Cameron's veto: waiting for the sound of the pin drop ...

As we await events in the unfolding Euro-drama that will determine the EU's fate, it is as if we  populate a world suspended in time, a world without roots in reality. A world Alice discovered.

A commenter on Tim Mongomerie's piece had this to say about Cameron's poll bounce:

The one defining issue of the accidental veto/non veto of David Cameron, is that those including some in the party and on this site, can no longer use the excuse that the British people don't care about the EU, in an attempt to stifle debate.

I expect nothing from the leadership and am rarely dissappointed, and I also expect the next move just like the veto to be forced on him. Whether the journey we now follow becomes a light stroll or a hard slog, depends on those who give him the benefit of the doubt at the GE, after a brief pre veto out of character rebellion, will they now blindly revert to type and follow him without question, or will they have learnt the hard lesson that it is pressure that actually gets things done, not blind subservience.

His final sentence encapsulates the essence of the problem. Thus far, Europhiles have always counted on conservatives blindly reverting to type - and thus far that assumption as profited them.

Cameron has used up all but one of his nine lives - each of the others having been spent on sophistry. This "veto" is surely the Daddy of all propaganda pieces.

You have to hand it to him - his "Veto That Never Was" (HT: Boudicca) was a masterpiece in spin. An artefact of sheer genius. It is abstract, amorphous and based on nothing concrete, nothing researchable, nothing deliverable. And yet it has had such a profound effect so far.

Whether or not Conservative MPs give Cameron the benefit of the doubt depends on whether they fear him more than they fear us.