Ich bin leidenschaftlicher Europäer. Photograph: AP
Tony Blair has made his next move in the chess game of EU crisis diplomacy. As gambits go, it is quite robust.
The issue is not between a "free market" Europe and a social Europe, between those who want to retreat to a common market and those who believe in Europe as a political project.
This is not just a misrepresentation. It is to intimidate those who want change in Europe by representing the desire for change as betrayal of the European ideal, to try to shut off serious debate about Europe's future by claiming that the very insistence on debate is to embrace the anti-Europe.
Queen to the centre of the board. Check. Chirac/Schroder to move.
Much of the speech has in fact been trailed already. It is the PM's own articulation of the view, set out in countless commentaries post-French and Dutch referendums, that the hour has come for Europe to embrace the Third War. Blair's way. Cometh the hour etc.
Tony also takes the opportunity to attack the idea that the UK is some ultra-liberal sink-or-swim capitalist free-for-all.
We have lifted almost one million children out of poverty and two million pensioners out of acute hardship and are embarked on the most radical expansion of childcare, maternity and paternity rights in our country's history. It is just that we have done it on the basis of and not at the expense of a strong economy.
He might just as well have added: 'You can stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Jacques.' But he didn't. That's what they call diplomacy.
Meanwhile, the blog is a little disappointed to note that Tony only used three of our Top 10 euro-crisis cliches, but we are pleased that he chose numbers 1-3.
(Thanks to Nosemonkey for the German translation.)
