Howard Epstein – GROUCHO MARX’ MOTS JUSTES FOR EU
We shall get back to Groucho (although I suspect you have already guessed why I invoke him today), and start this week by asserting that, whilst no man is an island, Great Britain certainly is. In fact, it is the largest of the one thousand islands that make up the British Isles. Their sole non-maritime connections to the continent of Europe are a two-way, undersea tunnel and membership of the European Union. The former, war and an exceptional terrorist act excluded, will endure. The latter is on the skids.
| Box 1
Nominal GDP for EU countries (US$billion) |
||
| Rank | Country | 2014 |
| 1 | Germany | 3,860 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 2,945 |
| 3 | France | 2,847 |
| 4 | Italy | 2,148 |
| 5 | Spain | 1,407 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 866 |
| 7 | Sweden | 570 |
| 8 | Poland | 547 |
| 9 | Belgium | 535 |
| 10 | Austria | 437 |
| 11 | Denmark | 341 |
| 12 | Finland | 271 |
| 13 | Ireland | 246 |
| 14 | Greece | 238 |
| 15 | Portugal | 230 |
| 16 | Czech Republic | 206 |
| 17 | Romania | 200 |
| 18 | Hungary | 137 |
| 19 | Slovakia | 100 |
| 20 | Luxembourg | 62 |
| 21 | Croatia | 57 |
| 22 | Bulgaria | 56 |
| 23 | Slovenia | 50 |
| 24 | Lithuania | 48 |
| 25 | Latvia | 32 |
| 26 | Estonia | 26 |
| 27 | Cyprus | 23 |
| 28 | Malta | 11 |
Against all the odds – well those given by the bookies, at any rate – the British voted yesterday to leave Europe behind. Historic? Undoubtedly. Suicidal? Not at all. The last time I checked, those countries not in the EU were every single one in the world except the handful, the 28, including Britain for now, who are.
Now, in order to evaluate how being continuingly-linked to them could have been an advantage to Britain, let us consider the economies of the EU states. As we see in Box 1, the countries that are fourth and fifth in the world (that is, after the USA, China and Japan) are, unsurprisingly, first and second in Europe: Germany and the UK.
What benefit does Britain derive from the nine EU (double figure) lowest-ranking economies? It will not be significant but, to the extent that they buy British goods, they will be able to buy them more cheaply from today, and for as long as the markets are manipulated to keep sterling weak.
Further up the list are countries such as Romania, Poland and Belgium. The first two have been a good source of gastarbeiter labor for the UK (or of resented immigrants “stealing our jobs”, depending on viewpoint) and the last, Belgium, was without a government for several years until recently. Riven in two by the mutual resentment of the Walloons and Flemings, Belgium is the main beneficiary of the EU with thousands in Brussels who pay no taxes. (They work for the EU.) Otherwise, Belgium is like Switzerland, but without the cuckoo clocks, or the watches, or the precision engineering, or the drug manufacturers. In fact, it has nothing to offer but chocolate and a stifling EU bureaucracy – and that is what people all over Europe resent. The British are merely the first to do something concrete about it.
Returning to the list, near the top are France, Italy and Spain. France is in political turmoil, Italy has an economy that is drained of integrity, and who knows how much wealth, by the mafia and Spain has massive systemic youth unemployment problems. The UK, on the other hand, has almost record low-level unemployment and full employment, even with the large influx of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere.
Admittedly, Britain now has a lame duck prime minister, with Cameron’s resignation today, and a (governing) Conservative Party leadership contest ahead. Given that the government’s working majority is 16, a general election seems unlikely; but the position of George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) at least, must now seem unsafe. If he and other members of the cabinet resign, there may well be a vote of no confidence for a new prime minister to defend in the coming months.
A further admission: the pound collapsed, along with the stock markets (and then they started to revive). A weak pound, on the other hand, will boost exports, as so, eventually, will corporate values be boosted. Not much else will change, certainly in the medium- to long-term. The Airbus, Boeing’s only competitor, will still contain significant components designed and made in Britain. British hi-tech and medical industries will continue to progress. There will be no greater need for a Brit to obtain a visa to visit France than before Britain’s joining the European Common Market (as the EU then was – started, so we understood, because the French were afraid of the Germans and the Germans were afraid of themselves), and it would seem unlikely that French and Spanish towns and villages would wish to make it difficult for expat Brits to continue to live there, given their spending in their communities. Of course, those who live on UK sources of income with tight margins will find it difficult to maintain their place in the sun but there are broader issues at stake today.
The UK Leave vote will reverberate around the world. In the USA, it would be called a protest against the Beltway, a censure of the establishment. Who there will gain from the British protest vote? Trump not Clinton. Indeed, the British vote will be seen as more in line with Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton, and may well boost the numbers of Democrats who plump for Trump, a phenomenon that had already been forecast but which may now be more significant.
Box 2
47 Banishments
Mainz, 1012
France, 1182
Upper Bavaria, 1276
England, 1290
France, 1306
France, 1322
Saxony, 1349
Hungary, 1360
Belgium, 1370
Slovakia, 1380
France, 1394
Austria, 1420
Lyons, 1420
Cologne, 1424
Mainz, 1438
Augsburg, 1438
Upper Bavaria, 1442
Netherlands, 1444
Brandenburg, 1446
Mainz, 1462
Lithuania, 1495
Portugal, 1496
Naples, 1496
Navarre, 1498
Nuremberg, 1498
Brandenburg, 1510
Prussia, 1510
Genoa, 1515
Naples, 1533
Italy, 1540
Naples, 1541
Prague, 1541
Genoa, 1550
Bavaria, 1551
Prague, 1557
Papal States, 1569
Hungary, 1582
Hamburg, 1649
Vienna, 1669
Slovakia, 1744
Mainz, 1483
Warsaw, 1483
Spain, 1492
Italy, 1492
Moravia, 1744
Bohemia, 1744
Moscow, 1891
The loss of the UK to the European Project is massive in psychological terms. British strengths such as integrity, diplomatic skills, sang froid and savoir faire (old habits die hard, as you see) will be persuasive as to the direction that other EU members will wish to take. There are strong forces in France (Marine le Pen), Holland (Gert Wilders) and elsewhere that will consider their fortunes boosted today. There is wide resentment at the all-pervasiveness of the Brussels bureaucracy that determines the sizes and shapes of fruit and vegetables, that is seen as a self-perpetuating gravy-train and that appears to have formed a new class of untouchables. That resentment was expressed yesterday in the UK and will be seen elsewhere in Europe in the future.
Which brings us to Israel. Already, Israeli pundits have expressed their fears about a Europe without the UK. No news is good news, and good news certainly does not sell copy. Fear does and that is what pundits peddle. Well, here is something that should strike fear into every Israeli heart: there was no walkout by members of the European Parliament yesterday when Abu Mazen (to use the nom-de-guerre of Mahmoud Abbas, PhD in Holocaust denial) repeated that old canard about rabbis calling for the poisoning of the wells from which the stachim Arabs draw their water. (Do Mekorot know about this, I wonder. Poison or no poison, it’s like rerouting the electricity so it does not pass through the meter.) in fact, Abu Mazen’s speech was applauded.
Applause by the Europeans at hearing this hateful and abusive verbal contortionism! These would be the same Europeans who have, with their 40 year plus funding of PLO terror campaigns made terrorism into the New Normal that was OK whilst it was only Israel that suffered it; and, even now that the New Normal has reached the streets and airports of Brussels and Paris, they cannot bring themselves to wonder if they have erred in supporting a racist entity that pretends that the “Two State Solution” will, as the “Palestinian President” (term expired before several MEP’s left school) suggested, end all terrorism. Do Da’esh know that Ramallah wants them to cease burning people alive and stop taking sex slaves? Did he obtain the blessing of Iran, recognised – even in the America of Obama that sponsors them – as the world’s greatest exporter of terror? These niceties are irrelevant to the Europeans. Abu Mazen spouts more nonsense and they applaud it. A standing ovation! For 30 seconds!
In my view, anything that limits the already bankrupt European project – certainly bankrupt morally but also, with the insupportable euro, likely to be recognized as insolvent around the time of the next Greek fiscal crisis – can only be good for Israel. Once more I urge a study of the books of Bat Yeor (Giselle Littman), which set out with 
documentary evidence the European plan to draw ever closer to the Arabs, whilst continuing the European 1,000 year war against the Jews (see box 2 for 47 expulsions over the millennium) – and now Israel. The European Union rules about the labelling of goods from the West Bank was nothing other than the imposition of the Yellow Star by other means. Even today, as the politics of France descend into chaos, they assume the right to tell us how we should live – or lose – our lives.
So “Hurrah, old chap”, I say. “Well done, and the best of British luck.” If Israel can make its own way in the world despite European hostility, then surely the UK with its remarkable $3 trillion economy can do so.
In the meantime, all that the world admires about the UK will not change, including admiration for the strength of its democratic traditions – how the Venezuelans, sans bread, sans loo paper, sans everything else, must wish that their political leader would recognize the time to depart as did Cameron today – and the EU can be left to ruminate on how they, with their arrogance, caused this débacle (for them) by denying Cameron a respectable deal when he asked for it as clincher for the Remain vote in the referendum.
Arrogance, gratuitous and self-defeating arrogance, from the people who only seventy years ago brought the world the Holocaust. Note that it was not some nebulous group, “The Nazis”, who did that. There were willing participants all over Europe, from Oslo to Rhodes, from Brest to Minsk. They, the Europeans, should be humble in the way they disport themselves for a thousand years. Instead, they affect to hide their shame with their arrogance.
They will get their comeuppance when the EU collapses, as it surely will. The UK will have long gone by then, and thankful that European hubris played its part in driving the British people away.
Oh, and my reference to Groucho Marx? Was it not he who said he would not join any club that would have him as a member? That is a good way to regard the European club. Today it started to confront life without one of its most successful, honest and respected members. Britain is not, say, Slovenia. The loss of face for the rejected Europeans is massive, as will slowly dawn on them.
Finally, all the energy that those in the City of London and elsewhere put into trying to persuade the British to vote Remain will now have to be redirected – as I assume that fiscal suicide is not on their agenda – into making a success of Britain outside the EU. That will be a lot of positive energy, which will over the two years it will take fully to Brexit, produce for Britain the sorts of deals that Israel has been doing in the Far East, and perhaps deals too with the USA. The Americans already have in place: Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA), Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA), Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). There must be room for the UK to participate in some of those.
As for all those American bankers who threatened to move to Germany, if they still mean it (if they ever did) then: Achtung, achtung: you had better start polishing up your language skills [not noticeably better than those of the British] and importing some entertainments that will replicate those of NYC and the West End of London in [don’t laugh, because there they don’t very much] Frankfurt.
I wish them luck. Ein stein Weihenstaphaner, guys?
© Howard David Epstein – June 2016
Howard David Epstein is the author of the soon to be published:
Guns, Traumas and Exceptionalism – America in the Twenty First Century
