No s**t, Sherlock

I do apologize for that title but I did not know how to phrase it otherwise. The great Daniel Hannan is in despair: the veto, the wonderful veto, he wails, has been dropped. Well, I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. Actually, I really am. I am truly shocked by Mr Hannan's disingenuousness. Apparently, he has only just discovered the following:

So now we know: no repatriation, no renegotiation, business as usual. December's 'veto' turns out to be nothing of the kind; at best, it is a partial opt-out. Britain had asked for concessions in return for allowing the other member states to use EU institutions and structures for their fiscal compact. No such concessions were forthcoming, but we have given our permission anyway.

Oh my! Who could have foreseen this? Who knew this was happening? Well, actually quite a few of us but, it is true, that no Conservative politicians, barely anyone in the main-stream media and a large proportion of the population bothered to find out.

Now they know. Or sort of know. Because everything Mr Hannan complains about was there from that first Council where the phantom veto on the non-existent treaty was supposed to have happened and, what is more, Mr Hannan knows that. In a previous article he admitted as much.

Now he is back with his People's Pledge leading  light hat (which, pace the Boss of EUREf, he always was) and advocating an IN/OUT referendum since all other options (well, one  option, relying on the Boy-King) are closed. This piece is presumably tied to the East European Furniture Polish Organization launching the next stage of their campaign, which happened yesterday. That old chestnut, the unofficial referendums, which have no significance whatsoever and are ignored by the overwhelming majority of the electorate, is back. Yippee!!!

We  have just witnessed how easy it is to bamboozle the electorate, the media and the political classes with the likes of Mr Hannan being either the ones who bamboozle or the ones who are bamboozled; just what will happen if we have a real IN/OUT referendum? I suppose, Mr Hannan will get lots of air time.

Apparently the veto is not exactly a veto

Well, well, who would have believed it? Who would have credited it? It seems that when the rejoicing nation was told that the Boy-King had vetoed the treaty he, well, ahem, hadn't actually vetoed anything very tangible. Did you ever? Certainly Iain Martin did not ever. He is rather worried that Mr Cameron, the man who by some freakish historical development has become the Prime Minister of this country, might be going back on that veto that seems not to have played much part in anybody else's consideration.

In December, we are told,

David Cameron sought assurances that he could protect the City of London from various measures that EU bodies overseeing the financial sector want to impose. No such undertaking being forthcoming, Cameron refused to sign up. The other 26 members of the EU indicated that they would press ahead despite Britain’s veto. But afterwards Cameron said he would block them from using the EU’s institutions – such as the Commission in Brussels and the European Court of Justice – to enforce any new arrangements. This infuriated the Europhile Nick Clegg.

Never mind, Nick Clegg. He is an irrelevance. Why exactly did David Cameron not insist that a change of that kind needed a completely new treaty to be decided on by an IGC, something the colleagues feared? Then he would have had a treaty to veto. At the moment he has nothing.

 Back in December he was basking in glory and even Mr Martin has to admit that the man did not know what to do with that glory.

The problem is that different groups interpreted the veto differently. For Eurosceptics, it was a joyous moment which they thought signalled that the Prime Minister wanted to negotiate a looser relationship with the EU. For Mr Cameron, it was a welcome popularity boost, but it was not clear if he saw it as anything beyond that. For the mandiranate in the Foreign Office, and its outpost in Brussels, it was a disaster, undermining their traditional approach of always getting a deal done that maintained good links with their counterparts in France and Germany. They got to work watering down the British line.

The real problem is that a veto would have meant not fiscal treaty. It would have been vetoed as this blog said a little while ago. The real problem is that not only Britain did not veto any treaty because it did not exist, but the Prime Minister actually gave up his right to veto any forthcoming treaty. He is, one assumes, looking for a way to make the truth palatable to his party and is, once again, using his preposterous Deputy as and excuse.

In the meantime, may I have an apology (and the Boss should have a few as well) from all those who attacked me (and the few others) because we did not join the mass hysteria about the phantom veto?

And even more meanwhile

Daniel Hannan is fulminating that if the new text of the Fiscal Union treaty is agreed by the 26 member states, then the famous Cameron veto was for nothing. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Never did I think ....

... that I would have to say this but the Boss at EUReferendum is showing signs of being far too charitable and to no less a person than Daniel Hannan, clogger extraordinaire and the man who thinks he can run with the hares and hunt with the hounds indefiinitely.

In a very measured piece, which is for some reason dated with tomorrow's date (they must be in a different time-zone in Bradford) the Boss takes apart young Hannan's latest piece. It is, indeed, full of mistakes and misjudgements none of which I need to point out as it has been done already.

What is so interesting is the growing realization among the various dead-tree media chatterati that, perhaps, not all is well with that phantom veto of a non-existent treaty. It seems that The Sun is uneasy on the subject as well. Of course, none of this is news to those of us who have been following events slightly more closely than the average hack but the development is interesting.