reply: it does! Read the post again. It was a statement of official Conservative policy for heaven's sake.

As an engineer I have always thought of economics as something of a pseudo-science, one part being stating the b** obvious, the other part so nebulous as to be meaningless. Indeed, because my compulsory course in economics was one lecture a week at 9 am, too early for me, I slept through most of it but gained a good pass on the basis of one day's reading of the coursework on a sunny day, the day before the examination. However, the basic principles are these:

Even if the exchange rates at which currencies of different areas are combined are notionally correct at the start, over time "asymetric shocks" such as the discovery of natural resources, inflationary pressures greater in one area than another, changes in world demand for products from each eara – eg high tech v old tech, will inevitably mean that over time the rates at which were originally set will inevitably become wrong for some countries – eg Italy is now 30% overvalued due to inflation having been allowed to let rip, compared to Germany where it has been controlled.

Friedman et al pointed out that there are only 3 ways for the resuatant stresses to be absorbed

1/ Mass migration from the failing areas to the successful areas

2/ High taxes on successful areas to subsidise unemployment in the failing areas

3/ Changing the exchange rates between these areas to even up competitiveness – but that of course is not allowed within the euro.

We have seen the first two work in practice over generations, as in Britain where the South in general subsidises the North while Northeners move South, and the opposite in Italy and East to West in the USA when the virtual collapse of the "Rust Belt" of the old industries in the North East led to mass migration to prosperous California etc.

Friedman's point of course is that the ties that bind Britons together, Italians together, Germans together and Americans together. including language, "culture", newspapers, politics, TV programmes, simply do not exist across the EU and that there is no prospect whatever of (for example) Germans working harder and harder and paying more and more tax to subsidise uncompetitive and therefore unemployed Italians and Spanish to lie back and enjoy the sunshine.

As I recall, a particular example quoted went something like "does anyone seriously expect an unemployed Sicilian peasant to move to Bradford to find work? In reality the majority will simply stay where they are, for reasons of language, climate, culture, etc, and riot when the system implodes.

This seemed to me to be an entirely reasonable and logical analysis when I read it back in the 1990s, and although the euro has lasted rather longer than I then expected, the trend in that direction is surely undeniable, with ever more frequent predictions that the euro if bound to break apart. But if it does not, then sooner or later the violence that Friedman predicted will be inevitable.

It may well be in any case that the break-up of the EU will come about precisely because "the current structure and centralising tendencies" are unstable. Just one example – the euro always was a stupid idea, before the EU became a single State, and the current economic pressures, not just here but world-wide may well cause the euro to break apart. The problem if it does is that the EU dare not allow it to happen, and will apply even more centralising pressures including forcing EU member states not currently in the eurozone to join, so that other countries would see the euro no longer as an orphan currency but like all others, backed by a single State and therefore immune to break-up. Incidentlally, Torquil Dick-Erikson, who first exposed Corpus Juris in 1997, made precisely that prediction about the euro to a small number of us in 1998, warning that the EU would see it as "a beneficial crisis" that would allow it to declare a state of emergency and do anything it wished.

In predicting that the result might well be violence, I do not rule out the many other perhaps peaceful outcomes, no one knows, I warn only that violence – including HMG calling in the European Gendarmerie Force to restore order, as Mr. Miliband pointedly refused to rule out in a Commons reply to Bob Spink MP, is one of the possible consequences.

If it were not, why is the EU busily building the EGF? Have a look at its boastful web site, showing clearly that THEY are preparing for violence, and note a EU resolution recently that the hithertoo "nothing to do with the EU, just a few countries acting together" status is shortly to change to make the EGF officially a EU organisation. I don't know if they frighten you but by God they frighten me!

Reply: No-one sensibly wishes a war on us. I do not think the tensions within the EU will come to war between members. Nor do I think the current structure and centralising tendencies are stable.

But whether the nominal basis of any such referendum, it will inevitably be fought on an In/Out basis, because that is the only basis on which the Federalists can hope to win. They would use every tactic and every threat known to man – "alone", "bobbing like a cork on the Atlantic", "3.5m jobs"and all the rest of it, to threaten voters that rejecting Lisbon will mean being thrown out, and that this would be a catastrophe.

That is why our side has to be prepared (as indeed many sections are) to argue the opposite – Better Off Out, with all the facts and figures, because unless we do that effectively we might still lose, due to fear of the unknown.

And that is why all talk about compromise, reneogotiation etc is so dangerous, because it gives the impression that if we vote not to leave but to stay in, we would then be able to
achieve a satisfactory position from within. As before, this is simply not credible and the reality is that ie Lisbon is fully ratified, all the debate in the world will thereafter be a waste of time, and only violent revolt will recover our freedom.

That surely is a point for Cameron and Hague to bear in mind if Lisbon has been ratified by all 27 countries by the time they take office (as they onevitably will, in June 2010 and not before) It really will be no good at all for a Parliament which under our constitution may not bind its successor to tell us that "it's too late, it's a done deal, it cannot be undone." Of course it can be undone, especially if the alternative to undoing it by
long established constitutionsl means is undoing it with shot and shell.

That Lisbon again seeks to imose Citizenship, but seriously this time, can only mean that it intends to be a Srate, as confirmed by its new legal identify and treaty-making powers.

I have spent thousands of hours, travelled thousands of miles, spent thousands of pounds and stored gigabytes of information about the EU since I first realised at the time of Maastricht that they intended to make working long hours a criminal offence and are therefore, by definition, both clinically insane and doomed to economic and therefore political collapse.

The error common to all comments here, including John Redwood's (though I understand the pressures that apply to him but not to most of us) is to assume that we can negotiate sensibly to achieve something totally different from what the EU has been planning for more than 60 years. Who do you think you are kidding? Do you SERIOUSLY imagine that, as they are about to slam the last gate of the totalitarian EU cage, these people, with effectively unlimited amounts of taxpayers' cash but no scruples whatever, are going to resond to our polite requests for different sort of EU involving just trade but not politics, by saying, "Oh all right then, let's not bother!"?

There is ONLY ONE SOLUTION – and from what I read here, whether open and above board or veiled or hinted at, is that everyone has had enough, more than enough, and WANTS OUT. I do not believe that anyone here seriously believes that renegotiation as advocated by Global Britain is a serious option, and certainly not without the explicit threat that unless we get it (ie a trade only deal) we will leave.

The good news is that the tide of anti-EU opinion, which I have been watching and listening to for 16 years, is swelling by the day and is now unstoppable. There could never be any possibility of the Lisbon Treaty being approved in a national referendum if (and its a big IF) Cameron keeps his word. Incidentaly, his claim that he could not do so once it had been ratified by all 27 countries is nonsense – that is precisely what Wilson did in 1975 over abrogating the 1972 ECA. Once Lisbon had been rejected its a whole new ball game, and whether we get kicked out or leave makes no odds.

From innumerable conversations I have had for years with thousands of people I meet casually, in the street, in shops, at cash desks etc, anti-EU views are at least 95%, and the few who are in favour turn out to know nothing whatever about it. The tide will continue to flow towards the exit as more and more people read and hear about what the EU really is and really means for them. But any honest referendum now would see us out on a flood tide.

Pity we cannot rely on the Conservatives to put it to the test. Maybe a massive vote on June 4th 2009 for UKIP will make them see sense.

How different things would be by now had John Redwood gained in 1995 that handful of extra votes that, as Major later admitted, would have forced him to resign. As things are, we face the imminent prospect of Britain ceasing to be a sovereign country and appearing on maps of the world instead as 11 regions of a State called Europe. I refuse to believe that this is what the British people want, and I believe that we will reject it, if not soon by peaceful means, then later by inevitably violent means when none other remain.

It was I believe as long ago as the early 1980s that a Conservative MP replied to a constituent who had complained about the EU take-over that "These matters will not be resolved here in Parliament, but on the streets." I fear that he will be proved right.

Reply: The aim must be to get a referendum to prove the strength of feeling against political union to the federalist majority people keep electing to the Commons.

Closing down regional assemblies would be a real step, a strong sign to those who are worried about europe and yet they are still off the radar of many anglophobes, so minimum political backlash.