The eurozone is now in a very dark place

Well, Mr Van Rompuy, when you first appeared here in what proved to be a rather expensive speech, I said you'd be the quiet assassin of nation state democracy.

And sure enough, in your dull and technocratic way, you've gone about your course.

But I have to say, you're even worse than I thought you were going to be. I thought it was just going to be a federal Europe - a federal union. But actually it appears with every statement you make that what you now want is the total subjugation of the states to completely undemocratic structures based in Brussels.

I misread the bailouts. I thought that when the bailouts happened - and I could see the panic around this chamber, people fearing the economic meltdown.

But you of course were calm through it all, because you saw the bailouts as your opportunity to take control. Just think how Ireland today is managed. Greece, for that matter. The sinister-sounding Troika [Commission-ECB-IMF] come in, 50 officials spend a few days in the country, investigate the situation and then tell puppet prime ministers what they may or may not do.

And I note great enthusiasm in this chamber for Spain to have a bailout. Lots of members here want Spain to accept the bailout so that they too are subjugated to this new order. Indeed in Italy, the appointee there, Mr Monti, is very keen for his own country to be bailed out, because, to quote him, he fears that parliamentary democracy could bring down the European Union.

So I think it's pretty clear that your next phase is for those who haven't been bailed out and may not need to be bailed out; you now want them to sign guarantees, budget guarantees, and to have the power to strike down national budgets after they have been through parliaments.

I have to say, I feel that the eurozone is now in a very dark place, economically, socially, politically, and I fear that the countries trapped inside it - in that prison - will be there for many years to come.

So it's odd against this backdrop that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the European Union. It's true that Germany hasn't invaded France since 1945, but I don't think there was any prospect of that happening, unless of course what you're all saying is that the Germans are inherently bad people.

No, the treath actually came from Russia, and we should be thanking NATO. And we should be thanking millions of American soldiers who served on European soil to maintain peace. Yet I don't hear a word of that because we loathe America and everything that it stands for.

No, this is now a divided, split Europe, with neo-Nazi politics on the rise, with violent demonstrations in the streets. And I frankly think that the award of that Nobel Prize devalues that whole organisation.

Well, it's not all bad news, because in Britain the opinion polls are clear that a clear majority of Brits now want to leave this Union, leaving David Cameron as piggy-in-the-middle, trying to pretend to be a Eurosceptic when he comes over here, going back home and claiming victories - but he's stuck. And I predict one thing: Big political change is coming in Britain because he's losing the support of millions of his own voters.