In his ascent to the top, David Cameron has benefited a great deal from watching his foe Tony Blair. But now it looks as if Cameron may be doing Blair a favour in return, albeit accidentally. With growing expectations that the Irish will vote "yes" in an autumn referendum on the Lisbon treaty, Blair is back in contention for the job it creates: president of the European council. Before the Irish torpedoed the treaty last year, Blair had many opponents, mainly because of his part in the Iraq war.
Several things have brought him back into the running. The first is that in a post-Dubya world with Barack Obama wowing Europeans, Iraq and America are no longer toxic issues. The second is that the case for a big personality doing the job of president is more or less won. Last year, during France's EU presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated the impact that could have during both the conflict in Georgia and the financial meltdown. Now the reverse has been shown too. The implosion of the Czech presidency of the EU culminated in the fall of the government in Prague and wild comments by the country's prime minister, Mirek Topolánek. Speaking to the European parliament, he derided the US response to the economic crisis, underlining the fact that leaders from small countries sometimes find it hard to distinguish between national and international politics.
The final factor helping Blair is the balance of power within the EU—and this is where Cameron comes in. In June the European elections will determine the context within which a series of big appointments will be made. Providing the Lisbon treaty is approved, this will include a European council president and a foreign minister, as well as president of the European commission. The EU heads of government will find it hard to ignore the results of the European elections when they fill these jobs.
With every European economy suffering, the centre right EPP-ED—currently the biggest bloc in the European parliament—is under pressure. Moreover, Cameron's determination to pull the British Conservatives out of the group (along with Topolanek's Czech ODS party) means that the Socialist group, where the British Labour party sits, may emerge from the elections as the biggest bloc. If José Manuel Barroso wins his battle for reappointment as commission president, it will be more difficult to appoint another figure from the centre-right as council president. When he was prime minister, Blair did everything he could to distance himself from his socialist roots. But, with the potential prize of a top EU job, that may be about to change.
Who will lead the European parliament?
In the European parliament there is much excitement about the looming elections—not those involving voters, of course, but the subsequent one among MEPs over who will be president of the European parliament. You might have thought that the contest over who would head the institution could wait until MEPs had been returned to Strasbourg by the electorate in June. But not for a juicy job like this that brings most of the things they covet: status, a cabinet and limitless globe-trotting.
For a time it looked like the deal had been stitched up along the lines of the current arrangement, where the left and right blocs split the five-year mandate. The plan was that Jerzy Buzek, a short-lived former Polish prime minister from the centre-right, would take the first term, followed by Martin Schulz, the fiery German socialist. So confident was Buzek that his staff had been declining media requests for their boss for the next three months.
But this cosy deal is in trouble. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has broken ranks by putting up a rival centre-right candidate, Mario Mauro. Italy, he argues, has not held the job since 1979. After the June elections, Italians are likely to be the biggest national contingent of the EPP-ED. Meanwhile the Polish government failed to promote Buzek vigorously as it dithered over whether to use its capital over that job or on its (unsuccessful) candidate for Nato secretary-general, Radek Sikorski.
The key element in the puzzle is Schulz. He came to prominence six years ago when Berlusconi accused him of behaving like a Nazi concentration camp guard. Would he agree to share the job with one of Berlusconi's cronies? To complicate matters there are rumours that Schulz has ambitions to become Germany's next European commissioner. His prospects for this post are unlikely to be clear until the German national elections in September. But the European parliament president post will be carved up in the summer. Those voters are such a nuisance.
Berlusconi on best behaviour
There was relief among Italian diplomats that Berlusconi committed only minor embarrassments during the lengthy round of summitry in April. The Italian premier annoyed the Queen in London with his boisterous behaviour at the G20 family photo, then held up a session of a Nato meeting in Strasbourg/Kehl because he was on his mobile to the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But what was really worrying officials was how Berlusconi—a close ally of Bush—would go down with Obama. Fortunately there was no repeat of the Italian leader's biggest faux pas, a reference to the US president's "sun tan."
