Captain Un-Credible

The European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has questioned Tony Blair's credibility as a European leader and has suggested that any failure to agree an EU budget would ostracize the UK, relegating it to the sidelines (more here). This perhaps comes as little surprise to the many of us who have watched el Presidente Blair repeatedly turn his back on Europe. Well, he's got to be facing the right way to suck Dubyas chipolata, hasn't he?

Despite the occasional demonstration of how a spinal cord should work Blair has consistently appeared as the Governer of the 51st state, all because of some apparently 'special' relationship between our two countries. But the bottom line is the the US is out of touch with the rest of the world and the more time we spend in bed with them the further we will be cast adrift. You want proof, look at Japan. Okay, their war record and subsequent refusal to make amends have played a large part in their isolation but for the last 60 years they have focused all their attention on building a relationship with the US and by doing so have recently struggled to truly be part of Asia.

We have all been well aware of Blairs arse-kissing - Pravda wrote this about it 3 and a half years ago; The Curmudgeon sends it up very aptly here; Christ, even the cutesy film Love Actually managed to poke fun at it. So how does it manage to prevail? Even Tony must have come to realise that our support of the US does not guarantee a return favour since no amount of lobbying has managed to turn Dubya around on anything from Iraq to Kyoto. I know that it's apparently better to give than receive, but really - what the fuck do we get out of it? I mean aside from derision and isolation from our nearest neighbours who, despite linguistic differences, actually have more in common with us than our distant US cousins.

We don't have to be anti-American but we could at least stop playing the bitch. And we don't have to bend over backwards for Europe, but adopting a US-style stance and refusing to compromise and find solutions to common problems will just turn us into outcasts.

Cheers m'dears!