Can a country be excluded from membership of the European Union? The answer is no. Does a non-ratification of a treaty by a single member state prevent a treaty from entering into force? The answer is yes. Both answers are as true as they are meaningless. I guess that I must have caused some consternation last week, when I wrote that it was possible to exclude a country from the EU as long as there was a political will. Let me explain today how this can be done, in all its gory detail.

For a start, we are not at this point, nor are we going to be at this point soon. There is a serious political process under way to persuade the Irish to hold a second referendum. The Franco-German decision to link further EU enlargement to ratification of the Lisbon treaty should not be underestimated. It serves as a reminder that simply reverting to the Nice treaty is not the risk-free option that some people had hoped. It was one of the Irish No campaign’s most reassuring lies. Peter Ludlow, head of the European Strategy Forum, the debating group, tells me the standoff is likely to come to a head in the middle of next year, when we have reached the final stages of the accession negotiations with Croatia.