As the governor of the Bank of England and the CBI trundled into the debate about Britain’s relationship with the European Union last week, it finally seemed as though the cold war was over, and the first salvoes in the Brexit debate had been fired.

Mark Carney, speaking in Oxford University’s ornate Sheldonian theatre, stressed the “dynamism” EU membership has unleashed in the British economy over the past four decades, and the benefits we have won from the four freedoms enshrined in the Treaty of Rome – free movement of capital, labour, goods and services.

His speech was accompanied by a weighty tome from the Bank, running to 100 pages and covering everything from the benefits of immigration to the joys of free trade.

That came just a day after the CBI had published its own glossy document on the joys of EU membership, stressing the free access it brings to a consumer market of 500 million people.

It even includes a picture of a fridge stuffed with imported delicacies from our EU partners. The accompanying text reads: “Customers in the UK have a wider choice of goods and can buy cheese from France, salami from Italy, beer from Belgium and put it in a fridge from Germany as if they were buying from the UK with no extra charges,” the text said.

A string of Europhile CBI members, from the chief executive of BT Group to the boss of small, independent Somerset cheese producer Wyke, explain how the EU has helped them to succeed – against a glossy red, white and blue background.

Yet in some ways, despite its huge importance for the future of the British economy, this remains a phoney war, because voters still do not know what concessions David Cameron is going to bring back from Brussels – or even precisely what demands he’s planning to make of his EU partners during the forthcoming “renegotiation”.

Carney, who likes to make a splash, may have overstressed the EU’s past benefits; the firmly anti-EU Lord Lawson, leader of the Conservative no campaign, expressed his fury that the governor had seen fit to speak out. But the truth is, rather than helping voters to make up their minds, the Bank – and in its own way, the CBI – were preparing Cameron for battle.

The governor’s praise for the EU was backward-looking, and came tempered with a warning that the UK’s openness, and its oversized financial sector, have made it particularly vulnerable to shocks transmitted from the EU – such as the Greek sovereign debt crisis.

And as the eurozone member countries press ahead with economic integration – something the UK supports, in the hope that it will prevent another meltdown – the Bank fears that non-eurozone members will be disadvantaged, and that UK regulators will lose the discretion they need to fend off future financial challenges. The worry is that the new rules will increasingly be written to suit the members of the single currency, rather than all the member of the single European market.

Carney urged Cameron to seek ways of safeguarding Britain’s interests. The CBI said Britain would be better off inside a “reformed” EU. But neither of them was prepared to say what action they would recommend should the prime minister come back all but empty-handed – and indeed, Bank insiders stressed that they would not be prepared to “mark the government’s homework”.

The real decision voters will have to make when the referendum is called will depend on what kind of EU is likely to evolve over the coming decades, not the benefits that have accrued in the past. It will also depend on impossible-to-fathom variables about what kind of deal the UK could hope to negotiate after Brexit – and here, the analysis provided by business groups and central bankers gives out.

This battle has a long way yet to run.

Moving issues for HSBC

Another week, another victory on the regulatory front for Britain’s big banks. The Competition and Markets Authority, to a storm of protest from smaller challenger banks, decided it was not interested in structural reform. There will be no break-up of the big boys. Instead, the regulator will seek ways to try to prompt customers to shop around.

The CMA’s vote for minor remedies continued a winning run for the big lenders, especially the international banks. In his summer budget, chancellor George Osborne restructured the bank levy and introduced a surcharge on profits. The net result: the likes of HSBC will pay less.

And on ringfencing – centrepiece of the post-crisis reforms – senior managers at big banks will not have to show they took reasonable steps to avoid catastrophe; the burden of proof will lie with the regulator.

Given three favourable results in a row, you might have assumed the directors of HSBC would have decided that, on reflection, the UK is not such a bad place to have your global headquarters. Instead, the review of whether to stay in London continues. Indeed, it was enlivened last week by an FT story that the US is a possibility; it had been assumed that Hong Kong, where HSBC has its roots, was the only rival to London.

The idea of HSBC contemplating a move to the US is extraordinary. The bank doesn’t have many political friends there, and operates under a deferred prosecution agreement after admitting in 2012 to laundering money for Mexican and Colombian drug lords. The US was also the scene of the worst acquisition in its history – sub-prime lender, Household, in 2003.

UK politicians, by contrast, seem to be falling over themselves to keep HSBC here. Surely we have reached the point where backroom pleading with HSBC’s directors, plus generous regulatory treatment, has reached its natural limit. If HSBC’s directors prefer undemocratic China or an unfriendly US, let them try their luck.

Still time to change tack on solar power

If the government does not want to rethink its solar strategy in the wake of attacks by Boris Johnson, numerous backbench MPs and the renewable industry, then the situation remains an astonishing defeat for common sense.

George Osborne and energy secretary Amber Rudd can still create some kind of compromise on an 87% subsidy cut to defray the criticism. But it will be worthless unless they vastly increase the size of the £7m cash pot that is left over the next three years.

Last week saw the end of the consultation on changes to the aid regime that would kill off the private sector solar industry in the UK, just as the government hails a 35-year subsidy scheme for a Chinese and French-backed nuclear power plant.

Whether it is a sign of Tory predilections for old technology over new or a ministerial addiction to big legacy projects, the attack on solar is a mistake.