The prospect of a President of Europe and what the role is, or should be, has been overwhelmed by whether or not Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair wants, or will get, the job. There has been little or no debate on the purpose of the post, because the Lisbon treaty which would create it is so opaque about its definition, as so many parts of such European Union documents tend, deliberately, to be.
Ostensibly, the post is designed to streamline the clumpy, six-monthly rotation of the presidency of the European Council between the 27 member states and to give the EU a single, united voice on the world stage.
The debate among the EU political elite in Brussels focuses around one question: does the EU want a celebrity figure with assumed authority to speak on equal terms with Barack Obama in Washington or Hu Jintao in Beijing, somebody in the words of Foreign Secretary David Miliband who can “stop the traffic” in the world’s capitals; or does it need a figure of quieter diplomacy who can be relied upon to be a uniting figure within the EU and whose name may not yet be a household name?
It is clear Mr Blair fulfils only one of those options. So assuming, after the ritualistic, secret calibrating of his chances of getting the job persuades him actually to go for it, would he be the right person for the job? The answer must be no. Both his record and his style should rule him out.
Mr Blair would shape the post into his own image, bolstering his own celebrity and transforming the presidency into a symbolic power that would be divisive throughout the EU, not least in a Britain which remains stubbornly ambiguous, to say the least, about the power of EU institutions.
But the more conclusive disqualifications lie in Mr Blair’s CV and they point to a question of trust. Under his premiership, the British people were denied a referendum on the development of the EU project which had been promised to them in an election manifesto, yet at the same time Mr Blair’s Government eschewed much of the progressive social legislation that was coming out of Brussels, keeping Britain out of the euro at the same time.
On the international front – which is where President Blair would stand – Prime Minister Blair subordinated the national interest to the military interests of a President in Washington, made a mockery of the Commons and took Britain into an illegal war and, because of it, onto a collision course with most of Europe. His role as peace envoy in the Middle East has produced nothing more notable than a damning silence on the destruction of Gaza.
The idea of an unelected President Blair slipping into a reserved seat in the front row of the disconnected global political elite after amassing a personal wealth on the basis of a premiership which sowed the seeds for the current recession and jobless numbers should rightly outrage and appal anyone who cares about political morality and the unity of Europe.
