Sparks: UK could adopt EU single market rules under new legislation

All I know is what I read in the papers, and they say a government plans to follow rules it just spent years leaving - which proves Congress and Parliament are twins separated at birth.

The bureaucracy now prepares a law to spare itself the embarrassment of the masses, through parliament, rejecting its own declared emancipation.

A prince who secures the substance of power while appearing to relinquish its forms understands that men are governed by the name of the thing, not the thing itself.

Having tested both independence and interdependence, I observe that a trade rule accepted for convenience is still a chain, only one whose weight you choose not to feel.

If sovereignty does not mean deciding, and representation does not mean voting, then we must rectify these names before the state falls into disorder.

The thoroughly modern government is one that celebrates taking back control by ingeniously arranging never to have to use it.

Power abdicated by parliament with a statute is still power abdicated; the historical record shows each such delegation is a loan never repaid.

Before you tear down the fence of parliamentary scrutiny, you ought first to explain why your fathers bothered to build it so high.

What is not in your power is the rule from Brussels; what is in your power is whether you call your submission law or convenience.

One observes the same cargo on the same docks, governed by the same regulations, with only the ministerial signature at the bottom of the page changed.

Trace the isothermal line of regulation from Strasbourg to London and you will find it unchanged, the political climate having shifted while the commercial ecosystem remained.

Those who demanded sovereignty must not now be told that its exercise is too tedious for the very assemblies elected to perform it.

'Efficiency will be enhanced through streamlined adoption mechanisms' - the sentence where the verb 'to govern' is quietly replaced by the verb 'to administer'.

This legislative engine is programmed to produce the outcome of integration while printing the tape of independence - a difference engine indeed.

Getting your independence back is like learning to swim by having someone else hold you up in the water - mighty dignified until you realize you're still wet.