And it goes to the significant, but subtle, difference between a single market and a free trade area.

I support the former.

Firstly, on subsidies. These are, in my view, a de facto barrier to free trade. My support for full market competition goes well beyond abolition of tariffs. There are zillions of ways nation states can act as protectionists without resorting to formal tariffs (e.g banning British beef in France on erroneous health and saefty grounds). I want a stronger (international) legal regime preventing the French from behaving in this extreme anti-market way. I think you want to leave the whole matter to the nationally sovereign French state.

Secondly, there is little EU-wide support for a “free trade nation state” model. There is some. But not much. This has tactical implications.

Finally, the sovereign nation-state view of the world is an anachromism in practical terms. The flow of goods, labour and a ton of other stuff makes it an almost mystical view that we can abscribe “sovereignty” to the nations on European map. I think the most “nationally sovereign” country on the planet is probably North Korea. It’s not a model I’m keen to follow. Without extreme statist mechanisms such as exchange controls, the behaviour of the ECB - inter alia - will have a direct and unavoidbale impact on the UK. In a global village, legal national sovereignty risks being a nicety rather than a reality.

Politicians and bureaucrats like complexity because it justifies their existance.

But the changign landscape makes the EEA option considerably less credible. The single market changes all that.

Very often, the debate about the EU in Britain seems to gloss over the significant differences between a free trade area and a single market. The latter is much,much more intensive.

The truth is that a country wanting a free trade arrangement with the single market would de facto be bound by single market rules and regulations without having a say in them.

But as regards strategy, all but the most irrational UKIP supporters must surely see their chief purpose as being to pressure the Conservatives more into their line of thinking on the EU. Yet UKIP’s intransigence in demanding nothing less than a highly radical policy of withdrawal has resulted in the Conservative party now ignoring them. On the grounds that nothing presentable at a general election will placate them. With Cameron becoming leader came a new strategy of going after middle-ground ‘New’ Labour and Lib Dem votes instead.

What represents a looming disaster for UKIP are indications that Cameron’s strategy seems to be working. The culmination will be the next general election. For if, as looks likely, Cameron’s strategy gets him elected to Downing Street despite Farage’s best efforts to continue to hold the party to ransom over withdrawal, UKIP’s leverage and core purpose will be utterly shattered.

Without being able to achieve power themselves, and with no-one who has power having any reason to listen to them, what will be the point of UKIP? Merely to cash in yet achieve nothing of substance in the European Parliament?

When Cameron became Tory leader, the political landscape changed. Since then, UKIP - by ploughing the same lame old intransigent furrow - have been cruising towards Westminster irrelevance. There’s only months left now for them to come up with a radical new game plan that preserves their relevance in the first term of a Tory government.

PS. Forgot to mention the Liberal party. Doh! Despite being seen by many to have come out better from the MPs’ expenses scandal than the other main parties, the recent election results show that they’re going nowhere all by themselves.