They’ve started!

Irish president Bertie Ahern was reported today as saying that there was a 50:50 chance of member state leaders agreeing on the constitution at their summit on 17/18 June. There is nothing new in that, of course - and certainly not to readers of the Blog – but it gets better.

This time Ahern was speaking at a news conference in the Hague but later in the day he went to Brussels for talks with Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt. There, he reiterated the 50-50 prediction, but this time added some crucial and highly revealing words: "Of course it's important that we get success. It's important that we conclude, but that doesn’t mean that we will conclude" at the June summit."

There it is. As predicted in this Blog on 31 May, click here,

"...what we can now expect is a series of increasingly clear signals from the 'players', talking down the chances of success at the June summit. By the time it is held, the expectations of success will be minimal and the damage arising from its failure will be contained."

They’ve started. The summit is dead, dead, dead.