Glad to see the order of priority of your objections: “Does anyone seriously believe that *anyone* is going to take Baroness Ashton seriously, a woman who’s been at the Commission for only a year, and was unqualified even for that?”

So nothing misogynist or chauvinist about that.

Beg pardon? How is it misogynist or chauvinist to point out someone’s lack of experience?

I think this says more about your own priorities than mine…

We’ll see how it works out, far too early to judge now.

So accusing someone of being inexperienced and underqualified means I’m chauvinist and misogynist?

Mentioning someone’s gender is not an indication of sexism, old boy. The fact that you think it is says rather more about your own priorities than mine.

Agree entirely. I can’t think of an institution hobbling itself this badly with an appointment since the UN went for Ban Ki-Moon. I assume the dynamic is identical, national governments wanting to keep power and attention at a national level.

I keep on trying to be pro-European, and then they go and do something like this.

2/4

Note poster 1 didn’t take issue with the criticisms of the Belgian Bloke. He at least has the distinction of being elected somewhere, whereas Ashton has never even stood for election as far as I can make out.

These appointments signal that despite expansion and Lisbon, power still resides in the Franco/German axis. Perhaps the southern and eastern states need to assert themselves.

That’s a really idiotic comment @1. You simply cannot take that sentence as an attack on Baroness Ashton for being a woman.

Ashton’s credentials are extraordinarily thin, however. Not least, she has effectively zero previous diplomatic experience in her CV so far as I can tell (chairing Hertfordshire Health Authority excepted). Maybe she’s just got a massive talent that is really obvious as soon as you get to know her, or maybe she’s just a mediocre Brown crony. The point is that you can make it all the way from the Hertfordshire Health Authority through the ministerial ranks to cabinet minister, to being Britain’s EU commissioner, and never once have to stand for election or have a public profile of any kind. We simply have no idea whether she is a shining star or a grey apparatchik with the single virtue of unquestioning loyalty to Brown. That’s a condemnation of our own British system, before we even start having a go at the EU.

About van Rompuy, well let’s be more charitable than the usual Belgian=nobody trope. I’m no Belgian expert but I do know they were having a dreadful constitutional crisis with no national government being able to be formed for a long time, and if that got solved, and it was he that solved it, then that’s evidence of some leadership and/or diplomatic skills. Having said that, I’m happy to be corrected with conclusive proof that he is a total zero, as long as it is evidenced.

Either way, I agree that this is the end of the EU dealing with the US & China as a single entity. You could say that this is more of a problem for the US & China than us. Europe remains over-represented at the UN Security Council, G20 etc. Does that make Europe easier to ignore or go around? Not necessarily.

Ashton is superby qualified by being the wife of Peter Kelner who is a big supporter of Blair. Labour have superbly used the powers of patronage to place their supporters into positions of influence; Charles II would be most envious of their skills.

The interesting bit to watch is who gets the Finance Commissioner’s job. Traditionally we’ve always blocked anyone French from having it, on the grounds that they would obviously use their position to take revenge for Waterloo, Blenheim, Agincourt, Crecy and Poitiers by passing the ‘raze the City of London to the ground and plough the ground with salt’ Directive.

The French apparently believe now that, by allowing small irrelevant little countries like Belgium and us to have the meaningless self-important jobs at the top, they and the Germans can get on with running the shebang properly.

So, when the first crisis PM David Cameron faces is a regulation calling for the abolition of all financial centres beginning with an L (Lisbon excepted) we can look back and say ‘well, at least our premier diplomatic expert, Baroness Whosis, is high representative’.

The French apparently believe now that, by allowing small irrelevant little countries like Belgium and us to have the meaningless self-important jobs at the top, they and the Germans can get on with running the shebang properly.

Good to know that the Europhobic conspiraloon spin on “this the EU doesn’t try and grab any power at all” story has now been established…

I just read through Tim J’s last post four times, and I still can’t tell if he’s taking the piss or not.

10/11 – yes I am taking the piss. Mostly. As in, it really was genuinely historic British policy to block the French from getting the Finance Commissioners job; and yes it appears (according to Le Monde) that part of the overall deal was that the Finance Commissioner will be French next time round.

From Bloomberg:

France bid for the post of financial-services and single- market regulator to be handed out next month, while Germany and Italy campaigned for the post of European Central Bank president when Jean-Claude Trichet steps down in 2011.

“Germany as well as France have not eyed the top positions now, which means they are going to have the frontrunners for the other top positions in the commission, for the ECB and other potential jobs,” Fredrik Erixon, director of the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy, said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy opened the public bargaining last night, saying that he wants a regulatory role over the common market and financial services for France’s nominee to the commission, Michel Barnier.

French officials have pushed for tighter regulations on hedge funds than has the current internal markets chief, Charlie McCreevy of Ireland, and criticized him for not responding forcefully enough to the financial crisis.

If there’s a conspiraloon here, it would appear to be the President of France…

Oh, I see. I obviously missed the bit where Sarkozy said “I want to abolish London as revenge for Waterloo”, so I’ll have to take your word for it.

13 – well, that part was the ‘taking the piss’ bit that I mentioned above. French motives for wanting to regulate the hedge fund industry to death are, obviously, entirely altruistic.

Sorry, I must have missed the bit where Sarkozy said “I want to regulate the hedge fund industry to death”, also.

Does your Web browser have a different default stylesheet to mine, which shows this hidden stuff?

15 – he didn’t say it. But the plans that the French have been pushing for regulation of hedge funds (80% of which in the EU are UK-based) would, according to the ECB no less, prompt an exodus of such funds from the EU altogether.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04d2f904-bf6d-11de-a696-00144feab49a.html

http://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/MarketsAndSectors/Sectors/article/20090708/8fadba56-6bb1-11de-8c65-0015171400aa/Hedge-fund-regulation-under-fire.jsp

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8232723.stm

This isn’t terribly novel or controversial stuff Neil. France has been pushing for this, in the face of opposition from the UK (and Sweden, perhaps oddly) for over a year now. They have also been explicit that one of the reasons they want the finance commission is to push for just this change.

Still glad it wasn’t Blair but not sure he wants it with all the millions he’s making up as the world faith leader.

Shiver.

What a cynicist.

Tim, I still can’t see the Sarkozy quote, where he says “that will teach ‘em for Agincourt LOL!”

Do I need to highlight the text or something?

I can’t believe that Miliband (D) and others went along with this farce. Europe needs a proper Foreign Minister. The job has a big budget (I think around 10 billion euros for Aid), around 5,000 diplomats, and should be high profile. We get lumbered with a joke nobody Brownite toady. How does Brown central look at itself in the mirror in the morning? I’m yet to hear or read one statement about why she’s suitable.

18 – well, you could just read the bit where I said that was taking the piss. Do you actually have an opinion on any of this? Or is this just entirely pointless?

I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out that I was satirising Anglo-French relations in the cause of highlighting the only interesting potential outcome of appointing a Belgian boring even by domestic standards, and someone who is not even the most famous person in her own family to the two ‘most important’ positions in the EU.

If you want it shorn of all amusing, interesting and non-essential language:

The British have always sought to block the French from taking the financial commissioners position, because the British believe that a primary French objective is lessening Britain’s comparative advantage in the financial sector. Part of the deal in appointing the President and High Rep to non Franco-German candidates appears (according to the French press, Bloomberg and Sarkozy himself) to be that the French will now get this commissionership. If they use this to push through the regulations on hedge funds that they have been pushing for over a year then it will lead to a significant problem for the British Government.

Clear?

That was very po-faced and humourless, Tim. What is it with you righties?

21 – you win. I surrender. Pax now?

@19 “Europe needs a proper Foreign Minister…. We get lumbered with a joke nobody Brownite toady…. I’m yet to hear or read one statement about why she’s suitable.”

Thinking about this a second time, it strikes me that this is service to Washington rendered by Britain in its capacity as 51st state. Hillary was very effusive on the radio this morning, and you might interpret that as the pleasure of a Secretary of State who has as good as got a member of her own State Department staff into the post. With a Brit at the helm – any Brit, but particularly a massively inexperienced one – the US can effectively nip in the bud any tendency for the EU to develop a seriously independent foreign affairs & security policy line.

Strategist @ 2:17 pm

Might one further consider the implications of “any Brit, but particularly a massively inexperienced one”.

Now, how would that play with, oh … say an incoming Prime Minister whose sole experience outside Westminster might amount to PR-puffery for a failing TV station? Or an ex-Selfridges shop-boy suddenly advanced to running the national exchequer?

But then, having read in the first paragraph of the head piece that the topic was Baroness Ashton, I was intrigued by the emphasis in the fourth paragraph that she might be a woman. Now: I was emphatic that such a usage could not, ever, conceivably, possibly be chauvinist or misogynist, so I went about my daily business. I drop by here later and find a couple of others taking umbrage that I did so imply. How could I make myself clearer? After all, we don’t want to give the impression that this is just a bunch of little boys playing with themselves, do we?

I can’t understand why the EU voted for a couple of no-marks over an war criminal/Bush toady/religious nut/someone who kept the UK out of a common European currency.

There’s obviously something wrong with Europeans.

@24 “I was intrigued by the emphasis in the fourth paragraph that she might be a woman”

There was no such emphasis. Read the sentence again. The basic premise for your display of smartarsery is simply wrong. If anybody is looking a silly willy-waver here, it’s you.

“an incoming Prime Minister whose sole experience outside Westminster might amount to PR-puffery for a failing TV station”

Yep, the Cameron govt will be as pathetically subserviently Atlanticist as the Brown and Blair ones. At what point are you telling us something we don’t already know?

24 – But then, who was the last Prime Minister to have had a significant and substantial career outside politics? Brown lectured for a year or so in adult education, Blair was a minor barrister in a fairly desultory way, Major was a low-level Shell executive, Thatcher briefly a junior research chemist, Callaghan a union official…

Might one further consider the implications of “any Brit, but particularly a massively inexperienced one”.

Now, how would that play with, oh … say an incoming Prime Minister whose sole experience outside Westminster might amount to PR-puffery for a failing TV station? Or an ex-Selfridges shop-boy suddenly advanced to running the national exchequer?

For one who vaunts his own expertise in trolling, this is pretty thin stuff. Must try harder.

Does Neil ever do anything but make sarcastic and condescending comments?

Strategist @ 2:57 pm:

OK: so you didn’t mention gratuitously that the Baroness was a woman. How else could we have guessed such a shocking fact? So, is she a chap? What other point were you hoping to make? Consider all the poor little electrons that were exhausted bringing that detail to public attention.

Tim J @ 3:112 pm:

Well, you rose to the bait. But, since successful trolling needs fundies, there’s no chance of that here? Yes?

Personally I recognise that Callaghan’s two decades in the Civil Service, his war service, and uniquely having held all of the other three Great Offices of State qualified him. I would also suggest that Ted Heath’s witness of the Nuremburg Rally, meeting the Nazi leadership, seeing Republican Barcelona, commanding an artillery battle in the advance into Germany (and supervising an execution party) coloured his judgement for the better.

“Does Neil ever do anything but make sarcastic and condescending comments?”

Do you?

29 – I’m not convinced that being a clerk at the Inland Revenue from 1929 to 1936 really counts as two decades of Civil Service work.

Nor am I sold on the idea that a good war record was necessarily a good training for being Prime Minister. After all, since the War, until Thatcher, Wilson was the only one without it. How useful was Eden’s war record in making his a successful premiership? Since we no longer have conscription, can there be such a thing as a qualified Prime Minister?

And once again, parochialism takes over, and any discussion of the topic at hand is quickly sidetracked into purely domestic squabbling, spattered with the odd ad hominem attack.

God, I love the internet. So much potential gleefully squandered by petty spats and deliberate missing the point. Much like the EU, really…

Yes, what we need is a titanic hero to impose his will upon the governments of sovereign nations. Oh, wait, hang on…

Neil does a fine job of keeping people in check but then I would say that.

Is Malcolm Redfellow trolling or something? How on earth is that sexist?

Anyway, I’m shocked, absolutely shocked that the right-wing press have not made a big deal about this. And we thought they were interested in EU affairs.

If Sunny says it isn’t sexist, then you’ll have to do a lot of looking to find someone who does ….

34 – nothing wrong with keeping people in check, especially using humour, it’s just that he’s used that line about righties being po-faced about 4 times now.

“he’s used that line about righties being po-faced about 4 times now”

And the rest!

Trouble is, you po-faced righties keep walking straight into it – and you don’t like it one little bit when someone pulls it on you, do you?

Poor po-faced, humourless righties.

The general view here is that a gratuitous nudging reminder of a baroness’s gender is merely a gross tautology, so … fair enough.

I know that I’d prefer to provoke, and even offend, rather than be pitied for sloppy thought and lame expression.

Baroness? You chauvinist…

(etc.)

“Trouble is, you po-faced righties keep walking straight into it – and you don’t like it one little bit when someone pulls it on you, do you?”

What point are you trying to make exactly? As far as I can see, TimJ wasn’t being humourless until you started deliberately ignoring the humour and the point he was trying to make.

If you’re annoyed about the way some on the Right accuse the Left of being po-faced, it’s usually in relation to that subset of the Left who will, for example, read Harry Potter and then claim it’s sexist/racist/classist/whatever while most people are thinking “it’s just a kids’ story book!”. That doesn’t mean those analysing the story are necessarily wrong, it’s just that they’re perhaps seen as taking seriously something that’s actually quite lighthearted.

Righties – wind ‘em up and watch ‘em go!

“Two no-marks”…

Why has Liberal Conspiracy dropped its quality threshold to offer us this startling piece of non-analysis?

just asking