For all of my adult life, support for the European Union has been seen as the mark of a civilised, reasonable and above all compassionate politician. It has guaranteed him or her access to leader columns, TV studios, lavish expense accounts and overseas trips. The reason for this special treatment is that the British establishment has tended to view the EU as perhaps a little incompetent and corrupt, but certainly benign and generally a force for good in a troubled world.
This attitude is becoming harder and harder to sustain, as this partnership of nations is suddenly starting to look very nasty indeed: a brutal oppressor that is scornful of democracy, national identity and the livelihoods of ordinary people. The turning point may have come recently with the latest intervention by Brussels: bureaucrats are threatening to bankrupt an entire country unless opposition parties promise to support the EU-backed austerity plan.
Let's put the Greek problem in its proper perspective. Britain's Great Depression in the Thirties has become part of its national myth. It was the era of soup kitchens, mass unemployment and the Jarrow March, immortalised in George Orwell's wonderful novels and still remembered in Labour Party rhetoric. Yet the fall in national output during the depression — from peak to trough — was never more than 10 per cent.
In Greece, gross domestic product is already down about 13 per cent since 2008, and according to experts is likely to fall a further 7 per cent by the end of this year. In other words, by this Christmas, Greece's depression will have been twice as deep as the infamous economic catastrophe that struck Britain 80 years ago. Yet all the evidence suggests that the European elite could not give a damn. Earlier this week Olli Rehn, the EU's top economist, warned of ‘devastating consequences' if Greece defaults.
Unbearable conditions
Another official was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that Germany, Finland and the Netherlands are ‘losing patience' with Greece, with apparently not even a passing thought for the real victims of this increasingly horrific saga. Though the euro-elite seems not to care, life in Greece, the home of European civilisation, has become unbearable. Perhaps 100,000 businesses have folded, and many more are collapsing. Suicides are sharply up, homicides have reportedly doubled, with tens of thousands being made homeless. Life in the rural areas, which are returning to barter, is bearable. In the towns it is harsh and for minorities — above all the Albanians, who have no rights and have long taken the jobs Greeks did not want — it is terrifying. This is only the start, however.
It is not just families that are suffering — Greek institutions are being torn to shreds. Unlike Britain amid the economic devastation of the thirties, Greece cannot look back towards centuries of more or less stable parliamentary democracy. It is scarcely a generation since the country emerged from a military dictatorship and, with parts of the country now lawless, sinister forces are once again on the rise. It must be said that this disenchantment with democracy has been fanned by the EU's own meddling, and in particular its imposition of Lucas Papademos as a puppet prime minister.
Late last year I was sharply criticised, and indeed removed from a Newsnight studio by a very chilly producer, after I called Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio, a European Union spokesman, "that idiot from Brussels". Well-intentioned intermediaries have since gone out of their way to assure me that Altafaj-Tardio is an intelligent and also a charming man. I have no powerful reason to doubt this, and it should furthermore be borne in mind that he is simply the mouthpiece and paid hireling for Rehn, the Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner I mentioned earlier. But what is more striking by far is the sheer callousness and inhumanity of EU commissioners such as Rehn, as they preside over a Brussels regime that is in the course of destroying what used to be a proud, famous and reasonably well-functioning country.
In these terrible circumstances, how can the British liberal left, which claims to place such value on compassion and decency, continue to support the EU? I am old enough to recall their rhetoric when former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was driving through her monetarist policies as a response to the recession of the early eighties. Many of the attacks were incredibly personal and vicious. The British prime minister was accused of lacking any kind of compassion or humanity. The reality is that Thatcher was an infinitely more compassionate and pragmatic figure than Rehn and his appalling associates. She would never have destroyed an entire nation on the back of an economic dogma.
It can no longer be morally right for Britain to support the European single currency, a catastrophic experiment that is inflicting human devastation on such a scale. Britain has historically stood up for the underdog, but shamefully, George Osborne has steadily lent his support to the Eurozone.
Thus far only one British political leader, UK Indeoendent Partry's Nigel Farage, has had the clarity of purpose to state the obvious — that Greece must be allowed to default and devalue. Leaving all other considerations to one side, humanity alone should press British Prime Minister David Cameron into splitting with Brussels and belatedly coming to the rescue of Greece.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2012
