No More Waffle

Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, eh? What are they like? Well, try explaining to them the situation in Northern Ireland, or the issues around the Welsh language, or the role of Catholic schools in the West of Scotland, or why Irish and Commonwealth citizens can sit in the House of Lords, or the status of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, or why the United Kingdom has four international football teams (and it is not only because none of them is good enough for anyone else to care).

Didn't we once fight a World War at least ostensibly to defend much-mocked Belgium, historically our principal ally and trading partner on the Continent, an entity not unlike our own United Kingdom, even headed by a monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and with a social democracy based on Christian principles? Yet now we cheer, laugh or both as certain people seek to carve her up into neoliberal statelets. Including at least one party with SS roots on the Western Front all the way to the Channel ports.

See quite how small a country is nevertheless intolerably indigestible by global capital. Those who regard themselves as Thatcherites and who are now in favour of English independence, take note, for this as for several other reasons: England has five times as many people as Belgium, and covers a vastly larger area. If Flanders and Wallonia are to be the preferred size of unit, then let the thoroughly global-capitalist ruling faction of the SNP ponder that Scotland covers a much greater area than either, and is not far off twice as populous as Wallonia.

What started with the dismemberment of Yugoslavia has still not come to an end. When will it ever? Where will it ever? How will it ever? Will it ever?