By Geoff Dyer, the FT’s China bureau chief

China can do strange things to your politics. I know foreigners who purr about the efficiency of authoritarian bureaucracy and others who search Confucian texts for new political ideas. In my case, China has converted me to the importance of the European Union.

Sitting in Beijing, it is all too easy to feel that Europe is becoming irrelevant, as the US and a rising China stitch up the global agenda. The Chinese have become quite adept at playing one European government against another. When Beijing cancelled a summit with the EU last year to punish Nicolas Sarkozy for meeting the Dalai Lama, the response from other EU capitals was an awkward silence. The European Council on Foreign Relations claims Beijing treats the EU with “diplomatic contempt”. Continue reading "China has converted me to the importance of the EU"

The British foreign secretary spoke to my colleague George Parker about Afghanistan, Russia and the prospect of president Blair. Continue reading "FT video: David Miliband interview"

Poor Tony Blair – sabotaged by his own countryman. Just weeks ago,Mr Blair looked like the frontrunner to be president of the European Union. But now William Hague, Britain’s shadow foreign secretary, has let the rest of Europe know that the opposition Conservative party would regard his appointment as a “hostile gesture”. Since the Tories and Mr Hague are likely to be in government by the middle of next year, after a British general election, their views have real weight. Charles Grant, head of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, says: “On my travels around Europe I have found that Hague’s comments have made a huge impact.” Mr Blair’s candidacy has been badly damaged.

There is, of course, history between Mr Hague and Mr Blair. A decade ago, Mr Blair was prime minister of Britain and at the height of his powers, and Mr Hague was the leader of a struggling Tory party. Ten years on, both men have gone down in the world. Mr Blair is an elder-statesman for hire. Mr Hague has seen the Tory leadership pass to a younger, more charismatic man.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below

At last! Ireland has passed the Lisbon treaty and now the European Union can move forward with its plan for world domination. Within months, the EU is likely to appoint a president and a foreign minister. Tony Blair is limbering up for a
run at the top job. A clutch of Swedish, Dutch and Belgian candidates are jostling for the post of foreign minister.

Fortified by its new foreign-policy structures, the Union is staking a claim to be taken seriously as a global superpower. David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, says: “It shouldn’t be a G2 of the US and China. There should be a G3 with the European Union.”

But what happens in Brussels – or even in trilateral dealings between the US, China and Europe – is a sideshow. The real key to Europe’s global ambitions is the Group of 20.

The remainder of this article can be read here. Please post comments below.

On Friday, the Irish are going to vote one more time on the European Union’s benighted Lisbon Treaty. Together with a clutch of Irish and European politicians, I spoke last night at a forum on the treaty at the Historical Society at Trinity College, Dublin. The HistSoc is said to be the oldest undergraduate student society in the world, and was founded by Edmund Burke in the mid eighteenth-century.

I wonder what Burke would have made of the Lisbon Treaty? I suspect he would have disapproved of a top-down effort to re-mould national political cultures that have developed organically over centuries. On the other hand, he certainly would have disliked the resort to referenda, since he was the arch exponent of representative government. Continue reading "Edmund Burke and the Irish referendum on Lisbon"

Over the past few months there has been lots of speculation about whether Tony Blair wants to be “President of Europe” - or, more accurately, president of the European Council. But I think it is increasingly clear what job he would most enjoy - Pope.

Now that he is both retired from politics, a Catholic and head of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the former PM is giving full expression to his spiritual side. I was struck by this recent article in The Guardian, headlined - “‘Materialism a threat to planet and human identity’, says Tony Blair“. To be fair Blair’s speech to a Catholic conference in Italy (full text, here), covered a lot of ground - from Chinese attitudes to climate change, to globalisation. But there was also a fair chunk about the evils of materialism. Blair insisted: “We only need to contemplate the financial crisis to understand that the pursuit of maximum short-term profit, without proper regard to the communal good, is a mistake and leads to neither profit nor good. Yet, at a deeper level, the case against a purely individualistic or materialistic philosophy has to be made.”

Splendid stuff, but I would take it all a bit more seriously if Blair hadn’t spent part of the summer as a guest on “Rising Sun”, a vast yacht, owned by Larry Ellison, the Californian billionaire.

Nothing stirs the blood of the British more than the idea of being unfairly arrested by foreigners. London’s mayor Boris Johnson has used his newspaper column to attack both the UK and the US governments over the extradition of a British computer hacker to the US. Read the piece - it’s both funny and thought-provoking.

Meanwhile, the Eurosceptic website, Open Europe, is railing against what it regards as the misuse of the European Arrest Warrant to persecute Brits.

And finally, here is an account of the funeral of Cory Aquino