Europe's future more likely to lie with universitities than farmers

Let us leave aside the vexing problem of the Lisbon treaty. Despite the raging torrents of words that have cascaded over the political pages like so many streams in flood, we are really no further forward. The crumpled brows of Brian Cowen, the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), are still a tangle of perplexity and may well remain so for some considerable time to come.

Nevertheless, I doubt his reflections have been helped by the curmudgeonly exchanges between Nicolas Sarkozy, the Frenc...