The Economist - fine verbose but just wrong

I rank the Economist as one of the finest newspapers out there, I tend to nick my parents' copy whenever I am at home and subsequently get a mouthful for not "sharing" (if you are not quick enough, then that is your own fault) it with the rest of the family. Well, tough love I suppose. This week, the Economist has done a lot of pieces on the Tories and their supposedly eurosceptic stance. You know as well as I do that there is nothing conservative or eurosceptic about the current Conservative party, but lets role with the myth and see what the Economist has to say on the subject.

In this piece aptly named "David Cameron's splendid isolation" they have it in the last paragraph that (my emphasis)

Sooner or later, though, Mr Cameron has some home truths to tell his own backbenchers. These surely include the fact that on many issues Euroscepticism has won. After the damp squib of Lisbon, further big treaties look unlikely. Thanks to a changed intellectual climate, to enlargement that took in ten largely free-market countries from central and eastern Europe, and not least to Britain’s own influence, the EU has become both more liberal and keener on competition—not a million miles away from the club the Tories always wanted. If they would only look and learn, the Conservatives could find some strong allies in Brussels, not just implacable enemies.

This is where you ask yourself 'and this is supposed to be a respected sociopolitical periodical?' - that is certainly what I did. They appear to have completely missed that only last week did Angela Merkel of Germany propose that the EU needed just such a big new treaty to create something of an EU-IMF. Thus I wonder is the Economist trying to pervert the truth or are they just trying to plant a false sense of hope into their readers, a hope which says that the EU is benign; that it has no federal aspirations; that it does not want an EU Army etcetera. I am quite frankly astounded that they completely ignored that tiny slither of news, particularly since it has the potential to bring down both an incoming Tory administration as well as a coalition government (which will fall anyway). Labour backbenchers are eurosceptic, the Libdems want a referendum on a complete in or out of the EU, and the tories are eurosceptic to the bone, all except the front bench of course (with some exceptions). Now if a new treaty were to be rolled out that means that there will have to be a referendum in the UK of some kind, which means that the parties will do everything in their power to prevent the people from having a say on the EU. For if they do, it will be very nasty indeed. The result will begin the slippery slope towards the UK's exit from the EU. But the Economist seems to just have blissfully 'forgotten' this - how very convenient.

They have another one on David Cameron if you can be bothered to read it, myself well I am very disappointed; I thought that if there were any paper out there which stood their ground as the paragons of honesty then it was the Economist. Well, what a wasted paradigm that turned out to be. Mr Carswell appears to share my sentiment as well.