They can’t be serious, can they?

Declan Ganley, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled and masterminded the successful “No” campaign in the Irish referendum, is a target all the same. Many in the European establishment would like to see Mr Ganley come a cropper, see his campaigning days terminated and his nascent political career liquidated before he can do any more damage.

The mysterious Mr Ganley is now talking about turning his think-tank Libertas into an EU-wide political party. He’s been touring Europe looking for support for his campaign to turn next year’s elections to the European Parliament into another referendum: on what he calls the anti-democratic Europe of the Lisbon Treaty. You remember – that’s the one that so many say is just like the constitution the Dutch and French threw out.

But the European Parliament has instructed the Irish authorities to investigate his funding and motives: many believe that the mysterious Mr Ganley is a stooge of the American military industrial complex, doing the bidding of the right-wing neo-cons in the CIA and Pentagon, hell-bent on smashing the rise of a political Europe.

You’re right. It couldn’t be that the EU didn’t sell the new Treaty. It couldn’t be that the Irish government was less than full throated in its campaigning, having other (useful) things to spend its political capital on. It couldn’t be that the Irish were a tad annoyed at being told that the EU Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty weren’t one and the same, when they clearly were.

No, the Irish said no because of a US conspiracy. Clearly.

There are some delusions that just can’t be believed…