The Silly Season Cometh

Nicholas Sarkozy and Tony Blair

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If you want to take a sounding of the public temper, one way might be to turn to Google News, where you will find, at last count, 4,834 entries on the latest twist in the saga of Paris Hilton's jail sentence – or, if you want something closer to home, you can try the 347 entries on "Big Brother".

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That compares with 70 on the forthcoming EU treaty – most of which are derivative reports on a story in this morning's Sunday Telegraph.

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In The Sunday Telegraph Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite tells us that, "Labour has been plunged into a bruising referendum row after Tony Blair secretly agreed the blueprint for a new European treaty - presenting Gordon Brown, the prime minister-in-waiting, with his first big dilemma."

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It takes the Sunday Times, with its much bigger circulation – to bring the groupescules back down to earth, with a downbeat story telling us that the prime minister soon-to-be, Gordon Brown, "is insisting he will not be bound by any new European Union constitution and that Britain must have opt-outs from key elements if any treaty is agreed at a summit of EU leaders at the end of this month."Even then, we get the possibility that a treaty will be signed – which we know it will not – but the tenor of the story makes it clear that there is everything to play for, in a situation which is about as clear as mud.

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In two short weeks, however, we will know the worst, in that the discussion documents, which will form the basis of the IGC negotiations, will at least be on the table. The bulk of the contents will be highly technical and obscure, but there will be a few high-profile issues that we Eurosceptics can get their teeth stuck into.

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Then, after a brief rush of media interest, we will be in to the long hot summer of Tennis (with Strawberries) and Cricket (with Cucubber Sandwiches). It will be well into the autumn political season before the tempo begins to pick up and we begin to see how the parties are shaping up for the final dénouement of the EU IGC summit. That will be time enough to raise the temperature of the debate, when we are working with known issues and can make intelligent guesses as to the outcome, but not untill.