summits Archive

  • Blair or Churchill: who told the truth?

    Posted on 19/07/2013 | 1 Comment
    Can Tony Blair really be compared to Winston Churchill?  A recent talk by Mr Blair’s former communications chief Alastair Campbell noted that Winston Churchill actively and shamelessly engaged in deception during the second world war, but that in contrast to his former boss, nobody holds […]

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  • Lessons from Libor for EMU

    Posted on 19/10/2012 | No Comments
    The European Council meeting has reached yet another agreement that will solve the EU’s financial crisis, this time relating to banking supervision.  (Read about it here.)  Mark Twain said something similar about giving up smoking: the EU finds it easy to make plans to end […]

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  • No globalisation without representation

    Posted on 22/11/2011 | No Comments
    That the protestors outside St Paul’s cathedral are critical of global capitalism should not be surprise.  Doesn’t everybody object to the way in which what was effectively gambling in unregulated markets nearly brought down the financial system and has ground economic growth to a halt? […]

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  • Asleep on the job

    Posted on 13/05/2009 | No Comments
    This blog has commented in the past on the impact of sleep and tiredness on political decision-making, and it is interesting to see the same phenomenon arise elsewhere. The practice of the EU of taking its most important decisions at intergovernmental summits is prone to […]

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  • G20: they came, they saw, they concurred

    Posted on 08/04/2009 | No Comments
    London has regularly played host to foreign leaders. From Julius Caesar onwards, the banks of the Thames have been visited by the same figures that bestride the world stage. The local inhabitants, from the blue-coloured woad-wearers to the city gents in pinstripe suits and bowler […]

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  • The EU gets the wrong farm deal

    Posted on 21/11/2008 | No Comments
    EU farm ministers never tire of discussing the Common Agricultural Policy. The latest negotiations concluded in the early hours of Thursday morning, over the so-called CAP healthcheck. The aim was to revise some aspects of European agricultural policy, but without affecting its overall cost. (The […]

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  • Damage to democracy

    Posted on 03/07/2007 | No Comments
    A meeting of the International European Movement was held this weekend in Berlin. I was there as a British delegate and also because the UEF bureau was meeting in parallel. I’m not sure if it’s really a good idea to have such meetings scheduled for […]

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  • Supranationalism

    Posted on 18/05/2005 | No Comments
    One of the first things I learned about the etiquette of debating politics on the internet was that the first person to mention Hitler is deemed to have lost the argument. When you think about the kind of debates that go on, you can see […]

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  • Blair’s reliance on summits is misplaced

    Posted on 13/08/2001 | No Comments
    By Richard Laming Tony Blair’s recent comments that next year’s EU summit in Barcelona will be “make or break” inspire nothing so much as foreboding. For the record of summits in making anything is not impressive. And all that gets broken are the town centres […]

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