The Albanian Option. It sounds like a John le Carré novel. You imagine a story with political intrigue, huge sums of money going astray, criminality and double-dealing. And you’d be right.

But the Albanian Option isn’t holiday reading fiction — it’s diplomatic fact.

Albania is on course to join the European Union — alongside four other countries, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. The already unwieldy group of 28 is due to become a throng of 33.

And Britain isn’t just backing this move. We’re paying for it.

Every week we send £350 million to the EU. And now millions of your hard-earned taxes are being directed to these five prospective members.

Between now and 2020 the United Kingdom will pay almost £2 billion to help these nations prepare for membership of the EU — that’s more than we will spend on the NHS Cancer Drugs Fund over the same period.

This bounty will be our greatest gift to Albania since the comic talent of the late Sir Norman Wisdom, that country’s improbable national hero, lit up the dark days of Stalinist dictatorship.

Indeed, I wonder if the Albanian people are now convinced that Britain’s Foreign Office is full of Norman Wisdom characters, lovable chumps whose generosity and good-heartedness make them easily gulled into accepting all sorts of bad advice.

How else could they explain their good fortune in being on the receiving end of a £2 billion Balkan bonanza?

Many British people will ask why, if we have billions to spare, it isn’t being spent on UK schools and hospitals rather than Albania and Montenegro.