The charade of horrified defiance of the EU which the Tories displayed this week takes some beating. Under the pretence of demanding that the EU super-state already has too much power and must be drastically cut back, George Osborne calmly welcomed without demur a few days earlier the biggest intrusion into the British economy at the hands of the EU that we have seen for decades, namely a massive carving-up of two of the biggest UK banks as the price for the second round of gigantic bail-outs. Not a peep came from the Tory front bench. Hannam, the Tory Eurosceptic MEP who resigned from their front bench rather than accept Cameron’s lame figleafs for dropping his ‘cast-iron’ guarantee of a referendum and who then announced a crusade to restore self-government for Britain, didn’t even mention it. What did however stick in the Tory craw was the charter of fundamental rights (which the other 26 EU States, most of them with right-wing governments, have taken on board without complaint) and the social and employment legislation enshrined in the EU Social Chapter. That says it all.

The Tories have no objection to the EU so long as it meets their neo-liberal market fundamentalist instincts. Britain already has what amounts to an opt-out from the migration, home affairs and justice elements of the Lisbon Treaty, and the only target of their wrath are the very modest provisions that ensure minimalist protections for workers in terms of parental leave, part-time work, temporary or agency work, holiday time, and a balanced family life. The Tories are entirely happy to support the further EU pressure we are now witnessing to de-regulate and privatise increasing chunks of the health, energy and transport sectors. What however they will go to the stake over is blocking any demarche from Brussels which might seek to ameliorate the grotesque inequalities of income, wealth and power which now so deeply disfigure the neo-liberal capitalist State which is the core of their ideology.
It can be expected that the hypocrisy of their call for freedom from the EU – untrammelled freedom of action for themselves and other power-holders at the same time as suppressing even the most basic rights for those they see as the modern serfs – will figure strongly in the upcoming election. The EU played a big part in bringing down the Tories in the 1990s. With Christian Democrat disgust, led by Angela Merkel, at the Tory antics now widespread across Europe, the signs are there that it may well do so again.

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