This implies that if the issues are important enough other exceptions will follow

This implies that, if the issues are important enough, other exceptions will follow. Once they start, there is a small army of diplomats and other civil servants who will most eloquently make the case for yet more exceptions, and the grand attack will disintegrate.If that happens, those political isolationists whose prejudices Messrs Rifkind and Major have been so busy whipping up will not forgive either of them. Malcolm Rifkind has already allowed through three exceptions to the vetoes. This will make the Government vulnerable, at least in theory, to further defections from the Tory left – to another few Howarths or Nicholsons. Having spoken to some of the Europhiles in recent days, I can confirm that they are depressed.

(And yet, aren’t they always, these days?) For to retreat would probably be even more dangerous for Major. The Prime Minister is dangerously close to becoming friendless in the EU, in a way Lady Thatcher never quite was.Certainly, thus far, the veto-barrage has produced greater stubbornness in Paris and Bonn, not less. If he carries on with his campaign, vetoing many more innocent and useful EU initiatives, then he will confirm the growing continental view that he is not worth doing business with. The big players are now at least half-committed to sitting the Major government out, giving it no political help at all, and waiting for Tony Blair. The European Union is an institution founded upon the politics of compromise and wink. Without second-bests and weary handshakes, it would not exist at all. Yet Britain has achieved the hitherto-unthinkable; we have united every other country in uncompromising mood against us.

In that, as in some of his recent privatisations, Mr Major has comprehensively out-Thatchered Margaret Thatcher.In this pass, he can go forward or he can retreat. The politics of the next few weeks of Northern Irish life will be, to put it mildly, turbulent and impatient; Mr Major has commented privately that he may be the first British premier to be ousted by the Irish question since William Gladstone.
Meanwhile, at Luxembourg and Brussels, and other places where politics has been generally placid and patient, British ministers are being harangued by continental politicians who have had enough. But, as John Major’s administration twitches and jerks its way across the front pages, it is an essential one. On all sides, this seems a government that rests on powder-fragile foundations. At Stormont, the ultimate guarantors of Major’s majority, the Ulster Unionists, are being angrily confronted by a table they don’t want to sit around. We cannot wait in ironic expectation of such stars.The solution is to get serious now, preferably before Saturday comes England expects .. but then, being England, she does not expect very much.. The floor of the House of Commons may have lost its supremacy over many aspects of public life – judicial, diplomatic, and as the place for national argument – but it retains absolute supremacy in one key area: there, and there alone, are struggling governments killed off That is not an interesting observation.

It’s a joke, right? Jordan is from another planet; Gazza is human, all too human. Okay, George Best could get drunk, have a haircut, open boutiques and still play like a god for 90 minutes But he was a genius and Gazza is not. Think of Gazza and then think of the basketball superstar Michael Jordan. Other countries demand heroism and a defence of national pride from their players. In the United States, successful sports coaches become moral shepherds to the nation.

The Promise Keepers, the male fundamentalist Christian sect which is driving previously alienated urban men back to their homes and families, was started by a sports coach. In the United States, as in many other nations, sporting excellence is an expression and celebration of moral character.Irony cannot prevail against this. The culture of Post-Modern laddery is no match for moral seriousness. Gazza and friends have started to think that football means ticking boxes, not kicking balls.This is a hopeless state of affairs Modern sport cannot be played ironically.