I always enjoy reading Daniel Hannan’s* Telegraph blog mainly because I usually agree with him.

Take this short post: Britain should rejoin EFTA [European Free Trade Association]:

“You really can have your cake and eat it. Switzerland managed to strike a deal with the EU which gave it full access [to the] market without pressing it into common political structures. The Swiss export more than twice as much per capita to the EU as the British do. Yet they control their own trade policy, foreign policy, borders, home affairs and employment law. Being outside the EU, they are free to disperse power through cantonalism, referendums and competing tax jurisdictions. Result? They are the wealthiest people in Europe.

“Do we really imagine than 60 million Britons couldn’t negotiate at least as favourable a deal as seven million Swiss? We are, after all, a larger market for EU exporters. We are an existing member state, with commensurate leverage. And, of course, we buy far more from the rest of the EU than we sell to it. It isn’t normal, in any transaction, for the salesman to have the upper hand over the customer.”

The Dutch bank ING calculates that any defaults within the eurozone — which in my opinion are inevitable — will spread deflationary shocks and depression around the world. It also suggests that the one-off effects of eurozone break-up “would dwarf Lehman Brothers collapse”. Isn’t it time we distanced ourselves from this dangerous organization? Whichever way the dice fall, Britain is going to lose trade.

Better at arm’s length than in the thick of it.

* Daniel Hannan is a British Conservative MEP and joint author of The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain.

Update: Read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s brilliant blog post over at the Telegraph tonight. Excerpt:

“In a sense, the Verfassungsericht [German Constitutional Court] has become the defender of democratic freedom and liberties for the whole of the European Union since other national courts are largely craven (Though not Ireland’s supreme court) and since the Hegelian ECJ [European Court of Justice] has demonstrated in a series of key cases that it has no respect whatsoever for human rights and acts a mere enforcer of authoritarian power-grabs by the EU’s executive machinery. As such, the ECJ is a dangerous organization.”

I do hope David Cameron and William Hague are listening to this debate.

John Evans

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Is the eurozone about to collapse?

When the eurozone goes, it will go suddenly. One moment it will be there, and then it will have vanished into the historical annals of catastrophic human vanity projects that disappeared.

Gordon Brown, who claimed to have “saved the world”, was partly instrumental in all this. He it was who transferred the massive private debts of the ailing banks onto the public balance sheet, thereby creating the current crisis: Sovereign Debt.

The world followed the sorcerer’s apprentice into universal contagion. Brown made his claim for glory, now he must bear the approbrium of putting the world’s financial systems at deadly risk.

Europe is the epicentre of the new Armageddon, and the euro currency is its central cause. Britain did well to stay out of it, but, as an EU member, we are still trailing in the wake of this approaching cataclysm, subject to bigoted laws and restrictions from Brussels.

To make matters worse, regulators are depressing the money supply right around the world by their insistence on higher capital ratios in the banking sector.

Moreover, Britain is being contaminated from the Continent in ways that are not being explained to the general population unless they read the FT or the business section of other newspapers, notably, the Telegraph. We are in the eye of a storm, and it’s relatively calm … for the moment.

If Greece, Spain, or Portugal collapse, banks across the European Union will be left holding almost worthless sovereign bonds. It will be the end of the road if trillions of sovereign debt is written off, or “restructured” in the jargon. Major banks and corporations will fail.

Such contagion would leave governments helpless to respond. Theoretically, the IMF would be bust. The US Senate has already made its position clear by 94 votes to 0 — no more American dollars.

Almost the minimum that can happen now is an awesome deflation across Europe and America — already the US money supply is shrinking at an alarming 10% on an annualized basis. A double-dip recession is at the benign end of the spectrum.

The worst case scenario is that a worldwide contagion begins on the European continent. August 1914 will have its 21st-century anniversary in four years. And the grandiose political vanity of Continental politicians will be at the heart of it.

This sunny spring could represent a kind of Edwardian glow before the chancellory lights go out once more across Europe.

David Cameron should use his new leverage to negotiate the UK out of the danger zone and back to full independence.

John Evans

I have not written about politics for a week or so because the smoke of battle had not yet cleared, and the toe-curling necessities of compromise were still underway.

We’re getting a better picture now — some commentators might later regret their bawling out of that bloke called Dave. Far from being a LibLab pact in all but name, the new arrangements have “Conservative” embedded in their core, rather like a stick of Torquay rock.

Daily we’re seeing Tory policy changes implemented, largely below the surface, or at local level, that tell a different story from the prevailing mood of gloom on the Right.

Civil servants are reporting a new atmosphere of courtesy in Government circles, in place of the aggressive “f-ing and blinding”, equipment-hurling chaos of the Labour administration.

On the macro view, the Prime Minister’s strong performance in Berlin yesterday reset the scale on Europe.

David Cameron put aside weasel words and articulated unambiguously what many of us have thought about the EU for decades. No more treaties, no eurozone business conducted under the umbrella of the wider European Union — Britain will veto them at birth.

A notice of intent has been driven into the gap between eurozone and the concept of the EU. This wedge is apposite because, although around half of our exports go to the eurozone, they are sold to people and companies, not to politicians.

The implications of this are profound. If the eurozone wants to turn itself into a country with a new political government to oversee its economic infrastructure, it will have to make treaties of its own. The UK will have none of it, knowing it would be drawn into the net at some point.

This is very shrewd. What Cameron seems to be implying is that Europe must make up its mind about the solidity of the common-currency zone, or break it up so that what’s left is viable.

Britain is now striking out on its own, daring a central core of states to remake its own EU. If that happens, whole chunks could be ripped out of the existing treaties where Britain, Sweden and other possible volunteers are concerned.

It’s almost a new Doctrine that the Prime Minister would do well to define more clearly in the near future. Brussels has dug itself into a hole that could have been avoided. Its blinkered personnel need to be forced into an acceptance of the magnitude of their failure.

The alternative is that the once smug, comfortable-in-its-own-skin euro area could indeed be responsible for a worldwide Great Depression II, as some economists are now warning.

On a local level, the beast of Whitehall is stirring too. Here in Devon, the proposed Unitary authority of Exeter, pushed through at the last moment by outgoing Ministers — with more than a hint of gerrymander about it — has been scrapped, subject to repeal legislation. The impoverishment of the County of Devon has been averted.

Similarly, the absurd emergency fire callcentre in Taunton has been abandoned in favour of retaining the service in Exeter. Localism lives. Well done the Tories.

I’m also satisfied that the abysmal Human Rights Act (read: Human Wrongs Act) will be tamed by subterranean forces if only we have the patience to wait awhile.

As for the muddle of tax cuts/rises disputed by the two parties of Government, they will be massaged into shape in their own good time, I have no doubt.

It could be a lot worse. Gordon Brown and Ed Balls could still be there.

Hope trumps despair. I’m increasingly sanguine that something approximating a minor Panglossian scenario is at least visible on the very far horizon with the correct magnification binoculars.

And the Conservatism is just below the surface.

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There they stood, in the Rose Garden at Number 10 Downing Street. Two smoothy 40-somethings in blue suits, arraigned behind identical lecterns, joshing away like a pair of ITV comedians — the Chuckle Brothers, perhaps.

The era of Dick Clameron has begun.

One can perhaps forgive them their moment of exuberance. It’s not often a chap becomes Prime Minister, even if he was expecting it. Nor a no-hoper, doomed to a life as a political Bedouin, unexpectedly to emerge as Deputy Prime Minister. It was more than a jaw-dropping occasion, it had all the ingredients of a new dawn, did it not?

For those who welcome a kindlier, softer form of Government, stationed firmly on the soggy marshland of the centre ground, it must have been a red letter day. From now on blue means red, or at least orange.

And, yes, there are lots of kindlier, softer things to look forward to, including higher taxes, chummier governance, smiles all round.

Crisis, what crisis? Do you mean our little, local difficulties? Don’t worry your pretty heads about it. The Clameroons are here.

Even Alex Salmond fell for the spell as the circus wafted into Edinburgh yesterday. Don’t be fooled, the phoney honeymoon is about to end.

Next week is a crunch period for the country. The question put will not concern who occupies Downing Street, but who governs Britain?

In Brussels, our secret masters are planning an audacious land-grab of power under the cover of the collapsing eurozone. Having presided over that chaos, they now want to drag us into the mess of their own manufacture.

On Tuesday, the Alternative Investment Directive comes up for final endorsement by senior politicians. It’s already got through committee stage, as participant Daniel Hannan has described in his blog.

It will do untold damage to the City of London, which has over 80% of Europe’s alternative investment businesses. Even the Americans, who are competitors in this trade, are protesting at this bulldozing measure.

Where is the opposing army to defend our shores? While I have every faith in George Osborne and William Hague to put up a fight, somehow Dick Clameron doesn’t instil much confidence.

There follows the EU Commission’s demand that all UK Budgets be submitted to them for approval before they are put to our “sovereign” Parliament. Where are the shouts of opposition? Apart from a few doughty journalists, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in particular, most people are still basking in the rosy glow of sweet togetherness.

Three governing bodies are being set up in Brussels to cement the final bars into our new economic prisonhouse. Welcome to the fascist Europe some of us have been warning of for years.

Make no mistake, these decisions will make Britain a minor protectorate of the illegitimate Brussels regime.

David Cameron must now tear himself away from the embrace of LibDem Euro infatuation and fight as if his life depends on it. Now is the time to take an arms-length position to the colossal burgeoning mess on the Continent and refuse to participate in anything they cook up.

If the Conservative Party can’t handle that, it doesn’t deserve to exist, let alone take office.

John Evans

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How would you fancy living in a country with the following characteristics?:

1. This side of the Atlantic
2. Out of the European Union
3. Out of the United Kingdom
4. The Queen as Head of State
5. No Gordon Brown
6. Low taxes
7. Only a short boat ride away from the UK mainland.

It is, of course, the Isle of Man, and I’m seriously considering moving there.

The Lisbon Treaty is an imposition too far. When an elected government betrays the people who elected it, depriving them of a vote on the most important constitutional decision since 1688, something has to snap.

In the early 1990s I moved to Spain for seven years to get away from the European Union — or the EEC as it was in those days. Although Spain joined around then, the EU presence was minimal, especially in the easygoing south of the country.

I also moved to Australia for two years to escape the cloying influence of Brussels. The old country always draws you back though.

At least the Isle of Man is part of the British Isles and has shared defence and foreign affairs. They should improve with a Tory Government in place.

It will be a huge wrench to leave the West Country, but governance by Brussels diktat is not for me.

I may even write a book about it.

If any reader has experiences of living on the Isle of Man, or indeed still does, I would be delighted to hear your views. Please email: man@syntagmamedia.com.

John Evans