Toby on Tuesday

'I'm a real boy!'

Today, just for the benefit of our beloved Prime Minister “Call-me-Dave” Cameron, I’d like to retell the story of Pinocchio.    He was the little wooden puppet whose nose grew longer every time he told a lie.   And now that our Dave is back from his tour of EU capitals, holding that piece of paper drafted for him by Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, we get a fair idea of his capacity for truth.   Of course Dave spent the whole of his tour reassuring EU leaders that his purpose was to “lock Britain into the EU once and for all” and they took him at his word.   In fact his proposals are far, far worse than anything that Britain has faced before, as they represent formal acknowledgement that nothing at all can change here without the consent of Brussels and Berlin.   In truth, Mr. Tusk has run rings around silly Dave and achieved a negotiating triumph at our expense.

It was an Italian writer, Carlo Collodi, who first wrote his “Adventures of Pinocchio” in 1881.   His creation was a little wooden puppet, carved by a woodcarver called Geppetto, who longed to become a little boy.   But he told the most terrible lies and every time he lied his nose grew longer.   And he mocks and insults the good woodcarver who first gave him life.   Geppetto calls him a “wretched boy”, yet for a long time he gets away with all his mischief and deceit.   And what is extraordinary is that, in the illustrations to Collodi’s original masterpiece by the Italian artist Enrico Mazzanti, Pinocchio looks astonishingly like our Dave Cameron.   But in the end, Pinocchio’s enemies, the Fox and the Cat, just like Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, decide that they have had enough of the little puppet.   They put a noose around his neck and hang him from the branch of an oak tree, “...a tempestuous northerly wind began to blow and roar angrily, and it beat the poor puppet from side to side, making him swing violently, like the clatter of a bell ringing for a wedding.   And the swinging gave him atrocious spasms.   His breath failed him and he could say no more.   He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, stretched his legs, gave a long shudder and hung, stiff and insensible.”

Pinocchio is a cautionary tale, which our Prime Minister should really take to heart.    He has allowed himself to be the EU’s puppet, he has told the most brazen lies to anyone who would listen and his nose has no doubt been growing longer all the time.   But in the end the Fox and the Cat, Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker, will decide that they too have had enough of him and to do away with him.   His great blunder of course has been to trust them while mocking and insulting the honest woodcarver, in this case the British people, who first gave him life.   So the story of Pinocchio should serve as a warning to our Prime Minister of what happens when you lie.  The British people are patient and forbearing but they are not to be mocked and, when their patience runs out, justice follows as day follows night!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby