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

A writer who projects emotions on to the weather is guilty of the “pathetic fallacy”. But, at the risk of sounding both pathetic and fallacious, it was entirely appropriate that the sky darkened and the thunder cracked as I approached the office of the Latvian prime minister in Riga last week. The gloomy atmosphere reflected the dark mood in a small, embattled country of 2.2m people. While business headlines in the rest of the world speak of clearing skies and rays of sunshine, the Baltic states are still in the midst of a howling economic gale.

Despite the region’s small size, the intensifying crisis in the Baltics cannot be treated as a freakish local squall of little concern to outsiders. Bank failures or plunging currencies in the three Baltic nations – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – could threaten the fragile prospect of recovery in the rest of Europe. These countries also sit on one of the world’s most sensitive political fault-lines. They are the European Union’s frontier states, bordering Russia.

The economic downturns in the region are shocking. Last week, Lithuania announced that its economy had shrunk by 22.4 per cent, at an annual rate, during the second quarter of 2009. Latvia and Estonia are likely to record similar falls when they announce their figures. Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian president, told me last week that her country might have to apply to the International Monetary Fund for a loan. Latvia has already trodden that path. Last week it agreed its second loan in eight months from the IMF and the EU.

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

Whenever European leaders want to justify the drive for ever-closer union in foreign policy, they quote Henry Kissinger’s famous remark - “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?”. The comment is meant to epitomise Europe’s failure to get its act together on the world stage. The hope in Brussels is that if the Lisbon Treaty goes through, the Americans will finally get that single number to dial; it will be the new EU foreign secretary for Hillary Clinton, and new EU president for Obama.

The Kissinger “who do I call” remark was trotted out at almost every seminar I ever went to Brussels. So I’m delighted to add it to the list of “famous sayings that were never said”.

Reginald Dale of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington (and before that of The Financial Times) has written to me to say: “Kissinger never made the famous remark about Europe’s telephone number. According to the late Peter Rodman, who knew him well, the saying is apocryphal, and in fact Kissinger’s concern was the precise opposite - he was fed up with having to deal with a Dane whom he regarded as incompetent and ineffective, who was trying to represent the whole of the EU as President of the Council. Kissinger himself has disowned the remark, and it seems that he was actually seeking to divide and rule in Europe, rather than be restricted to a single voice on the telephone.”

Any more myths need puncturing?

Given their longstanding rivalry, it is slightly surprising that Gordon Brown has openly backed Tony Blair to be the first ever President of the EU. (Technically speaking, president of the European Council, a job that will come into being, if and when the Lisbon Treaty is finally ratified later this year.)

I cannot imagine that Brown would really relish greeting Blair back to Downing Street as “president of Europe”. So why has he done it? Here are some possible motives:

1) Explanation one: He doesn’t really want Blair to have the job - and this is all a Machiavellian manoeuvre. Experience teaches that the most talked-about candidates for top European jobs rarely get them in the end. Chuck a name into the hat, and you give  time for the opposition to coalesece. When Jose Manuel Barroso won the post of president of the European Commission for the first time, his name emerged only at the very end of the process.

2) Explanation two: National ties matter more than personal antipathy. Brown may not like Blair much. But there is an ingrained national instinct to try to secure any top job for a British candidate. Or as Brown certainly wouldn’t put it - “Blair may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.” Continue reading "Why is Brown backing Blair?"

“What’s the difference between a Finnish extrovert and a Finnish introvert? The introvert looks at his shoes when he is talking to you. The extrovert looks at your shoes.”

As politicians jokes go, that is not bad. I heard it from Alex Stubb, the Finnish foreign minister, who was speaking last night at the European Business Leaders conference here in Helsinki. Like many successful young politicians, Stubb is a crazed over-achiever. I used to know him in Brussels, when he was a member of the European Parliament,  so I asked him if we could meet up again later this weekend. He informed me proudly that this would not be possible, since he is going to Germany to take part in an “iron man Triathalon”. Lucky him.

Another way of dividing up the Finns is between the inward-looking and silent “forest Finns” and the outward-looking cosmopolitan “Nokia Finns”. Naturally, the Nokia Finns are running the show at the business conference. Finland’s recent economic success has made the country a prime example of the benefits of being a small open economy in a globalised world. But some of what I’m hearing at this conference makes me wonder, if we may be moving back into an age in which it’s better to be big. Continue reading "Forest Finns, extrovert Finns and the perils of being small"

There is much head-scratching in Britain today, about why the Iranian government has chosen to focus its anger about “foreign meddling” more on the UK than the US. Why is it Iranians working for the British embassy who have been arrested? Why did the supreme leader single Britain out for special condemnation in his speech at Friday prayers, ten days ago?

Two popular theories are doing the rounds here. First, its all to do with history - and Iranian memories of decades of British meddling. Second, the Iranians want to keep open the possiblity of accepting Obama’s famously outstretched hand. Both theories have their merits. But I think there is a simpler explanation. I’m sure the Iranians are furious with the Americans and see the CIA’s hand everywhere. But arresting Americans or bating Obama is risky. The US is the sole superpower and has troops and planes sitting in the Gulf and in Iraq. It is much easier and less risky to pick a fight with Britain.

You could see the same logic at work in the recent spats between Britain and Russia. The Russians, like the Iranians, claim to be convinced that western intelligence agencies are plotting against them and fomenting revolution. But it was the British Council that was singled out for harassment - not some branch of the American government. Again, its easier to pick on the less intimidating “little Satan”. Continue reading "Bashing Britain is fun and easy"

Ever since the economic crisis broke I have been scanning the European horizon for signs of political turmoil: red flags being unfurled, jackboots polished. But on the evidence of the elections for the European parliament over the weekend, I should have directed my gaze closer to home. There is only one big country in the European Union that is having a national nervous breakdown – Britain.

The UK was the only one of the six biggest EU countries where the governing party did not come either first or a close second. Labour was forced into a humiliating third position with just over 15 per cent of the vote. Gordon Brown’s defeated army straggled in behind the United Kingdom Independence party (Ukip), which wants to pull Britain out of the EU. To compound the agony, the collapse in Labour’s vote meant that the openly racist British National party (BNP) has gained two seats in the parliament – and all the money and publicity that goes with it.

The picture in the five other largest EU countries is very different. Despite the fact that the German economy has shrunk by almost 7 per cent over the past year, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats will again be the largest German party in the European parliament. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP trounced the Socialist opposition – and both the extreme left and the extreme right had a bad night. Poland’s centre-right Civic Platform won easily. The governing People of Freedom party came out ahead in Italy, despite a rash of humiliating scandals involving its leader Silvio Berlusconi. Even in Spain, where unemployment has soared, the ruling Socialists only lost narrowly to the centre-right.

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

My FT column tomorrow is about the European elections and focuses on political turmoil in Britain and the progress made by far right, anti-immigration and Eurosceptic parties across the continent. I particuarly like this headline about Britain’s belegured prime minister from Spiegel in Germany - “Brown im Bunker”.

But the election also threw up lots of other interesting wrinkles. The French Greens did really well and will now have one of the most colourful delegations in Brussels. It will be led, as ever, by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who still looks remarkably youthful given that he made his name on the barricades in 1968. Joining Danny-the-red will be Jose Bove, the Asterix-lookalike who has led France’s anti-globalisation farmers and was famously imprisoned for trashing a McDonald’s. I once got caught in a massive traffic jam in France, caused by Bove-supporting farmers - one of whom eventually presented me with a melon, with a little note attached to it - “Ce melon est un symbol de notre colere” (This melon is a symbol of our anger). It was a memorably bizarre political statement. A third member of the French Green delegation will be Eva Joly, a crusading anti-corruption magistrate of Franco-Norwegian origin.

The ranks of female anti-corruption crusaders in Brussels/Strasbourg will also be boosted by the election of Marta Andreasen, a former chief accountant at the European Commission turned whistle-blower - who had just been elected as a member for the United Kingdom Independence Party; an oddly nationalist outfit for an Spanish-Argentine ex-Eurocrat to end up representing. But that’s the joys of European integration.