Now that Cuba has agreed to release – and exile – a goodly number of political prisoners, Spain expects the European Union to ‘respond’ and be more flexible.

I have written here on various occasions about Cuba. Maybe the most astonishing thing about this run-down Cold War relic is not the fanatical loyalty its incompetent undemocratic regime attracts from so many foreign people who appear to enjoy their own democratic way of life.

No, it is the fact that the EU has in fact no real policy on this matter.

This ought to be a no-brainer.

Cuba is island which is geographically and civilisationally part of ‘the West’, which speaks European languages and which is thought to be keen to keep some distance between itself and its massive USA neighbour.

So the EU should be pressing a Deal:

  • here’s what we’ll do, Cuba
  • we’d like you to be independent and, if that’s what your people really want, a country which emphasises Equality rather than Freedom
  • and we’ll help you stay independent of the USA
  • so large sums of money will be made available to help you make the sort of transition which has happened so successfully elsewhere in the former Commie world
  • you can move at your own pace, as long as you do move with some energy in the right direction
  • Dull but honest European advisers will pour in to help you devise modern welfare programmes
  • and your young people can come en masse to Europe for scholarships and training in non-American ways of running business and a government
  • BUT, there is a but
  • you do have to accept, and we hereby call for as an integral part of the process, a date for free and fair elections and an end to one-party communist rule. Not tomorrow. But definitely within a sensible time-span.
  • We’ll even help the Communist Party with campaign advice of the sort we give to other parties set up once politics is liberated properly once and for all 
  • OK?

The EU is nowhere near that sort of common sense, generous deal, aimed at ending the misery in Cuba in a progressive, measured and principled way.

Indeed, my spies in the FCO tell me that the new British government is busy limply positioning itself ‘in the middle of the EU pack’ between those who want to suck up to the Cuban Leftists (Spain) and those who want freedom in Cuba (Poland).

Come on everyone, including in the FCO.

Lift your horizons. We can do better than this!

Oh, and if anyone wants to know how we brought democratic change to Milosevic’s Serbia, they only need to ask me.