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There are plenty of people in the UK who are pro-EU. Maybe this appointment will make their lives easier: maybe it'll even be good PR for the EU in the UK. I can't tell.
Or maybe it just won't make much difference either way, in which case the Council will have wasted an opportunity to make an appointment which could have made a difference to the EU, if not the UK.
I think the concern here is not Brit bashing, but a reaction to the Narrative that Tony Bliar had to get the top job, and, failing that, Britain had to get at least the other job.
The fact that Baroness Ashton may turn out to be competent, or at least unobjectionable is almost irrelevant to that Narrative and the hostility it has evoked. Why must the UK always be appeased? What would have been so wrong about appointing a duo over Browns objections by weighted majority vote and send out the message that those who seek to weaken the EU will not be indulged?
The fact that Brown got his way in the end is a victory for UK Euroscepticism even if Brown or Ashton are not Euroscepticism. It feeds into the narrative that "Europe can't do without us, and needs British leadership - exactly the sort of leadership we have been providing since Maggie Thatcher and Tony Bliar".
Really, it's so easy to push those consensus loving, cheese eating surrender monkeys around, isn't it?. We can safely ignore them in the future. We have succeeded, again, in making the EU largely irrelevant as anything other that a free trade area - Ashton's claim to competence. notes from no w here
Turns out I don't care if it gives some of the British establishment a testosterone boost.
The figurehead isn't there to write policy notes and have meetings, but to embody a political narrative, so that people know what they're a part of - giving them a chance to feel they can at least agree or disagree, in that traditionally powerless democratic way.
If there are no figureheads, the process becomes remote to the point of disinterest.
The EU does a lot of this already, so picking Van Rompuy and Ashton is in character - more so than picking Blair would have been.
That doesn't mean 'The best we could have expected, considering' is really all that admirable, or the ideal template for the future.
The EU is good at functional politics, but very bad at narrative politics, with theatre and pageantry. Theatre and pageantry are stupid and annoying, but very necessary.
Brussels doesn't want to believe this, but I think it's a mistake to ignore it.
ThatBritGuy:
Brussels doesn't want to believe this
This sounds like a plausible explanation. If you do not believe something, you might develop a structural incompetence in the area, because you prioritize wrong and give promotions to the wrong people. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
The EU is good at functional politics, but very bad at narrative politics, with theatre and pageantry. Theatre and pageantry are stupid and annoying, but very necessary. Brussels doesn't want to believe this, but I think it's a mistake to ignore it.
There is also the fact that every time the EU tries to build a pan-European demos - with EU flag days or whatever - you get all kinds of nationalist neanderthals up in arms about the Evil International Jewish/Communist conspiracy "undemocratic, unelected Bruxelles bureaucrats seeking to subvert people's national identity."
And those nationalist neanderthals quite often have a strong say over the federal purse strings...
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
Jerome has written a good story articulating the case for the status quo post Lisbon and the Council appointments. I think it is possible to argue a coherent contrary case - that the competence of the appointees is not proven, that it is an attempt to appease British Euroscepticism and will fail, and ultimately, that the EU might have been better served by appointees with greater electoral standing, proven track records of articulating EU interests, developing new EU policies or mandates, and influencing their adoption on a global scale.
The jury is out, I don't know which view will ultimately turn out to be right, and I am open to persuasion, but I am interested in participating here only if I am allowed to articulate views which are not necessarily mine or which I am not sure about. notes from no w here
I am interested in participating here only if I am allowed to articulate views which are not necessarily mine or which I am not sure about.
You could make this clear for dumb people such as myself. 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 fact that Baroness Ashton may turn out to be competent, or at least unobjectionable is almost irrelevant to that Narrative and the hostility it has evoked.
The fact that Brown got his way in the end is a victory for UK Euroscepticism even if Brown or Ashton are not Euroscepticism.
Given past enmity between the two, is there not at least a chance that he went along with the campaign on the basis that Blair would come out of it looking shabbier than when he went in?
Brown isn't that devious. He doesn't do calculated.
I think it's more likely someone suggested Ashton to him, and when it was obvious that the other fellow travellers were out, he jumped at the chance to shoo-in someone who could wave the flag.
I wouldn't expect plots within plots from Brown. He's neither adroit nor imaginative.
As for why - yes indeed, it was to keep the UK on side. Not picking a Brit for the big jobs would have given the Eurosceptic gutter press in the UK its best Christmas ever.
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