Europe

Most of the other countries in the EU are perfectly content to openly admit that it is a political project, a way of centralising power and decision making. For decades a powerful elite has repeatedly concentrated more and more power in their own hands, remaining untroubled by any sort of democratic defecit.
I am totally in favour of Britain being very in Europe, but the emphasis should be strongly on economic issues before the political ones. Because is the establishment of a genuine single trading market, where all goods and services can be bought and sold freely across all countries that will make peoples' lives better, which is fundamentally what politics at any level should always be about. So it doenst seem a very clever or efficient idea to spend half of the EU budget on farmers who only employ less than five per cent of Europe's workers. Can you imagine the outcry if the British government did the same thing with its spending?
Why does the European parliament have to meet, at vast expense, in Strasbourg and Luxembourg? To keep the French happy of course. Because it is the French, much more than other other nation, who pull the levers in power in Europe.