A week ago I urged my colleague, Wolfgang Munchau, to elaborate on his argument that a country can legally be chucked out of the European Union. Today he obliges.

But – as ever – one question begets another. All the remedies Wolfgang suggests are so drastic that one is left wondering, why bother? Essentially, the idea seems to be that all the countries currently in the EU quit the Union and then re-group in a new Union – minus the Irish and any other recalcitrants. This procedure reminds me of the famous remark attributed to an American army officer in Vietnam – “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, obviously goes to some great parties. He writes in The New York Times that :

“The last few years, we’ve spent July Fourth at the house of friends who have had the assembled company read the entire declaration (of independence)… I was doubtful at first that reading the declaration would enhance the overall beer-and-hamburger experience of the day. But the effort has proved more thought-provoking and patriotism-stirring than I expected.”

I’ve also been to some July 4th parties. It can be a slightly awkward experience as a British passport holder - since the whole thing is a celebration of throwing off the colonial yoke. It’s the same thing with being invited round for Thanksgiving dinner – since the Americans are, in fact, celebrating leaving Britain and landing in the Americas. At some point, one of of your hosts, is bound to smile and say – “I guess you Brits don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving.”

Simon Hoggart of The Guardian has come up with the perfect response to this: “On the contrary, we give thanks for getting rid of all those dreary Puritans.” I once tried this out on my American hosts, but they didn’t really laugh.

My joy at Spain’s victory in the football last night is almost unconfined. I say almost because Spain were England’s companions as the great under-achievers of world soccer. Now they have won something. So it’s back to not so splendid isolation for the English.

At the beginning of the tournament, I speculated about reasons for longstanding Spanish footballing failure. Perhaps, it had something to do with a lack of a strong sense of nationhood in Spain?

Well, that theory has clearly not withstood the test of Torres. But how about the new theory - that footballing victory will create a surge of Spanish nationalism that will help to bind the nation together?

As the sham Zimbabwean election proceeds, there is increasing discussion of charging Robert Mugabe with crimes against humanity – with a view to an eventual trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Many liberals regard the establishment of the ICC as a triumph for international justice and victims’ rights- and a crucial breach in the idea of inviolable national sovereignty. They also argue that future dictators might be deterred by the sight of prosecutions in the Hague.

But - it seems to me – there are two coherent counter-arguments. The first is pragmatic. It will be much harder to persuade dictators to leave power, if they fear they may end up in the dock in the Hague. Some argue that Mr Mugabe might have agreed to go into exile, were it not for the sight of Charles Tayor - the former Liberian dictator – going on trial at the ICC. Taylor himself, it is argued, only quit office because he thought he had an amnesty. Mugabe and others like him will now never believe in amnesty offers – and so they will cling onto power regardless.