Thursday, November 23, 2006

Choose Wisely

From The Telegraph:

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, wants Britain to choose between being a "vassal" of the United States, and embracing a French-led drive for European integration, her adviser on Europe has revealed.

Throughout Miss Royal's spectacularly successful campaign to sew up the Socialist nomination, she kept the details of her EU policy under wraps for fear of reopening deep splits within her party.

However, in the hours after her victory on Thursday, Gilles Savary, a French MEP and her spokesman and foreign affairs adviser, spoke exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, revealing her EU policies in detail.

[snip]

He demanded efforts to integrate foreign policy and cast that struggle in searingly anti-American tones. Mr Savary said: "The question that needs to be asked is – do we want to be vassals of the United States, do we want to be a 51st state?"

The Brussels Journal reproduced two graphs showing how much higher the rates of unemployment and taxation are in Europe than in America. The British should think carefully about that before giving Ms. Royal her answer.