There are a serious problems with these sorts of responses.

The first is the Euro. It may look like a battered currency just now, but the work to save it is central to almost every aspect of the future of the EU just now. Sarko could slap down Cameron because of the latter’s categoric rejection of the Euro much more easily than he could attack Donald Tusk or Helle Thorning-Schmidt, PMs from countries that still hold out the option of joining the Single Currency. So any argument about British leadership in the EU absolutely must not rule out Euro membership in the medium term, because without that commitment any attempt to reform anything at EU level proposed by the UK will be rejected at worst, and not taken adequately seriously at best.

Second, the pro-European vs. Eurosceptic fight is tiresome and gets us nowhere. As I argued in the Pragmatic Radicalism pamphlet, this frame only serves the interests of the EU-phobes, and prevents a narrative being developed that would allow a more socially responsible EU to be advocated. The term ‘pro-European’ is just too vague and stodgy to be useful.

In short, we need answers on how we want the European Union to look in the future – how the economic and political future of the EU should be. Just better defending what we’ve got, being cheerleaders for the status quo, is uninspiring and a waste of time.

We need to be able to attack the Common Agricultural Policy while defending and hoping to strengthen protection for workers EU-wide, and to advocate a future of the Euro that promotes growth rather than relying on austerity. That’s a long slog, but at least in the blogosphere we can make a start.

Enlargement to central and eastern Europe was in process at that time, and the Euro would be found in citizens’ pockets less than 8 months later. Wrangling over the Treaty of Nice the previous December was perhaps a sign of things to come, but with Blair’s Third Way and Schröder’s Neue Mitte in full swing and the war on terror not even thought of it was a generally optimistic period.

Important in today’s political context are pages 40 and 41 from that edition (PDF here), featuring then MEPs Michiel Van Hulten (then 32), Lousewies van der Laan (then 35) and Nick Clegg (then 34). The same van der Laan has recently given the Lib Dems a controversial pep-talk about the coalition (poorly reported in The Guardian here, and in a misogynist fashion in the Daily Mail here (‘glamourous Dutch ally’ – oh, come on)).

The important thing with all three of these young MEPs, written about under the heading “Shaking Up the Brussels Bureaucracy”, is how their approach has changed, and how they have encountered problems. Van der Laan took the same route as Clegg – back to national politics – and ultimately failed to lead D66. Van Hulten also returned to national politics, becoming chairman of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) between 2005 and 2007, and now seems to be doing think-tank work. Clegg, as we know all too well, returned to UK politics, becoming a MP in 2005 and is now Deputy PM and focus of major student anger.

“If you’re young and want to change things, you should follow the power – and power is shifting towards Brussels,” said van der Laan in the article. Seems that all three of them did precisely the opposite, and did they perhaps regret their choices?

And the author of the Time piece back then? Gareth Harding, now (among other things) a lecturer at IHECS, and I’m working with him there next month…

It’s not because I fear the result of the UK’s forthcoming general election – even if Labour wins there will be scant optimism. The battle is about who cuts what, when – aside from occasional forays into whether Brown is a bully or whether Cameron u-turns on marriage tax. Brown is battered, Cameron is weak, and Clegg is non-existent. Will even 50% of the population be enthused enough to vote? A heavily indebted, inward looking, security paranoid, deeply unequal population needs some cause for optimism, but where is that to be found?

In the meantime workers are ranting about refinery closures in France, increases in pension age in Spain, and everything in Greece. Meanwhile in Brussels everyone is playing silly power games about a nomination to Washington, and everyone is trying to undermine the High Rep for Foreign Policy who was supposed to help the EU play a greater role in world affairs. Fat chance. [UPDATE: more on the strikes in The Economist here]

To deal with all of these things 2 things are lacking: incentives and leadership. To deal with any of these issues we need strong, optimistic and visionary leaders, at national and also at EU level, people who can show that solidarity or common EU action or whatever is in the interests of everyone. People that can create a narrative that brings together business and worker interests, people that can persuade the baby boom generation that they don’t have to mess up absolutely everything for the generation coming after them. Where are those people? Or maybe it’s because the incentives are wrong within political parties, hence preventing those people emerging?

Beyond that all of this is intensely personal. Here I am, a political motivated individual with good skills (particularly when it comes to internet politics) and I’m effectively pottering around the edges. I’m designing websites for politicians but the sites do not come close to pushing the boundaries of net politics as all the individuals concerned are in the same restrictive structures that prevent the emergence of visionary leadership… Since the Atheist Bus Campaign I have no major, concrete online deliverable that I can point to.

Offline is no better – I just cannot bear political meetings that are filled with bla bla for hours on end, never-ending lists of reasons why X or Y cannot be accomplished, and interminably dull speeches designed by speakers to make themselves look intelligent rather that actually getting to the crux of an issue. It all depresses me enormously.

But what the hell is the conclusion of all of this? What should I do? I’m an intensely political person, driven by ideology and some desire to make the world a better place (oh how naive that sounds). But I’m terribly lacking inspiration and ways to do that just now.

There is one line I really dislike in the FT piece though:

Based in Bruges, it has for 60 years fed prospective civil servants an unabashedly federalist diet of courses for a post-graduate degree in political studies.

Oh come on folks, is that the best that FT journalists can do?

Of course the College of Europe by its very nature is not going to a bastion of opposition to the European Union. The fact that people are motivated to go there means, almost by definition, that they have an interest in EU politics and think that the EU is important in some way. But that does not equate to federalism, be that either the twisted British use of the word, or the correct political science definition of it.

The College of Europe in my experience was a rather practically orientated, non-ideological place. I would certainly count myself as one of the most forcefully ideologically motivated people who was there during my year in Bruges 2003-04. I was even criticised for having views that were too concrete and too stridently expressed.

No, the College of Europe is a place that fills students heads with facts about how the European Union works, and also equips them with some of the skills and approaches in order for them to deal with the EU’s machinery in Brussels. For a start the College’s own bureaucratic morass is a good training for the bureaucratic treacle that greets anyone in the European Commission.

Bruges is also a good place to meet people who will be in the corridors of power and to hence find a job in Brussels. If anyone’s in any doubt that’s a means of motivating people then see the enormous amount of comments on my posts about Commission jobs here and here (more comments there than on the rest of my blog put together) – a secure job is a much greater motivation that federalism is ever going to be.

But of course British journalists need to fit any EU story into the well-worn (and now increasingly broken) eurosceptics versus federalists frame. Problem is that the College of Europe does not fit the frame.