About nine years ago, the pro-European politician Peter Hain delivered a clear critique of the European Union’s modus operandi at a speech following Ireland’s “no” vote on the Nice Treaty. Following the predictable swipe at the right-wing media, Hain turned his fire inward on an institution that he believed in but he had seen to have grown “elitist” and “out of touch”.
He laid out his case of how the behaviour of the machine was betraying the cause thus, “We need plain language, not Eurobabble understood only by an
