referendums. 

In addition, there is the prohibition of political advertising in Section 321 of the Communications Act 2003:

(2) For the purposes of section 319(2)(g) an advertisement contravenes the prohibition on political advertising if it is:

(a) an advertisement which is inserted by or on behalf of a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature;

(b) an advertisement which is directed towards a political end; or

(c) an advertisement which has a connection with an industrial dispute.

(3) For the purposes of this section objects of a political nature and political ends include each of the following:

(a) influencing the outcome of elections or referendums, whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere;

This applies to the multitude of local television and radio outlets with the exception of the BBC which is overseen by the BBC Trust.

In the 1960's JFK embraced the relatively new medium of television to great effect, this in contrast Barack Obama who embraced the new medium of the internet in 2008. His internet campaign was crucial to winning the Presidency.

We can therefore learn the lessons of using a new medium to try to keep the old medium of broadcasters "honest", or by simply by-passing them. Thus in the UK we can embrace the internet in the same effective way and with regulatory bodies in place over the traditional legacy media  the internet allows us as individuals to facilitate a campaign to ensure some resemblance of impartiality. The simple use of Twitter has worked before

Thus unlike 1975 we now have the internet and everything that comes with it; smartphones, Twitter, Facebook and forums. The establishment no longer has a monopoly on information. Scotland revealed the significance of this development. The independence campaign was a dry run of how an EU referendum would be conducted and it showed comprehensively that unofficial campaigns centered on social media was very powerful.

By using the internet to lobby regulatory bodies, each one of us can make a small but significant difference.

If You Want To Be Strictly Accurate...

An interesting phenomenon which becomes apparent when being an established blogger is the nature of the readership - it never fails to amaze who actually reads the bog. Despite being dismissed as "electronic version of pub gossip", bloggers can sometimes make a real difference.

With this in mind it's interesting that for the first time this blog has had readership from the European Parliament. Since my previous post was published yesterday on why a 2015 EU referendum cannot happen the hit rate from the EU Parliament has been very significant.

It's hard to pin down influence of course, but sometimes media reports which belatedly begin to write about very familiar themes in similar language can be difficult to explain away as mere coincidences.

An example would be in a piece in today's Telegraph; 11 things we've learned about Jeremy Clarkson. The piece relates to Top Gear's Stig delivering a petition to the BBC's London headquarters to call for the return of the show's host, Jeremy Clarkson, while being transported on this - pictured below:

The vehicle is virtually identical to the one which was used during a protest outside the UKIP Spring Conference in Margate back in February:

It was universally described as a tank, however as EUReferendum noted:

If one wonders just how naff the Daily Mail can become, one just needs to visit the headline of their piece on the Ukip spring conference in Margate. There, we are told, the Ukipites were "gatecrashed" by "NAZI dancing troupe goose-stepping through Margate in front of a Second World War tank".

Notwithstanding any other errors, the vehicle in question is not a tank – it is an Abbot FV433 self-propelled gun. And it is not of World War II vintage. It was actually introduced into British Army service in 1965. I remember it well as, about that time, I was nearly flattened by one when it came hurtling down a track on which we had pitched our tent (don't ask).

Therefore and rather interestingly half way down Telegraph piece today, we have this by the author of the piece Anita Singh, Arts and Entertainment Editor:

A man dressed as Top Gear's Stig has delivered the petition to the BBC's London headquarters in a tank (or self-propelled artillery, if you want to be strictly accurate).

This provokes two interesting observations. One that given the media as a whole have described it as tank, that Anita Singh acknowledges accurately it might be something else such as self-propelled artillery - of where there is only one source to report this - suggests strongly blogs are read.

The second is the dismissive tone of describing self-propelled artillery as "if you want to be strictly accurate". These are two completely different types of military vehicle.

To give an analogy, in the spirit of Clarkson and Top Gear, we could say that the car pictured below is obviously a Mercedes-AMG GT which has 4.0-litre V8 biturbo and produces 462hp. This allows it to achieve 0-60 mph in as little as 3.8 seconds.

But of course "if you want to be strictly accurate" we would note the picture is actually one of an Enzo Ferrari.

What a good example that is of a newspaper publicly acknowledging that "being strictly accurate" is an optional extra.

Why The Pro-EU Telegraph Uses The Term 'Norway Model'

A recent Telegraph editorial, which is an unashamedly pro-EU paper, not unsurprisingly includes information from the recently outed pro-EU think tank Open Europe:

At first blush, then, today’s report by the think tank Open Europe on the costs of EU regulations to Britain should push the prime minister to head for the exit. The burden of the costliest 100 regulations to our economy is £33 billion, it says. And while the apparent benefits total more than £58 billion, some £46 billion of this derives from three items “which are vastly over-stated”. Financially, it seems, we are losing out.

By reducing the argument down to cost and economics means that it becomes divisive for the eurosceptic movement to its detriment as Richard North notes:

The trouble is that EU regulation, and how much money we may or may not save from leaving the EU, constitute the type of "biff-bam" arguments that the media love to report. But the two sides getting bogged down in such arcane details is precisely the wholesale turn-off for the general public that we need to avoid. If we are going to make any progress, the economic issues should be neutralised and "parked", not endlessly chewed over by a bunch of hyperactive think-tank wonks and ill-briefed politicians.

What we are seeing, therefore, is incompetent campaigning from both sides – although the need to overcome the status quo effect imposes greater demands on the "out" campaign. Equal incompetence means we lose. Either way, though, the anti-EU movement is being poorly served. And if we can't even trash the OE nonsense, we deserve everything we get.

Similarly arguing that the EU can be reformed has the same effect when trying to win a referendum. No wonder the pro-EU Telegraph is so enthusiastic in adopting such tactics.

Interestingly, and far more dangerously, Business for Britain whose Chief Executive is Mathew Elliot who is very keen to be the official out candidate for a referendum uses precisely the same arguments and terminology as pro-EU Open Europe and the Telegraph. Business for Britain's daily email briefings are virtually identical to Open Europe's.

No doubt Tory central office will be over the moon if Elliot would be the official candidate for the out campaign in a referendum.

Any genuine euroscepetic knows that the EU hides in plain sight that its raison d'etre is all about political union and has been from the outset. To ignore that as a eurosecptic movement could be described as dishonest. Thus by neutralising the economic arguments it allows us to concentrate on the fundamental principle that the EU is all about political union by its own admission.

Neutralising the economic arguments involves invoking the Norway Option, and more specifically Flexcit, by adopting the off the shelf EEA solution as a temporary measure allows us to negate the inevitable FUD threat in a referendum.

And it is a threat that the pro-EU press such as the Guardian and City AM fully recognise. If they didn't they wouldn't spend so much time in trying to undermine the argument.

With this mind, it is interesting that the Telegraph uses the phrase "Norway model" rather than the usual term "Norway Option";

The so-called “Norway” model – leave the EU but remain part of the European Economic Area.

A quick internet search suggests why; a search for the term 'Norway Model' is likely to result in links to copious pretty Norwegian women:

Conversely a search for the 'Norway Option' results in this and this:

This is cynicism by the Telegraph of the highest order, and this is an example of the dirty tricks we face. The eurosceptic movement as a whole needs to wise up...otherwise we will lose.

The Telegraph's Race To The Bottom

For those unversed in motorsport, or more specifically Formula One, Spanish driver Alonso - one of its best drivers of the current generation - is at the centre of speculation concerning a head injury as a result of a high speed crash.

The Spaniard crashed his McLaren into the wall during pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya on 22 February and reportedly was concussed. As a result he was airlifted to hospital where he spent three nights and has now been advised not to start the season opening in Melbourne. Clearly and rightly it is being treated seriously and McLaren's lack of openness regarding the situation suggests there maybe more to it than is being made public.

Certainly as any F1 fan acutely appreciates in recent years head injuries are not to be treated lightly; as evident on recent occasions with Michael Schumacher and Jules Bianchi last season. Such details are not for the Telegraph who via Judith Wood, under the section of F1 News informs us that Alonso is a lucky man because:,

...the Spaniard was so badly concussed he initially lost his memory and believed he was a boy again. Most striking was that his 13-year-old-self told doctors that his ambition was to be a Formula 1 driver. Twenty years on, he is living his (admittedly dangerous) dream. How many of us can say that?

I dimly recall that at 13 I wanted to be a nun. Weirdly, my husband entertained the idea of becoming a pillar hermit, à la Simeon Stylites – before and not after he married me, since you ask. We both drifted into journalism, about which I’m very pleased in particular, because it has meant I have been able to meet Donny Osmond.

There is much to be said for following your heart. But if you are happiest sailing or cooking or raising children, realising those ambitions might not be how you earn a living. What all 13-year-olds have in common is a sense of passion and endless possibility – and it’s holding on tight to those that counts, whether you drive a McLaren-Honda or take Holy Orders.

And there we have it, a head injury reduced down to the level of tittle tattle. We shouldn't be surprised, this is from the same journalist (I use the term loosely) who has a recent article about what happens to dogs when a couple breaks up.

No wonder that increasingly if we want proper news, and not just with sport, we have to go elsewhere.

Goodbye Nokia

According to the Telegraph today, it's "a goodnight from me and a goodnight from him" with regard to the once mobile phone giant Nokia:

Farewell Nokia. Once one of the biggest brands in the world, it has now gone the way of Pan Am, Opal Fruits and Somerfield supermarkets.

This week Microsoft, which bought Nokia’s handset division for £4.61 billion last year, has announced that the next phone it releases will no longer have the Nokia logo stamped on it. 

Although the company still exists, as a brand it's all over - Microsoft deciding that Nokia is not a name synonymous with smartphones. Within 10 years it has gone from a giant to nothing more than a footnote, though I guess no-one will miss its distinctive ringtone which was widely parodied. A victim of the ruthless and relentless march of technological progress. Its classic phones, with changeable covers and customisable ringtones, now museum pieces.

Yet while we mock old fashioned mobiles for being like bricks, it is a curious oddity that modern phones are getting larger. As technology progresses it is not unreasonable to expect devices in general to shrink as it did with mobiles in the '90s, probably best illustrated by the Nokia 8210 launched in 1999. However as mobile technology has developed their size has now gone into reverse - as anyone who has held an iPhone 6 can testify to. A reflection that they are being used less for phone calls and more as mini-computers.

In other words we are communicating more but talking less. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

No flowers

"Third World Europe Finished"

The Sunday Telegraph reports that Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone "has become the latest high-profile business leader to write off the stagnating economy in Europe":

“Slowly but surely what I predicted about Europe is happening. What I said 10 years ago is that it would soon become a third world economy."

We don't of course dispute the thrust of Ecclestone's views. In charge of a global 'circus' which takes in five continents, nineteen countries and draws in a global television audience measured in the hundreds of millions", he is well placed to understand the stagnation of "little Europe" in contrast to the economic realities of globalisation.

And this matters to the UK because, despite F1 being a global business, its home is in the UK, notably in an area known as "Motorsport Valley" - its contribution to the UK economy not insignificant:

Now almost 3,500 companies associated with motorsport are based in Motorsport Valley, employing around 40,000 people. That represents around 80% of the world's high-performance engineers.

The industry continues to grow, with companies in Motorsport Valley producing an estimated turnover of £6bn, of which £3.6bn is exported. 

But this endorsement from 'Bernie' comes with a caveat. Ecclestone's business deals are...erm... somewhat less than candid. He once donated £1 million to the Labour party in an attempt to exempt F1 from tobacco advertising. Having achieved that exemption he then got his money back, leading to this infamous quote by Tony Blair:

"I think most people who have dealt with me, think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy and I am." .

Then we have Ecclestone paying off German judges with £60 million to end a very damaging bribery trial which would end his tenure in F1. A tenure that has left a sport in crisis with two F1 teams now in administration, and 'Bernie' admitting he doesn't know how to fix the crisis.

Views from a man who in charge of a multi-billion pound industry is out of touch with the need to adopt a social media outlook. Ironic really in a ruthless sport where technology is king, that same technology which is passing the old man by.

In this sense Ecclestone's views on Europe and its problems are not helpful. Rather like Richard Branson who claims exit for the UK would be disastrous, we have two less than candid business leaders with reputations tarnished slogging it out over the economic case for EU membership - with no altruistic intentions intended. Thus with Ecclestone's intervention for the outers it's a case of; "with friends like this..."

As Richard North notes the EU is a political project not an economic one:

...while Osborne is pretending we joined the EU "economic proposition" when, quite obviously, we joined a political project.

Everybody is pretending here that their particular corner of the EU is something it isn't, and then to cap it all, Osborne joins with his boss in lusting after something neither of them can have – a reformed EU. One of these days, these people are going to grow up, face reality and talk about the EU as it really is, rather than they would like it to be – or think it should be. Then, perhaps we might just start making some progress. But, as always, it would be unwise to hold our breath.

In this sense the message therefore to the likes of Ecclestone and Branson is mind your own business.

Article 50: The Premier League Of Exits (Part 1)

With the England football team's, not entirely unexpected, dismal early exit from the World Cup in Brazil, we see the usual media post-mortem analysis of where it all went wrong. Two themes always emerge when attempting to analyse what went wrong; that footballers are paid too much and that there are too many foreigners in English football.

However given England's international record since 1950 both theories can be seen to be clear fallacies. 1966 aside, England's record in international tournaments has generally been very poor. England has never reached a final on foreign soil and they have won only five knockout games in any World Cup played outside their own country; none of them against any so-called 'football superpowers' such as Germany or Italy.

This poor record occurred during the maximum wage era - ended by the landmark Eastham case in 1963 - as well as during the far more prosperous English Premier League (EPL) incarnation. And no one could argue that a half-fit Luis Suarez playing for Uruguay against England only showed passion because he is on minimum wage when playing for Liverpool. Thus that the fault lies with players' lack of passion due to being paid too much doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

The other criticism is of too many foreigners in the EPL (foreign players currently make up over 60%). However when the English leagues consisted of almost only British players during the '70's and '80's it's worth noting England failed to qualify for the World Cup in 1974 and 1978, and as for the European Championships in 1988...well that's best forgotten.

England's record has been largely abysmal regardless of how many or how few foreigners play in the English game. And as Soccernomics argues England's record has actually improved since 1992 (the beginning of the EPL) - averaging 1.69 points per game up from 1.4 per game pre-1992.

Yet the obvious fallacies behind the proposed reasons of England's poor international record doesn't stop the likes of the 'award winning' Telegraph football correspondent Henry Winter putting forward 'solutions' to England's perennial abject performances. He complains bitterly:

When England were blown away by the fast, intelligent, ruthless movement of Germany in Bloemfontein at the last World Cup four years ago, this newspaper carried a “10-point plan to save the face of English football following shame in South Africa”. Only three of the points have been achieved, leaving little surprise that England continue to lag behind more sophisticated footballing nations.

And one of his solutions that was not adopted?

The issue of quotas, suggested in Point Eight of “Six plus five adds up”, focused on the influx of foreigners into the Premier League and the blocking of the pathway for younger English players, an issue at the heart of Greg Dyke’s FA commission.

It seems to have escaped the 'award winning' Mr Winter's attention that such quotas, even if they worked, are against EU law. And nor is this an obscure EU ruling. Instead it is one of the most well known infamous moments in English football history - the Bosman ruling. And not just Bosman but also ECJ judgements regarding Dona, Kolpak and Simutenkov.

One of the consequences of Bosman in particular was that it prohibited domestic leagues in EU member states, and UEFA, from imposing quotas on foreign players to the extent that they discriminated against other EU states. The judgement was hardly a surprise given that free movement of people is one of the fundamental freedoms of the Single Market - based on what is now Article 45 (2) of the Lisbon Treaty which established the rights of EU nationals to work on a non-discriminatory basis in any Member State.

Previously UEFA had a rule which prohibited teams in its competitions, namely the Champions League, Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Cup, from naming more than three "foreign" players in their squads for any game - a rule which had led to the embarrassing defeat by Barcelona of Manchester United in 1994. After the ruling, quotas could only be applied to non EU-players only.

Mr Winter should (and I suspect does) know better but it's revealing that he fails to acknowledge this. Thus it appears that it is not just Telegraph political correspondents who have myopia when it comes to the UK's membership of the EU but football ones as well.

The Bosman ruling had profound consequences right across the EU - in all sports but one of its greatest impacts was felt in the Premier League. To maybe understand why, we need to revisit the consequences of the establishment of the Premier League in the early '90s.

The Hillsborough disaster in 1989 was a watershed in British sport and it essentially resulted in two main legacies - safer stadiums and its more dubious cousin the birth of the Premier League. 

Football in the UK has largely been governed since the 19th century by an uneasy alliance between two bodies; the Football Association (FA) and the Football League (FL).

The FA can rightly claim to be the first such football body in the world which not only first codified the rules but helped develop the popularity of the game. And, not unusually for a Victorian sporting institution, it has always retained an amateur ethos - a determination to remain a "purity" different from commercial interests. It was a public school cocooned world.

This 'purity' was challenged in the late 19th century by the establishment of the hugely popular football league, a league competition led mainly by the rise of working-class northern clubs who could not afford such luxuries as 'amateurism'. Professionals they had to be out of necessity. In very simplistic terms such a divide between the FA and the FL can be seen as a north/south one, not too dissimilar to the divide which was more explicitly expressed in the form of two sets of codes in rugby.

Most other countries in the world which started from scratch avoided this seperation of the governing body and the League. Instead they established a single football federation governing the lot...this mistake, not replicated by other countries, would come back to haunt the UK.

From the start the FL was concerned about ensuring a degree of equality between its member clubs - on almost a socialist model it wanted to ensure that money was divided equally within the whole league structure on the basic premise that every club needed each other for a basic competition to exist. A model that largely worked for circa 100 years.

But with the influx of television money in the 1980s the bigger clubs (then known as the big five) in the top division wanted to break away from the FL's rigid formula of distributing money throughout the leagues and instead keep all the money for themselves. Despite initial resistance from the FA the big five's opportunity to breakaway came via Hillsborough.

Lord Justice Taylor, in his Final Report, had identified that one of the many failings in football at the time was due to a lack of leadership, a lack of vision, due to the inherent archaic conflict between the FA and the FL. What football badly needed was one strong governing body. In the spirit of Lord Taylor's report the FL produced a document called, one game, one team, one voice. It proposed an end to football's historic divisions and the establishment of one joint board, six members from the FA and six for the FL to run football.

However the FA, with self interest most acute, saw this as 'parking tanks on its lawn' and thus in response betrayed their own game by instead allowing the breakaway of the top division with its permission in a selfish attempt to destroy the power of the FL.

The result was a Premiership division, under FA governance, with clubs standing on the threshold of undreamt riches intoxicated by the injection of further money by Sky television. No longer would money have to be distributed throughout the leagues, instead the PL kept most of it if not all. But the unintended consequence was that the FA created a monster which it could no longer control.

This PL monster, now greedily independent of the rest of the football league, was then given a substantial steroid injection by the Bosman ruling in 1995.

After the ruling, a player was free to leave as soon as his contract expired. Thus power moved away from clubs towards players; they could now demand very large signing-on fees and salaries, on the basis that the club they were joining had not had to pay a penny in transfer fees. Clubs became powerless to stop their best players leaving at the end of their existing deals. Wages soared and in the UK this was funded by more and more television money. Not expectantly this attracted ever greater numbers of foreign players into the EPL - over 1,500 in the last 20 years and most from the EU. 169 players have come from France alone.

Yet while we take the view from a purist football fan perspective the PL has been negative innovation in destroying the integrity of the English league system, we recognise that the PL is a major contributor to the economy, we cannot avoid the fact that the economic figures it generates are staggering.

In 2011/12 for example the revenue of the 20 Premier League clubs was over £2.3 billion, while five clubs each generated revenue greater than that of the entire First Division twenty years previously.

Last year the contribution of the EPL clubs alone - just 20 of them -  to the Exchequer was over £1bn. Just Premier League football in Manchester on its own rakes in the equivalent of an Olympic and Paralympic Games combined for the economy every four seasons and English clubs spent a record sum last summer in transfers amounting to a total of more than half a billion pounds.

The financial behemoth that is the EPL means it is extremely popular with both domestic and foreign fans. In England, for example 32 per cent of the adult population state that they are actively engaged Premier League football. And it was a sector which remained resilient when the recession struck.

And in addition the EPL plays an important part in British tourism. In 2012  there were nearly a million foreign football tourists who visited the UK spending £706million – or £785 per fan - around £200 more than the average spend for a visitor to the UK.

The following of the Premier League globally is 1.46 billion – or 70 per cent of the world’s estimated 2.08 billion football fans. The EPL therefore, liked or not, is a most potent instrument of soft power the UK possesses. As an EU Commission paper noted in 2007-08:

...the Premier League has become much more than just the United Kingdom’s most popular regular sporting competition. It has also become an important economic agent, with a significant impact on employment, GDP and national and local economies. A number of related industries have benefited from the Premier League’s strength, including broadcasting, marketing and other communications industries, and the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. Premier League Clubs have become the social focus of many urban communities and are often the most prominent symbol of their cities in the UK and around the world.

The economic success of the Premier League generates significant taxation revenues for national and local government, giving the Government and local authorities a direct interest in the continued economic health of our competition. It is therefore important to bear in mind that, in considering the impact of the EU on sport, the relevant policies include employment, the internal market, economic development, trade, judicial and legal services, social inclusion, and regional policy as well as sport itself.

Thus if we are to win a referendum, reassurance needs to be made that the world's most watched league is not adversely affected.

What Margaret Thatcher seemingly failed to appreciate, but largely her Prime Ministerial successors did (albeit some superficially, not naming names - Cameron) is that the majority of football fans, and indeed sports fans in general, are above all else taxpayers and voters. Thus millions in the UK who follow the EPL need to be onside in order to win.

The Bosman ruling is by no means the only EU interference in domestic sport and interestingly there has been long running disputes between the international regulator FIFA and EU law. These we will address in part 2.

Delingpole: Another MI5 Agent...

James Delingpole former Telegraph blogger and author of fine works such as this has understandably been an enthusiastic advocate of Farage's party to the extent of attempting to bid to be a UKIP MEP. Take this article from 2nd May 2014 for example:

Since the beginning of the European elections campaign, not a day has passed without some vicious new assault in the media on UKIP. But as we've seen, far from denting UKIP's popularity in the polls all this free publicity - bolstering its status as the rebel-outsider, none-of-the-above party - has seen it go from strength to strength.

The people who aren't part of this Establishment, however, not remotely, are the people in the country at large. They feel, for any of number of reasons, that they have become disenfranchised; that the Establishment looks after its own interests but not theirs.

For some the problem is political correctness; for others it's immigration; for others it's the plethora of regulations over which they feel they have no democratic control regardless of which political party is in power; for others still it's the sense that, despite this blessed recovery we keep reading about in all the newspapers, their standard of living appears to be going down.

It's not so much what UKIP stands for that is attracting so many voters as what it stands against: everything they hate.

And what is the embodiment of everything they hate? The Establishment, of course. No wonder the media arm of this Establishment is as proving as discombobulated as the political wing of this Establishment: they're all in the same boat.

The problem of course with being "anti" anything is that it only gets us so far and then a glass ceiling is always firmly hit. Eventually people will want to know what a party actually stands for. That requires well-worked out policies and detail.

In 2012 Delingpole wrote this (my emphasis):

Look at its manifesto. It's the most reasonable, people-friendly manifesto of any political party in Britain. You might quibble with the details: has its championing of grammar schools been rendered irrelevant by Gove's education reforms? Isn't it fence-sitting, rather, on fox-hunting by declaring it a "local issue." But by God, if we could get a government in power which ticked even half the boxes on UKIP's wish list Britain would once more become a land well worth living in.

Despite Delingpole's praise, this manifesto would subsequently be one that Farage denounced as "drivel". 'Dellers' betrayed like many before him.

So with this in mind it's interesting to note that like many of us ex-Ukippers Delingpole seems to have experienced the well-trodden journey of UKIP membership from hope, to frustrations to then despair - he has somewhat belatedly noticed there is something not quite right:

I'm nervous about UKIP for different reasons. My concern is that if they're not careful they're going to end up just like all the other members of the political class in the LibLabCon bubble - more interested in the pursuit and retention of power by telling special interests groups whatever they want to hear rather than in ideological principle.

The other is the apparent lack of anyone like Margaret Thatcher had — a Keith Joseph, say, or a Norman Tebbit — with the ability to underpin party policy with some intellectual and ideological heft.

What, pray, is the point of voting Ukip into power if all you’re going to get is another bunch of career politicians on the make, aping the cynical, vote-catch opportunism of the usual suspects from LibLabCon? You might get more grammar schools here, fewer wind farms there, but without a clear direction of travel you’d just get another party prey to the inevitable temptations of shoring up its power base with eye-catching initiatives aimed at grasping special interest groups.

Delingpole has spotted what a number of us have; that UKIP is bereft of substance and detailed polices (there's always always a manifesto in preparation) and that the leader is essentially trying to "wing" it.

Another (of so many) examples is Farage not bothering to campaign in the Newark by-election today but instead he has been photographed yet again on the booze accompanied yet again with another female.

Despite legitimate criticisms no doubt, as Compete Bastard notes, Delingpole's article will be "spun" as another example of "sour grapes". (how many more examples do there have to be?):

[Delingpole] is obviously out to get Ukip, and it's all just sour grapes because he didn't get selected to be an MEP.

For a party that's been about for 20 years it still doesn't have a detailed policy on how to exit the damned EU project. Therefore Autonomous Mind has it so right when he says:

This blog has long considered itself a critical friend to UKIP, despite the attacks by those who consider themselves virtuous defenders of the cause.  But if UKIP looks set to hamstring the prospects of the anti-EU side by acting as a repellant rather than a recruiter, then the friendship has to end and UKIP has to be taken on and defeated.

I wish there was an alternative to this.  But there’s far more at stake in a referendum than there is in preserving the ambitions of Nigel Farage.  UKIP’s failings must not be allowed to drag down the chances of the anti-EU side of winning a referendum.

I am often asked just what my agenda is as people cannot believe I want to leave the EU, but remain critical of UKIP.  It is very simple. We need UKIP to sort itself out and shape up, or we need to get it out of the way so we can take on and defeat the Europhiles.

It is no coincidence that so many go through the same experiences. So while Farage goes bonking and boozing around Brussels on the taxpayer, the heavy lifting of how to actually extricate ourselves from the monstrosity is left to others.

Despair and betrayal is an all too familiar pattern with UKIP. And sadly 'Dellers' is not immune either. Who to vote for is the cry. If not UKIP who? The answer is simple - the Lib Dems, currently the outcome will be precisely the same.  

Losing The EU Referendum

Let's not beat around the bush, without a fully worked-out policy and strategy on how to leave the EU any referendum on EU exit will be lost for those who wish out. It's as simple as that. And should the "outers" lose it's game over for at least a generation, probably more. We won't have another chance - it won't be a "best of three".

We don't actually need to have a referendum - there was no referendum to enter the EEC (EU) - and there needs to be no referendum to leave. Yet we must acknowledge that the reality of current political momentum which suggests strongly that our exit will hinge very decisively on one being called.

So should a referendum be called, we face an extremely unfair fight against a pro-EU and ignorant media (including the Express and the state broadcaster), an unfair fight against all of the main political parties, an unfair and dishonest fight against FUD and the need to overcome the "status quo" effect which has an inbuilt advantage of around 20%.

It's imperative therefore that there should be a reassuring policy on EU exit which attempts to alleviate any concerns. This involves invoking Article 50, parking the economic issue temporarily via EFTA/EEA membership, and campaigning on the political (democracy) issue alone giving us a fighting chance.

On Article 50 at least we thought that the UKIP's position was settled when Farage confirmed at least twice that the Article would have to be invoked. But despite being a one man party he clearly isn't in total command when UKIP literature is being distributed contradicting him in the run up to the Euro elections.

Such confusion and a lack of available policy on UKIP's website means the "Life on Mars" option is still alive and kicking as Witterings from Witney notes:

Yesterday evening The Boiling Frog and I spent some time on twitter trying to convince three Ukip supporters that that which they were tweeting was pure fantasy. We were presented with statements such as the old canard that repeal of ECA 1972 meant the UK was free of EU membership; that abrogation of ECHR would mean the EU would promptly rescind the UK’s membership of the EU; and that a new trade agreement could be placed on the table within 24 hours for signature. In our attempted ‘debate’ matters are not helped when it is suggested that I should Go and smoke another spliff – leave it for the rest of us to sort out the mess; neither when I am called a supercilious tit in the comments to this post. Such ignorance is indeed a tad terrifying. 

That somehow 40 years of integration and hugely complex international agreements can just be undone in 24 hours really does defy belief.

More crucially failure to confront the nature of our exit by UKIP inevitably leads to split messages. And split messages don't win referendum campaigns, in the same way split parties don't win elections as per the 1906 General Election when the Conservatives lost by a landslide which was largely attributed to a party split over free trade.

The lack of a policy by UKIP leads this rather incoherent interview with UKIP councillor - who defected to UKIP from the Tories - Suzanne Evans. She was asked by Andrew Neil on the BBC's Sunday Politics if UKIP had published a "roadmap" if the vote was a yes to leave.

Suzanne Evans response was; "wouldn't that be great?" Well yes it would actually, which begs the question why has it not been done?

Some argue that UKIP is an "amateur party" with limited funds in contrast to others, but that of course is no excuse. Seventeen shortlisted entrants to the Brexit prize produced papers on precisely that issue within four months including one from a 15 year old boy. A damning indictment on UKIP's failure to produce one in twenty years with well-paid MEPs.

As Christopher Booker observes in the Sunday Telegraph:

It is equally disturbing that a party founded on a desire to extricate us from the EU should have no properly worked-out policy for how this could be done. Ask Ukip what are the practical steps whereby we could achieve a successful exit from the EU, and the answer is little more than a blank stare and empty platitudes. 

Andrew Neil pressed Suzanne Evans further on whether UKIP had a "roadmap". Her answers remained very unconvincing stating that she's "not a legal expert on this" and that "we could come out quickly or there's a longer route as well". Then the question put to Suzanne was "but have [UKIP] published any of that detail". The response being;

"well...not, not that I have read but there are ways to do it..."

Then Suzanne continues that UKIP want to revert back to 1975 to "what people voted for". This despite the EEC was never an economic project nor a common market. The Treaty of Rome makes this perfectly clear:

"Determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe"

With Suzanne's statement to effectively revert back to a "golden age" that never existed she then gets caught out...Andrew Neil rightly asks her that the vote in 1975 involved the "free movement of people" which goes against a party which is now chasing the BNP vote on immigration. What a mess...

No doubt some will see this as another gratuitous anti-UKIP piece. My philosophy though was always been clear right from the outset when I joined the party - "my loyalty is to the cause not to any party". In its present guise UKIP are damaging the cause and for that reason I can no longer support them.

UKIP's current stance will lose us the referendum, the choice is increasingly becoming clear; it's either the party or EU exit. The two are no longer compatible.

"Boris Johnson Is A Massive Europhile!"

Thus reports the Telegraph with seemingly not a hint of irony, on a piece of why UKIP are "stealing" Conservative votes. (Note the words "stealing" - last time I looked votes belong to the electorate not to any political party).

Apparently former Tory MP Louise Mensch, who has buggered off from being a MP or something, comes to the conclusion that:

" BoJo is far more pro-European that many people realise…"

Ah..."BoJo" - what a lovely chap he is! Of course Louise - I can't be bothered to do my job properly - Mensch is telling us nothing new. "BoJo's" pro-EU stance comes as no surprise, the level of his support for the EU puts Cameron to shame, if that is possible.

It's worth noting that Boris Johnson's father, Stanley, was between 1973 and 1979 a senior official of the EU Commsision. In 1984 he resumed his career in the Commission becoming Director for Energy Policy in 1990.

During the early 1980's a greater desire for EU integration emerged via Altiero Spinelli who is regarded as “one of the founding fathers of the European federalist movement". Out of this ambition was born The Crocodile Club, a cross- party group open to all MEPs convinced ‘of the need for European political reform of great width’.

As a consequence The Crocodile Club resulted in an EU draft treaty so ambitious in its leap forward in political integration that it had to be spilt into two parts – The Single European Act 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty 1992 in order to be acceptable (forced through) to “EU citizens”.

A UK Conservative at the time enthusiastically supported Spinelli's move towards a European federalist movement…stand up one Stanley Johnson.

Bob Crow

Naturally it is with a little shock to learn that the RMT leader, Bob Crow has died suddenly this morning – though I guess the manner of his passing is not entirely surprising. Many words undoubtedly will be expressed about his legacy which means there is little I could add that is of use to the extensive coverage that will ensure.

Typically for a rather forthright chap he divided opinions and so he does in death, going by the torrent of comments – split as they are by so-called “left” and “right”. Londoners obviously will probably have more passionate views than others.

Yet many of the venomous comments on the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph website seem to have forgotten that, like him or not, he was against the EU and our membership of it. He saw the insidious organisation for what it is and its impact on the working class members he represented.

Given his often uncompromising stance on other issues undoubtedly his eurosceptic views were genuine, as illustratrated by the No2EU party which he led, unlike the views of the more Judas goat like politicians we have become used to.

And so in that sense that's how this blog would like to remember him by.

Acting The (Judas) Goat

On Monday in the EU-supporting Telegraph, we have Douglas Carswell in his regular blog arguing that Britain should leave the Ukraine alone. He states:

What should we do? Take great care, for a start.
At the time of the Schleswig-Holstein question, when Britain was the world’s hyperpower, we avoided wading in. We would be wise to be cautious now.

Maybe, just maybe, this desire to be in the thick of things comes less from a sense of our strength, and more from a fear of our weakness.  Perhaps after Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, a certain kind of British official feels that this is what one does.

British diplomats might want to be doing the deals and laying down the terms of the UN resolutions. But since when was the amour-propre of British diplomats the yardstick by which we measure the national interest?

In his anticipation of the motives of British diplomats, what seems to have escaped Carswell's notice is that the UK does not have a choice in the matter. We are members of the EU and as a consequence we cannot have a separate national foreign policy on nations who have Association Agreements with the EU and are undergoing a European Neighbourhood Policy which applies to Ukraine.

Such matters are now a European External Action Service (EEAS) competence so our foreign policy is whatever President Barosso and Baroness Ashton decides it is. It doesn't matter what the UK wants - we are up to our necks in the Ukrainian mess because of our EU membership.

The increasing importance, or 'encroachment' of the EEAS regarding the UK is demonstrated by its continuing expansion at same time the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is declining. For example since 2006-7, staffing has been cut from 7,005 to 4,450 and it is planned to fall further to 4,285 by 2014-15 (page 31).

Yet strangely not once is the EU or the EEAS mentioned in Carswell's blog. And it's not as if Carswell is unaware of the EEAS given that he voted against its establishment in July 2010 while most of his colleagues voted for it, and in October of the same year he said this to the House:

I remind Members that the European External Action Service is the EU's diplomatic corps. It already has about 20 times the budget of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

So one wonders why the silence now, Carswell?

Update: I've just spotted that Autonomous Mind has just written a piece on a similar theme regarding the silence on the EEAS from Con Coughlin in the Telegraph.

"It Ain't Likely"

Words written by Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph on the prospects of EU renegotiation, an article which reflects on the constant turmoil within the Tory party regarding the issue. The consequence of decades of continuous pretending the EU is something which it isn't...and it's coming home to roost in a big way (my emphasis throughout):

The Foreign Secretary's point, and Mr Cameron's, is the obvious one: the EU is a club with a set of rules that the United Kingdom has signed up to. Indeed, most of the big structural rules, notably the Single European Act, were agreed by Mrs T. If we want to stay in the club we can't reasonably expect to be exempt from the rules we don't like, which is most of them. And that bring us straight to the political problem. Many Tory MPs, and most of those who signed the letter, and certainly those who organised it, don't want to be part of the club.

And:

No 10 even sees the Boris one, as in his column today, as unhelpful, because all it does is build up the prospect of a major renegotiation when everyone knows that in reality, it ain't likely.

And:

The anti-EU ultras are clever [sic], and are holding Dave's feet to the fire. At some point he will have to call them out. That point has got a whole lot closer.

Are those at the Telegraph starting to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee?

Tories Dying On Their Knees?

In the Telegraph today we have Brogan warning that the Tory party is in danger of dying on its knees:

Ministers are becoming more pessimistic, devoting an increasing amount of time – quite naturally – to considering which way they would jump in a post-election leadership contest that grows ever more likely. Even more fearful are those in marginal seats, some of whom have already thrown in the towel and are planning for life after defeat.

It's astute of him to eventually notice I guess given that it has been a process in place since the early '90s. But thankfully we have the paid Daily Telegraph's Deputy Editor to point out the obvious.

The Tories of course have never won an outright election victory since the passing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. That combined with the ERM crisis precipitated a collapse in membership and donations from which they have never recovered. Even under Cameron's leadership membership numbers has officially halved - the true figure strongly rumoured to be below the 100,000 mark.

Brogan is naturally concerned that the Tories will lose the next election. First up is a variation of the theme "we're not getting our message across":

First, he must make the economic case that, in his words, the job is not done. That is why Mr Osborne struck what must be the right note in an interview on Sunday with Andrew Marr, speaking about the need to reduce both taxes and the cost of government. He believed, he said, in “the affordable state”. That message to the country must be coupled, however, with one to his colleagues. He has to convince his own side that he and David Cameron are worth following from now until polling day

The apparent good news on the economy is not leading to optimisim within the Tory party regarding winning in 2015, which Brogan writes with puzzlement:

Given how well things are going relative to expectations less than a year ago, the pessimism I have encountered in recent days is striking. A number of top-half Cabinet ministers tell me they now expect to lose power in 2015. Middle-rankers mutter the same. It is difficult to find Conservatives willing to say privately that they will still be in power after polling day.

Then what follows is frustration articulated in the form of analysis by Brogan of the reasons why; conflicting, incoherent and confused tactics of the Tory party over economic strategy. Thus he supports a return to the core economic strategy when Osborne delivers his Autumn Statement 2013 on Thursday:

The Chancellor’s aides insist that the dirty work of defusing the Labour threat has been done, and that Thursday will represent a clean return to the core Tory strategy. Now he just has to persuade his own side of that.

In other words, Brogan is using, without explicitly saying it, the old standby of; "it's the economy stupid". This was a phrase coined by Clinton campaign during his successful 1992 presidential campaign against sitting president George H. W. Bush. The problem is it's one of those phrases and subsequent election strategies that is often rolled out lazily but doesn't actually always translate into election wins, particularly in this country.

This fallacy is evident in 1992 when Major won the election against the backdrop of one of the worst recessions of the 20th century. Conversley five years later the Tories lost by a humiliating margin, despite much improvement in the economy - Major campaigned on the theme "Britain's booming, don't let Labour ruin it". When Brown was told of the economic legacy the Tories handed over he allegedly retorted; "what do you want me to do? Send them a thank you card?"

In 2005 as far as Labour was concerned:

..."it was the economy, stupid". By standing shoulder to shoulder with Blair, Brown, the chancellor and heir apparent, helped Labour to a third term by highlighting Labour's economic achievements - low unemployment, low interest rates, decent economic growth.

Yet Labour lost 94 seats, a loss of seats attributed largely to Blair taking us to war in Iraq. And then we come to 2010. The Tories were unable to win despite the dire state of the economy, yet it wasn't the economy and the banking crisis that did Brown in, it was the "election that never was".

Thus it's clear to see that there are many other factors in elections, and party's fortunes than the economy but that doesn't stop Brogan taking comfort in resolving the Tories' lack of a coherent message over economic matters to win in 2015.

Not once does he acknowledge other possible reasons for the Tories' collapse such as; cast iron, gay marriage, humiliation by the Chinese, the veto that never was, failed immigration promises, lies on the Norway option, HS2, a three-line whip imposed on his party against an EU referendum only to change his mind and promise one he cannot deliver on, trying to take us to war in Syria, flip-flopping on green policy, VAT on pasties, the electoral disaster that was the PCC elections, escalating fuel bills - the list is endless, not bad for a party that hasn't even served a full five year term yet.

But cocooned in bubble wrap Brogan is either unwilling to acknowledge or unaware of the fundamental problems. Not that Labour is any better either. A more accurate headline would be "Parliament is dying on its knees?

But then I'm only a humble blogger and Brogan is Deputy Editor of the Telegraph so what do I know?