Bagehot | Beached in Brussels

摘要

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the world's leaders to commemorate D-Day on June 6th, David Cameron can reflect on a great British success in Europe that could easily have gone wrong. Had the weather turned stormy, or had the Germans not been distracted by internal quarrels and other fronts, the allied landing might have tipped from triumph to disaster. This makes it, among other things, an unhelpful study for a British prime minister whose Europe policy is also perilously poised. The latest illustration is Mr Cameron's effort to block Jean-Claude Juncker from becoming president of the European Commission. A former prime minister of Luxembourg, whose tiny elite naturally sees the European Union as a windfall opportunity for national security and personal aggrandisement, Mr Juncker is a European federalist of the old school. He barely acknowledges the dissatisfaction millions of European voters have just shown for the union. Even setting aside the contentious-and, for this newspaper, unwelcome-precedent his appointment would set, as the candidate foisted upon Europe's leaders by its parliament, the prospect fills Mr Cameron with a special horror. A hostile commission president could block perhaps half the reforms he would engineer in his bid to renegotiate the terms of Britain's eu membership before putting it to a referendum in 2017, including those concerning access to benefits and improving competitiveness. And Mr Juncker, who appears to view British griping about the union as a senseless distraction from its relentless march, is clearly hostile.