EU power grab

No Prime Minister wants to do battle with the European Union, which is why it has accrued so much power in such a short space of time. When preparing for government, David Cameron was warned by the Civil Service that if he wanted to wrestle powers back from Brussels — as he has promised to do in party conference speeches — then it would absorb at least a year of his time in Downing Street. Since then, his approach has been to spend as little time as he can on the subject, hoping it will not appear on his political radar.

While he may well have no interest in Brussels, but Brussels has all too much interest in Britain. For years, the European Commission has envied the way that financiers from across the Continent gravitate towards London — and are, even now, generating billions in tax revenues to help close the deficit.