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 94 MPs propelled there by a backlash from conservatives angered at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy. They looked on as Mrs Merkel voted in the 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 actually happening in Europe – where a surge of nationalist, separatist and anti-migrant feeling is tearing the Union apart – a thunderous silence reigns.
This weekend, the Czech Republic became the latest member state to elect a strongly Eurosceptic prime minister, when billionaire Andrej Babis led his tellingly named Action for Dissatisfied Citizens to victory over his country’s pro-Brussels establishment.
Thus, Czechs join Hungary, Poland and Austria in electing nationalist leaders aggressively opposed to EU migrant quotas – while 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 is in effect the opposition leader after winning more than a third of the popular vote in May. In Sweden, the antiimmigration Sweden Democrats regularly come second in the polls, while riots have broken out in protest at foreign settlers.
Perhaps most ominously of all, Alternative für 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 the central government 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, with the far-Right Northern League claiming an overwhelming mandate for greater autonomy from Rome after Sunday’s local referendums in the country’s richest regions, Lombardy and Veneto.
All over Europe, tens of millions have demanded greater regional and national independence – the opposite of the ‘ever closer union’ foisted on them by Brussels.
Without doubt, the mass immigration rashly encouraged by Angela Merkel has played a large part in feeding resentment.
So, too, has the catastrophic one-size-fitsall euro, which has caused sky-high youth unemployment in southern Europe, while leaving countries such as Italy, Greece and France hugely vulnerable to another financial crash.
But isn’t this also a question of identity – the need for a sense of belonging to a region or nation, which a remote and unaccountable super state 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, more than seven years behind Britain.
Nobody pretends it will be easy to disentangle this country from Brussels, with its crazy and corrupt common agricultural and fisheries policies, meddling regulations and punitive tariffs against the booming outside world. But seen in the perspective 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. France’s Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker go on demanding ever more integration.
Meanwhile, the UK Remain camp keeps up its campaign to sabotage Brexit – even a few Tories hint they may join Labour in seeking to frustrate Britain’s democratic decision. They should ask businesses which they fear most: Brexit, or a Marxist government under 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 dishevelled EU.