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

Re: The end of the road

[nevillegamgee.livejournal.com]

You need to check your figures: England's population is not sixty million. It's roughly just over 51 million.

Re: The end of the road

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Two points. First, the government of David Cameron represents, God knows how, sixty million Britons, not just forty-seven million Englishmen. Point two: I worked in the 2001 Census and I can tell you for a fact that all numbers arising from that and succeeding counts are untrustworthy. I am certain that I under-reported the number of people in my area, especially those of foreign origin who needed a little help, because I was not allowed enough time to do my job. Multiply this across the face of Britain and you have an utterly unreliable set of figures caused by stupid cheese-paring.