EU Constitution

The original treaty proposing an EU Constitution was negotiated by the Irish during their Presidency of the EU (the Irish media at the time even referred to it as the Dublin treaty, hoping it would lead to Dublin taking its place amongst the other European Cities with a treaty named after it, such as Amsterdam, Maastricht, Nice and Rome).

So it's interesting to see that according to the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, "“The substance of what was agreed in 2004 has been retained" and “Really what is gone is the term constitution."

So although the Telegraph is wrong that the implications of Ireland having a referendum implies anything for the UK situation (Ireland always has referendums on the EU - they'd have a referendum if there was a treaty mandating the sort of chocolate biscuits to be served at the Council of Europe meetings), it does seem that the Irish have backed their main point.

This is clearly a disgraceful attempt by the EU to ignore the democratically expressed will of the French and Dutch people on the treaty. More to the point, the wiggling by Brown and Blair about their election promises is basically saying "we don't need to vote on the duck any more, because we're now calling it a chicken".

Which is a pretty good analogy for the two PMs.