EU negotiators learned from the best

Shortly before the start of the Second World War, Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s foreign minister (and son-in-law) talked to his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

In his diary, Ciano recalls asking Ribbentrop how the negotiations with Poland were going. “Any chance of a settlement?” “We don’t want a settlement,” replied Ribbentrop. “We want war.”

Any observer of Britain’s on-going negotiations with the EU may be forgiven for feeling that Ribbentrop’s spirit wafts in every time the parties sit down. For that episode provides a useful blueprint for the EU’s strategy, and it’s good to identify the source of its inspiration.

Like Ribbentrop, the EU functionaries are only pretending to negotiate for a mutually beneficial outcome. Underneath that thin veneer of pretence they too want war, if only, one hopes, figuratively speaking. Their aim isn’t to end Britain’s EU membership in an equitable manner. It’s to punish Britain for jeopardising the survival of that awful contrivance.

Britain has a vested interest in continuing to trade with EU countries, helping both parties to prosper. This is consonant with the legacy of the great trading empire Britain once was. Conversely, the EU, contrary to its protestations, doesn’t see this issue even in terms of its own prosperity, never mind Britain’s.

Its aim is to make Britain suffer pour encourager les autres. And if spiting Britain’s face involves cutting off the economic noses of the 26 EU members, it’s worth it.

From its very conception, the EU has been a political, not an economic project. Its overriding objective is to create a single European state, with the economy being strictly subservient to that goal. That’s not to say the economy is of no consequence –  it does have two roles to play: seducing the poorer countries into membership and camouflaging the underlying political imperative.

This arrangement was enunciated in so many words by many EU founders, most famously by Jean Monnet. Our purpose, he wrote, is to build a single European state by incremental steps, each sold to the world as pursuing strictly economic objectives.

It’s essential to the EU’s survival that members already reeled in don’t wriggle off the hook. And if by some miracle one manages to do so, it’s imperative that it suffers. Otherwise the others, especially those outside the EU core of Germany, France and Benelux, may get funny ideas too.

Hence the pathetic little game being played by heirs to Ribbentrop in softening their demands one day, then tightening them the next. Some of those demands are unthinkable for any sovereign country even to consider.

For the essence of sovereignty is a country’s ability to live by its own laws and no one else’s, and also having control over its borders on land and at sea. Show me a country that doesn’t exercise those rights, and I’ll show you a fiefdom of an outside political entity.

Yet the EU demands that Britain respect a mythical ‘level playing field’. That means Britain complying with all EU laws and thereby agreeing to garrotte herself with the red tape so beloved of most national, and all supranational, bureaucracies.

Moreover, Britain is expected to obey not only the laws existing at present, but also all the future ones to be begotten by the fecund minds of EU functionaries. One does wonder what part of sovereignty those chaps don’t understand.

Then there are those fishing rights, ostensibly meaning only that EU trawlers will continue to be able to catch about £12 million’s worth of fish within the internationally established 12-mile zone. Now, £12 million is a lot of money to you and me, but for either negotiating party it doesn’t even qualify as pocket change.

Hence, given bilateral good faith, an accommodation could easily be found to keep those Breton fishermen happy. But the other side, those heirs to Herr Ribbentrop, aren’t negotiating in good faith. They too want war, if only of the trade variety.

That’s why they demand that Britain unconditionally relinquish control of her territorial waters, thereby becoming the only sovereign country in the world to accept such an arrangement. Actually, they don’t want to make demands that could be accepted, only those that any sovereign country is bound to reject.

Thus what’s at stake here isn’t the derisory amount of £12 million’s worth of cod and haddock, but the principle of sovereignty. And this is something that the Johnson government can’t betray without triggering social unrest and probably a vote of no confidence – even considering its 80-seat majority.

There’s no doubt that, by combining a version of Napoleon’s Continental Blockade with one of Ribbentrop’s negotiating methods, the EU can create problems of both economics and convenience for us. But then, as the great American adman Bill Bernbach once said, “A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something.”

We didn’t vote to leave the EU to gain riches; we did so to regain our sovereignty. The Brexit vote was a political answer to a political question, and it was unequivocal.

Now, I shan’t pursue the analogy between the Third Reich and the EU further than it goes naturally. And I certainly don’t hope that Michel Barnier will eventually be strung up like Ribbentrop. The differences between the two are blindingly obvious – but then so are the similarities.

Their shared cause is creating, under the aegis of Germany, the Leviathan of a giant European superstate. Ribbentrop’s role in that project was as evil as the project itself, whereas both Barnier and his masters are merely immoral, cynical and misguided.

When Britain resisted the former, the response came in the form of the Blitz bombs raining on London. Resisting the latter will only cause a minor inconvenience. A price well worth paying in both cases, I dare say.