Don’t count on it, though. This leaking too could be a plot to silence the level of protest.
The Independent has an online petition against his appointment to this post and anyone disturbed by the idea of Blair in such a role should go there and sign it.
Europe itself will be tainted if it appoints so shamed a figure as Mr Blair to be the first holder of this representative position.
Blair has been scheming for this role since he was forced from office in the UK. He has recently sent his bagman to Europe to help to persuade the Czech Premier to ratify the Lisbon Treaty (now done). Why? Because the sooner Europe is free to decide on the appointment of its first President – a post provided for in this Treaty – the better the chance Blair has of getting it.
He is under attack for having achieved nothing in his vanity posting as Middle East envoy and when the Gaza crisis was in full flow he was nowhere to be seen when it mattered. He was said to have been on holiday in the sun at the time and, as with the Banda Aceh tsunami, saw no reason to disrupt his ease in a premature return. He did make a couple of phone calls though.
Because of his record, Blair is a divisive figure not a cohesive one. This too can be no help to Europe.
He will have to give evidence to the enquiry, chaired by the increasingly independent John Chilcott, into the UK’s going to war in Iraq. Chilcott has widened the reach of the enquiry and has agreed to hold it in public.
Blair had hoped, first, not to be called to give evidence at all and then not to have to do so in public. Losing both of these positions leaves him vulnerable to being the focus of the sort of attention that concerns the more cautious European leaders.
Factors like these are said to be causing support for his candidacy to leach away.
However, Blair and friends are experienced and committed spinners. They have, from the outset, downplayed the intensity of his desire for this post, knowing that any premature triumphalism would bring damaging protest to the fore.
It would be a mistake to relax in the face of these suggestions of loss of support. Voting in the Independent’s petition at least enables your voice to be counted.
There is a justice in the almost classical punishment of the cupidinous Blair being condemned to wander the world, making more and more obscene amounts of money for meaningless appearances and sinecures and deprived of the spotlight he craves. That spotlight focuses on active statesmen of substance. Blair, the illusionist, was never that and does not now even appear to be.
Will this ancient justice be meted out to him? Only if there is no let up in public expressions of outrage at the possibility of his being given this post. Sign the Independent’s petition.