British media ridicule Belgium's "Rumpypumpy" candidate (News Feature)

By Anna Tomforde Nov 19, 2009, 11:56 GMT

   London - British newspapers, sensing defeat and betrayal in the battle for the new top EU jobs, were at war once more with Europe Thursday, ridiculing the Belgian favourite for president as an 'EU- fanatic' and a gaffe-prone 'clown.'    

The emergence as front-runner of Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy - nicknamed Rumpypumpy - is, for Britain, the clear result of a stitch-up between the all-powerful Angela Merkel and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy.

   By favouring a Belgian economist better known for writing Japanese-style poetry than for his charisma or political skills, the all-powerful Franco-German alliance was seeking to block once and for all any aspirations of Britain's Tony Blair.

   'Germans to block Blair,' said the headline in the Sun newspaper, famous for its dislike of the Germans, and which has also recently abandoned supporting the Labour Party which Blair lead.

   Van Rompuy, 62, is portrayed as a colourless bureaucrat apparently called 'Rambo' by his wife and labelled a 'clown' by his own sister, Christine.

   Choosing his words carefully - considering the anger - Britain's Europe minister Chris Bryant branded Van Rompuy a 'federalist' who threatened British interests.

   But the papers, including mainstream publications, unleashed a barrage of attacks on the quiet Belgian whose first aim it would be to bring in EU-wide 'green taxes' to finance welfare spending and would do away with national anthems and flags.    

The tabloid Express pointed out that Christine, the politician's sister and member of a rival Belgian party, had once helped to produce an election poster portraying her brother as a red-nosed clown - an image it promptly reproduced on its front page Thursday.

   The Express claimed that ordinary Belgians were backing its outspoken opposition to the bureaucrat's rise.

   'Mr Van Rompuy is a nobody who hasn't done anything since as prime minister ... The Belgian people want to get rid of him,' the Express quoted Belgian Mick Willems as saying.

   The paper also noted that Van Rompuy explicitly blamed 'Anglo- Saxon' freemarket policies for the current global economic crisis, and claimed that Islam was the only force standing up to the markets - 'although it is doing so often because of complete intolerance.'

   Even the pro-European Guardian said that anger was mounting among the 27-nation bloc over a reported deal between Germany and France. The contest seemed to be 'dominated now more by tactics and one- upmanship than strategy and policy,' the paper said.   

  And the liberal Independent, which has all along been sceptical of the 'secretive and elitist' process of choosing Europe's top representatives, compared the race to the Eurovision Song Contest.

'The finals of the 'European Job Contest' will take place in Brussels tonight, without the cheap glitter of the musical version but with the same sort of secret, national horse-trading and, most probably, the same kind of unmemorable winners,' said the paper.