Talking heads: Habermas - Garton Ash - Munchau - Vogel

Jurgen Habermas - Timothy Garton Ash - Wolfgang Munchau - Toby Vogel 

For years, Brussels experts have enjoyed the quiet life. Brussels correspondents would write a weekly 500 words, knowing it would be cut by the editor in favour of more colourful stories from elsewhere in the world. As the financial crisis hit, these commentators have come blinking into the light. There is the academic Jurgen Habermas, a 'communications theorist' who defies understanding. There is Timothy Garton Ash, former foreign editor of the Spectator, and still stuck in the geopolitical Europe of the 1980s. There is Munchau, Germany's relentless Euro-commentator. And there is Toby Vogel, one of the Economist's men in Brussels, scourge of Catherine Ashton (see Geostrategists above).

With apologies to: Communication theorists; Cold War relics; Baron von Munchausen; the boy reporter in the Lake of Sharks