Baroness Ashton is doing an excellent job

Yesterday our very own Cathy Ashton spent an hour with Labour MEPs at our regular meeting in Strasbourg.

 Contrary to what you have read in the press, Baroness Ashton understands her task only too well.  She has very evidently thought through the enormous difficulties in setting up the EU External Action Service from scratch, a truly daunting prospect. I can’t help but wonder how many of those in the British media who feel free to criticise her every move, could go anywhere near making a success of the job Cathy Ashton is doing.

 Baroness Ashton will undoubtedly step on a lot of bureaucratic feet, so you should expect a steady trickle of negative stories as she goes about knocking heads together. Her objective is to make the EU operation effective and  deliver real change for women and men on the ground. Her travel schedule is breathtaking. Moscow, Washington, Madrid, the Balkans in just a few days.

 She is doing all that while also being a devoted mother and making sure she spends quality time with her family. Quite an achievement.

 Now let’s turn to Haiti, the subject of quite unjustified criticism. Last week in Haiti Cathy was thanked for not rushing to the scene in the days after the killer quake. One Foreign Minister who did so had blocked the airport for five hours, stopping vital aid from getting through.  Cathy visited two EU hospital ships, moored outside Port au Prince, one Spanish and one Italian, and met with fire fighters, doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, engineers and NGO staff all working together to deliver real help to the people of Haiti at time of extreme need.

 Cathy also told us about Operation Atalanta in the Gulf of Aden.  Atalanta, the first ever EU maritime operation co-ordinated by the UK, led by Admiral Hudson and involving ships from a number of Member States, is successfully leading the fight against naval piracy. But that’s not all. The EU is working with Kenya to bring the pirates to justice as well as implementing an anti poverty programmes to give local people a real choice – a striking example of the EU being effective, just in case you ever doubted it.

 Meanwhile in the European Parliament Chamber, the UKIP clowns continue to disgrace the country they purport to defend. This time it was the Earl of Dartmouth, who launched what can only be described as a silly personal attack on Cathy Ashton. The Parliament President (Speaker) rightly turned his microphone off, thus precipitating one of the most childish tantrums we have ever seen in the normally well behaved Parliament. Dartmouth shouted, gesticulated wildly and tore up his papers before storming out. First Farage, now Dartmouth – mad (dogs and) Englishmen both of them.