It helps, just occasionally, to stand back from the breathless reporting of events and remind ourselves that the euro – and ultimately the EU – was always going to fail. And that is what Booker does in his column this week, and if he is blowing our own trumpet.

We thus concluded, when we published The Great Deception, that two things would ultimately bring about the disintegration of the “project”. The first was the most reckless of all the moves it devised to weld the member states together: imposing on them a single currency without any of the preconditions to make it workable, above all a single economic government with the power to tax and to transfer vast resources from richer countries to poorer.

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Indeed (although a pedant might observe that the will to leave is not the same as finding oneself no longer part of a former whole), and when that happens we, or those who come after us, cannot but find ourselves, or themselves, in grave peril. Thinking ahead, and mindful of all possibilities, the question is: How might we secure ourselves and our great-grandchildren? The answer lies in our past and in our ability to organise ourselves.

Well, I see the crisis in the EUro as an opportunity forthe EUSSR to enforce greater control ovre its provinces.A common fiscal, and taxation, policy I am sure is being worked on behind the scenes.

Richard,

I see the price of your 'trumpet' has gone up! That's a pleasant outcome. A free market is a wonderful thing.

I take it that the hike is due to a happy increase in demand for your 'musical' talents? An awakening in the public at last?

Whatever it is, I'm very pleased for you and Christopher Booker. Justice! Well done.

Of course Booker and North were spot on ahead of the game about the EU and euro.
Various Sunday newspaper MSM opinion makers have now decided they agreed (backdating their opinion several years).
But I found myself rewatching this. Portillo really does think the referendum is acoming in the forseeable future because the EU political union demands will now get far far too big for the UK public to go along with or to miss what is going on no matter how hard a UK Parliament might want to hide it.
Alan 'I forget his name but he was in the Labour Cabinet for years in various jobs' also notes how Cameron will now have to put up or shut up over what specific powers he wants to repatriate AND how he can possibly go about it. North and Booker could save him time in researching the answer.
Easpecially from 5 mins 20 seconds
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15491694

I don't mind [at all] people who blow their own trumpets - when they are right and right down the line so it has proved.

Why does EdCase have John Archer's wolf?

Shub,

No one knows. It's a mystery.

Talking of which, I imagine you have heard of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Yeah?

Well, it's just a guess, but my theory is that you might be witness here to an Unholy Duo.

My understanding of the political world is, at best, basic…so please bear with me when I ask a couple of questions.
The first is: Can anyone tell me what part of its ‘Game Plan’, since inception, the EU has not successfully realised?
The second is: Which of the current 27 EU members has an elected government which is now actively against membership?

Those who had a referendum were simply ignored & told to give the right answer….little by very little, powers have been ceded to Brussels without so much as a murmur of real protest from those affected…nothing to see here; move along.
It has been pointed out here many times that small crises are valuable opportunities to impose more regulation & control in order to nullify them….the smaller PIIGS were a godsend to the faceless bureaucrats, expendable but rescuable only by a lifebelt from a generous EU which will ensure that the richer countries will pay up.
The EU is now so close to the total fulfillment of its aims that it cannot & will not allow any setback to interfere….they will not allow Greece, for example, to experience a total default under any circumstances…and the bad news from Spain , Italy…and, yes, France is perfect timing for an economic & financial takeover to rescue & stabilize the Euro & the EU once & for all and, as all (?) the members’ governments are pro-EU, they will very likely get away with it. Game over!
The wild card is, of course, Germany. The question for Angie or her successor is whether they will go along with it and, should they say ‘No’, they will be smilingly asked to reconsider their answer until they get it right.
We Eurosceptics are counting on EU implosion for whatever reason. I am 100% positive that the calculating men & women in Brussels do not see it that way at all…I doubt if it is even part of their calculations; they quietly continue to build on what has, to date, been an error-free success story.
We should be very worried indeed .

PE,

I agree. I see it that way too. These people are driven and they are not stupid. That's a dangerous combination. I'm certain they are looking at all the angles and have all the expertise they need readily available to them. So they will be very aware of the problems. Their point is not to solve them, or rather not to solve them in what we would consider an optimal way, but to get round them.

The upshot is that they'll only be stopped by a real disaster.

A better outcome for all is if someone started killing them.


ADDED:
Thinking about it a bit more, one way of looking at this is to see it as a kind of optimisation problem subject to a set of constraints. The solution then very much depends on the choice of constraints. We have our set and they have theirs. There will naturally be many elements in common in these two sets, but there will be others that aren't. In general therefore, you can't expect the two solutions to be the same and of course it's possible there is no solution to either.

Theirs however is much more heavily constrained and its solution, if it has one, will in all likelihood be far less optimal than ours. Indeed, I'd put my shirt on it.

Whilst I realise that Richard has a "thing" about the UKIP, it is interesting to note that this is the only party here that is growing…

And where is the most explosive growth?

The younger generation 18-30's…

Where once it was regarded as a bunch of old buffers who remember the war, now it is becoming synonymous with younger people.

Whether they are effective or not is not relevant here, there are many other young disaffected types who are not interested in UKIP, but if that is reflected in similar parties and constructs across the member nations, it points to a generational thing… the post war meritocratic generations being the main drivers for unification under the post democratic model, and who's powers are beginning to wane as they head for retirement.

The young have spotted what we all instinctively know, which is that people are clannish and they don't like being ruled by foreigners. After 300 years of the UK, its constituent parts are still uniquely identifiable, and we all speak the same language and live on an island.

So, apart from the economic issues that Richard and Christopher illustrate in their book, there is this aspect, and many others that are leading this little empire to its logical demise… Let us just hope that it does not wait for the inevitable wars.

It has been going for so long I think it has become a derivation of the plan rather than the plan itself. The people 'in charge' now are not the people who dreamed of this decades ago and today's politicians are just acting like their predecessors for personal gain.

A United States of Europe doesn't appear to be the goal anymore just a constant accumulation of authority.(or maybe I have been lulled into a false sense of security by their serial incompetence) You don't need an ever expanding EU for a USE. We have a magpie squatting on Europe pinching whatever it can. It cannot run things better and wants to deny others their autonomy. It's a cargo cult in essence - if they steal the varied authorities of a USE it will somehow become one. The one thing they cannot steal is legitimacy.

Or competence!

I tried to delete this - dual posting following edit - no delete option?

permanentexpat said



A goal can be close and beyond reach. The European Superstate Goal remains beyond reach whilst the €uro remains a basket case. Meanwhile EU credibility is slipping away and unless the € is sorted will pass a critical point leading to disintegration as various member states run for cover. I don't know if this will happen but it will be a close run thing . I was going to attribute that phrase to the Duke of Wellington, but on consulting wiki I discovered that what he really said was "..the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. ... " which has more of a ring to it.
I saw another quote of Wellington's
"..The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance. .." We are living through a battle now (it's definitely not a ball) the outcome of which is finely balanced. little things are now significant.