As we described in the previous post the European Union’s track record has been disastrous. It has been the least successful trade area in the world over the last 10 years. Global Finance magazine calculated EU GDP growth over this period at 1.0% per annum (and the Eurozone even worse at 0.7%) compared to other advanced economies (excluding the G7) at 3.0% and the world at 3.8%. As John May of Business for Britain commented on BrexitCentral “As a continent only Antarctica (population 4,000) performed worse than Europe.”
The Euro has crippled European economies and the index of investor confidence has just fallen dramatically from nearly 35% in January to 12% today.
The Italian bank crisis continues and the latest spending plans of the Italian Government, in defiance of the EU, have led to a rapid rise in Italian debt yields as the risk not just to Italy but to the whole Eurozone system rises. The Euro zone’s “Fiscal Compact” requires countries in trouble – like Greece, Spain, Italy – to keep reducing their deficits to no more than 0.5% of GDP, (a difficult task even for a growing economy like the UK, never mind bankrupt countries like Greece and Italy) and hence in the long run their national debt.
But the Euro is such a horrendous straightjacket for the poorer peripheral countries that their debts to the richest countries – like Germany and Holland – keep rising. Such debts are represented (because it is all inside the Euro currency) in the so called “Target 2” balances which is a settlement of accounts between Eurozone nations. Germany is on the line for some Euros 900bn because the system is owed billions by Italy (over 400bn Euros) and Spain a similar amount.
This economic weakness is reflected in political weakness in the member states where the traditional parties who created and defended the European Union disaster have lost massive public support. The international weakness is evident when in Europe EU nations rely on US military strength and in the Middle East have no significant role to play as Russia increasingly gains influence.
The alienation felt by European peoples, as the would-be Superstate fails, is growing. As with so many political cultural disasters the experience of specific people and families is the most instructive.
THE EU’S ALIENATION OF ITS PEOPLES
Anne-Sylvaine Chassany the FT Bureau chief in Paris has decided to move from Paris back to London because her son, wrenched from his school friends was so unhappy: “This realisation came when, more than a year after our return to Paris, I caught him under his bedsheets silently crying over his London class photograph.”
Alienation on a grand scale is evident from figures from Eurostat which chronicle the youth and brain drain from the poorer and peripheral nations of the EU. Nearly 20 per cent of working age Romanians work in other EU member states – up from under 8 per cent a decade ago. Lithuania (15.0 per cent), Croatia (14.0 per cent), and Portugal (13.9 per cent) also have high numbers of alienated workers competing for low paid jobs in other countries – because they have no currency to reflect the reality in their own.
Foreign workers are of course weak participants in the labour market, are paid badly and miss their own culture and find it hard to keep in touch with their families at home. But that does not bother the pseudo intellectual elitists in the Brussels nomenclatura who do so well out of the new economic empire (even as it fails). Indeed as it fails they are more active with “more Europe”, more “solutions”, more bureaucracy and higher salaries – as those they “serve” enter a third decade of grotesque levels of unemployment, poverty and desperation.
As we saw in the UK such bureaucratic parasites have utter contempt for the working class even in their own countries never mind the mass mobilised workers forced to leave their home countries for the greater good of the “country called Europe”.
And of course the mass movement of Middle East and African migrants into a Europe whose nation states long ago lost control of their borders to Brussels is a grave crisis, as the costs and crime rates for immigrants in Sweden and Germany testify. In Italy 40% of rapes are committed by immigrants but they make up only 8% of the population.
Millions of migrants are now working or just existing inside the EU without documents. Researchers Michael Peel and Jim Brunsden are reported on Brexit Central as examining the numbers of such people.
“Between 2008 and 2017, more than 5m non-EU citizens were instructed to leave the bloc. About 2m returned to countries outside it, according to official data. While the two sets of numbers do not map exactly — people don’t necessarily leave in the same year they are ordered to do so — the figures do suggest several million people may have joined Europe’s shadow population in the past decade or so. The cohort is likely to swell further as a glut of final appeals from asylum cases lodged since 2015 comes through.”
No wonder a warning to Brussels has just been issued by two of Europe’s “populist” (ie democratic) leaders:
“The enemies of Europe are those who are entrenched in the Brussels bunker.” –
Marine Le Pen
“Europe’s enemies are those cut off in the bunker of Brussels,the Junckers, the Moscovicis, who brought insecurity and fear to Europe and refuse to leave their armchairs.” – Matteo Salvini
IRAN TROUBLE EXPOSES EU WEAKNESS
Donald Trump has applied new sanctions on Iran for fomenting revolutionary movements in the Middle East and failing to meet its obligations under the agreement to halt the development of nuclear weapons. This affects European countries – especially those big corporations doing business in the USA – “Those who do business with Iran will not do business with the USA” said Trump.
So the EU is trying to set up a payments tool to help companies trade with Iran and frustrate the US sanctions. The UK has joined them.
Trump’s second lot of Iran sanctions – targeting oil exports and central bank payments – are due in November and this special payments system is designed to help those companies who wish to risk their US business by continuing to trade with Iran. Most companies have stopped rather than risk that business.
It looks as if it will end up being some form of barter deal and is unlikely to weaken US sanctions – so internationally weak is the EU.
GERMAN AND FRENCH ESTABLISHMENTS COLLAPSE
The weakness of the establishments in France Germany and Italy is even more serious than the powerlessness of the EU itself.
The darling of that globalist corporatist cliques now so hated in the Western democracies, Emmanuel Macron, is seen as elitist and alien to French voters who see him as part of a corrupt establishment. His disapproval rating is now 59%. The Russians (whom Macron tried to suck up to with obsequious flattery while insisting on the continuation of sanctions!) call him “the little untrustworthy pervert”.
No wonder the Franco German plans for tighter EU controls over member states and increased “financial integration” has been strongly opposed by a united group of 12 other member states. The more the EU has integrated the more inequalities and instability have emerged. Growth in Germany is two and half times that in France or Italy.
Germany’s anti EU Alternative fuer Deutschland party has reached an all time high in the polls at 18.5% while the Social Democrat Party, the most eurofanatic of all, has collapsed to 17%. The AFD is now second behind the Merkel Conservative block which is itself in great trouble as the CDU’s sister party the Bavarian CSU opposes the Government’s immigration policies.
After Brexit Germany itself will have to find E10bn to plug the gap in the EU budget.
In Italy the major parties collapsed and the Liga and the Five Star Movement harvested together 50% of Italian votes. The main left wing party got a mere 18% for their eurofanatic betrayal of the working class. Italians have spent 20 years with crippling debts and high unemployment. The Italian banking crisis (and thereby the national debt crisis) is a threat to the whole of the EU, as Juncker and his friends are just realising.
HYSTERICAL EU THREATENS ITS MEMBERS
As the Brexit date nears and the EU establishment realises at last that there could be big losses for the EU, Brussels is using the threat of the EU’s next 7 year “financial framework” to rein in member states – especially East Europeans – who might be tempted to be influenced by UK arguments. Those states are particularly worried about the lack of security cooperation with the UK – the exclusion of the UK from the Galileo satellite system being of particular concern with the EU Commission’s Martin Selmayr (who has a track record of seeking to embarrass and marginalise Britain) being seen as a particular problem.
THE STENCH OF REMAINER HYPOCRISY
All this is of course a matter of complete indifference to British Remainers who are slavishly bound to the corporatist fascist EU and its poverty – while claiming leftist compassion for the people of Britain! They would rather hurl British youth into the 30% to 40% youth unemployment and mass migration which characterise life in the EU than allow an independent democratic Britain.
One of those calling for a second referendum is the Muslim Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn who immediately after the 2016 referendum told LBC radio that another vote on Brexit would lead to “even more cynicism… the reality is the British public had a say, they voted and they voted to leave ……..we’re out for good, there’s no going back”. Now he demands a second referendum.
The former Tory Prime Minister John Major (who drove his party to its worst electoral defeat since 1906!) said during the referendum: “If we vote out thats it we are out it is not credible to say lets have another vote.” Now he wants a second referendum.
Another eurofanatic ,the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, says she would back a second referendum and that the public “might not even get their Brexit”. But last year she told the party conference:
“Back in June 2016, everyone had their say. The country made a clear decision. I have said it before and I say it again: I fully respect the result. We chose to Leave and we must make a success of Brexit.”
As the MEP Daniel Hannan has rightly said about calls for a second referendum:
“Why should we accept calls for a second referendum from people who by definition don’t accept the result of referendums.”
Referenda for the European Union are not a legitimate expression of the people (the true sovereigns) about their constitution and democracy. Oh no – for the ruling euro-class referenda are an instrument of control. If the “plebs” are too stupid to see their own interest then they must keep voting until they do. Plebiscites have often been the easily manipulated weapons of dictatorships. In Europe they still are. But not in Britain. There may be another referendum – probably in about another 41 years which is how long the British had to wait for the Remainers to ask them for a second time in 2016.
