'My FT is a twat'

It is not every day that a European Commissioner talks about creeps, boobs, behinds, back massages and "deaf-mute nymphomaniacs" in one five minute speech. But Margot Wallstrom is not your everyday commissioner.

For a start she gives every impression of being a relatively normal human being – which immediately distinguishes her from many of the other drones in the upper echelons of the EU executive.

Proof of this is her decision to speak at the launch of ‘My Boyfriend is a Twat,’ – the book version of the hugely successful blog by Brussels-based Brit Zoe McCarthy.

It is pretty brave for any politician to publicly support a book whose very title is English slang for a woman’s vagina. But in the cosy, consensual bubble of Brussels politics, it was clearly a step too far for some prudes in the press.

In an Observer column entitled ‘Scraping bottom,’ the Financial Times – very much the paper of record among EU policy wonks – sniffs: “The European Union’s plan D for democracy seems to have become D for desperate.” In the sneering, condescending style typical of most English reporting on the EU, it continues: “Margot Wallstrom, the Mrs PR of Brussels, is pursuing her campaign to get the European Commission noticed, or at least talked about, at a book launch this month.”

Clearly utterly outraged that the telegenic Swedish commissioner had taken time out of her busy schedule to meet ‘ordinary’ people – the book’s author is one of the few Europeans in Brussels not connected with the EU – the pink paper fumes: “McCarthy’s blog seems to draw the line at politics and the only connection with the EU appears to be that she lives and works in Brussels.”

“The FT needs to lighten up a bit,” Wallstrom - who has her own pretty succesful blog - told me after the book reading. The response of the commissioner’s spokesman, a black-clad Irishman who plays for ‘neo-Celtic’pagan band omnia is not repeatable in a family blog.