The EU remains a front for French nationalist interests

The pantingly Europhile Independent only permitted its rightly respected financial commentator Hamish McRae to slip the following in at the end of an article on the state of the British economy: 

We are on the same side as the Germans for once. The European Union wants to impose taxes directly on EU citizens, rather than collecting money via the national taxation pools, a principle the UK naturally opposes, as does Germany. Since we are respectively the second-largest and largest net contributors to the EU budget, it is unsurprising that there should be a bit of push-back.

But there is a further twist. The two areas the EU wants to put taxes on, banking and air traffic, would hit the UK particularly hard. Financial services are the UK's largest export industry, with net exports (ie exports minus imports) of £33bn last year, more if you add in associated professional services. We are by far the world's largest net exporter of such services. We are also home to the largest international airport, Heathrow, and the largest international air hub. More people fly in and out of London than any other place on Earth.

So you might want to ponder why the EU should choose those two industries as its first targets for direct taxes.* Fortunately, Germany is home to Europe's number two international airport, Frankfurt, and has a huge (though less export-oriented) banking system. So we have Europe's other paymaster shooting alongside us.

* Well, you'll have to do it on your own, as there is no way the Independent will let McRae state the obvious: the EU bureaucracy is dominated by French officials who have a long and successful history of presenting policies specifically crafted to favour narrow French interests as being communautaire.