Britain has left the European Union in all but name … To all intents and purposes, the UK is already out. We stayed still. Europe galloped away without us. No doubt we can find some elegant formula to paper over the split. As my friend Daniel Hannan puts it, we could devise a Swiss arrangement while pretending that we are still EU members. No point frightening the horses. For those readers who missed it, the UK is preparing to pull out of almost all areas of "Justice and Home Affairs", the so-called Pillar III of EU jurisdiction. (Pillar I is the single market, and Pillar II is foreign affairs) – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: The EU … forever!

Free-Market Analysis: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard partially redeems himself with this article. After going through a bad patch when he loosed his inner Keynesian and inflicted it on innocent readers, he provides us with a fairly crisp perspective on the reality of Britain's stance versus the EU.

It is encouraging for anyone who believes as we do that the EU is an increasingly authoritarian enterprise that is part of a larger strategy to realize world government and has little or nothing to do with "free trade" at this point, if it ever did.

Our position has been that what we call the Internet Reformation has made it more difficult for the power elite to retain and expand its dominant social themes. Global warming, Peak Oil and even central banking itself are under attack. But were the EU to break up, this would have to be seen as a further blow to the elitists who endlessly seek centralization. Here's some more from the article:

This is revolutionary. We are withdrawing from 130 directives, covering everything from the European Arrest Warrant, the European Public Prosecutor, to the European justice department (Eurojust). Luckily, Tony Blair negotiated the right to a mass opt-out on this Pillar III corpus to be exercised before it all becomes justiciable at the European Court (ECJ) in 2014, a move that would transform the ECJ into Britain's supreme court. (The same ECJ that rubber-stamped the rights violations of Connolly, Andreasen and Tillack, and against which there is no further appeal.)

We did so on the grounds that the UK's Common Law foundation requires special treatment, but nobody really thought at the time that we would use the opt-out. It was a sop to placate people like us at The Daily Telegraph until the Lisbon storm had passed … The withdrawal from the insidious arrest warrant gives me particular pleasure. I covered the legislation as it rolled through the Brussels and Strasbourg machine years ago.

We were told categorically that it was to cover terrorist offences only. Then it became "terrorist-related". Then serious crimes. Then the final draft appeared and it included such issues as xenophobia, a term that other parts of the EU machinery had extended to include euroscepticism. Finally, we discover that it is being used to arrest people who fail to pay parking tickets. Any political magistrate can have you extradited for anything without having to put up evidence. Free speech is not safe, as the criminal witchhunt against the rating agencies in Italy shows all too clearly.

This explanation of how modern bureaucracies are constantly expanding their authoritarian briefs rings true to us. We've seen it in the US as well. Initially, Homeland Security was involved in searching bags. Now it is involved in high-tech scanning and body searches. It is also expanding to mass transit and even stadium sports.

Every part of 21st century governance seems focused on expanding the role of the state. At the same time, as people educate themselves (thanks to the 'Net), the efforts of the powers-that-be to advance world government are running into stiff headwinds.

The EU is perhaps one of the most prized of elite gambits. It was always intended to be a full union not a trade union and thus the project has been cultivated patiently for over five decades.

But the 'Net has exposed both the ruthless calculations behind the EU and the corrupt practices surrounding it. At this point, the EU's impact seems far more negative than positive.

Any failure regarding the EU weakens the inevitability that is the strongest part of its implementation. This is why the Eurocrats fight so hard to hold onto every part of the EU and the euro. Even Greece will not be loosed without a stiff fight. But it looks as if Britain is continually extricating itself from the EU even though a long-sought vote on the nation's involvement has never materialized.

Evans-Pritchard writes, "A whole superstate structure is coming into being. It cannot be democratic because there is no European political nation or shared political language, and all attempts to mimic the vibrant democracies of the ancient states have failed. The European Parliament has its charms but it is not a body that can hold a powerful executive to account."

This authoritarian enterprise will be greatly weakened by Britain's lack of participation. What makes it even more noteworthy is that the banking elites that evidently and obviously run Britain have seemingly lost control of the process. We don't think for a minute that Britain separating from the EU is a desirable outcome.

The power elite utilizes a dialectical strategy so no doubt Britain's separation from the EU – such as it is –

will itself be utilized to create a stronger and stickier EU rump. Order out of chaos, etc.

But when one looks at the struggles of the Southern PIGS and the building antipathy to these sorts of enterprises it seems clear that the larger project itself is in distress. Good. Perhaps it will all turn back into a free trade zone of sorts when the rest proves unworkable. That is certainly a desired outcome from Evans-Pritchard's perspective. He writes:

Of course, we don't to want lose the EU single market – Margaret Thatcher's bittersweet triumph, 20 years old this month – and Europe does not want to lose our market. We will have to work it out. Relations are likely to be stormy for the next few years.

Yet once the boil is lanced, we may find that our relations with Europe improve dramatically. The moment that the EU no longer threatens our laws, our parliament, our democracy, and our way of life – that is to say, the moment we take the stone out of our shoe – almost all hostility will drain away.

Even this would not be optimal. Leaving portions of the EU to linger is akin to not completely excising a cancer. There is always the possibility the poison will return. And yet … to read forecasts of the demise of such a body is encouraging indeed …