Pole Position

If Michal Kaminski really is in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, then that need not concern David Cameron. Cameron really is in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, too. That was why he banged on about a referendum instead of putting down an amendment rejecting the thing simply in itself, an option for which Parliament has had no opportunity to vote.

A referendum would have ceded the decision, over the preceding month, to the BBC. Thus was a No majority turned into a Yes vote in 1975. And thus would a No majority have been turned into a Yes vote again, exactly as Cameron, Michael Heseltine’s Vicar on Earth, intended.

If Cameron really were against this Treaty, then he would promise that it would not be ratified if it had not been so on his coming to office, with no need of a referendum. But he won’t. Well, of course not.

And it looks as if the EU Foreign Minister is going to be a British parliamentarian in receipt of the Tory Whip. Well, of course.

As for Kaminski, his other views are rather more pertinent. Peter Mandelson as Prime Minister at all is a ridiculous enough suggestion. But Peter Mandelson as Prime Minister of a country one twelfth Polish, and rising? Could any notion be more absurd?

Only, perhaps, that of David Cameron as Prime Minister of such a country.