In the long game, the real game that is what States have played with one another for hundreds if not thousands of years, German and the UK are enemies.
Whilst we have some culture in common (terrible food!), we have long been the foes who have sort to exert their power on the weaker European States. Since the defeat of France in 1940, the French have either been supplicant to Germany or nothing, despite being on the winning side overall in the war.
Now, with the French economy wrecked by their socialist fantasies, the only powers who face off across Western Europe are UK and Germany.
Merkel sees this in an antagonistic way, as any decent Ossie would, and therefore is aghast at Brexit. Brexit is partly a push after all at dismantling the German hegemony in Europe. A free UK may well show up the fallacies that lie at the heart of the EU.
I had hoped that Merkel would not stand in the German elections next year, but over the weekend she has determined that she can see off AfD and lead her party to victory. She is still very popular in Germany despite her recent political mis-steps.
A Merkel win will make Brexit much more challenging as she is the most insistent after her home policies around immigration have been so prominent for her. There will be no compromise about free market for free movement.
Still, the UK can't rely on foreign governments for favours which is why we are in this position in the first place, so let's see what 2017 brings!
20 comments:
Allow here free movement.
It's the free access to state services that are the problem. The selling of the NHS below cost as one example.
Don't tell her that it means a minimum tax for EU migrants. 12K per person per year.
Someone appears to have hijacked your blog to send out multiple emails in Arabic I believe. It is most annoying. If there is anything you can do to correct it I would be grateful. I have had other similar emails but usually from someone selling something.
Agree with your article by the way.
Don't worry! Be happy!
Let all of this wash over you. Merkel's main task is not Brexit negotiation but to make sure she is still in charge after the election. It is all triangulation and grandstanding. She has to stop support from leaking to AfD or the left. If German voters feel they can vote AfD without risk then they just might.
Italian voters might just get rid of Renzi. French voters might just accidentally vote Le Pen.
As an aside, Merkel said the other day that there might be a compromise somewhere. Also, Britain is essential to German growth prospects. They will not be shutting the door quite so quickly.
silly games while a real threat to all our freedoms lurks further to the east
Agree. The Germans have lost none of their policy hubris and are facing challenges on three or four fronts
Demographics - UK has dealt far better with a birth rate below the replacement rate (2.1) than has Germany - and our immigrants are better integrated, more assimilated and more productive than theirs. Our future national pension position (public + private) is also far better than Germany's
GDP - anyone with a spreadsheet has compared two equal nations, one with a GDP growing at 1% and the other at 2%, after just ten years. Germany is the slow grower and faces being overtaken as Europe's no 1 nation at some point by the UK. Germany now faces several huge drains on resources - having to spend at least another 1% of GDP on defence, finding a full 25% of the EU's costs after the UK's exit and of course the cost of a couple of million migrants for a generation until they start to become productive
Infrastructure - the UK's Victorian infrastructure has in many ways held up better than Germany's from the 60s and 70s. It's all desperately now in need of renewal - roads, airports, bridges, the works.
Financial centre - There have recently been a slew of planted & PR pieces about banks going property hunting in Frankfurt and the like. All utter bollocks. Frankfurt is a dreary little provincial town a bit like Ipswich and most bankers would rather thrust pins through their eyeballs than live there. London in the GFCI rankings is at no 1 while Frankfurt is hanging in the top 20 by its fingernails - at no 19 and on a downward trend. Luxembourg looks a possible, except it's only all the big corporates HQ'd there for tax reasons that sustain it. Once Amazon, Starbucks, eBay and the rest have to pay taxes to HM Treasury I can't see Luxembourg sustaining its position.
I'll stop there. So long as we tell the Krauts to bugger off, no more money, Fritz and free ourselves from EU economic sabotage (lots of it of German origin) we'll be fine.
roym - Russia is about the same economic size as Italy and we could exceed her naval strength without breaking sweat. Putin will take advantage of EU / NATO incompetence (and there will be several to come) but he's not massing on the border waiting to roll west.
(i) Sought, not "sort".
(ii) Largely bollocks: the Germans have been the foe only since 1914, a mere blink of the eye compared to Les Frogs.
Follow the money...
The Germans want help paying for the eu.
We want good access to the markets.
There is a deal to be made.
What is the price of Merkel's principles.
@ Raedwald - UK infrastructure has in many ways held up better than Germany's ... it's all desperately now in need of renewal
yes, and many of their big municipalities have lost a massive & irreplaceable source of income: the divi from the big old utilities they own - Ruhrgas, E.on, RWE, various stadtwerke; which are nowadays paying out buggerall compared to even 10 years ago
Essen for example (home to RWE and Ruhrgas) is having to grub up much of its tram network because it can't afford to run it any longer: and its 'inner city' schools are in absolute, most un-German turmoil, quite unable to absorb the newcomers
Frankfurt ... - absolutely: as I've often written here, German politicians genuinely have not a clue how markets work, (or derivatives) e.g. 'we'll stop London clearing euro-transactions', which is a bit like saying 'we'll stop people using dollars as currency' or 'we'll stop people speaking in English'
According to my friends in Germany. It's not just the financial side of their infrastructure that is the problem. The Green Party (a non offensive lump for any coalition) who will hang with anybody as long as they can influence the policy decisions. Punching way beyond their weight they have managed to bung up every infrastructure project to cross there desk. (From memory)during a drunken conversation, my German friend almost sobbing into his Kolsch " we currently have three ongoing high speed rail links being built to other countries. Rail the jewel in the crown of German efficiency. All three projects are ahead of schedule or completed, except for anything which is inside the German border. Those F$@&""@ green W@)!&)$ are grinding our country to a haunt
@ Suff - haha, yes, another thing I've written abt - the Battle of Stuttgart Station
Nobody mention Schönefeld.
Well... (having read comments, Raedwald's @ 2.07) We need to remember that Europe's (not the EU's) long term future is neither German nor British.
"Infrastructure - the UK's Victorian infrastructure has in many ways held up better than Germany's from the 60s and 70s. It's all desperately now in need of renewal - roads, airports, bridges, the works."
Got to say...
'We' have become experts at patch and repair (tunnels, viaducts, aquaducts and bridges) which has been partly forced on us because of our preservation laws and genuine love of our engineering heritage.
From life at the 'blunt' end one gets to see what they've been up to. A wonderfully preserved Victorian tunnel portal, yet inside is like a solidified goo which has been splooged all over a mesh drilled into the interior.
Master brick laying replaced. Artisan to fartisan over the festive shutdowns but it works ! (German equipment and teqhniques I believe.)
While this is happening they do the major exams, engine and cooler group swaps on depot. All of which needs shunting of course.
EK...choo choo!...couldn't resist...sorry.
Opinion polls only rate Mutti at 50% liked and I have it from a few German contacts that, last time most Germans voted Mutti because the alternatives were so shite. They all are aghast, angry, discombobulated at Merkel's constant abasement to and courting of the sultan of Ankara and just for that, I think Merkel has a helluva job to even cobble a coalition government with her as titular head.
Merkel, will struggle to win anything like any sort of popular mandate which she's commanded in past elections, we're entering post Obama times, even the lazy Krauts are waking up to smell the schwarzer Kaffee, they know full well that the EU establishment its status quo is about to succumb to blitzkrieg.
Thud said: EK...choo choo!...couldn't resist...sorry.
We could do with foghorns and the shipping forecast right now.
They were never going to make it easy for us, because if it's easy for us there is a whole queue of lesser nations ready to break away.
Hell mend them.
Let's just get on with it; we can deal with the fallout later.
This is probably the most absurd post I've seen on the EU. The UK was in the EU precisely to prevent German Hegemony. Thanks to the UK, there's no Universal Euro for example. By leaving we're gifting the continent to the Germans. There are no upsides to Brexit. But it probably is now in the UK's interest to encourage the EU to break up.
WE,
au contraire.
most of the smaller nations benefit from the EU.
Only germany, uk,netherlands, france, italy pay in over 1bn eur
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