Now it really is time for Britain to go it alone
Last Sunday on Jon Sopel’s politics show, they linked up with Michael Heseltine, the most pro-EU Tory of all time. He was looking a bit battered poor old soul: but then, finding europhile Blue grandees these days is an uphill task. So even though he looked like something the taxidermist had thrown out, he still got his few minutes of pro-Brussels airtime.
In a doddery tone, the one-time mace swinger told us what an enormous success the single currency had been, and how he was sure it would weather the storm. It was quite the most denialist, deluded statement I’d heard since Gordon Brown’s conviction that he had saved the world.
There is a mindset in the UK which holds that anyone – anyone at all – with doubts about the EU in general and the euro in particular must be a retard; an old brigadier blasting off his blunderbuss whenever the council house kids go near his prize gardenias, or perhaps a far-Right neoNazi who opposes all things foreign when not busy throwing petrol on Pakistanis. The bottom line of this ‘viewpoint’ is that the EU is the future, and anyone against it must, ergo sum, be an archaic Luddite determined to put the clock back to 1702.
It requires a quite staggering level of blind deafness in order to retain this political position; but you see, these people have seen the Light. Look, they say, there are cafe tables on pavements, and brasseries, and dejeuners sur l’herbe, and bars. We have holiday homes in France, and we make City visits to Milan and Prague. We take part in the Champions’ League. We are Europeans at last! I too think this part of Europe is terrific, but how anyone in possession of a primary faculty can have avoided the seamy side of the European Union – taking powers by stealth, uneven subsidy distributions, appalling waste, bureaucratic strangulation, avoidance of democracy at all costs, outrageous eurocrat pension emoluments, inefficient economies, mendacious fiscal reportage, unrepayable sovereign debt, endemic graft, and the growing dominance of Germany the Rigid….it doesn’t seem possible (or even normal) does it, that a sane human being would just keep on saying “It’s all exaggerated by the Tory press/UKIP/the BNP/Liam Fox etc etc”?
On the ‘real’ continent of Europe, the overriding view of us is that we are doubters. Cynical, devious, only joining in when it suits us, and moaning about every budget. Sound like the French? Quite. But as to the cynical doubting, they’re right: the Brits are, on the whole, enormous fans of laughing at authority, pricking pomposity, or making classic comments like, “And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything”. The prevailing opinion among UK eurosceptics is that one State speaking 27 languages and containing nearly 40 cultures is the triumph of hubris over reason; and creating one currency with no enforceable rules was an act of rank insanity. We are a glass half-empty culture most of the time – one that assumes failure, and expects the cockup. The other term for this regrettable mental illness is realism.
But there is a view among officialdom ‘over there’ – and I include in this local dignatories, company bosses, the media and economists – that the very idea of Europe de-uniting is….and here’s that word again, unthinkable. We have to realise that the generation running the EU now are not converts like their parents were: they have – especially in the core founder countries – never known life without the yellow-starred blue flag. Sure, there is a lot of reversion to type going on (and national self-interest writ large) but in the end, there is a sort of unwritten agreement to agree. Like it or not, there is a commitment to uniting Europe, even if nobody loves the EU. And continentals are very, very proud of having given up their national currencies in favour of the euro. To them, this is the achievement of an ideal….something that appears in European politics about as often as Halley’s Comet.
The German version of this at the moment appears both Prussian and Imperial. It isn’t really: I only write of tanks and juggernauts because I want to wake up my largely British and American audiences to (a) the controlling, undemocratic and appallingly run Superstate taking shape east of Dunkirk, and (b) the fact that the senior end of the German CDU has not the faintest idea what the markets want.
But as of yesterday, I would add this about the German europhile tendency: nor does it care.
I italicise those last four words because they are central to the thesis of this article. There is always pride before a fall, but pride in what Germany and Brussels have achieved has now reached another, abnormal stage. It is typified by Van Rompuy, Lagarde, Merkel and Schauble, and its view from here on is this: “We will do this come Hell or high water, and if necessary in the face of both. We are right, and we are going to prove you wrong”. Even Barroso and Sarkozy – still plugging away about bazookas and eurobonds – will, if necessary, fall into line behind the German advance – because (and they’re right, actually) they don’t see Das MerkeSchauble as that: they see it as the EU standing up to the evil markets, while putting its house in order once and for all.
Within the EU hierarchy, when they say ‘you’, they mean the lily-livered ClubMed, the rapacious banks, and the UK. But mainly, they mean the UK. Anyone who watched the performance of a senior German official on Newsnight last Wednesday couldn’t help but have been concerned by the air of ‘we know better and you will see’ triumphalism on offer. Yet the New Statesman’s attitude to British euroscepticism remains as it was, summed up two months ago by its phrase, ‘Our friends in France and Germany really don’t need these kind of nimby hobbits’.
In short, the signs that we have mad europhiles on both sides of the Channel are there for anyone who cares to see them.
Yesterday, I was disturbed to note that this Iron Curtain of the mind had extended to a very senior and respected economist and financial journalist based in the eurozone. I’m not going to name him, because the comments were made in a private email, and unless the national interest is at stake I don’t think any commentator should betray that. Suffice to say that he is well-known, and I have long followed his articles about what the EU has done wrong in tackling the debt crisis.
I sent this chap the Slog piece from earlier this week about a potential British intervention that could solve the crisis and herald a better future for a wider eurozone. (I also sent it to key market and media opinion leaders, where it got a mixed response.) The piece was accompanied by this brief intro:
‘Although written from a UK perspective, I think this idea has some merit. I am Brusselsceptic myself, but very pro-Europe if it was more democratic and market-open.‘
This was the first reply I got back:
‘Thanks, but no UK perspective. I am German, and I live in Brussels.’
Unsure what that might have to do with the price of fish, I replied asking what he meant, and had he read the piece? The response was:
‘No, I am just saying I am not taking a British perspective.’
There is no linguistic misunderstanding here: the bloke often writes in English, and his spoken English is completely fluent. He was saying I’m not really interested in democracy, open markets, another point of view however constructive, and what Britain thinks about anything.
I think there is a message here for all UK Government policymakers. It is a very sad one, but it cannot any longer be ignored. We do not matter to the EU. The German psyche as found in the europhile hierarchy – even amongst the economic intelligentsia – is closed to criticism from what it sees as Ausländer. So, contrary to what I was suggesting in this week’s earlier piece, the UK Government would be wasting its time trying to help. The EU is become the Pete Doherty of international relations: it knows better, and it will not be saved because there is nothing wrong with it. (US readers should substitute Charlie Sheen for Pete Doherty).
While this was a gut feeling I’d had for some time, I confess to having been stunned by the blank-out mentality of the response from such an eminent commentator. I mentioned it yesterday to my Brussels contact, who was not remotely surprised. I’m awaiting a response from The Slog’s Bankfurt Mole, who has been lying low of late. I suspect he will have a very different view.
But if one message is that an influential axis of pro-Brussels Germans is no longer open to rational argument, another has become simpler still: we really must get out of the European Union, and focus instead on making our own way in the world, free of American Special Relationship bullsh*t and Brussels bollocks. The UK Establishment can no longer escape the truth: it isn’t just that most of us would rather not be a part of what they’re hatching – the EU bigwigs would prefer it if we weren’t there. In fact, if they didn’t need our money, I rather fancy they’d have tried to chuck us out before now. And the Americans are backing Germany from here on.
Camerlot, take heed. (Daft request, but I’d like it on the record).
The Slog 