SOME may be beguiled by David Cameron’s ‘acolyte’ Mark Harper and his assurance that ‘it is only the Conservatives that have a credible plan to reshape Britain’s relationship with the EU’ but those of us with a firmer grasp of realpolitik (rather than a party political point to make) will understand why, when the EU is wrestling with a failing single currency and now with the greatest immigration crisis since the Second World War, the Prime Minister’s work on his EU renegotiation will be viewed by Eurocrats as incidental to the scheme of things – as little more than his ‘dance of the seven veils’ round Europe’s chancelleries.

Where Mark Harper is wrong is in wanting, like his ‘high priest’ David Cameron, ‘a relationship between Britain and the EU that keeps us in it’.

It’s obvious to anyone but the purblind that the EU will now forge ahead with greater integration in the eurozone – where we cannot follow – which leaves us with only ‘associate membership’ on offer, a second-class relationship that successive Prime Ministers since the War have rejected for a country of Britain’s standing in the world.

The only way we can honestly ‘reshape Britain’s relationship with the EU’ is to leave the EU to its greater integration and, using the Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50, give notice of our intention to leave.

Since such notice only takes effect after we have negotiated a new deal there is no break in our relationship (just a transition from one to another).

We remain in the Single Market in the short term and so avoid the disruption and job loss to the British economy that so many Europhiles bleat about.

And now, when a Tory government commits to a white elephant like the £24 billion nuclear power station at Hinckley Point, when our Upper House is stuffed with party political donors and the Lower House bereft of credible Opposition leadership, when the SNP is chomping at the bit and when stories of a chillaxed David Cameron tend to remind us of ‘Nero fiddling’, is it any surprise that British politics seem so surreal?

But now I see my shadow lengthening on a brown field site. O death where is thy sting?

– John Muir, Newnham.