Decay at Doha: 'ambition' was strictly a one-way street."

EU demands Australia be biased toward it in its’ favor, and accuses it of bias.

Mr Mandelson said the EU was used to "ritualistic abuse", but until "we see everyone, all the negotiating partners being asked to the table and to demonstrate some sort of flexibility, we're really going to be no further forward".

Mr Vaile rejected the accusation of bias towards the US and said Australia had always been "very ambitious as far as market access on agriculture is concerned".

So Aus self-interest is somehow a pro-US bias. That’s a new twist on reality. The subject isn’t even the US here, it’s EU trade restrictions on Australian goods.

"The European Union's offer to cut agricultural tariffs by 51 percent might sound reasonable, but its tariffs are so high that it would make very little difference. Carve-outs for sensitive products would have weakened the result further," he continued.

Australian trade officials see the EU for what they have mutated into: the worst of their own citizens – fearful, needy, and whining.

Referring to the US, which last month refused to put further concessions on the table arguing that both the EU and developing countries were not giving it enough incentives to do so, the farm commissioner said "I am afraid to say that, for some of our trade partners, 'ambition' was strictly a one-way street."

"They understood ambition only in terms of demanding concessions from others, not offering them", she said.

Let’s not forget that magic Euro-wand that works with lefty ideologs far and wide too.

Labor's trade spokesman Kevin Rudd said Mr Downer seemed to have forgotten that his job involved diplomacy.

He wouldn’t be saying that if he DID some sort of labour himself which resulted in something that can’t be exported to that devine spit of land on the western end of Asia, of course – but surely it feels good to beat Howard or Downer over the head with.

The fuse is lit!