After three hours of hard questioning before 20 television crews, hordes of journalists from across Europe and as many MEPs, Cathy Ashton’s ‘high rep’ hearing showed her to be a true international statesperson. The socialists in Brussels initially supported her because she is the ‘right woman’ for the job and she has lived up to it.
But her true enemies were the four or five UKIP and Tory MEPs in the room, seeking to get headlines in the UK press, and force her out of the new Commission. Though continental MEPs clearly found their heckling tiresome and ill-mannered, she was able to survive the grilling. The Telegraph reported that the right wing MEPs said at the end ‘I suspect we will support her.’
It is anyone’s guess what the majority of people in the room thought as the few anti-EU right wing British MEPs tried to smear her with their obsessions about the funding of a few CND leaflets in Hemel Hempstead in the eighties, when they were there to discuss the important European contribution to world peace, our lead on climate change after the failure of Copenhagen, a non-violent long-term solution in Afghanistan – let alone the Middle East and world trade.
The importance of the new post is that for the first time ever Europe will speak with one voice. As high representative Cathy Ashton will work for both the heads of state and the Commission, whereas previously the EU had been a push-me-pull-you with two heads speaking on foreign affairs – a very confusing situation for the rest of the world.
As I said in the European Parliament’s debating chamber Cathy Ashton ‘may not be a politician to stop the traffic in Washington or Beijing in a flurry of publicity, she is there to organise the traffic system.’