THE greed of some of the European Union grandees did not get the bad publicity it deserves.

The latest issue is the case of the European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker spending £24,000 on a private jet for a one-night trip to Rome.

And this is but a tiny fraction of the scandal.

Campaigners who want to unearth the whole sordid story have been told by the Commission that they cannot disclose other expenses because of the “excessive administration burden”, claiming it is already “one of the most controlled organisations in the world”.

Don’t make me laugh. The auditors have refused to sign off the EU’s finances for more than a decade now – and no one seems to bat an eyelid.

This is an outrageous state of affairs which makes the expenses misdeeds of UK MPs seem puny by comparison.

CAN you picture the scene: A contrite Theresa May on the stool of penitence pleading forgiveness at the forthcoming Conservative Party conference for her catastrophic misjudgement in calling last June’s general election?

Personally, I don’t see it like that. I expect her to make some kind of apology to the party’s activists, but she is not, as some commentators are suggesting, a groveller.

It is far more likely that she is a PM who, although not attempting to sweep this miscalculation under the carpet, will be more interested in looking forward rather than holding painful inquests on past mistakes.

DAVID Miliband, once the favourite to win the Labour Party leadership, is beaten by his own brother. So he quits Parliament and flies off to the United States to take a megapaid job heading an international charity.

Now, he describes the pro-Brexit vote at the referendum as “an unparalleled act of economic self-harm”. If he believes that, why didn’t he stay on and fight his corner?

Just asking.

YOU would have been justified in thinking that after their relative success in the Brexit referendum last year, Ukip would have become a thriving, even possibly influential, party. But no.

Things have gone from bad to worse, to an utter shambles for them. The party is riddled with personal animosities, friction and political blood-letting.

At this rate, it seems likely to collapse into a heap of smoking dust at our feet.

Indeed, that prospect is now seen in some quarters as inevitable.

The latest chaotic event is the resignation of Mike Hookem, as the party’s deputy whip in the European Parliament.

This is, he says, because Anne Marie Waters, who founded the Sharia Watch pressure group and has called Islam “evil”, has been allowed to stand in Ukip’s leadership election.

David Cameron seems to have got it right when he dismissed Ukip’s membership as “fruitcakes”. This now ludicrous outfit has certainly provided us with a textbook masterclass in how not to run a political party.