The Franco-German Future

Such Blair cultists as still exist are bemoaning the "Franco-German" scuppering of their idol's always rather slim hopes of becoming EU President. Anything rather than admit that the present American Administration would never have stood for him. But they are still right. The EU is the means whereby France continues to enjoy the trappings of Great Power status while Germany enjoys the status itself; that is a slight oversimplification, but only a very slight one.

And Germany, ancestral home of most white Americans, especially though not exclusively the Protestants among them, has always been America's real favourite in Europe, even if there have been occasional blips such as the War (almost immediately forgotten by Americans and West Germans alike where relations with each other were concerned) and the Bush years. Behind the EU is France, behind France is Germany, and behind Germany is America. Whether the French always care to admit it is another matter. But hence, among numerous other examples, the British neocons of the Henry Jackson Society, calling for a single, German-led EU defence capability under overall American command.

I don't want a Franco-German EU. But I wouldn't mind a Franco-German Britain. A Britain like France, in which an economically social democratic, Agrarian and Distributist, morally and socially conservative political tradition looked back to, or if necessary produced, equivalents of the man who rightly held out against all four of German occupation, American domination, Soviet infiltration, and the unbalancing of the nascent EU by means of British accession. A Britain like Germany, with better schools, policing, transport infrastructure, working conditions, and standards of behaviour than we have, as well as cleaner streets, a huge domestic manufacturing base, ownership of her own industries, and a full public role for the churches. And a Britain already out of recession. Like both France and Germany.