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The DT reports:

George Osborne is to admit defeat on new European Union rules to regulate Britain’s multi-billion pound hedge fund and private equity industry and allow finance ministers to pass a new directive which could badly damage the sector.

Mr Osborne told Ms Selgado of the UK’s fears about the directive but it was clear, according to sources, that the vast majority of European states supported the new regulations. The UK is only supported by the Czech Republic and because the vote is under qualified majority voting, the UK is set to lose.

British hedge fund managers say the new directive will cost UK funds millions of pounds in new regulation fees and could lead to an exodus of City leaders to Switzerland and the Middle East.

An exodus of ‘City leaders’ to Switzerland and the Middle East? Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

I’ll be at Heathrow Airport to wave them goodbye. And to make sure that they’re really going.

More on this wonderful news here.

And good to see the Germans cracking down on the speculators too.

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The Daily Mail reports:
Tony Blair's audacious bid to become Europe's first president was in crisis last night.
As even Labour's socialist allies refused to back him, Gordon Brown clashed angrily with other EU leaders, telling them to 'get real' and support the Blair candidacy....
Leading German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung - a bellwether of opinion in Berlin - said Mr Blair's chances of becoming president were now 'approaching zero'.

More on this oh, so sad story at The First Post and The Guardian.

If you see someone jumping off a bridge today in London or Washington, it's highly likely to be a neocon.

UPDATE: Over at the Spectator blog, in response to this post by James Forsyth, commenter Paul Hughes writes:
I don't care if Satan gets the job. The man who allowed Brown to wreck the nation's finances, before ducking out in time to make his millions, is not going to have the opportunity to swan around in a job which he will mould so as to be able to outshine our next PM.

But Paul, Satan isn't going to get the job. The Europeans don't want him.

FURTHER UPDATE: The Mail on Sunday reports:

Tony Blair has been in talks with Tesco about helping them open supermarkets in the Middle East - allegedly in return for up to £1million.
It is believed the discussions between the former Prime Minister, now a peace envoy to the region, and the supermarket chain, whose slogan is 'Every little helps', ended after the two sides failed to agree terms.
The disclosure could further damage Mr Blair's hopes of becoming the first President of Europe, as critics will seize on it as evidence that he is as interested in making money as he is in reviving his career as a statesman.
According to one source, Mr Blair's proposed role for Tesco would simply have been to act as a figurehead for their drive to break into the Middle East market.

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Starting a new occasional series, featuring news items which are portrayed as being ‘bad’ news, but are in fact are quite wonderful.


NATO should have been put to sleep when the Warsaw Pact dissolved- if not earlier.
But it seems that the military alliance which illegally attacked Yugoslavia in 1999, and which the neocons want to transform into an organisation which operates worldwide to topple governments who don’t open their economies fully to western capital- is dying a natural death anyway.

Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind.

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