Eu

The EU has said it will not renew an arms embargo on Syria which ends this Saturday. That should pave the way for countries wanting to arm the rebels, something both Britain and France have been saying they will consider. It is a tired truism, but nonetheless one still worth restating, that not all the Syrian rebels are jihadists. This is precisely what has motivated Britain and France to explore ways of working with the rebels, although there are currently no plans to supply them with arms. But arming the rebels would be a mistake. It is clear Assad must go and that a future Syrian state will need to be recalibrated in his absence, but the fissiparous nature of the ongoing conflict makes it impossible to arm even trusted rebel groups.

This morning two European Commission technocrats and a spokesman held an off-the-record press briefing to explain the EU’s economic ‘governance.’ (Governance is the word eurocrats use instead of the more precise word ‘government’, because that word panics the Anglo-Saxons.) They gave it an hour. That’s called optimism, but an hour is about the maximum level anyone in the press corps is going to give on this one, so an hour it was. Why an explanation had to be off the record I have no idea, but, okay, my lips are zipped.

Parliament is a "brothel". The state is an enterprise of "thieves" engaged in a conspiracy against "the good little people" and the "humble housewife". Time, then, for a party that will stand up for "the little man, the downtrodden, the trashed, the ripped off, the humiliated". Not, as you might suspect, the most recent UKIP manifesto but, rather, the sentiments expressed by Pierre Poujade during the run-in to the 1954 elections to the French National Assembly. Poujade's party, the Union to Defend Shopkeepers and Artisans,  shocked France's political elite by winning 2.5 million votes and sending 55 deputies to Paris.

Ben Goldsmith, Partner at WHEB Partners and signatory to Business for Britain In the private sector, every business must provide regular and accurate accounts. Yet when you try to look into the European Union’s income and expenditure there is just obscurity, masking a black hole of inefficiency and waste. The EU’s finances are a mess - the Court of Auditors has refused to sign off the EU’s accounts for eighteen years successively. The costs of EU membership to the UK are high – around £8.9 billion in 2010/11, with the threat of increases to come.

Lord Lawson’s announcement that he intends to vote for Britain to leave the European Union has been interpreted by some as reinforcing demands that David Cameron holds his referendum this year or next, rather than 2017. But it does no such thing. Follow Lawson’s arguments and the logical conclusion is that the best chance of securing a British exit from the EU is for a vote to be held as planned, in four years’ time. As the Prime Minister has said in a letter to MPs, he is powerless to bring in a vote while in coalition because the Liberal Democrats are so vehemently against it. Nick Clegg’s commitment to the Euro project is such that he would not allow it to be threatened by giving the public a say.

I’ve just come from a briefing with a European Union official. He was asked whether Lord Lawson’s call for Britain to leave the EU was a ‘dinosaur argument.’ In response, the official paused. He smiled in an indulgent way. He tilted his head: ‘Mrs Thatcher’s finance minister, who is the father of such a good cookbook author – .’ Another pause, another smile, a gaze at the ceiling for a moment, then: ‘Of course it’s not a dinosaur argument, because it very much reflects debates in certain segments of British politics and as such is something we are constantly confronted with.’ Another pause. Perhaps that word ‘confronted’ was a bit too direct for a fonctionnaire.

One of the inevitable consequences of Lord Lawson's announcement that he'd vote 'No' in an EU referendum is that the ideological divides over Europe in the Tory party are starting to open up again. This lunchtime, two Conservative MPs debated one another on the issue, which must be confusing for the electorate, and also shows that it will be very difficult for any Tory leader to unite the party on the issue, even once the referendum has taken place. Margot James, a member of the new Number 10 policy board who also speaks for the pro-European Mainstream Conservatives on trade and investment, sparred with Bernard Jenkin, who isn't just a eurosceptic: he's a eurosceptic who wants a referendum now, rather than a few years' time, and who wants to leave the EU.