Will Blair supersize the EU presidency?
So McDonald’s has pulled out of Iceland.
The ultimate economic indicator of ruin is struck, with the closure of three fast food outlets on the island and an indication from the multinational that they don’t expect to return.
Iceland hopes to make good by swallowing something even more indigestible than a reindeer burger – membership of the EU. And it is not the presidency of the European Union that excites them, but the prospect that the island with a ‘c’ in its name can mimic the economic rescue the EU has extended to the member island with an ‘r’ in its name – Ireland.
Speaking of the presidency, I’m told by my Parisian informant that France continues to “decelerate” rapidly on backing Tony Blair for the job. But the problem remains “if not Tony, who?”
The Lisbon Treaty specifically outlaws any candidate from Reykjavik. The candidate for the presidency has to have held high office in a member state.
The race is on therefore – not for Icelandic membership, but to sign the treaty into law and immediately appoint the European Union’s first president.
The Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, says Tony Blair will be appointed “over my dead body”.
Downing Street is already denying that Gordon Brown has tapped up a couple of civil servants to lobby for Blair’s candidacy. One certainly wonders whether if is this had happened, it would represent an acceptable use of tax payers’ money.
In any case, as I blogged here last week, Blair is NOT a candidate.
He has merely let it be known that he will have to be asked, and if asked has indicated he would serve.
Even as we speak, Blair must be weighing up whether to leave matters quite like this. How many lectures could be launched upon a reputation as the man who was rejected from becoming Europe’s first ever president in a contest in which there was no known opponent?
If I am wrong, and Blair gets the job, there will be no more high earning lectures anyway, for a bit.
But then we don’t yet know quite what sort of an expenses and “outside earnings” regime the new president is expected to enjoy.