Juncker and Tusk wheezed with laughter, taking the pils
WOULD the Brexit process need yet more time? Oooh yes, yes, yes, the Europeans liked that idea. Time means more of our pounds sterling. Time means a chance to screw us harder to their Titanic deck.
Donald Tusk, the Pole who chairs the European Council, smiled wolfishly in Brussels yesterday when asked about it at a press conference.
‘I’m sure the leaders [of the EU countries] would be ready to consider this positively,’ he purred. Translation: our embuggeration strategy is working better than we dared hope and the British officials haven’t a clue what we’re up to. We’re luring Madame May on to the flypaper.
Ditto his comedy partner Jean-Claude Juncker, who runs the European Commission. With those hooded, diagonal eyes, an avuncular, seemingly sober Juncker said: ‘This prolongation of the transition period probably will happen. It’s a good idea.’ It would allow ‘more room’ for negotiations.
More time, more room, more possibilities for stiffing democracy, for cementing the technocrats in their spanking palaces and for exasperating the voters. Already it has been 28 months since we elected to leave the EU. Yet the elite is still not ready. And they are doing this, or we are letting them do this, by confecting an entirely non-problem of an Irish ‘hard border’.
When a BBC reporter asked the two men about various customs proposals and border fixes being discussed over Brexit, Tusk shrugged and said happily ‘it is for me too complex’. Juncker retorted: ‘For me, it’s too easy.’ The commission’s president was having a ball. And with our pathetic Whitehall officials, who can blame him?
Both Tusk and Juncker wheezed with laughter. Delighted tinkles of mirth. They were taking the pils.
Talking of which, EU leaders went out for beers in the Brussels Grand Place on Wednesday night, sans Theresa May. Aw, guys. She’s such fun on a night out!
Shortly before the Tusk-Juncker doubleact, doggychops Angela Merkel – the only person in European politics who makes Mrs May look chirrupy – grunted zat she was ‘neither more pessimistic nor more optimistic’ about the Brexit talks. As she hunched there in front of a banner saying ‘Europaischer Rat’, it was worth stressing that Rat is German for ‘council’.
Were Tusk and Juncker quite as happy as their public performance suggested? Film footage showed Tusk shouting at Juncker’s svengali Martin Selmayr, shaking his limbs with animation. It looked quite a bate.
Mrs May’s press conference came a short while later. I watched it on the BBC’s News Channel. Jeepers, they’re blatant. One bloke, talking about the Irish backstop, rhapsodised about the sincerity of the Irish government.
Mrs May’s mood was not as brittle as after the Salzburg punch-up but she still seemed twitchy, an impression not helped by that dreadful barbed-wire necklace. She does not radiate confidence at these summits. It’s like seeing a learner driver on Hyde Park Corner.
We heard the usual cotton wool about ‘good progress’ and ‘intensifying the work’. Why does she bother trying to sound constructive? They’re not being remotely constructive to her. Why even turn up? Why kiss Juncker? Why go through the diplomatic motions?
She should try being intemperate, monosyllabic, molten, sulky. Trump would do that and he would extract many more concessions from these swine.
When she talked about her aims, she did not, for once, mention leaving the single market and the customs union.
DID she just forget or was this significant? She did repeat her mantra about ‘delivering on the vote of the British people’, but if she keeps us in the customs union that will not have happened. She will have ignored the 2016 vote. The country will be stuffed. The Tories will be bogwashed in the next election.
After a few questions she sped from the room, top waddle, off to more meetings and another dinner with Europeans. If only she would leave Brussels at similar speed. The longer she stays there, the more they will con her out of our money.