It cannot veto, in the sense that no country can strictly ‘veto’ – but in the more generalised sense of “unilaterally cause not to happen” they are certainly a country powerful enough to block a particular candidate if they wished.

For my part, I cannot see a man who offended the Indian Prime Minister, and had the Russian Foreign Minister screaming expletives down the phone at him, chosed by the EU as the best person to act as its diplomat-in-chief. David Miliband would be, I suggest, a disastrous choice. The man is to diplomacy what AA Gill is to animal rights.

Now Lord Mandelson would be (in all seriousness) absolutely perfect…

Since I’m not a member of the Conservative Party, I don’t feel the need to defend their caucusing arrangements in a “Parliament” to which I attach zero importance. The fact that I prefer the Tories to Labour does not oblige me to go to the barricades for every stupid decision they make – you must be confusing me with someone who blogs in between looking for a constituency to stand in.

You and I both know that Cameron promised to leave the EPP for short-term, tactical reasons. The fact that some of the people they’ve now decided to sit with may have extreme views is embarrassing for them, sure, so go ahead and make hay. But it’s a tactical embarrassment, in the sense that it doesn’t reveal anything about the Tories, only about their attackers.

What if an Italian member of the PES, say, who had been a Communist in his youth, had written articles defending Stalinism? Does that mean that David Miliband is an apologist for the gulag? Of course not!

Someone like Ken Livingstone, by contrast, actively promoted causes (and people) with odious views, and many people didn’t seem to care about that, despite the fact that it told us a lot more about him than Kaminski’s views tell us about David Cameron. I think most people, in as far as they care, understand that the European political scene is comprised of some pretty weird, extreme and downright nasty characters on all sides. You sit down with dogs, you get fleas.

This is essentially a process story. And that’s why no-one cares – see today’s ICM poll. Feel free to keep banging the drum, but it’s been two weeks now, and absent any further “revelations”, this one’s going to fade fast.

And in the very next sentence::

‘If these guys were a bunch of homophobic and anti-Semitic Muslims you’d all be on a war-path.’

He doesn’t even see he’s doing it, does he?

http://order-order.com/2009/10/30/tony-blair-had-downing-street-dinner-with-kaminski/

http://charlescrawford.biz/blog/even-yet-more-further-labour-kaminski-nonsense

If true, perhaps Mr Miliband should make some sort of speech condemning this outrage?

Funny though, Mr E, that rather than address the points about Kaminski and others that have legitimately been raised. You right-wingers are basically engaging in the biggest exercise of whataboutery and ‘look over there’ tactics that I’ve seen. If these guys were a bunch of homophobic and anti-Semitic Muslims you’d all be on a war-path.

They do have a say and there will be some effort to achieve consensus. They just don’t have a veto.

@6 Very unsavoury indeed. Dunno about inside the beltway, but in Europe people are still pretty sensitive about these issues; Cameron is disgracing himself and it’s right that Brits should be aware of that.

@ Sunny H and Unity – When a nation’s elected officials have no say in who their electorate is represented by to the extent that someone with whom large chunks of the population are unhappy or angry with can get the job then yes I think there is a problem with democracy.

I think “holding to ransom” is a bit strong. If you think every other country is so desperately keen on Miliband getting the job that they could not even consider another candidate then I might agree but asking them to consider one who is even a little less contentious/ a little more honourable or competent is not an all together unreasonable request.

Some of these Law and Justice Party characters appear to be pretty unsavoury, and clearly Cameron’s decision to leave the EPP (while entirely correct in theory, given the views they espouse) has come back to bite him on the ass. But the idea that it’s the Tories who are engaged in the smear campaign is utterly laughable.

Apart from anything else, how is saying that the Poles would try to block Miliband a “smear”?

Since when was the existence of a power of veto a useful test of democracy?

So the poles should hold everyone else to ransom?

A lot of Poles are deeply unhappy with what he has said. Can he ever really represent them after his continued string of attacks?

If what you say is true and Poland can’t veto this then you should be calling for reform so that they can not revelling in party political point scoring.