AND SOROS SAYS EURO ‘Will destroy European Union”
Dodgy Dave wins a 1938 déja vu
Rarely can the major UK press titles have been in greater concert than they are today on the EU budget ‘victory’ delivered by David Cameron. The coverage represents, once again, the triumph of rhetoric and hack idleness over facts.
‘Victory for David Cameron as EU budget faces cuts for first time’ (Telegraph). ‘On the brink of an historic agreement: EU leaders poised to cut budget by £30bn’ (Independent). ‘Cameron closes in on EU budget victory’ (Mail). ‘On the brink of an historic agreement: EU leaders poised to cut budget by £30bn’ (Guardian). ‘David Cameron victorious as EU is forced to make cuts for the first time in its history’ (Express). ‘Le Sulk: Hollands stands up Cameron as he faces defeat’ (Sun). ”He’s a dirty rat but I hate her even more’: Newly-wed husband cheats with his wife’s best friend’. (Mirror). That’ll be Britain’s last bastion of left-wing politics the Mirror, then.
But Germany’s leading political magazine Der Spiegel takes a different view. In today’s online edition, it features a piece about what the European Union ‘delivers’ t0 Britain. This is the summary of its conclusions:
‘In 2011, [the UK] paid some €7.3 billion more into EU coffers than it received back in the form of structural aid….Britain is debating whether membership in the bloc makes any economic sense. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s virtually impossible to find hard proof of any net benefit.’
It may be a surprise to the vast majority of Germans, but for those of us who regularly do the maths (and I’m no UKipper by the way) it is in that region between obvious and certainty. The €7.3 billion ‘gap’ referred to by Spiegel above represents only a fraction of the real net cost: our ‘membership’ fees plus trade gap with the EU add up to an eye-rolling €118 billion per annum. Our saving from this deal is €500 million….one sixth of our monthly trade deficit, and under 1% of the total statutory cost of being in the European Union.
The use of ‘contributions’ as a yardstick is little more than classic europhile spin: we are a trading nation, and successful traders judge business worth based on a cost/benefit analysis. There is no positive benefit to us staying in the EU whatsoever. But this only represents the situation today. Read what George Soros (left) had to say about the future he sees for our European partners on Dutch Radio this week:
“I am terribly concerned about the euro potentially destroying the EU. There is a real danger that the solution to the financial problem creates a really profound political problem….
“Germany needs to realise that the policy it impose on the euroarea – the austerity programme – is counter-productive. It cannot actually succeed. At the moment they [the South] is being pushed – unwittingly, not with bad intentions, but the effect is that they are being pushed into a long lasting depression and that is what is happening to Europe. And it may last more than a decade, in fact it could become permanent, until the pain is so big that eventually there may be a rebellion, a rejection of the EU, and that would then be the destruction of the EU, which is a terribly heavy price to maintain to preserve the euro, which is meant to be just a servant of the EU….
“[The euro] could last quite a long time, the same way as the Soviet Union, which was a very bad arrangement, lasted for 70 years. However, I think that eventually, it is bound to break up the European Union. The longer it will take, and it may take generations, those will be lost in terms of political freedom and economic prosperity. The solution is to me a terrible tragedy for the EU. And it΄s happening to the most developed open society in the world….”
George always has an agenda. But I find it very hard to argue with that view.
The only way to analyse this ‘deal’ is in the context of total potential damage to the UK in remaining EU members. On that basis, it is even worse than a re-run of 1938. The shameful willingness to write off ClubMed is no different in either style or substance to the alacrity with which Britain fed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis at Berchtesgarden. The cost in lives to liberate Europe afterwards was horrendous; and the Czechs themselves further paid for it with another forty years under Moscow after the War.
But the material cost of being legally bound to a superstate with a toxic currency and a fascist mindset is incalculable. This leering, crushing, unaudited, multiply law-breaking leviathan run out of Brussels-am-Berlin will never, ever give up its commitment to a single currency. The euro is inflammable fiat paper: it has done nothing but harm to every member State except Germany since its inception….and will swamp the Germans if it is allowed to run its maverick course.
I have no idea what comes below Pyrrhic in terms of victory, but the one being proclaimed for Cameron today is it. And the MSM are, as usual, goosestepping in perfect order with the lunatics in this suicidal battle for brainless hegemony. May they stand forever condemned for so doing.
Earlier at The Slog: Why this deal means nothing good
The Slog 