September 13, 2006
Barroso the Blairite
Do not worry about Tony Blair. He is alive and well and has moved to Brussels. He has also changed his name to Jos Manuel Barroso and has acquired a tan, a Portuguese accent and an exciting new job as president of the European Commission. That, at least, was the impression I was left with when I attended the FT debate in Brussels yesterday, in which the president of the Commission gave a speech and answered questions from the audience. Some of his language sounded strangely familiar. And so it proved. Compare these quotes from Barroso yesterday with some speeches by Tony Blair: Barroso: “If we want to keep our values, we have to change and modernise our policies.” Blair: “Our policies may change, but our values remain the same.” (This particular quote comes from a speech Blair gave in Scotland in 2002, but he uses this formula all the time.) Barroso: “Some people in Europe would prefer to hide from globalisation, but we believe that we have to embrace it as an opportunity.” Blair: “The way for us to handle the challenge of globalisation is to compete better, more intelligently, more flexibly. We have to give our people confidence we can compete.” (Los Angeles, August 1 2006) Barroso: “The question is who wins the argument - the modernisers and reformers or those who want to see us as a declining continent, resisting globalisation.” Blair: “We will modernise Britain, as we modernised the Labour Party.” (1997) An early biography of Blair was actually called “The Moderniser”.
