Already past its sell-by date?

The big news of the last couple of days in Britain was that Lord Lawson, the man who as Chancellor of the Exchequer insisted on shadowing the DM thus taking Britain towards the disastrous ERM and the Conservative Party towards a number of disastrous decisions, has had a Damascene conversion. Not only is he now against the single currency, he now thinks Britain would be considerably better off outside the EU.

We then had a great deal of entertainment as we always do when the Deputy Prime Minister (how did that come about?) enters into the fray. Nick Clegg produced the usual canard about 3 million jobs depending on our membership of the EU. (It is true, that some jobs do depend on that, in particular the sort of jobs Mr Clegg had before his meteoric rise in the Lib-Dim party.)

Lord Lawson made short shrift of that. Nick Clegg, he said accurately enough, talks "poppycock". Robert Peston has been stirred into looking at both sides of the question from the point of view of business and admitting that

maybe Lord Lawson can be seen as kicking off an important debate, which is whether the UK will find it easier to start paying its way in the world on the inside - or the outside - of the EU.

As it happens, the debate has been going on for some time and very vociferously, too, but one cannot expect important hacks to notice that. If Lord Lawson's statement made the BBC notice the debate, that is all to the good.

However, nobody is asking the obvious question: has this development pushed Business for Britain with its plan to "renegotiate our terms of membership" past its sell-by date already?

Business for Britain

I first heard about plans to set up this organization a couple of weeks ago. It will be, if all goes according to plan, the first of three: one for business, one for general campaigning and one for turning the Labour Party towards supporting a referendum. Or so I understood at the time. I also understood that the plan was to have a business organization that would try to persuade the various businesses, large and small, but mostly large as that is where the money is, to start thinking about withdrawing and then negotiating new links.

Clearly, I misunderstood or was given the wrong information. The new organization, Business for Britain, turns out to be same old, same old.

Hundreds of business leaders have formed a new lobby group Business for Britain to press the government to renegotiate the UK's deal with the EU.

Well, that should be quite easy. Just call up the Porcine Air Force and they will sort it for you. The Boss on EURef has covered the story in somewhat more pungent terms. I may not go as far as he does (I rarely do) but I would like to ask a question: given that renegotiation of terms is, so far as we know, still the Conservative Party's policy, what is the point of having a lobbying group to push it?