“The U.K. is a European country, and always will be. Trade and contacts among the nations of Europe can and should continue much as before. And I have no doubt they will do so. But the political nature of the EU has changed since monetary union. The EU failed to recognize that the euro would demand fiscal and political integration if it was to succeed, and that countries outside the euro area would require a different kind of EU membership. It was inevitable, therefore, that, sooner or later, Britain would decide to withdraw from a political project in which it had little interest apart from the shared desire for free trade.”
– Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England. If you read his comments carefully, his displeasure at how the institution he led has become a plaything of Remainer propoganda is plain. His book, The End of Alchemy, contains a devastating take-down of the euro and is an explanation of why the UK had little alternative in the end but to leave. King was never quite of the full “establishment” – too much of the West Midlands grammar school boy to really be at ease in the EU corridors of power. Good.
I think that is being too charitable, when it was already being pointed out back in the ERM days that even the smaller EU of the early ’90s was not an optimal currency area. “Feature, not bug” is more like it.
“Unexpectedly”, an expert… in hindsight?
The world is FULL of ’em.
Supporting EU, just for the “free trade”?
Oh PLEASE!
I’m thinking the Chunnel will be tres handy once the French guillotines fall silent, and the embers die down, again.
“Oh, but it all looked so good…on paper!”
So does “The Complete World History Guide To Woke Political Science/ economics Intersectionality.”
” The EU failed to recognize that the euro would demand fiscal and political integration if it was to succeed”
Completely and totally disagree: it was the ENTIRE point. The inevitable failure was alway meant to be the catalyst for further integration – the beneficial crisis.
The Eurocrats have always known that they could not get the political union because it would be a step too far. The Euro was always a trojan horse, as in “the introduction of a pathogen” sense of the word, from the start to generate the crisis that would require political union as its solution.
The sacrifice of an entire generation of Spanish, Greek and Italian youth on this altar was the defining reason I voted “Leave”. Any organisation that could do that – deliberately and with malice aforethought – to its own populations is fundamentally evil at its core.
The current refrain on “No Deal” from many commentators, painting it as a deliberate strategy to impoverish the nation, is _precisely_ what the Euro was intended to be.
The trouble is that many Remainers don’t see the EU as a political project. They regard it as an ideological one. They simply cannot accept that it is just an international agreement and therefore ephemeral.
At least the EU is not as bad as Europe’s other recent ideologies, communism and fascism, so things are improving on the continent.
Agree here with The Pedant-General. This has always been first and foremost about creating a United States of Europe by making each additional loss of sovereignty seem reasonable even if few people would have agreed with the whole package.
Yet.
Or as Blackadder put it;
Baldrick: “What I want to know, Sir is, before there was a Euro there were lots of different types of money that different people used. And now there’s only one type of money that the foreign people use. And what I want to know is – how did we get from one state of affairs to the other state of affairs.”
Blackadder: “Baldrick. Do you mean how did the Euro start?”
Baldrick: “Yes Sir.”
Blackadder: “We…ll, you see Baldrick, back in the 1980s there were many different countries all running their own finances and using different types of money. On one side you had the major economies of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, and on the other, the weaker
nations of Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. They got together and decided that it would be much easier for everyone if they could all use the same money, have one Central Bank, and belong to one large club where everyone would be happy. This meant that there could never be a situation whereby financial meltdown would lead to social unrest, wars and crises.”
Baldrick: “But this is sort of a crisis, isn’t it Sir?”
Blackadder: “That’s right Baldrick. You see, there was only one slight flaw with the plan.”
Baldrick: “What was that then, Sir?”
Blackadder: “It was bollocks.”
1. From the beginning, the europan institutions were foreseen to become one day the United States of Europe. If you don’t want to be part of it as a British citizen, your choice must be respected. It’s not stupid or immoral to have a different opinion.
2. I don’t think that the United Kingdom of Nothern Ireland and Great Britain is now a lot more artificial that an United States of Europe. 45 % of Scottish citizens want to leave UK. Same for Nothern Ireland. A nation sate is as artificial or real as an international organisation. Nation states didn’t exist as a political entity before the French revolution.
3. If you think that a fiat money can be a stable currency (US dollar, Pound, Yen, .. ) , I can sell to you the Eiffel Tower .. In other words, the EURO was foreseen to be a strong currency which could not be debased easily. It will be an abject failure. But the others currencies will follow.
Philippe H,
1. You are quite right that a European super-state was always the plan. It wasn’t really a secret, but discussion of it tended to be met with scorn by the Europhiles, as if it were alarmist, a pattern of deceit and disregard for good faith that is ingrained in the supra-national bureaucracy and all its tentacles and adherents.
2. The UK (as formed in 1801) has already lost a chunk, when what is now the Republic of Ireland left. I wouldn’t date the nation state from the French Revolution, England has been around a long time, only joining Scotland in 1707 with Wales annexed many centuries before, and Ireland only being in it from 1801 to the mess of 1923. The USE is not yet born, and if the Scots should leave the UK, then they are free to go, should they wish to do so (one can hope). But it should be a hard border, mined if needs be.
3. The Euro is an amalgam, harder than I though it would be, but all fiat currencies are like parachutists with various states of entanglement of their ‘chutes. Some fall to Earth (the crack-up boom) faster than others, and so look bad, and the best parachutes might give the impression of flight, not a slow descent. A jarred back is better than a self-drilled grave., but land they must.
RE: terence patrick hewett
Bravo Sir!
Most people date the modern nation state to the treaties of Westphalia in 1648.
1. From the beginning, the europan institutions were foreseen to become one day the United States of Europe. If you don’t want to be part of it as a British citizen, your choice must be respected. It’s not stupid or immoral to have a different opinion.
Actually, I wouldn’t have minded a “United States” model.
The fact is that 50+ years down the line and we still don’t have any kind of direct voting for any of the positions of power within the EU.
The whole “no taxation without representation” thing seems to be completely lost on the EU elite, and, like the UK a few centuries ago, they will now pay the price.
Which is a common misconception as to what the Peace of Westphalia actually achieved. It was more about the de facto recognition of the structure of Europe at that time than anything else.
Give us a clue then. Which king are you talking about in terms of “No taxation without representation”? John, Charles I or George III? or was it one of the more minor skirmishes?
There is more to the whole “taxes and representation” issue than just the events of Boston Harbour (with a “u”) in 1773, you know.
While it’s true that the EU was always a political project masquerading as an economic one, and it’s true that it was formed post-WWII by intellectuals without intellect who interpreted the lesson of WWII as “don’t let those prejudiced common people have any say”, we need not attribute machiavellian cunning to them. Even within the very constraining limits of their prejudices, the EUrocrats are not clever or capable people.
The EUrocrats did not intend the euro to be in crisis within ten years of its creation, any more than socialists intend to run the economies they nationalise at an every-growing loss. The EUrocrats intended the euro to be a shining example of the wonders of euro-integration, teaching us all to desire ever more of it in ever more areas.
The EUrocrats of course reacted to the crisis by demanding more integration because that is the sole idea in their heads. But they did not foresee the bad PR that some quite predictable outcomes would give it and them. To that extent, Mervyn King has a point.
The assessment of May’s Withdrawal Agreement over at Bloomberg by Mervyn King ex-governor of the BoE called:“May’s Brexit Deal Is a Betrayal of Britain” is brutal.
“The UK economy is fine – it’s parliament that’s sick.”
And that’s just for starters…
The Pedant-General wrote:
If this is meant literally, then i disagree — as Niall did in his comment above.
Long ago, however, i have started to think of the ruling class as having a collective intelligence and a collective purpose, that drives them to act in such a way as to justify an expansion of their powers down the road — without any individual member of the ruling class being aware of this.
The euro is one example.
Obamacare might have been another example, had Hitlery won.
Yet another example is Merkel letting in 1M hard-to-assimilate immigrants: one might suspect that her plan all along was to use them as an excuse to curb freedom of speech (which she eventually did); but that would be to overrate her intellect.
@Philippe HERMKENS
Trouble is my old sausage – that you do not understand the nature of the dialogue between the 4 nations of our 2 islands – a sometimes extremly violent game that has been going on for millennia – for us it is the only game in town – and it is a game to which you are not invited.
The love that you imagine that some have for the EU within these islands can only be appreciated within this context – don’t think for one second that just because some don’t like the English very much – that they love you any more – they don’t – it is just another foray in the Great Game of sticking one on the English.
And – in the not too distant future you will find out just how difficult the Irish in the Republic of Ireland can be when you ask them to subsume their hard won indepenence in a EU state.
In fact you will be well advised to dig out your tin hat.
You mean dig out your white flag. He’s Belgian after all…
@John Galt
Daniel O’Connell opined of Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington:
“No, he is not an Irishman. He was born in Ireland; but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.”
But the Duke never joined the Orange Lodge in respect of the brave Irish at the Battle of Waterloo.
In the film Waterloo, Christopher Plummer asked “will the Scottish regiments stand?” Rupert Davies replied “aye they’ll stand” [but not for you you Irish bastard]
It’s a grand auld life!
1.You are very funny To my knowledge, Belgian soldiers didn’t surrender in World War I or in World War II except under overwhelming superior force
Without the channel, panzers would have a military parade in front of Buckingham Palace
The winners of World War II are the Soviet Union and the USA ..
2. As Belgian with a country invaded by France, Germany, Spain Austria and so one, we prefer indeed an international organisation to national states because very often these national states are very aggressive
3. I am deeply impressed by the actual Royal Navy (3 or 4 aircraft carriers ?) or the Royal Airforce ( 1/4 or a 1/3 of the Russian Air Force ?)
4. I am also deeply impressed by the last US victory since World War II against Grenada
5. I am further more aghast to see how fantastically the NATO forces are winning in Afghanistan..
Please, be serious
@Philippe Hermkens
No-one believes all that European, happy clappy – lets all dance around the maypole – John Lennon euro bullshit. Not the French, not the Germans, not the Russians, not the Chinese , not the Japanese, not Visigrad and certainly not the Brits. Absolutely Nobody.
@Philippe Hermkens
We’ll have the last laugh, we always do and I don’t think we’ll have to wait that long.
Have you got any Francs in a drawer somewhere? I think you’ll be needing them soon!
@tph
No sir, I won’t have that. I’ve met some who do, or did. I once knew a Portuguese lady (uni graduate, perhaps psychology) who believed it all, raised in northern France near the Belgian border, she was a fervent believer. I asked her how she regarded herself. She said ‘I am a European‘. I asked something like ‘So if you walked into a room full of strangers, would anyone say ‘Oh look, a European has just come into the room.‘? I didn’t get an answer, just a scowl. Quite a few of the same type from Portugal also believed it, (yes, all graduates) they also wanted their country dismembered into 3 regions (this was in the mid-1990s). Starry, starry eyes. (To misquote Don McLean).
Personally, if we are expected to be like ‘Europeans’, that’s a lot of things and people, I’d like to know if that includes loading people into train wagons for one-way trips (as has been known to happen) or throwing goats off church towers? If not, why not? If so, count me out.
What Continental Europe has never understood is the Liberal Democracy hammered out with much violence after 1688 and 1776 in the US, the UK, Oz, Canada and NZ. The liberal tradition of Edward Coke, John Hampden, James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Milton, John Locke, Pitt the Elder, Edmund Burke, Earl Grey, Viscount Palmerston, Richard Cobden, John Bright and of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
In the grand abstract terms of the Enlightenment, the legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the governed, and therefore no government should have the right to hand over its authority to some external body which is not democratically accountable to its own people. So when the framers of the EU arranged for the nations of Europe to do exactly that, they were repudiating two centuries of political struggle for the rights and liberties of ordinary citizens and of governance “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
We Hewett’s were at the 2nd Roanoke settlement: no matter what the spelling we are all related and were were not discouraged and we built a vast army in the US:
1587 Thomas Hewet VA (2nd Roanoke settlement)
1620-1650 Ephraim Hewett New England
1624 Henry Hewett ME
1635 Ambrose Huett 27 Barbados
1635 Morgan Huett VA
1635 Rich Huett VA
1636 Antho Hewett VA
1636 John Hewett/ Huett VA
1637 Rich Hewitt VA
1638 Robert Huett VA
1639 Ephraim Hewett New England
1639 John Huett VA
1640 Robert Huett MD
1642 Francis Huett VA
1643 Gyles Hewet VA
1644 Ephraim Hewett/Huet New England
1648 Rich Hewitt VA
1649 Robert Huett VA
1650 Hannah Hewett MD
1650 Kath Hewett/Hewitt VA
1650 Robert Hewett/Hewit MD
1651 James Hewitt VA
1652 Alice Hewitt VA
1652 Fra Hewett VA
1652 William Hewett VA
1653 Catherine Huitt VA
1653 Fra Hewett VA prob same as 1652
1654 Edward Huit Barbados
1654 Randall Hewett VA
1657 Rob Huett VA
1659 Antoine Huet Montreal
1664 Mathew Heweat VA
1664 Robt Hewitt VA
1668 William Hewett Barbados
1673 Charles Hewitt MD
1675 Susanna Hewett MD
1676 Elizabeth Hewitt Barbados
1677 Susanna Huett MD
1680 Abraham Huett MD
1680 Robert Hewitt Barbados 2 sons, servants
1680 Robtt Hewitt Barbados wife, child, servants
1682 Thomas Hewett America
1684 Mary Hewit 18 VA
1685 John Hewett/Hewitt MD
1685 Mary Hewett West Indies
1685 Robert Hewit/Hewet Philadelphia, PA
1696 John Hewitt MD
1699 Mary Huett VA
1700 John Hewitt America
1703 Eliza Hewitt VA
1703 Hannah Huett VA
1705 Hannah Hewitte 21 America
1714 Thos. Hewit VA
1715 Hannah Hewett VA
1719 Elizabeth Hewitt MD
1721 John Hewitt 22 NY
1723 Hannah Hewet VA
1724 Richard Hewitt NC
1727 Rachell Hewitt VA
1729 Richard Huett MD
1733 Ja Hewet (missed writing this down)
1733 James Hewet GA with son James
1734 Geo Huyett PA
1736 Edward Hewett VA
1737 Ann Hewitt VA
1737 Peter Hujet America
1738 Frantz Carl Huyet(t) Philadelphia, PA
1738 Joseph Hewitt MD and/or VA (how could it be AND?)
1742 Thomas Hewitt MD
1746 Peter Huyett PA
1749 Michel Huyet/Hujet/Huyet(t) Philadelphia, PA wife & 4 children
1751 Catharina Hueth America
1751 Christina Hueth America
1751 Daniel Hueth America
1751 Johannes Hueth America
1751 Michael Hueth America
1751 Peter Hueth America
1751 Valentim (sic) Hueth America
1752 Jacob Huwit Philadelphia, PA
1756 Edward Hewitt MD
1760 Ann Hewet America
1760 Thomas Hewitt America
1762 Thomas Hewitt Anapolis, MD
1763 Alexander Hewat America
1764 Hendriet Hewit Mobile, AL
1764 Piere Hewit Mobile, AL
1766 Charles Hewett Boston, MA
1766 James Hewitt Charles Town, SC
1766 Peter Huett PA
1767 John Hewitt America
1769 John Huet MA
1774 Geo Hewitt MD
1774 John Hewitt 29 Philadelphia, PA
1785 Thomas Hewitt Philadelphia, PA
1796 Robert Hewitt Philadelphia, PA
1799 William Hewitt Philadelphia, PA
As an engineer I have met Hewetts all over the world: an Africaans farmer in South Africa: a professor of classics: a lady of negotiable affection, a doppelganger in a bar. Edgar Lee Hewett 1865, the US anthopologist, is a dead ringer – he has the Hewett ears, the chin, he could be my brother – hilarious.
@Mr Ed
Well yes; as Prof. John Carey so eloquently opined – that the tragedy of Mein Kampf was not that it was a deviant work but that it was in line with the current European thinking of the time – it was at that time not really controversial.
Philippe Hermkens (December 4, 2018 at 7:39 pm), you are correct that in WWI the Belgian government and army resisted bravely, surprising and infuriating the Germans who had assumed they would sell their honour for a generous payment. (At the end of the war, a Belgian expressed surprise to a German at how generous the offer was, only to be reminded that “the French of course would have had to pay for it.”) Their allies were also a bit surprised – I forget who it was who said “No-one expected courage from the Belgians” but I recall reading it in some WWI history. “Plucky little Belgium” was a saying in the UK early in WWI and was the reason Agatha Christie invented Hercule Poirot. (Later, she moaned that she wished she had made her detective a citizen of some country she knew more about.)
Belgium at the start of WWII presents a less admirable picture. My view of the Belgian government’s behaviour before being attacked is here and here. Their surrender was also precipitate. It can of course be said that Belgium was not alone on the continent in being less impressive early in WWII than in WWI.
I am aware there are Belgian cemeteries with lines of gravestones inscribed ‘Fusille par les Allemands 1914″ and longer lines inscribed ‘Fusille par les Allemands 1944″ – and, I presume, others with the same sentiment expressed in Flemish, though I could not read it.
The Euro relies on honest politicians.
And – in the not too distant future you will find out just how difficult the Irish in the Republic of Ireland can be when you ask them to subsume their hard won indepenence in a EU state.
I would not count on it.
Public opinion (vast majority of politicians, media etc) here is astoundingly, uncritically pro-EU and anti-Brexit.
Mervyn King is correct – we must get out of the European Union.
The problem is that the establishment elite (the education system, the BBC and so on) is fanatically determined to keep the British people under the rule of the European Union. And most Members of Parliament are loyal to the “liberal” establishment elite NOT to ordinary voters. Constituency Conservative Associations often fail in their basic duty to nominate people who are actually Conservatives to be Members of Parliament.
What? No comment on yesterday’s votes in Parliament? Do PM’s suffer revolts everyday?
The entire escapade may well be the largest and most significant warning in all history. How was this nonsense sold? Oh goody! we get to have in excess of 27,000 pages of regulations relating to…cabbage? Ok, that’s no fun how about this a brand spanking new, Central Bank, and a new currency! Let’s not forget immigration which will be decided, oh well not to worry about that you subjects have your lives to get on with. Funny, I’m so old I can remember when it was about freedom of movement across borders and expedited trade. Instead they have delivered the re-branded feudalism known as socialism through a byzantine, unaccountable, Hell, unknowable Eureaucracy who live like royalty at public expense. You cannot long trust or lower your eyes from the people in charge, they are largely there because there’s nothing else they CAN do.
“Constituency Conservative Associations often fail in their basic duty to nominate people who are actually Conservatives to be Members of Parliament.”
Didn’t Conservative HQ take on the responsibility of candidate selection – probably to ensure no independent minded actual conservatives were chosen?
That the EU aspires beyond a United States of Europe should be readily apparent to anyone who attempts to recollect New Hampshire having received serious grief from Massachussets about harmful tax competition.
We’ve still got a bigger army than the EU, plus the watery ditch between Dover and Calais has always acted as a goodly disincentive to ambitious foreigners…
@Phillipe Hermkens. Very much enjoying your contributions. Please keep it up.
@philippe hermkens
I too am enjoying your contributions riling up those with a more sensitive disposition.
However, in spite of your accurate comments about the parlours state of UK armed forces, I think you’re being unfair on our American cousins.
I remember the woeful response to genocide in Kosovo by EU forces and the consequent necessity that NATO (ie the USA, really) intervene.
Let’s be honest, the entire EU couldn’t fight its way out of a paper bag right now. What’s worse, it probably couldn’t summon the backbone to even try. At least the UK is making some kind of attempt, commissioning new (probably obsolete) aircraft carriers and attempting to throw off the stultifying technocracy that is slowly killing our national vitality. We also propose to renew our ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent.
So, what’s Belgium’s excuse?
Just a guess, but “Belgians” probably… 😆
They are certainly not obsolete in their design. Au contraire, the Royal Navy seems to have gone for a very high-tech high-automation concept that does not justify concern about ‘last year’s model’ bur rather raises the question: ‘When we start taking incoming, will these systems be as robustly redundant as having twice the crew and a lot of things needing muscle-power.’ Obviously, I have no clue what answer some future conflict will reveal – maybe our designs will prove to be the wave of the future. For now, the first of them is still engaged its early shakedown cruises, so who knows. Like Jon, I see it as a good sign it is (finally!) there.
One of Natalie’s recent posts implied caution in using the phrase “Let’s be honest”. 🙂 I agree that whatever truly-European army the EUrocrats could nerve themselves to deploy and then get to pretend to obey them would likely be a joke. I am out-of-date about the French military but would hope for France’s sake that they are not quite as useless as that. I’ve been told that UK forces taking over Italian-garrisoned locations in Afghanistan have been obliged to form a very realistic view of their (in)capabilities – but this confirms impressions I myself once had occasion to form decades ago (and that others made dating back to WWII). As for the militaries of the other nations in the EU, my impression is that the longer in it they have been and the further from (Br)exitting their cultures are, the nearer their militaries are to Jon’s ‘paper bag 1, army nil’ assessment – but who knows?
The Pedant General writes: “Completely and totally disagree: it was the ENTIRE point. The inevitable failure was alway meant to be the catalyst for further integration – the beneficial crisis.”
Well that depends on whether you think the architects of monetary union were Blofeld-style superfiends or, as is often the case judging by those I have followed in my media and financial career, foolish. Some of them may have hoped that the euro would indeed “succeed” by failing, as it were, much as Obama hoped his health reforms would succeed by failing and hence creating a crisis on which to introduce single-payer healthcare. There is sometimes a sort of “save the village by bombing it” mentality. But bear in mind that Mervyn King (one of the brightest minds in this business) – a eurosceptic – knows that a lot of those involved in the European policymaking world as well as anyone, and he clearly thinks a lot of these people did not see the disaster coming. Let’s not make the assumption that everyone we disagree with is evil, or deeply cunning.
Take the case of Theresa May. It may well be that she has a dastardly plot to make Brexit fail, so she can then turn around and say, “Ha! Told you that we should have remained in it.” But the reality is I suspect less emotionally satsifying than that. She is, I believe, genuinely unoriginal, the sort of person who takes the standard civil service line on pretty much anything. Kerist, she probably lets them choose how to paint her nails.
Flubber – yes Party H.Q. tries to control Parliamentary candidate selection, but Conservative Constituency Associations retain the power (IF they use it).
@a different James
Ich am of Irlonde,
And of the holy londe
Of Irlonde.
Goode sire, praye ich thee,
For of sainte charitee,
Com and dance with me
In Irlonde.