As an ex-diplomat, I volunteer to join an EU diplomatic service and sit around doing nothing

I may be Labour, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the Lisbon Treaty much. Any more than I liked Nice. Or Maastricht. It is increasingly clear that European institutions have turned into a huge juggernaut, built and set in motion by European nations, but over which they now have no vestige of control. As for the democratic deficit, it is now reaching black hole proportions.

Not that I’m dead against a degree of European integration: it makes obvious sense in the age of globalisation. But it should have been bottom up, not top down. Above all, we should have stopped and redesigned the whole bang shoot from scratch when the picture changed so radically in 1989. But by then the wheels of the juggernaut were already unstoppable. So now here we are and here we stay, no matter who wins the 2010 election.

However, a naughty and delicious thought has been germinating. As well as the Blairs and the Milibands and whoever else gets the plum jobs, the Treaty of Lisbon provides for the establishment of an EU diplomatic service.
This is not an entirely new thing, of course; the EU has long maintained separate representation in the world’s major capitals, and there are already large numbers of Brussels-based officials working as diplomats. But I can’t imagine they have a fully staffed diplomatic service ready to roll. They must be drafting new people in from somewhere, presumably transferred or seconded from national diplomatic services for the most part. But maybe, just maybe…

I tried this idea out on my son, who perceptively replied “But you don’t want to go through all that again, surely?” I pointed out that it was not diplomacy which I had disliked, it was work. Contrary to popular prejudice, British diplomats have to work quite hard. The FCO has long-established traditions of high competence and efficiency (there are exceptions, but they are the sort that prove the rule) and there are still plenty of old-style martinets in the higher reaches to enforce them. The idle and the disorganised are soon found out (no predictable jibes please – I lasted 20 years).

But Eurodiplomacy has had no time to establish such traditions. It is all fairly new, and the men in Brussels can have no clear perception of exactly what they can expect from the out-stations. A further obvious point is that the Eurodips will come from a wide variety of cultures, some of which are, shall we say, a good deal less Stakhanovite than others. To put it bluntly, there could be some very cushy little niches out there.

Would it be dishonourable of me? I don’t think so. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Many of us are less than enthralled by modern capitalism; but for now it’s the only game in town, so one has to come to some arrangement with it to earn a living. All work at bottom is either vocation or prostitution. If you’re going to sell out, you may as well get a decent price.

So – FOR HIRE, reconditioned vintage diplomat, one careful owner, still under fifty, 20 years experience, German and Mandarin speaking, will eat and drink anything, adaptable to siesta culture, impenetrable bullsh*t no problem, all offers involving fat pay packet and expense account considered. Apply now to beat the Christmas rush.