It would be quite funny if it were not so sad

Either Lady Warsi's minions in the civil service have learnt nothing and forgotten none of their ridiculous and frequently disproved statements from the past or they have decided that parliamentary questions are of so little importance that recycling old and meaningless answers is a perfectly adequate way of behaving. Lady Warsi herself, of course, has not the capacity to understand either the questions or the answers so she must be absolved of all sin except the one of not knowing exactly what her limitations are. Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked a perfectly reasonable question that required some kind of a reasonable answer:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Prime Minister’s comments in Brussels on 27 May that Brussels was “too big and too busy” indicate that they intend to oppose any further expansion of the European Union.

After all, we know from experience that widening is not the opposite of deepening and the bigger the EU becomes the more powers are centralized as, quite clearly, a large and ramshackle collection of member states that could never work as one union need to be forced to do so. Does Baroness Warsi understand this? I very much doubt it. Do her minions in the civil service? Well, that is the big question as I asked at the beginning of this posting. In any case, their reply would be quite funny if it were not so sad:

The Prime Minister, my Rt. Hon Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron)’s comment was that Brussels is “too big and too bossy”. He was referring to the need for the EU to reform to become less interfering and more competitive, flexible and democratically accountable. He was not pronouncing on the EU’s territorial size.

The UK continues to be a strong supporter of enlargement based on firm but fair conditionality, focusing on key concerns shared by many Member States, particularly around the rule of law. Enlargement has proved a huge driver of peace, prosperity and progress across our continent.

If they really believe the idiocy of that last sentence or the idea that making the EU ever larger is somehow compatible with it surrendering powers (not that there is the slightest indication of that possibility except in the Prime Minister's pronouncements) than the calibre of our civil service has clearly sunk to an all-time low. If, on the other hand, they do not believe it or do not care whether they believe it but think that any old rubbish will do in reply to a member of Parliament, albeit, the Upper House, then we need to think very seriously about the relationship between the civil service and Parliament, which will be of enormous importance when we start negotiating our way out.