Do we really want a Europe that sees itself as a counterweight to America, chiefly by virtue of its willingness to do business w/ unpleasant regimes?

...all of a sudden we can say what we want to say

writes committed Europhile David Aaronvitch (as quoted by Eursoc, with thanks to Gregory) who evokes "the essentially tragic figure of Jacques Chirac — now fulfilling his blind historic destiny as assassin of all his own hopes".

If peasant agriculture is la vraie France why should we subsidise it at ruinous cost when our own industries such as coal-mining, surely la vraie Bretagne, all had to go to the wall? And doesn’t the EU in its language and practices ape those of the patrician political classes of France and Benelux, rather than the more demotic approach of Britain and the new accession states? Do we really want a Europe that sees itself as a “political counterweight” to America, chiefly by virtue of its willingness to do business with unpleasant regimes?