You no doubt are wondering what has been happening to my articles for DIPLOMAT.

The answer is that their website has been having some issues, so I am behind at linking to them.

But here is my latest, a timely little number on Intelligent Euroscepticism:

Broadly speaking, the idea of ‘Euroscepticism’ boils down to the proposition that we can reasonably expect to capture the key benefits ascribed to the EU (peace and prosperity) without having anything like the intricate (and, some say, oppressive) institutional and legal superstructure that comes with it.

Different camps of Eurosceptics exist. Under one taxonomy, ‘hard’ Eurosceptics oppose the very idea of the European Union in its current form. By contrast ‘soft’ Eurosceptics accept (perhaps reluctantly) the general framework, but insist on less EU-level decision-making in favour of a much greater role for member states.

People are Eurosceptic for many different reasons. As a matter of principle they may dislike the way national sovereignty and democracy are qualified by law-making powers at the EU level. They may accept the theory but argue that in practice it goes too far, leading to a weird new ‘post-democratic’ polity in which substantive democratic control of policy-making seeps away into unaccountable Brussels processes. They may say that whatever the blandishments of ‘ever-closer union’, EU policies and structures necessarily create dangerous problems (such as the accumulating financial – and moral – contradictions in trying to keep the eurozone afloat).

… Many UK and other diplomats comprise another category of Eurosceptics: people who work with or within EU structures and are appalled at the waste and dysfunctionality they find. What normal person emerging from the Schuman Metro station in the heart of Euro-Brussels stands unmoved on beholding the Commission building shrouded by the latest gigantically expensive banner proclaiming European glory, such as the European Year of Volunteering (2011), the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity Between Generations (2012), and (incoming in 2014) the European Year of The Brain.

This bombastic yet insecure propaganda is reminiscent of Ceausescu’s communist Romania. It exists only because a tiny, invisible and unaccountable plump elite of Europeans have managed to organise colossal sums of public money to spend on their pet projects. Meanwhile down in Greece that same elite demands ruthless public spending cuts, to the point of driving some people to suicide. Something really is not right here.

Conclusion?

Back to Herman Van Rompuy: ‘In every member state, there are people who believe their country can survive alone in the globalised world (sic). It is more than an illusion: it is a lie.’

Sorry, but that’s a lie too. There are 193 UN member states and 166 of them survive ‘alone’ without too much trouble. The UK is a powerful force in the world economy and would survive outside the EU. It might well be poorer in some important respects, but it would regain its own independent voice in world trade and many other fora and have all sorts of new policy options.

Which is better? To be a fat serf or a skinny freeman? To be Illinois? Or Canada? Or best of all, to avoid for a few more years the ghastly decision?

What’s happening is that those years are fast running out, not only for the UK…