It is not the British government that is living on another planet but the Europeans, or at least those briefing the anti-Brexit media. I have always resisted falling into the old trap of endless Second World War analogies: they make it impossible to have a sensible discussion.
But I’m finding it increasingly hard to avoid concluding that the EU is actually engaging in a bizarre attempt at reenacting the settlement that followed the First World War: the €100 billion figure is so extreme, so devoid of any rational basis or genuine legal logic that it must be seen as an attempt at imposing reparations on Britain. We are guilty of crimes against the European dream, and must therefore face cruel and unusual punishment.
This is a shocking state of affairs, not least because of what it tells us about the increasingly delusional state of mind of many in Brussels (and even some in Germany), who see us as some sort of weak, vanquished foe ripe for the clobbering.
The last time this sort of idiocy was attempted was in 1919, at the Treaty of Versailles, when a defeated Germany was ordered to accept full responsibility for the war and to pay vast reparations to the allied powers.
A “Reparation Commission” was set up, and Germany was told to pay an immediate 20 billion marks in gold, commodities, ships, securities and other assets, while accepting occupation, oversight and endless humiliations.
John Maynard Keynes called it a Carthaginian peace, likening it to the total subjugation imposed on that Tunisian city-state by Rome. He decried France’s revanchism, and its obsession with extracting tributes from the Germans, and rightly predicted that the whole affair would end in tears in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
History never repeats itself, of course, and we are a successful, powerful nation that won’t be bullied by anybody. But the fact that Juncker is even trying it on should serve as a reminder that the Eurocrats are out of their depth, intellectually as well as practically; far from being accomplished negotiators, they are pathetic amateurs desperate to conceal the fact that they are terrified that the British cash will soon run out. Their arguments are bogus.
The EU isn’t a force for economic freedom. It keeps demonstrating its mercantilism, and explicitly sees trade as a one-way favour, a privilege in return for which money and control (via European-imposed rule and the jurisdiction of its court) must be surrendered.
In reality, trade is always mutually beneficial, and no other “trading block” charges a “fee” for access. The fact that Barnier and his gang want to make us “worse off” by imposing protectionist barriers on UK firms expose them as economic illiterates with no interest in free markets.
