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This is Jan Peter Balkenende, Dutch Prime Minister and in my humble opinion the first President of Europe. Currently he's available at 11/4, second favourite behind Blair who I believe has less than a cat in hells chance of survival in this race.

He might look like Harry Potter and is almost certainly sporting a syrup, but he really is the only dude who ticks all the relevant boxes for this post. The backroom boffins who are deciding all this stuff and who make the Papacy look like a Chinese parliament, are apparently of the opinion that the first President should be from a country that has signed up to the whole nine yards of EU deals; the single currency, the defense commitments, big on smelly cheeses that sort of thing.

They're also saying he should be from a country which is small and therefore easily manipulated. He should have taken a stint as the six-month presidential position and finally, Angela Merkel should like him. In fact, forget all the other stuff. He just needs to have Merkel's approval. And she hates Blair.

The only other candidate with the German chancellor's approval is Wolfgang Schussel, who is curently 8/1, but Austria is Germany lite and one would think they'd try and make the first appointment seem as impartial as possible.

There is of course nothing democratic about this and we should all be very angry that with the Czech Republic's ratification of the Lisbon Treaty we are no longer an independent nation. To most of Europe this means nothing, they've all been conquered and invaded and savaged fairly recently in their histories so being independent is neither here nor there to them, but we have remained pure, unraped, unsoiled for a thousand years and I value our sovereignty. I am very seriously considering converting to Islam.

This really is the Papacy incarnate. A group of the most unpleasant people will now be deciding how 500 million of us live and there will be nothing we can do, save a half billion strong uprising, of countering it. At least the Pope hid behind the word of God when he was telling everyone what to do, the Lisbon Treaty doesn't quite pack the same punch. Even when the proles were allowed to read the Bible they still believed it, but these people still thought the wheel was awesome. We should not be so easily hoodwinked.

In real terms Sharia law will give me more freedom and privacy than claustrophobic EU rule and I'll be in a stronger position to lobby for the banning of women's football. I'm not growing a beard though.

So anyway yes, Balkenende 11/4 - with a few shillings on Schussel 8/1 Paddy Power.