Wrapped up in a Union Jack

On Wednesday, David Cameron received a bit of a beasting at the hands of a group of rebel Tory MPs.
Our Dave is scheduled to attend an EU budget conference in the not-too-distant future. The stance he had leaked in advance of the upcoming  budget negotiations was that he intended to be tough but proactive;  demanding any rise in the budget be restricted to a real terms increase, and promising to exercise the UK's veto if the Eurocrats insisted on sticking to their proposed six or seven per cent increase.
Making common cause with the Labour Opposition, the Tory rebels, on the other hand, insisted that the only change to the EU budget should be in a downward direction.  Not unreasonably, they opined that the Eurocrats should endure the same pain and austerity that most of Europe has been living through for the last couple of years.
Much to the horror of the Government, the rebels and their cohorts won the day. The reaction of the Parliamentary Press corps tells you much about what is wrong with this country and its politics;and more particularly the traditionally supine attitude our political elites adopt in any negotiations with Europe.
Far from hailing the no vote as a triumph for Parliamentary democracy, they almost universally characterised it as a defeat for the Prime Minister. Instead of celebrating the supremacy of Parliament, they wrung their collective, little hands, with worry at the reaction of Frau Merkel and her cohorts and placemen. Apparently, they were correct. Our beloved Fuhrerin has let it be known that she is deeply unhappy at the prospect of any veto - parliamentary democracy notwithstanding - and will not look kindly on our Dave if any more vetoes are thrown into the ring. You can almost hear the scrabbling sound as our leader and his advisors attempt to retain the moral high ground bestowed by the Parliamentary vote, even as they rapidly retreat to the familiar territory of fudge and compromise. 
There they will be greeted with open arms by Nick Clegg. Sensing that the national mood has swung emphatically against the EU, but not quite able yet to admit just how deeply the loathing has penetrated the national psyche, Clegg has described the move to renegotiate our position and reclaim powers from the EU as "a false promise wrapped in a Union Jack". 
In Clegg's worldview, we are safe only as long as we cling to Frau Merkel's apron strings.  If we insist on reclaiming important elements of our sovereignty, we could face the ultimate sanction; expulsion from the European Union.  
For Clegg, and indeed for most Europhiles, Great Britain is a small, slightly worn and grubby island anchored off the west coast of Europe whose only chance of future prosperity and influence comes from remaining part of Greater Europe. Our departure from the EU would be the first step onto the national equivalent of the Liverpool Care Pathway. Starved of the nourishment provided by the communal teat we would eventually wither on the vine and simply  fade away.  In the scenario most frequently used to frighten the children, we would be banned from trade agreements, ignored by the great supranational companies that drive world trade and our people, goods and services would be ostracised and ignored. 
Naturally, companies like VAG, Ford, BASF  would be only  too happy to obey Merkel, Baroso or whoever and withdraw from one of the world's major developed markets, one that represents billions of dollars in  revenue to them. Equally, the rest of the world would also sit on its hands. No American, Canadian, Australian, South African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Russian or Brazilian would rush to fill the void and their corporate pockets should such an unlikely scenario be played out. Members of the Commonwealth, which with 54 countries and 2 billion inhabitants, is getting on for three times the size of the EU, would also be bound to ignore what is still the mother country for most of them. That, by the way, is the same Commonwealth with a current growth rate of around 7% GDP annually compared with the EU's less than stellar zero per cent.
So, if Frau Merkel and the rest decide that they really don't want us to contribute billions to their club any more, we can happily go our own way knowing that we have a ready-made market waiting for us. A market whose citizens, for the most part, speak our language, whose legal and administrative systems are a mirror of our own and whose undoubted good will is confirmed by their electing to join and remain within the Commonwealth sixty years after we first began the process of dismantling the old British Empire.