You would think that the last unpublished work of Marx had been discovered, in which he admits that his life’s works were wrong and that the world should follow Adam Smith instead. Such is the breast beating and Woe in the pages of the Guardian today. Timothy Garton Ash who has suffered some misfortune or other writes from his NHS bed.

Well, you know what, the last thing in the world I want to write about is that bunch of weary, short-sighted, retread opportunists, laughably called "European leaders", who are tearing apart a magnificent project before our very eyes. Sod them

Jackie Ashley meanwhile, tries to convince us that the French actually have a point in defending their subsidies.

But there is a logic in the French position, too, never reported in the British press. France has twice our landmass, with the same number of people. It has 28m hectares of agricultural land, compared to our 16m.

This logic we need to accept otherwise:

The danger is that sabre-rattling and point-scoring could lead to a complete breakdown in the European project this weekend.

Meanwhile the leader lectures Tony Blair on his bad attitude and warns him not to marginalise Britain.

The tide of opinion is running in a direction from which it would be tragic for Britain to marginalise itself just to secure a few handbagging headlines in the tabloids. Compromise is neither a dirty word nor a dereliction of the national interest.

The cost of not securing those headlines runs into the Billions, and we would lose any faint hope for future CAP reform, but its all in a good cause. Things must be a lot better than I realised to cause such a fit of depression in the corridors of socialism. I guess I should