More Than One Idiot Last Night

You can tell the Euro is in deep trouble when it leads the BBC news headlines for days on end - which it has done. Newsnight last night covered the crisis extensively, but much is being made of Peter Oborne's contribution where, among other things, his persistent use of the word 'idiot' to an EU apparatchik led to the chap walking off.

Richard North is not impressed with Oborne's performance and I agree completely. Fair enough about calling the EU man an idiot - given the devastation this crisis will cause I'd be tempted to use much stronger terms - but Oborne's no eurosceptic. He's claiming the victory won by others.

Oborne wrote in April this year:

For the past 20 years, the Conservatives have been the only major Eurosceptic party in Britain.

Anyone who thinks that is an idiot. Oborne continues in the same article:

It is already safe to say that Ed Miliband’s Labour Party is considerably more Eurosceptic than at any time since that Delors speech in 1988.

Anyone who thinks that is an idiot. This from the Evening Standard two days ago:

Ed Miliband today came under pressure to back a referendum on Britain's EU membership as a way to split the coalition government...[but] sources close to Mr Miliband said that a referendum was not a "realistic prospect".

Then Oborne writes:

This meant [Tory Eurosceptics] felt so isolated that they were afraid to speak out – the main reason why David Cameron has gone out of his way to close down Europe as a subject of debate.

Close down the debate? Yep with the help of Oborne. As proved nearly a month later when we get this from Oborne:

David Cameron has the makings of a truly great prime minister. Many of those in No 10 end up as essentially irrelevant figures, but a small few attain genuinely heroic status, says Peter Oborne...So the ambition of the Cameron Government is beyond praise. If it achieves half of what it has set out to do, it will come to be seen as one of the great reforming governments of all time. Personally, too, the Prime Minister is setting about his mission with grace and charm...

"Ambition beyond praise...?" Anyone who thinks that is an idiot. Oborne is praising the same government who has integrated into the EU faster than previous one. Not my words...

This is a Conservative-led government. The Conservative Party's policy, clearly set out in our 2010 Manifesto, was to start repatriating key powers from Brussels. Instead we are transferring new powers to the EU faster that the previous Labour administration did. Eurosceptic Conservatives -- who form the majority of the Party's rank and file -- are entitled to be appalled by the Coalition's EU policies.

Oborne is part of the problem, as Richard rightly points out:

Peter Oborne - who kept EU issues out of the media, and played along with Cameron who sought to suppress discussion on the EU.

Oborne, like many Tories, do not advocate EU withdrawal but are instead using the Euro crisis to pretend that they are Eurosceptics. He is a classic Europlastic - an idiot. The only small comfort is when everything goes up in flames, he'll be the first to melt.