Does Ireland want Blair? Does anyone?

How fitting. The unelected, unaccountable Minister for Europe, Lady Glenys Kinnock, has today thrown her weight behind Tony Blair becoming the unelected, unaccountable new EU President.

According to PA, she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg today:

"The UK Government is supporting Tony Blair's candidature for President of the Council (of EU governments)".

Asked if the prospect of being Europe's president had been discussed with Mr Blair, she said: "It is the Government's position. I am sure they would not do that without asking him."

It shows a blatent disregard for the Irish for the Government to be talking about grabbing the cushy new jobs in the Lisbon Treaty, before it has even been ratified. But this is also a reminder to the Irish, as they prepare to vote again, that the creation of a new EU President will substantially diminish the influence of smaller countries in Europe.

Under the existing system, each EU country gets to chair the EU and set the agenda for six months at a time. That is no small matter for a small country whose politicians tend not to secure the higher profile jobs in the other EU institutions.

It means that the democratically elected prime ministers and presidents of each country are able to be EU President on a rotating basis. Nobody is pretending that this system is ideal. But it seems a damn sight fairer and more democratic than simply handing the post, complete with enormous new salary, perks, pension and prestige for two and a half years at a time to an ex-leader who has fallen from grace in his or her own country, as will be case under Lisbon.

Nobody even knows what this uber-President is actually going to do, given the total ambiguity of the Lisbon Treaty. How will his role differ from the super new EU Foreign Minister's?

The Swedish EU Presidency have today had a novel idea. According to PA, the Presidency "has suggested drawing up a proper job description - and then seeing which available political figure best fits the bill."

A job description??! Radical!

This just proves that the idea for a President is mostly about giving the EU a symbolic, political figurehead to help propel its wild dreams about becoming a world superpower. Otherwise why has noone ever bothered with the details?

Tony Blair may well be well respected around the world, and a weighty character for meetings with Putin and Obama. But he is also yesterday's news - he has no democratic mandate at all - and neither will any of the other contenders for the post.

Not only that, but according to a Populus poll for the Times in May, 63% of British voters don't want Blair to be EU President. So Glenys Kinnock is completely out of touch with the British people - quelle surprise.

Better fall into line, Glenys

It's a good job that Lady Kinnock was not Europe Minister this time last year when the Government was falling over itself to persuade us that the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty was nothing to bother our little wooden heads about.

One particularly misleading and often repeated claim was that the Treaty secured Britain's veto in foreign policy - that "unanimity in decision-making will remain the rule (i.e. the UK will hold a veto)", as the FCO told a Commons inquiry.

The Lib Dems argued the same thing:

Ed Davey: "The changes wrought by the treaty involve no new powers for Brussels but a simple and sensible reallocation of powers between those responsible for this area of policy. Foreign and security policy remains, as it always has been, in the control of member states. Britain controls its veto on all key decisions."

Interesting then to see Glenys telling the Fabian Society:

"Vetoes are a problem in foreign policy. We need the foreign policy reforms which were in the Constitutional Treaty".

Indeed. As we have long argued, the Treaty, just like the Constitution that preceded it, introduces majority voting into a dozen areas of foreign policy (See page 3 here).

Glenys steps up

Amid the Cabinet reshuffle, we learn the Europe Minister Caroline Flint has resigned, after failing to be promoted to Health Secretary, a position which she has apparently been coveting.

Iain Dale has the full text of her resignation letter, in which she accuses Gordon Brown of running a 'two-tier Government', and laments her lack of invitations to Cabinet meetings, saying she has been "only invited once since October and not to a single political Cabinet - not even the one held a few weeks before the European elections."

Not to worry Caroline, maybe the Prime Minister just needed briefing on the Lisbon Treaty, and you're not exactly qualified for that.

And so we learn that the new Europe Minister is to be the serial junketeer Welsh MEP Glenys Kinnock, wife of former Labour leader and EU Commissioner Neil Kinnock.

Unable to find anyone currently serving in Parliament to fit the position, Brown will elevate Glenys Kinnock to the House of Lords to take over.

Our recent ranking of MEPs gives us some easy-access info on the new Europe Minister.

Glenys Kinnock at a glance:

In a vote in the European Parliament in February last year, Glenys voted against an amendment which asked that the European Parliament "undertake to respect the outcome of the referendum in Ireland" on the Lisbon Treaty.

She has also chosen to opt into the highly controversial and dubious second pension scheme (see here, here and here) and in 2005, Glenys Kinnock was among those MEPs that vetoed a proposal which would have ensured that MEPs' contributions to the second pension scheme could no longer be paid out of MEPs' allowances, but would have had to come out of their own pockets.

Glenys did not do particularly well in our recent ranking of MEPs, coming 65th out of the 78 UK MEPs. However, she was not present for 5 key votes which we used in our league table... probably off on a 'fact-finding' mission somewhere.

Glenys is the most well-travelled of all UK MEPs, clocking up almost 130,000 air miles over the past five years, enough to travel around the world five times. Some of these included 'fact-finding' missions to the Seychelles, and trips to the Caribbean in May this year.