When Donald Trump won the US presidential election while lying about almost everything, Boris Johnson expressed deep interest in his success. “He was fascinated by it,” an official in constant contact with Johnson at the time told me. “He kept asking how on earth Trump had got away with it.”

Johnson required no tuition in mendacity since he had practiced it continually throughout his career, but he was nevertheless impressed by Trump’s expertise in selling falsehoods.

Johnson’s own record of duplicity in word and deed is, in my view, unrivalled in British politics: “He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial,” wrote Rory Stewart, who was a minister at the Foreign Office when Johnson was foreign secretary, last year. “He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true.”

The EU is under attack, 360 degrees, from a variety of fronts. From the west, with the Brexit. From the south, with the Euro-weak countries in which people dream of leaving the euro, clearly crippled – perhaps I should say “looted” – by the so-called “expansive austerity” (an oxymoron) of Franco-German matrix. And now also from the northeast, with Poland put in check and fined by the EU for the sole fault of wanting to continue to “be Poland”. Above all, the galloping inflation, exogenous in origin, which in a few months will no longer be able to be contained even in Latin countries, which today are still silently experiencing governmental manipulation of consumer price indexes (I imagine that social peace will not last long; see the report on prices for September 2021 published by the MISE/Italian Ministry of Economic Development, with prices in general vertical ascent – very often even in double digits – but with inflation “only” at 2.9%, totally absurd).

The above clearly points to an ongoing paradigm shift.

That is, the EU engineered to live on devaluation with the Euro (much weaker than the hypothetical German mark), or with the hidden aim of transferring wealth from the Europeripheral countries to the center of the Empire, is finally in the priority need – on the core Europe side – to tame inflation before being able to export thanks to an artificially devalued currency.

It is in fact clear that a country, or rather a “political continent”, without raw materials like Old Europe, is obliged to contain first of all the costs of production if it wants to hope to survive without destroying the social base on which its power is based, e.g. when inflation bites. That is to say, being tempted – on the German side – to mimic, today, with a new mark yet to come, the wise Switzerland and its franc, which has been rising steadily for months precisely in order to counter international inflationary pressures. And therefore, prospectively leaving the EU to its rubble, rubble on which Paris will certainly throw itself like a vulture, first of all on the Italian ones.

All the more so if, in this context, the USA and the FED are anticipating – as is clearly happening – the events by making the dollar rise in an anti-inflationary capacity (but also having abundant raw materials in place, above all oil, a situation not unlike the times of the attack on Nixon, see De Gaulle’s provocation on the convertibility of dollars into gold and the subsequent Watergate scandal, ed.)

Now then, in addition to the centrifugal drives within the EU, i.e. having as a driver the national interests of Southern Europe, mainly Italy, perfectly legitimate interests, a macro-economic context is also generating that will lead us to the epilogue expected to the title, due to inflation and related monetary policies: the controlled demolition of the EU based on the euro.

It should be remembered, for example, that Rome has seen in recent years a massive reduction in its own welfare (e.g. in terms of wages); to this is added – TODAY – interest from the center of the Empire in a paradigm shift, the first time in almost 25 years.

In addition, here is Poland’s recent response to the diktats of Brussels aimed at ceding superfunds (i.e. its own welfare) to EU interference; Poland clearly supported by the USA, see the so-called “Trump Base”, i.e. the US military installation in Poland recently inaugurated by the States on Polish soil.

A brutal response to say the least: in this context the Polish government has announced that the largest fine imposed by the EU to a country that gravitates in its sphere of continental influence, will not be paid anyway.

On the contrary Warsaw foresees a progressive enlargement of its armed forces, always with American support, a constant Anglo-Polish collaboration since the times of Brezinsky, Sikorsky and marriages in the heart of the US corporate with Polish soul (J&J above all).

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In all this we must not underestimate the reaction of Berlin, as always upset when its plans do not follow the expected trajectory: although it has not been properly emphasized by the EU media always too pro-German, as to the Reich themes, the German move that will lead to chaos (come) is materializing before our eyes, see the incredible announcement of the German Defense Minister of military intervention in the Baltic even with the nuclear threat as anti-Russian, ie with weapons that Germans theoretically would not have (…).

This exudes desperation (never forget that the German system, then survived in various ways the post WWII purges, is the same that laid the foundations for the atomic military industry 80 years ago, ed).

Clearly, the US power factor remains in the background, ready to be activated if necessary to defend the stars and stripes interests. To date, however, the situation remains extremely fluid.

We can however fix some stakes, as of now, to understand how we arrived to such a EUrocentric debacle, that is where we are today. And perhaps try to hypothesize some future developments.

First of all, Draghi represents the real factor of continuity wanted by the EU to dampen the centrifugal pressures aimed at leaving this EU: too many people forget that only a few months ago, in 2020, the majority of Italians publicly expressed their support for an exit from the Union, as reported not without a vein of ill-concealed terror by the website german-foreign-policy.com only last year.

Accomplice to the fall of Trump, instead, Draghi arrived to stop the Italian diaspora, after the media canonization of Draghi at the Rimini meeting last year, preparatory to his landing at Palazzo Chigi, thanks to the activism of the leader of the Milanese “Compagnia delle Opere” (the German Bernhard Scholz), a religious-ethical entity contiguous to Communion and Liberation and perhaps even reminiscent of the activism in German protection of Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster 75 years ago.

Clearly an attempt to postpone the plan to deflagrate the EU via dollarization of Italian debt, as winked at by Giuseppe Conte in last year’s Eurogroup, behind US impetus (“…if we don’t go it alone,” said the Italian prime minister at the time, making Angela Merkel’s entourage excited).

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In this context, it is essential to understand the genesis of Mario Draghi, a character who is grafted in a groove that is Anglo but intrinsically pro-EU. Noting that we are dealing with the area that we can roughly define as the “Cameronian world”, i.e. that pro-EU British elite that is behind the genesis, in the Peninsula, of both the 5 Star Movement and the Regeni case (no small detail, the wife of the former British Prime Minister Samantha Gwendoline Cameron – a Countess Astor – had a primary Christian education, ed).

That is, Draghi is supported by a political-elitist area of Anglo matrix that has always been close in its interests to Paris, as German containment (to represent less summarily the address of this, let’s say, pro-European current based in the Perfect Albion, one could go back to the “Scots Guards” of Mary Stuart in the French capital, who were also in defense of Joan of Arc, ed.)

Hence the natural closeness of the world that orbits around the current Italian Prime Minister towards what France represents, today especially given the expected turn of Berlin towards a more German set-up (Goethe himself depicted the printing of money as mephistophelian, diabolical, as it created inflation).

Unfortunately, the above does not augur well for future Franco-Italian relations, which will certainly be to Rome’s disadvantage; a relationship that the two neighboring countries will necessarily develop from here on, that is, during the period of German meditation on what to do with the current EU, thanks to the subjugation of the Roman political class to interests that are more French than Italian.

Hence the expectation of a new Franco-Italian strategic macro-agreement signed by Draghi soon, I repeat, to French advantage.

Wages on EU, from 1990 to 2020: “Italy is the only European country where wages have decreased compared to 1990” – Openpolis on OECD data – at LINK

In this context, with inflation now out of control, with economic growth actually close to recession if netted with the correct GDP deflator, Italian BTPs fell below a very important technical level, 150 points, only last Friday.

At the end of the game, however, it will always be the Peninsula to act as a watershed in the fate of the EU, with its expected collapse of public finances, in the long term, i.e. with the markets very skeptical about the possibility of repaying the huge debt in euro (…): for your information, today the Italian GDP without undeclared activity exceeds 180% of GDP. And with a number of pensions paid by the State equal to about the same of the employees: it is not a question of Italian implosion by remaining in the euro, only of when.

Finally, here creeps the Green agenda, always with Italy as center of gravity, to be saved with money borrowed from the same Italian citizens but in the name of the EU (the Recovery Fund is for the most part a loan, guaranteed in fact by the assets of Italian families), that is the total value of the PNRR of about 200 billion euros – paid in 3-4 years – of which the Recovery Fund, only about 30 billion euros are lost!

In addition to the madness of mass vaccinations in Italy, now with a target of 90% vaccinated and with the de facto obligation of universal vaccination, under penalty of the impossibility of working. Even in this context we simply observe that there is a huge and obvious correlation now between vaccination madness in selected countries and technical failure, in fact, of their local pension systems (on all, Italy, France, Israel, Austria with its minimum retirement age still below 60 years on average, ed).

* * *

In conclusion, it is easy to expect a controlled demolition of the EU, starting with German and pro-German drives aimed at shielding themselves from international inflationary pressures by returning to a surrogate of the new mark, stronger than the euro. At the same time, the centrifugal drives within the EU, undeniable e.g. on the Italian side if you want to ensure a minimum of future prosperity to their people, will be concentrated in the Europeripheral countries, i.e. where the state welfare institutions are practically bankrupt. Only to end in an inevitable contingency of, let’s say, reduced monetary union, in which Paris – once Germany crosses the Rubicon of the return to a stronger currency – will play the card of a “Euro-CFA” with Italy as a wingman; or rather, a Euro Med (or better yet, French Euro) in which the African countries of the CFA franc are replaced by Italy and perhaps Greece.

In this context, the only addendum that does not add up are the 100 US military bases in Italy, of which at least 4-5 are nuclear, together with the largest US weapons depot outside the US borders.

It is not to be excluded, therefore, a renewed next American activism aimed – encore – to neutralize threats to its strategic interests; we believe that this effort will not be too dissimilar from what was the American intervention in Indochina or more properly in the Suez Canal (these facts led to an implosion of the residual French and veteran-European colonial network in the world, ed).

Nearly two years after finalizing its Brexit divorce with the European Union, the British Conservative government is now looking to scrap its commitments to the part of that deal known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

In doing so, the British are gambling with peace in Ireland in the calculation that the EU will make more concessions to London.

London has repeatedly kicked the can down the road regarding its legal obligations to implement the protocol. For the past two years, the British have not introduced new customs arrangements on trade with Northern Ireland. They simply say, “it’s not working”. They have never tried to make it work.

Britain’s government was supposed to introduce customs checks on traded goods between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, effectively forming an Irish Sea border. The purpose was to avoid the creation of a hard land border between Northern Ireland (UK territory) and the Republic of Ireland which is a member of the EU.

The erasing of a land border was a key element of the Good Friday Peace Accord signed in 1998 which ended nearly three decades of deadly conflict in Ireland. The Nationalist population in Northern Ireland and Ireland more generally do not want to see the return of a land border that symbolizes Britain’s colonialist partitioning of the island almost a century ago.

Following the United Kingdom’s historic referendum in 2016 calling for Britain to leave the EU, the negotiations on the Brexit divorce were habitually hampered by the Irish question. The British could not opt for a “hard Brexit” as this would have necessitated the formation of a land border in Ireland to preserve the EU’s Singe Market. London and Brussels both said that protecting the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Ireland was paramount.

Hence, the fudge was innovated that Northern Ireland would remain part of the EU’s Single Market. That meant that goods transported to Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain would be subjected to customs checks to meet EU standards. What that created in effect was a constitutional split in the United Kingdom whereby Northern Ireland was different from the rest of Britain. And in effect, Ireland became a unified regulatory territory abiding by EU standards.

In Northern Ireland, pro-British Unionist political parties hated that outcome because it undermined their claims of being an integral part of the United Kingdom. There has been simmering violence from Unionist communities against the implementation of an Irish Sea border.

For the Brexiteer government of Boris Johnson, the arrangement is also galling. Even though he negotiated the Brexit deal and its Northern Ireland Protocol, and hailed it as a success two years ago, Johnson and his Cabinet have not come to terms with the fact that the EU still retains control over the United Kingdom via the special arrangement for Northern Ireland as being part of its Single Market. The European Court of Justice oversees trade disputes involving Northern Ireland. That is an affront to British pretensions of “independence”.

This explains why London has obstinately refused to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol for the past two years. That refusal to abide by an international legally binding treaty which Johnson himself signed off on has aggravated relations with the EU. Apart from the bad faith and perfidy, the practical consequence is that goods from Britain can find their way into the Single Market without checks or tariffs by going through Northern Ireland and thence to the rest of Europe. London is making a joke of the EU’s Single Market.

To get its way on the matter, the British chief negotiator for Brexit, the aptly named Lord Frost, has repeatedly threatened that Britain will walk away from the Northern Ireland Protocol if the EU does not make concessions on the Irish Sea border issue. This week, Frost warned of “historic misjudgment” if the EU did not re-write the protocol.

By “historic misjudgment”, the British government is tacitly threatening the return of conflict in Ireland and playing on the EU’s conscience as being responsible for that onerous outcome. If London were to abandon the Northern Ireland Protocol, as it repeatedly says it will, that would inevitably mean the EU having to set up a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In that case, the Nationalist population will be in uproar. The Good Friday Agreement would have become null and void, and a return to armed conflict would be a major risk.

This week, the EU proposed far-reaching concessions over customs checks on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland. The package on offer reduces red tape controls on trade by up to 80 percent. European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic said the new proposals could work if the British authorities introduce labeling on goods stating they are not for resale outside Northern Ireland, that is, ensuring there is no back door into the EU market.

The EU is offering a generous compromise to break the logjam – a logjam that has been largely created by British intransigence to not implement a deal it negotiated and signed.

But even with this show of flexibility by the EU, the signs are that London is simply banking the concessions and moving to extract more from Brussels. The British side is now saying that it is unacceptable to them for the European Court of Justice to have jurisdiction over trade issues in Northern Ireland. The court issue is a red line for Brussels. Any member of the EU must recognize the ECJ as a fundamental institution of the bloc. And if Northern Ireland is to remain part of the Single Market then the ECJ must have jurisdiction there.

The raising of the ECJ issue is another case of London moving the goalposts of its Brexit divorce. A collision course is being charted by London rather than seeking a negotiated compromise.

When EC vice president Maros Sefcovic visited Northern Ireland recently he said that no-one raised objections to the European court having jurisdiction. The people with the problem are in London and they are making the issue a showdown. Johnson and Frost are now pushing the EU to not only water down its Single Market rules, they want Brussels to compromise on a foundational matter of the European Court of Justice.

Lord Frost is an unelected member of Britain’s House of Lords. He became the chief Brexit negotiator as a political appointee made by Boris Johnson. Yet, ironically, Frost is lecturing the EU that it is being undemocratic on insisting that Britain adhere to its international obligations over Brexit.

The British government pays lip service to protecting peace in Ireland by claiming that it does not want to create a land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But cynically it is threatening to jeopardize peace by continually warning that it is ready to walk away from the Brexit protocol if the EU does not make concession after concession.

If the British rip up the protocol then the EU will be compelled to set up a border in Ireland to protect its Single Market. London is not only displaying bad faith and showing itself to be duplicitous with regard to an international treaty, it is recklessly playing with people’s lives in Ireland. London is betting that the EU will continue to blink and make concessions in order to avoid creating conflict in Ireland.

Of course, from a wholly different perspective the solution to all this is rather simple. Britain should relinquish its undemocratic territorial claim to Northern Ireland and allow the island to be reunited as independent nation, an outcome that the majority of the people on the island of Ireland would welcome. For the Johnson government to lecture the EU about democratic consent and jurisdiction in Ireland is nauseating hypocrisy.

One of the slogans used during the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union — the Brexit operation — was “take back control”, by which Prime Minister Boris Johnson meant, as demonstrated in a speech of December 2016 when he was foreign minister, “taking back control of its democratic institutions.” But it was nonsense for him to say that as a member of the EU the United Kingdom did not have control of its governance, because although membership entailed abiding by EU regulations (to which Britain had agreed) there were no dramatic or harmful instances of crumbling democracy. It was just another slogan, but it appealed greatly to those many Brits who espouse nationalism to an unhealthy degree.

Johnson’s mishandling and misrepresentation of the Brexit process is indicative of his overall unsuitability to be leader of the country. As Patrick Cockburn pointed out on September 28, he is what Isaiah Berlin called a “charlatan” who deceives and manipulates all the time, being “a prime example of Berlin’s rare breed, who does just that with his boosterism, false promises and lying”.

A few days before Cockburn’s stinging commentary appeared, the British government website carried a piece of bureaucratically-produced gobbledygook titled “Global Britain: delivering on our international ambition” in which it was stated that “Global Britain is about reinvesting in our relationships, championing the rules-based international order and demonstrating that the UK is open, outward-looking and confident on the world stage” thus following Johnson’s declaration that “It is in the interests of global order that we are at the centre of a network of relationships and alliances that span the world. It is one of the great achievements of British diplomacy in the 20^th century that — together with others — we effectively changed the basis and assumptions on which those relationships work.”

Concurrent with speeches and other harangues about “global Britain” the government in Westminster ordered a Royal Navy warship to sail through the Strait of Taiwan, continued to conduct military exercises with the HMS Queen Elizabeth Carrier Strike Group in the Pacific and Far Eastern waters, and had the country’s senior military commander, General Sir Nick Carter, give an interview to CBC News in which he said Britain wanted to “co-operate in terms of helping Canada do what Canada needs to do as an Arctic country” and that “we have military capabilities, certainly in the maritime domain and in terms of our science that would be useful to Canada and I think operating alongside Canada in that regard is going to be clearly good for both countries.”

None of these performances produced anything that can be regarded as even remotely positive or productive in economic or strategic terms. The naval deployments in the Far East have engendered only exasperation on the part of China which declared the Taiwan Strait frolic to be ridiculous, which it undoubtedly was. The UK’s defence ministry riposted that “The UK has a range of enduring security interests in the Indo-Pacific and many important bilateral defence relationships, this deployment is a sign of our commitment to regional security,” but it is difficult to see how a deliberate insult to Beijing can be considered a positive contribution to security.

The speech by General Carter was a follow-on from his declaration last December that the “posture for our armed forces also addresses state threats. The most serious of these in the Euro Atlantic area is of course Russia and we have seen recently that Moscow is determined to test Britain and our NATO allies. The Russian regime’s increasingly assertive activity is almost certainly influenced by problems at home.” In fact, Russia’s reactive policy has been taken in response to enlargement of the so-called “enhanced forward presence” adopted by the U.S.-Nato military alliance around Russia’s borders.

Britain’s global aspirations rely not only on absurd gestures like sending a warship to try to irritate China and trying to whip up anti-Russia enmity but also on the quaint notions, as noted by a contributor to Carnegie Europe, “that the UK really does have a special relationship with the United States and that Brexit would enhance prosperity at home and Britain’s influence abroad.”

The “special relationship” supposedly existing between the United Kingdom and the United States has not existed since 1956 when President Eisenhower refused to support Britain’s illegal invasion of Egypt to try to wrench back control of the Suez Canal. The outcome of the UK’s absurd fandango was crippling both economically and strategically, and the “special relationship” fantasy completely disappeared in the 1960s when Britain refused entreaties by President Johnson to contribute military forces to the U.S. war in Vietnam.

As winter approaches in the northern hemisphere the British prime minister has more to worry about than the dissolved “special relationship” because his country is fast approaching economic disaster, some of it caused by the pandemic, but largely stemming from the decision to quit the European Union. As the New York Times has noted, “Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks of creating a more agile ‘Global Britain,’ with stronger ties to the United States and other democracies, like Australia, India and South Korea . . . But most benefits of a Global Britain so far remain theoretical. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said it expects little effect from new trade deals . . .” In starker terms, the United Kingdom is suffering severe problems of its own making. And in the middle of the plunge to crisis, the prime minister lowered the tone of international diplomacy in a most regrettable and undignified manner.

The NYT explains that “A British agreement alongside the United States in September to help Australia deploy nuclear submarines was hailed by Brexit supporters as a success for the new approach, especially because it upset an Australian defence deal with France.” This was not only a major international disagreement between ostensible allies, but was laughed about by Prime Minister Johnson who tried to make fun of the French President on September 23 by joking in French-English to reporters in Washington that “I just think it’s time for some of our dearest friends around the world to, you know, ‘prenez un grip’ about all this and ‘donnez-moi un break,’ because this is fundamentally a great step forward for global security.”

Not only did Johnson totally trivialise the international impact of a broken contract worth over forty billion dollars and alienate a long-standing and most important ally, but he destroyed the claim that he was aiming for a “Global Britain” by behaving immaturely and insultingly. At the time his country is suffering from extremely serious economic problems, Prime Minister Johnson wants to strut the world stage as a global statesman. But he is failing dismally and displaying a lack of leadership that could bring his country to its knees and cause enormous suffering.

In one telling disproof of the claim that leaving the European Union has had nothing but economic benefit for the United Kingdom, Johnson has had to agree to immigration of some 5,000 haulage drivers from Europe because the dearth of lorry drivers is disrupting the national economy. Further, as Reuters reported on October 1, “Britain’s pig farmers on Friday warned of a pork crisis unless the government urgently eased an acute shortage of abattoir workers and butchers that has left up to 150,000 pigs backed up on farms and facing a costly cull.” As known by most observers, the vast majority of these workers, like goods vehicle drivers and fruit-pickers and hospitality-industry staffs, came from mainland Europe and had to go back to their own countries when glorious Brexit was achieved.

Britain isn’t flourishing, to put it mildly, and Johnson’s silly pretensions in that regard are only lowering the UK’s standing even further — all round the globe. The best thing that British citizens could do is to take back control and get rid of this conceited lightweight, thereby encouraging movement to international diplomacy and development of economic cooperation.

The lifeblood of intelligence agencies is threat inflation: exaggerating the gravity of the dangers menacing the public, and calling for harsher laws to cope with them. MI5 director general Ken McCallum did his best to follow this tradition in his annual speech this week, in which he explained the security risks facing Britain.

He spoke of threats from states such as Russia, China and Iran; from far-right activists, Islamic terrorists, and the resurgence of violence in Northern Ireland. Alongside these were the more amorphous threats posed by encrypted messaging, online spying, and cyber attacks.

Many of these developments are less threatening than they look. Russia may engage in gangster-type assassinations, such as the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury, but the very crudity of its attacks on its critics underlines the limitations of Russian capabilities. President Putin may relish the fact that his country is treated like a superpower – albeit a demonic one – but it has nothing like the power of the Soviet Union. The idea, for instance, that the Kremlin determined the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election was always a myth. Hillary Clinton’s dire campaign is sufficient explanation for Donald Trump’s election.

Demonising the enemy – exaggerating its strengths and its evil intentions – was central to the propaganda directed against the Soviet Union during the first cold war. Much the same kind of threat inflation is happening in the second cold war, except that this time the primary target is China, whose every action is portrayed as part of a bid for world domination. Shady authoritarian allies like Narendra Modi’s India are promoted as allies of the west in “the struggle for democratic values”.

The threat posed by al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorism is likewise given too much importance. Savage though their attacks have been in western Europe, they were in practice vicious publicity stunts aimed at dominating the news agenda. Politically, this sort of “terrorism” only really succeeds if it can provoke an exaggerated response, as 9/11 did when the US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in retaliation.

Britain does indeed face increased dangers, but they have little to do with those on the MI5 list. The greatest threats in a post-Brexit Britain stem from the country being a weaker power than it was five years ago, but pretending to be a stronger one. The gap between pretension and reality is masked by slogans, and by concocted culture wars geared to divert public attention from failings and unfulfilled promises.

The success of “Little Englandism” in the referendum of 2016 and the general election in 2019 had predictable results, at home and abroad. Britain outside the EU is inevitably even more dependent on the US than before. Many will ask what is new about our reliance on Washington. Has it not been Britain’s default position since the Suez crisis in 1956, if not the fall of France in 1940?

But this time around, British dependence on the US is even greater, and comes with an extra twist. It is happening at a moment when America is moving to confront China, and to a lesser degree Russia, in a new cold war in which Britain will be a participant but will have very little influence. Theatrical antics – like sending a British destroyer through Russian-controlled waters off Crimea, and dispatching the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth to the South China Sea – are gestures designed to persuade public opinion at home that Britain once again has a global role.

Most of the negative consequences of leaving the EU have long been obvious. The move undermined the compromise between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland represented by the Good Friday [Belfast] Agreement of 1998. The MI5 chief McCallum, who knows Northern Ireland well, hints at this, saying that “many of the powerful aspirations of the Belfast Agreement remain unfulfilled” while insisting hopefully that “the holding of multiple identities – British, Irish, Northern Irish – is a living reality for many people, in a way it was not in my youth”.

But a Northern Ireland half-in, half-out of the EU has shifted the balance of power between the communities in the province in a way that is likely to lead to a return to political violence. We have already had a taste of this with the rioting in late March and early April, which was the most serious for years. What we have not yet seen is sectarian killings, but they could start at any moment. If they do, then peace in Northern Ireland will swiftly evaporate.

Yet the greatest risk to Britain is that it is ruled by a government that has promised far more than it can deliver. This weakness is still masked by the development of the anti-Covid vaccine and the success of the vaccination campaign, but these were achievements of scientists and the NHS. As Dominic Cummings has made clear, Boris Johnson did little but spread chaos.

The problem facing all nationalist populist leaders in the world is that they promise bread and circuses for everybody, but seldom deliver them. This is true of Trump in the US and Modi in India, and is also the case for Johnson in Britain. This was made blatantly clear yesterday when the prime minister made one of his rare public speeches – the first for 10 months – which was supposed to spell out his “levelling up” agenda, the centrepiece of his populist appeal to former Labour voters.

Except that it turns out that there is no such agenda, and his speech consisted of the usual shallow boosterism. Cummings summed it up venomously but accurately as a “crap speech (same he’s given pointlessly umpteen times) supporting crap slogan”. As with foreign policy, there is no social or economic strategy to rescue Britain’s deprived population, despite all those radical pledges.

But there is a political strategy for diverting attention away from the fact that a central plank in Johnson’s platform is missing. The plan is to talk up culture wars, exacerbate divisions, and pretend that critics are unpatriotic or treacherous. Since culture and race go together, this means none-too-subtle dog-whistle appeals to racism. “If we ‘whistle’ and the ‘dog’ reacts we can’t be shocked if it barks and bites,” said Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative peer and former party chair.

Populist governments play the “culture card” more vigorously in times of trouble. The smallest incidents are exaggerated as threats to national identity. A piece of graffiti scrawled on a statue of Winston Churchill becomes a sign that British culture as a whole is under assault.

Critics can be demonised as unpatriotic, but a surer way of silencing them is to deny them a voice, by putting pressure on independent commentary on the BBC or threatening to sell off Channel 4. The effectiveness of these methods in suppressing criticism and dominating public opinion should not be underestimated. Most of the nationalist populist regimes in the world have a disastrous record, but very few of them have lost power.

counterpunch.org

It might well be Michel Bernier who emerges as a veiled presidential anti-EU runner in France’s presidential elections in 2022.

Curiously, it might well be Michel Bernier who emerges as a veiled presidential anti-EU runner in France’s presidential elections in 2022 as his latest whacky idea could be the demise of the entire project.

Hardly a day passes since Brexit, when the EU doesn’t appear to be in some kind of political tailspin. The constant petulant attacks on the UK by both France and Brussels, which only make the EU look like a really sour loser, are trumped by the relentless comical calamity of a vaccine crisis.

Trade wars with the EU is probably what the hardline Brexiteers in the cabinet of Boris Johnson were expecting all along. A whole new crisis of confidence, which EU folk think will push non-Eurozone countries in the EU towards their own exit strategies, while even threatening the giants themselves like France, is happening. And at quite some speed.

Consequently the highest echelons of the EU itself are panicking and are desperate for a solution.

On the 8^th of May, the EU launched a grandiose new talkshop which aims to find a roadmap for the EU itself. Given that the EU needs to find a new identity it is perhaps worrying enough, but we shouldn’t forget the last time it did this, exactly twenty years ago, when it was called The European Convention, and it failed. Under the auspices of Valerie Giscard d’Estaing, the only French President refused membership of the freemasons due to him faking his own aristocratic credentials, it imploded under a cloud of graft allegations about the former French president and his dodgy expenses while in the Belgian capital.

What finally did emerge was a new European Constitution but which in the end didn’t make it over the line after French and Dutch referendums.

Take more power

And now Brussels is at it again. Few could argue with its argument that it has a new pile of problems which need to be tackled head on. But the hardcore federalist mentality in the Belgian capital will always argue that the way out of the EU’s problems is always to take more power. This time around, this jaded mindset though met with considerable opposition from a dozen EU member states who wanted the whole conference to be played down and made distinctly low key. In the end, they couldn’t even agree on a former president to run the whole circus. Macron would have been an obvious choice but curiously he was not the man of the moment

Perhaps some in the EU believe that Macron’s inept anti Brexit stunts and blinded dogma that the EU with more power (in particular around the world) is more part of the problem rather than the solution.

The EU has massive problems which stem from its own diabolical management and growing discontent from smaller member states who previously used Britain’s power to do its bidding. Sure, climate change is a huge subject it needs to grapple. But way more importantly are the economies and immigration policies of its own vanguard member, France.

Immigration both in Germany and France has come with huge political consequences on the elite and how they govern. While Germany can weather the storm on the impact of almost 1 million Syrian refugees, Macron is showing signs that he is prepared to get tougher on all immigrants simply to stop Marine Le Pen from taking what everyone expects will be huge gains in the first round of the next presidential elections.

But he stops short of calling the EU’s Schengen policy to be scrapped.

The 1985 accord, which on paper looks like a great solution to Europeans who want free access to move around Europe but in reality is a nightmare for controlling huge swathes of migrants looking for the best asylum deal they can find.

Which is why EU darling Michel Barnier, who is planning to stand as a candidate in France’s presidential elections in 2022, has dropped a bombshell both on the EU and France by his latest declaration: he wants a five-year freeze on immigration in France.

While hacks may argue over whether there is any strong argument that this would help the French economy – some taking the view that it would at least prevent a Le Pen win – others might say that it could help France, but at the EU’s expense. If France can renegotiate its place in the EU immigration deal, then others will follow and the overall implications will be an even bigger crisis for the EU. Critics will say: “If Schengen isn’t working and we can opt out of it, what else should we opt out of?”. It will make the EU look incredibly weak and ineffective. The well worn cliché of the EU being an arbiter of the “free movement of goods, services and people” will have to be downgraded to just goods and services – which many Eurosceptics have argued for years is its best option for long term survival. A trade block. Nothing more, nothing less.

And then there is even the bigger problem of the widening gap between southern EU member states and Brussels itself. A reworked Schengen – or a scrapped one – will mean that EU member states like Italy will be obliged to contain all of their refugees themselves, rather than allow them to cross the border into other countries in their search for a better deal. That alone, could be the spark which ignites a full-on Eurosceptic momentum in Italy which calls for an exit altogether from the European Union.

Jobs for the boys

Combined, the Barnier stunt represents a new nadir for the European Union and its apparatchiks in Brussels. With a radical emergence of far-right parties already threatening to take a majority stake in the next EU elections, lowest ever confidence in the EU in key member states like Italy and Spain and a very real worry that at least one EU heavyweight will follow Britain (watch Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands), the EU will fall on its knees with a shattered Schengen.

The end of Schengen could mark the end of the EU as we know it. And all for the political ambitions of Michel Barnier who wants to have his cake and eat it in Brussels. Like any good Europhile, Brussels has its own distinct role to play in giving jobs to the boys and this final act of getting the ultimate job at the EU’s expense is certainly going to set a new precedent; usually the EU gets its main officials from member states as politicians lose their seats and look to their own political party to give them a cosy retirement present in the Belgian capital. But Barnier is doing the opposite. The EU actually propelled him into the media limelight via the Brexit so-called “negotiations” and he’s milking it for all he can get. The huge question in the coming weeks will be how the French press treat him and how Brussels will react to this new storm on the horizon. Now the European Union has a new migraine to add to the headache of Brexit. Its demise is guaranteed if more of the big thinking is to keep on pushing for a bigger power grab. A new European constitution is not the answer if the aggregate of this delusional pontificating is that the EU somehow gets bigger. And there simply isn’t time. Something’s got to be done about Barnier.

Britain’s shameless tabloid newspapers still ludicrously try to sell dithering, panic-stricken Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the Second Coming of Winston Churchill (The ‘Third’ Coming really since Margaret Thatcher beat him to it). But it is now hilariously clear that far from being Westminster’s new Iron Man, Boris is instead a spineless dessert of quivering blancmange.

Times are tough for Boris: After four years of sycophantic flattery he has dropped his old friend and champion, former US President Donald Trump under the bus in a desperate, even contemptible and spectacularly unsuccessful effort to curry favor with new President Joe Biden. However, this is a Mission Impossible if anything is. For Biden has inherited and is continuing the strongly anti-British prejudices of his old long-time boss Barack Obama.

Obama’s grandfather was tortured by the British Empire in Kenya in the 1950s when the Kenyans were desperately struggling for freedom from their colonial overlords. Obama openly despised British prime ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron and routinely humiliated them.

Now, Biden, only the second Irish-American president in US history after John Kennedy, has already made clear that improving relations with the European Union takes precedence for him far above bailing out desperate, isolated Britain.

In January, Biden shook the world by taking a decisive and unmistakable bold step in foreign policy: He removed the bust of Winston Churchill that his predecessor Trump had installed in the White House.

In doing so, Biden was once again loyal to the policies and values of his close friend former President Barack Obama whom he loyally served for eight years as vice president.

Obama humiliated three successive British prime ministers – Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May – by the offhand way he treated them as President, Before leaving office he praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel as by far his closest ally in Europe. No US-UK Special Relationship for him! For Johnson, who himself served as the always treacherous, always backstabbing foreign secretary to May, a treacherous Brutus to her own blissfully unaware, sleepwalking Julius Caesar, the lesson should have been clear.

For all eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, the British media and popular culture remained in fascinating denial of every humiliation and shrug off that Obama dealt their long-proud nation. In one of his later novels, Frederick Forsyth, one of the best-selling spy and action popular novelists of all time, even portrayed Cameron and Obama having especially close personal ties as they waged happy war together on the Great Unwashed of the rest of the world.

Eager to find favor as a favored White House poodle, Gordon Brown, as prime minister sent Obama, the first African-American president, a president of a desk made from the timbers of a Royal Navy warship that had fought the Africa-to-America slave trade in the 19th century. Obama immediately banished it to the White House storerooms.

Trump like a most US conservatives revered Churchill (Britons are more divided, their grandparents and ancestors suffered or were needlessly killed by too many of his misadventures and bungles). He brought the bust of Churchill into the Oval Office. Biden, obviously made of more sensible stuff (He is, after all, an Irish-American) promptly through it out after he took the Oath of Office in January. It was one of the very first things he did as president.

Johnson, who made his political reputation as the King of Bluster did not exactly show Churchillian pride or backbone at this “outrage.”

“The Oval Office is the president’s private office and it’s up to the president to decorate as he wishes,” was the only comment the prime minister’s official spokesman expressed.

Yet back in 2009, Johnson, who has written a biography of Churchill, devoted an entire newspaper column to sneering at President Obama for getting rid of Churchill’s bust the first time. He called it a “snub” to Britain that was caused by the “part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British empire.”

That was Johnson’s English elitist way of indirectly acknowledging that Obama’s paternal grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, who had fought for the British Empire against Japan in Burma in World War II, had been horrifically tortured during Kenya’s long, bitter struggle for freedom.

According to the testimony of surviving eyewitnesses, Hussein Obama was viciously whipped daily over a long period of time and permanently scarred. He may also have tortured with so-called castration pliers, a common British practice against jailed Kenyan freedom fighters at the time.

Biden is proud of both his Irish ancestry and his close friendship and partnership with Barack Obama, Only last year, Biden compared Boris Johnson to a “physical and emotional clone” of Donald Trump. He has given no sign that he has revised that considered opinion.

On February 19, an increasingly desperate Johnson gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference trying to position himself as the optimistic champion of the transatlantic alliance between Europe and America that he himself by championing Brexit – the British withdrawal from the European Union against the repeatedly expressed warnings of Republican as well as Democratic foreign policymakers in Washington alike.

Johnson’s speech was predictably short on substance and relied instead on the frenetic optimism that has been the mark of all US presidents since Ronald Reagan.

“Let me respectfully suggest that the gloom has been overdone and we are turning a corner,” Johnson said. “And the countries we call the ‘West’ are drawing together and combining their formidable strengths and expertise once again, immensely to everybody’s benefit.”

This must have produced guffaws of raucous laughter in Paris, Brussels and Berlin where the Brexit (British exit from the EU) policies that Johnson used to topple David Cameron from power in 2016 and then become prime minister himself three years later have opened wider and deeper divisions between the Western European nations than anything since World War II. And Russia and China had nothing to do with any of them.

The clear, obvious reality is that Biden, loyal to Barack Obama’s precedent in European affairs as in so much else, is giving priority to restoring close ties with Germany, France and the European Union. Britain is not anywhere among his priorities. And he will not trust Johnson to his dying day. And if Vice President Kamala Harris from California eventually succeeds Biden, there is even less likelihood that she will see any “Special Relationship” with Britain as necessary or even desirable.

For all the frantic flailing of their ministers and diplomats, the British today are irrelevant ghost-walkers in Biden’s Washington. And Boris Johnson has no one to blame for this but himself.

There is an interesting tendency in American political history that whenever there is some sort of crisis, one answer to it, especially from the Right, is some form of secession. The waves of Liberal triumphant ecstasy that Obama rode into the White House were scary enough to start discussions of leaving the Union from Ohio to Oregon. During the 1990s it was the scary militias of places like Michigan that were supposedly going to fight for some sort of breakaway from the tyranny of Clinton. None of this came to pass and the only semi-successful attempt to do something like this required the support of the entire political and economic elite of the South, with a very heavy economic dependence on a “peculiar institution” to even try. But for some reason this naive power fantasy of being able to simply break away from the evil grip of Washington, gaining everything, yet somehow losing nothing just will not die. And so, now there is discussion of an imminent “Texit”. This time though the strategy is going to use a long term bureaucratic roadmap and vastly more signatures, stamps and red tape in order to ultimately fail.

Brexit is a False Narrative

This new term Texit comes from the “success” of the Brexit movement that sort of got the UK out of the EU to some extent. The glowing positive side of Brexit, is the fact that things were done absolutely peacefully via referendum and very slowly bureaucratic processes. Although the drudging seemingly endless path of Brexit was very annoying for those who advocated it, having lots of time to play with, allowed for things to happen more gently and with less economic consequences. If they would have just put up barbed wire and machine gun nests on the British side of the Chunnel the day after voting, the economic impact would have been a lot more severe. For us commoners we want politics to be exciting and full of triumphant victories towards a better tomorrow, but the reality is that sometimes slow and steady wins the race. No matter what the anti Brexit crowd says, Britain’s economy has not crumbled or suffered some sort of fatal wound due to leaving the EU. Essentially a soft secession, at least in the context of the EU, is now proven to be pleasantly survivable, at least for a major player like the British.

Image: Is a post-Brexit UK really fundamentally different?

It is probably this particular safer softer bureaucratic approach that appeals to those who understand paper dancing most intimately – local politicians. From their standpoint, why not try to slowly break Texas away from impending death from Socialism/Globalism, but in a rainbows and kittens peaceful way? Brexit required no guns nor blood, simply lots of time and stamps, this looks very spiffy in contrast to blood soaked Civil War 2.0.

If the British could leave without collapsing, why can’t the Lone Star State? Everything is bigger (and better) in Texas right?

The issue is that for pencil pushers the Brexit narrative looks attractive but ultimately this narrative is false. England was not able to lead some sort of massive Conservative or Nationalist revolution by gentle means. Yes, the Union Jack was taken down at the EU parliament, and in theory Brussels cannot suck more resources from across the English Channel at will, but ultimately the UK remains in NATO, completely philosophically dominated by extreme Progressive Liberals, and is not going to reforge “The Empire” any time soon. All of the pre-Brexit issues not related to tax that have been slowly destroying English culture and nationhood are still very much in place, but taxes are lower so that’s nice.

The UK is not truly independent, Brexit or not. The real test of a nation’s independence in a Monopolar world is if it can (or at least tries) to pursue policies that go against the desires of the Hegemon (Washington). So far we have yet to see a post Brexit UK try to work the Russians or Chinese against Washington or assert its interests over those of America’s anywhere on the globe. The Brits are not players in a “great game” at the moment, they have just adjusted the flavour of their vassal status. This Brexit narrative is something to note, something of interest, but it is not a “proof of concept” for Texas.

The collapse of the USSR is realistic a model for Texas

We should be impressed that local politicians in America were actually aware of an event that happened overseas. This level of worldliness is rare, but sadly if they were to look just a bit further east they would see the potential nightmare that can happen even if they were to succeed in leaving the United States on “peaceful” terms.

Despite the fact that 77% of the populace voted to save but reform the Soviet Union, it was broken up by pen strokes hidden in the forests at the very western edge of the empire. What ensued was a nightmare scenario of starvation, collapse and untold small military conflicts. Many of the chunks of the USSR felt quite confident in their ability to stand on their own as part of a great Red Civilization, but the second it fell apart they quickly had to fight to survive and quickly realized just how small and helpless their nations were without big daddy Moscow. To this day all the Former Soviet Republics remain poor irrelevant territories whose only purpose in their existence is to antagonize Russia and challenge the spelling skills of their Washington masters with their unpronounceable last names.

Image: Breaking away from the big empire comes at a high cost, is it worth it?

Texas is big and has a very vibrant culture, but it has far more value as a part of American Civilization than as a Texan nation. This is much in the same way that Armenia, Georgia, the Ukraine etc. were vastly more relevant as part of Russian/Soviet Civilization, than as forgettable blips on the global radar. Within Russia everyone can at least recognize Armenian script, knows the name of those big Ukrainian red trousers they like and can determine what is Georgian cuisine. As “independent” nations they are culturally non-existent globally except for those twerps who accidentally bought the wrong “Georgian” flags to the Capitol Hill protests. Even if Texas would be allowed to slowly nudge its way out of the Union by some sort of Texit its destiny will look much more like a Former Soviet Republic in the 90’s than their mythical Brexit narrative.

The geopolitics of Texas are dismal

If Texas were to become independent it would find itself surrounded by 3 different spaces. The first being the land border with the rest of America, who would be very hostile to the breakaway republic and very willing to put the economic screws to them. The United States has brought misery to many places across the globe with embargoes, sanctions and blockades. We shouldn’t be so naive to think they wouldn’t do it to a naughty Texas. The second space would be the Gulf of Mexico which is essentially dominated by the U.S. Navy. Texans would have to say goodbye to goods from China, unless they could get them via Mexico. Blocking off Texas from the rest of the world is very realistic and this enforced isolation will change the shining big cities of the state into dim impoverished Capitalist copies of North Korea in terms of economy.

Image: Texas would have it worse than North Korea during a “Texit”.

The third and most important space is the border with Mexico. If the Mexicans were not under the thumb of Washington, this could be a potential “way out” for an independent Texas, to get access to the world’s goods. But as it stands today Mexico City will always side with Washington when it counts. meaning that Texit would lead to a new nation being born that is completely cut off from the rest of the world. It would not only have to economically fight against the Global Hegemon but would start life surrounded by it on all sides to be consumed and digested like a longhorn steak. Texas is big, it has a diverse landscape, but maintaining an economy with guns pointed at you from every direction will not exactly be easy.

The geopolitics of America, being far away, surrounded by oceans with only underpopulated Canada and submissive Mexico at the borders is a huge boon to American stability. Well wishing and power fantasies cannot topple geopolitical realities and the fact that Washington will simply never let a Texit take place. The politicians advocating this position should understand that if they go forward with this Texas will gain geopolitical realities worse than those of North Korea. Furthermore, any Texan politician who will seriously put forward legislation for a referendum or soft exit process is likely to decide “to take their own life” as often happens with people who disagree with certain U.S. policies. The people advocating for Texit are naive, they have no idea what they’re actually getting into and just how bad things will be even if they succeed.