EU: the madness of Brown

I can scarcely think of a better reason for leaving the European Union than a story in today’s Times. It seems that once it was clear that Tony Blair was not going to get the presidential post, Lord Mandelson, the foreign office and, unfortunately, the Conservative Party advised that Britain’s best interests would be served by our getting one of the top economic jobs.

Gordon Brown, to spite the Tories, ‘went for second best’. That is to say that instead of acting in the interests of his country he followed the narrow, bigoted tribalism that is his ‘moral compass’. He was helped in this by Jose Barroso, the former Maoist head of the Commission, who saw clearly that if a non entity got the Foreign Minister portfolio he would be able to control it himself.

Now it seems that Michel Barnier, a Frenchman, will have the job of regulating the financial markets and, guess what? He is not in favour of the ‘Anglo-Saxon model’.

This insane, politically charged horse trading may well turn out to have cost Britain billions as the financial markets move to Switzerland and Singapore to flee misguided regulation. The French will lose nothing because they never rivalled the City of London anyway.

Madness. Utter madness.