The Little Big Men of Brussels will find themselves on the wrong side of history

Many of them went into politics because they wanted to make life better for people; it’s a shame how so many end up as mere busybodies

What do we think of when we think about Europe? Culture, cuisine – Brigitte Bardot, Gina Lollobrigida? Getting lucky with a sexy student on an Erasmus exchange? No one can deny that these wonderful things exist and that they’re a joy to the world.

Regrettably, as the bureaucrats of the European Union have been giving us grief for so long, when I think of Europe these days, I think of self-important little men running round passing piddling laws and being rewarded handsomely for doing so. One of my favourite EU stories is the one about the procedure guidelines for the import and export of caramel – apparently they’re longer than the US Declaration of Independence.

It’s funny when bureaucracy applies itself to confectionery – not so amusing when it comes to a killer pandemic. Every week, some cautionary incident takes place to remind us why we were right to want to have nothing to do with this shower for one second longer than possible.

Last week’s public service warning came to us courtesy of the lying Eurocrat Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, when he claimed that Britain had imposed “an outright ban” on vaccine exports – later corrected by the EU Commission after a stern letter from Dominic Raab.

Red faces all around – and I don’t just mean our old mate Jean-Claude

Juncker after a thirst-quenching business brunch.

France, historically one of the biggest bosses and beneficiaries of the Brussels gravy boat, has her own troubles, with Macron facing the fact that almost half the electorate believe that Marine Le Pen may win next year’s election.

Ever since the founding of the EU, those involved saw themselves as the saviours of poor fragile Europe – great men of history, defining the fate of a continent. But increasingly, they’re being revealed as moral pygmies – the Little Big Men of the failed European dream, strutting about like a gang of expense-account Napoleons without even the uniform to recommend them.

That’s not to say that only the EU suffers from the march of the LBMs. Look at Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales, who singlehandedly has destroyed the stereotype of the Welsh as a roguish, lyrical people, with his love of lockdowns and insistence that baby food and sanitary towels are “nonessential” items.

And that’s not to say that all LBMs are male – look at Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, the Joan of Arc of admin, who never saw a pint pot she didn’t want to penalise for not being metric.

We have one of our own leading the Labour Party; Sir Keir Starmer, whose more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mien reminds one of that teacher who wasn’t cross, just disappointed, but who might one day snap if the class continued to play the fool.

There is a distinct “you won’t like me when I’m angry” feeling about the LBMs – but we don’t like them anyway, for being bossy bores, which takes away their bargaining power somewhat.

But it’s mostly an EU thing. One of the characteristics of the LBM is that he finds it hard to accept his own limits, that he was born with such a low level of all the gifts – brains, beauty, wit – that they would never naturally propel him into the spotlight.

Unable to accept this, he attaches himself to a project that gives him power over those more gifted than him.

Everything great about Europe existed long before the EU; it’s telling that its theme tune Ode to Joy was composed by Beethoven in 1824. Couldn’t this brave new EU world produce a new one?

There is a large element of the LBM in the neurotic Remainers, clinging to their stinky old Strasbourg comfort blanket, which indicates that it is they – not we Brexiteers, happy to live in a small and dynamic nation – who want to be part of an empire. (To hear them speak, you’d think only Britain ever had one, whereas those “owned” by France and Belgium were far nastier – and we won’t even mention what Germany got up to.)

But, somewhat pitiably, many LBMs went into politics because they wanted to make life better for people; it’s a shame how so many end up as mere busybodies, seeking to corral and control any fellow citizen more daring than themselves.

Oscar Wilde famously said: “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”; the LBMs are made of stardust like the rest of us – but they are forever looking down at the gutter, tut-tutting at the fag ends and wishing they could bring in littering laws like Singapore’s.