“Ooooeugh….please don’ ‘urt me, ah am joost a leeturl mouse oo storl ze scheez”
But will we Britons wind up being the plucky amateurs yet again?
Trace the spin bollocks back over the last few weeks, and I think you will find that by far the most constant element is the French-promoted fantasy that, somehow, it can survive as one of the European Top Dogs. From the ‘Close to Agreement on EFSF access to ECB’ nonsense of a fortnight ago to the reality-free yarn today about France ‘leading an EU breakaway’, Sorbonnier media tripe has been an ever-present factor. It would be hard to describe to somebody with no affinity for Germany just how tooth-grindingly annoying they find all this stuff. But I can assure both Germaphobes and Germophiles that the future is going to be very diferent to the past.
The eurozone’s second largest economy came under fire from the European Union and international investors this week for not doing more to cut government spending, and in this respect the criticism was never more deserved. I’ve lost count of how many times The Slog posted to this effect over the last two years, but we should also remember that the person in charge of this particular consideration was of course Cristine Lagarde, the Silent Lady of the IMF, formerly known as the Noisy Lady from Paris.
Rather like a variation on the UK, much of France’s success in recent years depended on making loans to peripheral eurozone countries, many of which are now in deep trouble – and unable to repay their loans as a result of that French economic policy. Gallic banks have written off most of their loans to Greece, but would need a big bailout by French taxpayers if their loans to Italy suffered a similar fate. The gloomy picture in France means that the country is about to fall out of the first rank of euro nations.
“This is a disaster for France,” a pro-DSK source told me this afternoon, “There is no escape from this. This is gross fiscal mismanagement of the first order”. But then, being for DSK, he would say that: he has an election to win. (This doesn’t, of course, mean he is wrong…..just biased.)
What we must now do is take a few strides forward into the future, and look at the more likely outcomes once this all pans out, and those elections are over. It seems to me almost inconceivable that Nicolas Sarkozy can win, and thus – minus DSK – a grey socialist will become President of France. He or she will in fact be perfect casting as the leader of Europe’s Second Division. I really am not being patronising when I say that: we must all play to our strengths, and it has been the case for nearly 200 years now that the French, Italian and Greek ‘Grand Tour’ was chiefly laid on for the rich Anglo-Saxon. Spain and Portugal – not in contrast, but in concert – have over the last half century been the destination for those looking for fish n chips, bratwurst, a suntan, and a tasty waiter. (Greece is the bridge between these two versions of Europe).
Southern Europe moving at a slower pace, with a smaller income, more redistributionist aims – and a more flexible currency to take account of all that – would suit pretty much everyone. France could overcome any feelings of shame by returning to its glorious Franc (as it so often has) and exporting its more advanced products to those in eurozone2 and Asia, whose desire for its output remains as strong as ever. And northern Europe could go back to feeling incredibly rich for two holiday weeks each year.
The exception in all that is….er, us. And we have three generations of silly politicians to thank for this, our stateless fate.
Contrary to many claims, Thatcher was even more enthusiastically pro-Europe than Heath. Her reasons were entirely different to his – like Churchill, she wanted a strong bulwark against the old USSR – but the result was pretty much the same. She signed the Maastricht Treaty, and while she fought her corner with entirely admirable courage, she must have known that she was signing us up for something difficult to control. And to complicate this situation further, she joined that long line of naive British politicians who believed the Americans meant Special when they said it.
For all kinds of very odd reasons, the UK stayed out of the Euro. We congratulate ourselves too easily for his lucky bounce: we are not in it today because a more than slightly mad Scot was too much of a control freak to cede his power over Britain’s finances to another. But what we have wound up with is some degree of guilt by contagion, increasingly little influence over European affairs, and an unaffordable bill to help the euronauts out with their self-inflicted problems. I see absolutely no sign that this gutless Coalition has what it takes to say no to such insanity.
The third corner of this infernal British triangle is the usual Establishment inaction in the face of emergency. Ever since Hastings in 1066, it has been part of the Angle psyche to potter about the garden while, just beyond the fence, all manner of enemies are fighting for the chance to be first to tear us limb from limb, having first viciously uprooted the gladioli. Considering that, from the late seventeenth century onwards, we built easily the greatest empire ever known, it remains hard for me – a trained historian – to figure out what amazing confluence of good luck and enemy plonkers enabled us to achieve that end. I suspect the answer is that a series of military and land-grabbing entrepreurial pyschopathic geniuses simply ignored both politicians and bureaucrats….and at times, even monarchs. Sir Francis Drake, Robert Clive, Nelson, the Duke of Wellington and many others variously used patched eyes, late messages and umpteen other ruses to do this. (As late as 1944, Montgomery was still at it).
But when it comes to the authorities, then we have always been reliably unready. Dunkirk is today celebrated as a great victory (and it was – for make-do-and-mend bravery) but the Crimea, the Dardanelles, the Arnhem adventure, Suez, and even the onset of the Falklands War turned into horror-shows because of fat, obtuse and glib idiots back in London’s Defence and Foreign ministries who missed the signals. So it is today: the FCO – was there ever a more useless bunch of ever-wrongs? – have failed yet again to sort out a half-way sound policy in relation to the EU. As they managed the same confusion with the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Iran, Iraq, and myriad other opposites, this has been no mean achievement. But the bottom line today is that we have one major ally who doesn’t care about us, a trading partner who hates us, a former Commonwealth which is lukewarm towards us, and an Asia that is at best equivocal.
In other areas of government, two generations of myopics saddled us with quite the most ridiculously lopsided economy since that ancient, apocryphal Greek region I can’t recall which was 100% dependent on honey exports. (Better that than funny-money).
Camerlot has never really grasped this reality. Its leading lights talk about ‘sticking with it’ and ‘stimulating growth’; but in all honesty, they show little sign of truly understanding why endlessly repeated claptrap simply won’t cut it. I may be painting a dim future for France tonight, but unless somebody with real ideas and drive gets a grip very soon, ours looks rather like something approaching total darkness.
The situation really isn’t that hard to understand. Europe is splitting up into an Anglo-Saxon manufacturing north, and a farming with services south. We are to the left a bit, and nowhere: weaker farming than the south, and poorer manufacturing or marketing skills than the north. Our future sure as hell is not, in either the immediate or medium term, “inextricably tied up with the EU”. Our future is greater self-sufficiency and added-value, high margin exports beyond Europe. We are hopelessly ill-prepared for this, and twas ever thus. But this doesn’t mean that we will fail. As in 1940, all we need is someone with energy and brains to inspire us.
The Slog 