The right questions the wrong question

Hi All,

The whole EU debate is on screen 24 -7  and sometimes we need to take a step back and reflect.  The stumbling bloc right now to finalise a withdrawal deal (not , incidentally the future relationship with the EU) , is of course the Irish backstop. 

Herein Dublin and Brussels have found something with which to give the hated British (read English)  a drubbing. For the Irish government this is a good time to give the English what they see as a taste of their own medicine. Don't forget that Irish politics and the current government is dominated by Irish nationalists. For all the talk about peace the Irish government would like or rather dream of reunification of the North. Of course this dream is after ten pints of Guinness and the Irish know absorbing the North would cost billions they don't have. 

The veiled threats of returning Ulster and mainland Britain to the troubles, if the withdrawal agreement isn't ratified ,  is an insult to this country and Dublin can only get away with this because the EU machine sees it as means to punish Britain for leaving the EU. While most British politicians , leave or remain would wish the rest of the EU well, very few actually want to hurt or destroy it (even if Euro sceptics can see that in its current form the EU and the eurozone currency is unworkable and will end up destroying itself). Pace the EU has a different view and wants to make brexit fail to both warn and deter others from leaving and to punish Britain for voting against the project and the dream of a peacefully created  federal state of Europe.

Hence Brussels has latched onto the open border issue , the good Friday agreement and encouraged that arrogant Irish  Taoiseach [another strange Irish thing is the usage of English and Gaelic , even though  , no one really uses Gaelic as a day to day lanaguge. Israel at least took up Hebrew and make it a day to day language] to think Ireland is more important in world affairs than the UK, forgetting after Brexit Ireland will be on the naughty step due to its de facto tax haven status. The Irish government also forgets how it was treated by the EU after the financial crisis, wherein Dublin was forced into austerity  to  bail out, like Greece, German and French lenders.

  If the English had done that...

The trouble is that the EU isn't around to answer "the Irish question". In fact the EU and the Eurozone is an answer to the "German question". Namely how to allow Germany to be  the primus inter pars of  European powers while constraining Germany and preventing a possible return to the jackboot.   German unification worried both Thatcher and Mitterrand, who had lived through the second world war . Mitterrand had his solution:  further integration of Germany into the EU via the single currency. Of course this has backfired , albeit the  unification of Germany did restrain Germany for a good twenty years, although the single currency enhanced German power ,rather than restraining or even constraining it. Today Germany and not France is the key power broker of Europe, albeit in a fashion that tries not to leave too many fingerprints at the scene of the crime (Greece, Ireland ,  Italy et al) preferring instead to use the EU Commision as its enforcement agency.  Sooner or later there will be a reckoning, but suffice to say the EU has not resolved the German question and it will not resolve the Irish one either.

While on the subject of questions , here are five from the late Tony Benn and they apply superbly to the EU and gives inter alia the reasons why Britain has to leave the EU machine ( you will see no xenophobia or whatever nonsense arch remain liberals come up with and of course Benn was a socialist , not a liberal ) :

“What power have you got?”

“Where did you get it from?”

“In whose interests do you use it?”

“To whom are you accountable?”

“How do we get rid of you?”