European Affairs

Of course I agree. I shall come on to the non-job and the non-entity filling it, who is Cathy Ashton, a lady who has never been elected to anything and is doing rather well for herself. I would not know her if I fell over her—she is not a household name or face, yet she is now doing this job not for Britain but for Europe. A lot has been said about the need to be absolutely certain whether she is doing her job in the interests of the EU, but I suspect that the French, being the French, will very much look at what is in the best interests of France—they always do. I actually have a grudging respect for how the French always look after the French, and they have done so in this matter. We were all supposed to be gleeful about a Brit getting one of the so-called top jobs in Europe, but it did not make me gleeful at all. We know that the EU does not yet have power over foreign policy, but I am sure that that is a work in progress. I suspect that in 20 years' time, if it does not have its own dedicated foreign policy and armed forces, it will be very disappointed. Foreign policy and defence should remain with sovereign states, and I was disappointed by a story in The Sun this morning headed, "Where the hell are EU?" It mentions the contributions of forces from other EU states to what is going in Afghanistan, which show that we are clearly not all working together. It goes through how many troops countries have there. We know that we have committed 10,000 troops to that war on terrorism, which affects everybody. Germany has committed 4,300, France 3,095, Italy 2,700, Holland 2,100, Poland 1,910, Spain 1,000, Romania 990, the Czech Republic 690, Denmark 690, Belgium 530, Luxembourg eight and Ireland seven. What the heck is going on?