Terminal error
EUROPE'S presidency has strange side- effects. Last time round John Major had an enormous table made, so that at his Edin- burgh summit everybody could sit round it, thus providing work for every French-pol- isher in Scotland. This time the big winner is London and Continental Railways, which operates Eurostar. Its speeded-up service from Brussels to London is a hot line. One Eurostar train last week conveyed 18 Euro- pean commissioners, all paying the full first-class fare, or rather, having the Com- mission pay it for them — plus, of course, a full supporting cast of secretaries, advisers, bag carriers, translators and spokespeople. Tony Blair, in the chair, does seem to have missed a trick by letting them reach a sta- tion that is still called Waterloo — mili- tarist, nationalist, vainglorious, a relic of the old Britain, hopelessly off-message. Millennium Station, Princess Diana Sta- tion, Presidency Station? Come on.
Previous page
