A bit of a no-brainer question, I suppose. An outstanding article in The Times of London today by Michael Gove demolishes the haughty conceits of European Commissioner Chris Patten. Patten, some may recall, was the UK’s final Governor of Hong Kong, who carries the dubious honour of being the man who handed that fine capitalist piece of the planet to the Chinese Communist Party. Patten’s beef with the recent “Axis of Evil” speech by President Bush is that it was, er, frightfully “simplistic”, definitely the mark of a vulgar west Texan and definitely not the sort of thing one would hear at an Oxford dining table or a Brussels drawing room.
The important thing, he implies, is to be “sophisticated”. You know, like the French. Patten also questions whether the governments of Iraq, Iran and North Korea can be characterised as “evil”. For a Roman Catholic, it seems a bit rum that this man has such trouble with the concept. I wonder if Patten has the remotest idea of how arrogant he and his like sound to our cousins across the big pond? Hopefully this is another blow to America’s unwise support for the EU as an institution. If Patten helps show the EU mindset for what it is, then I guess we should be kind of grateful.
