In recent days I have been trying to reconcile Brian Cowen’s claim on one hand that he negotiated the Lisbon Treaty line by line with the other assertion that he hadn’t read it cover to cover, when up popped Willie O’Dea, Fianna Fail defence minister and master of the unintelligible one liners to trump his new boss.

O’Dea is reported in today’s English Times in an article by David Sharrock as describing the treaty as “more Stephen Hawking than J.K. Rowling”. The article’s title claims that “Voters in Ireland baffled by Treaty no one has read“.

So maybe the reason voters are baffled is the strange quips of government ministers. Moreover O’Dea’s familiarity with the work of Stephen Hawking puts him in the exalted company of George W Bush who claimed to have read The Stranger by Camus on his summer holiday’s last year.

Maybe there is a secret Oprah Winfrey book club chapter for state leaders and that could explain such diverse reading habits, or are Fianna Fail parliamentary party meetings cover for a secret book reading group, given that they take very few real decisions about party policy.

Sharrock’s article and an accompanying one on the Lisbon Treaty can be accessed at timesonline@co.uk.

While you are online check out an opinion column in yesterday’s English Independent titled “If only the Irish would kill the Lisbon treaty” by Adrian Hamilton. He is not that nice (or right) about Sinn Fein but the article is an interesting read.