I hope Albion is being horribly, viciously perfidious over the Euro crisis

The Euros start in ten days’ time, and, obviously, England doesn’t stand an earthly. (Mind you, as the weight of expectation has been lifted from the team’s weedy little shoulders, and as Lampard is injured, we might actually do better than expected). Whatever, I hope the England players do themselves credit by not pretending to have been felled in the penalty box and by not clustering hysterically around the referee every time a decision goes against them.

I know all that stuff’s become de rigeur in the Premiership following the influx of histrionic foreigners, but on this occasion the team is representing their country rather than egomaniacal billionaires.

But when it comes to the other European Championships – the ones where Eurozone countries have to try to stop the rest of the world destroying their currency – I hope this country’s government has thrown all principle to the winds and is doing the equivalent of flinging itself onto the grass whenever a competitor county so much as glances our way, threatening to kidnap and torture the referee’s nearest and dearest if he even hints at awarding the opposition so much as a throw-in, and that it has tasked one of Britain’s political defenders with breaking the leg of any opposition forward who threatens to score a goal. 

I’m hoping this is what’s happening, because we’re locked in battle with the likes of Germany, France, Italy and all the rest of the currency fantasists to minimise cross-channel blowback from the Eurozone’s conflagration and to ensure that we accrue as much advantage as possible from the fact that, while Gordon Brown was undoubtedly stupid enough to join the Euro, he was too much of a paranoid control freak to do so.

Up ‘til now – as far as I can see – our previous government and this ghastly coalition mess have done their level best to act as if we have no advantage in this matter. Any suggestion that we might benefit from our neighbours’ agony has been met with pious platitudes about how the continued existence of the Euro is good for Britain, and how shouldering part of the burden of maintaining the ugly, misshapen little runt is the decent and sensible thing to do.

I’m hoping that these are simply lies designed to lull Fritz and Jean-Jacques and Juan-Martin into a false sense of security (“Don’t worry, chaps – we’ve got your backs!” – “Tenk you, Englischer chum!”), and that Albion is currently hatching economic plots of such fiendish treachery that the adjective perfidious won’t be sufficient to convey the enormity of our audacious crimes against the interests of our European “allies”.

I’m praying that no Eurofanatic has been allowed within a mile of our economic strategy bunker (so that’s Cameron and all the Libdems barred from the room, plus any Treasury officials, and I’m hoping a shoot-to-kill order has been issued with regards to Ken Clarke, Vince Cable, Nick Clegg et al), and that the room where the plans are being hatched is full of evil, cackling Eurosceptics who will delight in putting one over on the sort of unutterable communist shags one glimpses whenever there’s a clip of a European Parliament debate.

If I sound het up about this, it’s because my son will probably be entering the job market in three years’ time, and I don’t want him to be looking for work in an economic climate even worse than it is currently. I just wish I could believe that we had a team of government ministers in a positive rage to protect Britain’s economic interests: the sad truth is that this lot seem more concerned with keeping the Libdems on side and sucking up to the EU.