It is very sickening to see Cameron, Osborne and Johnson dressing up their opposition to a financial transaction tax as a defence of the UK against Europeans. Reducing the attraction of multiple financial speculative transactions is an obvious step in reforming the crazed world of fantasy finance. If it did reduce the concentration of speculative centres in the City of London that would in the long term be good thing – our economy is over-dependent on servicing a system which cannot last anyway.

The Tories see Britain as the world capital of spivs, with unlimited free amounts of cash raining down on their friends and family in the city who devise ever more elaborate financial speculations on every one of which they take a margin. Free lolly forever. Hooray!

But it is probably too late anyway. The establishment seems oblivious to the extent to which the system is unravelling. Almost all European governments face increasing demands for real interest on the money they borrow from banks and financial institutions – increased bond yields – but that only increases debt, which countries largely service by new borrowing in this never-never land. Banks demand higher interest because they fear the risk of not being repaid, and the higher interest makes it more and more certain they won’t be repaid. It is only one of a number of ways the logic of the system has collapsed.

So the Tories posture while the system sinks deeper and deeper, and meantime people around the world have noticed that the elite are screwing them. These really are the most interesting times of my lifetime.