IT reminded me of Oscars night: “And the Prize goes to the EU for having, over six decades, contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”

Are we sure this wasn’t a spoof, the International Comedy Awards of the Year?

It’s not even as if the EU needs the money, given the billions it screws every year out of our country. Around £800,000 for a Nobel Prize-winner: loose change to the bloated bureaucrats and apparatchiks in Brussels.

What will they do with the money? It’s a good job the Nobel Prize is not awarded for conspicuous honesty and above-board dealing, for the EU has not presented annual accounts for more than a decade. You just try following its example and see what HM Customs and Revenue have to say.

The advancement of peace and reconciliation?

Last week the benighted Greeks were dressing up as Nazis to protest against Angela Merkel’s financial strictures. There is presently a standoff that reminds me of the cold war: between Germany and France and the bankrupt nations of southern Europe which these two countries are reluctantly bailing out. Well, you might say, that’s only money wars. It’s not a hot war with real slaughter. Have we forgotten so soon the Balkan wars when EU politicians stood by with their hands in their pockets while the Serbs massacred 8,000 Bosnians at Srebrenica in 1995?

The Nobel judges certainly know how to pick ’em. In 1993 they gave the peace prize to Yasser Arafat – the man whose Black September group murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. This was the same Arafat who agreed a two-states settlement with Israel at Camp David, but then returned to the Middle East, reneged on the deal and started the second violent Palestinian uprising.

In 2007 the Peace Prize was given to Al Gore. What did Al do to foster “reconciliation among the nations”? He talked a lot of hot air about climate change, based on what many regard as very dodgy science.

The UN peace-keeping forces were the recipients in 1988. But, since the UN was founded in the 1940s, these so-called peace-keepers have a record of being ineffectual: of being flown dramatically to trouble spots, unprepared, undermanned and ill-equipped. And once there to stand by impotently “observing”

which ever local war is going on.

I suppose the most laughable presentation of the prize was that to Barack Obama in 2008, the year of his election to the presidency, before he had so much as got his knees under his desk in the Oval Office. This shows a mixture of cynicism and absurdity.

Well now they have cried peace again when there is no peace. They have given the award to the corrupt and self-regarding officials of the EU who have done what Hitler failed to do with force of arms: to destroy the sovereignty of the nations who make up its membership.

As I write, I hear that that honest and creative minister, Michael Gove has said that he would like Britain to withdraw from the EU unless the superstate returns to us our national sovereignty.

Not a hope in hell, Michael.

So Mr Gove has said that he would vote against membership in a referendum. I wonder if it was the absurdity of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU which tipped him over the edge?