Odd man out !

The decision to break step with the other twenty-six members of the EU and decline to sign an accord surrendering financial policy to the EU bureaucrats in Brussels brings with it great dangers for the British nation.

There is clear hostility from the leaders of both France and Germany.  Not only is Britain not a country using the Euro, it will now not sit in the inner councils of the EU alliance and it can expect national jealousies to openly act against it.

The main stumbling block was the EU intention to slap a transactions tax on all commercial dealings.  Britain's London is clearly the centre of world finance in the European sphere and Britain feared that such an impost would cause world finance to gravitate to either the US or Asia - where such a tax does not apply.

There is a danger that the EU may seek to break Britain's hold on finance by using it's group market strength to insist that those seeking to trade in Europe establish their presence in a European capital.  In particular, Germany has long had the ambition to make Dusseldorf the financial capital of Europe.

It remains to be seen whether British EU membership - while on a restricted basis because of this decision - will still deliver the benefits of free trade between member countries, or if enmity from France and Germany will reduce it to a pariah state.

From the British point of view, it is still an open question as to whether the Euro is worth saving - and whether the Common Market's dissolution is now inevitable.

The EU was a strange consortium of countries.   Unlike the United Nations, where five nuclear armed nations held the power of veto, no such arrangement existed and a majority vote prevailed.   As a result - the " big " countries -  France, Germany and Britain - were outvoted by the larger number of smaller countries, leading to the disastrous " Common Agricultural Policy "  - CAP - which saw mountains of unsaleable dairy products and lakes of unsold wine churned out by huge numbers of uncompetitive little family farms.

A vast bureaucracy seemed ever growing in Brussels and the " socialist " nature of the EU required expanding levies to be imposed on countries like Britain, causing the rise of Euro-sceptics - and a call for a referendum on continued EU membership in that country.

The past performance of the EU gives no confidence that it has the ability to use greater financial powers wisely.   Britain is taking a huge chance by going alone - but then this new financial arrangement will not come into force until three months into the new year.

In the present circumstances - that seems to be light years away.   All it would take is just one default - and the game would be over !