Is the EU now stable - or just a stable?

The Roman Emperor, Caligula, had a horse called Incitatus whom he kept in ostentatious luxury. The horse slept in a stable of marble, ate oats mixed with gold flakes and had a manger made of ivory. To complete his pampering, he had a collar of precious stones and was. apparently, waited on by a team of eighteen servants. At one point during his reign, Caligula proposed to make Incitatus a Consul, to demonstrate his contempt for the members of the Roman Senate.
Last night, 27 or so politicians and their assorted hangers-on gathered around a table and appointed a new Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Sorry, I'll rephrase that, what they appointed was a new President of the European Council, a nonentity of a Belgian to whose insignifcant shoulders Angela Merkle and Nicolas Sarkosy had already attached reins, the better to control him.
Like Incitatus, Herman van Rompuy, the new President will be kept in luxury. He will have advisors by the score, limousines and jets at his command and luxuriously appointed living and working quarters. He will probably even have the equivalent of his own Pratorian Guard to keep him safe from disgruntled Little Englanders and other assorted Europhobes. But, despite all the trappings, he will be as powerless as Caligula's horse. Real power will still be vested in little Nicky, lumpy Angela and the bureaucrats of the EU Commission.
At his side when he ventures abroad will be the august figure of the new High Representative; a title only previously encountered in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Catherine Ashton - for it is she -is such a nonentity that our dyslexic prime Minister called her Ashdown several times during an interview.
The pair's combined anonymity is being touted as a demonstration that The EU project is becalmed, or even dead in the water. The people pushing this view are life-long Europhiles and that tends to set the alarm bells ringing. These are the same people who, for years, poo-poohed any suggestions that we were moving inexorably towards a federal Europe. After a while, it was easy to tell when they were lying; their lips were moving. Now they wish us to believe that the appointment of two nonentities signifies how reluctant the assorted prime ministers, presidents etc who make up the Council are to relinquish the reins of power. Several have declared the whole business as undemocratic. That is so post-ironic it's almost non-ferrous.

The truth is that the reins may be attached to the new incumbents; but it is only a temporary measure. Like Caligula's horse, the two appointees are there to express an idea; to put flesh on the bones of two rather vague functions. Once people have grown accustomed to the reality of a de facto president and foreign minister representing the EU around the world, Mr van Rompuy and Ms. Ashtone will be eased into touch and replaced by some suitably big-hitting career politicians. When that day arrives, democracy in the UK will be a distant memory.