If you’re old enough to remember black and white movies, you’re likely old enough to remember Larry, Curly and Moe. The Three Stooges.
If you’re not, then Google them and watch some YouTube clips. You’ll soon get the picture that they’re about as useful as a fork when it’s raining soup. A spoon is what you need.
Around the same time as the Three Stooges were enjoying the waning rays of their heyday, the then United States president, Robert Kennedy, was visiting his family’s old homestead in County Wexford, in the south east of Ireland, just where it turns a corner if you were to look at a map on the bottom right side. And to mark that occasion, every year since then over the past six decades, there’s a gathering of intelligentsia, putting forward the best democratic theories, analysts doing their parsing, and experts doing their extolling on all things in the news. It’s a place of tall foreheads and nodding knowers.
This year is no exception. Anytime there’s a gathering of tall foreheads and nodding knowers, the subject of Brexit inevitably rears its ugly head — and a headache it truly is for anyone and everyone trying to come to grips with the complete madness of it all.
So, enter Larry, Curly and Moe.
There’s one thing you can say about the Irish: Even though they live on an island beyond another island beyond the continent of Europe, they are firm supporters of the European project, the European Union (EU), the Common Agriculture Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, the European Economic Area, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Consilium, the European Social Development Fund ... the list is endless, the end listless.
All things EU are loved in Ireland. Why? Well, let’s just say that they have been net benefiters of the whole European project. Before they joined the Common Market, as it was back then, there wasn’t a straight mile of road anywhere in the country, farming incomes were a pittance, agriculture was in shambles, industry was backward, government was inward looking, and it was a Third World nation looking for second chances. And the only thing that was first class were the carriages on trains running to Belfast.
One man who knows only all too well of the impact of joining the EU on Ireland is Phil Hogan. Right now, Hogan is the EU Commissioner of Agriculture and Rural Affairs — in effect the minister of agriculture for the EU.
Given that one third of every euro in the economy of Europe is tied up in agriculture in one way or another, he’s a man with a huge impact on farming and its impact on how the entire European project works.
Hogan too hails from County Kilkenny, and has been in elected politics since he was 22. He’s also a rarity in elected politics in that he’s a straight shooter, a man who calls a spade a spade. Indeed, politics now needs more men like him, someone who doesn’t suffer fools lightly, and everyone knows there’s a lot of fools around nowadays.
Which is where Larry, Curly and Moe comes in.
Last week, Hogan was the speaker of note at that Kennedy alumni gathering. And as a man true to his calling, he called it as he saw it on Brexit.
And if there are Britons who think for a single minute that they’re going to get the EU to move an inch — or even 2.54 centimetres — on any of the demands Prime Minister Theresa May has managed to put down on paper long enough for her hard-line Brexiteers to reject it, they are well and truly sadly mistaken.
And if Hogan is right, that Chequers plan any isn’t worth that piece of paper it’s written on anyway.
At Wexford, Hogan likened Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage as Larry, Curly and Moe — and warned that May’s plan is dead. As a politician who has made all the right moves to occupy one of the most senior chairs at any table in Brussels never mind the Commission itself, he knows a thing or two about the workings of the EU.
Simply put, Brussels will do anything and everything necessary to protect the freedoms it has been built upon over the past 60 years, and it will not do nor sign any agreement with London that will damage the bloc in any way.
The fundamental issue is that everything that the EU stands for and has achieved, is based on the four fundamental freedoms guaranteeing the movement of labour, goods, trade and services.
And that’s it.
Chequers envisages that the Brits will somehow be able to cherry pick these and take what it wants, being able to limit workers. That is piffle, Hogan says — but his vocabulary and choice of words is far stronger and colourful than that.
“Absurdist” was one word he used to describe the May government position.
Hogan is a man who’s tight in political terms and in a working relation with Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission. That’s why his words need to be heeded by May — and a lot of other Brits too.
“Don’t be misguided by those extremists riding the wrecking ball and calling for the EU’s disappearance,” Hogan says. “Don’t be misled by the rhetoric of Mr Johnson, Mr Farage and Mr Rees-Mogg. They like to see themselves as the Three Musketeers. They are more like the Three Stooges.”
Few will be laughing come March 29 next.
