Eat Out from £5

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, has now adopted the role vacated by Tony Blair at these things, by belting around glad-handing everyone, beaming at the cameras and giving interviews to every media outlet of every nation.

One after another, the signatories filed onto the stage: it was like a cross between a school prizegiving and the Eurovision Song Contest, without the songs or Terry Wogan. Mr Miliband looked at his watch. My mind wandered, amazingly enough. This stunningly beautiful monastery was built to commemorate Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India in 1497. Did da Gama, when history beckoned, send a message saying he couldn’t make it as he was washing his hair that day? I think not.

“And finally, the United Kingdom . . . ” said the announcer, sounding extremely cross. By this point, Mr Brown was somewhere over France.

Mr Miliband bounded boyishly on stage, signed both books quickly, and paused as if he felt he ought to write something else, as in a visitors’ book: “Thanks for a lovely lunch. So Sorry Gordon couldn’t make it. David xx.”

Since he had no prime minister with whom to shake hands, Mr Miliband shook hands with Verena Schubert, a protocol officer (the European Council’s equivalent of an usher). Ms Schubert, whose duties for the day had until then included handing pens to the signatories, looked rather surprised.

After this, a woman with pink and purple feathers sewn into her hair burst into a sad Portuguese song, backed by a pair of villainous-looking guitarists. I have no idea what the song meant: perhaps it was about subsidiarity; perhaps it was about a burly Scotsman from over the sea who failed to turn up on time.

The leaders then took a tram to a private lunch in the national coach museum. Before the cameras were switched off, I could not help noticing an empty space next to the Prime Minister of Lithuania, who was left playing with his iPhone and pretending he didn’t mind having no one to talk to.

As the meal ended, Mr Brown finally arrived. While the other leaders folded their napkins and slapped each other on the back for the last time, Britain’s Prime Minister was signing the treaty in a nearby room, filling the space on the page left by Mr Miliband.

Four hours after the ceremony had started, Mr Brown awkwardly shook hands with his Portuguese hosts as they wandered out into the sunshine. They put on an almost convincing show of being pleased to see him. Mr Brown had a particularly earnest conversation with José Barroso, President of the European Commission, no doubt filling him in on some of the highlights from that unmissable Commons Liaison Committee. Then, as abruptly as he had arrived, Mr Brown vanished again.

By my calculation, he had been in Lisbon for one hour, mixed with his European counterparts for ten minutes, enjoyed no Portuguese hospitality, spoken to no media, and signed a treaty, leaving no one any the wiser about whether he had wanted to do so or not.

The philosophy of Sócrates is right. History may not remember what happened, but what did not: the peculiar, partly invisible, nonpresence of Macavity, the mystery prime minister.

Times Recommends

• Milk: do we need a dairy godmother?
• DIY: the women doing it for themselves
• First double portrait of Princes unveiled