The Riga Conference is a jewel in the crown of security conferences. Yesterday I shared a panel with the Italian, Latvian and Norwegian defense ministers, together with Ambassador Sandy Vershbow, NATO’s US Deputy Secretary-General to discuss “NATO post-Chicago”. Did something happen in Chicago? I must have missed it.

Each time I enter NATO’s sprawling complex I cannot help but think of doomed British film producer Lord Grade. Having staked his future on one of Hollywood’s great flops, “Raise the Titanic”, he lamented afterwards that it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic than raise the Titanic.

They call it the ‘Davos of the East’, the Krynica Economic Forum. It must be a mark of Europe’s desperate economic straits that I have been invited to speak at this huge economics conference.

Nothing makes my blood boil more than recently retired senior government officials suddenly changing their story once retired. Earlier this year I was excoriated for suggesting that our troops were dying in Afghanistan for want of a meaningful political strategy and to avoid the political embarrassment of leaders.

It is clearly intelligence-led. President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron have said that any recourse to chemical weapons by Damascus would be “completely unacceptable” and would lead the US and UK to “revisit their approach” to the crisis.

In an article yesterday in London's Sunday Telegraph, British Prime Minister David Cameron hinted at a possible in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. “Let us start to spell out in more detail the parts of our European engagement we want and those we want to end”, Cameron urged.

Cicero, that great defender of the Roman Republic and implacable opponent of those that would abuse power in the name of the people once said, “Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscene than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system”.

It is beginning. The Euro end game is upon us. Last night President Hollande said at the G-Empty summit in Los Cabos that the bail-out fund should be used to ease the cost of Spanish and Italian borrowing. This is leader-speak for telling us all that the contagion that started with Greece and spread to Spain has now reached Italy.