Hey, Dave and George -- here's a joke for you

There's an old joke -- a VERY old joke -- about a Pope who decides to go out on the streets of Rome to plead with sinners. He walks around telling the hookers to get off the streets and mend their ways, and hectoring the johns to go home to their wives. Finally one of the putanas has had enough and marches up to the Pope, yelling, "Hey, Papa, you no play-a da game, you no make-a da rules!"

Someone needs to tell David Cameron and George Osborne that joke, and hope they get the message. It's remarkable to see them throwing their weight around as the crucial EU summit meeting gets underway, demanding that the beleaguered Eurozone gets its act together and finds a long-term solution to the debt crisis, and warning that British interests must be taken into account in any decisions that get made. Once the UK opted, over a decade ago (correctly, one must now reluctantly admit) to stay out of the single currency, it largely forfeited the right to tell the Eurozone members how to conduct their business.

It's not as if, in their role as self-appointed advisors, Dave and George are speaking from a position of particular virtue. The UK has a higher budget deficit than almost all the countries it presumes to advise -- in 2010 only Ireland and Greece performed worse, and in Greece's case the difference was marginal. The UK's recovery ran out of puff sooner than those of the major EU economies, and of course inflation in the UK is rising at a much higher rate than in the Eurozone. President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel and the rest of them will surely be sorely tempted to tell Dave and George where to stick their advice, though no doubt, unlike the hooker in Rome, they'll do so in the most diplomatic way possible.

If Cameron and Osborne are not to be shamed into silence by the facts, you might think they'd want to keep quiet in view of the looming House of Commons vote calling for a referendum on the UK's participation in the EU. But of course, the need to put on a show of machismo for the Tory Eurosceptics is probably exactly why they've decided to large it up at the Summit.

UPDATE, 24 October: Looks like I was wrong about Sarkozy and Merkel being diplomatic. This from The Guardian: Sarkozy bluntly told Cameron: "You have lost a good opportunity to shut up." He added: "We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings." Go, Sarko!