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Blair Weighs Up EU Presidency Bid
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Jan 17, 2008 02:35am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Monday, January 14, 2008 08:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | It probably says everything about his current place in history that the former Labour Prime Minister of Euro-skeptic Britain, Tony Blair, chose to kick off his unofficial drive to become the European Union's first president by seeking support from conservatives in Euro-enthusastic France. Suffice to say that he may find the road to the E.U. presidency a bumpy one, as his weekend sojourn in Paris proved.
Though he made no overt comments about a bid to become the E.U.'s first president next January, Blair's repeated references to Europe, globalization, and bipartisan efforts to reform and modernize made his aspirations evident. So, too, did Blair's role as guest speaker at the Saturday meeting of 2,500 leaders from the rightist Union for a Popular Majority party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The assembled conservatives applauded the former U.K. premier's calls to "take the future by the horns" and resist "retreating to comfort zones of out-dated slogans and old remedies".
The speech was designed to stake Blair out as a man capable of taking the E.U. to the same place his supporters say he brought Britain: the fabled "third way" between costly welfare states, and unfettered, even savage market forces. In a recently expanded Europe where attitudes in its older members, such as France with its generous social security systems, often clash with newer entrants with far less protection as with Latvia, the promise of Blair finding common ground as he often did in Britain will be inviting to many people. Elsewhere, however, he'll find hostility to his vision — and his positioning — just as strong. |
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