The wrecker's choice

When Gordon Brown went to such efforts to keep Britain out of the euro, I had rather mixed feelings. I was convinced that it was for the basest of motives - that with France and Germany already in he wouldn't be allowed to play captain - but I knew the result was right for Britain. Brown just mumbled about the national interest and his five-point plan

Now, I wonder if I have been maligning him - I don't think so but it is just possible. You see, a minor storm has arisen around the head of the External Action Service (the European Union's new Foreign Office), the fantastically unsuitable Baroness Ashton. It is said that she fails to prepare for meetings and fails to keep the 130 embassies and delegations round the world informed as to policy.

Could it be, could it just conceivably be, that Gordon Brown recognised the danger to Britain's national interest in having a crazed, bureaucratic dystopia getting involved in foreign affairs, and parachuted into the job the most incompetent person available, who, he knew, would wreck it from the start? Was he that devoted to us?

Perhaps we shall never know.