So Call Me has managed to negotiate the UK not taking part in the bailout. Apparently his list of demands for participation were long and extraordinary ans essentially could never be agreed to.
The Tobin tax may have been a very bad idea for the City of London
It's doubtful that agreeing to change the Lisbon treaty would have eventually somehow imposed a financial transaction tax on the UK. And if the UK chose not to implement one--just like now--it is rather unlikely that anyone else in the Euro-17 would either. Unfortunately for Chancellor Merkel, her idea only flies if everybody does it, and the incentive to free-ride is quite large and there isn't a world government (and the EC does not have the power to be one). There's a reason why taxes usually fall on relatively immobile payments within a national government's control, and not foreign exchange trades and the like.
Aside from that, the idea that exceptions that suit national interests should happen to EU laws is a poor one. Germany could seek similar protection for its auto makers, France for its champagne growers, Belgium for its chocolatiers, etc. There is little point in an EU if it is overly influenced by national interests, as there is little point in national governments if they are overly hijacked by local interests, or local government routinely captured by individualistic ones.
but I fear that 10% of GDP (the finance industry) has caused Call Me to make a decision which will have a profound impact on the rest of the economy by very much putting us on the back foot in Europe.
The UK has been on a separate trajectory to the Euro-17, and the EMU-hopefuls before then, since approximately forever. The Brown/Ballls decision not to join the euro in 2003 was also fraught with risks that the UK would be consigned to the slow lane, or back foot. But I suspect almost nobody in the UK believes that today.
One does have to wonder if he would have been as quick to use "the veto" if it was on behalf of any other sector of the British economy?
I think the cover story of protecting the financial sector is almost surely a red herring, and that the real reason Cameron cannot do a Lisbon treaty change is that the coalition has pre-committed to a referendum for any fundamental change to the relationship with the EU, and it is pretty hard to argue that a treaty change isn't that. And the referendum would very likely be lost because the UK electorate is generally more euro-sceptic than the average of its politicians.
There is also this rather strange double standards in regards to the "city", that sector is what got us into this mess to begin with so why do we want to remain so dependent upon it. I thought we were going to "rebalance the economy"?
Well it would better to do that by reforming the rest of the economy than by just shrinking finance. But see above about this being a red-herring.
It appears to have been a poor cover of a reason, and it seems clear to me that France and Germany would not accede to same/greater City of London dominance unless the UK had them over a barrel, which it didn't. I would not have thought it was all that great a story for the home audience either since plenty of people think that the city is overpaid and/or "
got us into this mess to begin with"
On this topic - I wonder how many of the countries that have apparently agreed to the centralisation of their finances will still have to get it through their governments?
All of them
I suspect there will be at least a few countries that will require some form of plebiscite before the new treaty will be enacted by their governments.
IIRC none of the Euro-17 have to do that. Possibly Ireland but they would say yes.
