So here we are again. A peripheral European economy is falling apart, because of its hugely overextended banks. The powers-that-be, being the European Commission’s EMU directorate-general, the European Central Bank, and the German ministry of finance, intervene. This time, rather than letting the government deal with the banks, destroy its credit, and then lend the government money on terms that basically preclude any prospect of recovery – and don’t ask me, ask Deutsche Bank and Edward Hugh about the impact of youth unemployment on long-run productivity – they’ve decided to bill the banks’ depositors under the bail-in directive, and to hit the insured depositors below €100,000 although they didn’t have to, and then anyway impose a structural-adjustment programme of the order of 5.75% of GDP in case the horse sings this time – don’t ask me, ask the IMF. Everyone’s now standing by for Monday and whatever may come.

But isn’t this a bit, you know, 2008? If there was any point to the policy of the European powers-that-be, surely it was that this stuff was meant to be over? Instead, we are landed with a sort of permanent state of emergency. Why isn’t anybody sorry? Why isn’t anybody responsible?

Instead, what do we get from the elite?

Attempts at ideological policing. A cocktail of whataboutery and racist dogwhistle – I’m sorry, Professor Sachs, you’re smart enough and ugly enough to know just what is meant by welfare in current US politics. The British prime minister flat-out lying about what his own pet pro-austerity committee says. And I call it that advisedly. We’ve had Olli Rehn’s spokesman descending into playground bullying. We’ve had British chancellor George Osborne telling himself recovery is but a Friedman unit away. We’ve had that American private-equity guy complaining that French workers work three hours a day, when he put them on short-time working at three hours a day. We’ve had Hans-Werner Sinn suddenly discovering intra-eurozone trade imbalances after all these years. Someone has invented a political party to demand that Germany leaves the Euro because it’s not been austeritarian enough.

Clearly, the powers-that-be are as bankrupt as the Cypriot Bank of Horsemeat, and they must go. Paul Krugman is entirely right that the whole story is foully reminiscent of Iraq. The great flabby mess of elite consensus rolled downhill, not so much William Cobbett’s Thing as 1950s B-movies’ Epic Blob, absorbing every punch that could be thrown at it.

So what’s with the most prominent representative of this feeling in Europe, Beppe Grillo? Well, when he’s not looking after his network of offshore companies, or rather, letting his secretary and wife look after them, at least in name, he’s demanding the elimination of trade unionists – that’s a must read piece, by the way. You’ll need to put up with slightly tiresome left-wing-art-collective stylings and I was quite pleased to identify “that lot who called themselves Luther Blissett because he was black, like” before finding out they are indeed the collective author, but it’s damning. Further, even UKIP manage to make sense in flashes.

And after the usual painful negotiations and baboon threat-displays, the intergovernmental leaders managed to agree a budget that zeroed-out EU investment in broadband infrastructure. Obviously! (I agree I’m talking my book professionally there, but you’ll struggle to find anyone who doesn’t think it will do at least some good.)

Clearly, the old motto can be adapted. Tous les mêmes. Tous pourris. Même moi!

But it’s not as if nothing can be done. We still have the economic policy team at the Commission we had in February, 2010. We still have the same Commission President we had in 2004. Evidently, the European public is entirely satisfied and the same broad strokes of policy from the property-boom years are OK. No. Whoops, I took a crazy pill.

So, if you want new methods you usually need new men. The European Parliament has, to its credit, knocked back the budget. Now, it must stand up to its responsibility and knock back the Commission. Amazingly enough, we still can’t just bin Rehn, it’s all or nothing. But it’s been done before, over issues that were far, far less important in their consequences. This quote is a classic:

“It was becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone who had the slightest sense of responsibility.”

So, we’re still waiting for Cameron’s big speech on Europe, which has grown a Twitter hashtag (#TheSpeech) during its repeated postponements. Curiously, if the prime minister had set out to make the case for the European Union, he couldn’t have done better. As the dithering continues, the polls are shifting steadily towards more support for staying in the EU.

This is in the context of a longer-term swing back. In May, YouGov’s polling found that 51% of those polled would vote to leave. By the end of the year, this was down to 46%, and a week ago, 42%, with a matching increase in the vote to stay in. As the chart above shows, the lines have now crossed over. Even before the cross-over, more people thought that things would be worse outside the EU on the economy, on jobs, on their own personal interest, on the UK’s relationship with the US, and on UK foreign policy in general. Go ahead and hop over to here and get more information on legal advice.

Meanwhile, there’s been something of an elite mobilisation, with the newly deployed psuedo-thinktank the Centre for British Influence rounding up 16 Tory MPs to write to the prime minister (I was surprised they found so many) and managing to place a succession of “pro-European thinks Cameron is wrong” headlines in the papers.

One of the most surprising discoveries of this latest go-round of the Tories’ conflicts on Europe is that UKIP has stopped being a party that is primarily about the EU, in the sense that its voters don’t care about it. In general, British electors rank Europe relatively low among their priorities. For normal people, it tends to be a strong opinion but weakly held. Astonishingly, it turns out that UKIP voters are no different – their polling profile is basically identical to that of Tories. You can to get in contact with the best law firm near you.

This is important and interesting. It shows up that both the Tories and UKIP have a problem. The Tories’ problems are as follows – they’re competing for votes on both flanks, to the centre and to the extreme right (the polling is clear that UKIP wins votes from Tories), and they’re forced by their internal politics to spend time and effort making speeches about Europe and the nature of Britishness, which isn’t a productive activity. UKIP’s problem is more subtle; its leaders are fascinated by the EU. It’s why they do it. But their voters aren’t – only 27% of them rate the EU among their top three issues.

Over time, UKIP has evolved in a libertarian direction. Its leadership basically believe two things: we should get out of the EU, in order to be more neoliberal. The problem here is that libertarianism is very much a minority opinion. Most British people don’t want it or anything like it. Polling of UKIP voters shows they are no different. Instead, they seem to be Tories, but more so. They vote UKIP to register protest against the Tory leadership for compromising with the electorate and the Lib Dems.

For their part, the Tory Eurosceptics are trying to compete with UKIP in Euroscepticism and libertarianism. Therefore, the “Fresh Start” group wants David Cameron to demand three policies: an opt-out from the working time directive, and another from financial services policy. This is apparently meant to be popular. The Fresh Starters say some remarkable things – apparently the EU wants to “shut down financial services” – but it seems unlikely that the British people are desperate to avoid regulating the banks, and it is actually the declared policy of the government that the economy should be rebalanced to rely less on the City. (And they want to stop sending the European Parliament to Strasbourg, but then everybody wants that bar the mayor of Strasbourg.)

But this speaks to an important point. It’s meant to be about sovereignty, no less, and this is all they can think of to do with it?

Another interesting point. Is it really better for the public to believe in “Europe” abstractly by large majorities, and to be convinced that it is basically against their interests on concrete questions of fact, or to be suspicious of the windy speeches and wandering parliaments but to think that it’s probably better than the alternatives on real issues?

Back in December, Anne-Marie Slaughter said she thought an EU-USA trade agreement might happen i 2013, and that the Americans saw the US and Europe pivoting together towards Asia. Art Goldhammer makes the good point that British eurosceptics should look out.

Professional super-Right Tory Peter Oborne catches up, spinning off a statement delivered by the State Department directly. There is no contradiction between the EU and the special relationship.

But there never was. The Americans have repeatedly pressed the UK to engage with the EU. I remember the same story from the Treaty of Nice; all sorts of people promised nightmares, but actual American diplomats and statesmen would repeatedly say that in their view, we ought to be in. Oborne is too partisan to say it, but the 51st state option has never existed. The Americans have never wanted the UK out of the EU. If they did, they’d say it.

It is true that a lot of Tories – Oborne names them – have dreamed that all the problems of leaving the EU would be solved by an appeal to America. The cult of America is part of the Thatcher cult in general. But Thatcher herself was never overawed by the Americans; the 30th anniversary releases on the Falklands War show that she was firm with them to a degree that the French would have considered flinty.

The belief that the Americans really want us out is pathological, relying on any blowhard willing to open the mouth as an alternative to their actual decision makers. The integrated north Atlantic market for bullshit means that internal Tory rows are exported across the sea and reflected back as evidence. As Hopi says, one result is that Thatcher’s Bruges speech would now be considered daringly pro-European.

Finally, Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann:

Mit Merkel habe ich ein gutes persönliches Verhältnis, innerhalb dessen wir inhaltliche Unterschiede haben. Warum ich mir mit David Cameron schwerer tue, vor allem auch im persönlichen Verhältnis und beim Vertrauen, auch wenn die Umgangsformen immer nett sind, liegt darin, weil ich bei ihm das Gefühl habe, dass für ihn besonders gilt, was wir vorher besprochen haben: Er redet im eigenen Land anders als im Europäischen Rat

My translation: “With Merkel, I have a good personal relationship, although we disagree about policy within that relationship. I find David Cameron more difficult, especially in our personal relationship and in terms of confidence [or trust]. Why? Even though his formal manners are always very nice, I have the feeling we discussed earlier but even more than with the others – he doesn’t talk at home like he does in the European Council.”