If you’re looking for news about Baroness Ashton’s nomination for High Representative click here All of the analysis of Shriti Vadera’s move to some sort of G20 post has led to questions about what her departure means for Gordon Brown and for government. But what does it mean for the...
I’m still on holiday in Egypt and a Labour friend of mine just sent me a text message informing me that Dizzy Thinks claims to have some sort of an exclusive linking Harriet Harman to June’s about coup against Gordon Brown – via me! What a load of complete and...
Via Twitter my attention was drawn to this article in the Daily Mail about Tory toffs in OUCA behaving like racist idiots. Tell me what’s new, although this does seem more extreme than normal… But look at the sidebar of the Daily Mail website. Almost every picture is of some...
Gender framing has reared up in the German general election campaign as reported by The Local. Berlin Candidate for the Christian Democrats Vera Lengsfeld has put up pictures of herself and Angela Merkel both boasting considerable cleavages with the slogan “Wir haben mehr zu bieten” – “We have more to...
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...
If you don’t like a politician what do you do with him or her? International organisations are always an option. Could this work for Labour and Gordon Brown? Let me explain. Brussels is full of national politicians who no longer had a role in their national capitals; Neil Kinnock was...
I came across this map at The Guardian’s website about worldwide numbers of swine flu cases. I write this post from Belgium, currently at less than 200 cases, and more or less free of the swine flu paranoia seen in the UK. But why has the UK been so hard...
Rumours of tensions between David Cameron and Boris Johnson rumble on, as covered today by Alex at Labour List. I don’t want to comment on Boris vs. Cameron as such; others are better placed to debate that. I just have 2 small remarks. First, Britain has had more than a...
There were a few messages on Twitter and a lengthy post from ResEuropa about the prospect of Baroness Shriti Vadera being appointed as the British member of the European Commission this autumn. The story stems from this article in The Times. Firstly, let me set the record straight from the...
It’s been another silly day of do-they, don’t-they with regard to the composition of the political groups in the European Parliament. The ECRG lost one MEP (Takkula, Finland) and gained one (Tomaszewski, Lithuania). Meanwhile on the other side of the political spectrum the Socialist Group has put its new name...
I’m no fan of the Tory Party or indeed any of the parties they are cooperating with in their new political group in the European Parliament, the ECRG – European Conservatives and Reformists Group. Yet even I cannot have imagined how soon things would start to crack, for today Hannu...
The UK Tories have today announced the formation of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECRG) in the European Parliament. The group will have 55 MEPs – 25 UK Tories, and Jim Nicholson from Northern Ireland, 15 Poles from PiS, 9 Czechs from ODS, and then 1 MEP from each...