Some sections of the British Press have already crowned Tony Blair as Europe’s President following the emphatic endorsement of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish electorate. While many believe that most of this spin is purely just that, others see no other European of equal stature as Mr Blair who could possibly fit this new position to be created by the Lisbon Treaty.
But the lobby against Mr Blair being nominated as Europe’s first President is getting organised as I write. Here is a man who carries with him an enormous amount of baggage, some of which will haunt him for the rest of his public and private life.
The most obvious hurdle that he will need to jump over is the hostility still felt by many European leaders and politicians of all hues about Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war. Mr Blair himself resisted public pressure for the setting up of a comprehensive inquiry into the conduct of the Iraq war. But Prime Minister Gordon Brown had to give in and today Sir John Chilcot is presiding over this inquiry which started its work last July and is looking into all the aspects of the war in Iraq. Although at first it was believed that the inquiry will not apportion blame, later, Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Milliband pronounced that the inquiry will be free “to praise or blame whoever it likes”.
As Mr Blair is a major actor and witness in this inquiry it would be rather unseemly for the President of Europe to be embroiled in the aftermath of the inquiry which is expected to publish its final report late in 2010.
One other stumbling block for Mr Blair’s appointment as President of Europe is his lack of leadership on the whole question of Britain’s role in the EU. While verbally he always proclaimed that Britain was in the heart of Europe, his actions didn’t match his words.
He never acted decisively into gearing up the UK economy to reach the Maastricht criteria hence leading Britain towards adopting the euro as its currency. Political expedience won the day and Britain today is further away from getting anywhere near becoming a member of the eurozone, both economically and politically. To have a President of Europe whose country of origin is outside the eurozone (and the Schenghen area) would be a gross injustice on the countries that worked so hard to achieve economic convergence in order to be allowed to adopt the euro as their currency.
Although Mr Blair has been accepted into the Catholic Church, many politicians and ordinary citizens across Europe remain sceptical about his personal commitment to his Church’s doctrine. Since becoming an MP, Mr Blair had voted consistently with the pro-abortion lobby, despite claiming that he personally opposed abortion.
His party in government enshrined into law euthanasia by default, by allowing the denial of appropriate treatment and basic care, such as food and fluids, from non-dying patients. He has also declared his personal support for destructive stem cell research on cloned human embryos and has endorsed the abortion-inducing morning-after pill among teenagers. While all these issues would create no problem at all in many European capitals, I can’t see Ireland, Poland and Malta not taking into account Mr Blair’s record of voting regarding abortion.
There is still a lot of anger among Christians in the UK that he spent his time during his Premiership marginalising Christianity, to the extent that many well-established Church welfare institutions, particularly in the fields of fostering and adoption, had to close their doors because of his legislation regarding the acceptability of gay couples to foster and adopt.
Add to all this Mr Blair’s lacklustre performance as Quartet Special Envoy for peace in the Middle East and I hope that readers would come to the same conclusion I have reached that he would be more of a liability than an asset should he be crowned as Europe’s first President.