Herman's not a German but he's supported by them

It’s okay, panic over – Tony Blair will not become President of Europe and we can all sleep a little easier. I don’t imagine for a second that the “winning candidate” – and I use the term advisedly given that I don’t remember receiving a polling card for this particular “election” – is going to do a vastly better job. Herman van Rompuy seems like a unpleasantly devout federalist who talks about standardised taxation and exectly the sorts of things that will have people running to UKIP.

It reinforces my belief that the UK and the EU are increasingly incompatible in terms of their future direction. What pro-EU Conservatives and Liberal Democrats don’t seem to get is that the European ideal is a Franco-Germanic concept designed to ensure those nations’ national interests remain predominant. I don’t blame them for that – for 200 years Britain pursued often brutal foreign policy to ensure our national interests were enforced – but we are surfing over a waterfall if we don’t recognise where the EU path is leading us.

The most scary thing for me is not the single currency, tax regime, foreign policy etc – it is the idea of Mr Rompuy being “named” as the EU leader and “chosen” by other leaders. This is exactly the kind of thing that the Politburo used to announce through Pravda and identical to the way that the Chinese president is “elected”. For me, the worrying thing about the EU is that it is sucking up the democratic mandate further and further from the people it seeks to govern. I can’t accept that this makes Europe safer, more harmonious or prosperous.

Tony Blair as EU President would have been a dreadful thing precisely because he holds the sort of centralising, anti-democratic tendencies that would re-inforce this worrying trend. Voting by region every five years is not democracy – no-one should sit in the European Parliament unless they have been directly elected by voters and I’m still not sure why if the European Commission is necessary it cannot be chosen out of the parliament in the same way as the cabinet in Westminster.

A separate EU presidential election ought to occur if we are to have an EU president. But since the chairman or woman of the EC ought to wield sufficient power, I cannot accept that a president is necessary in addition.

There is so much waste, so much interference and so much anti-democratic instinct in Brussels that DC should ignore it altogether for six years. Then, two years into his second term, he should hold a full EU membership referendum – once Britain has built up her economic and social strength once again – to settle this question once and for all. A strong Britain needs Europe and vice-versa – but my view is that leaving the EU would make us focus on what we as a nation want to be in 2050 and beyond.

Michal Kaminski - a problematic past, but pragmatism must overcome principle

With Tony Blair having failed to get a job that doesn’t exist, Vaclav Klaus is going to have to do something seriously amazing to hold off on signing the Lisbon Treaty for another seven months. The Labour Party desperately wants it signed because it knows a Conservative Party promising a referendum on this issue will gain votes that it would not otherwise get – once the issue is dead it is a significant disadvantage to DC. If this happen, he needs to steady the ship and take stock rather than be rushed into knee-jerk European policy - while keeping on with the message that we should have had a referendum if Gordon Brown had kept his promises.

If I were him I wouldn’t be making hay over Europe. There is still a thorny issue of Conservative partners in the EP that is a tricky one to avoid. By asking for David Miliband to apologise over his comments at the party conference, DC is raising a tricky issue unecessarily and is hardly likely to succeed in his  request. Voters will turn a blind eye to Michal Kaminski for the moment to get rid of Gordon but sooner or later, the Grauniad, the Liberal Democrats and Mr Miliband will get this issue further into the mainstream.

The essence of this issue is the different ways the nations of the EU see the European Parliament. For France and Germany, the architects of the EU, the parliament is an important body that they see as having a consequential role in their domestic policy and the policies across the continent that they are trying to control influence. Other countries such as Italy and Greece ignore the EP and its deliberations completely, whereas eastern European nations look at it hopefully, doing as they are told in order to gain as much financial benefit as possible.

Only Britain frames the European Parliament around the federalism/sovereignty debate. So we position ourselves with those other European groups who on this issue and this issue alone align with our place in this arena. For Labour, it’s the socialist group, for the Lib Dems it’s the Liberal Group. For the Conservatives, though, the centre-right EPP grouping – while aligned on issues of economics and social policy – is not aligned on the sovereignty question because those governments don’t see the EU in that way.

Those groups that do focus on the sovereignty question in other countries tend to be small because it is a low priority in other parts of Europe. It so happens that some of their members have unfortunate pasts. I’m not delighted with this but if it’s a choice between falling into line with the federalists and gritting our teeth to stand up for what we believe in on the greatest political question of the age, I can accept it – just.

Update 1/11: Okay, so it’s only the Grauniad foraying around in the trash but this story gives an idea of the kind of trouble that could be in line for DC unless he lays off the European stuff a bit. Being criticised by other European leaders will go down well with some people but not with others. He needs to concentrate on the election winners – the NHS, schools, the economy. Europe at the moment is a mug’s game and the more he looks at it the more he will be pressurised into stating his position. It’s playing into Labour’s hands.

Nigel Farage - standing down

I once flirted with UKIP membership - back in around 1999, when things were really bad for the Conservative Party. I looked at their website and it all seemed pretty sound. But then I realised that if I wanted my Eurosceptic view to be represented in the European Parliament, I needed to vote for a party with a realistic chance of influencing a voting block.

I also realised that every vote not cast for a Conservative would be a help to the Liberal Democrats and Labour and that their resultant MEPs would represent exactly the pro-integrationist, pro-federal and pro-power transfer European ideals that I opposed.

Since that time, I’ve never contemplated supporting UKIP and have come to regard it as a complete political menace. Not only does the party harbour some views that are, shall we say, too off-field for even the right of the Conservative Party (and as someone on the left of the Conservative Party that’s a long way past my tolerance level) but they seem completely incapable of understanding what a political contradiction they are.

In council and Parliamentary seats across the country, areas that would otherwise be represented by Conservatives are instead represented by Liberal Democrats and (less so now) Labour because UKIP has taken a greater number of votes from natural Conservative supporters than the winning margin. It’s totally crackers, because the loyal UKIPpers have ended up with a representative opposed to everything they stand for rather than one atune to their views but more moderate.

During the MPs’ expenses nonsense, UKIP has been benefitting from the ill-done deeds of mainstream politicians. Goodness only knows why. Let’s start with Ashley Mote in 2004, move on to the issue about MEP attendance, the arrangement with the BNP and the latest saga about donations from a supporter not on the electoral register.

Over expenses, they have no MPs to be subjected to scrutiny but the indications from Europe are that if the party had MPs, they would be among the most generously expensed. The weasel words from the UKIP website about transparency are not worth anything – if you really want to vote UKIP because you detest the EU that much fine; but please don’t vote for them because they are trustworthy on expenses!

Personally, I believe that the UK should renegotiate our relationship with the EU into the trading and neighbourly co-operation one that was voted for in 1975. But voting UKIP isn’t going to deliver that.

The price of UKIP is pro-European elected representatives - not to mention about £2million each, apparently.