As the British economy continues its run of success (in contrast to the Eurozone and in spite of a worsening world economy) the European Union negotiators daily demonstrate with their hysterical demands the openly imperialist nature of the EU.
It was always clear to those of us who have spent 30 years seeking Brexit that only on leaving would we see the true nature of what we had joined and the true attitude of our “friends and partners”. Only when we achieved Democratic independence and the freedom to trade would the protectionist, controlling, corporatist fascist nature of the EU be really exposed.
HEALTHY UK ECONOMY
Average weekly wages in the UK have reached their highest levels since before the financial crisis. Weekly pay reached £512 in the three months to December, which – adjusting for inflation – is the highest since March 2008.
The last quarter of 2019 showed a record high employment rate of 76.5%. Unemployment was at 3.8% 0.2% lower than a year before. Real growth in regular pay was up 1.8% and there were 810,000 vacancies. UK Households’ perceptions of financial wellbeing rose substantially in February and there was a big jump in future expectations of financial health (from 49.6 to 52.7%).
In 2019 UK goods exports were up 6.4% over 2018 to £372bn. But this hides a fall of nearly 1% to the stagnant EU and a 13.6% rise in exports to the rest of the world.
EUROZONE CRISIS
By contrast the Eurozone industrial production index plunged – 4.1% in December on a year on year basis, now at its weakest level since 2012. None of the EU’s economic and social crises have been solved, the Italian banking crisis continues and the German economy is in serious trouble due to the diesel car crisis, the slowing of the Chinese economy (where car sales have fallen 90% due to the Coronavirus and to which Germany sends 17% of its exports) and the continued threat from US trade sanctions for the outrageous EU subsidies of its car industry and Airbus.
The EU now has a Euro 75bn hole in its budget for the next 7 years and few EU members want to pay for it!
After negotiating for 20 years with South America no trade deal has been signed and EU farmers are complaining about the potential challenge to the EU beef market. The Brazilian President Bolsonaro has accused the EU of behaving in “a disrespectful manner and with a colonialist spirit”. Fancy that!
NEGOTIATING WITH IMPERIALISTS
Given these evident difficulties in trade deals with North and South America any sane political leadership in the EU would embrace the prospect of quickly turning what is already the biggest free trade deal of all (with the UK its biggest market) into a formal trade deal along “Canada Plus” lines.
But having originally promised not only a Canada type deal but “a better deal than with any third party” Michel Barnier and the Brussels unelected technocracy now claim that the UK:
“with a very particular proximity – a unique territorial and economic closeness….can’t be compared to Canada or South Korea or Japan”
Again any sane EU representative would recognise the proximity and the EU’s enormous trade surplus in the UK as a reason for doing a very good deal. For while the EU benefits from the so called “gravity principle” in economics which says trade with proximate neighbours will always be more beneficial, the UK is an example of where that is not the case since with the rest of the world we have a substantial surplus and with the proximate EU a massive deficit!
This is no surprise since in Europe we are competing with economies at a not dissimilar stage of development while we have skills, manufacturing technologies, chemical and pharmaceutical expertise, scientific and educational distinction etc etc which the less developed countries want to trade with us.
Indeed it is interesting that even in food production where the UK has high standards and a superior geographic ability to produce milk, beef, pork etc which are valued in the rest of the world inside the EU they are restricted by EU policy to subsidise less productive German, Spanish, Italian and French farmers!
EU DEMANDS
The EU negotiators – apparently unaware of the UK’s new desire for a straight forward trade deal and the end of the May deal terms – have already come up with ludicrous demands which reflect a continued desire to control and restrict the UK after Brexit. They demand
- control over any UK climate change policy
- continued jurisdiction by the European Court
- effective control of our labour and environment laws
- continued joint ownership of our international fishing grounds
- demanding clauses about the trade and ownership of heritage assets (which while not explicit could mean eg the Elgin Marbles)
- the power to freeze the terms of any UK/EU trade agreement
There is an innate EU (principally German and French) mindset derived from past aristocratic and imperialist principles – or perhaps traditional philosophical theory – which sees free contracts under law as inferior to a binding control system for all.
Rather than set up a series of free trade agreements the EU seeks to set up a new country containing the contracting parties. Starting from this structure it is easy to extend the logic to controlling the internal laws of the “former countries” and what belongs to the “former countries” – like British territorial waters!
Particularly vociferous on the demand for British territory is France’s Emmanuel Macron, the classic corporatist and Euro-imperialist (https://freenations.net/napoleonic-macron-a-classic-leftist-corporatist/) whose country takes 30% of its catch from Britain’s waters! He says he will not let French fishermen “pay for a British vote they could do nothing about.” Of course the British fishermen got no vote on losing so much when we entered the EU so decades of British politicians have certainly not discouraged this imperialist attitude!
David Frost the UK’s chief trade negotiator in a recent lecture rightly said that just as the Uk saw no reason to allow its laws to be determined by the EU or its Court so the UK would not seek to dictate the (often inferior – see https://freenations.net/if-eu-prick-us-eu-will-bleed/ ) EU standards in return for free trade.
As Frost stated the control of our own laws and refusing to automatically accept all EU rules
WILL THE EURO BUREAUCRACY RUN AWAY WITH NATIONAL INTERESTS?
Ironically the very techno bureaucratic system incorporated in the unelected EU Commission which bludgeoned the EU towards political and economic dominance is now out of control of the EU nations who will suffer most from that organisation’s pursuit of the UK and a no deal Brexit.
Unaccountable bureaucratic power structures “just obeying orders” could bulldoze everything including the basis of the EU economy itself. Democracy, the will of the peoples of Europe, parliaments and international trade must all take a back seat to supranational power, corporate interests, frightening countries which might follow the Brexit example and EU expansion.
Certainly the EU solution is to hold a “Future of Europe” conference at which (surprise, surprise!) selected not from the people, the protestors or sceptical parliaments but from “Trade unions and employers’ organisations”.
As Claire Fox the former Brexit MEP wrote recently:
When the parliament voted on proposed amendments, suggestions such as “this conference is a chance for fundamental debate on the EU” and it “should be an open process without any predefined conclusions”, were voted down. So was “treaty change must be put to referenda”. It seems then these citizens assemblies are little more than a democratic veneer using a manipulated, tightly-controlled stage army to back up agendas that EU politicians have already decided on.
THE EU AS A TERRORIST THREAT
A report, “What Terrorist Migration Over European Borders Can Teach About American Border Security”, by Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the US Center for Immigration Studies, described the horrendous effects of the EU’s open national borders and how terrorists disguised as migrants have entered the European Union to commit terrorist attacks. He used this as a warning to Americans about what could happen in the USA.
The leading Euro-imperialist MEP Guy Verhofstadt said recently:
Brexit is a failure of the Union. There is a lesson to learn from it: to deeply reform the Union. To make it into a real Union, a Union without opt-in, without opt-outs, without rebates, without exceptions. Only then we can defend our interests and defend our values.
So the EU’s values are so strong that Verhofstadt needs complete control, the end of the nation states and their democratic sovereignties and total taxation powers to realise them!
So the EU has learned nothing. It will not change. It cannot change. So it will die.
