MR John Major was talking about cloud cuckoos yesterday. Poor man. Yet again, the British Prime Minister feels besieged by the damned things. And as he called on his party (yet again) to unite behind a "hard headed" but practical view of Europe, many ill have wondered (yet again) why he doesn't simply abandon duty and, leave them to get on with it.
It is, by any standards, an extraordinary spectacle. They're culling councillors next week.
Conservative councillors, to be precise. Against the high water mark of the 1992 results, next Thursday's local elections will spell fresh calamity for the Conservative Party. Hundreds more of the faithful will follow those who fell last year, and the year before, as the Tory party is pushed still farther to the margins of local government power in Britain.
The "feel good factor" simply refuses to materialise. An underestimate of the public sector borrowing requirement has lopped some £3 billion off Chancellor's Clarke's potential tax cuts.
The crisis in the beef industry will cost still more. Dr Brian Mawhinney is reputedly seeking ministerial sackings and yet another cabinet reshuffle, in preparation for yet another Major fight back.
His party, meanwhile, detects just the moment to tear itself apart (yet again) over Europe.
The cabinet had thought to have resolved the issue. After an interminable internal wrangle, Mr Major found a referendum formula which would placate his Euro sceptics while keeping Chancellor Clarke aboard.
If a future Conservative government decided to join a single currency, it would submit the proposal to the people. Mr Clarke - who never denied that he had threatened to resign - was satisfied that, in that event, ministers would be bound by collective cabinet responsibility. The golden scenario left the party free to unite, and both wings with everything still to play for farther down the line.
But Sir James Goldsmith cut the line brutally short. Sir James is invariably described as Anglo French businessman. He sits in the European Parliament for a French constituency. But he is shaping up as the Ross Perot of the next British general election.
His Referendum Party is, threatening to run some 600 candidates on the single issue: who governs Britain? Sir Alan Walters, Mrs Thatcher's former economics adviser, is reportedly the likely challenger to Chancellor Clarke. Tory Euro enthusiasts: like Mrs Edwina Currie are firmly in the Goldsmith firing line.
Backed by Sir James's billions, none of the Referendum Party candidates would expect to win the election. But their intervention could be decisive in the many constituencies where Conservative MPs are defending fragile majorities of less than 500 votes. And for all the official bluster and dismissal, the Tory party is running scared.
In the London Times yesterday Mr Peter Riddell advised the Conservatives to fight Sir James rather than humour him; to treat him as a political opponent rather than a well intentioned if misguided ally.
The Goldsmith questions clearly could express popular sentiment. Do you want a Europe of nation states or a European super state? Do you want a single common market or, integration? Do you want to be ruled by Brussels or by Westminster? But Riddell argued, "they are imprecise, highly subjective and could not be translated into specific policies."
They are proving specific enough for the Sun, however, and for the entire battery of newspapers which endorsed Mr Major in 1992, and whose support next time seems set to be grudging at best.
Even the loyalist Daily Express, has launched a "Stop the rot from Brussels" campaign. More than 30,000 Sun readers rang up on day one to support the paper's demand that the people be given a say on Britain's future relationship with Europe.
They are unlikely to be much impressed with Mr Major's response.
A mood of Euro realism was essential, he declared, if jobs and wealth were to be protected. Of course, he didn't accept that Britain simply had to go along with every demand her partners made. Nor did he accept that the alternative was the door marked "exit".
And any MP who thought that Britain could negotiate a trading relationship with Europe while staying outside, leaving others to fix the rules without regard to Britain's national interest, was "living in cloud cuckoo land."
As Mr Major spoke, Mr John Redwood, last year's leadership challenger, was preparing to meet Sir James and attempt to broker a deal which would presumably see him concentrate his fire on Labour.
There is no suggestion that Mr Redwood is cuckoo. On the contrary, many believe he occupies that post election territory in which the fiercely Euro sceptical Tory opposition will gather to elect their new leader.