Melanie Phillips: If Cameron Doesn’t Stop Blair Being Shoehorned as EU President, There’ll Be No Point in Him Becoming Britain’s Prime Minister
MAIL ONLINE: By the end of the Tory party conference, which starts today in Manchester, it would come as no surprise to find that Jerusalem had been replaced by the Czech national anthem.

It appears that David Cameron is sweating on the Czech Republic to help him escape from the biggest dilemma he faces.

Now that the Irish people have had their arms twisted to deliver the required 'yes' vote on the EU's constitutional Lisbon treaty, a deeply unwelcome ball has been bounced into Cameron's court.

He has promised that Britain would hold its own referendum on the treaty - but only if it has not been ratified by every other country, and thus is not in operation, by the time he comes to power.

Ireland's 'yes' vote increases the likelihood that it will be in operation by the next General Election. Only the Poles and Czechs now stand in its way.

The Poles are said to be likely to roll over soon; the Czech constitutional court is considering whether the treaty is consistent with Czech law.

If the Czechs say no, Cameron is off the hook. The big question, however, is whether Cameron will hold a referendum if the treaty has been ratified. He ducked it again yesterday.

The Irish vote has changed nothing, he protested. Well, nothing - and everything.

Yesterday, Tory Euro-federalists and Eurosceptics were trading blows about this even before the conference had properly started.

However, those who are calling for the referendum pledge to be honoured, even if the treaty is in force, fail to acknowledge that it would not be possible to renounce the treaty at that point because it would have turned into the constitution of Europe.

Notoriously, Cameron merely says that if the treaty has already been ratified the Tories 'will not let matters rest there'. What on earth does this mean?

If he is seriously suggesting that he would then try to repatriate certain powers to this country as he has pledged to do, he is being - to put it politely - disingenuous.

The EU constitution that the treaty brings into being cannot be undone or unpicked.

As Cameron desperately tried to shut this issue down yesterday, he was in danger of thus giving the impression that he did not grasp why Europe is indeed an issue of overriding importance.

If this constitution comes into force, the EU will be changed, unalterably and for ever, into a wholly new entity: a 27-nation superstate with no democratic legitimacy which will nevertheless rule our lives - and, in all probability, with Tony Blair as its President.

It would be beyond intolerable if, at the very moment that the British electorate finally voted out the government he led and consigned Blairism to the bin, the man who did so much damage to Britain as its Prime Minister should be shoehorned into a post which makes him the effective ruler of this country.

For if this constitution comes into effect, Britain and the other EU member states will no longer be self-governing nations.

Foreign policy, defence, social, economic and welfare policies, immigration, internal security - every national interest will be subordinated to this new anti-democratic entity.

As such, 'President' Blair would be committing the single most treacherous act of all towards his own country - taking away its own democratic power of self-government.

And as a zealot whose aim has always been to supersede the nation state by trans-national bodies which promise the arrival of the brotherhood of man, we can be sure that 'President' Blair would make full use of the despotic powers of the EU constitution to impose upon us all a frightening degree of uniformity and control.

So David Cameron would have defeated Labour only to find himself once again being ruled by Tony Blair. >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, October 05, 2009

If Europe Does Get a President, It Definitely Won't Be Tony Blair
THE TELEGRAPH: Boris Johnson wagers – a fiver – that the former PM will not be granted his dream of ruling 500m people.

A spectre is haunting Europe, my friends. That spectre has a famously toothy grin and an eye of glistering sincerity and an almost diabolical gift of political self-reinvention. Barely two years after he stood down as prime minister, it seems that Tony Blair is about to thrust himself back into our lives. It turns out that he is not content merely to be in charge of brokering peace in the Middle East – which you would have thought was a full-time job for anyone. It isn't enough to potter around the world making speeches about climate change and Africa. He wants more, much more, than to consecrate his remaining days to the promotion of inter-faith dialogue and school sport.

With his colossal mortgages in Buckinghamshire and London's Connaught Square, you might have thought he needed to stick firmly on the after-dinner circuit. You might have thought that the Blair finances oblige him to keep making boss-eyed speeches to armies of tuxedoed Arizona neo-cons about the importance of the special relationship and beating up Saddam Hussein. Well, not any more, it seems. Blair has evidently piled up such a fortune that he is ready for one more big public job, and we now discover that his extinction as prime minister was only the prelude for his re-emergence – like some wizard in The Lord of the Rings – in a guise more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

He wants to be President of Europe. He wants to be the one-man incarnation of the wishes of 500 million people and 27 countries. He wants to be the answer to the decades old question originally posed by Henry Kissinger: "Who should the President of the United States ring if he wants to be put in urgent contact with Europe?" >>> Boris Johnson | Monday, October 05, 2009

Václav Klaus, the second President of the Czech Republic. Photo: Google Images
EU's Push for President Post Faces Hurdle: After Ireland's Approval of Lisbon Treaty, European Leaders Begin Effort to Win Over Adamantly Opposed Czech President
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: DUBLIN -- Backed by Ireland's resounding approval of a treaty designed to strengthen the European Union and give it a full-time president, leaders of the bloc said they would start a drive to remove the last remaining hurdle to the so-called Lisbon Treaty -- the refusal of Czech President Vaclav Klaus to sign it.

Ireland's 67% to 33% vote for the treaty Friday was a huge turnaround, reversing Irish voters' veto last year. The change of heart appears to have been driven mainly by the dramatic collapse of Ireland's economy, which made voters less willing to risk weakening the bloc.

For EU leaders who have been struggling for nearly a decade to pass versions of the treaty, it was a huge relief. They hope the scale of the victory will help them to persuade Mr. Klaus, a committed euroskeptic who has refused to sign the Czech legislature's ratification of the treaty, to back down.

Swedish Prime Minster Fredrik Reinfeldt and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said over the weekend they would meet Wednesday with the Czech Republic's prime minister to add pressure on Mr. Klaus. Sweden, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, is also dispatching its European-affairs minister to Prague.

Mr. Barroso said he was also ready to accept names from the 27 EU countries of their representatives on the commission, the union's executive arm. Terms of the current commissioners end this month, and the process of replacing them had been delayed until the fate of the Lisbon Treaty became clear.

"We start already on Monday to start to push every head of state" to sign the treaty, said Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and head of the European Parliament's liberal wing.

Ireland alone held a popular referendum on the treaty; the others ratified it through their parliaments. The process is now incomplete in two countries: Poland and the Czech Republic, which need their presidents' signatures.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski has said he would sign it as soon as Irish voters approved it, though his office gave no details on timing in a statement Sunday.

Mr. Klaus is another matter. The Czech president has never hidden his disdain for the EU, and he has a hero's status among treaty opponents across Europe. >>> Charles Forelle. Alistair MacDonald, Sean Carney and Malgorzata Halaba contributed to this article. | Monday, October 05, 2009

Tony Blair, the EU President No One Really Wants

THE SUNDAY TIMES: The reluctant vote in favour of further European integration by the Irish this weekend may usher Tony Blair into a new role as titular head of the European Union — despite most of Europe being reluctant to have him.

The former prime minister is the leading candidate to become the European Union president for a want of alternatives rather than any enthusiasm.

With the Irish having finally ratified the Lisbon treaty, all that remains is for the Czech and Polish presidents to sign it and authorise the creation of two new key posts in the EU hierarchy: the president of the European council of heads of state, popularly known as the EU president, and that of high representative for common foreign and security policy, in effect a foreign minister.

The Swedish prime minister, who holds the rotating presidency of the EU, indicated last week that he wanted the president and foreign minister to be appointed by the end of this month.

Blair owes his 6-4 odds for the job to the fact that the offices will probably be divvied up between the social democrat and conservative blocs among the EU heads of state. Although Blair appears to be disliked by all parties, especially by his supposed allies on the left, he may end up being elected because of the lack of another suitable candidate from the social democrat group.

Only two other possible social democratic candidates have emerged — Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, and Felipe Gonzalez, a former prime minister of Spain — and neither has the international clout of Blair. The same is true of the potential conservative candidates Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, and Jan Peter Balkenende, his Dutch equivalent.

The president will be elected by all 27 EU leaders, but the attitude of France and Germany is crucial. French diplomats last week indicated that Blair remained the preferred choice of President Nicolas Sarkozy, putting the ball into the court of Angela Merkel, the newly re-elected German chancellor. Blair is disliked intensely by Berlin for his role in the Iraq war and his perceived failure to contribute to Britain’s European integration.

“The only thing he cared about during his premiership was the City and that mentality has led to the current global crisis,” said Michael Gahler, an MEP from Merkel’s Christian Democrat party. “He is good at making speeches but he does not deliver.”

However, the Germans consider the post of the president to be far less significant than that of the foreign minister, who will also be vice-president of the commission and, in effect, be able to shape a common foreign and security policy and have leverage over commissioners addressing other areas.

Although her party’s favourite is said to be Juncker, Merkel, like Sarkozy, will be concerned with keeping at least a relatively pro-EU British politician in the spotlight. >>> Bojan Pancevski in Brussels | Sunday, October 04, 2009

Blair to Be Named EU President ‘Within Weeks’ if Irish Ratify Lisbon Treaty
MAIL ONLINE: Tony Blair is set to become EU President within weeks if Ireland votes 'Yes' in its referendum on the Lisbon Treaty tomorrow.

The former prime minister's candidacy for the new post will be rushed through as quickly as possible, according to government sources.

Mr Blair is among the favourites to become the first President of the European Union, a role that is chosen by the EU's 27 leaders and not by voters.

Such an appointment would restore him to the world stage as well as boost his long-term income.

Mr Blair has refused to rule himself in or out of the running, but did say that 'it is good to have fans' for a possible candidacy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has given his full support to a Blair bid. When French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner was asked yesterday if Mr Blair was the only real candidate, he said: 'For the moment, indeed.'

The post of President cannot exist until the Lisbon Treaty is formally ratified by all member states and officials across Europe would scramble to move forward this weekend if Ireland votes 'Yes' on Friday. >>> | Thursday, October 01, 2009