As Richard North wrote on Wednesday "Anti-German sentiment is still only skin-deep in much of British society" and with Cameron meeting Merkel today in what has been described as a tense meeting so it proves. Following on from recent copies of the Express and the Daily Mail, today's Telegraph (pictured above) indulges in a non-too subtle form of 'hun-bashing'. As a result I'm already suffering from 'Godwin's law overload' trying to follow the Euro crisis - and it's still only mid-morning as I write.
But nevermind, apparently German plots are afoot to deny us our say... which is nonsense. If we wanted a referendum in this country we can jolly well have one, there's little the Germans or anyone else can do about it. The real reason we won't get one lies a lot closer to home; more specifically David '3-line whip' Cameron. That somehow the Germans are preventing a referendum that Cameron really wants is ludicrous - at least it gives him someone to blame though.
Not that any of this will prevent outbursts that the EU is really a Fourth Reich or ODESSA-on-steroids. The reality is much different, as revealed by even only a cursory look at the EU's French origins and the consistent manipulation of the EU by France for its own ends, a classic example being the CAP. Rather than a plot, the Eurocrisis has meant that Germany has been reluctantly dragged kicking and screaming into the current limelight primarily because it holds by far the biggest chequebook.
If the EU was really a German plot then this Eurocrisis would not exist. Instead we would have a fiscal union dominated by Germany, playing by German rules, solving at a stroke the fundamental flaws in the currency - the markets would be popping champagne corks.
However we have a crisis because she is doing precisely the opposite. Germany faces an impossible choice between accepting fiscal union, and thus giving up sovereignty (which the German Constitutional Court has ruled illegal) or facing the breakup of the Euro resulting in it being a pariah in the EU - taking the blame for its collapse. Damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.
All of this 'Nazi' blame game though conveniently overlooks the fact the real enemy lies elsewhere. It doesn't reside in Berlin, nor Paris, but in London - Whitehall. The EU never attacked our castle walls with copious Trebuchets and forced entry, instead we lowered the drawbridge, lifted the portcullis and invited them in. Not only that, we also laid on the biggest banquets, gave them the best rooms and told them that they could stay as long as they liked.
One of the first rules of battle is to know your enemy, and if we can't even get past that then we are doomed to lose the war (oops did I mention the war?).
Well said. It is, and has always been, about the enemy within.
ReplyDeleteThe extent to which the Germans or the EU put pressure on Cameron is of course unknown.
ReplyDeleteI envisage he will come back from Berlin, waving a piece of paper, just like Chamberlain. "EU peace in our time".
One can just hope it works out like Chamberlain's piece of paper and is seen to be worthless in a few months' time resulting, hopefully, not in war, but our withdrawal from the EU when we decide enough is enough and stop appeasement.
WfW, while I'm in general agreement with you, it can't be denied that, as Mr Farage, the EU, with German and French complicity, removed two democratically elected leaders (in Greece and Italy) and replaced them with their own yes-men. Mr Cameron might try to use Fr. Merkel as his excuse but I suggest he is not trusted by most in our country. The Germans and the French are, however, pushing ahead with their agenda regardless of what our politicians might say.
ReplyDelete@TT Thanks
ReplyDelete@EP, that is true, and I imagine pressures are being put on all countries particularly Germany. One thing to admire about Merkel is that she's doing the best for her country in the most impossible of situations, which as you suggest the same cannot be said of Cameron - who in my view is completely out of his depth
@JiC Yes but it's worth remembering that both Italy and Greece held the ultimate ace card namely "fine we'll default - let's see how you like them apples". That they didn't speaks volumes. They were prepared to step aside for the good of the project.
ReplyDeleteThus the EU is a project that is for the benefit of the political class - creating an us and them. And that's my main point; it's not a 'German Nazis dominates Europe' conspiracy but more something that permeates every countries' political class including our own.
Evoking the last war is a blunder and plays into the hands of our enemies, who are not the French or the Germans, nor even their governments, but the traitors in our midst who have quietly betrayed this country's interests. Our struggle is in the present and for the future.
ReplyDeleteSpot on comment TT, I couldn't agree more
ReplyDeleteWhilst the machinations of M. Monnet were the driver of the Schumann plan of 1950, it struck something of a chord in the German political class because the idea of "European Economic Community" had already taken hold under the Third Reich. I translated a book of that name, a collection of papers from politics, economics, diplomacy, administration, industry and academia, which had been published in Berlin in 1942.
ReplyDeleteThe lead paper was by Walther Funk, Reichsminister for the Economy, Preisdent of the Reichsbank and Minister for Post War Planning, The scheme included many aspects of the EU we know today, including the euro although it was called the "Europagulden" and the Europa Bank was to be in Berlin rather than Frankfurt.
In 1951, Adenauer's Minister of Commerce explained the post war European project as follows "Will free Europe join Germany? Germany is the heart of Europe and the limbs must adjust to the heart, not the heart to the limbs" .And so, here we are.
In 1958 I was on a school trip to Hanover. My host and other German boys asked "Have you heard about our economic community? It will guarantee our living standard". Obviously they had learnt this in school.
It was forty years later, when I translated "Europaeische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft", that I found that former Reichsminister Funk had been set free early from his Nuremberg sentence on health grounds. He had got a position with the Education Ministry of Lower Saxony (a former Nazi stronghold) and I can only assume that it was his thoroughness which ensured that my German contemporaries were so "on message" (Dr. Goebbesl would have called it "gleichgeschaltet") about the wonders of the then EEC. (or EWG in German).
Absolutely right TBF. But it is more than politicians and the civil service, especially the Foreign Office. It is also the judges, who go out of their way to enforce the decisions emanating from Europe, and the bosses of large businesses, who benefit from the corporatist EU system.
ReplyDeleteThe whole so-called elite are selling us and the sooner we are rid of the lot the better.
Thanks James, spot on
ReplyDelete