Could Tony Blair become the first President of the EU? So wonders the Independent on the front page of its Life supplement. Should Ireland approve the Lisbon Treaty in the 2 October referendum, “then the debate will start in earnest about who can best fill the big brand-new job of full-time EU president the treaty will create.” Although Blair studiously avoids the subjects, preferring instead to focus on his role as Middle East envoy for the EU, US, Russia and the UN, his candidacy is supported by British PM Gordon Brown. Observers also believe that crucially Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are in favour. There remains, however, deep hostility to the ex PM from the European left. “It's easy to rehearse the reasons,” reports the Independent “-the Atlanticism, the failure to join the euro; the perceived deference to press-inflamed eurosceptic opinion; the economic liberal, free market, free trade agenda, and most of all Iraq.” But as Denis Macshane, a former Europe minister points out – "big Europeans from Churchill to De Gaulle to" all had their faults but also "the vision and communication thing which even Tony's bitterest enemies can't deny he has."
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.