The EU has a much more precarious future than Britain

The key maxim in any contest, from war to chess, is to project oneself into the situation of one’s opponent and thus assess the respective strengths and weaknesses on either side. Such strategic thinking has been conspicuously absent from the counsels of our leaders, as well as the media and wider public, in negotiating the issue of Brexit.

Both the Brussels nomenklatura and its Remainer fellow travellers in Britain have attempted to create the impression of a mighty coalition of 27 EU states, inflexibly united in purpose and resolute to punish the United Kingdom for its desertion of the European project. To any sensible person that was always a propaganda fantasy. Yet, in the initial stages of Britain’s Article 50 trial by ordeal, a cosmetic appearance of unity among the EU member states was preserved.

How was that achieved? Two main factors contributed to the illusion of EU unity. The first was the decision by Brussels to restrict the first cycle of negotiations to the attempt to extort from Britain, a consistent net contributor to the EU budget for 44 years, an imaginary “debt” of around €100bn (when one is fabricating indebtedness the sum is wholly discretionary). No EU state, whether a net contributor such as Germany or a parasitic basket case such as Greece, was opposed to that banditry, which could only be fiscally beneficial. The Brits were being bled white and, incredibly, submitting to the mugging. What was not to like?

The other factor imposing a patina of unity on the EU was the influence of Angela Merkel, the real head of the Union. Merkel, who learned political discipline in the East German Communist Party, was always in command both of her own CDU party and of disparate and mutually jealous EU leaders. Since 2005 “Brussels” has been a euphemism for Berlin.

The achievement of the Brussels and domestic Remain cliques was to promote the delusion that the EU’s having 27 components was somehow a strength when, in any negotiating context, it is a vulnerability. As soon as the EU bared its fangs and demonstrated its hostility to Britain and determination to subject the United Kingdom to every humiliation within its power, it was a lamentable deficiency on the part of the British government that it failed to retaliate by ruthlessly exploiting every fissure of conflicting interests – and these are myriad – among EU member states.

Whatever became of perfidious Albion, doing unto others before they could do unto us? Instead, our pathetic negotiators have collectively succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome, supinely submitting to Barnier’s demands on every occasion.

The reality is that Britain holds the better cards in this one-sided poker game. We are in the stronger position – it is just not seemly to say so in polite company. There are many factors involved; but one fundamental statistic highlights the imbalance in our favour. Britain’s exports in goods and services to the EU totalled £236bn in 2016; our imports from the EU amounted to £318bn. Britain’s trade deficit with the EU is £82bn and 54 per cent of UK imports are from member states. Our exports to the EU have declined from 54 per cent in 2006 to 43 per cent in 2016.

That is not a commerce our EU trading partners would wish to lose. Brexiteers were naively surprised that German motor manufacturers did not stand up and tell Angela Merkel to stop playing hardball with Britain. Of course they did not: Merkel ran a tight ship and no German corporation wanted to risk the displeasure of the commissar, besides which the bizarrely orchestrated Brexit negotiations had not yet impinged on the topic of trade.

They are scheduled to do so next month and Merkel is now a spent force. She may not even survive as chancellor. Besides the surge building up within the SPD against accepting the coalition deal, her own CDU party is appalled by the number of key ministries she has conceded to gain the appearance of power. She is also in trouble over her irenic relations with Turkey, which the AfD, the official opposition if the coalition deal survives, will skilfully exploit.

The era of German hegemony within the EU is over. The ludicrous Emmanuel Macron sees himself as Europe’s leader in waiting, but this man of straw more closely resembles Napoleon III than Napoleon I. It is only a matter of time before this latest Icarus keeps his fatal rendezvous with the sun.

Europe is riddled with fissiparous divisions. The EU budget is the immediate bone of contention. Britain’s departure will remove 16 per cent of Brussels’ revenue. Yet the Eurocrats have made no provision for reducing their spending. Recently, Sampo Terho, European affairs minister of Finland, warned that his country would not contribute one extra penny to compensate Brussels for Britain’s departure. “When the EU becomes smaller the budget should become smaller,” he said.

He was echoed by the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, who said: “A smaller union means a smaller budget.” The most militant nation on the budget issue is Austria under its new chancellor Christian Kern, a sign of the growing internal EU power shift against the Brussels elites. The latest ploy by some Eurocrats is to suggest the reduced cake should be shared along political lines, with smaller payments going to countries that “disrespect” the rule of law, i.e. Poland and Hungary for rejecting mass immigration and, in the case of Poland, uprooting hereditary communist judges.

This is the Catch 22 increasingly frustrating the EU. Every attempt to assert unity in the face of Brexit provokes further fragmentation. The V4 nations are now semi-detached from Brussels; any punitive action will widen the gulf. Austria is entering into orbit with Poland and Hungary. There is already a faultline running through the European Union in the existence of eurozone and non-euro currency members.

Macron’s mad drive “to go further and faster” by introducing a common budget to the eurozone and a Brussels-based finance minister would severely exacerbate the division of the EU into two tiers. Ironically, the existence of two tiers not only contradicts the principles of the EU’s integrationist founders, but is in itself divisive. Why would anyone, individually or as a nation, want to be a second-class citizen? The clever money is on a combination of the euro currency and the closer integration of the richer member states becoming the force that provokes disintegration.

On the fringes of this potential combustion still lurk the usual suspects: insecure Italian banks, Greece as perennial mendicant, separatist issues in Spain and the relentless advance of anti-globalist political parties threatening to implement the public will rather than the prejudices of the elites. Britain is fortunate to be leaving this death star in the making. If only our government could appreciate that reality, present a firm ultimatum to the deluded megalomaniacs in Brussels and, if denied satisfaction, walk away from this car-crash confederation and forge a sovereign future.