More spurious explanations and justifications for Brexit, this time from the American economist Michael Ivanovitch writing for CNBC in the United States:
[The] huge European mess is exactly what Trump and the U.K. need to settle their trade scores with a disintegrating European Union.
Will the euro survive all that?
Upon reflection, the Europeans will also realize that a demise of the euro would herald Germany’s total political, economic and financial domination of a system of fragmented European states.
But many in Europe would find such a German domination unacceptable. Europe’s old demons would soon take over, and Washington would have to step in to keep the erstwhile European “brothers” off each other’s throats.
Surely the primary purpose of the European Union is to maintain and promote peaceful cooperation and fraternity in Europe? A purpose which the United Kingdom is wilfully disengaging from?
Meanwhile, the mistress of fascistic politics in France, Marine Le Pen, has leapt to the defence of London and its opposition to the peace-keeping Backstop Protocol in the draft Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and the EU.
“The European Union, in truth, is looking to recreate a form of civil war in Ireland … to reignite the existing conflict there.
I can confirm this, I know this, and it is very dangerous and reveals the EU’s tactics.
Why would Europe do this? Well, to punish the British people for Brexit. They need to be punished, and Brussels wants the divorce to be as painful as possible.”
As if the Brexiteer fruitloops in Britain weren’t bad enough!
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Written as if the EU is leaving the UK, the riots will be on the streets of England as the truth reveals itself, the 2011 UK riots there cost £200 million in insurance claims and 5 deaths.
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That is very true. The UK really does act as if the EU is leaving it, denying it access to an EU market that the UK should retain as of right. Mad stuff.
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Yes and the concomitant argument is that the Republic of Ireland is threatening and or holding the UK to ransom.
Well at least so in the eyes of many of the oppressed Brits.
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I’m wondering if the British aren’t in fact oppressed. ………..just not by Ireland.
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I wouldn’t rule the possibility that England could see serious political violence and unrest. Just because they didn’t when they had either The Empire or EU as an internal stabilizer, doesn’t mean that they have become inherently incapable of violence on par with the French Revolution.
Of course if that does happen one major hope will be that little or none of that spills over into Ireland. (Or France even). And of course, the Brexiteers will be main responsible parties if it does happen.
Part of what I see in the English is a people that have been trained by centuries not to really understand political choice very well.
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I wonder how you all feel over there in Ireland, with the UK (or what’s finally left of it) sitting there as a physical and geographical barrier between you and the rest of the EU? Their support for you is admirable for sure, but what can they do in practice to ease your isolation?
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Well, that has already started with the creation of extra sea routes to the Continent and the expansion of continental ports. We’ll have to wait for the rest, which will be context dependent.
It could be awful – the EU treating Ireland as an adjunct customs territory of the UK – or it could include special provisions for Ireland reflecting its peripheral nature.
Certainly, having a non-EU and perhaps hostile UK between us an the rest of the EU will bolster the Irish argument for retaining our special corporate tax provisions. Other sweetners could also be argued if a no-deal Brexit was bad enough, taking the wind out of the sails of Ireland’s French and German critics on tax matters. There are a lot of EU regulations in terms of public contracts that we could argue need to fall under State-control or need to go to domestic firms during a post-Brexit transition. Plus, the EU has already hinted at helping to cushion Ireland’s woes if the UK jumps off the cliff.
It’s in the EU’s interest see one of its members emerge unscathed from the current crisis. Even if just as an example to others of the benefits of EU camaraderie and solidarity.
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Ireland out alone in the North Atlantic might become a bit of a Gibralter for the EU if we’re lucky … a strategic far-flung “colony”.
Tongue in cheek, but we’re quare handy to have for the bit of fishing, oil exploration, undersea cables, etc
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Are many of those ports to Spain?
I’ve said this here before. There is a theory that’s been going around for quite a while, that says Spain is Ireland’s hidden-in-plain-site centuries thwarted natural ally.
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Well one myth has it that the Gaels reached Ireland direct from Spain, cutting Britain out entirely, a precedent perhaps 😉
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Well it’s definitely true that there is some Celtic influence in parts of Northern Spain. But this theory largely plays upon a lot of other notions such as geographic, maritime logic, complementary climates, and Spain’s history of trying to help Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries even if that largely took the form letting those who could afford to immigrate to the Spanish Empire do so.
The George Washington of Chile, Bernardo O’Higgins and early comrade of Simon de Bolivar, was the son of an Irishman. A daughter of an Irishwoman, Doña Teresa Aguilera y Roche, was the wife of Spanish Governor in Santa Fe, is famous for being one of the few women to successfully defend herself (and her husband) against The Spanish Inquisition in Mexico City.
Che Guevara had Irish and Basque roots much like Eamon De Valera.
Irish people have a much stronger presence in The Spanish speaking world than most people outside it commonly assume.
Ireland always had a lot of global sympathy, but most of that time The British Empire was the 800lbs gorilla that limited what anybody else could do.
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Do people really feel isolated ‘behind’ Britain or that Brexit isolates the ROI further in some way? I’m a bit dubious about the idea. Not in an age where inter-EU air travel is so easy. In the 80s for me London was the place to go to (or New York) but those younger than me by ten, twenty, thirty years, go on weekend breaks to Berlin or Malaga or Barcelona or go to work in the US or Australia. The UK, and I was born there and my mother is from Birmingham (from a family with no Irish links at all), just isn’t the draw it once was. I have mixed feelings on that, London is a great city (Birmingham too in its way, England is a great place in many ways) but if the structural aspects of the situation are that the UK becomes isolated in some form then it is what it is. Forty minutes extra on a flight to the continent isn’t exactly punitive and it’s notable how ship links to the continent are increasing visibly. One interesting question is how Scotland addresses much of this. It is also noticeable the common cause the SNP government makes with the ROI. I wonder if that will see some other linkages emerge in a quiet way.
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BTW that’s a very interesting theory Grace.
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I was just talking to some British Republicans from Leeds. They seemed pretty professional.
One had to wonder how their cause would “go” under any number of Brexit related scenarios.
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A cause after my own heart Grace, British (or English) Republicanism. (apologies, not sure where this comment will land).
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Well the ones I met seemed pretty firm on two things:
1) They want their new Head of State to be modeled on Irish or German presidency but not called “President”. Semi-Presidential system was out. (I didn’t expect them to want a full Presidential system with “England is the mother of Parliaments” and all that. But their aversion to a Semi- Predidential system or even the term “President” was pretty pronounced.)
2) They view Prince Charles as a major source of concern as well as opportunity. No surprise about the latter as nobody seems to like Prince Charles.
But their concerns went way, way beyond that. Apparently they talked about the “spider memos” and believed Charles would push the limits of a Constitutional Monarchy, and that he is sort of a fanatic who’s so far been restrained by his mother, but wouldn’t be as King.
Maybe that info is old hat to you, but some of it surprised me.
Constitutional monarchy is confusing from my POV. Most Presidential and semi-Presidential systems are easy enough to make sense of, as are a minority of fully elective Parliamentary systems. But Britain’s system: the more I try to understand it the more confused I get.
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The potential isolation of Ireland with the EU is well understood by the Britnat Brexiteers.
But so is Ireland and so is the EU.
If as has been suggested the UK is trying to undermine the EU it is very much in the EUs interests to continue to support Ireland through very possibly many of the policy initiatives you have just outlined.
Let us hope so because a united EU is so much more than a bitterly divided and hostile UK.
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I’d say that there is a global epidemic of “crazy” that isn’t restricted to The “Western” or “English Speaking World”.
India has that Narendra Modi fellow as a key example of South Asia having some of the “crazy bug”.
Brazil elected that maniac Jair Bolsonaro who would have been more frightening than Trump and Putin put together if Brazil controlled the same kind of weapons.
Mexico is the happy exception-that-proves-the-rule with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: A great guy, but I worry he’s not careful enough with likely political enemies.
I tend to see the manifestations of the “crazy bug” in the US as having more in common with France or many countries in the Americas, than Britain.
The fact is that politically and culturally we have a lot of things in common with France that we do not share with Britain. And our political system and history has commonalities with Mexico and Some South American countries that we do not share with Britain, such as a Presidential form of government with a fairly strong Presidency, a “war of independence” with a civil war or internal revolution a few generations later, and just being “nations of immigrants”.
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As it happens I was just reading this blog which may be of interest :
https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/the-crazy-you-get-when-opinion-becomes-fact/
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This is the crap that the Express has come up with this evening:
“IRELAND has been warned it faces the difficult choice between implementing a hard border or being forced out of the EU’s single market in an unprecedented move to protect the bloc from a no-deal Brexit.”
Funny that , the EU has no powers to expel any EU members and evidenced by the very restricted options in dealing with Poland and Hungary.
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‘There will be no re-negotiation’ – Says the EU and the Germans, This German Minister sums it up well
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