Update: EU constitution, er, REFORM treaty

Call it what you will, it’s looking like the secret is out on the latest EU Treaty. The secret is that the sexy new reform treaty, recently modified under Miss Mild Mannered Merkel’s leadership at an emergency Brussels summit in order to be re-presented to the public after failed referenda in France and Holland, is barely different from its predecessor. Granted, those few differences are formidable, as will the political spin put on the whole 2^nd draft, but most of the treaty remains the same. This fact is the source of both critics’ ire and proponents’ glee. That is to say, the latter still like the original idea, the former still don’t. The more things change…

Now those nasty sceptics— who won’t be happy until the EU is broken and oozing internal goo like Humpty after his fall— are going to throw a tantrum. They are going to start breaking the good china in the House of EUrope until there’s nothing left to eat on and everyone reverts to animalistic grunting. So we have conservative EUroskeptics par excellence Open Europe arguing that its exhaustive analysis shows that 96 percent of the new text is the same as the rejected constitution. Sure, in quantity maybe only 10 items have changed, but that speaks nothing about the quality of the changes, idiots! What about direction, the future, sacrifice, teamwork?! No no no. Instead we have fingerpointing (with chubby little baby fingers):

"If Brown now tries to carry on pretending that this is somehow a different document, it will be one of the most audacious political lies in the last couple of decades. It would be simply ludicrous," said the group's director Neil O'Brien.”

Meanwhile, proponents of the Reform Treaty are taking classic political measures in order to justify the bypassing of a national referendum: they are relying on semantic bullshit. Thus the new, strapping young British foreign minister David Miliband claims:

"The concept of a constitution has been abandoned. That is made clear in the new treaty. In that context we don't think there needs to be a constitutional referendum."

See? No wonder he got the job.

The poor reform treaty! How will it ever pass, now that people are beginning to realize it’s not really that reformed! And one of the Reforms was to take away the EUro symbols—itself a terrible sign! Joder, things are looking bleak.  Have a great weekend!