WHO IS VOLKER KAUDER?

AS THE EURO CRISES continues apace, an unfamiliar German has started abusing us. He is Volker Kauder of Angela Merkle’s Christian Democrat Party; and he seems quite upset with the UK. He accuses us of ‘Only going after [our]own benefit, and refusing to contribute, is not the message we’re letting the British get away with.’

                He later put it more succinctly accusing us of  "only defending [our] own interests", and, in the language of an earlier period in German history said that the European nations were speaking German in that they are backing Chancellor Merkle’s diktats.

                I do not know how well regarded this buffoon is in German politics; but he has done the Eurosceptic cause in the UK a great deal of good. The likes of poor old Nick Clegg, who is struggling to keep the vision of the Greater Europe alive, must be banging his head hard against his copy of the Lisbon Treaty, which he has had engraved in concrete in his back garden as a show of solidarity and a replacement for his much beloved gnome.

                Germany ( and here I mean its people) have seen their hard earned taxes poured away, like so much dirty dishwater, in order to keep afloat the euro and prop up a corrupt and indolent Greece; a country which  should never have been allowed to join the euro in first place, and soon, no doubt, to be followed by Italy, Spain, Portugal and…well, you name it!

                The German worker is indeed the most efficient in Europe. They work hard and pay their taxes – an obligation which many Italians and almost all Greeks seem unfamiliar with.

               

HERR KAUDER                attacks us in the UK for defending our national interest as if this were the height of immorality, instead of  the virtue that it undoubtedly is for any nation state. If we were conjoined in solidarity with the rest of Europe as a mere canton of the Greater Europe, then I suppose Kauder would have a valid point. But thankfully our politicians have not yet managed to  corral their people toward this unhappy fate - although it has not been without trying.

                National sovereignty should not be a bargaining chip for any form adventure that our political class embarks upon; and while we still have enough of our sovereignty left, those on the continent are free to do whatever they like with theirs. But do not expect the same passivity from the people of the UK, as the Eurocrats have found among other once proud European nations.

                This awful word ‘solidarity’ that is meant to replace a nation’s self interest in Europe, is a  socialist construct that has been bought into by what were once known as Conservative parties throughout Europe; but who have evolved into social democrats alongside the Socialist and Communist parties who have also traded themselves into becoming social democrats.

                Even the modern UK Conservative party is attempting to rearrange its ideological goalposts, and has been doing so since the reign of Harold MacMillan in the 1950s-1960s. But with MacMillan it was done to un-tether us from empire, not to abandon the nation state. His One Nation Conservatism however, evolved Toryism into a mainstream social democratic party in the European mould.

                We need not go into Ted Heath’s governance of the Conservative Party to realise the direction, this once proud, patriotic, and nationalist party was heading. It met with a brief obstacle however when Margaret Thatcher came to power.  As the last of this country’s great statesmen, she stopped the slippage and fought for nationhood. She turned a decomposing national economy into a fully functioning and much respected entity.

                The Greater Europe that had also been the dream of Napoleon and Hitler, has now become , through the foreign debt crisis, the anxious and desperate hope of the European political elite.

               

VOLKER KAUDER  represents that desperation. He attacks the UK because it was the UK that warned the rest of Europe against such an ill thought through and utopian concept of monetary union that they eventually proceeded with.

       When the euro zone was created, such a diverse and unworkable  stratum of economies were  ignored by its architects (one of whom was Mario Monti) the newly assigned leader of the Italian nation and its parliament. Mr Monti is a fervent Greater European and believes to this day - even after the travails that have so undermined his conviction  he still sees only opportunity for the euro currency.

                For Herr Kauder to accuse this country of acting in its own self interest is stiflingly hypocritical; especially  when we were left high and dry by Germany in 1993 after they cut us adrift from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in order to rescue France. We however learnt our lesson then, and it was one well learned. What it taught us is that Germany and France will always put their self interest before any concept of a greater European solidarity.

                I believe that German and French politicians are in a state of near panic over sovereign debt, and are lashing out in all directions, and as ‘perfidious Albion’ is the traditional target at such times, I suppose we must make allowances for Volker Kauder.