Outside the EU sphere of influence it is often uncontroversial to suggest that the EU has expanded way beyond what makes functional sense and has been legitimised by voters. Make the same suggestion in the parallel universe of the EU federalists and you might fall asleep before hearing the end of how you have failed to comprehend “the vision”; how individual member states (or banks) are the main culprits; how efficiency will improve with further power centralisation; and how voter discontent can be solved with more “EU information”. There is not much interesting about such self-serving arguments. Much more interesting is how the federalists routinely get away with making them. And how have they managed to make more or less nonsense of the arguably quite modest UK reform demands?