Stop Blair: ambition to lead Europe hits fierce opposition

Tony Blair's hopes of becoming the first ever president of Europe are running into mounting opposition with the Germans leading the way to express how unhappy they would be should such a prospect ever come to fruition.

"There was surprise in Berlin when Blair's name came up so soon," said a European ambassador. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany admires Blair and has "great personal sympathy for Tony", he added.

"But more generally the German political elite would be puzzled by the idea of Tony Blair. His track record on EU matters is not so great. There is unease about a Briton at the top in that job. And then personally with Blair, there's the Iraq thing."

Sources close to Merkel confirmed her opposition. "He made a lot of fine speeches about Europe but, essentially, stood on the sidelines when it came to concrete steps forward," they said.

It would be ludicrous for Blair to be appointed as Europe's first President. For one, and I say this as a Brit, our relationship with Europe has always been skewered by our relationship with the United States, with the Iraq war proving more clearly than anything else that - when it comes to a straightforward choice between the US and Europe - Britain has an almost default position to side with the United States.

Now, whilst Europe clearly does not seek to find itself in opposition to the United States, it nevertheless sees itself as an independent partner. That independence would be fatally undermined with the appointment of a man who has been nicknamed George Bush's "poodle".

And Blair's candidacy is further undermined by the kind of person who is proposing him.

Praising Blair as "the most European of Englishmen", President Nicolas Sarkozy of France first threw the Briton's name into the ring last October. Blair has chosen not to dispel the reports of his candidacy.

Sarkozy is famous for aligning himself with Bush and defrosting France's relationship with the United States after the Iraq war. He's hardly the man to convince you that Blair has Europe's best interests at heart or that Blair would stand up for European interests when they did not coincide with American ones.

"The feeling here about Blair is that he never stuck his neck out for Europe," said a senior official in Brussels. "All the political risk he took was transatlantic, always towards Washington, never for Europe. His chances are dim. Merkel is against."

The opposition to Blair feeds on his commitment to the Iraq war, Britain's high rates of Euroscepticism, the government's half-hearted ambivalence towards the EU and Gordon Brown's battles over the past six months to exclude the UK from several key elements of the Lisbon treaty by "defending Britain's red lines" against the rest of Europe.

"This is a treaty that marks quite a serious drift by the UK away from the EU," said a second senior EU official.

"It would certainly help a country to get the job if it decided to opt in," said Hans-Gert Pöttering, the German European parliament head, implicitly criticising Britain's "opt out" of common policy areas such as the euro single currency, the Schengen border-free zone of 24 European states, and other parts of the new treaty.

I would hope his candidacy is dead in the water as I think he is simply a dreadful person for the job. The last thing Europe needs is a president who thinks the most important function of his job is that the United States should never be isolated, even when the US is engaged in blatant unilateralism, which was Blair's position prior to the Iraq war.

If the United States wants to plough a lonely path - as it was blatant Bush was going to concerning Iraq - it is not the responsibility of Europe to provide a fig leaf of respectability, which was essentially how Blair defined the British position.

The Europeans are now punishing him for this. Good for them.

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Tags: Blair, European presidency, Iraq war, Merkel, Sarkozy