Brussels is just not willing to negotiate
WHEN two parties sit down to negotiate an agreed settlement that will last for decades and affect many millions of lives, one thing is vital: a mutually shared determination to reach agreement. But when the party across the table, despite plastic smiles and phoney handshakes, clearly cannot stand you, then your realistic hope inevitably dies and failure to agree becomes unavoidable. That is precisely the situation we face in our Brexit talks in Brussels.
It is now perfectly plain that the EU, in the form of Barnier, Juncker, Verhofstadt and the rest, intend to offer us nothing but the option of our capitulation and humiliation. We have a fifth column in high office in the UK prepared to accept.
For the EU leadership our country simply has to be ruinously and very publicly punished. First for the sheer impudence in voting to end our 40-year subordination to them and secondly to warn the rest of the continent never to try the same thing.
ON OUR side we want to be a sovereign nation again, democratic and humane, and also the best trading partner the nations of the continent ever had. That way we could live side by side as warmly collaborative neighbours. But that is simply not the sought agenda of the fanatical EU leadership. So what is their agenda? If we pay attention, it has all been explained. A few weeks ago JeanClaude Juncker made a speech spelling it out very clearly. The destination of the EU journey, held up as a holy grail, is complete and total unification of the entire continent including us. The EU is not stationary, it is on a journey. The next stage of that journey, which cannot be retarded or delayed (says Juncker) includes a series of further and rapid unifications. These include unification of armies, navies, air forces, intelligence services and currencies.
Abandoning the national currency and joining the eurozone must move from optional to compulsory. I never saw this feature much in our own media but that was what he said. So the opt-out concession secured by John Major in 1992 has got to go.
I don’t think the British people have hoisted this aboard yet. But when they do I suspect the 52-48 percentage breakdown in the Brexit referendum would convert to more like 70-30. We want and intend to keep and control our pound.
That alone is why, if the Barnier team insists, we may soon have to face a straight choice. Capitulation on everything or go-it-alone no-deal departure and we have to prepare for the latter.
There would be terrible dislocations in the trading sphere, not just here but right across Europe. But the fanatics do not seem to care how many working folk they put out of a job.
For the UK I suspect the misery would be short-lived. We have many friends across this planet and at least a dozen major economies gagging to do more business with us via free-trade treaties.
With its steadily diminishing percentage share of world trade, the EU has nowhere else to go. We do. And we are the British. We do not crawl.