Last week’s announcement of a closer link between Germany and France was in part, I suspect, a recognition that Brussels’ plans for a deeper, more ‘federal’ EU were running into difficulty. Such a move was also bound to provoke a reaction – and now it has. London and Warsaw (Poland will be joining the EU next year) seem to be agreeing a common negotiating front on at least some aspects of the proposed EU ‘constitution,’ something that probably increases the chances that this unlovely document will end up where it belongs – in the trash