Revealed: the golden gag that keeps Nick sweet on the EU

With the Wall St Journal reporting that the Greek debt crisis is spreading to Portugal, there was a sell-off of government bonds across the markets today. “We have gone past the point of no return,” said Jacques Cailloux, Chief Europe Economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. “There is a complete loss of confidence. The bond markets are in disintegration and it is getting worse every day.”

The ECB’s ‘nuclear option’ of directly purchasing government bonds will be seen in Germany as disguised money-printing to bail out latin debtors…and the start of a slippery slope towards hyper-inflation…as indeed it would have to be.

As The Slog’s been predicting since Nick Clegg was in short trousers, the single currency is ending in tears. But Clegg himself remains a dedicated follower of all of it: the waste, the gravy train, the dithering and the super-State. Because from his point of view, it earned him five million quid – and a £250,000 tax-free profit on his house there at the taxpayers’ expense. Mandelson is the same.

There’s something both these glorified bureaucrats have in common: whopping great EU pensions. That’s why you never hear either of them uttering a bad word about the Union of Sleaze-Socialist Republics. An EU pension is very fat indeed, but it comes with a radio-active condition: any of that naughty criticism of the EU afterwards means….you forfeit it.

And that’s the way we keep all the little chocolate soldiers in line.