The Advance Of Le Grand Projet

It suits some tastes to describe Booker and North's The Great Deception as polemic. It is better than that, though undoubtedly partial. At the time of the second edition in 2005 the authors were unwise enough to think that the rejection of the EU constitution in French and Dutch referenda might signal a brake upon Le Grand Projet. This underestimated the righteous momentum of the ensconced bureacracy and the wretched indifference of the populace. So the Trojan horse of the Euro has today rolled into Rome (not a good metaphor but you know what I mean) and Le Projet has bloodlessly carried of its greatest prize - a whole bloody great country, very much the size of Italy, in fact, well, Italy.

A quite large part of Europe

The laughable but duly elected Berlusconi has been despatched to spend retirement with his billions and his pecadilloes. In his place the EU has parachuted in one of its own. No need for anything as troublesome as an election, no what was needed was a technocrat, a safe pair of hands, a man equipped for leadership by past service as an EU Commissioner. Bugger me, what's next, Kinnock, Mandelson or Leon Brittan as our PM? Last one out switch the lights out.

The new Italian PM will be Mario Monti. In 2010, Mr Monti was one of the founders of a European federalist initiative known as the Spinelli Group, which seeks to promote greater EU integration. Other members include former commission president Jacques Delors, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer and Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Nuff said. Mind you that Europe's going to have a bloody good football team once it's all sorted out.