First day for Germany’s far-Right MPs
REPRESENTATIVES of Alternative for Germany took their places in the German parliament yesterday – the first time a far-Right party has won seats since the Second World War.
Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel – parliamentary leaders of AfD – were among the 9 MPs propelled there by a backlash from conservatives angered by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s opendoor refugee policy.
They looked on as Mrs Merkel voted in the Berlin parliament’s first session.
IN the salons of the Europhile intelligentsia, it’s the subject they don’t discuss. They never tire of expressing arrogant contempt for Brexiteers, while acclaiming the EU ideal of brotherhood and the imagined economic advantages of membership.
But on the reality of what is happening in Europe – where a surge of nationalist and anti-migrant feeling is tearing the Union apart – a thunderous silence reigns. This weekend, the Czech Republic became the latest member to elect a strongly Eurosceptic prime minister, when billionaire Andrej Babis led his tellinglynamed Action for Dissatisfied Citizens to a resounding victory over his country’s proBrussels establishment.
Thus, Czechs join Hungary, Poland and Austria in electing nationalist leaders, aggressively opposed to EU migrant quotas.
Even in the founding nations of European idealism, the nationalist far Right is on the march. In France, Marine Le Pen of the Front National won more than a third of the popular vote in May.
In Sweden – once a bastion of the oh-soliberal, multi-cultural EU consensus – the anti- immigration Sweden Democrats regularly come second in the polls.
Perhaps most ominously of all, Alternative fuer Deutschland has emerged as the third largest force in Germany’s Bundestag, becoming the first party of the extreme Right to win seats since Hitler’s Nazis.
Meanwhile in Spain, the row between Catalonian separatists and Madrid threatens to erupt in the worst conflict since Franco’s day. (And how revealing that Brussels, with its inbuilt aversion to democracy, gave its approval to the Spanish authorities’ brutal suppression of this month’s independence referendum).
In Italy, too, separatist feelings run high. After Sunday’s referendums in Lombardy and Veneto, the far Right Northern League claims an overwhelming mandate for greater autonomy from Rome.
Indeed, all over Europe, tens of millions demand greater regional and national independence – the opposite of the ‘ever closer union’ foisted on them by Brussels.
Without doubt, mass immigration has played a large part in feeding resentment.
So, too, has the one- size-fits-all euro, which has caused sky- high youth unemployment in southern Europe, while leaving countries such as Italy, Greece and France hugely vulnerable to another crash.
But isn’t this also a question of identity – the human need for a sense of belonging, which a remote and unaccountable superstate will never satisfy?
Whatever the truth, today’s reality behind the myth of European brotherhood and prosperity is a continent criss-crossed by razor wire to keep out migrants – and a eurozone only now limping towards recovery, years behind Britain.
Nobody pretends it will be easy to disengage from Brussels, with its crazy and corrupt Common Agricultural Policy, meddling regulations and punitive tariffs against the booming outside world.
But seen in the context of the myriad crises threatening the EU’s future, Brexit is a mere sideshow.
Yet still the Europhile establishment behaves as if nothing untoward is happening. Deaf to the chorus of protest, France’s Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Jean- Claude Juncker demand ever more integration.
Meanwhile, British Remoaners keep up their campaign to sabotage Brexit, with even Tories hinting they may join Labour in seeking to frustrate the people’s will.
They should try asking businesses which they fear most: Brexit – or a Marxist government led by Jeremy Corbyn?
Instead of chanting unthinking mantras about the benefits of membership, they should open their eyes and ears to the reality of today’s EU – and thank their lucky stars we’re getting out.