Crossing borders and impregnable boundaries

What a sweet moment it was when at noon yesterday I walked into 32 Smith Square, a stone's throw from the Palace of Westminster.
For all my political life it was the building known as Central Office, the headquarters of the Conservative Party. But, in a cost-cutting move, they have transferred to Millbank Tower, home of the Labour Party during the 1997 election.
That was a good joke but not half as good as what has happened to their former HQ. It is now the London headquarters of the European Commission and, to make it even more rib-achingly funny, it has been renamed Europe House.
So the building from which the assault on Britain's place in the EU has been masterminded - and which was the site of the iconic photo of Margaret Thatcher waving triumphantly out of a window on the night of her 1983 election victory - now hosts the eurocrats and europhiles who the Tories so despise.
I was there for the monthly meeting of the Association of European Journalists and our guest was Edward McMillan-Scott, for more than two decades a Conservative MEP but kicked out of the party for being pro-European.
He believes that the apparent conversion of Cameron and Hague to support for the EU is a facade forced on them by the realities of office. He revealed the ways in which the UK is now sidelined and isolated by the Tories being outside the mainstream EPP group - something you never hear about from the British media, naturally.
The conversion of Conservative Central Office to Europe House is highly amusing. But there is nothing else funny about what is happening to this country's relationship with Europe.