Tony Blair Throws Down the Gauntlet

BBC NEWS covers the story: Blair urges debate on EU's future

He refuses to back down on the Budget. France won't budge on compromise regarding the agriculture policies, including farm subsidies. What's a future UK President of the EU to do? Raise the stakes:

Mr Blair last month stressed he did not want to ditch social protection in favour of an Anglo-Saxon economic model which trampled on the poor.

On Friday, he said Europe should have a "strong social dimension".

"Europe is not just about free trade and it is not just about the economy," he said.

"But it is no use us trying to compete in the tough, changing world unless we are prepared to make the changes necessary, including not abandoning our social model, but updating it and modernising it."

Eurocrat reaction was typical:

[EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso] said said leaders should nurture a "culture of compromise" rather than treat EU talks like a boxing match.

"We are a union of 25, very soon we hope 27, which is diverse and nobody is going to impose its own point of view to the others," he said.

"To reach an agreement everyone will have to contribute."

Funny, I thought that's what Mr. Blair was doing. Makine a contribution, that is. Oh, that's right. He wasn't contributing business as usual. As in promoting Western Europe's hopelessly irrelevent and economically precarious socialism. Ah, that's it. Shame on the Prime Minister! What's the matter with him. Observing that Europe's only hope to viably compete with the United States was to more realistically reform the continent's economy. O the humanity!

Dropping birthrates. Failing GDPs. A virtual invasion of impoverished fundamentalist muslims with little patience for western decadence secularity. What do the brave Eurocrats do when faced with this derailment of their civilization? Cry foul when an incoming European President proposes change.

Brilliant!