Just
look at the face of Herr Schäuble. I think he’s rather enjoying this – his
jackboot is on the Greek’s windpipe – pricked and sprawling on a pin. This is
the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bail-out but
with a bang.
Tony
Blair displays one more time why he’s never been qualified to run a p-ss-up in
a brewery but he’s still running for President of Euro-Fantasyland. Memo to
Tony – Angela is only talking about “more Europe” to keep the heat off as much
as possible and provide some talking points, not because she believes it ever
will or should happen. She knows Das Volk is not up for taking on the poisoned
chalice of Euro-Hegemonie and having Wolfie run the budget of every Club-Med
member. And they are certainly not ready, willing nor able to accept
mutualisation of all Club-Med debts onto the Bu-Bank’s balance sheet in
perpetuity, ad infinitum, per ardua ad astra. Everything else is pious
platitudes designed to counter Die Kanzlerin being accused of destroying the
Great Project with her lumpen Prussian myopia. She knows a sinking ship when
she sees one. But she also knows there is no one (outside Tory Euro-sceptics
and mad Nigel Farage) with whom to engage in a real conversation about how to
mitigate the fallout from that fact by intelligent statesmanship and good
sense. So the charade must go on, until something really big breaks with a loud
crack.
It’s
going to be a big week in Euroland (it always is), but this jalopy is seriously
leaking oil. There’ll be another in the series of weekly summits, at which it
should become blindingly obvious that none of the palliative poultices being
promoted by Club-Med and fellow travelers (our Christine of the IMF’d) has a
prayer of landing one in the back of the Bu-Bank’s net. Frau Angela made that
abundantly clear in Rome to the fiddling Trio Latino on Friday, as prelude to
Germany pounding Greece 4 – 2 later in the day. And then to rub it in, the PBI
(poor bloody Italian infantry) couldn’t even score a real time goal against a
pathetic England side. OK, so they went away with the consolation prize of a
pretend win on penalties – which entitles them now to have their heads handed
to them by, who else, the Germans! You really couldn’t make this stuff up, as
they say. Now the pbg’s have to send their deputy second team reserves to the
summit due to a sad indisposition of the starting players. They can ask for the
moon and promise the earth but it will avail them precisely nichts!
Liam
Halligan and Niall Ferguson are a pair of sound commentators, not given to
flights of fancy nor hyperbole. They both say the Euro-gig is up. They’re right
and it doesn’t take multiple degrees in history and a Harvard professorship to
figure that out.
Silvio
has decided he’s the Comeback Kid. Things aren’t looking so good in bunga bunga
land, so his safest bet is to reëstablish PM’s immunity by inviting Mario 1 to
quit the Quirinale so that Silvio can move back in while the Statute of
Limitations runs on Ruby the Heart-Stealer.
Roger
the Bootle adds his ten (euro) cents and confirms that all wise men know the
Euro is doomed to break up, but no politician (outside the lunatic fringe) can
admit it – for the simple reason they just don’t want to be restrained in the
pillory for admitting Euro-heresy, blasphemy or even plain common sense, or
worse, for the accusation of being the proximate cause of the disaster that is
imminent. (I think one of the numerous Euro-treaties – Nice, Rome, Lisbon,
Maastricht, Disneyland - explicitly banned common sense as anathema
to “progress” and the great pie-in-the-sky of Euro-Fantasy). So we are
condemned to listen to the likes of Barroso, Van Rumply, Hollande, the Lib-Dems
and the assembled Club-Med mendicant chorus – not to mention Tony Bliar –
calling for more full red-blooded socialism, aka Europe, aka growff not austerity.
Blair is right to state that, “The only thing that will save the single
currency now is... a sort of grand plan in which Germany is prepared to commit
its economy fully to the single currency.” What a crass, ridiculous, redundant
statement. That has been the case lo these many years. What Blair cannot get
into his thick head is that the Germans are not “prepared” to do any such
thing. They are a nation state, with values, a constitution, laws, courts, eine
Sprache (shared with the Austrians), a Chancellor und das Volk, all of which
they take quite seriously and which, when the fat is really in the fire, they
are not “prepared” to compromise nor sacrifice on the altar of some collectivist fantasy
dreamed up by self-serving, indolent Frenchmen and their Club-Med sycophants;
knowing as they full well do that the monstrous baggage that they would be
adding to their shoulders will take them down too. They’ve been there before
and they know the outcome.
Iain
Martin quotes Mario 1 as stating that there is a week to save the Euro. He,
Mario 1, may be right, but if the only saviour being stitched up for the role
has decided he doesn’t fancy the part, the statement becomes pure demagoguery.
The logical conclusion must then be that Mario 1 should sit down with all
Euro-speakers of good-will and work on Plan B. But that would be heresy and
ultra vires Euro-Fantasyland. So there is no plan B and at some point some
major piece of the edifice will crack and the house that Jack built will come
down on everyone’s head. The resulting misery will, sadly, not be fantasy.
There
is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Et
tu, Brute.
Simon
