Toby on Tuesday

'A failed Utopia'

At last the Penny (or in this case the Euro) is starting to drop.   Thanks to the threat of Brexit, signs of sanity are starting to break out in the whole crazed Euro project.   Now Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, is one of the five Presidents who really run the EU.   From 2007-2014 he was Prime Minister of Poland, leading a deeply patriotic country that during the Second World War was the staunchest of Britain’s allies and without the courage of whose pilots the Battle of Britain might have been lost.   Indeed it was over Poland that we finally entered the war in 1939.   And sandwiched as they are between Russia and Germany, the Poles have learned to be cautious and circumspect.   So it is significant to say the least that during the past fortnight, Donald Tusk has made two speeches that could in large measure have been drafted by UKIP.  They are a warning shot to the Euro-zealots throughout the Continent and without our Referendum they would certainly have never been made.

 

In one he declared, “I don’t need to explain to anyone present here what dramatic consequences, also economic, would be brought about by Brexit...But we know that there are more threats, and the migration crisis has shown how difficult it is today to agree a common European answer and foster common determination in the decision process...We must and can avoid this scenario.   The condition is to depart from utopian dreams and move on to practical activities...Forcing lyrical and in fact naive Euro-enthusiastic visions of total integration, regardless of the obvious goodwill of their proponents, is not a suitable answer to our problems.   Firstly because it is simply not possible, and secondly because – paradoxically – promoting them only leads to the strengthening of Eurosceptic moods, not only in the UK.   As one of the key players of European integration Hubert Vedrine recently said, ‘You see governments and parties all over jumping up and down asking for more Europe, more Europe – if you want people to massively reject Europe, just keep on.’   An ideological drive forward can end in a disaster.”

 

And in the other, Donald Tusk again echoed UKIP when he stated, “It is us who today are responsible for confronting reality with all kinds of utopias.   A utopia of Europe without nation states, a utopia of Europe without conflicting interests and ambitions, a utopia of Europe imposing its own values on the external world.   A utopia of Euro-Asian unity.   Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe do not share our Euro-enthusiasm.   Disillusioned with the great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been doing until now.   Today, Euro-scepticism, or even Euro-pessimism, have become an alternative to those illusions....That is why let us refrain from exaggerated rhetoric, because exaggeration, in whatever direction, is a heavy sin in politics.”

 

Together these two speeches represent an astonishing concession by one of those at the very summit of the EU project.   But Donald Tusk is an historian.   He has studied how ideologies can lead to disaster, how the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution which all began in those naive visions, full of hope, led only to death, bankruptcy, tyranny, war and human misery.   And he will know that the EU project now runs the risk of the same outcome across the Continent of Europe.   The cry of “More Europe” will only deepen the abyss into which it is now staring.   The Leave campaign was the catalyst for Donald Tusk’s two speeches which received so little coverage in our press.   And a big Leave majority on 23rd June can become the catalyst for a truly reformed Europe, based on nation states working together, co-operating, trading, playing to their strengths, keeping their identities, rather than some over-arching supranational monster, sucking the life out of the once great Continent.   To save Europe from itself in this way will be the true prize in this Referendum and fulfil Britain’s historic role as the power which has always restored balance and equilibrium to the whole Continent!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby