I am attending a conference in Berlin where senior EU panjandrums are reeling around clutching their heads over the ‘disaster’ of the Irish vote against the Lisbon constitutional treaty. Of course, they take it for granted that everyone will agree that the Irish vote was a disaster. This is a given here. If you say brightly that actually you think it was the best thing that’s happened for a very long time, you are looked at with total incomprehension, disbelief and distaste rather as if you had just got up and announced that paedophilia should be made compulsory. One very senior Eurocrat sighed this evening that the Irish hadn’t really studied the constitution and so the vote couldn’t really be taken as a rejection of the constitution at all. Ah yes, of course – the people deliver the wrong result, so the people must be stupid or ignorant or both. Sack the people! After all, a stupid thing like democracy mustn't be allowed to get in the way of the behemoth of Brussels…