European Affairs

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interjection, because clearly Baroness Ashton deserves the money. She is only following the example of the former leader of the Liberal Democrat party in building up a huge pension plan, which sustained the party for a long period. I was talking about today's skirmish, in which our side is being led not by the Foreign Secretary but by our hon. Friend the Minister for Europe. He is acting not as the King but as the Rupert in this particular battle, and I must say that he is doing it very well. He is making a brilliant fist of his job, but I wish that his ability and eloquence were applied to a better cause than the Euro-enthusiasm that he has always manifested. He is right in the tradition of first-class Foreign Office minds, in that he now devotes all his effort and attention to developing second-class arguments for the third-class—indeed, third-rate—institution called the European Union. Every defeat must be interpreted as a victory and every loss as a gain, and we must always say that Britain leads, however humiliated Britain is. The Foreign Office and its Ministers seem to live in a different European Union from the rest of the country. The US Department of Defence has a situation room; the Foreign Office has a fantasy room, where matters European are discussed. There is a naïve view of Europe as the Foreign Office would like it to be, not as it actually is: a Europe that is kind to small countries and helpful to poor ones, even while it excludes their agriculture from our markets; a Europe that is of great benefit to the UK, even while it makes enormous demands on us, with a growing deficit and contribution burden; a Europe that defers to British wisdom, even while a new leadership of the European Union emerges as Angela Merkel endeavours, successfully, to interpose herself into the world's greatest love affair of Sarkozy with Sarkozy—it is now in fact a threesome. That is what dominates Europe; we do not, and it is no use pretending that we do. Another example of such Euro-think is my hon. Friend's interpretation of the latest appointments as a triumph; I think that that is what he said. Personally, I think that it is a shame that Tony Blair did not emerge as the President of Europe. He would have done well in that position. He can convince anyone of anything. He might have been able to convince people of the benefits of Europe, given his eloquence. Europe certainly needs someone of his vigour, energy and traffic-stopping ability. The appointments show what Europe really wants, and it is not the flair of that kind of leader. Europe wants to be a bigger Belgium. That is the European aspiration: to be a bigger Belgium, dominated of course by France and Germany, which is inward-looking, has low growth and high unemployment—it is the black spot of the advanced world—and maintains agricultural protection to keep out the agricultural production of smaller countries. It is true that we have the foreign policy post—