Democracy may be the price for securing a Lisbon agreement

Let's get one thing straight: the Lisbon Treaty is dead. The states that have yet to ratify the treaty may continue to do so, or, in AA Milne's immortal phrase, they may play ‘here we go gathering nuts and may with the end part of an ant's nest.' It will not make a blind bit of difference.

To enter force Lisbon required 27 ratifications. The maximum number of ratifications now available is 26. We are, therefore, one ratification short of a treaty; ergo, the treaty falls.

Those i...