Two peas in a pod

Le Figaro of 10 December reports that Lisbon architect Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and 1968 veteran Daniel Cohn-Bendit had a debate the other evening on Europe before some students in Paris. Quite how two men who agree with each other on "Europe" can have a debate about it I don't know. To be sure, they managed to find some things to disagree on so their audience wouldn't get bored, like nuclear power and Turkish membership of the EU, but otherwise Europe was the "objet d'une forte volonté commune". The old student radical and the even older "conservative" showed themselves in their true colours as fanatical europhiles both. Le Figaro, misty-eyed with emotion, enthused that "ces deux hommes que tout sépare ont un destin européen commun."

But what really made me reach for the basin was Giscard d'Estaing's take on why the referendum on the EU consititution was defeated in France. Not because the French people were, like, you know, against the EU constitution. No, it was just because Chirac went about the campaign in the wrong manner. "Les Francais ont dit non à la campagne, ils n'ont pas dit non à l'Europe." Note a.) the incredible arrogance of a eurocrat who either can't believe or doesn't care that his countrymen don't support him in his insane project, and b.) referring to the failed constitution as "Europe", as if anyone who didn't support a long-winded and bureaucratic treaty was somehow betraying the heritage of this continent.

With politicians as obtuse and fanatical as that running the show in Brussels, is it any wonder they're demanding that we Irish vote again?