Odds against Blair, but don’t rule him out of race yet
The post of President of Europe is just one piece in a top jobs jigsaw which is only now starting to be assembled.
The President of Europe and a second post of EU Foreign Minister, both come into being under the Lisbon Treaty.
But the search for candidates comes, coincidentally, just as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, is in the process of appointing a new team of commissioners from the member states to serve for the next five years.
EU leaders are beginning to submit names of national nominees to Barroso for consideration.
Once they are all in, Barroso will then burn the midnight oil allocating Commission portfolios, from the prestigious and powerful, such as competition policy, or the environment, to the worthy, such as research or administrative affairs.
He will face intense lobbying from national leaders to give the best jobs to their nominees.
And key to his decisions will be who becomes his new Foreign Secretary — officially called the High Representative — with a seat at the Commission top table.
If the chosen one is a political figure from the centre-left, that virtually rules out another centre-left figure — Blair, for example — becoming President of Europe.
But if the High Representative happens to be a figure from the centre-right political family in Europe, Blair will still be a contender.
“People are writing him off already and it’s true that the odds are against Tony Blair,” according to one EU insider.
“But consider this: if some of the countries opposing Tony Blair were offered key Commission portfolios, they might be persuaded by Blair supporters to lift their objections.”
That scenario depends on the Commission President being ready to play matchmaker — and being ready, as well, to accept Blair in a role in which Barroso might find himself overshadowed as an EU figurehead.
