Published in the Yorkshire Post 19 October 2009

Tony Blair ruled us for over ten years. To earn the right to do this he had to submit to our judgment at three General Elections, and to that of our elected representatives, week by week, in the House of Commons.

Next year Tony Blair may be ruling us again. But if this happens he will not have to face any scrutiny from MPs, still less meet any voters. There will be no awkward encounters with the families of soldiers killed in the Iraq war.

He is in the frame for the post of President of the European Council, created by the Lisbon Treaty. No voters in Britain were asked if they actually wanted a President of the European Council, or any of the rest of the Lisbon Treaty, but that is another story.  If and when the final Czech resistance to the Treaty disappears, the post will be allocated in a secret deal between European politicians. The British people will have no say in the choice. Nor will any of the other peoples in the European Union.

This is typical of the way in which the EU does its business: since its inception democracy has always been an afterthought. But the prospect of Tony Blair as President of its Council is especially outrageous, and threatens to deepen the collapse of trust by voters in politicians and political institutions.

Tony Blair is the choice of a dying government, pre-empting the views of British voters at the coming election. It is dictated largely by the internal politics of the Labour party, or more accurately, the Brown-Mandelson coalition. A significant minority of Labour MPs and Labour supporters actually detest him.  He is supported by no other British political party, least of all the one most likely to form the next government.  

To put it mildly, Tony Blair is an intensely controversial figure, not just in our country but throughout the EU. His admirers rate him a great reforming Prime Minister and a major international statesman: his detractors consider him incompetent, dishonest and immoral. These competing views should be debated and weighed before he is nominated to any office in the EU which commands power and respect.

It should also be remembered that he is implicated in three important ongoing inquiries or investigations in this country. The Serious Fraud Office seeks to prosecute British Aerospace for corruption over the sale of an expensive air traffic control system to Tanzania – a deal actively promoted by Tony Blair as Prime Minister. The police are continuing to investigate the role of our security services in the torture of terrorist suspects. If anything wrong did happen, it almost certainly had the authority of government ministers. The Iraq inquiry will be surveying Tony Blair’s conduct over the Iraq war. Although it may seem unlikely, it is conceivable that Tony Blair could emerge from these inquiries as complicit in corruption and torture, and as a liar and a war criminal. The government should not pre-empt their conclusions.

Parliament should examine, debate and vote on Britain’s nominee for the post of President of the EU Council – whether it is Tony Blair or anyone else. The nominee should attend Select Committee hearings in both Houses (the Lords is much better at scrutinizing the EU than the Commons), and both Houses should give their “advice and consent” to the eventual nomination through a vote by all their members.

Such proceedings would be of value in many different ways. First, they might actually reveal what the new President is supposed to do – an issue which, like most of the Lisbon Treaty, is totally opaque. Some sources suggest that it is no more than a non-executive chairman – but Tony Blair would not give up his huge outside income (£1 million plus for occasional strategic advice to a couple of banks, £100,000 plus for a half-hour speech, £180 to pose for photographs) for a job like that. He will demand something with real power.

Second, it would make Parliament an equal partner in the nomination – just as the Congress shares responsibility for major public appointments in the United States. There is no reason for Parliament to stop at this nomination. It could and should take an interest in all the pullulating public busybodies who are now nominated purely by patronage of the Prime Minister. Voters might enjoy seeing Parliamentarians doing a serious job of work instead of reading endlessly about their expenses.

Finally, and most important, Parliamentary scrutiny of this nomination would open the entire process to the British people. People who care about it could make their views known to their elected representatives – and in the run-up to an election when those views get most attention.

If Tony Blair is nominated without debate in Parliament it will confirm what too many voters already believe: Britain and the European Union have abandoned democracy for cronyocracy and they are to be ruled by politicians appointing other politicians to suit their own interests regardless of what people think of them.