The World

By Gideon Rachman

If the answer is Herman Van Rompuy and Cathy Ashton, what the hell was the question? Europe’s choices for its new “president” and “foreign minister” are like the result of some sort of computer-dating programme that has gone badly wrong. If you fed in all the criteria for the jobs into your computer and it spat out the names – “Van Rompuy” and “Ashton”, you would ring the systems department and tell them that there had been some sort of catastrophic breakdown.

Lady Ashton is not the best candidate in Europe for the job – she is not even close to the best candidate in Britain. If the EU leaders were determined to have a Brit there were plenty of other much better qualified people: Chris Patten, Mark Malloch Brown, Paddy Ashdown, Peter Mandelson, Geoff Hoon, Chris Huhne, Kenny Dalglish. It might be objected that none of these men are women. But that need not be an inusperable problem.

I am in Dubai and when I informed a fellow Brit that Europe’s choice was Ashton, he startled me by saying “what an interesting and imaginative choice”. But it turned out that he thought I had said “Ashdown”. Lady Ashton is the classic example of somebody who is not a household name, even in her own household. She is also a vindication of the accident theory of history. She was only sent to Brussels as trade commissioner because Peter Mandelson was unexpectedly summoned back to Britain by a desperate Gordon Brown. And Brown only chose Ashton to replace Mandelson because he could not risk choosing a prominent politician and thus sparking a by-election. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. I bet she can’t believe her luck.

As for Van Rompuy, I hope he writes some good haikus while chairing the meetings. He might even have material for an absurdist play.

Related reading:

FT video: Relative unknowns take EU centre stage

Send veto, guns and money: The EU “presidency” Alan Beattie,  FT

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