Making London a truly global financial centre again, with all that would imply for Britain’s place in the world, could quickly become more attractive than the apathy of decline, however proudly sovereign.
British commentators who jumped to condemn his decision as a travesty of democracy failed to understand the country’s constitutional traditions.
If Italy really is to make a radical, momentous break with the Euro, sooner or later, voters should explicitly endorse the move.
Readers will see that it is all plain sailing for the plan reportedly being cooked up by “Tory grandees”.
One day the country’s voters may dig in against the long squeeze imposed on them from northern Europe. But don’t be too sure it will happen yet.
From its range of tailor-made trade deals to its habit of allowing Member States to break the rules, Brussels is more flexible than Barnier’s rhetoric might suggest.
Storming results for the Five Star Movement and the League pose big challenges to the established structure of Italian politics, to the EU, and to the left more generally.
If anything is put to the Commons at all before exit day, it will be a Heads of Agreement plan. The most likely consequence of its rejection would be the re-invention of transition.
Conventional German politics is still paralysed because being German is still almost impossibly difficult, and being European is pretty difficult, too.
That means defending NATO from encroachment by an EU army, and supporting Central and Eastern European countries in staying out of the Euro.
We should prove our commitment to democracy and the individuated nature of nations by promising now to return what Lord Elgin looted.
The German consensus which placed no significant party to the right of the CDU, thus bolstering it as a governing force, is breaking down.
Berlin has a quite different, and far more leisurely, sense of time to London.
Between 1997 and 2005, public sector spending rose from £336 billion to £517 billion a year. But its output has increased little, so its productivity has fallen dramatically.