I’ve always thought that it was something of a cheap shot to refer (too often) to the Maoist past of José Manuel Barroso, the EU’s top bureaucrat. Then again, to read his repellent ‘state of the union’ speech to the EU’s parliament is to be given a glimpse into the mind of a commissar determined to press on with his agenda—ever deeper EU integration—regardless of its cost, regardless of the misery it causes, and regardless of what most people actually want.

And then there’s the language:

[I]t may be necessary to consider further changes to the Treaty. I am also thinking particularly of the constraint of unanimity. The pace of our joint endeavour cannot be dictated by the slowest. And today we have a Union where it is the slowest member that dictates the speed of all the other Member States… A Member State has of course the right not to accept decisions. That is a question, as they say, of national sovereignty. But a Member State does not have the right to block the moves of others, the others also have their national sovereignty and if they want to go further, they should go further.

Doublespeak much?

The speech also included plans for a financial transaction tax. The Financial Times explains:

Under the proposal, trades in bonds and shares would be taxed at 0.1 per cent, while more complex derivatives would face a 0.01 per cent levy. Both parties to a transaction would usually be charged, even for transactions where one was based outside the EU.

A levy of this sort has been pushed by France and Germany for quite a while. It is, of course, only a coincidence that its impact would fall most heavily on the City of London, and it is, of course, only a coincidence that introducing such a tax would require that pesky unanimity that Barroso detests so much (the Brits will oppose it) and it is, of course, a complete irrelevance that, according to at least one scenario prepared by the EU Commission itself, the tax will cost significantly more than it raises.