Remember the Arab Spring? Thousands of people in Egypt and Tunisia gathered in the streets to demand Democracy. The “West” supported this although turned a blind eye to the Saudia Arabian repression of protests in the neighbouring kingdom of Bahrain.

Indeed the “West” even went to war to support the Libyan protestors.

Contrast this with the European Autumn. The German and French have orchestrated bloodless coups d’état in Greece and Italy. The governments cant deal with their debt crisis and as the European banks demand “action” and protestors gather in Athens and Rome to protest the austerity measures, a coalition government has been formed in Greece without any recourse to having an election. Worse the Italian government has lost power and been replaced by technocrats…bankers without any electoral mandate whatsoever.

I have been a constant opponent of European Union, achieved by stealth over four decades. The expansion of “Europe” to a union of twenty seven nations with different economic systems (eg Finland and Bulgaria) was never going to work. The theory was that European nations would give up a degree (always too much) sovreignty in return for financial and economic reward.

I opposed this on principle and frankly I was right. A lot of people were right about that and we were dismissed as living in the Past and of being opposed to Modernity. There is a certain amount of truth in this. But the dimunation of European democracy has confirmed our worst fears.

But perhaps it is even worse. I had always assumed that the maxim of 1970s opposition to the (then) Common Market…….”the Common Market is a rich mans club” was true……but I assumed that sovreignty would effectively go from small nations (Ireland, Denmark, Latvia, Malta etc) to larger nations (eg Germany, France, Britain, Italy) but this is only true to a limited extent. The sovreignty has not passed to Nations and Politicians. Sovreignty has passed to Banks and Bankers.

The Joy and Curse of History is seeing historical precedents in Current Events. Many (including myself) saw the modern European Union as a form of the much older Holy Roman Empire. But many of us noticed that there was a European fault line between the (Protestant) North and (Catholic) South which has underscored European wars for centuries. The narrative coming out of Britain and Germany is of hard working northern Europeans with a superior sense of work ethic and fiscal responsibility subsidising lazy and feckless southern Europeans in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain and….Ireland (while not geographically “southern”, Ireland s linked with the Catholic feckless).

The question is no longer IF the European Union can survive. Rather the fact is that it has already failed. It will probably take a couple of decades but a break up is now almost inevitable. It could be very,very nasty. Those who sought European Unity simply over-reached themselves.