Divisive Blair will harm the EU
Oct 30, 2009
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Tony Blair's ambitions to become the first EU president were dealt a blow on Tuesday. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, joined David Cameron and William Hague in voicing his opposition to Blair's candidacy, saying he was "the wrong person for the job". "Government by directive", he added, "or in his case by sofa, just does not work in the EU".
Clegg's views matter; there are seven Liberal prime ministers in the EU and he leads the largest Liberal party in Europe, say Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt in The Guardian. Blair did, however, win the backing of French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, as David Miliband lobbied his EU counterparts for the Blair candidacy.
At first glance, Blair seems unsuitable, says Mary Riddell in The Telegraph. The initial job spec "suggested a glorified planning committee chairman" rather than someone with a "flimsier grasp of detail than a hamster". But "the instincts that made him, latterly, a bad prime minister... his impatience, his grandstanding and his enthusiasm for liberal intervention would galvanise a sclerotic Europe". And he would also, as Angela Merkel believes, "be a check on Cameron's isolationism, should he win power".
Sorry, but he's too divisive a figure for a post that needs to command a consensus, says The Independent. He may see himself as a good European, but many Europeans don't, instead associating him with George Bush and Iraq. That's an understatement, says Max Hastings in The Daily Mail. "It is hard to imagine a more devastating indictment of a leader than that he took his country to war under false pretences."
But Iraq was merely the "decisive, catastrophic error" of a premiership characterised by "breathtaking cynicism" and an utter inability to "make things work". Now he's gone, recession-struck British voters grasp "the scale of his failure and betrayal". Blair has "injured almost every cause he has espoused – as he will injure the EU if its members are foolish enough to give him this job."
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