In an astounding act of collective self-harm, EU leaders have chosen the perfect partnership of mediocrity and disappointment to be their Council President and Foreign Affairs representative. The appointments managed to surprise and disappoint everybody in every country of every political persuasion. The Guardian and the Daily Mail’s front pages called it “the great EU [...]
We’ll kick off EuropeWeek with the biggest topic in British-European policy; The Lisbon Treaty. Let’s look at how it’s been handled rather than what it entails; we’ll save that one for later. In 2004, the European Union underwent a “Big Bang” enlargement and added 10 Eastern European countries to its membership list. Meanwhile, the Convention [...]
Tony Blair would make a good candidate for “President of Europe”, a new post created by the treaty approved by EU leaders at their Lisbon summit. The reasoning behind this is that the job will enable the EU to function more efficiently and to enjoy greater unity as Europe will have a face, principally that [...]
Gordon Brown, for all his shortcomings, is an exceptionally fortunate politician. For a while, it seemed as though the Iron Chancellor was invincible; he dealt with floods, terrorists and foot-and-mouth disease all in his first week. More importantly though, unlike throughout the Blair years, media scandals are all speculation with little tribulation; the press has [...]
