In all the furore about whether David Cameron has or has not gained a “victory” in limiting the budget rise in Europe, we have had had presented to us various differing strands of opinion.
I have heard the plain “Better Off Out” view, and whether one agrees with it or not, the case has been robustly put.
Similarly those who argue the need to construct alliances to better address the fiscal irresponsibility of some Member States have made a less trenchant, but nevertheless coherent statement of their position. We may be treading lightly now to be more forceful later.
The more populist sceptics have done their work too, telling us how many aircraft carriers or nurses could be purchased with the money, and we are awash with contrasts between the suffering of the UK budget and the continuity of an upwards trend in the monies disbursed by Brussels.
Our Legalists and Constitutionalists have considered what this means in terms of present and future Treaty obligations, advising whether we could or could not refuse to pay.
In short, I have heard from almost everybody except one important sector of contribution to the debate. As far as I have seen - and I can doubtless be corrected if I am wrong - nobody has been out there in the media robustly arguing why the EU needs, must have, cannot do without, or ought to have a budget rise of 2.9%.
Someone surely knows, but, curiously is not telling us.
I have heard that had the Prime Minister been more aggressively non-Communautaire, it would have created tensions with some of our Lib Dem allies. Is there anyone in that quarter who wants to explain why there should be a rise at all when there are cuts in the public and private sectors all around?
We know that a number of Labour MEPs have voted for the increases, and for all I know some think the requested 6% was justified. That may be a perfectly responsible and respectable case; but I am not sure that any of us have heard it.
There are pro-European Tories who may understand European budgetary exceptionalism, yet they appear to be absent from the airwaves. Can they not explain “UK cuts - good, EU cuts bad”?
We fund a vast array of EU bureaucrats, PR men, and would-be diplomats who readily assume that they know better than we do about all manner of things, and who aspire to do things for our own good that we and our elected domestic representatives do not or cannot understand. Surely there is someone within those expensively funded ranks of Eurocracy who could step from the shadows and into the public arena to explain to us plainly what it is that their organisation is offering us, that uniquely privileges it in respect of claims to an increased share of our money.
There is much talk of the Eurosceptics potentially distancing us from the “mainstream of Europe” by their constant criticism. Yet is not the other side of the coin equally important?
If there is a case to be made in favour of that supposed “Mainstream view” for an ever expanding budget (even when everyone else is in recessionary mode) then in a democratic society, whether domestic, or on a larger European politic stage, it is incumbent on those in that “Mainstream” to make its case.
If anything fuels the grievance of the Eurosceptic, and adds to the sympathy they attract, it is surely the perceived sense of entitlement and of case superiority, that means that no argument needs to put.
There is nothing more calculated to inflame the independent mindedness of the British voter than the idea that an unstoppable budgetary rise is so self evidently correct that no more needs to be said.