The Blair witch-hunt project

Although many get indigestion at the thought of Tony Blair as EU President, his potential appointment might be a blessing in disguise

By Joe Miller

Such is the strength of sentiment against Tony Blair in Britain today, I feel I must preface this article with a disclaimer. I am not about to defend Blair or venerate him in any way. I agree with many of the criticisms levelled at the former PM, and I am not unsympathetic to the charge that he lied to, or deliberately withheld information from, the British public in the lead up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, I do feel that the campaign to stop Blair attaining the soon to be established position of EU President is deeply misguided.

No matter which side of the political spectrum you approach this issue from, it has to be admitted that the European Union is not the world force its founders hoped it would be. For an economic and political union representing almost 500 million people, its voice on the international stage is muted and its impact on global affairs is limited. This is due to a variety of factors that are too numerous and complex to be discussed in detail, but some of the broader issues are rather straightforward. The constant renaming, repositioning and reforming of the EU has definitely not helped it gain the reputation it so craves. The failure to gain a consensus on vital issues has also proven a barrier to global recognition.
However, most analysts will agree that the failure of the EU is, at

least in part, due to an image problem. It is not that the EU does not have sufficient power – its economic power alone is a force to be reckoned with – it’s just that people like Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden simply will never generate any sort of ‘buzz’. With the position of President created by the Lisbon treaty, the EU finally has a chance to appoint someone who will ‘wow’ the world stage. That someone is Tony Blair.
Whatever your opinion of Blair’s politics, he is someone who genuinely does ‘stop traffic’ around the globe. Many mock his current role as the Quartet’s Envoy to the Middle East, accusing him of being ineffectual and doing nothing to further peace in the region. In fact, Blair is doing precisely what the Quartet (America, the UN, Russia and the EU) sent him there to do. He is there to support the numerous NGO’s working towards developing the infrastructure of a Palestinian state whilst also ensuring that the socio-economics of both Israel and Palestine are in a position to support a two-state solution. He is invaluable as an international ‘face’ for these organisations, and his contribution is immensely constructive. In just the same way Blair would, as President of the EU, provide the ‘face recognition’ Europe so desperately needs.
There isn’t another country in the entire European Union that would not support a candidate from their own country for the EU presidency – regardless of the candidates’ political affiliation. It is simply bizarre that the Tories feel that Britain will be better represented in Europe with an EU president from Luxembourg or Belgium. (Perhaps they prefer their far-right Polish EU ally Michal Kaminski for the job, a man whose deeply homophobic and anti-Semitic past does not seem to cause them any distress). For a party constantly concerned with the increasing power of the EU, they seem remarkably calm about forgoing the chance to ensure British interests are represented at the highest level.
Vaclav Claus of the Czech Republic this week signed the Lisbon Treaty and the EU is in a position to finally gain the reputation it deserves, and resist what Gordon Brown called ‘permanent irrelevance’. Unfortunately, it seems increasingly unlikely that it will utilise this unique opportunity.