Hold the front page

Honestly.

According to the Press Association the latest Brussels storm in a tea cup has *intensified* tonight as Caroline Jackson (an MEP apparently) has launched "all out war" on her colleague Dan Hannan by calling for him to be deselected.

Tonight, in a statement acknowledging that she had "declared open war on one of her own party", she explained: "I think the Conservative Party should withdraw the whip from Mr Hannan.

Blimey.

We fear editors won't be holding the front page though. To be honest Hannan is one of the few MEPs that anyone has ever heard of.

As far as we can see, the current row seems to have less to do with any comments Hannan has made and a lot more to do with the inability of MEPs to stand any kind of criticism coming from within the European Parliament.

For many years the Tory MEPs have muddled through by basically splitting the difference between (a) the party's domestic stance and (b) the federalist European People's Party which they are members of in the Parliament.

However, over recent years a few younger MEPs have managed to sneak in, and the chill wind of political reality has blown in the door after them. Long serving MEPs seem to have found it hard to swallow the news that not everyone back home is favour of every closer union - and indeed not absolutely everyone is 100% impressed with the performance of the EU institutions.

Worse still, some of the younger members seem to have eschewed the enormously heavy traditional Brussels lunch for the slightly heavier workload. Quelle shock!

Mild as it may seem, this intolerable combination seems to lead to eye popping apoplexy among the old guard.

On this particular occasion the real trigger for this MEP “outburst” seems to have been Hannan complaining that the European Parliament was ignoring its own procedures, and refusing to allow MEPs to vote on the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty. How unreasonable can you get? Clearly he should be sacked on the spot.