Jonathan Todd

5 Comments »

Jon Worth said:
OK, so the danger is real. But what do we *do* about it?
It’s in the interests of Gordon Brown, Merkel etc. that the European Commission stays weak as with an equivalent of Delors there the national leaders lose the limelight. Same for the EU foreign minister position created in the Treaty of Lisbon.
In short leadership on the world stage needs leaders, and Europe is rather lacking those just now.
# 27/07/2009 at 14:59

jonathantodd said:
Thanks for the comment, Jon. What we could do is recognise and debate these issues properly, which seems to be something we all too infrequently do.
# 27/07/2009 at 15:04

Jon Worth said:
Yes, but to cope with the issues we need to completely re-frame the discourse across Europe – that European countries are too small to do these sorts of things on their own. That does not fit easily in the UK where the public still remembers Britain ruling the waves. Elsewhere in Europe a time of economic weakness, economic downturn is not an easy backdrop against which to change public perceptions.
Then more generally there’s the question of leadership in a post-modern age – could Mitterand and Kohl have done for Europe what they did in the 1980s in the era of 24 hour news and the internet – i.e. take unpopular geopolitical decisions, knowing in the medium term these would pay off?
# 27/07/2009 at 15:18

jonathantodd said:
I think that too often a pro-European argument is taken in the UK as an argument predicated on the kinds of notion of British decline that you touch upon. As Dean Acheson didn’t quite say, the fact that the UK lost an Empire long ago doesn’t mean that we can’t now have a full and significant role on the global stage. But we’ll only have such a role in and through the EU. This isn’t a narrative of British decline but a narrative of European powers working together to create a rules based global order that embodies the values and interests that they hold in common.
The EU isn’t at the moment performing in a way that is likely to deliver such a world, however. I think that there is a duty incumbent upon all European leaders to face up to the reasons why this is and to address them. And the European citizenry should hold them to account on this. Both European leaders and citizens need to raise their sights to the bigger global picture, not allow them to be limited by the 24 hour media. I don’t pretend that this will be easy but nothing that is worth fighting for is.
# 27/07/2009 at 15:39
Nick Clegg either doesn’t believe in the EU or isn’t really a politician « The Home of Toddism said:
[...] Europe wither? It surely shall if we do not wake up and smell the coffee and move on from the navel gazing and introversion that have marked recent years. Tony Blair [...]
# 27/10/2009 at 22:16

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