Blair is out of step on Europe

The latest utterings from Tony Blair, however, will have been met in many quarters with little more than a cynical curiosity over which particular book now requires promoting.

Mr Blair still holds an important role, as peace envoy to the troubled Middle East. Yet, once again, it is his comments on European matters which draw the biggest headlines.

Seven years after he helped negotiate the universally-rejected EU constitution, Mr Blair continues to bang a lonely drum for ever-greater European integration.

Common EU policies in truly fundamental areas such as tax, defence, energy and immigration are all now being advocated by the former PM, along with a directly-elected President voted in by the people of all 27 member states.

No prizes for guessing who Mr Blair’s favoured candidate for such a role might be. His argument for such a measure can be summed up neatly by Henry Kissinger’s famous off-hand dismissal of the EU some decades ago.

“Europe?” the Secretary of State sniffed. “Who do I call, if I want to talk to Europe?” Yet this old assertion that Europe needs a figurehead has now been shown to be fatally flawed. For the EU – you may have forgotten – has had its own President and Foreign Affairs supremo for some 18 months now.

And could there be a single more ineffective politician in the modern age than Herman Van Rompuy, or his sidekick, the Labour peer Cathy Ashton? Both have been utterly invisible; remarkable only for their reluctance to speak out, or show any semblance of leadership whatsoever.

The so-called Arab Spring has been one of the most important global developments in decades. Yet Baroness Ashton has remained silent throughout.

Mr Blair is correct to highlight the rise of Chinese hegemony as one of the great challenges faced by the West this century, but if he believes that it is through the promotion of politicians such as these – and the handing over of yet more powers to Brussels – that European nations will ultimately prosper, then he is sadly mistaken.

Fortunately, Mr Blair is correct on one point. There is “no chance” of a sceptical public allowing this to happen.