Daily View: European presidency
Tomorrow night, the European Union leaders will meet in Brussels to choose the first president of the European Council. The front-runner, Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, has been getting the commentators talking.
Ross Clark in the Daily Express isn't impressed with Herman Van Rompuy and says the appointment of a European federalist will make Britain reconsider its membership of the EU:
"A greying, bespectacled figure who makes even John Major look glamorous, Mr Van Rompuy's friends admit that one of his selling points is that no-one has ever heard of him and he can thus pose as a compromise choice."
Mirror columnist Kevin Maguire would prefer Belgian Herman Van Rompuy as European President; he thinks Tony Blair doesn't deserve the role because he failed to convince the public that membership to the EU was a good idea.
The Daily Mail complains that the presidency of Europe is not being decided by the public:
"No matter who emerges triumphant from the cosy horse-trading, the new president will be on a collision course with the British people.
"In the bitter clash that's sure to come, our political class, Tory and Labour alike, will rue the day they cheated us out of our referendum."
John Lichfield in the Independent argues that the president doesn't matter much anyway as he or she will have limited power.
Alice Thomson in the Times says there is a dearth of female candidates for European Presidency but warns against a political culture of putting women in a political job just to look pretty without wanting to hear her views.
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• Ross Clark | Daily Express | Bossed around by a Belgian nobody
• Kevin Maguire | Mirror | Gord help us if Tony Blair is ever king of Europe
• Daily Mail | EU 'democracy' and why we always lose
• John Lichfield | Independent | Nothing presidential about new EU president's job
• Alice Thomson | Times | Wanted for the EU: female candidate, pretty, no opinions
• Darren Ennis | Reuters | Does the EU need another president?
• Tony Barber | Financial Times | Scarcity of women candidates signals trouble ahead
• David Rennie | Radio 4's Today Programme
