Memo to Tony Blair (with apologies to our ambassador to Poland). Subject: this week’s European Council of EU leaders, draft speech, preferably to be delivered on arrival in Brussels. Message: Tell the Frogs where to get off.

“Mes chers amis and, in particular, mon ami Jacques, it gives me great pleasure to be back here in Brussels, home of the bollocky EU bureaucracy. Here you breathe the sweet smell of Belgium’s unique brand of corruption, which it has generously bestowed on the rest of Europe. Here you are at the heart of that discredited, inefficient, socialistic community we call the EU.

“I welcome to the table the representatives of the new member states, who joined our community in May last year. It hasn’t been long but you have already adapted well to the ways of the EU. You are now displaying a rudeness and ingratitude it took the likes of Portugal and Greece years to develop. With your unpronounceable names and incomprehensible languages — why don’t we all just speak English? — you may have some difficulty understanding this but let me say it plainly. We in Britain have thrown open our doors. We’ve created more jobs for Poles and Czechs than you could have dreamt of under your five-year plans. And what do we get? Not a word of appreciation but a sniffy thumbs-down for my budget plan, which is already causing me trouble with my scary Tory opposition and that old curmudgeon next door at No 11. Well, screw you.

“Let me turn to mon ami Jacques, the proud upholder of the most immoral state-subsidised policy in human history — the £27 billion-a-year common agricultural policy. You have refused to budge a centimetre on this inefficient transfer of taxpayers’ money to bloated French landowners, pumping up food prices in Europe and creating poverty in Africa. Your hypocrisy and absurdity know no bounds. So thanks a bunch, Jacques, and the rest of you ingrates who have lived off Britain’s budget contributions for years. That’s it for the UK presidency. I’m off.”