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Labour has spent the last week gurning about how unlucky it is with the media, the political weather and much else. But now comes proof that Lady Luck favours no one: it was not, despite the claims of some Tories, anything other than bad luck for David Cameron that the Irish vote on Europe coincided with the start of his conference. And so, here we go, back to the future.

It seems half a lifetime ago that Westminster was boiling with abstruse-sounding rows about Maastricht, sovereignty and weighted voting systems, with Tory MPs hurling abuse at each other. Yet with the Irish vote removing the last major obstacle to the Lisbon treaty, it's hard to see how David Cameron can avoid returning to the blood-soaked old battlefield. The Czechs and the Poles haven't signed up yet, but...