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Until recently, it was homegrown regulation that was causing the greatest anxiety in the UK financial community. True, there is now real concern in the City that a proposal by 11 countries to introduce a financial transactions tax will have far-reaching consequences. But these concerns are widely shared by other EU states and by influential lobbies in the participating countries. The proposals are anyway almost certainly unworkable in their current form. It is premature to say that the UK and its allies can't minimise the damage likely to be caused by this ill-judged tax.
The idea that EU membership somehow damages UK trade is bizarre. The obvious riposte is that it hasn't stopped German or French or even Italian companies successfully exporting to emerging markets. Eurosceptics consistently fail to spell out their alternative to EU membership, but it is hard to imagine any new UK relationship with the EU that didn't require compliance with EU regulations as the price of continued access to the single market...
Of course, it's possible that eurosceptic fears will prove well-founded. Just because they have been wrong so far on the collapse of the euro or the creation of a full eurozone fiscal and political union doesn't mean they won't be proved right eventually. Similarly, it's possible the financial transactions tax will be implemented in its current nonsensical form, the prelude to further acts of gratuitous aggression against the UK's financial-services industry.
And perhaps the EU really will reject the true "inexorable logic of the euro crisis" by rejecting open markets in favour of self-destructive protectionism. In that case, the argument for UK withdrawal could become compelling. But until then, Mr Cameron needs to start explaining why he believes EU membership is worth defending.
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