"Sleepwalking out of the EU"?

[Pickles]

I haven't read Lawson's original article (refuse to pay Murdoch), but am relying on subsequent reporting of his comments plus his radio interview. Once you scratch the surface, his premise seemed to be entirely based on the effects of EU regulation on the financial services industry (which to me is an extremely parochial viewpoint). Now, my understanding is that this industry, which lost the run of itself and needed bailing out to huge levels, needs some sort of regulation to stop it from doing the same thing again. Is he saying that the UK should get out of the EU so that we can let the City have an advantage over other EU centres ... with the (unquantified and unquantifiable) risk being taken up yet again by the UK taxpayer?

For an economist, he seems to be pretty sure of the values of a couple of unknowables

1) the benefits to the UK from being in the EU

2) the costs to the UK of leaving the EU

If you ask 10 independent economists what the values of those figures are, I'm sure that you'd get at least 11 sets of answers.

[Pickles]

Are the Tories in such a mess that they are reduced to this bit of parliamentary time-wasting?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22518403