In Sixties' Britain, millions of people flocked to the cinema to view The Longest Day and Sink the Bismarck. How can that same nation now submit to foreign control of its farming, fisheries, energy resources, financial regulation and external trade, as well to the undermining of legal protections (such as habeas corpus and trial by jury)? 

The answer is that the British political class has been bribed. Too many of its members have taken decisions for the greater good of themselves and their chums. The corruption at work is largely insidious and opaque, with two processes being particularly important. First, lazy and rather dim politicians have ceded powers to foreign bureaucrats for the sake of a soft life. The truth is that nowadays very few government ministers write their own speeches and organise their diaries. They are told what they can and cannot do by civil servants. 

Not surprisingly, over time the national bureaucracies have become contemptuous of the people's elected representatives. Civil servants see the organisation of an international, pan-European bureaucracy as the means of transferring power to themselves. Bureaucrats have the great advantage over the politicians that they are much cleverer and do not have to seek re-election. 

Second, the civil servants invent structures that encourage politicians to approve further integration. For example, the European Parliament now offers subsidies (ostensibly to pay for "research" and such like) to MEPs who form "pan-European groupings" and "pan-European parties". So subsidies to promote European integration are now being offered to MEPs of separatist parties — including Ukip — that are supposed to oppose it. If the Virginia School is right, these MEPs might even accept the money that is being dangled in front of them.