Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

That beacon of British academic brilliance, Timothy Garton Ash, writes the cover story of this week's New Statesman. Entitled "The banality of the good", it's an optimistic view of a Europe whose relationship with the United States is based on friendship and not the kind of bitterness that Habermas and Derrida wish to foster. Recalling that last week's lead story in the New Statesman was headed "How to stop America", Garton Ash states:

"I don't want to live in a Europe that is trying to build its identity by asking itself how to stop America. It's hopeless, because to define yourself against the US will not unite Europe — it will split it down the middle, as we saw over the Iraq war. It split governments, with France, Germany and Belgium on one side, and most of the rest on the other. It split public opinion, with most people against war and against Bush, but certainly not against America. To be European today is, whether we like it or not (and I do like it), to be deeply intertwined with America — culturally, socially, economically, intellectually, politically. Why cut off your nose to spite your face? Why define yourself by who you are against, rather than by what you are for?"

TO THE DEEPLY Europeanised anti-European, the pinstriped Tory Eurosceptic "who has a house in Tuscany, is an expert on French wines and knows a great deal more about Wagner operas than Chancellor Gerhard Schr? does", and the deeply Americanised anti-American such as "the ageing German anti-American peace campaigner, whose inspirations are Woodstock, Joan Baez and not the German Martin Luther but the American Martin Luther King", Garton Ash says:

"You may retort that George W Bush was not elected by a majority, even of that minority of all adult US citizens who bothered to vote in the latest presidential elections; that the president of the European Commission was not elected by anyone at all; and that, therefore, it's a bad joke to talk of either the current US presidency or the European Commission presidency as 'representative institutions'. Yet America's highest courts and political institutions have accepted, however reluctantly, that Bush is the legitimate, elected president, and European institutions do represent, however imperfectly, a voluntary, law-based association of democracies. So the distinction soon gets blurred."

IN BETWEEN THESE CHOICE BITS, there are delightful observations such as this one about Oxford cafe English: "It's what is now called Elf — which, in case you're wondering, is not the language of the Elves invented by Oxford's own J R R Tolkien, but English as Lingua Franca." And then there's this truly excellent anecdote:

"In the Cafe Orange on the Oranienburgerstrasse, in the now trendy heart of what used to be East Berlin, I talk to a guy dressed in T-shirt, sandals and designer sunglasses. An old '68er, he is sharply critical of the current policies of the Bush administration. At one point he leans forward and says, teasingly: 'Don't you think we need a new Boston tea party?' Surely, he jokes, the Boston tea party was good for relations between Britain and America — in the long term. When he gets up to leave, I notice that he puts on a black baseball cap advertising 'American Eagle'. 'Ja,' he says, 'das habe ich in Boston gekauft.' ('I bought it in Boston.')"

And who was the German? Why, none other than the country's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer. But he was only joking that the time has come to overthrow the US government, wasn't he? Just wondering, like. After all, he is being tipped for the post of EU foreign minister and it would be comforting to know that such a person represented the views of the majority of Europeans, those of us Garton Ash properly describes as being "deeply Americanised".

Diarist of the day: John Evelyn , 16 June 1670

"I was forc'd to accompanie some friends to the Bear-garden where was Cock fighting, Dog-fighting, Beare and Bull baiting, it being a famous day for all these butchery Sports, or rather barbarous cruelties: the Bulls did exceedingly well but the Irish Wolfe dog, exceeded, which was a tall Gray-hound a stately creature in deede, who beate a cruell Mastife: One of the Bulls tossed a Dog full into a Ladys lap, as she sate in one of the boxes at a Considerable height from the Arena: There were two poore dogs killed; and so all ended, and I most heartily weary, of rude and dirty passetimes, which I had not seene I think in twenty yeares before."