Great piece by Ambrose Prithcard. As a British conservative, he asks the right questions of the European Left. It is time for a Lexit.
I noted earlier that somehow, some way, the Left became the upholder of EU piety and at least in Britain, Conservatives became the eurosceptics.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/they-voted-for-hiller-too.html
"The EU establishment henceforth faces what it has always feared: a political war on two fronts at once."
I noted earlier that somehow, some way, the Left became the upholder of EU piety and at least in Britain, Conservatives became the eurosceptics.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/they-voted-for-hiller-too.html
"The EU establishment henceforth faces what it has always feared: a political war on two fronts at once."
"It is long been fighting an expanding coaltion of free marketeers, parliamentary "souverainistes", anti-immigrant populists on the Right."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11742624/EMU-brutality-in-Greece-has-destroyed-the-trust-of-Europes-Left.html
He's right. I myself while an American-though I was born a Brit-have from afar have tended to dismiss the Right's euroskepticism through the lens of hatred for immigrants. backwardness, a generally anti-cosmopolitan view. Ie, basically typical Right wing backward provincialism. Surely the idea of a United Europe was a noble idea whose time has come.
Any such illusions are now gone. I credit anyone Left or Right who opposes the euro and I can't say enough how Mr. Prtichard's great work is appreciated on this issue.
He is right in what he says here about the European Left's mistaken seduction by the Eurocrats.
"It's has now lost its remaining emotional hold on the Left after the scorched-earth treatment of Greece over the past five months - culminating in the vindictive decision to impose yet harsher terms on this crushed nation just days after its cri de coeur in a landslide referendum.
"This has been coming for a long time. We Conservatives have watched in disbelief as one Socialist party after another immolates itself on the altar of monetary union, defending a project that favours the elites - a "bankers' ramp", as the old Left used to call it."
To me, I've come to see the Eurocrats as Europe's GOP-and you know how I feel about them-I hate them, but I've come to detest the Eurocrats too.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/tripas-vs-eu-as-obama-vs-gop-congress.html
I'm surprised the GOP isn't demanding we join the EU-geography be damned.
Back to Prtichard. I don't want to quote the whole thing but everything he says is so on point.
"We have watched our friends on the Left apologise for 1930s policies. We have seen them defend a regime of pro-cyclical fiscal cuts imposed on the whole eurozone by a handful of "Ordoliberal" reactionaries in the German finance minstry."
"To the extent that these gentlemen know what they are doing - and most Nobel economists would dispute that - they have certainly not risen to the challenge of pan-EMU leadership. As ex-official Philippe Legrain writes in Foreign Policy, Germany is proving to be a "calamitous hegemon".
"By a twist of fate, the Left has let itself become the enforcer of an economic structure that has led to levels of unemployment once unthinkable for a post-war social democratic government with its own currency and sovereign instruments. It has somehow found ways to justify a youth jobless rate still running at 42pc in Italy, 49pc in Spain and 50pc in Greece, despite mass emigration."
"It has acquiesced in the Long Slump of the past six years, deeper in aggregate than the span from 1929 to 1935."
"He is dead right: the euro project has outlawed Keynes or any kind of economic logic."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/trying-to-discuss-economics-with.html
"It meekly endorsed the EU Fiscal Compact, knowing that it imposes a legal requirement on eurozone states to slash their public debt by 1.5pc of GDP in France, 2pc in Spain and 3.5pc in Italy and Portugal, every year for the next two decades - a formula for near permanent depression. It outlaws Keynesian economics, and indeed classical economics. It is a doomsday construct."
"This is what they agreed to, and what they have reluctantly defended, because until now they dared not question the sanctity of EMU. And so the once mighty Dutch Labour Party has been reduced to a pitiful relic. Pasok has been obliterated in Greece."
"The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party has lost its left-wing to the rebel Podemos movement, freshly victorious in Barcelona. France's Socialist leader, Francois Hollande, has been languishing at 24pc in the polls as the French working class defects to the Front National."
"Yet events in Greece have finally broken the spell. "Progressives should be appalled by European Union’s ruination of Greece. It’s time to reclaim the Eurosceptic cause," writes Owen Jones in a remarkable piece in The Guardian. The new term "Lexit" is gaining currency."
"The voices of Left are uneasy. Their instincts are to oppose everything that UKIP stands for. "At first, only a few dipped their toes in the water; then others, hesitantly, followed their lead, all the time looking at each other for reassurance," Mr Jones writes.
"Yet the cruelty on display in Brussels and Berlin has trumped all. Mr Jones runs through the names."
Absolutely. A specter is haunting Europe: eurosceptics of the world unite.Whether or not of the Left or the Right.
Europeans need to take back their countries.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11742624/EMU-brutality-in-Greece-has-destroyed-the-trust-of-Europes-Left.html
He's right. I myself while an American-though I was born a Brit-have from afar have tended to dismiss the Right's euroskepticism through the lens of hatred for immigrants. backwardness, a generally anti-cosmopolitan view. Ie, basically typical Right wing backward provincialism. Surely the idea of a United Europe was a noble idea whose time has come.
Any such illusions are now gone. I credit anyone Left or Right who opposes the euro and I can't say enough how Mr. Prtichard's great work is appreciated on this issue.
He is right in what he says here about the European Left's mistaken seduction by the Eurocrats.
"It's has now lost its remaining emotional hold on the Left after the scorched-earth treatment of Greece over the past five months - culminating in the vindictive decision to impose yet harsher terms on this crushed nation just days after its cri de coeur in a landslide referendum.
"This has been coming for a long time. We Conservatives have watched in disbelief as one Socialist party after another immolates itself on the altar of monetary union, defending a project that favours the elites - a "bankers' ramp", as the old Left used to call it."
To me, I've come to see the Eurocrats as Europe's GOP-and you know how I feel about them-I hate them, but I've come to detest the Eurocrats too.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/tripas-vs-eu-as-obama-vs-gop-congress.html
I'm surprised the GOP isn't demanding we join the EU-geography be damned.
Back to Prtichard. I don't want to quote the whole thing but everything he says is so on point.
"We have watched our friends on the Left apologise for 1930s policies. We have seen them defend a regime of pro-cyclical fiscal cuts imposed on the whole eurozone by a handful of "Ordoliberal" reactionaries in the German finance minstry."
"To the extent that these gentlemen know what they are doing - and most Nobel economists would dispute that - they have certainly not risen to the challenge of pan-EMU leadership. As ex-official Philippe Legrain writes in Foreign Policy, Germany is proving to be a "calamitous hegemon".
"By a twist of fate, the Left has let itself become the enforcer of an economic structure that has led to levels of unemployment once unthinkable for a post-war social democratic government with its own currency and sovereign instruments. It has somehow found ways to justify a youth jobless rate still running at 42pc in Italy, 49pc in Spain and 50pc in Greece, despite mass emigration."
"It has acquiesced in the Long Slump of the past six years, deeper in aggregate than the span from 1929 to 1935."
"He is dead right: the euro project has outlawed Keynes or any kind of economic logic."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/trying-to-discuss-economics-with.html
"It meekly endorsed the EU Fiscal Compact, knowing that it imposes a legal requirement on eurozone states to slash their public debt by 1.5pc of GDP in France, 2pc in Spain and 3.5pc in Italy and Portugal, every year for the next two decades - a formula for near permanent depression. It outlaws Keynesian economics, and indeed classical economics. It is a doomsday construct."
"This is what they agreed to, and what they have reluctantly defended, because until now they dared not question the sanctity of EMU. And so the once mighty Dutch Labour Party has been reduced to a pitiful relic. Pasok has been obliterated in Greece."
"The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party has lost its left-wing to the rebel Podemos movement, freshly victorious in Barcelona. France's Socialist leader, Francois Hollande, has been languishing at 24pc in the polls as the French working class defects to the Front National."
"Yet events in Greece have finally broken the spell. "Progressives should be appalled by European Union’s ruination of Greece. It’s time to reclaim the Eurosceptic cause," writes Owen Jones in a remarkable piece in The Guardian. The new term "Lexit" is gaining currency."
"The voices of Left are uneasy. Their instincts are to oppose everything that UKIP stands for. "At first, only a few dipped their toes in the water; then others, hesitantly, followed their lead, all the time looking at each other for reassurance," Mr Jones writes.
"Yet the cruelty on display in Brussels and Berlin has trumped all. Mr Jones runs through the names."
Absolutely. A specter is haunting Europe: eurosceptics of the world unite.Whether or not of the Left or the Right.
Europeans need to take back their countries.
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