Blair to Europe: Drop Dead

From The Telegraph (UK):

Tony Blair has given up on Europe as an issue worth fighting for, senior allies of the Prime Minister have told The Sunday Telegraph.

A leading Blairite cabinet minister made the admission last night as the European Union descended into deeper turmoil, with doubts surfacing over the future of the single currency.

Mr Blair, who will seek to shift the focus of his administration on to poverty in the Third World this week during talks with President Bush, has told his closest allies: "Africa is worth fighting for. Europe, in its present form, is not."

This is momentous, as Richard at EU Referendum explains in a post titled Blair - The Suicide Bomber of Europe:

Don't get me wrong - I am not suggesting that the prime minister is going to turn up in Brussels with explosives strapped to his midrift. But the effect of today's pronouncement in The Sunday Telegraph – if true – will be roughly similar.

With Blair deciding to switch, not fight, The Telegraph proposes a substitute EU Constitution that has the advantages of brevity and clarity; here's Article V:

In order to give effect to these principles, the institutions of the old EU shall be reformed as follows:

1. The European Commission shall lose the right to initiate legislation. Such a right is incompatible with the principle of accountable democracy. The Commission shall instead fulfil the role of a neutral civil service, answerable to the elected governments of the Member States.

2. The European Parliament shall be replaced by an Assembly comprised of national deputies and senators, seconded from their home legislatures for a period of not more than four days a month. The Assembly shall not pretend to the role of a legislature. Its function, rather, shall be to oversee the Commission.

3. The European Court of Justice shall be comprised of judges, required as a condition of their appointment to have had experience on the bench in their home countries. It shall adjudicate disputes between the Member States as well as questions arising from the interpretation of this Treaty, but shall have no right to demarcate the border between national and European jurisdictions.

Any dispute over the location of power shall be referred to a European Tribunal, comprising the heads of national legal systems: the Master of the Rolls from the United Kingdom, the President of the Conseil d'Etat from France, the head of the Bundesverfassungsgericht from Germany and so on. These eminent jurists, retaining their national perspectives, shall adjudicate all questions touching on sovereignty.

4. The Council of Ministers shall be the supreme authority of the European Commonwealth. It shall propose common initiatives, open to such member states as choose to participate. Such initiatives should also be open to states from outside Europe.

5. The European Central Bank shall be abolished and member states shall be free to set their own interest rates or to combine their monetary policies bilaterally or multilaterally.

Read the whole thing.

(via Instapundit)