EU: 'The End is Nigh'....but how long, O Lord, how long?

The EU is  like an old bull in the corrida de toros, staggering around full of barbs from the toreros knowing that the matador will finally put it out of its misery but unsure when. And yet however long this takes, the end is inevitable.

 

In all probability the collapse will begin with the Euro. The entire Eurozone economy is becoming a zombie.

 

Growth in Germany, the engine of Europe, has almost ceased. Their budget surplus is the highest in the world; domestic demand is moribund; the population is both aging and declining; public investment is totally inadequate with inevitable deterioration of infrastructure like roads, bridges and canals.

 

France is a basket case.

 

The Club Med stagers from crisis to crisis and has horrifying unemployment, especially among the young.

 

So who will be the matador? Step forward the unlikely figure of  the Pope.

 

In an astonishing address in Strasbourg, he castigated what he (and many) see as the EU’s failings.

 

He said ‘In recent years, as the European Union has expanded, there has been growing mistrust on the part of citizens towards institutions considered to be aloof, engaged in laying down rules perceived as insensitive to individual peoples, if not downright harmful. In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and aging, of a Europe which is now a “grandmother”, no longer fertile and vibrant. As a result, the great ideas which once inspired Europe seem to have lost their attraction, only to be replaced by the bureaucratic technicalities of its institutions’.

 

He stuck in another barb.

 

He referred to ‘certain rather selfish lifestyles, marked by an opulence which is no longer sustainable and frequently indifferent to the world around us, and especially to the poorest of the poor. To our dismay we see technical and economic questions dominating political debate, to the detriment of genuine concern human beings.  Men and women risk being reduced to mere cogs in a machine that treats them as items of consumption to be exploited’.

 

Two more toreros have entered the corrida.

 

First up, Prodi, the former Brussels Mr Big.

 

He says that Britain is already in a state of withdrawal. Its clout in Brussels is at a very low ebb, partly because of Cameron’s inept diplomacy. The outcome has been that the smaller nations that formerly allied with the UK are now clustering around Germany. The political and economic shambles in France  has left only one player in the Premier League. The reality is that there is now a German Europe, when the original intention was a European Germany.

 

Brexit is likely to cause the whole rickety structure to fall apart like a dilapidated old building; no sudden collapse but a crumbling away so that it becomes uninhabitable. It will not be another Holy Roman Empire that lingered on for centuries.

 

Next, the admirable Owen Patterson, arguably the most able Minister in Cameron’s entourage (which may be why he was sacked).

 

His standpoint is that Britain wants nothing to do with ‘ever closer union’; its future is outside the federalising thrust and we must seize back control over treaty-making. Britain is no longer represented on international bodies which control and regulate much of the world economy. The EU is in charge. He rightly says that Britain should have its seat at the table.

 

He advocates a return to a Europe of the single market, with free trade and effective trading arrangements, and abandon the political aspects of the EU.

 

This all sounds like a case for Brexit. If this comes to pass, as seems increasingly possible, the whole construct will start to disintegrate.

 

And all this is coming from a senior Tory, not from Nigel Farage.

 

We live in interesting times!