In a neat example of government ‘spin’ in action, David Miliband’s speech today about Europe is being trailed in this morning’s Guardian.

Once upon a time it was a good enough result to get the speech reported after it had happened. That being unreliable, Labour have taken to a high art the reporting of a speech before it happens.

By giving one or other outlet an ‘exclusive’ to some of the pre-speech substance they secure positive coverage largely on the government’s own terms and, if all goes well, they may get further coverage after the speech takes place.

Two headlines for the price of one!

It of course takes a servile and idle media environment to pull this one off, time after time. But we have one, so that’s OK.

The likely speech? Miliband will praise the French for saying they are willing to reintegrate into Nato’s command structure, and will insist that a stronger European defence policy does not mean Nato stops being the cornerstone of European defence.

But he will add: "As the Balkans wars in the 1990s demonstrated, unless Europe can develop its own capabilities, it will be consigned always to wait impotently until the US and Nato are ready and able to intervene.

Huh? The Balkans wars in the 1990s demonstrated no such thing. The best available European capabilities (ie British and French) were deployed in large and flexible numbers. It was the political dithering in Washington and other capitals including ours that created so many problems. 

In any case, ever since PM Blair and President Chirac launched European Defence back in 1998, the deep problem has been that Europe wants to avoid paying for it.

Even better, pay even less. And so the gap between collective EU defence spending and US spending grows and grows.

So instead of dwelling on that failure of their own leadership and looking hard at Priorities, EU leaders prefer to fiddle with the structures.

More structure = less flexibility. By creating more ‘European’ defence we effectively give a greater say over our possible deployments to all those countries who contribute very little but have huge opinions on everything.

Will we hear one day an honest speech from a Foreign Secretary looking at substance not spin and saying something about that?