SURELY it wasn’t meant to be like this. Surely this should have been the one to boast about in the pub or save up to bore the grandchildren. I was there when they signed the Constitution for a New Europe. No, really, I saw it with my own eyes. Isn’t that what the hacks of the day said when they tumbled off the stage coaches from Philadelphia holding in their inky hands six freshly-printed pages which began with the words “We the people of the United States”?
This hack is instead stuck in an airless, lightless cubbyhole in a soulless Brussels towerblock studying pictures of men getting in and out of cars. We are not, you see, permitted to hear our leaders’ deliberations.
I will munch on “single European sandwiches” (you know the sort — croissant-shaped bread and a slice of damp ham) while struggling to understand the difference between a national veto, an emergency brake mechanism and a brake augmented by enhanced co-operation. Then I will give up and write the odd wry script line over those men and their cars before cutting to an image of a poster-van carrying one word in huge letters — “NO”. Underneath it will be the letters UKIP. Is it any wonder that many watching will let out a cheer?