Posted 1:51 PM by Paul
UK - Those Islands near Iceland

Maybe all this stuff going down at the UN is no longer about Iraq at all - but about the relationship between an emerging (if disorganised) Europe and the good old USA. Muscles are being flexed. The disagreements over the course of the crisis and France and Germany's attempt to slow down the Bush Cheney war machine is actually giving the EU some kind of new raison d'etre. Russia may now throw in its lot with Germany and France. That is one hell of a power bloc. From the Baltic to the Pacific. Are they looking to challenge the US rather than simply criticise it? Not in terms of miltary but economic power, with a new currency as its spearhead. It's a thought. And the UK? We seem to be about as relevant as Honduras at the moment. An adjunt of the White House. No 10. is the East Wing.

Blair's only big ally seems to be Aznar in Spain who has already announced that he will not stand at the next election and whose party is plunging in the polls. Besides he has an awful moustache and looks like Charlie Chaplin. Hardly a big hitter. I know there is this theory about a new Europe emerging out of the old Eastern European states with Tony Blair as its leader. To me that seems to be the conceit of the English.

The real power in continental Europe has lay in a triangle between Frankfurt, Paris and Milan for centuries with the UK looking outwards to empire and the sea. I cannot see that changing much in our lifetime at least. German and French ministers and their civil servants meet on a monthly basis to harmonise policy. A kind of secular Holy Roman Empire. As for Blair he is looking old beyond his years and stressed out. He is starting to look like Jack Nicholson in the first Batman movie, but he is not much of a Joker. The proposals laid on the table by the Franco- German allaiance will make his job harder tomorrow in parliament as MPs see that there is an alternative to war that is not appeasement. But there will be a war because the troops have been mobilised. Bush cannot just send them home. Colin Powell may be the first casualty.