Rhetoric and reality
The rotating presidency of the European Council of Ministers passes to Britain today, giving Tony Blair and Gordon Brown six months in which to coax agreement from the European Union’s governments to reset its flailing compass in the more “flexible, reforming, open and globally-oriented” direction urged upon them last week by the Chancellor. It is a challenge that Britain should relish. The demonstrable flaws of the interventionist, overregulated, Franco-German concept of European integration have created propitious circumstances for radicalism.
The determination of both men to force the pace of change is unmistakeable, and laudable. To understate the scale of the task, as Mr Blair came close to doing when he told the European Parliament that the rejection of the constitution “is not a crisis of political institutions, it is a crisis of political leadership”, would be to pass up a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Yet, at the same time, they must take care not to succumb to the new Labour propensity to promise more than can be achieved in six short months.
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