The point of protectionism as the name suggests is to protect your own skills and internal markets. Who to protect depends on the current power base. The leader of the peasants party may sign a deal letting foreign machinery in in exchange for letting agricultural produce out but won't keep his job if the opposite happens.

The EEC as a blanket deal where there was no protectionism was great, except it never really happened, it just became an under the table game of subsidies and regulation.

The EU as a single entity looking outwards does not have the leadership required to sacrifice one industry's protection against anothers external trade. They wont let Russian wheat be traded for German cars because the French farmers will want to burn the lot. If they felt like Europeans the French farmers may just give up and go get jobs at BMW, but it would still hurt.

The UK alone can make these deals because we can't be in the business of anything that needs thousands of acres of land to be efficient. Russian wheat for Insurance and design skills upsets no-one. We let our own motorcycle and ship building industries die to protect our financial markets etc.

If we unfortunately stay in, we have to abandon any thoughts of Britishness and get a hundred million other people to also see themselves as Eurostatesians even when that means getting the ****y end of the stick for the common good. Learning their silly games to trample on fellow members to have the cake and eat it is beneath us. Nice guys finish last though.

Andy