eurealist.co.uk

Mark Steyn in the Telegraph notes that Peter Mandelson is admitting the Common Market has been a failure. He points out that when Mandelson says “Europe is faced with a fundamental choice. One way, we sink into economic decline, losing the means to pay for our preferred way of life. The other way, we press ahead with painful economic reforms that can make us competitive once again in world markets.”

The big concession was so slyly done you may have missed it: the European Trade Commissioner is acknowledging that the one thing even Eurosceptics were in favour of - a “common market” - has been a failure.

But Steyn asks “Is it likely that “Europe” will muster the will for “painful economic reforms”? It was always a political project masquerading as an economic one, and thus the ruling class’s investment in it is more primal and less rational.

So the question is from the point of view of “the great permanent Eurocracy” can the Common market be described as a failure, as it was never intended to be an effective trading block, but rather a means to an end, of a united Europe. So paraphrase Steyn whatever the failure of common market means, it certainly doesn’t mean the failure of the common market.