To those who say that we were trying to go soft on the banks, nothing could be further from the truth. We have said that we are going to respond positively to the tough measures set out in the Vickers report. There are issues about whether this can be done under current European regulations, so one of the things we wanted was to make sure we could go further than European rules on regulating the banks.

First of all this relates to regular EU law (Directives rather that Regulations actually, but definitely not in the Treaty). So whatever Cameron had or had not negotiated last week will not have impacted this.

Secondly, according to Michel Barnier, the Commissioner responsible for this dossier, there is no problem of incompatibility between the draft [PDF] and the Vickers conclusions, demanding 10% core tier one capital, higher than the 7% proposed in Barnier’s draft.

Third, this is a codecision dossier and – even if the original proposal was a problem – almost the whole of the legislative procedure lies ahead. Timetable information is here, and Sharon Bowles in the EP is on the case. It seems there is some genuine confusion over the compatibility of Vickers with existing legislation (see Mervyn King’s comments here (ignore the silly story title)), but the new proposals amend the legislation currently on the statute books. So this is the chance to make sure everything is compatible.

Fourthly, the Vickers conclusions are due to be implemented in 2018, and the EU proposals according to a similar timeframe, and the timetable for the agreement of the legislation in Brussels is the next 6 months. It is not as if this all has pressing urgency.

I’m just rather surprised that – at an event earlier this morning – I heard a rather extraordinary spat between Charles Grant and a Commission official on this point, with Grant defending the Cameron line. On the basis of my efforts to look at this, documented here, I cannot see how the Cameron line is right.

Merkel & Sarkozy: To stabilise the Eurozone we want to agree a new EU Treaty among all 27 Member States.
David Cameron: I will agree to that only if you add a protocol to the Treaty protecting the City of London, changing some areas of financial service legislation to Unanimity rather than Qualified Majority Voting* (paper summarising Cameron’s proposals here).
Merkel & Sarkozy: But this Treaty is about the stability of the Eurozone, not about financial services. Why are you raising these issues now?
David Cameron: I am raising these issues because they are vital for the UK.
Merkel & Sarkozy: We know that. But we do not want to discuss financial services now. We need to stabilise the Eurozone. So will you help us?
David Cameron: Not without the protocol.
Merkel & Sarkozy:  OK, so we will go ahead in the Eurozone without you, because we can, and you knew that was the danger. And as there will be no protocol as a result of us doing this, then rules for regulating financial markets remain unchanged.

Result: Merkel & Sarkozy get the Eurozone integration that they want, albeit with legal complexity to make it work outside the EU treaties. David Cameron gets nothing, because without the protocol the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon apply.

* – whether this actually would have been achieved with Cameron’s protocol is another debate. Let’s assume it would do what he demanded.

Here’s Article 273 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union [PDF of full treaty here]:

Article 273
The Court of Justice shall have jurisdiction in any dispute between Member States which relates to the subject matter of the Treaties if the dispute is submitted to it under a special agreement between the parties.

The ‘special agreement’ would be part of the pact the 17 Eurozone members, plus 6 (+3) others would sign, and so the Court of Justice could intervene, making legally binding fiscal surveillance by the Court of Justice viable, whatever Cameron says.

There are two problems with this.

First, the agreement might not be for treaty change at all at the summit this week, or at least not treaty change as the first priority. As the leaked Van Rompuy report (FT blog about it here, full document here) details, some of the measures for improved budgetary discipline could be pursued through an amendment of Protocol 12 of the Treaty, and this can be done by a decision of the European Council (after consulting the EP and the ECB), without needing national ratification. For the UK, this would require prior authorisation by an Act of Parliament, rather than ratification afterwards.

The second problem is the wider one, with the framing of this ‘repatriate or not / referendum or not’ debate. Where is any sense of European responsibility in this? If the Eurozone needs urgent changes, who is making the case in the UK that the UK will assist in this hour of need? Imagine Cameron were to succumb to backbench demands for repatriation and/or a referendum, and a referendum in the UK further messes up the Eurozone crisis… The whole debate in the UK is what the UK can take, take, take. How about what it can give too? Of course Labour could play that responsible role, but instead Ed Miliband chooses to poke the Prime Minister about repatriation at PMQs instead.

The need to start to question it, for me at least, has been given new urgency by Douglas Alexander’s EU speech earlier this week (full text here) that mentions ‘national’ 9 times, and ‘democratic’ only once*. Alexander uses phrases like “those of us who see Britain’s national interest as best served within the European Union”.

But what does that actually mean? What is the national interest?

First, there is the notion that – when it comes to negotiating in Brussels – there is something that binds the inhabitants of the United Kingdom together, to want to push for the same thing. That encompasses everything from a Scottish fisherman to a person in retraining in a Welsh valley to a millionaire banker in the City of London. The way UK internal politics works correctly assumes there is little common political ground between these characters, but when we talk about Britain’s relationship with the EU we suddenly assume there is.

I do not reject the notion that there might be some trends between countries – that the British population might be more hostile towards integration, more free-market as opposed to protectionist, more opposed to subsidies, than populations elsewhere. But I would also contend that a banker in the City of London has more interests in common with a banker in Frankfurt than with a fisherman in Scotland. Likewise a Welsh person on a retraining scheme in a post-industrial region has more in common with a French counterpart in the same situation in Lens than with a millionaire banker in the City. Only we never debate EU politics in those terms.

There is then the second issue – that citing national interest in relation to the EU is done in equal measure by both Labour and the Tories (or at least their frontbench) – Cameron’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet this week is a case in point. When Cameron says Britain’s membership of the EU is in the national interest, do the words mean the same as when Douglas Alexander says them? Each will have their own interpretation of what that national interest is, but by using the term so frequently across the political spectrum it precludes meaningful debate about the sort of European Union we want. “The national interest is for a more social EU” doesn’t really work.

My third issue is the emotional connection that the phrase “national interest” evokes. It makes a person first think of the nation (and, for all the problems of defining Britishness, there is some emotional connection), and then make the leap to think of the nation in the context of something wider, the EU. With a debate in the UK about the EU that has been antagonistic for more than 30 years, the use of this phrase that encompasses and even emotionally highlights this antagonism makes no sense in framing terms.

I therefore suggest that the term “the national interest” should not be used in speeches by UK politicians about the EU, in the same way as I have argued the pro-European / eurosceptic frame should also be rejected. Politicians instead should articulate the interests of individual citizens, or groups of citizens wherever they are located. The needs of workers, bankers, fishermen, entrepreneurs, public sector workers should be set into an EU context, rather than first of all trying to construct a false notion that all in the UK agree before our politicians speak about the EU.

* – for more analysis of Alexander’s speech see this I wrote for LabourList and Emma Reynolds’s response.

1. Freedom of speech
Nick Clegg pledged a return of British freedoms. Freedom of speech is a crucial part of this. Any effort to close down or censor the internet or social media is a restriction on the free speech of the population, and as such is dangerous. Remember that upwards of 30 million Brits (more than half the population) use social media. We do not want the UK emulating Belarus and China.

2. Social media is useful, but not vital, for emergency communications
Parallels have been drawn in today’s debate between the response to the riots and the 2005 terrorist attacks in London when access to mobile phone networks was restricted. In the latter this was so as to ensure emergency services could communicate with each other. No emergency service’s communications are dependent on any social media technology, and there is no evidence that net access needed to be restricted for this purpose, so there is no emergency case for closing social media sites.

3. Restricting social media deals with the symptom, not the cause
There is no way to stop people communicating within a community. If they want a riot they will find ways to do so. Networking via social media is the symptom of anger shown by people – social media is not the cause of the violence. People have always had ways to organise violence or protest, and they will find ways to do so with social media or without it.

4. Targeting any system(s) will not work
Even if BlackBerry Messenger had been closed during the violence in Tottenham (as local MP David Lammy advocated, wrongly in my view), other technologies could have been used instead. BlackBerry Messenger is not – strictly defined – social media anyway. It’s more akin to Skype or MSN Messenger. But the issue here is clear – if you shut one means of communication, another can be opened very swiftly. Anyone with a basic understanding of technology can see that.

5. Social media can be used to reassure a population, and to organise a cleanup
I used Twitter to check on the situation at home in Bow when I was in West London, and to plan a route to Kentish Town by bicycle to avoid any flash points. Other Twitter users were happy to help. Stella Creasy MP has done brilliant work networking with and reassuring the people of Walthamstow, while across London cleanups have been organised primarily via Twitter. Cutting off social media cuts off all of these tremendous solutions.

So then, David Cameron and the vast majority of backbenchers, it’s time to learn a few lessons about social media and technology in light of the riots!

Whichever way, the use of water cannon is a bad idea. The picture shown is from Stuttgart21 protests in Germany where a protestor was hit in the face and may stay blind for life. With trust in the Met low after the original shooting incident in Tottenham, do we really trust them with water cannon?

Theresa May who, dare I say it, sounds more measured than any other Tory throughout all of this, has however said that the police see no need for it at the moment.

Cameron’s line on water cannon seems to be the next round of ever tougher vocabulary from him – earlier he said “we needed a fightback and a fightback is under way”. So, faced with a violent mob, the state is to fight them? Surely that is no way to calm a situation.

Cameron’s approach seems to be a long way away from the dignity and statesmanship shown by Jens Stoltenberg a few weeks ago after the Oslo and Utøya attacks. I’m not at all impressed by Cameron’s approach.