Would Nicholas Sarkozy be hot-footing it to Dublin in the dog days of summer if Ireland had voted 'Yes' in its Referendum on the EU Constitution? Of course he wouldn't. He is only going because even he can smell the raspberry the Irish blew at the EU last month. Having spoilt France's grandiose plans for jobs for the boys, expect a whole lot of angry finger-wagging.

As his own spokesman Axel Poniatowski has made clear on his behalf, there is no other choice for the Irish but to hold a second referendum and, regardless of EU and French protestations to the contrary and regardless of whatever emollient nonsense Sarkozy utters in public, behind the scenes Brian Cowen will indeed have to put up with some serious pressure from this angry voyou from Paris to get it right in a second vote and to hold that vote sooner rather than later. Fortunately others are doing their democratic bit.

Now the faintly alarming President of Poland, Mr. Lech Kaczynski, has decided to withhold his signature, a legal requisite apparently for the completion of ratification by Poland, on the grounds that (a) Ireland voted 'No!; (b) The Treaty of Lisbon requires everyone to say 'Yes!' for it to enter into law EU-wide; (c) 'No!' means 'No!'; etc. etc.

Funny, isn't it, that nations with some experience of being ruled effectively by other countries for hundreds of years (Ireland, the Czech Republic and Poland) should be the ones to throw a spanner in the works of a Treaty designed to end that independence once more. They know a thing or two about being part of an Empire and having looked into the abyss of being part of yet another one, they have wisely drawn back.

How one wishes to be a fly on the wall of a EuroNabob's private get together to hear thier true opinions of such naysayers. I bet the swear-box would be full in five minutes. Still, France's diminutive President will, nonetheless, be out and about bullying the Irish for spoiling his grand plans for France's Presidency.

He had thought that this next six months would see France once more in its rightful place as the natural leader of Europe, handing out this fatcat job here, this little pourboire there, accepting the plaudits from a grateful Eurcracy and European political elite for a job well and truly done.

Instead he is left with having to illuminate one of Europe's greatest phallic symbols, the Eiffel Tower, in the colours of the EU as a highly suggestive symbol of what the EU really has in mind for its handmaidens.

That all this is down to the casting of ballots in a free and fair election at the same time as the EU is frothing about the electoral habits of one Robert Mugabe is a delicious irony. There is, but for the violence deployed by Mugabe's henchmen, little difference between insisting that the Irish vote again until they get the answer right and Robert Mugabe holding a second vote and insisting that Zimbabweans elect the 'right' man, such has become the democratic deficit in the EU.