Freedom Line Blog

In what may be a lesson for budding progressive politicians, the career paths of President Barack Obama and the new European Union foreign minister offer insight into how to position oneself for stardom while ascending in darkness.  It turns out that like Obama, Lady Catherine Ashton has a dodgy past full of close ties to political radicals on the Left.  As a paid organizer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), then Ms. Ashton rubbed shoulders with a group that Russian Communist leaders found helpful during the Cold War.

Yet the fact remains that the Kremlin found CND and other “peace movements” useful ways of undermining the unity of NATO, weakening the West’s defence posture and stoking anti-Americanism. The ex-dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, an expert in Soviet penetration of the West, says: “the worldwide disarmament campaign in the early 1980s was covertly orchestrated from Moscow. To a substantial extent it was also funded by the Soviet bloc”.

Like Obama’s well-documented connection to ACORN, though, the row over Lady Ashton’s past affiliation with folks proclaiming “better red than dead” probably won’t be enough to force her resignation as the embodiment of European foreign policy.  Who knows; maybe she’ll be able to broker a deal with a resurgent Russia to help combat the rise of an Islamic Republic inside the continent.

Although it is painful to criticize a fellow name-bearer (no relation), the selection of Britain’s Lady Ashton for European High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy – the second most important position in the European Union – is yet another indictment of consensus-driven politics. Who else but a collection of power-protecting politicians would select a person charged with being the international face of European diplomacy of whom this could be written:

Lady Ashton was so unprepared for her “promotion” that she had no speech prepared when she held a press conference with Mr. Van Rompuy (the new European president). She was telephoned to see if she would accept the job once Mr. Brown switched his allegiance to the only other Briton with a chance of capturing one of the prized jobs.

She has been a commissioner for 13 months, since Lord Mandelson was brought back to the Cabinet. She has been Leader of the House of Lords but has no experience as a foreign minister and has never been elected. Mr. Brown said the appointment showed Britain was “at the heart of the future of Europe” and was leading the way in extending women’s representation.

In the span of a month, Britain went from defending the candidacies of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and current Foreign Secretary David Miliband to promoting a Trade Commissioner who has never won a single vote.  Hey, at least the nation is leading the way in extending women’s representation!  Good grief.