Mexican chat dance as Bill bores for Britain

Let us praise the indomitable spirit of William Cash MP. When Britain finally casts off the European yoke, and becomes free once more, Sir James Goldsmith will cause medals to be struck bearing the slightly perplexed features of the member for Stafford. For the billionaire leader of Forza Britannia will know that Cash has kept the flame of liberty burning, whence all others had fled.

Today Bill's metamorphosis is almost complete: in his larval stage he was a mild obsessive, became a dinner party bore, progressed to anorak, sojourned as standing joke, rose to rebellion, is now hailed by his entire family as a visionary and - at last - stands ready to be garlanded as victor. History will judge him to have been Britain's Braveheart, our William Wallace. Through persistence and bravery he has gathered a growing band of patriots and berserkers, ready to fight and die politically for their country.

But as yesterday's ten minute Bill debate on a European referendum showed, Mr Cash is an unlikely leader. Where some inspire through rhetoric, Mr Cash wears down through adjectival inevitability. So, burned out by an early and uncharacteristically colourful allusion to "surfing the tidal wave of federalism", he quickly reverted to "central, unelected authority" and "remote and unrepresentative European Parliament".

He reminded me of those old members of the Militant Tendency who could never speak of newspapers, but always of "the capitalist press". Eventually your conditioned synapses automatically make the connections and you are partly theirs.

True, the Cash way is boring and works slowly. Such is the lack of urgency and passion that he he could walk into a packed meeting of Neurotics Anonymous and shout "fire!" only to see his audience start chatting relaxedly amongst themselves.

But where once he toiled alone and friendless, today he is well supported with the considerable benefit of lots of dosh from the mysterious Goldsmith.

This financial arrangement is a mixed blessing. Irritatingly for Mr Cash it casts him in the role of John the Baptist to Jimmy's Saviour (though it is hard to imagine a modern day Salome getting off on Bill's severed head). Thus Mr Cash, for all his prophetic gifts, merely gives us a taste of what is to come.

And what might that be? Mr Goldsmith was variously talked about in the Chamber as a "French MEP living in Mexico", a "foreign politician" who had made his money from selling groceries and - finally - a "Mexican grocer". Images of Sir James, his mad blue eyes staring out from between a sombrero and a Zapata moustache selling beef enchiladas to unwilling Germans, roiled around my brain. As did this question: if he were not a billionaire, would he be invited to meetings of the Conservative Philosophy Group (prop. J. Aitken) and effectively supported by a third of the backbench Tory party? Or would he be forced to stand outside the member's entrance, next to the anti-vivisectionists, waving his placard as those same MPs' limousines spattered him with mud? Which proves that Cash talks.