Dave's slender majority is a great thing for the coming EU referendum

Well I'm delighted that Dave secured a majority: If you voted for him I salute you!

Given the parlous state of the global economy and the utter mess that the EU is making of Europe this was not a time for change it was a time for sticking with a party that is certainly not perfect but is at least competent and has got the country moving in the right direction.

Handing back the levers of power to Labour would not have been an experiment. It would have been handing them back to people who are proven to be incompetent. Thank God that didn't happen.

So now we move on after what has seemed to be an interminable campaign thanks to Dave's (I think unwise) move to fixed term parliaments.

And the big issue, for me at least, is now the EU referendum. It will happen. There's no way Dave can wriggle out of it now even if he wanted to - and I'm sure he does given that it will be a potential dividing force in his party.

He'll  have to juggle the anti-EU views of many of his back-benchers with those of the pro-EU elements of his party and it won't be easy.

But for us Euroskeptics this is a good thing. Dave has a majority but a slender one and he'll need to keep his own party onside not just on the EU but for all of his policies. And that suggests to me that he'll have to be even-handed. He won't be able to campaign for an 'in' vote because his party simply will not support it.

Unless of course he secures meaningful reforms on the terms of our membership from the EU: Reforms that a significant number of anti-EU back-benchers will be happy with.

And that means quite serious reforms in terms of sovereignty, nation-status, the ability to control our borders, the precedence of UK law over EU laws, an acceptance of the fact that the UK does not want to be part of a federal Europe; will not give up the pound and will not hand over its armed forces to the control of an EU army - which is very much on the cards.

In essence - and Dave will be waking up to this reality very soon - the reforms we want and need are about free trade - which we signed up for in 1975 - and not about governance from Brussels, which we have never signed up for.

Given the chaos that the prospect of net contributor Greece exiting the Eurozone has caused, Dave could, as head of the Eurozone's biggest customer and second biggest contributor, easily secure these reforms if he wanted to. The Eurozone benefits from its trade with the UK to the tune of £46 billion a year. Without its trade with the UK the Eurozone's current economic crisis would be out of sight. We are effectively keeping Europe afloat and have been for years. If Dave seriously threatened to leave they would have no choice but to accept all and any demands for reform that we made. The alternative would be the collapse and failure of the entire EU project.

Dave may of course have been hiding these aces in order to pull off one of the most momentous winning hands in history. But I think not. Poker? I'm not sure he's mastered 'snap' yet but he'll have to very soon.

The thing is that the EU is embarked upon a federal project with financial and political union as its goal. It wants Europe to be a single country with a single government and it needs the UK to be a part of that and a crucial funder of the whole thing. It has stated repeatedly that it will not compromise on issues like free movement of people (which means border controls) and with it's move towards federalism - a flag and an anthem and an EU-wide defence force - it's direction of travel is simply not compatible with the reforms that we want and need in the UK.

There is very little room for compromise if the UK is to stay in the EU: We want autonomy, a nation state and control of our own destiny; the EU wants to take that away from us.

It is difficult to see any way to match these two approaches into an agreed policy that takes account of both sides' aspirations. And Dave won't play his cards because for some reason he's signed up to the whole UN-based project (essentially Agenda 21 - google it) which is so good for us all that we're not being told about it.

The long and the short of it is that Dave will not secure any meaningful reforms of our EU membership because they are diametrically opposed to what the EU wants. And without 'going nuclear' and really threatening to leave, we'll simply be ignored and sneered at by those Eurocrats whose salaries we pay for.

So the reforms will not be meaningful and they will certainly not assuage the views of Dave's anti-EU back benchers. He might perhaps have been able to sell us the fudge that is inevitable if he were in coalition with the Lib-Dems as a 'practical' 'compromise' approach, but he will certainly not be able to do so within his own party.

All of which suggests to me that Dave will be forced to offer a free and fair referendum. That he will not be able to support one side or the other. That the debate will have to be balanced, factual and honest. Of course the EU (which currently spends  more than Coca Cola in the UK on indoctrinating us that the EU is a great thing) will want to pour money into the campaign - its very existence will be at stake after all - but Dave's slender majority might just mean that he is forced into making this a truly open, fair and logical debate.

That's all I want. I am confident that if the real facts are put before the British people, if the benefits of our EU membership are compared fairly with the downsides. If the reality of where the EU wants to go is compared properly with the interests of the UK - and not just the UK but also with most of the population of Europe - we will be able to make an informed choice on the issue and the 'value' or otherwise of the EU.

If people are allowed to know and understand the reality of the EU they will be able to make their choice accordingly.

And if so, we will choose to consign the EU to the dust-bin of history not just for our own benefit, but also for the millions of people in Europe who are being fleeced and are suffering because of the empire-building aspirations of the monstrously undemocratic EU.

Thanks for reading.