Brotherly love for the 24-hour Europeans

PERHAPS, like me, you have found this week’s Ryder Cup celebrations more than a little surreal? All those mud-splattered Brits, mainly, but not exclusively, Welsh, chanting “Europe, Europe” at Celtic Manor, while living in a nation which, with the possible exception of Greece, is the most Euro-phobic of any of the 27 member states of the EU?

It was enough to put a spring into the step of the old federalist Jacques Delors and bring on the night sweats for the editors of the Daily Mail and The Sun.

What Margaret Thatcher makes of it, or if she is even aware, we do not know. But I can guarantee that the Iron Lady, in her prime, would have had plenty to say about derogation, national sovereignty, her 1988 Bruges speech, the merits of the five iron in continental conflict, the performance of the Molinari brothers, and the role played by the likes of Luke Donald, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, and those key contributors from what she would have regarded as the Celtic fringes – Graeme McDowell, and Rory McIlroy.