LONDON: Tony Blair’s speech to the European parliament on Thursday confirmed that he is still the consummate political communicator of his generation. I found myself agreeing with every paragraph.

His audience in Brussels may also have been surprised to hear so much with which they agreed. Some headlines highlighted that passages of the speech were jeered. Do these people ever listen in when Tony Blair wrestles each week with the hubbub of the British parliament? By comparison with the bearpit of the Commons chamber, his audience in Europe appeared models of decorum and courtesy.

They may have been startled into silence by his robust presentation of the social achievements of the Labour government in slashing long-term unemployment, introducing a minimum wage, regenerating deprived communities and cutting child poverty. This is a far cry from the common caricature of a British government in frenzied pursuit of free markets and trampling the poor and dispossessed in the process.

But it is hardly surprising if the continent is unaware of Labour’s admirable record on social progress, as Tony Blair rarely puts it centre stage even when he speaks in Britain, lest the Daily Mail catch New Labour practising social justice. It will be an unexpected bonus of the British presidency if Tony Blair speaks more often with pride of the many positive measures his government has taken to fashion a modern social model.

Nor would any MEP committed to social justice disagree with Tony Blair’s strictures on the CAP. It will be difficult to find a more regressive example of public policy than one in which 80 per cent of its vast subsidies goes to the 20 per cent largest, richest farmers, including some of the most illustrious names of British aristocracy.

There is not much point in Europe doubling its aid to African countries and at the same time destroying their embryo industries by dumping on them surplus chickens, tomatoes and milk powder at subsidized prices they can’t compete with. No member of the family of European social democracy, including the French Parti Socialiste, is prepared to defend the CAP in its present form.

This makes it curious that at the recent summit the British team were not able to mobilize a broader coalition to demand change to the CAP. There is an unresolved tension between Tony Blair’s uncompromising defence of a nationalist agenda and his ambitions for agreement to reform across Europe.

In European politics, isolation is a sure guarantee for frustration. Yet we have got ourselves into a rather lonely box, where we are not only opposed by France and Germany but by the dozen new members from central and eastern Europe, who should have been natural allies. They were all expecting a big increase in funds from the first budget since they became full members, and repairing bridges with them will be tough without finding a way forward on the budget.

However, it is inconceivable that Britain as president of the EU can resolve the budget dispute by awarding itself a more generous settlement of the rebate than the one offered by Luxembourg last week.

Anyone who doubts that we are playing with fire has only to look at how the rightwing press gloated over the failure of the summit. The Sun celebrated with a ‘Hallelujah’ (yes, truly) that we are all Eurosceptics now and claimed ‘it is possible to imagine Britain outside the European Union’. Those who would most rejoice if that came about would be the neocons in Washington, for whom preventing the emergence of a united Europe as a rival to US influence is an explicit policy objective.— Dawn/The Guardian News Service