Still laughing here at our colleague Robert Shrimsley’s astute take on the Irish no vote and the aftermath: Here it is in full…

“The great figures of Europe met in the wake of the Irish No vote to agree on a way forward.
About one thing they were absolutely clear. “We must respect the Irish vote,” they agreed. “It would be a terrible sign of European arrogance to suggest we could just sweep aside a democratic vote of a member state.”
So they all agreed to go out and tell the Irish how much they respected their vote. And they agreed there must be no bullying; no warning the Irish to get their ungrateful Fenian butts into line or go it alone in miserable and obscure isolation.
In fact, they were so clear on this point that they at once agreed to go out and start emphasising it in public. Several gave statements noting that there was pressure from some quarters for Ireland to be left behind but adding that the people of Ireland should not be frightened or feel disrespected because they were sure it would not come to this. And so, just to offer further reassurance, they would put up posters in Ireland making clear that the Irish had better vote Yes PDQ or get their miserable Fenian butts out of the EU.
But maybe even this is not enough, said one. Perhaps we ought to get over to Ireland and give TV interviews stressing that under no circumstances will there be any miserable Fenian butt-kicking.
While they were there, they would take the chance to add that so deep was their respect for the Irish No that Ireland could have as long as it liked to change its mind. Across the continent European leaders insisted there would be no pressure. “If the deadline slips by a few months, so be it,” said one, adding that to take any other view would be to “disrespect the Irish No”.
But surely, they argued, the best way to demonstrate our respect to the Irish people is to show how we can move Europe forward. We need to change the agenda, said another.
“The people have spoken,” they said. And the message was that they wanted to get away from all this talk of treaties and constitutions and referendums that had caused the Irish reaction that had to be respected.
“We have to move the agenda on,” they said. We need to stop bothering the people of the EU with these referendums they do not understand.
When you analyse this, they said, what the Irish - who had to be respected - were telling them was that this was far too complex a matter and they want us to drive this through without bothering them. Once you put it that way it was clear their views had to be respected.
More importantly they had to heed the message that they were being told - to stop fussing about internal stuff and start talking about things that really mattered to the people, like jobs and the economy. That meant they needed to drive through those changes as fast as possible so they could get on to the important matters.
So they got to work at once, working out how to secure most of the rejected changes without bothering the Irish again - out of respect for their democratically expressed wishes. After all, they noted, deep down the Irish are good Europeans. They know a convoy cannot move at the pace of its slowest member - unless, of course, that slowest member is France.”

Diplomacy with Iran is difficult to follow at the best of times. Yesterday Gordon Brown added to the confusion by announcing sanctions on Iran that do not exist. Whatever his motive, it has not helped Britain’s relations with the US, the EU or Iran. Quite a feat.

Here is the background. Standing next to George W. Bush, the prime minister yesterday announced tough new EU sanctions on Iran.”We will take action today,” he said, “that will freeze the overseas assets of the biggest bank in Iran, the bank Melli.”

This delighted the US diplomats, who have been pushing the EU to take action against this bank for months. The sanctions were duly reported in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post (front page).

The big qualification to this is that there are no new sanctions in place. Bank Melli is working in exactly the same way today as it worked yesterday. It can use its assets in whatever way it likes. (Indeed, one imagines they will now be moving a lot of them to Dubai.) Its offices in London are open.

As one diplomat put it to me, Mr Brown “was wrong”. He made an incorrect statement. The problem is that the US delegation and the US press believed him. On the scale of diplomatic blunders, one delegation member put it as a “seven out of 10″.

What emerged yesterday is that the EU agreed (some weeks ago) on what action to take against Bank Melli. This is a significant step. But they have not agreed on when to take it. Downing St argue this is a formality and the sanctions will be imposed in coming weeks. Yet this gap is important, particularly as the EU has made a new offer to Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme in return for economic and political support. The Iranians have yet to respond. Mr Brown effectively punished Iran with the stick before Iran decided whether to take the carrot.

It is difficult to determine whether Mr Brown’s intervention has made a difference to the outcome of the talks with Iran. But it is hard to imagine the negotiators welcomed this surprise announcement, or relished explaining it to the Iranians. A decision like this is announced with the agreement of 27 EU foreign ministers, not after a UK/US bilateral. Unexpected moves like this do not help to build trust.

The British had some explaining to do to the American delegation too. Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, was so certain the sanctions were imminent he told the White House “press gaggle” to expect an announcement after a meeting in Brussels.

“You’re going to hear, as the prime minister indicated, an expectation that out of…the EU foreign ministers meeting this afternoon…there will be an announcement of new sanctions on Iran,” he said. When asked whether the sanctions were in place, or still under negotiation, he said Mr Brown had told him they would “imposed sanctions” on Melli and examination of further oil and gas measures.

“He said it would come out of an EU foreign ministers meeting at 3pm, was what Brown said. That was his expectation, the prime minister’s expectation,” Mr Hadley said.

For the US this was an important breakthrough. For some time US diplomats have been pushing the UK to take unilateral action against Melli because the EU was dragging its feet. Full EU sanctions against this bank was a big boon to Mr Bush as he ended his farewell tour of Europe. Whenever the British officials put the US delegation straight and explained that Bank Melli had not had its assets frozen, it must have been quite a let down.

What went wrong?

William Hague, the Tory foreign affairs spokesman, is rightly concerned about the shipment of Chinese arms which is trying to find its way to Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, but his grasp of African geography is less certain.

On Tuesday he issued a press release calling on David Miliband, foreign secretary “to take urgent action with regard to the Chinese ship, currently heading to Uganda carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe”.

Hague’s intervention sent the Foreign Office into a spin, as officials pored over atlases trying to work out how the Chinese vessel might achieve the unlikely task of offloading its weapons in a land-locked country in the heart of Africa.

Perhaps he envisaged the ship heading up to the Mediterranean, taking a right turn down the River Nile and then making the tortuous journey through sub-Saharan Africa to Lake Victoria. Not sure whether the river is up to taking ocean-going ships though.

“What is he talking about?” asked one government official. So far there has been no explanation from Mr Hague’s team about this strange Ugandan affair.

Why doesn’t Gordon Brown just say it? There won’t be a referendum on the EU reform treaty. He might as well make it crystal clear, because there are some - like the Daily Telegraph - that cling to the idea the prime minister might still put the text to the people, if he doesn’t secure all his negotiating "red lines".

On Monday the PM said that if all his red lines were not met when the treaty is finalised next week at an EU summit in Lisbon "we will veto it or say there has to be a referendum".

This is spin its its most juvenile form - and it left the PM’s official spokesman wriggling as he tried to explain it this morning. Think about it for a moment.

If Mr Brown was to hold a referendum on the EU treaty, that means he will have signed a document which he believes is against Britain’s national interest. Huh? And then what? Presumably he would have to campaign for a No vote - a rejection of a treaty which he had just signed in Britain’s name.

At least the PM was a bit more open later at a press conference when he said he would not agree to a treaty which did not contain all his opt-outs, opt-ins, protocols and exclusions. To make that clear to anyone who still doesn’t understand: there will be no referendum.

Of course, having "bottled" a general election, Mr Brown now stands accused by the Tories of bottling another date with the British people. And they have a point. I recently returned from a five-year stint as the FT’s Brussels bureau chief, and I can confirm that the new treaty is - essentially - the same as the constitution upon which the government did promise a referendum.

All the main ingredients - the EU president, foreign minister, foreign service, new voting system, extensions of qualified majority voting - are still there, albeit with some belts and braces for the Brits. The Commons EU scrutiny committee said as much in a report this week.

In spite of the political hit he will take, I reckon Mr Brown is right. The treaty will modernise the EU and make it more effective (admittedly a result europhobes will not favour in principle). It also strengthens the grip of member states on the Union - after all, the new EU president will be a creature of national capitals, not part of the bloc’s federalist structure.

Even if this treaty did represent a big transfer of power to Brussels, why on earth should this complex issue be a matter for the people rather than parliament? This is a representative democracy after all. The government got themselves into this mess, so I suppose Mr Brown deserves the opprobrium he will get for ultimately doing the right thing.