We are getting mixed messages from European leaders over the Merkozy monopoly. But today we had Montkel, and more backtracking on the Tobin tax. What we want, what we propose, what will happen: three different stories. It seems that Cameron is not the only leader with coalition difficulties. The free democrats in the German government do not want a Tobin tax either. Seems they agree with us that it is a useless jobkiller enriching civil servants (er no, they want to handicap everyone!). It cannot stop at the Eurozone (a pity), it has to encompass the whole EU (which it won't due to the trusty Union Jack veto).
And look who doesn't like Brussels ordering them about, telling them to cut spending or face fines and generally putting elected politicians in their place. Er, Brussels....oh, the irony!
"The commission is today going too far with its measures. Who knows [economic affairs commissioner] Olli Rehn? Who knows where he has come from and what he has done? Nobody. Yet he tells us how we should conduct economic policy. Europe has no democratic legitimacy to do that," Belgian enterprise minister Paul Magnette said in an interview with Flemish newspaper De Morgen.
You signed your powers away. You are now the elected functionary, who just does what the apparatchiks tell you, and as the Commission points out:
"We held a democratic debate on this with the European Parliament and the 27 governments of the EU, including the Belgian government."
They held a debate, it wasn't democratic, but Brussels sprouts concern afetr the horse has bolted. They will get sod all sympathy from me.