Peter Wilding: After Barroso, reform with allies to limit EU powers is within Britain's grasp

Peter Wilding is the Founder and Director of British Influence.  Follow him on Twitter

In his last state of the union address this morning, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso finally woke up and smelt the coffee regretting Europe’s focus on red tape.

He admitted that Europe had meddled too much in some areas and now needs to focus on completing the single market with a respect national sovereignty and also avoiding any new powers for the eurozone against the EU as a whole.

Barroso, in the winter of his term and without the support of Germany in recent year, paid lip service to the hoary rhetoric of "political union" but failed to explain what he meant outside of the current snail’s pace stagger to banking union - which is a very different thing.

Matthew Elliot of Business for Britain writes in ConHome this morning about the inevitability to banking union. This is not simply a runaway, uncontrollable fact. The German constitutional court is a major impediment to deeper integration.