Imagine the courage and fortitude, borne of desperation, it requires to embark on a do or die attempt to cross the sea in a dinghy from a land where you’ve already been met with the fist of fury rather than the hand of friendship, to another land where more hostility and rage awaits your arrival.

Then imagine that no matter the hostility that awaits you at the end of this perilous voyage, it pales when compared to the horrors you managed to escape in your country of origin, horrors borne of the conflict, chaos and societal collapse underwritten at least in part by the foreign policy of the very country you are trying to reach for asylum and sanctuary.

To witness news crews from the BBC and Sky News sailing around some of those trying to reach British shores in these dinghies is to witness the funeral of the UK as the beacon of decency, human rights and civilisation it’s proponents have long extended themselves in arguing it is. Now, in this time of toxic Brexit nationalism, the mask has been ripped off to reveal the ugly face of a state whose brutality and barbarity is entrenched in its very DNA.

There is no flag big enough to cover the shame of the hysteria that’s been whipped up by the army of bigots who’ve poisoned our politics in recent years, chief among them Nigel ‘pint and fag’ Farage. He’s so unpleasant that it wouldn’t be a surprise to find that even his own shite can’t stand him. Competing with him in the toxicity stakes is a government of privately educated thugs, with Home Secretary Priti Patel in particular doing a great impression of a woman whose preferred perfume is poison. Her announcement of the appointment of a Clandestine Channel Threat Commander to tackle this ‘invasion force’ of desperate migrants and refugees is straight out of a spoof Bond movie.

Interesting to note in the midst of this current crisis that the baton as Leader of the Opposition (the real opposition that is) has over time been passed from Piers Morgan to Man Utd’s Marcus Rashford and now to the Twitter account of Ben & Jerry’s UK. One twitter thread in opposition to this rancid government’s war on dinghy-borne refugees from this account has done more to ruffle its feathers than Sir Keir Starmer and his desultory shadow cabinet has done in all the time they’ve been in post.

Hey @PritiPatel we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture. We pulled together a thread for you..

— Ben & Jerry’s UK (@benandjerrysUK) August 11, 2020

Migration and migrants have for far too long been a grotesque distraction from the real enemy without and within in Britain. Those are billionaires from across the world whose preferred destination is London, where the living is easy and ill gotten gains are turned into welcome donations to the Conservative Party, and a political and media establishment that has succeeded in putting the cruel into Cruel Britannia. Over 65,000 excess deaths in the UK during Covid-19 due to the criminal negligence of this execrable crew who are currently in power, and the worst recession just announced of any G7 country.

And if this isn’t enough to have you choking on your cornflakes, the government’s furlough scheme ends in October with Brexit set to materialise just two months later.

But just we head for a hard Brexit with no parachute, we are also thankfully headed for the sundering of this prolonged experiment in colonialism and mercantilism. The most recent YouGov poll at this writing reveals for the fourth poll running a decisive majority in support of independence in Scotland. With another YouGov poll revealing that a majority of Britons have no sympathy for the migrants trying to reach the UK across the Channel, we now have it confirmed that Scotland and England are two distinct countries with distinct and different cultural values and sense of national identity.

With this in mind, let Brexit Britain take the bigots and let an independent Scotland take the migrants.

As the man said, “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.”

End.

medium.com

Southern European countries, led by Italy and Spain, with the half-hearted help of France, lost yet another battle to their Northern neighbors at the Eurogroup, the Germany-dominated, informal gathering of the Eurozone finance ministers.

Last Thursday, just before the long Easter weekend, the Eurogroup agreed, after three days of talks, on a € 540 Billion rescue package to deal with the economic consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The devil, as always, is in the detail – of the resulting Eurogroup statement.

To the dismay of Italy and Spain there was no mention of Eurobonds. No sharing of the economic consequences of the pandemic. No liquidity injections by the BCE. On offer was only the much-dreaded European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

Meet the Beast

The ESM was created in 2012, and its dubious claim to fame came in 2015, with the negotiations over the Greek-debt crisis.

The ”About us“ section of its website explains: “The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was set up as an international financial institution by the euro area Member States to help euro area countries in severe financial distress”.

Next, we learn how such a helping hand perform its charitable work: “It provides emergency loans but in return, countries must undertake reform programs.”

Hence the ESM is an international lender, whose financial assistance comes with strings attached – just like the loans of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Troika Horse Steps In

Not by coincidence the IMF is itself involved in drawing such “reform programs”, and constitutes, together with the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB), the Troika.

To be eligible for ESM loans, a Member State has to commit to Troika-dictated reform programs: known, in typical Brussels Spout, as “conditionality”.

Like a bankrupt company, the financially assisted State goes into a sort of controlled administration, with the Troika acting as the insolvency administrator.

“Debt-restructuring” follows. This is EUrwellien newspeak for the Tax-and-Cut austerity policies that we’ve seen before. Tax the working and middle classes cut the welfare state and civil service.

Greece has suffered this fate since 2008, leading to a debt-crisis, soaring unemployment, widespread poverty and to the loss of “over one fourth” of its gross domestic product.

Berlin tricks Rome: no conditions, at one condition

Needless to say, the very mentioning of ESM and “conditionality” (=Troika austerity policies) has become political dynamite in Italy.

The Italian ruling coalition comprises two main parties: the staunchly pro-EU, pro-NATO, center-left PD (the Italian Dems); and the left-populist Five Stars Movement. The latter is fiercely opposed to the ESM.

Under pressure by Five Stars MPs’, Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte descrined the ESM as an “absolutely inadequate instrument” to solve Italy’s financial crisis, and repeatedly said he would never sign it.

Conte pushed for Eurobonds, and even tried to persuade the German public to accept them by giving interviews to Germany’s first channel ARD, and to Germany’s biggest selling daily newspaper Bild Zeitung.

To no avail. Germany and Holland, which led the Northern opposition to the Eurobonds (a sort of EU wide public debt), were unmovable.

Defeated, and before an incensed opposition, Conte and his finance minister, Roberto Gualtieri, claimed to have at least obtained a conditionality-free ESM.

Again, the devil lies in the detail of the Eurogroup’s statement. Member states may access ESM funds without conditionality – wait for it – at one condition: to cover the additional health expenditure only!

Regarding the economic and financial consequences of the COVID-19 crisis – subventions for hard hit companies, unemployment benefits, etc. – the ESM comes with the usual conditionality.

And with it, we are back to the Troika, and the dreaded Greek scenario.

Looming Italexit?

The Italian government however made a key mistake in pushing for Eurobonds, according to economics professor Alberto Bagnai, who chairs the parliamentary committee for Italian state finances.

In an interview to the independent web TV Byoblue prof. Bagnai explained how Eurobonds are inadequate, as a financial instrument, to deal with the current crisis – for two reasons:

“Firstly, because German and Dutch governments have always opposed an EU-wide debt mutualisation – Eurobonds are simply something those governments could never justify before their voters.”

“Secondly, Eurobonds would require putting together a technical-political structure in charge with issuing them – this alone would take several months, while the Italian people and business are now at home without work and without benefits, and thus need immediate help”

By putting forward an even more inadequate – and dangerous – tool like the ESM, the EU in turn shows that it really aims at bankrupting the Italian state:

“The only body that can quickly intervene by putting liquidity in the system is the European Central Bank. Either it does so, or it proves to be useless”

“With the ESM as the only means for Italy to obtain the liquidity it needs, the way is open for a restructuring of the Italian public debt, and with it, the Troika would finally be able to strip Italy of its savings and assets.”

Hence Italy might have to choose between a Greek and a Brexit scenario.

Already now, half the Italians (49%), according to a recent survey, want to leave the EU. Even more significative: the percentage of Pro-Remains has gone down from 71% in November 2018 to 51% in April 2020.

If elections were held now, a right-wing, Eurosceptic coalition would easily win.

In its attempt to force Rome under the Troika, so Germany and other EU countries can pillage Italian savings ad assets, the EU is quickly losing favour among Italian people – and might eventually lose Italy as a member state.

And that assault comes with the most innocuous name. Mini-BOT. Mini-BOTs were originally the idea of former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis to assist Greece get out of the stranglehold placed on it by the euro.

What is a mini-BOT? It is a small denomination (mini) Bill of Treasury (BOT) that can be issued by, in this case, the Italian government to act as a domestic currency for settling government debts, paying taxes, etc.

It would be a parallel currency which could circulate freely domestically at a discount to the euro which would work as a medium of exchange to reflect the reality of the Italian economy better than the euro does.

The euro’s value is dominated by Germany’s economy. And, in short, by being so the euro overvalues Italy’s labor pool and undervalues Germany’s. Gresham’s Law states under-valued money is hoarded and over-valued spent. In Italy the euro is hoarded. In Germany it is spent. This is why Germany runs such a massive trade surplus against the other members of the euro-zone.

Italy (and Greece, Portugal, Spain and others) need a currency that can circulate to properly support domestic trade.

By mispricing Italian labor via the euro it keeps the goods produced in Italy uncompetitive on the world market. Italy’s central bank can only issue euro-denominated debt which trades at rates far lower than it should, enhancing Germany’s position.

The Italian economy, like Greece’s, is also strangled by the cost of servicing its national debt denominated in euros. This keeps the demand for money within the economy high for debt servicing purposes and its circulation low.

Low circulation equals low trade and a sluggish economy. The EU’s budget rules favor paying off creditors first and tending to the Italian economy second. The ‘austerity’ imposed on euro-zone members, because of this mispricing of both the debt and the euro itself, becomes doubly harsh when the euro rises, sucking the life out of the debtor nation.

As the currency rises, the value of the debt rises versus the labor it is a claim against also rises. Then the country’s creditors need a bailout, which they get. The debt gets ‘restructured’ to put the debtor on an even-longer dated hamster wheel of repayment and some of it gets paid off in the form of national assets now trading at a fraction of its real value.

The mini-BOT seeks to reverse this process by allowing the Italian treasury to issue them as interest-bearing small bills which can be used to purchase goods and services in the Italian market but which will also be redeemable to pay for government services and taxes.

Doing this bypasses the euro completely and these will trade at a discount to the euro, thereby setting a proper exchange rate for Italy’s economy relative to Europe’s as a whole and increasing money velocity.

This is what Salvini and Di Maio are in favor of and what they will likely introduce soon.

And it is imperative that you understand what this means for the European Union. It is an existential threat to the current Germany-dominated political order. The main purpose of the euro was do to exactly what we have seen since its introduction, create a structural advantage for German industry through which Germany’s political class can dominate the EU itself. It was specifically designed to roll up the wealth of the continent in this way, bankrupt countries less competitive than Germany and keep them that way trapped within this single currency regime.

Laying aside my myriad and sundry libertarian and Austrian economics-based objections to this system of debt-based fiat currency, the current structure of the euro is even more monstrous than that of the individual currencies themselves. But, the Mini-BOT is a stop-gap measure on the road back to monetary and fiscal sanity. Not perfect, but the right first step.

Italy’s sovereignty-focused government, an outgrowth of the desperation of the Italian people, understand this dynamic at a deep level. It is why Salvini and Di Maio have attacked Brussels on the issue of the budget rules, tax cuts and infrastructure spending while soft-pedaling to the Italian people their radical agenda, which is to force a reorganization of power in Brussels or, failing that, take Italy out of the euro completely.

I have been arguing for over two years now since Matteo Salvini came onto the scene as a major player in Italian politics that his best path for success is to always and consistently put Brussels into the position of the bad guy.

Breach a budget rule here, detain some human traffickers there.

Each time the EU responds in the most predictable way, Salvini gains popularity and his arguments against Brussels’ unwillingness to listen gain credence.

And what scares Brussels the most is not what they say do – an increase in Italy’s debt, unsustainable spending, etc. Italy is nearly unsalvageable under a euro-only currency regime. No, what EU leadership fears the most is that this parallel domestic currency system of the mini-BOT actually works.

Because once it does it will show the rest of Europe just how corrupt and vindictive EU leadership is. As if Brexit talks haven’t exposed this fundamental truth to them already. And once that happens, the future of the EU itself comes into sincere doubt.

From what I understand, through anecdotal evidence, Salvini and Di Maio are going to move quickly on the mini-BOT, not just as a threat but as a real thing.

And their problems now lie with who I call the Troika of Technocrats who hold the positions to block their plans – President Sergei Mattarella, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Finance Minister Giovanni Tria.

These are all the epitome of the Italian Swamp. They work for the old guard political order in Italy who, like most of the political establishment in the U.K., work for Brussels.

They will try to take down the Italian government before the mini-BOT becomes more than a discussion in parliament. Conte already threatened to resign over this issue. You’ll notice he didn’t do so.

And that to me is a huge tell. Conte bluffed Salvini and lost. Because with Di Maio in charge of Five Star and the poll numbers where they are, the Troika could all easily be removed if they take down the government (see my article linked above for the tactical situation).

If Salvini did it, it would hurt him. But, again, Salvini is way too sharp an operator to fall for that trap. So it will have to come from President Mattarella and Prime Minister Conte, if it comes at all.

They have to move quickly to get the Mini-BOT in place. Europe’s finances are unraveling quickly. The ECB is looking at lowering rates again once Mario Draghi exits the stage to leave the mess for his replacement.

Deutsche Bank is looking to spin off a small portion of its bad assets into a Bad Bank while Germany’s economy continues cratering and a hard Brexit is looking more and more likely.

None of these things are euro positive and none of them help the EU in its fight to keep Italy in the fold.

Italy will need the mini-BOT once this huge move into sovereign debt is over. It is rapidly becoming the most over-crowded trade in history with nearly $12 trillion in debt now carrying a negative return.

For now, Draghi and the rest of the would-be oligarchs in Brussels are in denial about what Salvini and Di Maio are planning. They won’t be once the power struggle for Italy’s government takes center stage in September when the budget is proposed, Brussels tries to impose fines and Salvini starts selling mini-BOTs.

You shouldn’t have to wonder how the markets are going to respond to that.

The Euroskeptics got a lot of press in the run up to these elections and the final result was pretty much in line with expectations, with a couple of exceptions. The pro-EU left lost a lot more ground in Sweden than expected but the Dutch People’s Party were rejected thoroughly in the Netherlands.

Otherwise the polls were mostly in line with the results. And while the early spin tried to put a brave face on results in the U.K. and France Marine Le Pen outpolling sitting president Emmanuel Macron just two years after he beat her in the presidential election is notable.

The results in the U.K. were a microcosm of the trends we’re seeing across Europe. The major parties, both campaigning from the center, lost the confidence of the people on both sides of the divisive Brexit argument.

Those that want Brexit in no uncertain terms bolted to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party while those fed up with Labour’s indecision on not only Brexit but a host of other issues bolted for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

And a lot of those seats that would have went to the Social Democrats via Labour in the European Parliament now belong to Guy Verhofstadt and ALDE.

But the U.K. isn’t alone in this splitting along ideological lines. Germany has seen the collapse of the Social Democrats give spark to the Greens there as well. The Greens outpolled Angela Merkel’s Grand Coalition partners by more than five points, coming in 2^nd behind the CDU/CSU with 20.5%.

And this is the takeaway. Governing from the center by trying to mask what the EU actually is versus what it was sold as isn’t working. Merkel had to ‘un-retire’ as leader of the CDU to stop the bleeding, thinking she’d weathered the worst of the storm posed by Euroskeptics like Alternative for Germany, who regressed from their 2017 election result with 11%.

The strong performance in countries that are pro-EU by parties that want more integration of Europe, as represented by the gains of ALDE and the Green alliances, was offset by a harder, more confrontational brand of Euroskepticism as represented by Brexit, Hungary’s Fidesz and Italy’s Lega.

Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Nigel Farage’s Brexit are now the best represented parties in the European Parliament. Both are on a collision course with EU leadership intent on squashing both of them.

The full results weren’t even reported officially, and European President Donald Tusk was out in the media calling “Brexit the vaccine for Euroskepticism.” This is him doubling down on the fear tactics of what will happen to anyone who dares think about trying to leave the EU.

The problem for Tusk, of course, is that the political establishment in the U.K. is fraying badly and will not be able to hold onto power through the end of the year.

With this disastrous result one would expect the Tories to dissolve government out of shame, similar to what Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (not a guy with an ounce of shame, mind you) did after losing to New Democracy.

But that won’t happen. And it is obvious why. Brussels and Westminster are still scheming to scuttle Brexit and blunt the rise of Farage from riding a sovereigntist wave into 10 Downing Street later in the year.

Because Labour was so thoroughly rebuked after leader Jeremy Corbyn was suckered into backing a second referendum he doesn’t dare call for a No-Confidence Vote against the government as there’s little chance of him winning a General Election with anything other than an unworkable coalition.

There will be, however, a challenge to his leadership in the near future as the political class in London have been itching to get rid of Corbyn and put one of Tony Blair’s hand-picked globalists back in charge.

A drubbing like Labour just took should be all the impetus they need to pull the plug.

For now, we’ll have to sit through a ridiculous glamour party as the Tories try to figure out who wants to captain its Titanic with an iceberg dead ahead set for impact on Halloween.

But since these elections didn’t end up with an upside surprise for the Euroskeptic parties overall, the usual suspects in Brussels will wrongly take that as a vote of confidence to thwart any reforms to their European project.

Tusk’s statement was aimed directly at his own Polish government as well as Salvini in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary. The EU’s counterattack already began for Italy with the EU threatening to fine Italy $4 billion it doesn’t have for violating budget rules. This came one day after Salvini was handed a loaded gun by voters to oppose EU austerity.

Germany voted for Merkel et.al. to stay the course if not accelerate the program and Italy voted otherwise.

This is a perfect example of why, ultimately, the EU is an unworkable project that should never have been allowed to get to this stage of political integration. Had it simply stayed a free-trade zone like what is on offer in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) it would have been successful.

But that was never the agenda. The agenda was always to create a transnational superstate with no regard for the will of the people it governed. And for years these people were lied to about what the EU was and what its goals were.

And now that they see it some have embraced it and others have rejected it.

That’s why the center can no longer hold and why in the very near future mere anarchy will be loosed upon it because of the hubris of those who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

If we give all Eurosceptics/Conservatives/Right Wingers a free pass and count them as part of this big win for the Right then they have ~171 out of 751 seats – a tiny minority that can be absolutely crushed by pro-system block votes. Furthermore, in our current political system(s) that we live in, we are all at the mercy of the insanity of party-based systems that lack mechanisms to force members of a given party to behave according to their advertised principles. Meaning, that none of these seats that have been won by so the so-called “Right” are guaranteed to vote for those principles, so the actual amount of true Eurosceptics and Patriots is probably vastly lower than ~171. (This number could be counted a few ways but it is always a small minority)

Despite the way the Mainstream Media makes elections results look, changes in party balances and people’s voting habits are generally incremental and not radical. There are exceptions, but most shifts in voting results are best measured in single digit percentages. So from a long-term standpoint, a few more election cycles of this nature could actually yield a real change in EU Parliament dynamics. The question is whether Europe can survive 20+ years till it gets a Parliament against the bizarre and self-destructive economic/migration/military policies that have been forced upon it.

These electoral results (plus events like the Yellow Vest protests in/around France) should be used politically not for the future opportunity to have more Eurosceptics sit in a big room watching their countries be murdered bureaucratically, but to make a strong case for the total and obvious legitimacy of Eurosceptic/Traditionalist views in mainstream political discourse.

Legitimacy is very important. Only “legitimate” viewpoints get to go on TV, get discussed by hundreds of politicians in ugly blue chairs in a big room, and have the chance to become law. This is the historical moment when the sceptics can push the Overton window in the EU far in their own direction so they can finally get a piece of its territory. Using this newfound legitimacy to attain media exposure is critical if they want to have any hope of winning over the Euro-normies.

These Right forces need to work out all their talking points to answer the now boring and ridiculous (although firmly mainstream) views that migration control is racist, that loving your culture is hateful and that taxing the middle-class to death builds wealth. The Liberal elite that rules today was very good at establishing the right talking points and propaganda strategies to intellectually annihilate traditional Christian Europe. Now it is their turn to play defense as their way of doing things has proved to have its own very different set of blatant failings.

One small but important measure towards legitimacy is starting to do away with the term Eurosceptic, because more often than not scepticism can be portrayed as irrational. Sceptics stand against what is an accepted reasonable norm and this is generally a weak and scary (for normies) position to promote. Furthermore, the position of “against” is always weaker than presenting a clear and exciting positive vision of one’s ideology. Counteroffers are stronger than just saying the word “no” to everything.

The second logical step would be to attack the mainstream EU political position with justified allegations of racism and bigotry. In many ways it is the European mainstream who sees the world entirely through race, presenting Non-Europeans as inherently helpless victims. The Right needs to reject this 21^st century “White Man’s Burden” and offer up a worldview were Europeans respect themselves and have respect for others, seeing people in Africa and the Middle-East as equally competent and responsible for developing their own society themselves without Euro-interference. The Right’s offer needs to be clear – mutual respect between the world’s cultures and human dignity instead of cultural masochism, forced tolerance and open borders.

To put it bluntly now is the time for them to sell their recently electorally legitimized Euro-vision that doesn’t look anything like the current suicidal “Eurovision”, because their gained Parliament seats will not yield any major policy gains. Their opponents’ (the status quo’s) job is to make sure that perception of the Right continues to show them as cooky irrational marginal “sceptics” whose backward hateful beliefs are intellectually from the Dark Ages, that have no place whatsoever in serious public discourse.

A policy which she herself has had to pull back on. And no matter how far Merkel has changed her stance and acceded to the reality of the damage her policy has created, Orban is still guilty of the sin of non-compliance.

Actually, he’s guilty of a whole lot more than that. Because Orban has not only stepped on the third-rail of European politics he’s stomped up and down while taking a massive dump on it.

That third-rail, of course, is naming names. Naming the very person who controls so much of EU policy through his co-opting large swaths of the European parliament.

That person, of course, is George Soros.

Now there is a push, ahead of May’s European Parliamentary elections, to kick Orban’s dominant Fidesz party out of the European People’s Party (EPP), a nominal center-right coalition and the largest single party within the EU parliament.

And with each victory over Soros Orban grows even bolder. After a successful re-election campaign predicated on the slogan, “Don’t Let Soros Win,” Orban has banned Soros’ major NGO, Open Society Foundation, as well as forced out his Central European University.

But his biggest sin was equating outgoing European Commission President Jean-Claude “When things get tough you have to lie” Juncker with Soros’ attempts to weaken Hungary’s border.

His reward for this, and building a border fence which thwarts Soros and Merkel’s tactic of tying immigrants in the host country in legal limbo for years by being inset from Hungary’s actual border, has been an Article 7 procedure opened up against Hungary for not abiding by the EU’s position on human rights.

Poland is in similar hot water with Merkel but thanks to one of the few reasonable things within the EU’s framework, each country can use the other to veto the actual censuring and concomitant removal of voting rights within the Union that comes with the full application of Article 7.

But this article isn’t really about Orban’s latest troubles with the faux democrats within the EU parliament. It’s about how scared those people are of the rise in Euroskeptics like Orban across the continent ahead of May’s elections.

Orban’s potential expulsion from the EPP is just another symptom of this fear. Recently, France’s Marine Le Pen, found out that the trial against her for tweeting out images of ISIS beheadings back in 2015, will go forward with the potential of landing her in jail for three years.

This is not much different than the kidnapping charge Sicilian prosecutors tried to bring against Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of Lega and all-around bad boy Matteo Salvini in Italy. This was a lame attempt to split Italy’s Euroskeptic coalition and keep it focused on internal trivialities versus mounting a real challenge in May’s elections.

The same is true now for Le Pen. Her National Rally party is polling within the margin of error of President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche with a real chance to send a plurality of French Euroskeptic MEPs to Brussels in a couple of months.

Merkel is struggling with the same thing. And even though support for Alternative for Germany (AfD) has waned in recent polling, down to just 13%, don’t underestimate the voters’ desire to send a strong message to Brussels by voting in stronger numbers for the new or alternative parties rather than how they would vote for them at home.

We’ve seen this in the past with UKIP who shocked everyone in the last European elections in 2014 with the size of the vote for them. It never translated into domestic momentum as typical prisoner’s dilemma concerns are more prevalent in Britain’s majoritarian voting system.

But for the EU parliament where the two-party system doesn’t hold sway and the direct benefits are harder to make a case to voters for, it’s much more likely voters will loosen up a little and throw their support for a smaller, less established party.

And that, along with some serious miscalculations about Brexit which I’ll get to in a minute, has the power elite in European political circles very scared. So scared that they are willing to devote serious resources in Quixotic endeavors of dubious value.

Expelling Orban from the EPP will only give him more strength. It will only give Euroskeptics more ammunition. Orban, like Salvini, revels in being the outsider. He’ll use it to rally others across Eastern Europe and pull a few more seats into that orbit.

According to the latest polling, which you can find an up-to-date tally of here, Euroskeptic parties will take between 215 and 225 seats out of the 705 up for grabs, assuming Britain actually leaves and doesn’t stand for MEP elections, which at this point doesn’t look likely.

If reports are true that Prime Minister Theresa May cut a deal with Merkel in July of last year on the withdrawal agreement. And if that agreement was structured so as to ease the way for the U.K. to rejoin the EU later are true, then there is no way Mrs. May will be able to forestall Brexit on WTO terms at this point, even if it takes another 90 days to do so.

A report from the Bruges Group, since taken down, had the details (see link above). And we’ll know if this is the case if suddenly Theresa May agrees to step aside as Prime Minister just after March 29^th whether or not Britain leaves.

Because she will have either failed to scuttle Brexit and be sacrificed to save the Tories. Or she steps aside for a true Brexiteer in the event of Parliament voting for an extension.

We’ll know this was the case if she does so.

Lots of ifs, I know, but right now everyone is doing the Juncker-Two-Step, lying and cajoling to maintain the status quo and continue forward towards further European integration.

Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank did his part, going full dove for the rest of 2019 to keep markets from imploding.

And if Brexit is settled on WTO terms that opens up their worst nightmare going forward.

Watch Viktor Orban smile the smile of the just at that point.