THE disgraceful way in which the EU bully-boys treated the Prime Minister at the Salzburg summit last week will have won her some sympathy from her Tory Brexit critics – but that sympathy will not morph into support for her Chequers proposals.

But it does signal a far more belligerent approach towards the stubborn and grasping EU negotiators. Dominic Raab, the splendidly outspoken Brexit Secretary, has served notice that Britain will not be dictated to by Brussels.

In short, the deplorable behaviour of the EU leaders, which was insulting to the UK as well as the Prime Minister, may well have been a blessing – in that the UK is already serving notice that it will not tolerate any more high-handedness from Brussels.

A lot, of course, depends on the response the Prime Minister receives at the Tories’ forthcoming conference in Birmingham.

I suspect it will be a lot warmer towards her than most of the Conservative anti-Brexiteers would have hoped. That should spur the Prime Minister on to demonstrate forcibly to Brussels that they cannot run rings round her or the UK. Let us hope so.

LABOUR have every right to demand an early snap general election this autumn over the Brexit debacle, but I suspect it will fall on deaf ears.

Do they really believe they will persuade Theresa May to repeat the same grave error of judgement as last year? She assumed, catastrophically, that the Tories would emerge from that snap election with a Commons overall majority in the 60s, but finished up without a majority at all.

She had foolishly ignored the advice of some of her wise advisers not to hold an unnecessary election, and had also seriously under-estimated the appeal which Jeremy Corbyn would exercise over voters.

The Prime Minister has now learnt her lesson. And Dominic Raab, Brexit Secretary, has firmly rejected the idea of an early election. However, it is more refreshing to see Labour at last attacking the party’s natural enemy the Tories – certainly at the start of its conference in Liverpool – than to see them tearing themselves to bits.

The country needs a battling Opposition, rather than one that is inward-looking and obsessed with self-harm.

POLITICIANS and their speech-writers suffer sleepless nights and spend hours of agonising,brain-wracking thinking up startling sound bytes to wow their audiences with.

So Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable and his team were patting themselves on the back when they thought up “erotic spasm”, which they thought was a marvellously derogatory description of Brexit.

But alas, as we all know, poor old Vince failed to get his tongue and his larynx around the phrase and, he spat out something which sounded like “exotic sprezm”.

He was mortified, especially as the newspapers splashed on his gaffe and paid relatively scant attention in many cases to the rest of what he regarded as a massively important speech at their party conference. It was lost as the nation roared with laughter.

Long live the political gaffe. They pinprick the pompous and give us all a good chuckle.