I CAN resist anything except temptation. A cheap shot? Maybe. But irresistible.
"British say animals should have EU treaty rights... but not human beings. I jest not.
The British submission to the EU's treaty-changing Inter-Governmental Conference, published on Tuesday, advocates the insertion of a clause into the EU treaty on animal welfare, but at the same time categorically rejects the incorporation into the same treaty of either civil rights - in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights or a bill of rights - or workers' rights - the Social Chapter.
In truth, the submission says as much about the nature of British politics - both the civil war in the Tory Party and the national obsession with animals - as it does about the needs of the EU.
And its significance lies not so much in a set of long-predicted proposals that, as they say in the stock exchange, have been substantially discounted by the markets, but in the extent to which the Tories have denied themselves more than the slightest room for negotiating manoeuvre on the keg issues.
On qualified majority voting, for example, the document repeatedly says that the British Government will not support any extension. Not even to relatively, uncontentious areas like research spending? No. The message is simple - Maastricht was a treaty too far. Integration must stop now. Let's not confuse the voters with nuance.
As one Dutch official told a colleague from the Wall Street Journal "The usefulness of negotiating now with the British is limited." It certainly makes the challenge of the Irish presidency in managing the IGC debate a formidable one.
On the key tasks facing the IGC - extending qualified majority voting and curbing of the national veto, enlarging the powers of the parliament, writing employment objectives, however aspirational, into the treaty, and creating the idea of a citizen's Europe - the Conservatives have given little scope for agreement.
(On our own pet obsession - the preservation of a national Commissioner - the submission refers to three potential options, each of which would deprive small countries to their automatic right to a place at the main Commission table.)
Significantly, the document also puts down clear markers that Britain, although sympathetic to the idea of a multi-speed" Europe, sees closer integration between some members taking place outside the Community framework without a role for the institutions or the budget unless backed unanimously.
So agreement is also unlikely on German and Commission proposals, designed to sidestep British foot-dragging on integration, to allow for "coalitions of the willing" take EU joint actions in the fields of foreign, security and justice policy with the "constructive abstention" of other members and funding by the Union. Such alliances, like the Schengen accord on passport-free travel, will have to take place outside and in parallel to the Union.
The British submission is as good an acknowledgment as one can ask for that the Tories do not expect to be around when the IGC finishes its business next year, almost certainly after a general election. So they can afford to buy internal peace in the party with some fighting talk for the Euro-sceptics and set up a few election traps for Labour in the knowledge that ministers' hands are unlikely to be tied.
But as one set of problems recedes, ironically, the Tories have found themselves in another mess over Europe capable of causing even more potentially catastrophic and immediate self-inflicted wounds.
They had hoped that the divisive issue of the single currency was one that could be left for another day. The formula was simple let's not cross any bridges before we have to, and so we'll decide on EMU, and whether we need a referendum, when the time comes.
But the best laid plans of mice and men... Along comes millionaire, Sir James Goldsmith, MEP for the French Europe of the Nations group, a man with a bottomless pocket and an obsession with the idea that the British public should be given the chance to vote on the single currency.
Sir James has launched a new Referendum Party and has personally vetted 400 general election candidates whose expenses he is expected to cover and they are not all cranks, some are former Tories, a leaked Conservative Party memo warns with a logic some of us find difficult to follow.
All Sir James has to do, under the archaic British first-past-the-post electoral system, is to pick up 1 or 2 per cent of the vote in key marginals for Tories to lose 30 or 40 seats and even the minute hope that an election campaign can bring them back to parity with Labour. Some irony this - the party which is most determined to set its face against constitutional, and particularly electoral, reform may be hoist on its own petard.
In a panic the Cabinet has asked the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, to produce a report on the referendum options. He is due to report within days and "friends" of the Europhile Chancellor, Ken Clarke, are suggesting he may resign if the cabinet opts to commit the party to a referendum. Mr Clarke is now denying his friends' assertions but few doubt that he will put up a bruising fight against a referendum pledge.
