I hasten to reassure Alexis’s few fans: physically he’s very much alive and, one hopes, in good health. Politically, however, he’s that proverbial doornail.
Or at least he would be in any place where parliamentarism has any meaning. The brave new EU isn’t one. No parliament there, including the European one, does much more than wielding the rubber stamp.
In any country with a sovereign parliament, a PM who calls a national referendum, campaigns for and gets the consensus he wants, then goes against it by succumbing to external pressure, would have tendered his resignation already.
But, by surrendering to EU blackmail, Alexis may have earned himself an elevation to the inner sanctum of the pan-European mafia. He’ll never make Don, but he may be allowed to hang on as caporegime.
I watched some of Merkel’s press conference at breakfast, and she almost made me choke on my croissant. In the good tradition of modern politics, Angie never answered a single question directly.
Whatever the question, the reply was the same: the deal is done, Greece has agreed to be like Germany, her communist government can be trusted to oversee this conversion, the €350 billion debt will eventually be paid off, even though only €50 billion’s worth of public assets will be sold off. Details? Don’t you worry about them. Our finance ministers will thrash them out, that’s what we pay them for.
Angie sounded like a demented godfather (godmother?) making you an offer you can’t understand.
Jean-Claude Juncker, Junk to his friends, was much more forthright. “Grexit is gone!” he screamed triumphantly, the decibel level typical of a man who has had a few during an all-nighter.
That’s what it’s all about. Angie, Junk, Tusk et al don’t care how many more billions they stuff into the shredder known as the Greek economy, nor about how much worse the already ailing European economies will get as a result.
Like a mafia family going to the mattresses, they don’t stop to think about the possible casualties. The family must survive at any cost. Grexit is gone! What else is gone with it is of no consequence.
You’ll be happy to know that some of the billions to be splashed against the Greek wall will come from our own pockets. But the brunt will be borne by the Germans, who don’t normally exhibit indifference to money among their salient characteristics.
One wonders how much longer Angie herself will survive as capodei tutti capi. Granted, things like national sovereignty, tradition or even basic honesty are these days pure phantoms, vague memories of European childhood. But money is real life, and at some point the Germans may wake up to what’s going on.
And Greece? Well, that soap opera has many instalments, and we’re nowhere near the end yet.
Like Red China back in the ‘50s issuing dozens of ‘final’ warnings to Taiwan, the federasts may heave a sigh of relief and congratulate themselves on having been able to shove their own Final Warning No. Whatever down Greece’s throats. Yet in a few months new final warnings will be needed and, more to the point, new billions.
Politics can trump economics, but only at the cost of destroying it. The very notion of 19 different economies sharing a single currency pegged to the monetary unit of by far the strongest one is sheer madness.
Such an undertaking can only succeed if the 19 economies become one. But fusing 19 countries into a single economy is only possible if they are also fused into a single nation, one with a single government, a single leader, a single monetary and fiscal policy, a single set of laws, a single army, ultimately a single people.
That’s what so many commentators mean when saying correctly that the EU isn’t an economic but a political project. But it isn’t just any old politics – it’s the nasty type.
Because the EU is founded on lies, every statement issued by it, including this morning’s effluvia, is a lie. And any political union based on lies and bribery will eventually have to dissolve or else use brute force trying to keep itself together.
The Zollverein, the 19th century tactical inspiration for the EU, set the good example. Prussia used bribes and lies to unite the German states under her aegis, but when one of the states, Schleswig-Holstein, refused to play along, military aggression saw the light of day.
This is the choice the EU will face sooner or later, probably sooner. When another country – be it Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or possibly even France – goes the Greece way, and neither Germany nor the IMF is any longer able to find the trillions needed, the EU will either have to self-liquidate or plunge the continent into a major war.
If history is anything to go by, evil political setups never leave without banging the door. I hope our own china won’t shatter inside the cupboard as a result.