32

Iron Ladies and Golden Dreams

Steven Keith

It was Margaret Thatcher who as Prime Minister was the principal driving force behind the expansion of the European Union. It was she who advocated the broadening of the physical, philosophical, financial and spiritual scope of the European Community as it was then known, to include the eastern European and Baltic, former Warsaw Pact states.

Her nemesis at that time was Jaques Delors, a bureaucrat and a Frenchman. He of course (being that he had risen to the appointed post of a Commissioner) came from the Brussels mindset that was then and remains to this day of the same view, that being, that Brussels, Berlin and Paris run the show between them. The physical structures of the EU project in Brussels, Belgium being underpinned by the financial and philosophical capacities of Germany and France.

Thatcher attempted to weaken that triumvirate by expanding the number of nations and taking advantage of the fact that those countries were existing in their post-Soviet incarnation, that being, in a state of virtual financial anarchy, masquerading as liberalism.

Thatcher is dead and gone and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is going too – or so it’s people have said.

The reasons that the British gave for leaving the EU were a few in number but one stood out, immigration. The countries on the physical periphery of the European Union, those countries that Mrs Thatcher had spoken up on behalf of all those years ago, are also now raising their voices to express concerns about immigration from out with Europe and they are doing so with much greater fervency, on every level of the stage on which they now speak from.

The voices of those eastern and now the southern states too, are beginning to unite, to privately make bilateral ‘agreements’, something that the EU constitution does not permit, countries like Hungary and Italy, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, even Poland, now have populist parties in powers with popular support and a unity of approach on the issue of external immigration into their countries and to the EU.

That view is fast becoming the majority view on the continent of Europe and it is on a collision course with the Brussels, Berlin and Paris and moreover the leaders of the bureaucratic Triumvirate are now experiencing catastrophic collapses in the confidence that their own electorates have in them to govern in their own peoples best interest.

The battle for the soul of Europe

Of course Margaret Thatcher knew that all of this would unfold as it has. She had her advisors and access to any and every persuasion of advice on offer, as do her successors. Thatcher was not a fan of Europe, not a believer in or a worker for, ‘The Project’.

That project revolves around the Franco- German post WW2 alliance. However, it is an experiment based on the ideas, principles, polices and institutions that had been conceived of by and for the National Socialists during the Weimar Republic and the fascist dictatorship that followed. Mr Delors and the central clique he represented, were never enthusiastic supporters of the movement eastwards. It would mean the dilution of their core values; western European, secular, quasi-atheistic, monolithic, anti-democratic and a belief in their own exceptionalism.

The new members from eastern Europe were not really believers in any of these things. They were and remain as, social conservatives, economic liberals, Christians and believers in ‘real’ democracy, after their experience with Soviet style communist ideology. Indeed their cultural dispositions are much more closely aligned to the nations of southern Europe; Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

And that brings us to today. A time when a fortified fence has been built along, not the border of the EU, but along a line that closely resembles that often used to depict the boundary of the old Holy Roman Empire; the previously iron clad Chancellor Merkel of Germany is now politically dead following her decision to allow one million African and Asian migrants into her country unchecked.

Her fellow ideological traveller President Macron of France is at phenomenally low levels, unprecedentedly low levels in the opinion polls, secessionist movements are on the increase across the continent, even in previously social democratic Scandinavia, and of course the UK has voted to leave.

Britain will leave but will not continue in it’s current incarnation – it will inevitably fracture but that does not necessarily mean that her constituent nations will automatically rejoin the EU. Many voters are not so enthusiastic. There are alternatives. Many voters in European countries agree with their British counterparts. Many are sceptical of the motivations of the European elites.

There are now two clear blocks developing within the European Union, and the one controlled by the Berlin/Paris axis is getting weaker in relation to the other, that led by Mr V Orban in Hungary but supported vocally and vociferously, by the new Italian Prime Minister, and his Prime Ministerial colleagues in Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic.

What is more, each of these populist leaders, not all of them of the ‘right’, are friends with President Putin of the Russian Federation. I don’t say this to detract from them, I don’t buy into the Putin monster narrative, I say it because it is the reality.

Over time, the populations of western Europe will come, by their own free will, to the only position that is logical – that being, that neither Putin nor Russia are of any threat to them, their countries nor their cultures, quite on the contrary, they have much in common, as brothers and sisters do! Russia’s influence will only grow as time passes and the story unfolds.

In the future, if the Orban block controls Brussels, then expect a very different arrangement of nation states, including Russia, in Europe. At that point, there is as much chance of a former EU merging with the Russian Federation, to form a Eurasia superpower, as the USA and Canada doing likewise and then welcoming their cultural progenitors into their fold, thus forming another. Geopolitics means one event forces the next. World War One? Triple Entente?

Margaret Thatcher, it could be said, was most responsible for the decision to allow the eastern European nations into the club and Angela Merkel for the unilateral decision to allow in one million refugees, that have created the circumstances that enables the previously stated outcomes to become reality.

If such scenario was to come to pass, then the People’s Republic of China would have no choice but to expand. We really are very close to this outcome being a political reality and the consequences would be catastrophic for all, whether or not they resided within or out with, one of the three superpowers that would be fighting for the scraps on offer.

In the late 1940’s a survey was conducted among the people’s of the US, UK and France. The question they were asked was, “who was responsible for defeating the Nazis?” The American public believed that they did most for victory. The British, when asked, thought that they had given the most. The French people gave the credit to the Red Army of the Soviet Union. Europeans are not necessarily willing to view the Russians as being their natural, default enemy. The English speaking world is and that world is effectively North America and the British Isles.

There is a certain inevitability about the drift into this dystopian nightmare. There was not before. The required circumstances that would cause the EU and the UK to fragment were not in place. They are now. The United States itself is fractured, almost down the middle.

President Donald Trump was recently asked how he thought that this rift, that has become a ravine, can be healed or at least bridged. His answer was revealing. “A global event.” Global events move countries and continents and they can move them very quickly, in a way that changes the world overnight and forever. Look at 9/11.

People in my homeland, Scotland, seem to want to exchange one Union for another. Exchange British exceptionalism for the European flavour. Unfortunately, Scotia might find herself free and independent only fleetingly, before geopolitics gobbles her up. However the Scots don’t seem to see that the big fish that will be swallowing her and England, and Wales and Ireland, will be North America, not Europe.

The wooing will be done in English and English is all that the nations of the British Isles have come to understand.

SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

32 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Mar 4, 2019 10:46 AM

As the Groans Harris dons his latest hair-shirt (he has a closet full!) pushing the Labour is the AS choice of political party, lie in the conspiracy to split the Labour vote with the funny tingers, Steve Bell on his Belltoons site takes us back to the future with the formation of SDP1 – 1982!
Let it be a warning to all tempted by the same old sirens that sold out the hard won post war social democracy and public services to the neocon aristos.

NEDLAGGDEFECTS
http://www.belltoons.co.uk/hotoffpress

wardropper
wardropper
Mar 3, 2019 11:38 PM

Let’s just be careful here. “A Global Event”, planned, orchestrated and executed by an evil western administration is not the same as a natural catastrophe. A huge asteroid wiping Washington or Westminster off the map is not the same as 911. You don’t get to prosecute cosmic Nature in a criminal court.

jag37777
jag37777
Mar 3, 2019 11:09 PM

Immigration and refugees are a distraction from the class war that is neoliberalism.

Don’t fall for it.

binra
binra
Mar 3, 2019 9:33 PM

If power (attempt to get it and fear of losing it) in worldly terms is to find some degree of balance, then a three legged stool has something a unipolar stool doesn’t – a practical structure through which common interests might find embodiment.
Globalism IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER is the nature of a technologically extended humanity.

Geopolitics is as likely to set division among rivals or potential rivals such as to encourage mutual destruction that benefits no one so much as those profiting by supplying what is necessary for war to be maintained.

Insider dealing is as likely to operate without any allegiance to whatever fronting nation or institution.
Any establishment of trust is where hackers seek to exploit blindness and work hidden agenda.
Seeking self interest can thus be exploited by inducement and incentives openly or more subtly applied.

The mind of the hidden private agenda is not only extended with technological development but is incorporated in government and private institutions and corporations to have the first access as well as shaping its development.

Such that technology serves the interests of the few who can afford it – and is served to the many in ways that then serve the few by either preserving the established power or consolidating it into new forms of control – such as the IoT and the shift to an energy-deby currency – and social credits currency – under the technocratic back end to whatever front face of regional distinctions or specialisations.

Globalism as a mask of dominion and subjection is not the freedom from nationalism and traditional tribal or religious identity – but their usurping and consolidation under a global state from which identity will be received and by which can be taken away.

While the mapping of alliances and boundaries runs as if the big deal, armies of lawyers draw up laws in advance of agenda that, once foisted onto governments and corporates and populations as an offer they cant refuse – will enslave them while perhaps leaving them nominally ‘sovereign’.

The law is in its true function –is serving the balanced or just needs of the whole. But Law – like language and thought, has been repackaged into complex instruments or weapons of war – using vectors of incentive that appeal to the way we are conditioned to think – that is to our largely unconscious guilt, fear, and hate – FROM which temporary escape always seems the lesser evil.

Self interest – facing some kind of checkmate or indeed overwhelming insanity – needs to re-evaluate EVERYTHING from a true perspective that a defended self interest cannot – because it is locked into a polarised and polarising position. So to some degree there are some who whatever ‘mainstream’ appearance or presentations – are also active in more than a search for ‘better’ ways to control, manipulate, defend, and strategise in armour or in disguises of alliance. Technology does not address our core relation issues – excepting to deliver more complex ways to maintain an insane way of living and get away with it – by dumping it on others, on future generations, on living environments and on our bodies – as a way not to address the conflict in our mind.

There is a shapeshifting evasiveness to deceit that takes on any and every form in which to hide – and thus not aligned in truth to anything but itself – or rather its own persistence in our thought.

Human minds are extraordinarily complex in their ability to serve two masters such that the left hand knows not what the right is doing.

My sense is that inspired purpose operates a naturally aligning ‘control’ that does not require coercion, but that the abuse of this under ideological device has left us at best highly sceptical or at worst polarised in anti-hate as simply an extension of the hated.

The madness is playing out, but our own part is being brought to choice. Aligning in what resonates true to our best discernment as an ongoing awareness, is not organising against horrors that may turn out to be either manufactured, magnified or needing a different response than premature reaction, but constantly engaged in re-educating or rehabilitating FROM a mind-capture that may not be fully uprooted or debugged yet.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Mar 3, 2019 2:29 PM

What an appallingly badly written, badly researched, superficial, inaccurate, load of pseudo-political tosh. Two major points: your comments re: Scotland seem to be from an outdated English travel brochure; and, the possessive for -it- is its – it’s means that there is a letter missing as in it’s twaddle meaning it is twaddle.

The saving grace, as always, is the BTL comments from people who do know what they are talking about.

Salford Lad
Salford Lad
Mar 3, 2019 1:52 PM

The EU is a criminal banking and Corporate racket,dressed up as a progressive political,social and economic bloc.
The destruction of the Greek ,Irish and Portuguese economies, using the power of the banking sector to create economic bubbles and then collapse them is well documented.
Iceland did not fall into this trap and jailed its corrupt local bankers, but the real villians were at the EU,ECB and IMF.

Greece ,Ireland and Portugal are now in debt bondage to perpetuity. The 2nd stage has already happened in Greece,with the fire sale of its State assets and is coming to the others.
These tactics of lending large amounts to Nation States, which eventually become unpayable has been common in Africa. It is now the tool to loot the smaller EU Nations.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Mar 3, 2019 11:17 AM

Where to start? Some potent drugs in the mountains of India!

I’ll stick with Mutti…

Merkel is not the same as Macron – just look at their personal histories.
Macron was installed by the bankers that he represents by stealing the French election. Using the ‘alt-right’ funding and insurrectionist ‘politics’ and msm that ran ukip and brexit.

Macrons job was to bring the Thatcherite Atlantist creed into the EU and throw it iff it’s independent stride, after Merkel had been defenestrated, again using the same neocon atlantist methods – that FAILED.
Merkel survived. Macron is toast.

The Brexit ploy to stop the EU economic security FAILED. The alt-right insurrections from Sweden to Hungary are runing out of steam – just aa the kippers did.

The tying into Europe of the Russians is progressing under Merkel/Putin – who remember the shitty post war world they grew up in – Nordstream goes live, NS2 is laid as fast as any pipeline ever and ensures gas supply for ALL of Europe – including the flouncing UK. The price of LNG is dropping daily.
The US energy giants are screwed by their greed!

Th EU and UK – the advanced economies with diminishing birth rates – can not survive without immigration, regardless of how many futuristic house robots and sex toys we can imagine will make do.
The ancient orchards don’t look after themselves and neither can computers. Merkel has ensured Germanies labour needs, while saving the lives of hundreds of thousands sent to freeze and die on barbed wire of ‘Fortress Europe’ by the Atlantist’s to secure their Nato allegiance. She single handedly grasped that nettle and nullified its use as an attack on EU human rights standards and solidity even aa the Fartage posed in posters of these refugees caused by the warmongers and thieves.

Again FAIL. (Except fir brexit by a fine margin)

But you are RIGHT on one thing – the integration of EU/Russia, without the Atlantist Nato Robber Barons is now advancing for mutual benefit. A base big enough to trade as equals with the emerging Chinese empire to the East.

While Nato and the Atlantist 5 blurred eyes weep as their Anglo Empire shuts down like an ageing bodies organs into a coma before a prolonged and painful death by refusing to go with grace. All they can do is commit suicide and take the world with them – the psychopathic pathocracy – the sooner it goes the sooner the human race can try to survive another millenium.

Mum knows best!

mark
mark
Mar 6, 2019 4:57 AM
Reply to  DunGroanin

“Diminishing birth rates… cannot survive without immigration.”
This is one of a number of tropes used to justify the massive invasion of millions of unassimilable Third World rapefugees and gimmegrants into Europe, and the open borders actively promoted by Soros and his ilk.
If European people aren’t having many children, it’s not altogether surprising.
Day to day reality for the 99% is declining living standards, chronic insecurity, shredded benefits and public services, and £500,000 for a one bed flat in London (if you’re lucky.) People can’t afford to have children. There are other issues, but that’s basically it.
And the powers that be would rather spend any available money on the millions of gimmegrants who remain on welfare indefinitely. Of the 1.5 million rapefugees and gimmegrants in Germany in 2015, less than 1% are in any kind of work. The welfare rolls just expanded by exactly the same number as those admitted. It’s the same story with Sweden, where the additional cost of all these folk greatly exceeds the military budget.
Which could be a problem, as they want to deploy the Swedish army to try to restore some semblance of order in the ever expanding archipelago of lawless ghettos, the Swedish police, which no longer even bothers to investigate the violent rapes of very young children, having largely given up.
But at least we can console ourselves with all the “diversity”.and “cultural enrichment.”

Grafter
Grafter
Mar 3, 2019 9:51 AM

Mark your rambling comment re Scotland is a ludicrous concoction of drivel from one who has a shallow superficial view of our country and it’s people. For a start you should stop calling us “Jocks”, a slang term emanating from those south of our border with a little englander mindset. You dredge up all the tired old propaganda used by the No campaign of 2014, a campaign based on fear and obfuscation backed up by a corrupt MSM who as we can all see now controls the narrative. Scotland is one of the few nations of the world which is not allowed to have its own independent broadcasting outlets thanks to an elite who see it as a threat to their precious “Great Britain” where they continue to exploit Scotland’s wealth and resources. The BBC is in the vanguard of their subjugation of any aspiration us “Jocks” might have towards a better future for those who live here. I can assure you that the incompetence of those who administer the medicine to Scotland are nothing but snake oil salesmen and people living here now see independence as a positive step towards self governance and that’s without the Brexit shambles where anything England votes for Scotland must accede to.

Loverat
Loverat
Mar 3, 2019 12:29 PM
Reply to  Grafter

Grafter

Good post. Personally I would love to see Scotland remain but I accept the reasons why people want to leave. My opinion is if we can drive the lunatics, single issue bigots and criminals out of power and get to start from scratch then that would be far better conditions for Scotland to reconsider its relationship and future.

At the moment it looks like independence would be going from the frying pan into the fire. If you look at formally strong states broken up before, this hasn’t usually ended well. Besides another referemdum would be (like BREXIT) another distraction from the most pressing issue facing us – survival of the planet and preventing global conflict..

Mind you, if Scotland were to leave NATO on leaving the union then I could see the possible merits of going sooner.

Grafter
Grafter
Mar 3, 2019 6:13 PM
Reply to  Loverat

Love rat Scotland is an oil rich country whose North Sea assets are being drained away by successive unionist governments. The fire you refer to was lit years ago and escape from the frying pan is now imperative. To stay within this sham of a union is not an option. England also needs to wake up otherwise it’s politicians will resemble the same capitalist serfs and war loving bigots who inhabit the corridors of power in America.

BigB
BigB
Mar 3, 2019 7:00 PM
Reply to  Grafter

Scotland WAS an oil rich country. The peak of its riches coincided with the regime of a certain Iron Lady. Scotland’s premium riches flowed straight down to Westmonster, to be distributed among the acolytes and grandees of her oppressive and illegitimate regime of power. The same regime of power that brought us European militarised dehumanisation and depoliticisation: installing an even worse regime of power under the pretence that Scottish sovereign wealth was gained by neoliberal economic wizardry and superior stateswomanship. It was not. Norway amassed a huge sovereign wealth fund from the period. She did not. She further enriched the depossessing classes, many who made their fortunes in the original accumulation by dispossession – the Highland Clearances. Now that the oil is way passed peak and slowing to an eventual trickle …the illegitimate regime of neoliberal dispossession and depoliticisation is beginning to show its true face …of the fascism it is. The Witch is dead, but her legacy of witchcraft lingers on.

Ken Kenn
Ken Kenn
Mar 3, 2019 9:36 PM
Reply to  BigB

Spot on.

Under a certain Minister called Tony Benn the oil wealth was the responsibility of a company called Britoil in the Seventies.

Thatcher and her cronies literally gave it to BP.

So the UK as a whole went from owning the oil to relying on receiving revenues in taxes which were used to win elections for the Conservatives and built on tax bribes derived from the revenues.

The Privatisation that followed was built on the success of this type of con.

The chance to buy what you already owned.

It continues to this day.

The article is interesting ( not sure it’s accurate ) but it is becoming increasingly obvious that there are three massive trading blocs.

The RICS ( Brazil may as well be the US for now) have no need of the economies of the UK Italy or certainly Hungary only in the sense of trading with them.

The fact is this leaves only two other blocs – the EU or the US.

Take your pick as this is all that is on offer.

The UK will choose the US unless the government changes from Blue to Red.

Brexit is part of this choice for most of the UK Parliament.

Whether they know it or not.

A hard Brexit means a US takeover and NAFTA in a part of Europe.

This keeps Macron and Merkel awake at night.

Grafter
Grafter
Mar 4, 2019 10:47 AM
Reply to  BigB

Big B Scotland is still an oil rich country. Have worked in the oil industry for over 40 years. The “Scotland was” meme is a result of giving credibility to your corrupt MSM especially the BBC.

mark
mark
Mar 3, 2019 9:45 PM
Reply to  Grafter

Grafter,
None of the Jocks I’ve known in my long life have ever objected to being called Jocks. And they’re not slow to object to anything they dislike.
I’ve got no interest in dredging up any 2014 No propaganda.
I was hoping Scotland would vote Yes then. I was disappointed when it didn’t. I thought it should have done years ago and this would be in the interests of the rest of the country, apart from anything else. About 10 years before the referendum I wrote to the SNP asking them about details of their independence campaign because I was interested in it. I thought that if Salmond had set out a clear programme of how this was going to be implemented he could have won. But he seemed a bit half hearted about the whole project. He wanted multiple options on the ballot paper – it was Cameron who insisted on a straight binary choice. If there’s another referendum I hope there’s a Yes vote this time. Though as a non Jock maybe it’s probably none of my business.
There’s no reason why Scotland shouldn’t go independent. It was for hundreds of years. There are a lot of smaller countries in the world, and Czechoslovakia made a success of it. But I know that Whitehall civil servants were talking about things like drawing the territorial waters to grab some of the oil fields after independence.
Maybe they were being ludicrous and superficial as well.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Mar 3, 2019 9:08 AM

It should always be borne in mind that the EU is not just a trade area, but also the civilian wing of NATO. Through initiatives like the Eastern Partnership, led by the unprepossessing pair of Sikorski and Bildt (ie., Poland and Sweden) the EU has been engaged in a cyber-propaganda war and responsible for financing, training and arming the Ukrainian neo-nazi militias – Europes’ own political Jihadis. It has become almost axiomatic that membership of the EU carries with it membership of NATO. This militarisation of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe was given an additional momentum by the membership of the ex-soviet sattelites and republics of the defunct Soviet Union.

”The destructive Russophobia of the ‘new’ Europe (see above) undermined the credibility and coherence of the EU as a whole. . It had been anticipated that the new members would be socialised into the ways of western Europe, but instead, the EU was in danger of reverse socialisation – incorporating the neo-liberal, neo-conservative dynamics and virulent neo-liberal free-marketism of some of the new members (Poland and the Baltics being the most extreme cases) accompanied by their prioritisation of Atlantic security over EU social solidarity.” (Richard Sakwa – Frontline Ukraine)

Thus joining the EU means joining an openly revanchist neo-conservative bloc controlled by the US through the instrumentality of NATO. The American-New Europe tail is wagging the western European dog.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Mar 3, 2019 2:45 PM
Reply to  Francis Lee

As a footnote I should have added that the EU Treaty of Lisbon which came into fruition in 2009 aligned EU security with that of NATO. This meant that nominally neutral countries like Sweden, Ireland, Austria and Finland were brought under the defence and security apparatus of NATO.

vexarb
vexarb
Mar 3, 2019 6:56 AM

The Iron Lady was let in by Labour wimps. That wimpish agreement by Corbyn that Britain should ban Armed Resistance to military incursions by Israel in Lebanon and NATZO in Syria goes not only against Corbyn’s conscience because he made it “though disagreeing with the Minister’s objectives” but also against International Law. Corbyn is the new Left Foot — except that Britain’s armed defense of the Falklands was within International Law. Let’s hope Corbyn will not cap this capitulation of his conscience by becoming the new Kinnock.

As for the Labour Party, it’s Back to the Future — to the days of Callahan, Foot and Kinnock: bumbledom, fumbledom, dumbledom, stumbledom till Kingdom come.

BigB
BigB
Mar 3, 2019 7:21 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Vex

You understimate the nationalism effect of starting a war to cover shoddy mismanagement and dispossession on a gullible, jingoistic, pro-establishment public …who hadn’t had much to cheer since 1966. Nothing like bashing Johnny Foreigners over a tiny rock no one had heard of to raise the nationalist morale and avert the gaze from possibly the weakest post-war Tory regime, prior to May’s. We didn’t let her in, a venal public voted her patriarchal political fascism in …and have been paying for ever since. I for my minuscule part tried to warn them. It sometimes seems like I’ve been repeating the same script ever since …particularly on the European Empire. 🙁

She eventually said “No, no, no” – so did we …to much the same effect. 🙁 🙁

vexarb
vexarb
Mar 5, 2019 5:39 PM
Reply to  BigB

@BigB: I for my minuscule part tried to warn them. It sometimes seems like I’ve been repeating the same script ever since …

“The March of Folly throughout the ages has never been short of Cassandras to warn that it was folly. — The March of Folly: from The Trojan War to The Capitulation of Corbyn”. (I quote the book from memory).

Godfree Roberts
Godfree Roberts
Mar 3, 2019 5:57 AM

“If such scenario was to come to pass, then the People’s Republic of China would have no choice but to expand.”

China might request the return of the territory the USSR grabbed after the war but otherwise might simply welcome the union since, ten years from now, its economy will be as big as the USA’s and the EU’s combined and it will lead the world in all the sciences and technologies.

Michael Cromer
Michael Cromer
Mar 3, 2019 4:56 AM

The wealth in the UK had already been divided up unfairly prior to BREXIT and that is why we voted to LEAVE the EU.
The EU is a failed project that will never work just like the British Empire and countless other systems that promise much but deliver nothing.

mark
mark
Mar 3, 2019 5:18 AM
Reply to  Michael Cromer

I’d be surprised if it lasts in its current form for more than a few years at most.
The euro is a disaster, though ditching it would be another nightmare, at least in the short term.
Several major economies like Italy and Spain are basket cases. France has major problems. Greece has collapsed. Ireland and Portugal are nearly as bad.
The European banking system is very shaky. Deutsche Bank is basically bankrupt already. So are Italian banks.
There is a huge and widening gulf between Brussels and the socially conservative east, exacerbated by Third World immigration.
The whole bloc is becoming increasingly turbulent and socially and politically unstable. Popular support for the governing elites is dwindling rapidly, where it still exists at all.
Even France and Germany, seen as pillars of the EU Project, are looking more and more shaky.
The political structure is ossified and bureaucratic, remote and unpopular, and incapable of reform.
The response of the EU elites to its current crises is to double down and move further towards a centralised EU Superstate, despite the opposition this has generated.
There are few, if any positives.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Mar 3, 2019 12:43 PM
Reply to  mark

Mark your ineffectual and misleading rants on the EU and the European peoples true politics will be shown to be the narrative manufacturing bollocks as early as the Spanish elections and through the EU elections and by the general election here as the neolibconartistes get a severe boot up the jacksie out of the door!

mark
mark
Mar 3, 2019 9:20 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

Dear DG,

I hope you understand what you’re talking about.
I’m not sure I do.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Mar 4, 2019 10:31 AM
Reply to  mark

It’s the conflation of the failures of the NWO and the EU socio-economic stabilty project that I object to.

Weeds and flowers.

Nothing personal – just a handy comment to hang my take on it.

mark
mark
Mar 4, 2019 5:04 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

I don’t see how you can divorce the two myself. There may have been some genuine social democratic elements in the 60s and 70s but that is ancient history now. There don’t seem to be any positives about the EU at present, unless I’m missing something. The treatment of Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Italy. Ireland, Ukraine, and developing countries has been pretty shabby, to put it charitably.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Mar 4, 2019 11:05 PM
Reply to  mark

However it started.
Wherever it is going.
It is the largest first world social democratic cross national enterprise in European history.

Not a single country has gone into a freefall and hyperinflation and starvation as has been a nlight in history because the EU DOES provide some kind of safety net.

There are many things historically and currently not good enough for the whole of the disparate countries involved. Going from a club of 6 to 27 in such a short time has got to have problems.

West Germany had to integrate East Germany – and not screw themselves up. It was a task.

The problem is that there are Global interests who wish to rule the EU. They don’t like that it makes its own rules! On standards and currency and increasingly security.

These interests have representatives in certain politicians and corporates that are European. They have been involved in trying to steer it internally to the rocks for them to plunder!

The expansion to 27 was one such ruse, the natoisation of these is another.

Corbyn said it during the referendum the EU is not perfect, maybe only 7 out of 10, I agree.

There hasn’t been so much peace between ancient European foes as the last 70 years! And Schengen is beautiful, the lack of currency exchanging better too.

The glass my friend is half full and not for throwing away!

And the EU can always be inproved with the elected representatives, even if slowly.

I’d rather have a CJEU than individual country courts or ineffective International Courts that are ignored.

I’d rather have common EU standards and regulations than WTO horse trading, no matter they are not as great as i want yet.

I could go on… but you get my point i hope.

mark
mark
Mar 5, 2019 4:06 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

I do, but can’t see how the most important points really hold water. There hasn’t been much peace in Yugoslavia or Ukraine or for any of the millions of dead in the African and Asian conflict zones to which the people who run the EU have outsourced their wars and aggression. The EU is only “social democratic” to the extent that the City of London or Soros or crippling austerity or support for Gweedo in Venezuela or a whole host of similar things are “social democratic.” Once upon a time in the 60s and 70s, possibly, but that’s ancient history. I think a lot of people in Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland would give you an argument about their countries being in freefall. The global interests do rule the EU, and have done for decades. The glass isn’t half full, it is bone dry. And this isn’t going to change. It will only get worse. The EU is utterly incapable of reforming itself.

mark
mark
Mar 3, 2019 4:05 AM

Poland is rabidly anti Russian.

As regards Scotland, I can’t see it going for independence, no matter how disgruntled the Jocks are about Brexit.
It has a population of 6 million. Much smaller than Greece – and see how small countries are treated by Brussels.
In the 2014 referendum, there was no clear answer even about what currency was going to be used.
I’m not knocking the Jocks. Good luck to them. I was hoping they’d go for independence for the sake of England. It might finally cut Britain down to size with our glorious leaders ditching all the absurd imperial pretensions.

However – if you think Brexit is complicated, get a load of an independent Scotland.
When communism collapsed, Czechoslovakia decided to break up into the Czech and Slovak bits.
It was all very amicable, but it took something like 30 major treaties over nearly as many years, and a lot of issues are still unresolved. They have 2 separate currencies.
Some things were fairly simple, like I think the army had 2,000 tanks, so they had 1,000 each. But there was a big power station in the Slovak bit supplying a lot of the electricity in the Czech bit, built with money from both of them.
There were a lot of odd problems. The Czechoslovakian Embassy in Paris was a very valuable piece of real estate with a lot of valuable works of art inside. There were endless arguments about who should get what.

With Scotland, there could be an issue over the borders, the territorial waters.
The eastern border between England and Scotland runs up at a 45 degree angle to the north east. If it carried on at this angle, it would put a lot of the North Sea oil fields in English territorial waters, rather than straight out from the coast at a 90 degree angle.
Just one silly example of many issues.
Currencies. Tax rates. Mixed marriages. Pensions and welfare benefits for Jocks in England, and vice versa. Armed forces. Creating all kinds of new institutions, like a Scottish army, diplomatic service, regulatory agencies.

I don’t think the Jocks will go for it. Good luck to them if they do.

vexarb
vexarb
Mar 3, 2019 7:35 AM
Reply to  mark

Mark, I’m reviewing the situation / I think I’ll go and think it out again.

“The Japanese are the best people we have yet encountered. But the Chinese Empire is a ship so rotten she can never be repaired but must be beached, smashed and rebuilt from the bottom up”. — an English naval officer (18th – 19th century?).

mark
mark
Mar 3, 2019 10:11 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Yes, but don’t be as ludicrous and superficial as me.