Yesterday, however, one of the most bizarre suggestions I’ve yet heard was put forward by Italy’s Interior Minister Giuliano Amato (who has his own ideas about the constitution). Speaking at the London School of Economics, he suggested that one of the reasons why the EU’s constitutional question may not be solved this year is “the British transition, because the British prime minister on that occasion might meet some difficulty committing his country for the future”.

In other words, Amato seems to think that it’s because Blair won’t be PM much longer that Britain is not participating in any meaningful way in any of the talks about the constitution, and that the British government has been remarkably silent about the future of the EU ever since Blair’s dismally ineffectual EU presidency back in 2005.

Newsflash to our continental cousins: if/when Brown becomes PM, nothing’s going to change. Ditto with Cameron.

Britain’s current attitude towards EU reform is that of the proverbial ostrich – head in the sand, hoping desperately that the problem will go away. There is not a single British politician within spitting distance of becoming Prime Minister who is going to risk opening that particular can of worms again, and risk being lambasted simultaneously by the largely eurosceptic British public for being actively involved in shaping the future of the EU and by their more pro-EU continental political peers for not being enthusiastic enough.

The only certainty in British politics is this: no matter what involvement any UK politician attempts to have in discussions about the future of the EU, they are going to end up getting burned.

Likewise, the future of the EU is uncertain at the moment, except for one thing: Britain will have no part in proposing new directions – the best she will do is block ambitious new proposals.

As in the 1950s when we missed out on participating properly in the talks that lead to the European Coal and Steel Community and the subsequent EEC, the UK is missing out on shaping the EU through a near-contradictory combination of insularity and over-confidence about her ability to maintain a position on the world stage. With Blair busy focussing his attention on Iraq, Afghanistan, saving the world through some kind of environmental revolution (no doubt backed by a pop concert organised by Bono) and how the hell he’s going to pay all his many mortgages on leaving office, he has no time for Brussels – and neither Brown nor Cameron appear to have much interest in Brussels anyway.

It is not the fact that Blair will soon be leaving office that prevents him from committing Britain to a firm position on EU reform: it’s that he can’t be arsed to make a decision that’s bound to end in criticism – the standard position of Britain ever since John Major hit on the genius cop-out idea of “wait and see” a decade ago. (Warning – barking right-wing anti-EU madness likely in that last link)

If that leads to the collapse of the EU, as some fear, Britain will simply sit back and wait once more to see how the collapse pans out. If it turns into a multi-speed EU (again, as some fear and as I hope), then there won’t be many on this side of the Channel who will be overly upset – it would, after all, instantly solve all the EU-related electoral problems that British politicians have been trying to cope with ever since we joined.

Britain’s EU “wait and see” is likely to continue for quite some time – it’s simply too risky for any major British politician to take any other approach. Yes, this will piss off many on the continent, but they should know it by now – after the Common Agricultural Policy, the UK is the millstone round the EU’s neck. With too large a population and too strong an economy to ignore, but never an enthusiastic participant, the UK’s like the fat bully at a child’s birthday party, standing sullenly in the corner refusing to take part in any of the games, and ruining the fun for everyone by occasionally rushing in to punch one of the other kids on the arm or steal their cake. The EU would be far better off without us – but, as with the bully at the birthday party, no one’s quite got the guts to tell us to bugger off.

“In Blair’s case, of course, the focus on foreign policy may have been accentuated by the difficulty of playing a leading role in the management of the UK economy, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer has held sway for so long.”

Me running a Europe-focussed blog, however, I’ll ignore (most of) the stuff about The War Against Terror, and head straight to the bits on British relations with the EU which, as Bulmer-Thomas notes, were pretty much the only aspect of foreign policy in which Blair had shown any interest before becoming PM – and that largely because Europe was a good stick with which to beat the disunited Tories back in the mid-90s. Blair did, after all, start moderately well – treading a fine line between reticence to commit fully to an EU (and a Euro) which was not quite right, while making definite steps towards closer participation:

“The Amsterdam Treaty, signed in June 1997, provided an opportunity for Tony Blair to demonstrate that Britain would once again play a constructive role in the European Union, while at the same time holding out the prospect of eventual British membership of the Eurozone. The decision in 1998 to sign into UK law the European Charter of Human Rights was seen in the rest of Europe as a very positive step. The claim that Britain would be at the heart of Europe no longer rang hollow. Furthermore, Blair followed up these promising first steps with a crucial summit with President Chirac at St Malo in 1998 in which the foundations of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) were laid on the basis of Anglo-French military cooperation.”

Ah – the St Malo Summit… Remember that? Nope – and neither does anyone else. The vague promises of an Anglo-French military alliance – to coincide with British agreements to reconsider EU-wide tax policy and the rebate – have never been heard of since and, nine years on, the tax and rebate issues have yet to be solved to anyone’s satisfaction.

(Another nice little reminder of Blair’s brilliant ability to say one thing in public and then piss off and do the precise opposite – though not overly relevant to Anglo-European relations – is of the old “ethical foreign policy” of the early Blair years, which included ehtically breaking UN arms embargoes to supply arms to African civil wars and refusing to extradite mass-murdering dictators to face trial… Nice chap, our Tony…)

And then comes 1999 and Kosovo – Blair being the guy who pushed for carpet-bombing to save civilian lives (nice one, Tone – bombing hospitals to save lives). In a tough situation in which something had to be done, he had the balls to step up, but still – was that the best he could come up with? Still, as the Chatham House report notes,

“This was a momentous decision for two reasons, both of which appealed to Blair. First, it committed NATO for the first time in 50 years to offensive action; and, secondly, it demonstrated how force could be used against a sovereign country with a degree of legitimacy without the support of the United Nations.”

And we all know how THAT precedent has ended up being used in the last few years… First, however, our Tony thought it was time to elaborate, and test his new version of international law a bit further:

“The rationale of the Kosovo campaign was subsequently set out by the prime minister in his Chicago speech in April 1999, while the war itself was still raging. In essence, this established the conditions under which Britain would support humanitarian intervention against a sovereign power with or without United Nations support… It was, in retrospect, a naïve speech with little or no reference to history that was unduly influenced by European failures in the Balkans before Blair came to power. However, the speech set the tone for the next few years and provided the intellectual case for the military intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000.”

(As another brief aside, does this little passage from that Chicago speech sound familiar? – “Just as I believe there was no alternative to military action, now it has started I am convinced there is no alternative to continuing until we succeed… Success is the only exit strategy I am prepared to consider.”)

And then into The War Against Terror proper:

“[Blair’s] desire to show empathy with the United States in its moment of grief was entirely understandable. However, his failure to try to coordinate a European response was regrettable… it gave the distinct impression that Europe was incapable of forming a geo-strategic view, that bilateral relations were the only ones that counted… Up to this point, the divisions within the European Union over policy towards the United States were not so severe that they threatened to disrupt the march of the European project… The problem Blair faced was not how to maintain European unity in the face of a threatened US preemptive
war.”

How did he do it? He didn’t. That simple. Since 2001/2, France and Germany have become ever closer, Britain ever more sidelined on the fringes of the EU. Even the arrival of ten new member states in May 2004 – affording an unprecedented opportunity for Britain to shift the EU balance of power back in her favour by getting the newcomers on her side – was not enough to do the job. Blair and co utterly failed to take the European initiative, and this failure was almost exclusively down to the utterly unnecessary distractions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hell, if Blair had focussed more on Europe in the run-up to expansion, the entire EU project could – just could – have seen itself reshaped on more British lines by now… As Bulmer-Thomas goes on to note, in fact:

“The European dimension of Blair’s foreign policy has been particularly difficult to manage since the Iraq invasion.”

But here I also have a quibble with the report’s interpretation: “Blair can take credit for the fact that Britain is no longer the outlier when it comes to Europe”? Where on earth did they get that impression from? Precisely nothing that Britain has proposed in the last few years has had any chance of success in the EU without the support of other, less disgraced countries. And even then, very little gets done the Blair way, from his attempts to force ID cards on us via Brussels to attempts to solve the ongoing EU budget fiasco.

Blair, the report effectively concludes, gambled it all on sucking up to the big boy, and has gained nothing of substance in return:

“The root failure… has been the inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way despite the sacrifice – military, political and financial – that the United Kingdom has made.”

And this is what it always comes down to, for me. What, exactly, has been the benefit of British participation in The War Against Terror? What have we gained? We know what we’ve lost – any kind of standing in the Middle East, any kind of respect in Europe or ability to influence the EU agenda on significant issues without being thought of as the agents of the US (as with the recent airline data transfer situation, where Britain continued to act bilaterally with Washington, agreeing to all their demands, while the rest of the EU was desperately trying to put up a united front).

If you support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because you believe they were the right thing to do, fine. But of what benefit have they been – or are they genuinely likely to be – to Britain? And, at the same time (and please try to avoid accusations of anti-Americanism) – what have we gained from our ever-closer close relationship with the US over the last few years?

As the report notes, “No British government – indeed, no European government – can afford to distance itself from both the United States and the European Union at the same time”, yet under Blair we have leaned so much closer to the US that our EU ties are wearing thin. Without those ties, we are of no use whatsoever to the US. After all, Blair’s principle role after lending our support to Bush post-9/11 was to gain military backing for US ventures in the Middle East. In this, Blair pretty much failed – at least, with the EU countries that mattered. The Anglo-French military agreement of St Malo in 1998 was but a distant memory, and without French support, official UN backing for the invasion of Iraq would never happen.

“A closer relationship with Europe is not only a requirement of British foreign policy, it is also likely to be urged on Britain by future US presidents. A government such as Law and Justice in Poland does the United States no favours by combining a strong Atlanticist streak with Europhobia. What US governments want is a European Union that can make a real contribution to the international political and security agenda, and any European government with the diplomatic skills to deliver EU support will be hugely appreciated.”

In other words, nothing has changed in half a century. This is precisely what Eisenhower wanted Churchill to agree to do back when the initial talks over the foundation of what has become the EU were happening.

And whoever succeeds Bush as President will know one thing above all else – the US needs more high-profile allies on the international scene who, unlike the likes of Russia and Saudia Arabia, can also be held up as great examples of the benefits of democracy and the rule of law. Whoever can deliver those will quickly usurp Britain’s position as America’s favourite European pet. Neither Brown (with his reputation across the Channel as leaning towards Euroscepticism) nor Cameron (with his foolish decision to withdraw Tory MEPs from the leading centre-right group in the European Parliament, leaving them with only fascists and fruitcakes for partners) look likely to have the skills that will be required to keep the fine balance working – especially as Blair will have left that balance deciedly skew-wiff by the time he finally gives up office.

Yep, we’ve supported The War Against Terror. We’ve helped oust a vicious dictator in Iraq and a bunch of barbaric psychopaths in Afghanistan. But, purely from the perspective of the British national interest, was the weakening of our international standing really worth it?

Depending on the long-term outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush and Blair may well be right when they claim that history will judge them to have done the right thing. But will history be so kind when the aftermath of Blair’s obsessions with crises further afield results in Britain being both sidelined in Europe and abandoned by her erstwhile American ally thanks to this loss of influence?

Still, Heffer has a piece in the Telegraph today about the French socialists’ presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, for whom I am holding out much hope (based largely on desperation for some kind of major, top-level reformist drive in the French political system that could finally give the EU a chance for significant improvement), so I thought I’d give him another go.

Heffer’s principle contention is that a President Royal would change France not a jot – although thankfully not for the same reasons as his fellow right-winger, Richard North of EU Referendum, who contests that

“Be they socialist or ‘right’ wing, there is one thing all French politicians have in common – they are French. And being French, they all think the same way”.

Although not as bad as that, Heffer doesn’t start well, it must be said, following the suggestion from one of Royal’s staff that Britain must finally choose between the US and EU with the typically unoriginal and tedious “look at me, aren’t I clever?” retort of innumerable not-as-clever-as-they-think-they-are anti-EU bloggers:

“Oh really? And just how, I wonder, would that choice be forced upon us? Will the French navy blockade Dover, Portsmouth and Felixstowe until either we divorce Uncle Sam or agree to complete immersion into the institutions of the Euopean Union – constitution, single currency and all?”

But, to be fair, European politics is rarely interesting, so spicing it up with a bit of humour is pretty vital – even if said humour consists largely of mild xenophobia tinged with a belligerent, quasi-militaristic nostalgia for the “finest hour”. We ought to forgive our anti-EU friends for a) having to recycle the same jokes over and over again, and b) being so stereotypical in their attitudes towards France (Heffer even does a grandiose version of “love the country, hate the people” in his column).

Still, Heffer’s basic contention is not the same as Richard North’s, that these frogs are all alike, but instead a broader variation – Royal is a politician, and all politicians are alike:

“Rather like our own leader of the opposition, Mme Royal has come far on image, the manipulativeness of the public relations game, and an almost complete absence of policy. These things will not necessarily prevent her from becoming president of a troubled, confused and increasingly angry country that knows it is underachieving and wants ‘change’. Regrettably, she doesn’t offer it.”

Now, of course, you may think that’s fair – a politician without any policies sounds a tad off, after all. Only Heffer then goes on to list some of the – decidedly, deliberately populist – policies Royal announced during her campaign (largely to undermine the far right populism of Jean Marie Le Pen): “national service for young delinquents, longer working hours for teachers, a new policy towards Iran and nuclear weapons, and various other absurdities” (emphasis mine). He follows that up by revealing the announcement last week that Royal will stick to “orthodox socialist policies” (which he then – naturally – interprets as “high taxation, vast public sector, dirigisme, total absence of meaningful economic reform, and the concomitants of high unemployment, minimal growth and sporadic social unrest”). In other words, erm… she has quite a few policies, then?

So far, so predictable. Accuse a politician of being a politician, then attack them for having no policies, then fail to present any evidence for your claims – just like any number of lazy bloggers (myself frequently included) who’ve failed to do sufficient research and so decide to transpose generalised political arguments and prejudices to a fresh subject for a merely cosmetic change.

But wait, this is one of the country’s best-known columnists – there must be more to it than that. Where’s his deeper analysis of Royal?

Oh no, hang on a tick – he then shifts to her likely opponent, the semi-centrist right-winger Nicholas Sarkozy, for whom Heffer (naturally, I suppose) seems to have more time. Perhaps his dismissal of Royal is thanks to Sarkozy’s infinitely better policy programme?

“[Sarkozy] published his personal manifesto last summer, and there was much in it to commend him.”

But wait:

“He wants economic reform of a radical nature, he wants France to end its stand-off with the Anglo-Saxon world, he wants what he calls a ‘rupture’ with the recent past and all its failures… if M Sarkozy is elected and tries to implement even half of what he has promised, expect barricades, fighting in the banlieues, strikes and other challenges to his authority”

So, in other words, Sarkozy also only has a very general set of vague policy ideas at this stage (which sound very similar to Royal’s), and he too is likely to plunge France into chaos and crisis if elected?

So where’s the killer fact which Heffer is going to pull out of the bag to show that his “Royal is crap” thesis holds any water?

But by now we see the heart of the matter. Heffer knows about as much about French domestic politics as anyone else who skimmed the halfway decent article on the situation in this week’s Sunday Times.

Seeing that he’s nearing the word count, we are then treated to a brief – and largely irrelevant – overview about how it’s impossible to predict the mind of the French voter because (some of them) voted for Le Pen in the last presidential elections, and the “Non” vote won the EU constitution referendum last year. Both of which were predicted by commentators with, erm, actual knowledge of the French system – much like Royal’s victory in the socialist primaries was last week.

And then it’s back to why Sarkozy will win (even though the latest polls put him and Royal neck and neck for the presidency). Now – despite earlier having dismissed Royal for her manipulation of “the public relations game” – Heffer contends that “M Sarkozy is the less vulnerable, because of his command of the media”.

In other words, Heffer’s entire analysis is based on minimal knowledge capped off with self-contradiction. Simon Heffer, ladies and gentlemen, is a blogger.

“Blogger” – according to large chunks of the press – means unprofessional, unconscientious, and not held up to the same standards as proper journalists. It is, in other words, pretty much always interchangable with “columnist”. As such, “Blogger” is a term of abuse I think we should all start applying to shoddy journalists, re-appropriating the the term after all the negative connotations which some in the media have tried to apply to it. After his column today, I nominate Heffer as our first big-name “Blogger” – any more for any more?

(By the by, if you want some decent, knowledgable analysis about Royal and the French presidential campaign, the Telegraph’s rather good Europe Correspondent David Rennie is doing a fine job – entertainingly enough, on his blog.)

Wallis’ bouncing bomb project was repeatedly rejected by politicians and civil servants, as were his later “swing-wing” designs for aircraft (used on modern-day fighters like the Tornado), dropped in favour of American planes. The bouncing bomb very nearly failed through lack of government funding, just as its designs were nearing completion, as they wrote him off as a typical mad scientist.

But hey, at least Wallis got a knighthood eventually… Flowers may have been posted to Bletchley Park, ensuring a certain amount of funding, but all he ever got for his pains was an MBE and a £1000 thank you cheque – despite the fact that he personally funded development of the groundbreaking Colossus codebreaking computer in the face of government resistance to a device that would remain in operation with spy agencies until the end of the 1950s.

Alan Turing, on the other hand, despite being one of the most important inventors of the 20th century, found that after the war (and despite the onset of the Cold War), the government could no longer bother to find the money for his research, forcing him to quit the sorely under-funded National Physical Laboritory in 1947. Five years later he was prosecuted for being a homosexual, forced into hormone treatment designed to reduce his propensity for such perversion (that ended up making him grow breasts), and had all his funding and lab access revoked before – disgraced, isolated and humiliated – he committed suicide in 1954.

And life hasn’t been much easier for Britain’s scientists ever since. Throughout the Cold War, largely to keep in with the US, British inventions were consistently abandoned in favour of American alternatives – most notably the abandoning of the Blue Streak and Skybolt missile systems in favour of the American Polaris, while more recently the Westland affair caused scandal – but not enough to stop the British military recently opting to buy US-made Apache attack helicopters rather than British alternatives.

Over the last few decades, funding for scientific research has been steadily cut by successive governments, most recently with this summer’s announcement of a fresh overhaul of government funding, which will see the likes of Oxford and Cambridge universities – world-leaders in scientific research for four centuries – lose out big style.

But, of course, Reid would never suggest that the government should fund such research – designed to better prepare the nation’s defences – that would be a dangerously socialistic idea for the modern New Labour party. Instead (unsurprisingly, considering he was speaking at an event sponsored by a technology company), he is proposing extending Private Finance Initiatives into science.

In other words, any inventions not deemed instantly profitable (much like all the inventions of Wallis, Turing and Flowers) will swiftly be shelved, and the government will end up paying top-whack for those that prove to have some use.

Nice one, John.

“Traditional loaves of bread could soon be replaced by packs containing just four slices under a new EU ruling”

It’s a disgrace! How dare these Brussels bureaucrats take away our sliced whites! How dare they presume to allow us to buy only enough bread for a couple of rounds of sandwiches!

Then read on:

“Existing British rules mean packaged bread can only be sold in 400g or 800g packs”

In other words, in an attempt to liberalise the food market, Brussels is planning to abolish such pointless restrictions, allowing consumer demand to shape the size and quantity of packaged food.

It’s not so much “be replaced by” as “be complemented by” – but let’s not allow petty little things like facts or accurate reporting get in the way of a good anti-EU scare story when we’ve got a captive audience of several hundred thousand commuters reading our drivel, eh?

The Metro – mindless dross that it is – carries on (in a wonderful description of a free market system – emphases mine):

“there will now be a free-for-all on sizing for items like ice cream, frozen food, detergents, pet food, low-alcohol drinks, soft drinks, paints, shampoo and toothpaste [at this point the subs can no longer think of additional products and give up]. The EC claims the idea, which could be approved by Euro MPs early next year, will give shoppers as much choice as possible.”

How DARE they give shoppers choice? How DARE they remove pointless domestic regulations that prevent pensioners and single people from being able to buy anything less than half a loaf when all they might want is a few slices (a system that works very well in Japan, amongst other places).

Finally, in the (never-read) second-to-last paragraph, we get the real story:

“The decision replaces 25 national packaging rules and two EU directives on quantities with one single EU-wide law leaving packaging up to market forces”

So no more scare stories of our pints of milk or pounds of butter being under threat – perhaps even an end to the “metric martyrs” business – as all restrictions on how food is packaged are removed in one fell swoop. If this new law is passed and works properly, if the market calls for food to be sold in Imperial measures, food can be sold in Imperial measures.

So, were the Metro to be slightly less rabid in its following of the Associated Newspapers anti-EU line, the story should perhaps have read “The EU does what it’s supposed to do, reducing pointless and restrictive food regulations and freeing up the market”. But as we all know from decades of reading anti-EU scare stories, Brussels NEVER cuts back on regulation. Oh no…

There’s French coverage of the speech in Le Figaro, Le Monde and Le Nouvel Observateur – but for those whose French is even worse than mine, a better translation than I could provide via EU Observer:

“the functioning of the union – and more generally the state of the union – appears worrying to me.

“It is not that there is a crisis, that is not the case, the European Union is rather suffering from a sort of illness of apathy, from general fatigue… [this does] not augur well for its future capacity to respond to the needs of its people.”

But there’s more worrying stuff there for the more ardent pro-EU types, not covered in the EU Observer piece:

“L’Union européenne pourra-t-elle continuer longtemps à décider à ce rythme? …l’Europe peut-elle même encore prendre des décisions cruciales? …une méfiance quasi-générale vis-à-vis de l’intégration” …On constate de même une grande réticence à toute démarche d’harmonisation, qui est pourtant l’une des bases de la construction européenne”

In other words (roughtly)

“How long will the European Union be able to carry on like this? … is Europe still capable of taking important decisions? … a pretty much general mistrust of [EU] integration …You can see a similar reservation when it comes to any aspect of harmonisation, one of the key pillars of Europe’s construction”

This being France, however, you just know that a solution will be suggested (unlike the UK’s tendency merely to complain) and that the solution is not (as it most likely would be in the UK were a government minister making such pronouncements) to pull back from an apparently failing project. Nope – instead the solution is (as always) ever closer union – and exactly the sort of thing to get British Eurosceptics (not to mention our dear Gordon Brown) foaming at the mouth:

“on ne devient pas une puissance en y consacrant 1 % de son PIB… relancer l’harmonisation dans un certain nombre de secteurs… en matière d’imposition sur les sociétés, par exemple, ou pour la protection des consommateurs ou la politique sociale… un salaire minimum européen, dont le niveau serait fonction du niveau économique de chaque Etat membre… Il faut aussi développer une politique industrielle européenne, fédérer des projets de dimension mondiale, investir massivement dans la recherche et l’innovation.”

Which means, approximately:

“One does not become a power by using just 1% of your GDP… [the EU should] re-start the process of harmonisation across a number of sectors… like company taxes, for example, or consumer rights or social policy… a European minimum wage, whose level would be tied to the economic level of each Member State… It is also necessary to develop a Europe-wide industrial policy, to organise multinational projects on a federal basis, and to invest massively in research and development”

Phew… they certainly don’t do things by halves, do they?

The thing is, for all the inevitable knee-jerk reactions, a lot of this is pretty sensible stuff – from the perspective of someone who wants to revive the concept of a continent-wide coalition of economic interests, at least. Especially in this day and age, organising industry and the economy purely on a national level simply doesn’t make much sense if you want to compete on a global level.

She’s also got a very good point about the level of contributions to the EU. Ignore the instant anti-EU reactions (I’m expecting my Eurosceptic stalker Robin in the comments any time now), how does anyone expect the Union to be able to do anything overly beneficial with such a small amount of revenue? 1-2% of each member state’s GDP is a pifflingly insignificant amount when you look at the scale of the post-industrial problems Europe faces. Compare the member states’ contributions to the percentage of our earnings that you and I fork out to our dear national governments each year in tax, it’s ridiculous. (Of course, one could argue that this is a sign that our governments are taxing us too much and are too wasteful with our hard-earned cash – but no one would believe that, surely?)

But whether you agree with her proposals or not (and I lean towards strong scepticism about them), one thing is certain – Colonna’s guts in coming up with something a tad radical is a welcome relief after a good couple of years of the same old nonsense being constantly regurgitated whenever some politico gets it into their head to talk about the future of Europe.

The constitution is mentioned largely to dismiss it. Rather than moan about rebates and the CAP, proposals (however unrealistic) are made to help generate revenue. Suggestions (if not overly sensible) are made for building public support. She’s talking in terms of practical measures that could be discussed, rather than abstract nonsense about whether or not we should include mention of some kind of ill-defined deity on a pointless piece of paper.

The fact that Colonna is close to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin – who may yet gain his party’s nomination for the Presidency next year ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy – also tends to suggest that this may well be the first stage of a new French EU strategy. Having lost the constitutional vote last year and then fended off Tony Blair’s feeble calls for CAP reform, France looks finally to be heading back on the EU attack after a year of defensive manouvres.

With Angela Merkel – another wannabe-reformer – taking over the EU presidency in January, if France can rebuild that decades-long EU partnership across the Maginot Line we may finally start to see some kind of serious movement after a good couple of years of post-expansion stagnation. I doubt very much that any of Colonna’s suggestions here will ever see the light of day again, but expect her criticisms of the EU’s tiredness and current failures to be raised repeatedly over the next year or so as Paris jostles to re-gain her once unchallenged grip on the EU tiller.

Right – enough prevarication. On with the meat of the thing:

Alec Russell in Washington – “Alec is the Telegraph’s Washington Bureau Chief. He has lived in DC covering US politics since September 2003. Previously he was foreign editor in London. He has also had postings in the Balkans and in Africa and written books about both assignments.”

Random quote: “Edwards is now preparing for another run and he tested out his campaign speech on me and other assorted hacks. As with the main runners here, he focused relentlessly on jobs and the poor.”

Am I still me? – “Along with hundreds of others I was on the Piccadilly line tube which was blown up on 7th July 2005. I am still struggling with the aftermath of that experience, it is with me every day. I think it has changed me, for better and for worse. I have started this blog in an effort to try & understand the person I’ve become.” (nominated by Rachel)

Random quote: “I have taken the day off work because my body is telling me to stop. I have been running on adrenaline for weeks, just as I did directly after the bombings. I am going to learn from my mistakes, even if the government are not, and I am taking it easy today.”

Archbishop Cranmer – “Things got just a little bit too hot on 21st March 1556. Haven’t been around much since, but I am as keen as ever to investigate and expose religio-politics or politico-religiosity, whatever the cost”

Random quote: “To outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is a threat to freedom of conscience and to freedom of religion. Christian landlords will no longer have control over what goes on under their roofs, and religious newspapers will no longer be permitted to reject advertising from homosexual organisations on grounds of conscience. How can the law force people of faith to approve and cooperate with values that they can never in conscience accept? What persecution awaits the dissenters?”

Asia Exile – Richard Lloyd Parry – “Richard Lloyd Parry is the Asia Editor for The Times and the Foreign Correspondent of the Year. He has lived in Japan since 1995″

Random quote: “I don’t share the view that Japan is undergoing an irreversible lurch to the right but the time and the place when this is easiest to believe is the 15th August, at Yasukuni Shrine. For the Japanese right, shusen kinenbi, or ‘End of the War Commemoration Day’ (what else are they going to call it – Victory Over Us Day?), is Christmas, birthday and Easter all rolled into one, when they get out all their toys and converge on the shrine in a day-long celebration of nationalism, historical revisionism and shouting.”

Beau Bo D-Or – “Involuntary donor to the Paul Keegan & Danny Flower charity at leat 12 times in the last year”

Random quote:

Beware of the Dogma – “The Weblog off M J Martin. Daily commentary on political and religious dogma from a Tory Humanist”

Random quote: “Considering the number of government U-Turns fulled by a lack of cash this week, it does seem as though the Chancellor is at last learning that the honeypot is not filled with everlasting treacle.”

Blog of Funk – “the every day story of the smell of sex” (nominated by bbm)

Random quote: “She laughed, believing me, warming my heart in the process and doing so much good PR for her company I think they should pay her an extra thousand pounds a day. In some parallel universe I arrived at her call centre with flowers, we went out drinking champagne that night, dancing naked under the stars, later coupling in the long grass with the intensity of a supernova and a can of beans.”

Bloggers for Labour have done their own roundup of new Labour-supporting blogs.

Bright’s Blog – “Politics uncovered by Martin Bright, New Statesman political editor”

Random quote: “I knew when I took this job that my Brownite sympathies would be assumed, however critical I was in print. I thought last week’s headline on my piece — A Plague on Both Their Houses – expressed my position pretty clearly. But there’s no accounting for the myopia of the Observer media section: if they can’t spot an Agnes B jacket when they see it, I can’t really help them.”

Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles – “Catherine has been in Los Angeles covering the west coast of America for the Daily Telegraph since spring 2004. She lives in West Hollywood.”

Random quote: “I made two new additions to my embarrassingly slender knowledge of all things Hollywood last night – backcombed hair is the look du jour for young starlets and Lindsay Lohan and Dustin Hoffman are best pals.”

Colin Randall in Paris – “Colin Randall, married with two grown-up daughters, has been The Daily Telegraph’s Paris bureau chief since July 2004. In 28 years on the paper, he has been a district reporter, chief reporter and executive news editor.”

Random quote: “I’ll take my own advice and stop somewhere nice south of Lyons, on the way (naturellement) to Le Lavandou. There, I will try my best to forget all about Sarko and Sego, Eads and Clearstream and the challenges of this, to me, strangely amateurish form of blogging (the real amateurs being, as it were, the true professionals).”

Comment is Free – “The aim is to host an open-ended space for debate, dispute, argument and agreement and to invite users to comment on everything they read.”

Random quote: “Our prime minister sees himself as a protagonist in an expanding conflict across the Middle East. And he is making our country part of the extended war zone.”

The Cutting Edge – “I’m the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (www.independent inquiry.co.uk) and The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Arris, Olive Branch, 2005). I teach undergraduate courses at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Brighton”

Random quote: “For the last few decades in the Middle East, armageddon has long lingered on the horizon, but in light of recent events, its shadow looms closer. Our leaders are not rational, trustworthy individuals, and we are not safe in their hands. We do not want to experience 7th July 2005 a thousand times over. So we must take action, now; which means making the voices of we, the people, heard so clearly and overwhelmingly that those who kill and support killing in our name can do so no longer.”

Dave, nice but knave – “Leader of Liz’s oppo gets on the interweb thingy” (nominated by Joe Otten)

Random quote: “I came across as exactly the sort of hip young thing that appeals to hip young voters these days. My master stroke was giggling along as Mr Ross and his other guest the actor Mr Bruce Rillis were saying ‘fuck’.”

David Rennie in Brussels – “David has been The Daily Telegraph’s Europe Correspondent since January 2005. He was previously posted to Sydney, Beijing and Washington DC. He lives in Brussels with his wife and two young children.”

Random quote: “Ed Balls was adamant that his boss was actually rather fond of the EU. A few years ago, he went on, some people thought Brown was dangerously pro-European, and might have to be restrained from plunging Britain into the Euro. That had been an exaggeration – but so was the current idea that Brown hated the place, he said.”

Everything Is Electric – “Copyright (c) 2005-2006, Katy Newton.” (nominated by Sunny)

Random quote: “I could pretend that I was an air hostess, or a piano tuner, or that I was the original Pears Soap Kid, or that I once got off with Jarvis Cocker in a Soho basement bar, or that Julie Andrews once changed my nappy when I was a baby, or that I was born with a vestigal tail which has mostly been removed but tragically leaves me unable to wear a G-string, or that I am the survivor of a pair of identical twins the other of which I absorbed cannibalistically in utero, or that I am the only person to have sailed single-handed round the world on a teatray with inflatable armbands taped to its base. All of those would be interesting lies well worth telling. But no, I only ever lie about having seen films.”

If Sam Tarran was in charge – “Age 14″

Random quote: “Where’s Dr John Reid come from then? How did a man who looks a potato with a personality like Victor Meldrew rise to his current position?”

The Injured Cyclist – “On the 24th April 2006 I fell off my bike in central London, landed badly and fractured my right leg in 3 places. I had an open fracture but thanks to the skill of my surgeon at St Thomas’s hospital who reconstructed my leg with 11 screws and a steel plate, I am now recovering. My purpose in writing this Blog is to warn other cyclists of the dangers of cycling in urban areas and the way that your life can change in seconds. I ask for no sympathy nor deserve it. This is my story.”

Random quote: “The noise I had heard a few seconds earlier of a breaking stick was my own leg bone breaking in half.”

John Wilkes – A Friend to Liberty – “British political commentary, humour and gossip”

Random quote: “I do wonder sometimes, what the obsession is that some Tories have with this moralistic outlook. Clearly, they claim to be libertarians in a number of fields, supporting the devolution of managerial decisions to the frontline in the public services and opposing ID cards and other anti-liberty outrages. But when it comes to society and the family, they become all traditionalist and high horse.”

Littlemummy.com – “Blogging mums = grown-up conversation” (nominated by Dave Goodman)

Random quote: “You will need: Custard (ready-made is fine) ; Food colouring (Green + any other colours you have) ; A few plastic bowls and spoons”

A Neo-Jacobin – “London born, free Englishman. Free to say anything, free to go anywhere and free to write anything. A libertarian, arguing for a world that’s fit for us humans to live in.”

Random quote: “Environmentalism seems to be converting what are legitimate concerns into some all-purpose cult like religion. It’s fast becoming the supreme source and standard of all values in human day-to-day life. Humanity, does in fact, face a very real threat in the future, but, it’s not from the melting polar ice-caps, or from too many hurricanes. The danger isn’t from the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, nor is it from planetary levels of CO2, or global warming – the threat comes from environmentalism itself.”

Nothing to see here – “a collaborative guide to some of the world’s lesser-signposted places to go – attractions that may not be all that attractive; coastal towns they forgot to close down; high streets that haven’t been homogenised; oddities and one-offs. The sort of places that are overlooked by guide books and given the bodyswerve by the tourist board. Places that still have a certain charm, a bit of je-ne-sais-quoi about them.”

Random quote: “As you travel along the A66 on the edge of Darlington you’ll see a train on one side of the road. Nothing unusual there except that this one isn’t going anywhere. Designed by leading contemporary artist and sculptor David Mach, Train is made from 185,000 local ‘Accrington Nori’ bricks and commemorates Darlington’s illustrious heritage as ‘home of the railways’. (The Stockton-Darlington Railway which opened in 1825 was Britain’s first permanent steam locomotive railway). Mach describes his train as ‘as much a piece of architecture as a sculpture’. 60 metres long and 6 metres high, it is a perfect rendering of the 1938 classic locomotive “Mallard”, complete with plume of billowing smoke.”

Peter Foster in New Delhi – “Peter has been the Daily Telegraph’s South Asia correspondent since January 2004. He lives in New Delhi with his wife, Clare, and his two children, Billy and Lila, both of whom were born in New Delhi. His ‘patch’ comprises India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives.”

Random quote: “We in the west, as we lay our perpetual claim to civilization, should never stop asking whether our actions are proportionate. Is the evil/violence we commit justified by the evil/violence it prevents? It may be, in time, we decided that the rows of dead children were worthwhile. Children and civilians died in the Blitz, in Dresden, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They probably died in a good cause, although we can argue about individual excesses. My point is only this: that the dead nephews and nieces mentioned in the AP report above need to be entered into the moral equations of this benighted War on Terror.”

Prodicus – “Random jottings on politics by a libertarian Tory. Not liberal or libertine – libertarian. Look it up.”

Random quote: “The most damaging charactertistic of the Labour government is not their stealth taxes, administrative incompetence or sleaze. It is their hubristic contempt for our constitution, which has been fuelled by a mania for power and social control, standing on a firm base of Old Labour class hatred.”

Right, that’s it. I’ve had enough. – “There’s nothing I like better than glancing through the paper, getting extremely cross with the idiocy therein, chucking the paper across the room and yelling … ‘Right…'”

Random quote: “I am absolutely STAGGERED at the vast number of obviously intelligent, well-informed, fluent bloggers who don’t know the difference between Its and It’s. It’s driving me bloody MAD.”

Sketch.sc – “Simon Carr has been the Independent’s parliamentary sketch writer for the best part of the 21st century… this site is an opportunity for the Sketch to share small experiences with (or in psychiatric parlance, offload them onto) members of the public.”

Random quote: “Twice, recently, the Speaker has told Michael Meacher to sit down and belt up as his supplementaries turn into mini-statements. It’s not just that he’s suffering from ex-Minister’s Nisease. No, he is planning to run against Gordon Brown as the Che Guevara candidate – of course he needs more time to develop his argument in the House than dumb back bench troops. This is a man of destiny. A MAN OF DESTINY, do you hear?”

The Spine – “The pocket-sized website”

Random quote: “Speaking under the promise of complete anonymity, Marine Sergeant Eugene Billywicker explained: ‘We’re being proactive in hitting these terrorist-loving scum where it hurts. They say they’re innocent but we know there’s somebody working them in the background. But now we’re on to them and are out to get the rest of the gang – Kermit, Fozzie, Big Bird, that little thing that looked like a shrimp but I ain’t sure what the hell it is… We’re out to get them all.’”

Stanlavisbad’s European and UK Politics Blog – “Pro-EU, Pro-Reform”

Random quote: “The EU spending plan for 2007 has just come out. Every year until 2013 we will be reminded how pathetic our leaders really are. Tony Blair had not even the slightest bit of courage to do what the EU needs – a budget which doesn’t spend 1/3 of its money on protecting farmers (and not even doing that since most of the money goes to large companies) and destroying 3rd world markets. And don’t even get me started on Jacques Chirac.”

Take back the voice – “no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through.” (nominated by Paul)

Random quote: “The Labour Party needs a new start now. That is the message the trade unions will be taking into the conference season ahead.”

Voxpolis – “Politics, culture, surrealism…”

Random quote: “Have the Tories learnt nothing from their last two election defeats?? They’re back onto the immigration debate, calling for restrictions on immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania when they join the EU next year. This is a bad idea”

Whats going on – “An attempt to try and figure out what the hell is going on in the world”

Random quote: “the look in Blair’s eye when he is around Bush seems to say ‘Oh – isn’t he dreamy! I am the luckiest girl in the world!'”

You see, it is simply a very young boy’s record – “Jangliss’s Journal”

Random quote: “Something equivalent to a Euston Manifesto for the British far left needs to define the post-Soviet consensus, to unite our aims and ‘sloganize’ the way forward. Postmodern and impenetrable though the academic left might be sometimes, this does not need to be our public face.”

Last time we restricted this to political blogs, what with us Sharpener types all being political and that. This time, anything goes. Preferably, however, make it good, interesting or entertaining – ideally all three. I know I need to update my regular reads list, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Ta, etc. – and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

Fine – a laudable aim. The British left has needed a way forward ever since the gang of four split the Labour party, a problem only compounded by the fall of the Soviet Union and Tony Blair’s careful guidance of the party towards the centre ground. The British left has to seriously reconsider its approach to the promotion of socialist ideals, and to what parts of the old left-wing obsessions are likely to be acceptable to the electorate in this post-Thatcherite age of rampant capitalism.

Obsessing over the Iraq war achieves none of this. M’colleague Garry has covered one part of the problem, but there’s another, broader one: the Iraq war is an irrelevance to the left’s attempts to revitalise itself after a quarter of a century of what amounts to a repeated defeat of left-wing ideology in successive British elections. It is an irrelevance to what the drafters of the Euston Manifesto profess to be their main aim.

Was Ken Livingstone elected Mayor of London first time around because he’s a socialist? Bollocks – it’s because we all knew it would piss Tony Blair off, and the candidates from the other two main parties were crap. Was George Galloway elected at the last general election because he was a socialist? Likewise bollocks – that was about the Iraq war and the government’s response to terrorism, not his economic beliefs.

This is the real crisis of the British left, not Iraq: the irrelevance of socialism to the modern political system. On the economic front, the right has won, and the left has little chance of a resurgence.

So where to next? Is the launch of a manifesto seemingly based on the Bartlet Doctrine from the fictional West Wing President’s second inaugural address seriously the best the British left can come up with – a wishy-washy, well-meaning but utterly impractical belief in international humanitarian interventionism? What about domestic policy? What about left-wing strategies for helping the poor of THIS country, which used to be what the British left was supposed to be all about?

The Iraq war has happened, whether you agreed with it or not. None of its western instigators are going to face prosecution. So get over it already.

The current insurgency is not thanks to the illegality (or otherwise) of the war. It’s due to the instability that removing a dictator who ruled an articifically-constructed country packed with internal religious and ethnic tensions was bound to produce (even if not necessarily to quite these extremes). If anyone with power had listened to Lawrence of Arabia after the first world war we’d never have been in this mess.

Take away the presence of foreign armies, what is happening in Iraq now is what happened in Yugoslavia after the fall of communism. That was another artificial construct of a country held together through the fear of the state, and fear of the state alone. Once the power of the state was destroyed, in both Iraq and Yugoslavia the suppressed intenal tensions rose to the fore.

Whereas other former Soviet or dictator-run states managed a peaceful transition to post-dictatorship existence (notably Czechoslovakia, peacably dividing itself along cultural lines into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), in many others similar tensions to those of Iraq continue, from Ukraine’s (now apparently failed) Orange Revolution to east Germany’s resentment of the west of the country, the Baltic states’ ongoing difficulties in accepting their Russian minorites as their own to Spain’s post-Franco problems with the Basque seperatists, the partition of India after the British Empire withdrew to the continuing problems endemic in the ex-Soviet central Asian states, mostly held together purely through fear and force by post-communist dictatorships.

The thing that has to be accepted is that Iraq is filled with numerous different cultural identities, split on loosely geographical lines. The most obvious are Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish. The logical solution is to divide the country between the three, and create three new states – ignore the oil factor, that can be solved through negotiation or creating a loose alliance between the three along the lines of the devolved United Kingdom. The chaos and bloodshed of the partition of India could, under the supervision of an international force, be avoided – as long as all three groups were able to gain from the partition.

But when it comes to the ongoing arguments in the west – especially in Britain and America – even these incredibly vague generalisations seem continually to be ignored, with the whole debate over the situation in Iraq divided purely into “pro-war” and “anti-war” camps, both of which repeatedly misrepresent the other and assume that only their interpretation of events is correct.

Me? I don’t care for either. I didn’t support the war, nor did I oppose it. I simply realised that I didn’t know enough about an incredibly complex situation to form a viable opinon. I still don’t – largely thanks to having got thoroughly bored of the whole thing before the invasion officially started and having changed the channel whenever Iraq news has come on for at least the last two years – which is why I so rarely discuss the bloody thing.

What I do find incredibly irritating is when people from either side start generalising about people’s attitudes towards the Iraq situation. The Euston Manifesto is a prime case in point, in that it misses the point entirely – despite having been written by a bunch of people who are obviously intelligent and whose obsessions with Iraq means they know far more than I.

The point about the divisions on the left is not that there is a pro- and anti-war split. It is that the left as a whole has somehow lost the overarching socialist ideology which once held it together. Although there are still a few Marxians knocking around – including a few of the contributors to this site – the majority of the people who currently make up the left no longer have any real unifying political ideology.

The Euston Manifesto proclaims itself an attempt to provide a framework for this much-needed new left-wing ideology. But while Eustonite Oliver Kamm‘s ideas of anti-Totalitarianism may – in the broad sense – be laudible, and while the Bartlet Doctrine may sound fine on TV, for any new codification of what it means to be left-wing in Britain in the early 21st century to be successful, it has to tackle issues in Britain, not in distant countries of which we know nothing.

After all, if anyone really cared as much about Iraq as the Eustonites seem to think, there’s surely no way in hell Labour would have been voted back into power a year ago. So why do they feel the need to bother? All they are doing is focussing on a single symptom of the left’s fragmentation, not the disease as a whole.