May 072017
 
 May 7, 2017  Posted by at 6:46 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


J.M.W. Turner Old London Bridge 1794

 

The French election, won just now by Emmanuel Macron, put several segments of the French population opposite one another in a pretty fierce contest. And that contest will continue. Because Macron won’t be able to lift the French economy out of its doldrums any more than Le Pen could have, or than Trump can life the US, and the new president will have the honor of presiding over a further and deepening downturn. The French political dividing line was aptly described by Simon Kuper recently:

The ultra-nationalist writer Charles Maurras believed there were “two Frances”. The one he loved was the “pays réel”, the real country: a rural France of church clocks, traditions and native people fused with their ancestral soil. Maurras loathed the “pays légal”, the legal country: the secular republic, which he thought was run by functionaries conspiring for alien interests.

Maurras was born in 1868 and died in 1952. But if he returned on Sunday to witness the French presidential run-off, he would instantly recognise both candidates. He would cast Emmanuel Macron as the incarnation of the “legal France” and Marine Le Pen as embodying the “real” one.

Maurras may have been a questionable character, but that description is not half bad. Once enough people in the country understand the failure of ‘legal’ France, they will want ‘real’ France back. That will be true in countries all over Europe; to a large extent it already is. Marine Le Pen summed up the key issue really well a few days ago when she said of the country post election: “France will be led by a woman, me or Mrs. Merkel.”

There is only one reason the French people would ever tolerate Germany having an outsized influence in their politics and economics: that they feel they benefit from it financially. And yes, if you put it that way, it’s already quite something that they haven’t revolted more and earlier.

The generous unemployment benefits are undoubtedly part of that. But those can’t last. And since the Germans owe their influence in Paris to the EU, it’s obvious how the French will feel they can stop that influence. And then the EU will turn out to be not a peacemaker, but the opposite.

 

Still, as much as France is divided, and as serious as that division is, the country is a shining beacon of unity compared to the UK, where the dividing lines are as manifold as they are laced with toxins. The snap election PM Theresa May called, in just over a month, can do nothing to resolve any of it. That means the EU can do what they want in the Brexit negotiations. Which will therefore be an unparalleled disaster for May and the UK.

The EU can and will ‘have its way’ with the UK for one simple reason: the United Kingdom is anything but United. It makes no difference what the EU does to the UK, the British won’t blame them for it. They will blame each other instead. No matter what happens these days, the British always know in advance who’s to blame, and it’s never themselves; it’s always another group of Brits.

The Tories are deeply divided between pro- and anti-Brexit forces. Labour is divided along those same lines, and adds pro- and anti-Corbyn sentiments for good measure. Other parties don’t really matter much, but they have similar dividing lines as well.

Anti-Corbyn Labour MPs have convinced themselves they know better than pro-Corbyn party members. They’ve kept claiming for so long that Corbyn is unelectable it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They’ll be lucky not to face the fate of their former brethren in François Hollande’s Parti Socialiste, who ended up with just 6% of the vote in the 1st round of the French elections.

PM Theresa May called the snap election for June 8 to hide some of the divisions behind, to make them appear less relevant, or even to profit from them and grab more power. But the very fact that Brexit was voted in, already makes the election nigh irrelevant.

Whoever wins, and it looks certain to be May herself. will open themselves to being scapegoated in a big way. Which won’t keep them from seeking victory, because the loser can expect the same fate. The trenches have been dug, and deeply. Governable? Don’t count on it. It feels more like 40 years later we’re back to Johnny Rotten ‘singing’ Anarchy in the UK.

 

If May threatens to leave the EU ‘cold’ and trigger a ‘Hard Brexit’, she will simultaneously trigger a whole lot more, and much wider, divisions in the country (or is that countries?!), and that’s even without mentioning an entire minefield of legal, and potentially constitutional, issues. The latter especially because Britain doesn’t have an actual -written- constitution.

For Brussels, it’s easy pickings, and pick they will. This week, they casually raised the UK’s cost of leaving the EU to €100 billion, from estimates varying from €40 billion to €60 billion before. Paddy Power and its equally powerful bookie ilk soon won’t be taking any bets below, say, €150 billion. In that regard, and many others, the EU will do to the UK what it is doing to Greece.

The only way to stand up against that is to show a common front. But there will be no such thing in the Divided Kingdom, not for a long time. Everyone has their favorite scapegoat, for some it’s Nigel Farage, for others David Cameron, George Osborne, Tony Blair, Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May. And nobody is going to leave their blame trenches. They’re the only places they feel somewhat comfortable, less scared, in.

 

Theresa May, if the polls are to be believed -and given the divisions we might for once-, will have to sit down and negotiate with the multi-headed Hydra that is the EU, ‘strengthened’ by a major election victory, but she will find it the ultimate Pyrrhic victory, because Brussels will have a ball playing her divided ‘nation’.

Scotland can probably easily be seduced with the carrot of EU membership, but more importantly, Juncker and his people can cast doubt on the entire Brexit vote, and they will have many interested takers.

The Brexit negotiations will take at least 2 years. But it could be 3 or 4 years, who knows? May has no power over that duration, unless she walks. She won’t. And as things are drawn out, Juncker et al have all the time and opportunities they want to tell both May and the British public that Brussels has no intention of punishing them, but will have to do so anyway.

After all, Brexit is a threat to the entire European project, and all the leaders of the 27 remaining nations, as well as the vast majority of their domestic opposition parties, are behind that project, no questions asked. And the many thousands of people working their very well-paid jobs in Brussels and Strasbourg are not too critical either.

All in all, the British need to wake up and smell the roses as long as there are any left, and before they have been replaced with less savory odors. Or they will have to seriously wonder whether the Kingdom, united or not, can outlive the Queen, aka the London Bridge.

 

 

“London Bridge is Down” was recently revealed as the secret UK government code for the moment the Queen dies.

 

 

 

 

Home Forums London Bridge is (Broken) Down

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  • #34028

    J.M.W. Turner Old London Bridge 1794   The French election, won just now by Emmanuel Macron, put several segments of the French population opposi
    [See the full post at: London Bridge is (Broken) Down]

    #34029
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    One borrows money to fix the London Bridge, so the financiers are doing quite well, thank you.

    The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
    ~Lord Acton

    “The true equation is ‘democracy’ = government by world financiers…The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. Enthroned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understanded [sic] of the people.”
    J.R.R. Tolkien,
    Candour Magazine, 13 July 1956, p. 12

    Collapsing the world’s economies IS THE PLAN OF THE DEBT-MONEY MONOPOLISTS. Their Mega-Corporate fronts are TBTF&JAIL and they will mop up all the other bankrupt people, companies, and governments.

    Order out of chaos…

    This ex-Dutch high level banking insider reveals a LOT about the inner workings of the Debt-Money Monopolist system…

    Banker: I Was Told to Sacrifice Children at a Debt-Money Monopolist] Illuminati Party
    https://themillenniumreport.com/2017/04/dutch-banker-i-was-told-to-sacrifice-children-at-an-illuminati-party/

    “Unite, unite, come together, and this entire shit story ceases to exist. That’s how fast this could happen.”
    ~Ronald Bernard

    Ephesian 5:11 – And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

    But they can’t unite because NOBODY IS TELLING THEM THE TRUTH EN MASSE.

    Omitting the truth on behalf of the drug running, terrorist financing, white slave running, child slave running, child sacrificing Luciferian Debt-Money Monopolists is aiding and abetting the Dark Side… One can’t serve both God and mammon… or the Debt-Money Monopolists that CONTROL mammon.

    Pick a side – because “lukewarm” isn’t good enough.

    #34030

    First time I’ve commented here in a long while:

    I’m the the UK. These past few years I have had to concentrate really hard to have a grip on finance, geopolitics and globalisation. My current understanding of the situation let me to vote for Brexit, chiefly in order to try to sever one on the controlling links of the EU from the US which affect NATO and therefore the hegemonic wars such as in Ukraine, Syria. As someone who originates from the left / green, my current stance on BREXIT would have been almost unthinkable to me ten years ago. most of my friends and family share a similar political background and I can’t even mention that Le Pen seems less dangerous to me as a nationalist than Macron does as a globalist.

    If I discuss Brexit with my peers then they fly into a rage out of proportion to the implications of leaving a political union (which is all it is, after all). These same people happily talk about local democracy and the problems of globalism without noticing the irony.

    The problem with me and my peers isn’t that we have different basic political ideals, it’s that we are conditioned differently, receiving our news and ideas from different sources. Differently brainwashed if you like. That’s really quite solvable in time. The rage in my friends comes from cognitive dissonance, I think. I don’t have too much of that left now, having already had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about the world.

    #34032
    tabarnick
    Participant

    France, united?

    This presidential election has shattered the French political world. Enough has been said about the Front National. Macron is a one-man party. The socialist party has been wiped out to an extent one wonders if it will ever bounce back. The France of old, bourgeois, conservative and, surprisingly for France, unapologetically catholic made an unexpected resurgence lately, seemed headed for glory with Villon but went down with Penelopegate. Then there is the incredible electoral success of Mélenchon: the extreme left scored almost 20%, a score the communist party never achieved in the 70s back in the heyday of the hard left, in those days when communism still mattered among the intelligentsia. And all of these factions hate each other. France used to have a reputation for fun, joie de vivre, but the country of Gay Paree, the country of glücklich wie Gott in Frankreich is now a deeply unhappy country, nothing works, the country is sinking and no one knows why or what to do about it, or rather there are several explanations but no consensus. Is it immigration, racism, globalization, the euro, unions, Brussels, red tape, taxes, islamism, or the liberalization of the economy?

    #34033
    Nassim
    Participant

    “Another Arctic ice panic over as world temperatures plummet”


    #34144
    jameslivinginlondon
    Participant

    Nonsense. Just nonsense. You have no idea of the mood in the UK around this. The solid ‘Remain’ vote is now down to 20%. May is going to trounce the rest in the election. You obviously have no idea how ordinary Brits feel about this. Dear oh dear.

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