The CAP encourages the wasteful over-production of food. It is a peculiar irony that a system originally designed to make Europe self-sufficient in food is now characterised, more than anything else, by the fact that it results in too much food being produced year after year. This is where the other mass of people who are short-changed by the CAP come in – the people of the developing world. The negative effect of the CAP, and the European trade policy that springs directly from it, is much greater for them than it is even for the people of Europe. On the one hand, we keep the produce from the developing world out of our own market and, on the other, we undermine prices for them elsewhere in the world by flooding other markets with all our surpluses at uneconomic prices. As a result, those people cannot get into those markets and compete. Meanwhile, we beat our breasts about the need to help developing countries as long as that help is delivered in the least suitable way in the form of large gifts or grants of cash. We give them with one hand while using the other to prevent them trading in the only things they have to trade. If we traded fairly, we could keep all our aid and the developing world would still be better off.