Hope that is not hyperbol - at least it doesn't feel like to me. :-)

Tony Blair has some advantages to be titular head of the heads of 27 states: name recognition, spin experience, fully networked, and comes equipped with a team of heavies - among others. From the European Council internal management point of view, he's perfect, because he's a good salesman.

The problem is - and it is the very worst problem for all the citizens of Europe - that what he's selling is not a united, fair, democratic Europe. He sells power. Tony Blair is not interested in solutions, he's interested in how our problems can enrich him and his cronies. In that, he is no different from a majority of all politicians, ambulance-chasing lawyers or professional wrestlers. Tony Blair is the Hulk Hogan of international diplomacy.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Blair is a grandstanding self-promoter, and as PM he was an obstacle to deeper integration as well as promoting, like Sarkozy after him, rule by a petit comité of the few largest states member states.

Not to speak of his war criminal credentials.

The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.

(he's also a liar, a crook, and eehm, a thief he may also be, just looking at his character)

The greater reason of course is the audacious mendacity he displayed in leading Britain into the Iraq engagement in the full knowledge that the alleged causus belli was a complete crock.

To say that Blair simply lacks the principles necessary in a leadership role is perhaps dramatic; but I don't think it qualifies as hyperbole.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

Equally, having such a track record of law breaking and then lying about it to his own parliament isn't likely to inspire trust at european level. Especially when he himself has shown little enthusiasm for European political institutions when he was in a position to bolster them.

If politics is as much about the meaning of gestures as it is realpolitik, then placing a man like him at the heart of a project tells the world an awful lot of awful things about the priorities of european elites.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Stop Blair.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

That he was able to guide the City into becoming the global financial center now respected around the world shows his understanding of global economic issues, not to mention knowing upon which surface of the bread is to be buttered basically, and is refreshing.

tony toni's grasp of complex issues germane to the enflowerment of the European Union is second to, hold, phone's ringing... and is refreshing.

What's most compelling to this observer, hubristically, is the great power and depth of the man's faith.  For without faith, what politician could fathom Europe faithfully enough to a rebirth of faith which is so lacking in our faithless secular boardrooms and blogs. Fait accompli i always say anyway. Faith is by its very nature refreshing, much as in the way pixels on a screen continually renew themselves.

As tonito himself put it so faithfully, "No man is an island, nor a chameleon." How much more refreshing could Europe get?

(apologies to afew if this runs afoul of england's hyperbole laws, but i didn't have time to look it up.)

Skennah Kowa

Appointing to a prominent EU position a man who possesses an inability (or a studied unwillingness) to tell a truthful story that is consistent from one day to the next is not going to help.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

Nominated too early? « Behind the Scenes

I cannot imagine that Tony Blair will get the job of EU president (a post created by the not-yet-ratified Lisbon Treaty).

He carries too much baggage. The Iraq war brought hundreds of thousands of Europeans to the streets in protest. It caused huge divisions among EU governments themselves, cleverly played upon by Washington at the time. To what good would it serve raking up this recent ugly past and then giving the (European) protagonist a major role in Europe?

And it will be a major role once a politician of Blair's calibre gets a hold of it.

The Lisbon treaty says the president should oversee the work of the regular EU leader meetings, but also externally represent the Union while not stepping on the toes of the EU foreign minister.  So there is plenty of room for manoeuvre.

If EU leaders give Blair the job it would be tantamount to saying they want an over-arching president who would represent member states to the world. This is not what small member states want and, for all his talk of "set[ting] the bar high and not aim[ing] for the lowest common denominator" I cannot see that this is what French president Nicolas Sarkozy, lover of the limelight, wants either.  Or London.

In addition, the Brussels apparatus is already acutely disconnected from EU citizens. Putting Blair, a supporter of a thoroughly unpopular war in the post, would only serve to underline this.

Perhaps EU leaders - most have changed since 2003 - will not pay too much attention to the Iraq war when and if it comes to the haggling of Lisbon Treaty posts.   The negotiations do not tend to be based on high principles.

But wheter or not Iraq would feature, I reckon London has done for his chances anyway. Giving Blair public backing so early in the game means his name is likely to get trampled down by opponents well before EU leaders get to formally discussing candidates for the post. A cunning ploy by Gordon Brown?

1. The Council needs someone able to arbitrate between 27, soon 29 governments, for a compromise solution. In his time as political leader, both domestically and on the European stage, Tony showed his complete inability to seek coalitions and compromise, and instead sought to marginalise opponents and to strengthen top-down power. In his time as emissary and negotiator, Tony was a no-show.

2. What the EU does not need is a President amassing even more power to the European Council he heads and himself. Thus, Tony's "brand recognition" and "international stature" and so on is the last thing we need in a President.

3. Furthermore, the right place for Tony is the International Criminal Court. A top EU official represents the EU not only in the eyes of colleagues and Beltway people in the US, but the eyes of both EU citizens and citizens of the rest of the world; and we don't need a widely resented war criminal there.

4. With his history of loyalty an insubordination to the US, to the extent of provoking a break within the EU, Tony can't be trusted to represent the interests of the EU, in any post (not just President of the EC; would they want to give the foreign affairs commissioner post or, heaven forbid, the President of the Commission post to him instead).

5. Tony's history of blocking important EU legislation and closer integration is no recommendation for any EU post either.

6. We don't need any more EU officials who are failed politicians domestically, either. Just see his record on the economy.

According to a YouGov poll in the Sunday Times, only 28% of people interviewed thought it would be good for Britain if Tony Blair got the EU presidential job, whereas 54% believed that it would be mainly good for Tony Blair, not the country. John Rentoul, writing in the Independent on Sunday, is right to note that the polling question was pretty loaded. Nonetheless, from soundings I have been taking, the message is clear: most Britons do not want to see Tony Blair in the post. It's not just that they haven't forgiven him for Iraq. It's also because he seems to be collecting titles and positions and fat salaries and fees galore without achieving great results in any one field. I was always sceptical that he could deliver anything significant in the cause of Middle East peace, on behalf of the Quartet, or that he would be perceived as an impartial mediator there, but even I have been suprised just how invisible his impact has been in the region. Meanwhile, he has been raking in the millions with lecturing and publishing deals. Let him get on with that and keep him out of the EU presidency. Blair in that job would harm not just Britain's interests, but the interests of the whole EU.

What the European Union needs is a truly pro-Unionist new President who has the credentials to contribute effectively to the proper function of the Treaty of Lisbon. That person is definitely not Tony Blair.

Examples are plentiful, the Terrorism Act of 2006 is one of the more famous.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

the combination of Mr Blair and Mr Barroso in the EU's top two positions would be extraordinary. First, they both actively supported the invasion of Iraq, as did Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who is about to take over as secretary-general of Nato. To say that this combination of European leaders does not truly reflect the diversity of European opinion would be an understatement.

Second - and for me this is a more important argument - Mr Blair is not the kind of politician who can act as a counterbalance to Mr Barroso, who has been unable to fill the EU's leadership vacuum. Mr Blair, for all his political qualities and purportedly pro-European views, has never been a comfortable operator on the EU stage. The European Council, the grouping of 27 heads of state and government, is a hugely complex political construction that a Metternich or a Talleyrand would struggle to deal with. Mr Blair is not a politician who relishes the nitty-gritty of technical disputes in areas such as fishing quotas.

Nor is he a man who could be relied upon to provide leadership during a European crisis. On a normal day, the council is a well-oiled machine that can run even without politicians. But not so during a big crisis. I wonder what Mr Blair would have done had he been in charge last autumn, when the global financial crisis erupted? In the absence of leadership from the European Commission, the turmoil brought out the worst in European leaders as they withdrew into national, unco-ordinated and often inconsistent policy responses, causing damage to the single European market in the process. This is exactly the situation in which you could expect a politically astute council president to make a difference. Would Mr Blair have really stood up against the eruption of nationalism or would he have accentuated the divisions?

Mr Blair's undisputed communication skills and his political star qualities are no doubt an asset, but the EU's leadership problem is not primarily one of communication or perception. It is for real. You need someone in that job willing and capable of banging heads together. Surely, this is not Mr Blair. Who else might fit the bill among Europe's former centre-left prime ministers? I have heard that Paavo Lipponen, the former prime minister of Finland, has been approached by some of his political friends. He could be a better choice.

Third, the job of council president might be very different from what Mr Blair imagines it to be. It does not currently exist. The Lisbon treaty does not define the role in detail. It will depend greatly on what the successful candidate makes of it. Foreign policy is not an explicit part of the brief: that will be the responsibility of a yet-to-be-appointed High Representative. So if and when someone outside Europe searches for that telephone number, it is not at all clear that it will be Mr Blair's.

1.  His policies have FAIL stamped all over them.

2.  He is, at best, a weak supporter of the EU 'project.'

3.  He has never taken a political risk to support the EU.

4.  His public statements places him outside the EU 'consensus.'