Tony Blair’s Euro project

Date: 30/06/05

With the United Kingdom taking over the EU presidency from 1 July, Martin Banks profiles movers and shakers in Tony Blair's team

Prime Minister Tony Blair

In 1997, at the age of 43, he became the youngest British prime minister since 1812.

With his re-election on 5 May 2005, Tony Charles Lynton Blair broke two records: he became the longest serving Labour prime minister and the first to enjoy three successive terms in office.

A third successive election victory might have been expected to put Blair in an unassailable position but a seriously reduced parliamentary majority and constant media speculation about his likely successor, Gordon Brown, slightly took the shine off his victory.

But in the wake of his latest spat with French President Jacques Chirac, Blair is, according to British officials, freshly "energised" and "up for" a debate about Europe's future.

The former barrister is a skilled performer in public debate and before the television cameras. His powers of persuasion are formidable, but he faces an uphill challenge to change the tide of opinion at home, where Euroscepticism predominates, and in several EU states, suspicious of Anglo-Saxon economic liberalism.

His early promise to put Britain "at the heart of Europe" has yet to be realised. Although his second term was dominated by foreign policy issues, they did not strengthen his claims to European leadership. The war in Iraq divided Europe, and Blair opted for loyalty to the US.

Although he paid a heavy price and lost popularity, he has held on to office. But he is widely expected to step down during the course of the next five years, giving way to the impatient prime minister-in-waiting, Gordon Brown.

Having come through a series of mild health-scares, Blair may now be looking to set the seal on his long-running premiership. Modernising the EU might present such an opportunity.

Finance Minister Gordon Brown

Widely seen as Britain's prime minister-in-waiting, Gordon Brown is the son of a Church of Scotland Minister whose early career was spent working in TV and lecturing.

While at school, he lost the sight of his left eye in a rugby accident. But he was a precocious and successful student, winning a doctorate from Edinburgh University and becoming a lecturer there.

Just four years after entering Westminster in 1983 (when he found himself sharing an office with a certain Tony Blair), he gained his first front-bench job as shadow chief secretary to the treasury.

After the 1994 death of leader John Smith, Brown allowed Blair a free run at the leadership. The terms and circumstances of the agreement between Blair and Brown have been the stuff of dispute ever since.

Aged 54, he married late and has come late to fatherhood. In 2002, he suffered a very public bereavement when his ten-day-old baby daughter died in hospital after being born seven weeks prematurely. His second child, a son, was born in October 2003.

Brown is the UK's longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer since the 1832 Reform Act. His first move when taking up office was to give independence to the Bank of England. But he has notably thrown up other barriers to the UK's membership of the euro - the infamous five tests.

Brown will chair the Ecofin Council of finance ministers from the EU25. But will not like to be reminded of his powerlessness over the 12-member Eurogroup.

The UK finance minister never tires of telling his European counterparts how he has transformed Britain's once-stagnant economy. His lengthy resistance to the terms of a withholding tax on investment from cross-border savings showed that he was not afraid to make enemies. In a speech in London last week, he said that current EU economic thinking was "not just out of date but counterproductive".

He is a skilled political operator, much more assiduous than Blair in cultivating support in the Labour Party. He has mostly concentrated on domestic politics but has campaigned for a landmark deal on debt relief in Africa.

Foreign Minister Jack Straw

Brought up by a single mother on a council estate, John Whitaker Straw was educated at a private school where he took the name Jack, after an English working class hero, the leader of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

At the age of 14, he joined the Labour party and later became left-wing leader of the National Union of Students.

He qualified as a barrister. Then in 1974 his political mentor, Labour stalwart Barbara Castle, took him on as an adviser and five years later Straw inherited her solid Labour parliamentary seat in the north-west of England.

As shadow home secretary, Straw cultivated a reputation for being even more authoritarian than the then Conservative home secretary, Michael Howard, famously condemning "aggressive beggars, winos and squeegee merchants".

His 17-year-old son had his own brush with the law when it was revealed that Straw junior had sold cannabis to an undercover newspaper reporter.

After the 2001 election, Straw replaced Robin Cook as foreign minister. Although he lacked experience on the world stage, the run-up to the Iraq war seems to have re-ignited his career. Re-appointed foreign minister after May's UK election, Straw, will be a key player in Britain's attempts to resolve the impasse on the EU budget.

During the presidency, Straw will also have the key task of presiding over the start, this autumn, of EU accession negotiations with Turkey as well as work on EU-US relations and the Middle East.

With Blair expected to stand down before the next UK election, there are some who also believe the 58-year-old Straw still harbours strong ambitions of replacing him.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott

The ruling Labour Party is supposed to have its roots in the working class and the trade union movement. The substantial figure of John Prescott, deputy leader since 1997, embodies those working class claims.

The son of a railway signalman, he left school at the age of 15 to work as a trainee chef. After working for ten years in the merchant navy, he gained a diploma in economics and politics at Ruskin College, Oxford, which was specifically founded to provide university education for the working class, and later the University of Hull.

He was a union official before being elected to the House of Commons in 1970 in his hometown of Hull. Prescott was a member of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe in 1972-75 and an MEP for three years from 1976.

Prescott then held a series of shadow cabinet posts and, in 1994, was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party.

When Labour came to power in 1997, he was put in charge of transport, environment and the regions. That portfolio gave him experience of various international negotiations. But his support for climate change action was undermined when he was driven a very short distance by limousine to deliver a party conference speech on traffic reduction.

After the 2001 election, he was moved to a post in the Cabinet Office. Since 2002, Prescott, now aged 67, has been head of the newly created Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Prescott, who stands in for Tony Blair when the PM is abroad, will be responsible for relations with the European Parliament. His original treatment of the English language could cause difficulties for the interpreters and his notoriously short fuse might create some friction with MEPs.

His love of large cars had won him the nickname of 'Two-Jags'. That was changed to 'Two Jabs' when he had a highly publicised scuffle with a protester during the 2001 election campaign: he swung a punch at someone who threw an egg. For all that, he has retained the affection of Labour loyalists.

Europe Minister Douglas Alexander

At 37, the ambitious young Scot is the 'baby' of Labour's front-bench - and also one of the party's rising stars.

Born in Glasgow, he comes from a strong Labour background and joined the party at the age of 14.

A lawyer by profession, his big break came in 1990 when he was offered the chance to work as a researcher for Finance Minister Gordon Brown. He has been a keen Brownite ever since.

When he first joined the government as minister for e-commerce in 2001, Alexander was the youngest minister in the Blair administration.

He and his sister Wendy, a member of the Scottish Parliament, have been described as the Scottish political equivalent of American singing stars, Donny and Marie Osmond.

As campaign co-ordinator, Alexander played a key role in delivering Labour's second general election victory in 2001. He had been expected to play a similar role in May's election but was appointed overseas trade minister in a September 2004 reshuffle.

He has now been brought back to the heart of government. Evidence of the importance Labour is attaching to European affairs these days is the fact that, for the first time, the Europe minister will sit in on cabinet meetings, something normally reserved only for the foreign minister.

Appointed in May, this young moderniser is seen as an Atlanticist who does not share the same love of all things Europe as his multi-lingual predecessor, Denis MacShane.

Even so, the slick presentational skills for which he is particularly noted may well come in useful in the next few months as Europe faces up to bridging the oft-quoted democratic deficit with its citizens.

Environment Minister Margaret Beckett

Popular with rank-and-file members, Beckett is, like Prescott, seen as an important bridge between Labour's modernising wing and the party's traditionalists.

Aged 62, she is of an earlier generation of politicians than Blair. She first became an MP in 1974, having trained as a metallurgist. She served as a junior education minister until she lost her seat in 1979. She used her time out of office working as a TV researcher.

Re-elected four years later, she has proved one of the party's great survivors and has been a member of its front-bench team for 21 years.

She served as deputy leader of the party under the late John Smith and was acting leader and leader of the opposition for three months in 1994. She stood, unsuccessfully, for the party leadership when Tony Blair triumphed.

Blamed by some party insiders for Labour's disastrous showing in the 1999 European elections, Beckett survived calls for her to be sacked.

As Leader of the House of Commons, in 1998-2001, she has experience of building consensus: she won plaudits from across the political spectrum for her efforts to modernise antiquated parliamentary procedures.

She has considerable experience of various formations of the EU's Council of Ministers: she was trade and industry minister in 1997-98, and has been secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs since 2001. She will be the only UK minister chairing two formations of the Council, the Agriculture and Fisheries Council and Environment Council. Since she is partial to caravan holidays, she can claim to have seen Europe from more than just the inside of a ministerial limousine.

Beckett is also the lead minister for the UK in international negotiations on sustainable development and climate change.

Article portrays key figures in the government of the United Kingdom, which took over the Presidency of the EU Council from Luxembourg in July 2005.

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