THIS YAWNING DEMOCRATIC GULF IS A CATASTROPHE OF EUROPE’S OWN MAKING

A GERMAN court has now refused to repatriate to Madrid the Catalan breakaway leader Carles Puigdemont. He was arrested on German territory while motoring back from Finland overland to Belgium (in both of which he seems to be safe).

Similar court cases are pending in Belgium (another Catalan, another Spanish request for extradition), Switzerland and here where Clara Ponsati is awaiting her fate in Scotland (see last week’s column). There may be other countries where fleeing Catalans have squirrelled themselves away. But if no extraditions are granted Madrid will have a lot of egg over its visage.

The voting results in Germany and Italy over recent weeks prove beyond peradventure that we are not leaving a flourishing, burgeoning and optimistic drive towards the European superstate but the slow dying of an impossible dream. Only the true believers and fanatics continue to believe in the one-state Eurodream of Jean Monnet and his followers. They fail to recognise a simple fact: if you wish to live in a democracy the government must carry the broad masses of the people with it.

This our EU masters are steadily failing to do. There is a yawning gulf between collaboration and subordination. It is the latter we have chosen to abandon. Unseen millions across Europe feel the same. Now they are becoming visible.

This is an unravelling catastrophe for Spain and Mariano Rajoy’s government. We await the Swiss, Belgian and Scottish court decisions. If they all refuse extradition what will Spain do?

Quit? Leave? Will we see Spexit? Barnum and Bailey would sell tickets for it.