U. K. Tories oppose Blair as EU head

Former British prime minister Tony Blair could become Europe's first president within weeks. Mr. Blair has already received public endorsements from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But while some see Mr. Blair as a British champion of the European Union, the possibility of his becoming Europe's first president has plunged British politics into a storm of controversy.

Boris Johnson, London's Conservative Mayor and a leading opponent of the EU, has warned against Mr. Blair's possible return to politics "like some wizard in The Lord of the Rings in a guise more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

"It is really a monumental poke in the eye for the British electorate," he wrote yesterday in The Daily Telegraph. "They finally get rid of the fellow after 10 years, only to find that he has re-emerged as a kind of Euro-emperor."

Irish voters overwhelmingly ratified the European Union's constitution-reforming Lisbon Treaty over the weekend and now potential candidates are jockeying for the new positions of president and foreign policy chief.

Though he hasn't officially declared his intention, Mr. Blair is the main candidate in a carefully orchestrated behind-the-scenes campaign to select the European Union's first full-time president.

The new post of president of the European Council of Ministers will be selected in a closed-door meeting of the EU's 27 heads of state and government, which could be held as soon as the end of October.

The new president will serve a 2½-year term that is renewable once.

On the weekend, Ireland's Prime Minister Brian Cowen said he would be "very supportive" of a Blair candidacy.

A high-profile leader with a large collection of European contacts, Mr. Blair is seen as a left-of centre counterbalance to the current EU Commission's president, Jose Manuel Barroso, a Portuguese conservative.

However, William Hague, the Conservative party's foreign affairs critic and a former leader who lost the 2001 election to Mr. Blair, is already warning officials in Paris and Berlin to reconsider a possible Blair appointment.

"There could be no worse way to sell the EU to the people of Britain," he said yesterday, noting the Conservative party could call a referendum on British membership in the EU, if it wins an election that must be held by next June.

"No single decision could do more to damage the European Union in Britain than [Mr. Blair's] appointment as an unelected president of Europe," journalist William Rees-Mogg wrote yesterday in The Times.

Euroskeptics in Britain's Conservative party have been calling for a public referendum on British membership in the EU for years. The debate has proved particularly toxic, causing deep splits in the party.

But now the party's anti-European wing is pushing hard for a public referendum to reconsider parliament's endorsement of the Lisbon Treaty.

Yesterday, as the Conservatives opened their annual party conference in Manchester, the whole issue of the EU threatened to erupt once more and become a possible election issue.

Conservative party leader David Cameron has said that if the Lisbon Treaty is not endorsed by all EU members before the next election, his party will give British voters a referendum on the issue.

On Friday, as Irish voters went to the polls to vote on the treaty, Mr. Cameron sent an email to his party members reassuring them of his policy.

"I have said repeatedly that I want us to have a referendum," he wrote. "If the treaty is not ratified in all member states, and not in force when the election is held, and if we are elected, then we will hold a referendum on it, we will name the date of the referendum in the election campaign and we will lead the campaign for a NO vote."

Under that sort of scenario, a new Conservative government could be asking voters to vote to reject further integration with the EU, while the EU is being led by their political arch-rival, Mr. Blair.

Only Poland and the Czech Republic have yet to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, though it has been passed by both their parliaments. Poland's Euroskeptic president, Lech Kaczynski, has already pledged to sign the treaty if the Irish passed it, while Czech President Vaclav Klaus is stalling ratification until a constitutional challenge is dealt with by the courts within a month.

That could pave the way to the installation of a new European president before the year's end.
From National Post