Times columnist’s dangerous naivety

Dateline: 17th February 2001

In describing the European Commission’s President at his luncheon with the British press (The Times, 16th February) Matthew Parris found Signor Prodi (by far the most dangerous euro-federalist ever to run the European Commission) “damned reasonable”, “more a professor than a prince”, “genial…. thoughtful, palpably earnest”.

How this reminded me of a gentle old professor of English (like Prodi he “loved this country”) who on my first day as a lecturer at a German University took me to lunch. He was also genial and earnest. Like Prodi, he also admired Magna Carta and was very keen on a “united Europe”.

Unfortunately he turned out to have been one of the Nazi Party’s leading academic ideologues and, no doubt due to his “love for this country”, had been pencilled in as a Gauleiter to help run Britain after the glorious victory of that other great admirer of the British – Adolf Hitler.

Matthew Parris is always amusing, but let us not laugh ourselves into that very State against which we fought two world wars.