He said, ‘When Members are debating Bills, there is frequently—almost invariably—no way for them to know whether the legislation emanates from EU law. When I was a member of the Statutory Instruments Committee many years ago, I managed to instigate a system to ensure that legislation emanating from the European Union was denoted by an asterisk to show where it came from. It would be extremely helpful for MPs to have that included in all Bills—for convenience, perhaps it could be in the explanatory notes—because if we are not entitled to legislate’.

How telling! It comes from the EU, so we are not allowed to legislate! Our Parliament is supposed to be sovereign. What is the point of us electing MPs and paying their salaries if they are going to act on behalf of others?

We have a parliament in Brussels which cannot do anything without the authority of the unelected EU Commission and another parliament in Westminster which is also subservient to the unelected EU Commission. The EU is not based on a pooling of our sovereignty; it is all about the abolition of our sovereignty and the destruction of our democracy.

We have been told by our dishonest political class for decades that the point of the EU is that it is for economic benefit but it is, of course, about political union for its own sake – the economic benefit is a Euro Myth, it was the excuse for integration not the reason.

Bill Cash also quoted from another politician in his speech. The quote was from Peter Mandelson, so we know it must be true.

‘I (Bill Cash) have recently quoted Lord Mandelson, who said when he was Trade Commissioner that over-regulation from the European Union amounts to 4% of GDP, and Mr Verheugen has demonstrated that over-regulation costs many billions of pounds. The most recent calculation I have seen is that since 1999 European over-regulation has cost the British economy and British business alone £124 billion’.

What a colossal waste of money and it is, of course, on top of the current and about to increase £6.7 billion annual membership fee we pay. All this money when we still trade at a loss with Europe and at a profit with every other continent in the world.

The argument that we need to be in the EU for economic reasons is absurd and all that EUphiles have to fall back on is their other bit of nonsense about it preventing wars. Their theory is that war cannot break out within a single economic zone. They forget that USA had a civil war despite it being an economically integrated entity; the same thing happened in this country. The absence of major wars in Europe since the Second World War is down to NATO not the EU.

God help us if we had to rely on or Federal masters to defend us, they are not even vaguely on our side at the best of times. One would have to be very optimistic in hoping that they would show the quick decisive action needed in war time. They were the people who took sixteen years to decide what chocolate is.

I imagine that with the enemy at our EU borders, President Rompuy would struggle to live up to the example of Corporal Jones, let alone Churchill.