It’s really far too early to say, but I have currently got my money on Helle Thorning-Schmidt to be the next president of the European Commission when the job becomes vacant this autumn.
David Cameron, Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Barack Obama take a 'selfie' Photo: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP
She’s currently the prime minister of Denmark but her political sell-by-date is long past making her about ripe to be chosen for the top Brussels job this summer.
She's just popped her head above the parapet to suggest Denmark should join the euro, political suicide at home but a good wheeze if you are positioning yourself to run for the commission.
I think she’ll get the job despite some of the strange ideas currently doing the rounds in Brussels about how the next chief of the EU’s executive will be chosen.
The European Parliament is currently peddling the idea that euro-elections in May will choose a commission president to become “a kind of prime minister of the daily life of the EU”.
Here’s the EP spiel, despite the silly voice-over it is the real thing:
The fantasy runs like this.
Martin Schulz, a bearded and sometimes rather shouty German Socialist, has been chosen as the candidate for the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
If Europe’s centre-left do well and get the largest number of MEPs, as they are currently forecast to do so, he will become the commission president.
If the centre-right, Christian Democrat, European People’s Party do best their candidate will take the post. The favourite is currently Jean-Claude Juncker, the jaded former prime minister of Luxembourg.
In the extremely unlikely event the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group get most seats, Guy Verhofstadt, the uber-Federalist former prime minister of Belgium will take the post.
And so on and so on.
The idea of the spitzenkandidaten or chief candidates, as they are known in this rarefied city, is both desperate and dishonest.
Desperate because it is only within the Brussels bubble or EU-funded public life that you find people who believe that a contest between Mr Schulz versus Mr Juncker or Mr Verhofstadt will galvanise Europe’s voters.
Most voters will find this bizarre ersatz contest, a synthetic substitute for a real political fight, baffling or just plain annoying, further confirmation of the remote, alien life as it is lived on planet EU.
Presumably, the Liberal Democrats, as the true EU party, will be featuring Mr Verhofstadt on their party political broadcast this spring – or not. Here he is explaining why the EU should have more money from British taxpayers.
The idea is dishonest because the Lisbon Treaty says absolutely nothing about voters, MEPs or parliament’s fake (but generously, publicly funded) political parties choosing the next president of the commission.
This is what the treaty says:
“Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members.”
The European Council, is a regular meeting of EU leaders, and as the treaty makes clear, it has the prerogative to choose the candidate for the commission “taking into account” the outcome of the final vote on 25 May. Rarely in fact are European treaties so clear. MEPs then get a vote.
Ms Thorning-Schmidt is a Social Democrat and if the centre-left is the biggest group of MEPs, I predict her name could well go forward.
She is a woman (a big deal here in PC euroland), she used to be an MEP and knows the Brussels circuit well. If her name goes forward can anyone really imagine MEPs voting her down, or Mr Schulz demanding a No vote to topple her from the job?
Here's the clincher: can anyone imagine gender-quota loving MEPs voting down the first ever female president of the commission to impose a male spitzenkandidat? Never.
Ms Thorning-Schmidt was educated at the College of Europe (a second rate university for budding eurocrats in Bruges). Her career in the Brussels bubble, including five years as an MEP, has been as long as her rather disastrous one, from a Social Democrat point of view, in Denmark.
Her notoriety for that “selfie”, her Gucci lifestyle and advantageous tax arrangements will do her no harm here. She’s also married to Stephen Kinnock, who is looking to perpetuate his family dynasty as a Labour candidate in a safe Wales seat. She is surely ideal for the job.
When EU leaders meet on the evening of Tuesday 27 May to "take account" of the EU elections, she will be at the table. I expect her name to go forward to a summit in June, my money is on Helle.
