Is Ashton an anti-EU Brit?

I think the FT (of all people) put it best: Blair is the wrong man for EU job

But alongside the debris piled up by the Iraq catastrophe, Mr Blair blew a historic opportunity to embed Britain in Europe and change the British conversation about Europe. At a time when Britons of his generation have never felt more familiar with and at ease with their European neighbours, and when so many EU arguments were going the British way, Mr Blair all but abandoned any attempt to win domestic opinion to even the pragmatic case for pooling a small portion of British sovereignty, instead capitulating to the Eurosceptic and jingoist media. On leaving office he blamed the press for forcing Britain's leaders into a false dilemma of being for or against Europe: "it's either isolation or treason". But after his landslide 10 years earlier he could have crossed the English Channel on foot. Leaders are supposed to lead.

It's not that he was an anti-EU Brit. It's that being a Brit he proved he was anti-EU by failing to make the case for the EU to his fellow citizens when he enjoyed an immense amount of political capital.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

The "no-one from the big countries" argument has to be addressed separately for the two posts, because of their different impact on the composition of the Commission.

President: Sarkozy, Merkel and Brown were evidently unwilling to put themselves forward. Berlusconi? Let's not even go there. So we turn to past leaders... Chirac, Schröder? Blair appears to have been the only one ready to put his name in the frame and to have the support of his country's current leader. That second condition is pretty crucial, since I cannot imagine circumstances in which a big country candidate could ever be considered viable without the support of the current member of the European Council. So by a process of elimination, Blair was the only big country candidate for President.

For High Rep, there were viable names available from FR and DE, but evidently Merkel and Sarkozy valued an economic portfolio in the Commission (not to mention the next ECB president in Merkel's case) more highly (and we'll find out soon enough if they get them).

The question is why did Brown decide foreign policy was more important than economics? Is there some kind of deal in place that will give him/the UK something else? Or did Barroso and the EPP gang up and tell him the UK was never going to get a senior economic portfolio?

The clear message is that someone from a small country can be forced into an EU job by peer pressure, whereas a big country leader can tell their peers to get stuffed. What's not yet clear is whether the UK is now a small country, in these terms...