Baroness Ashton: The world's most highly paid female politician has never had to face an electorate. 

It was like an assignation in a spy thriller. A helicopter picked up the middle-aged woman in the early hours and flew her to a secret location deep in Egypt. Then she was whisked to a military base, where she met an infamous Islamist hidden from the world for a month.

Afterwards, the woman faced the world's press to reveal that Mohamed Morsi, the elected president overthrown in a controversial coup by his army generals, was in good health. She refused to divulge details of their two-hour conversation — "I'm not going to put words into his mouth," she said a little pompously — but threw in the tidbit that Morsi, held with two advisers, had a well-stocked fridge and access to television.

It was Baroness Ashton's finest moment in the four turbulent years since she took on her job as the European Union's top diplomat, becoming then the world's highest-paid female politician despite never having faced an electorate. For all the achievement of becoming the first foreign dignitary to see the Muslim Brotherhood leader since he was toppled, she has little to show for her time in the job, despite clocking up an impressive number of air miles.

Her tenure has been scarred by backbiting and blunders as she has built an extravagant empire of Eurocrats around the world. Yet it seems largely pointless and ineffective, despite having 139 "embassies", 3,417 staff, 650 cars and costing close to half a billion pounds each year. Catherine Ashton's creation, the European External Action Service (EEAS)-a legacy of the controversial 2007 Lisbon Treaty — is part of Europe's ambition to seize control of foreign policy. It is typically wasteful and top-heavy: at least 50 officials earn more than our own Prime Minister's £142,500 salary.

Brussels has rushed to set up outposts in some of the world's most exotic locations such as Barbados, Belize, Fiji, Samoa and the Solomon Islands. The latest office is in Luanda, Angola, one of the world's most expensive cities; annual rent alone is expected to exceed £1 million while staff get lucrative perks such as business-class flights home.