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A pig in a poke?

• Mark Mardell
• 20 Jun 07, 04:29 PM

The constitution will officially be "abandoned".

You read it first here. Well, maybe you didn't, but we had it first.

Crowing aside, it does seem the British government has largely got its own way, although there's a lot of detail to be settled. But Eurosceptics are pointing out that the Charter of Fundamental Rights will be legally binding and they've got on their side.

In the Commons, perhaps with the scent of victory in her nostrils, Margaret Beckett says she won't buy "a pig in a poke". Of course, opponents fear the reverse. As I understand it, they are saying it means buying a pig in a sack which might turn out to be a worthless animal like, ahem, a cat.

Eurosceptics fear that the little piggy will grow and grow until it becomes a tuskily threatening wild boar.

It will be interesting to see whether the argument stays with the detail or turns into a much more general row about Europe and the UK.

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Just a phone call

• Mark Mardell
• 20 Jun 07, 12:14 PM

That famous threesome turned out to be just a phone call. Sarkozy was going to go to Chequers for dinner with Blair and Brown. But then found his diary was full. A snub? Diplomats, ever diplomatic, "are not reading it that way”.

They stressed they agreed over the UK's red lines. He said that he was a pragmatist, who knew they had to sell it to the British people, just as he had to sell any new treaty to the French.

This is how Patrick Blower saw it for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's News at Ten:

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