"I know I'll be prime minister, I just don't know when." José Manuel Barroso was right. A year after making this assertion in 2001, he was elected the youngest head of government in the European Union a few days before his 46th birthday.

In his native Portugal, the remark has become definitive, the quotation that best captures the cool calculation and fixed purpose of a dogged young politician who has nurtured big ambitions since his teens.