EU nations divided by visceral self-interest

Here's a paradox. You want to ship a 20' container of tools from Shanghai to Munich. You'd think the best route, after Suez, would be a port as close as possible to Munich, wouldn't you? Somewhere in the north Adriatic? Suez to Koper is about 1,750nm and 7 days at sea. From Koper, the Adriatic's largest container port, to Munich is also only 500km by road. Well, the freight rate Shanghai to Koper is around $1,750. However, if, after Suez, your container turns west and makes passage to Gibraltar, the entire length of the Med,  then north through the straits of Dover, and the North Sea, then finally east to Hamburg (4,250 nm, 18 days at sea) the freight cost will be, erm, around $1,350. $400 cheaper for an extra 11 days steaming. Road distance to Munich is about 800km.

The insanity of receiving substantially more freight from China through Rotterdam, Bremerhaven and Hamburg rather than through EU ports closest to Suez has escaped the attention of neither the Chinese nor the Italians. And just as Germany has shown two fingers to the EU in a deal with Putin to deliver Nordstream II, Italy has done likewise by signing up to China's BRI in a deal that would prioritize development of five key ports in the north Adriatic as a primary point of entry for Chinese goods into Europe. Even Saint Greta couldn't complain at the Eco-sense of it. However, the Dutch and Germans will be very cross.

Meanwhile, the US is seriously considering starting to move its 50,000 troops and defence personnel from Germany, which fails to pay for NATO, to Poland, which pays its full 2% of GDP. Given that the German armed forces under vdL were reportedly down to just one working helicopter at one time, the famed Leopard tanks are rusted and immobile and the army trains with broomsticks, America's departure would leave Germany militarily helpless but again paradoxically make many Germans, who like all true EUphiles loath the USA, very happy.

And so as the Italian government fragments, a blanket of choking tear-gas smothers Paris, German industry disintegrates and the Eurozone shudders just like Mrs Merkel on a hot day, the fiction of an EU united in purpose becomes every day more apparent.

Ignore the doomsters and gloomsters. We're actually going to be in a good place if we Brexit on Hallow'een.

Belgian Globalist sneers at Britain

Belgian globalist and MEP Phillipe Lamberts sneered at Britain today, saying

"Global Britain has already happened and it happened through the EU not through nuclear bombs and nuclear submarines .... Brexit is a lose-lose so you cannot make a success of it"

Well, it could be worse. We could be Belgian.

So, the Globalists think they've won. We'll see.

Globalists - Committed to global government, a world-wide constitution and harmonisation of laws and standards, open borders, the primacy of global economic activity, worldwide legal, judicial and justice systems, abrogation of personal freedoms to a class of unelected appointed experts who will act in the general good, the growth of the 'citizen of everywhere', the rule of benign technocracy over 'old fashioned' democracy, the supremacy of supranational State authorities – EU, UN, IMF.

EUROPA RESURGAM!

The continent faces its biggest challenge since the 1930s. We urge European patriots to resist the globalist onslaught

The idea of Europe is born again.

'We've had enough of cultural heritage, enough of the value of place and national self-worth!' The wreckers cry. 'Let us destroy the burden of the past and the traditions of Europe's diverse peoples and create instead the secure blandness of an homogeneous empire, a celebration of mediocrity, a joyless characterless technocracy!'

Europe is being destroyed by bureaucratic socially-progressive corporatists, an elite of patrician managerialists, who would destroy every vestige of democratic self-government, and who would destroy the principles of Westphalian Sovereignty for which Europe's nation-states have striven since the seventeenth century.

This is the noxious climate in which Europe's elections will take place in May. Europe's globalists want to dismantle the historic Europe of Westphalian states and to replace them with an unelected, unaccountable and anti-democratic cabal of permanent and self-replicating officials, law-makers sans Justice, rule-makers sans Right, who wish to degrade our rich diversity into a grey, amorphous, dead culture of compliance and pettifogging risk-aversity.

Those who believe in the legacy of Burke, Hobbs, de Toqueville or Nijaz Ibrulj also believe in our ability to raise ourselves above the corrupt and power-hungry machinations of Brussels, will have faith in our ability to defend our peoples and cultures against this new and barbarous totalitarianism, three-fourths of a century after shedding the last fascist burden, and a generation after we razed the Berlin Wall to a stump.

The nations of Europe have given us Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Voltaire, Verlaine, Mann and Dante. The technocrats have given us the Animal Waste Directive. They have banished love and joy on the Precautionary Principle - such emotions detract from technocratic rationalism. Love of the little platoons, for the local, for institutions within our compass are scoured from our earth in their unforgiving and relentless managerial trampling on the nations and peoples of Europe.

The greed of these unprincipled dullards for power and status will take our souls. So eagerly do they strive for the complete eradication of cultural identity that they will level the graves of our forbears, desecrate sacred memories and totems with the foulness of their touch. We must fight their depredations; we must speak our poems, recite our fables to our children, fire our micro-distilleries, thrill in our dance and our music, take pride in our raiment and costume, preserve the skills of the hearth and the oven and teach them to our sons and daughters in defiance of  the poisonous homogeneity of their multinational globalist factory-fertig foodstuffs.

From Tallin to Vienna, Porto to Budapest, we must fight these globalist managerialists, fight to preserve our nations, our cultural identity, our rich diversity, our local institutions and our allegiances. We are our soil, we are the heart of our lands, we are a Europe of nations and we must strive against the aggression and hate of these soulless monsters for our very existence. 

[written in response to a bunch of obscure 'intellectuals' of little wit and less wisdom who have signed a chain letter in favour of the global corporatists destroying our continent - see The Guardian]

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UPDATE

How could I forget - Happy Australia Day to all the 'Strines in the UK; sink one for me

All eyes on Italy

Italy has learnt from Greece, and the Lega coalition has drawn a line in the sand as they move towards a showdown with the EU. The new Italian government has done all it can to prepare for savage retaliation from Brussels - bond market manipulation, threats to international banks, financial sabotage and all the rest. Don't be fooled - for the EU this is war, yes real war, just sans the tanks and artillery. The EU will now defend its remaining empire with the tenacity of the retreat from Russia after Stalingrad. 

But what the Italians may not have prepared for is the same hidden weapon that has destroyed Brexit - the enemy in our midst. We have the Euphile mandarins, Italy has the Euphile Dirigenti, a professional class of senior civil servants who run the ministries, regions, PM's office and education. There is no reason to believe that la dirigenza is any less committed to the international brotherhood of unelected bureaucrats - nor any less loyal to the capos in Brussels.  

France and Germany are at greatest risk of Italian independence - French banks own Italian debt that totals 11% of French GDP, and 46% of Germany's Target 2 trillion Euro credit balance is owed by Italy. The EU will fight like a trapped tiger to prevent Italy's freedom. 

Faceless bureaucrat

Sorry Herr Juncker your woes are just starting

Later today or tomorrow senior EU official Herr Juncker will publish his official letter to the elected Prime Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban, congratulating him on his victory like an MD sending a memo congratulating his sales manager on winning the shiny shoes competition. Juncker will write of his hope for Hungary's participation in ever closer union, oblivious to the reality of democratic choice. 

The EU is quite clear however that it stands as the champion of democracy, just not the kind of democracy that involves people voting. No, for the EU democracy means compliance with the EU's standards and rules - any departure indicates a drift towards un-democracy that must be checked by sanctions and punishments, even if people voted for it. The EU's democratic principles, you understand, trump stuff like elections and voting; they are a purer form of democracy, crafted by unelected officials and demagogues free from popular approval. And yes, there are many in Brussels who actually believe all that. 

Meanwhile the Eurozone economy is stalling just as QE has reached its limit and its just one set of figures away from slipping into the first stage of recession. With the global economic cycle due to downturn next year anyway this could be a biggie. Deutschebank is slipping under the waves like some great ocean liner, each week bringing the share price closer to zero. Italy is working on a parallel currency. And now the Visegrad Four are confirmed and strengthened. Let alone Brexit. 

At home PTSD Andrew Adonis and ACGrayling are ever closer to complete meltdown, Adonis throwing petulant tantrums at the BBC for no longer being 'binary' in its output; i.e. for no longer reporting that 'Remain' has an equal chance of winning. With this degree of self-delusion, he's a natural for a cushy job in Brussels. Or rather he would be if we weren't leaving. Which raises the question; what on Earth will all the PTSD Adonises do after next year?

So, Herr Juncker, let me see if I've got this right ...

The fury from across the Channel this week at a reports that finds that the EU have no basis in law for their demand of a €60bn reverse golden handshake reveals rather more than the Berleymont apparatchiks would wish, I think.

It can't be because they didn't know that they have no basis in international law for their demands. They know as well as we do they have no lawful right to ask this of us. The weakness of their case is amply demonstrated by their demand that the matter of the exit bill is decided before any trade terms are discussed. They must also know that there is no way that Mrs May can agree a lump sum before knowing by how much the trade deal will benefit or disbenefit us.

On the other hand, Mrs May has clearly signalled her fall-back position; we leave without a deal on WTO terms, our contributions stop in March 2019, and we use our rights under international law to reclaim our assets; unlike the EU's spurious claims, our reclaiming our investments such as the €40bn we've put into the European Investment Bank will be enforced. And yes, WTO terms will hurt our GDP, but the lump sum we win back plus the €10bn a year buffer of no more Danegeld could compensate for the downturn. Whereas the EU has no such capital cushion, and faces charging its contributing nations far more, and will also suffer its own hit to EU GDP from a Brexit without any buffer at all. 

Have I misunderstood this or are we negotiating from a pretty strong position? Are the comrades so cross because they've worked out how weak they are in all this?

We must help the EU turn from self-destruction

A European customs union in which goods, services and capital can circulate freely is a pretty good idea. The power of Europe's 440m people as a trade bloc, the internal savings from lower frictional costs of trade and the spin-off advantages of a talking-shop at which representatives of the national governments meet to discuss trade matters are all powerful benefits of such a union of convenience. 

Unfortunately, what the EU has become is an unelected cabal of little men from small nations who want to be big. Maltese, Luxembourgers, Belgians and Dutch like the ability to talk on equal terms at France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Sadly, it has led to delusions - delusions that the EU can be a global superpower, and all it needs is an army to go with the flag and the anthem. Germany, the only member with the means to pay for this jejune fantasy, will only go along with it all whilst she is able to exploit the enforced poverty of all the nations of southern Europe that keeps German exports cheap. 

Tusk is one of Europe's little men who wants to be big. He is also literally a small man, with all the comedic chihuahua snappishness that comes with Small Man Syndrome. As the EU crumbles around him, all he can think of to say is "Everyone is against us. Therefore we must have even less democracy and a big army, now". Sadly, it is this sort of blind stupidity, remote from voters and the reality of democratic elections, remote from all modern reality in the make-believe Brussels bunkers, that will hasten the EU's failing. 

But it's neither in Britain's or Europe's interest to see it all crash. We must now work to turn the EU into what it should have been all along - a trade bloc that benefits its members, not a clumsy attempt at a Ruritanian world power run by the Mayor of Gozo. There's no point talking to fools such as Verhofstadt - they're all away with the fairies. We need to take a dialogue directly to the peoples of Europe's nations and plant the idea of a fundamental reformation of the EU.