Agnès Poirier made a convincing point in The Times last week about Blair’s bid for the EU presdidency. ‘What Europe needs is a figure that can incarnate the very idea of Europe, not a schemer who can pull his weight in the negotiations of banana exports. What Europe needs is a wise leader whose personal experience of the ordeals and triumphs of the 20th century makes for a commanding figure in the world, somebody who makes people stop and listen’. What’s needed, in short, is a candidate like ‘Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and French politician…the first elected President of the European Parliament and everybody there remembers her political clout and moral authority’. Having read her memoirs, published by Haus earlier this year, it’s hard to disagree that Veil embodies all the characteristics of the sort of president we should be looking for.
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