Chris Patten - CC / Flickr

Following on from my post about Bildt and Fischer, today is the time to look at two other strong candidates for top jobs in the EU, this time both of them Brits – Chris Patten and Tony Blair. I’m prompted to write this post after the FT carried a story that Patten would be “very positive” about the idea of taking the EU Foreign Minister position later this year.

Firstly, Patten. My first reaction was ‘hell, that’s going to really annoy David Cameron’, and secondly ‘isn’t he too old’.

On the first point, Patten, a former Chairman of the Conservative Party, has been causing a few problems for Cameron and the party leadership lately. He was opposed to the idea of the Tories leaving the EPP-ED group in the Parliament, prompting the young turks in the Tory Party to have a go at him. William Hague has already stated he found Patten’s statement “unwise”. So where is all of this coming from? Surely all of this bears the hallmarks of Gordon Brown and scheming in Whitehall; what better way to hammer home the Tories out of the European mainstream message than appointing one of their own to a top EU position, contrary to Cameron’s wishes?

Secondly, does Patten really have the stomach for this? When he stepped down as a European Commissioner in 2004, then aged 60, these were the lines in the BBC story:

The European commissioner, who lost his seat as MP for Bath in 1992, said he planned to retire, taking up writing, broadcasting and do some “serious gardening”.

“This is the last public service job I will do. When I finish it, I will be 60 and I would like to enjoy my sixties as much as I can,” he said.

There’s also an interesting interview with Patten given at the time in the New York Times. Is he the right person to be haring around the world for the next five years?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt he could do the job, and I also have a lot of time and respect for Patten. But somehow I cannot see all of the pieces of the jigsaw falling into place to make this happen.

Tony Blair - CC / Flickr

The second strong candidate for a top EU position, Tony Blair, this time rumoured to want the position as President of the European Council, a job that would be created if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified. Here the case is much more clear-cut than for Patten. There’s no way politically in the UK that Brown could not be seen to be backing Blair for this job (despite all the bad blood between the two in the past). The problems however are elsewhere. Blair is strong, charismatic, outspoken, and followed the USA to war in Iraq contrary to the wishes of France and Germany. OK, that was in 2003, and Blair still has decent working relationships with some member states, but if Bildt, Fischer or Patten are divisive figures then multiply it by 10 for Blair. CEP Blog has a breakdown on how the voting could work. Yet even after the horrors of the Czech Presidency of the EU and some sort of longing for leadership and coherency in the Justus Lipsius building I cannot see how a consensus for Blair could be achieved.

So I reckon Patten, Blair, Bildt and Fischer are all strong non-starters.

[UPDATE - 6.8.09]
A strong, personal case for Patten is made at Crooked Timber.

So is all of this likely, and is it desirable?

First of all I would be very happy for Miliband to take up some role in the EU. He’s a clever, communicative, coherent, intelligent and pro-European politician. He takes the EU seriously, and as far as I can tell he’s the only current UK cabinet minister that’s reasonably well regarded in Brussels. Having said that taking Miliband out of UK politics for 5 years or more would be seriously damaging for Labour and for his own career – after all Miliband is 42 now and is widely tipped to be a candidate for Labour leader once Brown quits or loses a general election. In the short term rumours of a Miliband exit would further damage a rather weak Brown cabinet, within which Miliband is one of the few stars.

Which leads me to the issue of whether Miliband as EU Foreign Minister is likely… When it comes to EU institutional logic then it looks like a sensible deal – Juncker would be European Council President, presumably with Barroso going for a further term as Commission President, and then a younger person from the left and from a larger EU Member State (Miliband) as EU Foreign Minister. But set against the background of UK politics and the Brown government’s present problems, and Miliband’s age and stage of his career, I reckon it’s still highly unlikely.

[UPDATE 23.10.09]
It’s still far from being a reality, but it seems there’s a little more to Miliband’s candidacy now, especially as Blair’s stock seems to have waned a little. See today’s Guardian, and this good analysis from the Economist’s Charlemagne blog.