Dutch referendum result is latest energy-sapping blow to EU cohesion

Europe isn’t coming together in a federal fantasy, it’s coming apart. We’ll miss it if it disappears

When it comes to the propriety of the government’s 27 million pro-EU leaflets, which are coming your way in the post, we are invited to choose between London’s spluttering part-time mayor, Boris Johnson, and phoney outrage specialist, Michael Fallon, the nation’s part-time defence secretary. That’s a tough one.

On a personal note I would much rather be marooned on a desert island with clever and amusing Boris, though I would insist on his being allowed to bring along a goat for personal use. In the early hours of 12 October 1984 I was sparring with young Fallon over Thatcherism at the bar of the Grand Hotel, Brighton, but left him five minutes before the IRA bomb went off. The cabinet’s verbal assassin and the real ones remain unhappily associated in my mind.

Related: Dutch EU no vote has worrying lessons for anti-Brexit campaign

Continue reading...