The end of the road

[fpb]

Well, England has pulled the rope once too often and it broke. A few days ago I called the English hatred of Europe a mental illness; now we see it in full swing. The sulphurous pleasure that seems to dominate even GUARDIAN Comment-Is-Free columns seems to me wholly impossible to understand. These people imagine that a country of sixty million people can "renegotiate", to its own advantage its membership of a club of 28 countries and 400,000,000 people. One does not have to have a deep knowledge of the fact to call this an insane, out-of-touch-with-reality, diseased ideation.

Even worse, the final blow of the English knife could not have come at a worse time. Every European leader will feel that Cameron tried to blackmail them as they were struggling for the life of the European project. No wonder nobody wanted to speak with him this morning. Nigel Farage drew attention to President Sarkozy's fury, but I would be more worried about what must be an equally intense rage from Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel. It's not just that she is, by everyone's acknowledgement, the most powerful person in Europe (give or take her fellow-countryman in the Vatican); it is that, as Silvio Berlusconi found out, fat, easily-mocked little Angela, with her frumpy one-size-too-small pants suits (and by the height of misfortune Hilary Clinton around to show how they should be worn) and her inability to speak any language but her own, is someone who makes you pay. Sarkozy may be here today and gone tomorrow, blown about by his mercurial energy, but Angela Merkel can and will remember. If she could end the apparently bomb-proof career of Europe's biggest scoundrel, she can certainly make any British politician regret the day they were born.

What do these people expect? The first demand to renegotiate British membership will be met by a series of actively damaging regulations that will cut European capital off from the City. Do they seriously think otherwise? You cannot negotiate to your advantage unless you are holding a really big stick, and England has none. English business, English exports, the English public and private accounts, none of them are anything worth writing home about. The only thing that stands out is the City, and exclusion from Europe will certainly damage that. Even granting that it can keep the confidence of the Russian, Arab and other third world billionaires who still flock to London with their more or less lawfully acquired wealth, to be left to trust on that sort of people would make the City an even dodgier-looking place than it is today. They speak of Switzerland; but Switzerland, apart from the ancient treaties that guarantee her neutrality, never left the impression of despising Europe and everything in it, and never used a moment of crisis to stab the Union in the back.

England's relationship with Europe is pathological

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The EU has never been particularly-popular with the British, and now the EU is collapsing. It's not surprising that the British may pull out. The British leadership may imagine that they are going to "renegotiate terms" -- but before this is over, the British people may wind up electing a leadership which rejects EU membership entirely.

That's what happens when you try to create a "union" governed by appointed officials, lacking a unified army, and composed of different states which lack a common culture, lack a common language. The EU lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the people of the constituent nations, and it even lacks the ability to hold itself together by force. It's pretty much doomed.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"The EU is collapsing?" Sez who? The same goddamn journalists and "experts" who never saw the collapse of the Soviet Union coming and who thought Japan would take over the universe? Let's try and talk a little sense here. What you have here is a crisis. What you see here is a lot of governments and people standing around wondering what to do. What you DO NOT see is anyone - not even Cameron - headed for the exit. Even the lunatics behind Cameron want to "renegotiate", not - except for the maddest - to leave the EU or to try and break it down. And Cameron has NO friends elsewhere. All the alliances on which he had counted - with the Czech Republic, with Sweden, even with the Fascists of Roumania - have collapsed, because none of those people were looking to really damage the Union; they only wanted a little extra for themselves.

There is no alternative to the European Union, and nobody wants to contemplate a pulverized Europe with people having to use visas and negotiate tax barriers and unsteady exchange rates to go from Milan to Vienna or from Bratislava to Budapest. It's as simple as that. So if and when this largely fraudulent crisis, invented by New York City ratings agencies WHILE THE EURO WAS RISING, NOT FALLING, manages to damage the Euro, what will happen is that some sort of other agreement will be reached. What will NOT happen is that the Union will collapse. Be clear on that, and don't listen to fairy tales.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

There is no alternative to the European Union, and nobody wants to contemplate a pulverized Europe with people having to use visas and negotiate tax barriers and unsteady exchange rates to go from Milan to Vienna or from Bratislava to Budapest. It's as simple as that.

You're assuming that one must either have an entity organized exactly like the EU and with all the authoritarian powers and lack of democratic accountability of the current EU, or absolutely no European economic and customs organization at all. The choice is not that stark. The EU was formed in 1993: I do not remember Europe exactly being an impoverished anarchy in the 1970's and 1980's, under the old EEC!

So if and when this largely fraudulent crisis, invented by New York City ratings agencies WHILE THE EURO WAS RISING, NOT FALLING ...

I understand that the messengers annoy you. But you should consider that the ratings agencies are commercial concerns: if any one ratings agency knowingly delivers false information, it will hurt its own long-term reputation and hence its ability to earn a profit for its service. Are you seriously arguing that the heads of the ratings agencies conspired to do Europe down? And if so, why didn't European-based ratings agencies counter with the truth? I have heard tell that there is still some financial activity within the City of London, the Paris Bourse, etc.

I do not think that the European Union will collapse utterly, but I do think that it is likely to lose a lot of its reputation and power -- unless it manages this whole crisis (most especially the Greek part of it) better than seems currently to be likely. A leader must emerge, or the EU will shrink in terms of authority.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The EU is the old EEC. End of story.

And since when have the tea-leaf readers and crystal ball gazers at S&P ever got anything right? What was their opinion of Lehmann Brothers in July 2007? They are messengers of nothing except their own efforts at divination.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"A leader must emerge."
Rubbish. I would remind you that Great Britain defeated Napoleon while being led by one of the worst collections of nobodies in the admittedly undistinguished history of British government. Can you even remember who was Prime Minister at the time?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

P.S.: about Europe not having a common culture, do you have the least idea what you are saying? Almost every European country has laws derived closely from the Code Napoleon, the same classical music, the same theatrical and literary traditions, the same children's books and road codes, the same artistic heritage - Paris and London are just as much parts of the Italian cultural heritage as Italy itself is part of the English, French, German cultural heritage - even at the height of that unnatural horror called the Reformation, ideas migrated freely from Stockholm to Palermo and from Riga to Lisbon. Everything from opera houses to bell towers is the same. Look at the instance of India. Language is not the only evidence of common culture, and sometimes it's no evidence at all - Hindi and Urdu are practically the same language, but a Hindi-speaker from Uttar Pradesh has more culturally and politically in common with a Malayalam speaker from South India than with an Urdu speaker from Pakistan, unless of course the Hindi speaker in question is also a Muslim. Europe is one culture. Please stop listening to doctrinaire idiots.