The EU makes grand claims about being a global force for democracy and human rights and yet, splendid as those values are, it is revealed time and time again to be merely an alliance of competing national interests. On the grand matters of global conflict, it not only struggles to produce a united front, but also often ends up pursuing its own internal vendettas instead. In particular, the corporatist view of the eurozone elites means that they are happy to sign massive energy deals with authoritarian regimes, but don’t like or understand the workings of genuinely free markets. The fact that the creation of the single currency saw much of the financial activity previously conducted in Frankfurt and Paris shift to London only reinforced this prejudice.