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Cardinal Danneels of Brussels, one of the most addle-pated compromisers in the Catholic world and an absolute disaster as shepherd of the Catholic Belgians, has finally resigned. And the man nominated in his place by the Pope is a living expression of the weary frustration with which Danneels' time in office must have been regarded in the Vatican. Indeed, it is also a slap in the face of the Belgian government and its culture of PC consensus. Two years ago, Andre-Mutien Leonard, then Bishop of Namur, was seriously threatened with prosecution for explaining homosexuality in Freudian terms (explicitly quoting Freud) as a regressive attitude. Ordinarily, whatever the value of the person himself, the Vatican would not promote a man who has so recently clashed with the media and political leadership of his country to such a position; evidently they must feel that there is nothing left to gain in propitiating the Belgian establishment.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys. In order to make sure of their own Opel factories, Germany destroyed the Fiat bid for the Opel-Vauxhall company, broke European law with enormous state subsidies, and, even more inexcusably, brought in the Russians, who are not our friends and who have quite enough influence in our continent already. Now GM have decided that they are not selling at all, and that they will restructure their European operation instead; which, in the present circumstances of high Euro and low GB pound, means thousands of jobs going in Germany, and few or none in Britain. Germany really must learn some time that brute self-serving attitudes such as they showed throughout this saga are self-defeating. There is a place for honour in international relations, and if you show none, none will be shown to you.