No matter what continental rabbit David Cameron pulled from his beret, the anti-mob were licking their lips at the chance to denounce it. Donald Tusk could have emerged from the talks with 'Britain is best' tattooed on his face humming God Save The Queen and agreeing to rename the EU as 'Britain's not-so-good neighbour' and the angriest of the doubters would have written it off.
Not that those at the head of the pro lobby have behaved much better. Many can't allow themselves to be aligned with the Prime Minister, their sworn enemy on other matters. They have to denounce the deal, lambast the PM, revel in his failure and then, ultimately, support his stance. Politics eh?
To be fair, maybe we're all right to be cynical. The PM is a slippery PR man who has achieved very little on this or practically anything else. Some people have stopped listening because they know not to believe a carefully choreographed word that spills from his mouth. He said, on the one hand, that he'd opt in to the EU on the terms he'd secured in the talks, but also stated that the detail was still to be decided, hinted that he wanted to earn more concessions and said he'd still rule nothing out. Lackey David Lidington then tried and failed to make sense of it all on Newsnight. It makes you dizzy trying to keep up with such a vacuous position.
This goes back to the problem above though. We all know that Cameron wants to campaign to stay in. We also know, pretty much, where most senior figures truly wish to sit in the EU debate. Yet, for some bizarre reason we're dancing around the houses pretending to wait for the detail of the deal.
One constant and clichéd point made in almost any edition of BBC's Question Tine is 'we need a proper debate on the EU'. The same is said on immigration. The problem is that this is said almost every week and almost always IN a debate on the two topics.
Yet the reason why it feels like we aren't getting a 'full and proper' debate is because it ends up getting lost amid a load of faffing about on if we should have a referendum, when we should have it and what the terms of the largely immaterial negotiation should be.
We all know the question - in or out. We all know that the supporters on both sides and for both campaigns have decided their positions, let's just get on with the crux of the matter.
PS - what exactly was the Mail on about this week? The splash on Thursday evoked a pre Second World War debate yet its article admitted the two times weren't comparable. It also admitted that by 'England' it meant the UK. Clear as mud. Given the Mail's position as an anti-EU paper surely the whole comment piece was really a job advert for the leader of the out campaign? It said it wanted a debate - that again - but really wants a champion for its cause. Settle back, there's surely plenty more of this overblown coverage coming ahead of the referendum this year. I don't know about you but I can't wait...
Thursday's Daily Mail front page:— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) February 3, 2016
Who WILL speak for England?#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #euref pic.twitter.com/BaBim27N85
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