There seems to be some strange consensus being built up among Conservative and Conservative-leaning commentators that the UK is effectively out of the European Union for reasons that are rather hard to define.

Andrew Lilico wrote on Conservative Home

There will be a referendum on our EU Membership even if Ed Miliband wins the next General Election. And even if there weren't, we would still be out of the EU regardless of whether we still officially held an EU membership card. Our EU membership, in the terms we have understood it up to now, is over.

Get-out-ers seem to have been even slower to grasp that and its implications than have the Cameroons (who are still pitifully behind the play). We are leaving the EU, one way or another. That isn't in doubt; it isn't the issue; and it's barely worth debating. Given that I didn't want us to leave, I might occasionally indulge in some recriminations over whose fault it is that we're leaving, but that's not the interesting question.

Whether we are leaving the EU is highly questionable as no particular plan has been proposed or even discussed officially. Even more questionable is the assertion that our membership "in the terms we have understood it up to now, is over".

Exactly, what has changed? Are we not still legally bound to obey the legislation in all its forms that emanates from Brussels? Do we not still pay over large amounts of money with more being demanded in the budget under discussion? Are we not part of the CAP, the CFP, the European Arrest Warrant (EWA) and many other alphabet institutions?

Today we get the same tune from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Daily Telegraph, whose headline says: Britain has left the European Union in all but name. All the above questions need to be asked and all the implied objections apply.

Mr Evans-Pritchard is assuring us that we are preparing to withdraw from vast amounts of legislation to do with the Third Pillar, that is law and justice. Well, no, not as such. So far, we have had a great deal of talk about not opting into some of the legislation from which opt-outs have been negotiated though this government has already opted in unnecessarily in a few cases. There is no sign whatsoever that the country will pull out of anything like the European Arrest Warrant or the European Investigation Order, which the government quietly and without telling anybody much opted in.

Periodically we get noises from Ministers who suddenly "discover" after a good many years that yes, indeed, EU rules do apply, have applied and will apply until we come out and negotiate a completely different agreement. We also get noises about how much this particular government has managed to save from the EU or, much more frequently, how much it will save any minute now. Been there, done that, ever since John Major's "game, set and match" over Maastricht.

There is a litmus test that needs to be applied whenever a government, a political party or its acolytes in the media start making statements of that kind: what are they saying about the fisheries policy? As long as this country's fisheries are run by the EU through the CFP we are not out of the EU nor are we heading out.

The days of packed fringe meetings at party conferences about the CFP are in the past but will, we hope, be revived. In the meantime, some people who are either going to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham (the only one at which there are any discussions of the EU and Britain's membership at all) or just happen to be in that city or its vicinity next week might be interested in the following.

There will be, as in the last couple of years, a Freedom Zone, outside the security one, at which people can meet and discuss matters outside the officially sanctioned programme. Two particular events seem interesting. At 4 pm on Tuesday, October 9 there will be a debate between Conservatives and UKIP about who the real eurosceptics are. Most of us know the Conservative record on, say, matters to do with fishing. Nevertheless, the debate should be very interesting.

On the preceding day at 5.15pm there is a drinks reception at which Brian Binley MP and the economist Ruth Lea will discuss Britain and Europe - a new relationship. It might be worth noting ahead of this discussion, should any of our readers would want to attend and contribute that Europe is not a political phenomenon. The European Union is and we do not have a relationship with it any more than Cornwall has a relationship with the UK. We are part of it and that is that for the time being.

The answer to that might be proffered at another fringe meeting, that of the Bruges Group, at 2pm on Monday, October 8. The title is How Britain Can Exit the EU and it will be interesting to hear what two MPs of two parties who are committed to staying in will have to say on the matter. The third speaker is Tim Congdon, the distinguished economist and member of UKIP.

It has been a longish time since this blog was last updated and there is little excuse for that except that discussions as to the best way to proceed have been going on and will be reflected in future postings.

In the meantime, we would like to call our readers' attention again to a document that needs to be revived. It is the Conservative Party Fisheries Policy that had been accepted by Michael Howard when he was leader and ditched immediately by David Cameron when he succeeded to the job.

It is our opinion in FAL that this policy, with a few possible minor changes, can still be the basis of our contribution to the discussion on how to move forward or how to "reform" the Common Fisheries Policy. Those who take the trouble to read at least the Executive Summary will see that we do not consider that there can be any movement until control of fisheries is restored to the UK government. Then we need to consider how far down in the chain should decisions be positioned.

We appreciate all contributions to the discussion, which will be fully aired on this blog.

Politicians' amnesia is a wonderful thing to behold. They say things with a straight face having, apparently, forgotten their own past history.

Take Sir John Major, for instance. He is everywhere, pronouncing on subjects to do with the European Union and all the things that are going wrong with it as well as all the problems it is causing for the UK. Yet, what is it that we mostly remember about Sir John's own premiership, when he was a plain Mr Major? The disastrous ERM, which he would not leave until this country's economy nearly collapsed and, luckily for us, we were effectively thrown out of it; and the Maastricht Treaty, which he forced through Parliament though after the first Danish referendum there was a golden opportunity to stop the whole integrating process that the treaty was speeding up.

Conservative Home quotes Sir John's "wide-ranging" interview with Andrew Marr:

He predicted that the EU had "fundamentally changed" because of member states' flouting of the Maastricht criteria and because of the movement to an "unsafe" Eurozone. We would now see, the former Prime Minister predicted, what he and Douglas Hurd had advocated in the 1990s. Europe would follow a model of "variable geometry" with different member states working at different levels. He predicted that Eurozone members would seek their own Treaty and gradually forge fiscal union characterised by tax harmonisation and budgetary control. This, he said, was an opportunity for a looser union and for the UK to repatriate control over parts of employment law, notably the Working Time Directive; financial services regulation; and control of Britain's fishing industry. EU leaders had to realise, he continued, that 27 member states could not operate in the same unified way as when there were much fewer members.

It appears that Sir John has forgotten that the Common Fisheries Policy was written into the treaties only in 1992, that is the Treaty of Maastricht, his particular treaty [as discussed here]. Nor do we remember Mr Major's government being in the forefront of the battle for the control of Britain's fishing industry. Not so, but far from it. Does he really not remember any of it?