Two EU bureaucrats copped off in a toilet? Marvellous, I say

This is a significant development in the European debate. On the rare occasions that sexiness has been mentioned in the same breath, it has invariably been with the prefix “un-”

The Sun never has a good word to say about the European Union (Reuters)

The Lex Building is not the ugliest building in Brussels. That, among stiff competition, would be Bloc A of the Europa Building, although others may have their own favourites. The Lex is itself a curved reflective glass high-rise, about a dozen or so storeys high, and you would not have thought that such an edifice, or the view from it, would encourage concupiscent thoughts among those employed within it. Rather the reverse, if anything – after all, is not European bureaucracy meant to be faceless, and therefore incapable of stimulating desire?

And yet it has managed just that, with the news yesterday that two Germans – possibly interpreters – were caught in congress, and not the dull kind of congress, in a locked toilet cubicle, enjoying what The Sun felt moved to describe (in the words of a possibly made-up “laughing EU source”) as “a bit of how’s your Fatherland”.

This is a significant development in the European debate. On the rare occasions that sexiness has been mentioned in the same breath, it has invariably been with the prefix “un-”. And, indeed, the architecture of this part of Brussels, especially when seen on a grey, drizzly day, with David Cameron banging on in the background – sorry, I mean, using all the eloquence at his command trying to extract meaningless concessions in order to bolster his campaign to keep the UK in Europe – is not the kind of mise-en-scène one would expect to give rise to carnal thoughts.

Also, from what I know about interpreters, which is admittedly not a huge amount, I would have thought that they would have other things on their minds instead. Simultaneous translation is a hugely involving business, and leaves little opportunity or time, let alone cerebral bandwidth, for erotic reverie.

Then again, human beings do have this wonderful capacity for inappropriate behaviour. Poe called it “the imp of the perverse”, and I once went out for a long time with a woman whose pleasure in visiting country churches was, she admitted, enhanced by the rude things she felt like doing in them. I also recall a particularly splendid encounter in a quiet corner of a well-known central London library which I had better not name, although that was after in impromptu boozy lunch at a restaurant round the corner well-known for its oysters, which may have had something to do with it (although, as I recall, I had the whitebait).

But the true significance of this story is that The Sun is the paper that has run it. (Mail Online borrowed it too, referring to an “elicit encounter”, a howler that The Sun’s subs would never have made.)

As we all know, this populist mouthpiece of the Murdoch empire never has a good word to say about the European Union; and the subtext of this story, whose veracity I suspect hangs by a thread in the first place, is that Eurocrats are not only obsessed with straightening our cucumbers, so to speak, but they are irresponsible, even when on the job, so to speak, and that we would do well to withdraw, so to speak, from the whole project.

And yet if there is another subtext to a huge number of Sun stories, it is that sex is both naughty and desirable; reprehensibly human. And when one considers three of the four main figureheads of the anti-Europe movement – Nigel Farage, George Galloway and Michael Gove – one sees, even with the most accommodating eye, the least sexy men in the whole of the British Isles (and Boris’s appeal has always been a mystery to me). Could it be that The Sun is coming round to a pro-European position? So to speak?