Something was nagging away at Guido after his second coffee this morning; Blairites don’t tend to be delusional, they are political realists, so why try to make their champion President of Europe? Half of Europe thinks he is a neo-con, war criminal.  There is no way he would be acceptable to most European social democrats and in any event it is probably going to go to a centre-right figure in the undemocratic Buggin’s turn way Brussels works.

The high representative of the council is pencilled in for a socialist on the same basis – a sort of undemocratic consolation prize.  There is talk, denied by David Miliband, that he himself is a strong candidate for that position.  Could it be some Machiavellian / Mandelsonian plot to get him the job?  The Dark Lord’s mind is subtle in his strategies, David Miliband is the anointed heir to Blair and the person to whom the Dark Lord plans perhaps in the future to play regent.  Could they be going through this Blair for President act to boost his credentials?  There is always a tiny chance they might pull it off Blair of course…

In the almost certain event that they don’t, “alright” they will say, if Blair can’t be the figurehead, can we give the mini-Blair (who acts as his campaign manager) some kind of consolation prize?  EU foreign minister?  Oh yes, that will dovetail nicely with the day job.  It would also give Miliband a world stage full of photo-ops to provide a backdrop for his post-election leadership campaign.

Just speculatin’…

If you were not one of the 55,820 visitors viewing 354,427 blog pages over the last seven days, here are the seven most popular stories (in order of popularity) that you missed:

You may be surprised to learn that Guido’s personal favourite story of the week wasn’t Nadine Dorries winning a damages settlement from Damian McBride.  It was the With No End to Recession, Labour Attack Strategy Misfires story, more analytical than a usual Guido story.  The media grid plan for Labour was to use the technical end of recession to claim they were right on the economy and Osborne was wrong.  Only when the numbers came out, the recession wasn’t over.  Guido highlighted the spin plans that went wrong, yet still went ahead.

You are either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

Prof Nutt said…

“I’m not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis and ecstacy. I think most scientists will see this as a further example of the Luddite attitude of this government..”