The real masterpiece of mischievous celestial wit is, as you may have guessed, Silvio Berlusconi. To place such a creature in charge of a major European economy at any time would have been a bold comic touch (too broad for my taste, with the sub‑’Allo ’Allo! national stereotyping, but each to their own). However, to allow Berlo dominion over the country on which the health of the global economy (notwithstanding the Munichean piece of paper waved in Brussels early on Thursday morning) will depend… well, you have to doff the cap at such divinely droll timing, and say bravo, Creator, bravo. Bravissimo.  The proud new papa is almost literally a clown. With the sad, wide eyes and beaky nose, he could be the love child of Mr Punch and Marcel Marceau. I like to picture him in a glass box doing that mime nonsense with the ascending hands while mouthing “saucissons, saucissons”. Vain, paranoid, shouty and rude (his rebuke to David Cameron was a grave affront to British sensibilities, however well-deserved), he would in any other age be the Continent’s top-ranked standing (on tiptoes) joke. Thanks to the protective shade cast by the Italian Rapscallion, he is very nearly taken seriously.  If the above reads like Little Englander discourtesy, let it be stated by way of redressing the balance that the solid, competent Mrs Merkel comes closer than anyone to honouring the saw “Cometh the hour, cometh the man”. The dumpy hausfrau from the east is the exception to the prevailing paradox throughout the ailing free world that the stature of leaders stands in directly inverse proportion to the size of the challenge they face.  Sadly, Mr Cameron has started to look comically tiny himself. The shock of the backbench rebellion has stretched the skin of his face, making his cheeks pinker and shinier than ever. With a foolish bald-spot-hiding parting, he was the spit of The Beano’s Lord Snooty as he vainly tried to muscle in on the big kids’ chats in Brussels the other night. When Sarko refused to look round at him while they shook hands, it put “Yo Blair” in its place. Perhaps if the Government ever tires of being in the path of the euro tsunami without having any say in how to build the tidal barrier, and decides to have a coherent foreign policy once again, he won’t appear quite such an irrelevant pygmy.  Almost wherever you look in the free world today, you find satire posing as reality, and reality TV contestants as global statesmen. Ireland’s presidential favourite until an 11th-hour-debate implosion was a star of their version of Dragon’s Den, while the roster of candidates pitted Eurovision songbird Dana against Martin McGuinness. That isn’t top level politics. That’s a mescaline addict’s proposal for the new Ant’n’Dec vehicle (a hearse, in this case) I’m a Celebrity… Shoot Me in the Kneecaps or Sing Me to Death!  Over in the US, meanwhile, the last Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, cited Gaddafi’s downfall as a warning to Vladimir Putin and the Chinese leadership of what may befall them – no really, he said that – while current wannabe Rick Perry revived the Birther lunacy with an admiring reference to Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the GOP’s national polling continues to be led by the affable but transcendently clueless pizza salesman Herman Cain.  What the hell is going on? God alone knows, but whatever it is I trust He is enjoying the fruits of his wit. For the rest of us, so an ominous feeling in my bones insists, the laughter stocks will not hold out for long.
Gone are the statesmen of stature – today’s leaders are a motley set of    lechers and buffoons.