One was a little taken aback yesterday by The Times which chose to compliment David Cameron on his "rational euroscepticism". This is ... a moment for Mr Cameron's sensible approach to Europe: a firm, hard-headed europragmatism, says that paper: "The policy of being in Europe but not run by Europe is right. Quite suddenly, it is also timely."
It is fair to say, though, that Booker, in his column, does not exhibit quite the same degree of approval in his romp through the current euro crisis.
In fact, as alarming as anything in this crisis, he decides, has been the sight of our new leaders preening themselves with their list of irrelevant little "coalition policies" and babyish boasts about the "greatest democratic shake-up since the 1832 Reform Act", as if none of this was happening.
One analyst puts it that: "They are like children let loose in the sweet shop, seemingly oblivious to the horrendous reality unfolding before us," while a well-known economist (exceedingly well known) told Booker: "Bring back the days of Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown. At least they had some grasp of what is going on. This lot are just totally out of their depth."
As to the euro crisis itself, Booker notes that we are witnessing a judgment on the entire deceitful and self-deceiving way in which the "European project" has been assembled over the past 53 years. One of the most important things to understand about it, he says, is that it has only ever had one real agenda. Everything it has done has been directed to one ultimate goal, full political and economic integration.
The headline labels put on the various stages of that process may have changed over the years, such as building first a "common market", then a "single market", finally a "constitution". But by far the most important step of all was locking the member states into a single currency.
That, of course, was always a political project, yet as early as 1978, the British economist Sir Donald MacDougall reported to Brussels that it could only work if, following the US model, between 20 and 25 percent of Europe's GDP was available to enable a huge transfer of wealth from richer countries such as Germany to the poorer, more backward countries of southern Europe.
It is the absence of any mechanisms for making those transfers, of any political legitimacy which would permit them to be made, which is at the heart of this crisis. But, as Booker points out, Britain is just as seriously affected as everyone else. A system failure on this scale would make the 1930s pale into insignificance.
That is a theme picked up by Bruno Waterfield and Angela Monaghan in The Sunday Telegraph, but it is also one rehearsed by The Sunday Times - not the first paper to write of the "Great Depression Mark II".
Following a complete collapse of the euro, the world's second largest currency, Europe would fracture, we are told. Countries would adopt protectionist measures and unemployment would soar to levels not seen since the pre-war years, causing mass social unrest. It would take years to emerge from the crisis, says this paper.
This is where Booker came in with his piece, noting that easily the most telling statement by any politician last week was that from an anguished Angela Merkel. But not only did she pronounce that "the current crisis facing the euro is the biggest test Europe has faced for decades, even since the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957", she went on: "If the euro fails, Europe fails."
Merkel thus warned that the consequences for the whole of Europe would be "incalculable", which is what Booker and a whole lot of others are doing as well. I guess we really do have a problem.
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Much tutting and knowing discussion attended the comparison between the fictional television character DCI Gene Hunt and David Cameron (above), during the election campaign. Widely regarded as an "own goal" for Labour, in drawing parallels between The Boy and a popular TV detective, it now seems that the comparison might have been far more apt than could possibly have been realised – and entirely unfavourable.
In the fictional series Ashes to Ashes, Gene Hunt – the Guv – is now revealed to be a ghost – the troubled spirit of a young rookie PC, shot dead on Coronation Day in 1953. The unusual twist to the story is that Gene Hunt and his colleagues do not know they are ghosts.
Had the poster-designers known, they could perhaps have drawn attention to the other uncanny parallel ... that Cameron too is one of the undead. Certainly, David Cameron might no longer love the comparison he traded on. He is a ghost and so are all his colleagues. They just do not realise it ... yet.
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No doubt stung by the charge that he has rolled over once again on EU policy, "call me Dave" Cameron has used the opportunity of his first official visit to Berlin to talk tough on "Europe", telling Merkel that he would not support any new treaty which transferred more powers from Westminster to Brussels.
The suggestion that a new treaty might be needed, specifically to deal with the euro crisis, has emerged over the last few days, for instance in The Guardian. That paper reports seeing a German finance ministry document, setting out a series of demands which, it says, presents Cameron "with a dilemma over whether this would trigger an EU referendum in Britain."
This gave Cameron the cue to do his tough talking, faithfully recorded by The Daily Telegraph, which has him signalling that he would be "ready to veto any attempt to create a new EU treaty to shore up the ailing eurozone."
Despite Dave's determination to give it star billing, however, Merkel was at pains to play down the idea of a new treaty, stressing that it was "early days" as yet, to be considering such changes. This low-key approach was echoed by yesterday's meeting of a "taskforce" of EU finance ministers under the chairmanship of EU council president Herman Van Rompuy.
French finance minister Christine Lagarde suggested forgetting about the treaty and concentrating on the "deliverables", while her German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble, advised his colleagues to do what could be done without treaty changes and then to examine the options. Nobody was proposing any treaty changes in the short-term, said Van Rompuy.
The focus on treaty change, therefore, looks very much a preoccupation of the British media, and then one which The Boy is highlighting – for the very obvious reasons. But, apart from the need to play to his domestic audience, manning the ramparts of the Alamo is a tad premature, not least as any necessary changes might be achieved through enhanced cooperation, as modified bythe Lisbon Treaty, which would rather make the histrionics redundant.
That didn't stop little Georgie Osborne laying down the law to the colleagues about disclosure of "national budget plans" and the need for elected members of the House of Commons to be told about them first. Given that budgets are now routinely cleared with the Commission before they are publically announced, this reinforced the growing conviction that little Georgie really is as stupid as he looks.
For the time being, though, the "tough talking" is playing well enough to the gallery, sufficient at any rate to blur the details of last Wednesday's humiliation, when Osborne was obliged to accept the new rules on hedge funds, without even the opportunity to address the council meeting.
It certainly allows "Call me Dave" to tell his faithful that he is protecting the national interest, and some of them are still gullible enough to believe him ... the great "eurosceptic" who is really "engaging" with Europe and telling them what's what.
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