After several days of opaque backroom dealings and horse-trading between 0.000005% of the EU’s population, the EU’s slate of new ‘Presidents’ was finally unveiled last night. Not a single one was on a ballot paper anywhere at the last EU elections, it’s a ragtag collection of undistinguished second-tier politicians unloved in their own countries and scandal-ridden appointees from the Davos circuit. Meet your new EU overlords:

European Commission President: Ursula Von Der Leyen. Who?

• Daughter of a senior Eurocrat who was born in Brussels, she’s been German Defence Minister under Angela Merkel for five years. Her scandal-ridden stint in charge is widely regarded as a failure back home in Germany.
• She thinks Brexit is a “burst bubble of hollow promises by populists”, supports a “United States of Europe” and is an enthusiastic cheerleader for an EU army, she even wrote about the importance of preventing “more democratic involvement” from “impeding Europe’s ability to act.” Nick Clegg eat your heart out…
• It turns out she also plagiarised large parts of her doctoral thesis, her university let her off as they said there had been no intent to deceive. She’ll fit right into Juncker’s shoes…

European Council President: Charles Michel

• Former Prime Minister of Belgium who was ousted in a no confidence vote last December, naturally because it’s Belgium he’s still ‘interim Prime Minister’ more than six months later. He now gets rewarded for failure and doesn’t even have to move cities. Theresa May must be gutted she didn’t think of it first…

European Central Bank President: Christine Lagarde

• Everyone’s favourite scandal-hit oompa-loompa is back, evidently the EU didn’t decide that being criminally negligent with €400 million of taxpayers’ money was a barrier to giving her the keys to the Central Bank.
• She might actually have to take a slight pay cut from her whopping half a million tax-free a year from the IMF. Will she still be able to keep her delightful suntan topped up?

High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs: Josep Borrell

• Spain’s pugnacious Foreign Minister and onetime European Parliament President has been embroiled in more scandals than Juncker’s had boozy lunches. He was forced to resign from the European University Institute over an undeclared €300,000-a-year conflict of interest. One insider tells Guido the board were just relieved to have any excuse to get rid of the worst president the EUI ever had…
• He was fined €30,000 just last year for a “very serious breach” of insider trading rules on the Spanish stock market, his defence was that it was only 8% of his portfolio. I’m rich, it doesn’t matter!
• He’s fiercely hawkish over Gibraltar and says that the UK will split before Spain, and would welcome an independent Scotland into the EU. Despite his visceral opposition to an independent Catalonia…
• He says that “you have to live with” how Iran wants to wipe out Israel and also likes being highly aggressive with journalists and innocent Catalan protesters. Makes Trump look diplomatic…

You didn’t vote them in, you can’t vote them out, in fact they can do pretty much whatever they like while living off hugely generous salaries and expense accounts funded by your taxes. EU democracy at its finest once again…

In the room where Marie Antoinette was sentenced to death by guillotine, IMF chief Christine Lagarde has been convicted of negligence over a fraudulent €403 million payout to businessman Bernard Tapie in 2008, when she was France’s finance minister. Typical of the French justice system that she will face no punishment. Almost as criminal as the IMF’s forecasts…

A damning report by IMF watchdog the Independent Evaluation Office has slammed a “culture of complacency” in Christine Lagarde’s organisation. Focusing on the IMF’s response to the Eurozone crisis, the report claims that the Fund was riven with “issues of accountability and transparency”, claiming Lagarde and senior management established “small, ad hoc staff task forces” to plan for the possibility of bailouts, rather than holding executive board meetings. The report slams the “lack of board involvement”, with management failing to discuss – sometimes despite direct requests – issues around the unfolding crisis. Preparations made by management lacked “analytical depth, rigor, or specificity”. Most damning of all, however, is the IMF’s “groupthink” and unquestioning links to European policy – particularly their irrational fervour for the Euro. The report concludes:

“At the euro area level, IMF staff’s position was often too close to the official line of European officials, and the IMF lost effectiveness as an independent assessor.”

So much for that independent report, eh Remainers?

Leave message: IMF bullying British voters and cheating purdah rules.

Remain message: “Independent” institutions back Remain.

Cut through: Christine Lagarde.

Leave social media count: 361,731 likes, 41,072 followers.

Remain social media count: 394,153 likes, 27,631 followers.

Odds: Remain 1/3 Leave 9/4

Latest poll: Remain 44%, Leave 46% (ICM, online). Poll of Polls is now Remain 50%, Leave 50%.

Osborne says the IMF’s Brexit-bashing report is totally impartial: “Today the independent IMF reinforced the conclusions of the independent bank of England.” So it’s unfortunate that Christine Lagarde began by thanking the Treasury for their help:

“Let me by the same token thank all UK authorities who have been helping us in preparing the article for work in the last few weeks. There’s always been good cooperation between the Treasury, the Bank of England and any other authorities that we consult with”

She was then forced to deny the Treasury wrote any of the report. Ooooops!

Christine Lagarde is making yet another doom-mongering ‘major intervention’ at 10am, with that €400 million fraud trial still looming over her. The IMF chief will again warn against Brexit during a meeting with Osborne at the Treasury, a geo-political courtesy return favour to the Chancellor, who campaigned hard for her to get the job. Like pretty much every group Remain have wheeled out, the IMF has received funding from the European Commission. Pro-Remain groups which have made referendum interventions have received €160 million from the Commission in the last nine years:

PwC warned leaving would cause a “serious shock” – no kidding, they’re bankrolled by the Commission to the tune of €16 million. LSE say we’re better off Remaining – they certainly are having received €18 million. The WWF says EU membership “benefits our environment” – it benefits theirs by €46 million.

Remain have barely named a group supporting them which hasn’t received huge amounts from the Commission. He who pays the piper…

UPDATE: RSPB get in touch to stress they do not have a position on the referendum because neither side is campaigning on the environment.