Monday, January 25, 2021

The EU is the Friction

The European apparatchiki will have the face of Britain for their two-minute hates, I guess.

Will Europe face friction? 

After Brexit, Britain and the European Union face the Gore Vidal trap. As the waspish American writer once said: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." There is now a powerful political logic pushing both sides to make the relative failure of the other the measure of their own success.

I don't blame Britain for wanting the EU to fail, at least relatively. The British did decide to escape the proto-imperial body before Brussels can strip away the prefix. 

But the EU wants post-Brexit Britain to fail absolutely. It took many decades before Britain admitted that its American colonies were independent. Europe has a way to go in denial and its search for punishment.

The EU spent four years trying to trap the British in a tangled web of a thousand cheese regulations. A local fifth column who wanted to Remain despite the referendum collaborated with the EU. Britain nonetheless escaped. Naturally the EU doesn't want that contagion to spread. 

Everyone should want the European Union to fail.