Remember Declan Ganley? He’s the British-born businessman who played a big part in Ireland’s rejection in a referendum last June of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty. Ganley often seemed a strange ally for the Irish nationalists, conservative Catholics and leftists who made up the No camp. But I saw him in action in Dublin and there’s no doubt in my mind that he was a formidable campaigner, fatally underestimated by the Irish political establishment.

Thanks to some good reporting by the Irish Times and the Czech newspaper Lidové Noviny, we now know a little more about Ganley. The Czech paper discovered that Ganley had paid a visit to Prague in late July and met President Václav Klaus, the Czech head of state. Klaus is a notorious eurosceptic who, immediately after the Irish vote, declared the Lisbon treaty dead – something not even President Lech Kaczynski of Poland or Gordon Brown, the UK premier, dared do.

As you’d expect, Klaus and Ganley got on like a house on fire. But when the Irish Times asked Ganley for his impressions of Klaus, this was his reply: “He has an amazing background of standing up to the Soviets and is a national hero in the Czech Republic.”

Ah-hem, not quite, Declan. Klaus was a young economist during the Prague Spring, which was crushed by Soviet tanks in August 1968. He worked at the Czechoslovak State Bank from 1971 to 1986, during the long dreary years of repression under Gustáv Husák, the Communist party leader installed after the Soviet-led invasion.

Klaus was certainly no party hack, but to talk of his “amazing” resistance to the Soviet Union is  farcical, as any Czech will tell you. As for his being a “national hero” – dozens of Czechs are drowning in laughter in their beer as I write.

All of which goes to show that running an effective political campaign is not the same as knowing your history.