Will The Penny Drop In Time?

Over on Comment Is Free, some expressions of the hope that the break-up of Belgium "within an integrating European Union" might herald the break-up of other member-states into some "Europe of the regions" in which Socialism would be impossible (far too big, like the US only more so).

Dream on!

No British or Spanish Prime Minister would ever allow either Flanders or Wallonia to join the EU, just as no British or Belgian Prime Minister would ever allow Catalonia or the Basque Country to do so, and just as no Belgian or Spanish Prime Minister would ever allow an independent Scotland (or, hypothetically, Wales) to do so.

The real story here is that, a short train ride from central London and a short boat ride from the South Coast, there is about to be an earthquake on the fault line between Latins and Teutons. Indeed, that earthquake has already begun. Follow its tremors down the Rhine through Alsace-Lorraine and into Switzerland, and on even into the South Tyrol.

At present, most Alsatians are happy enough in France, most South Tyrolese are happy enough in Italy, and so forth. But that state of affairs could not survive if France (certainly) or Italy (very probably) recognised an independent Wallonia, or if Germany followed the Netherlands and recognised an independent Flanders (ditto), or if Germany responded to a Wallonian UDI by pressing her claim to the German-speaking Eastern Cantons (i.e., to Prussian territory lost at Versailles...), and so on, and on, and on.