This man defends our interests?

"Timothy Kirkhope, the head of the British Eurosceptics' group in the European Parliament, told Lidove noviny he has not read Klaus's latest commentaries in The Financial Times.
He said he does not follow every word of Klaus as he comments on a plenty of things, and often repeats the same views on the EU in his writings".

This is the same man who claims to represent teh Tories in teh European Parliament. This is the man who when he wrote his own paper on the European Constitution (despite having been a member of the Constitutional Convention) fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of the word subsidiarity; on page 43 of that paper his idea of subsidiarity is summed up by this when describing the initiationof legislation. He would remove ot from the Commission and hand it to the most centralising and federalist of institutions,
"2. The European Parliament shall have the right of initiative."

This is the fellow that is supposed to be able to present an alternative vision to which British people can cleave. This is the fellow who cannot be bothered to read the only serious contribution to that debate since the French and Dutch referenda.

Now tell me, are you suprised?

The picture - his delusional life
He of course does not live at Newby Hall, he just fancies himself grander than he is.


Further update

I was rereading the original article and I noticed this criticism of Vaclav Klaus.
"Klaus has set a precedent...when he vehemently started to comment on European affairs during the government crisis in the Czech Republic [this spring]. Paroubek is trying to launch action to put things right, which Gross was unable to do," political analyst David Kral is quoted as saying.

"It may produce an erroneous impression that the president speaks on behalf of the Czech Republic, but he actually does not. This is rather unfortunate, and the prime minister's response is quite understandable, as it is him who bears political responsibility for the Czech Republic's image abroad," Kral points out.

You will note the the Czech paper, the Lidove noviny, from which the quotation comes fails to tell us who this fellow is, whpopresumes to tell us about the legoitimacy of the elected President of his country to speak about it political viewpoint. So Mr Kral, who are you?

It seems that he is the the "president of EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy in Prague and the director of its EU policies programme. He also lectures at the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague".

So a paid apologist for Brussels, ah... that rather makes his position a little clearer doesnb't it?