- Animism – not just pagan ritual leftovers like the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance but our deep empathy with pets and farm animals
- A deep distrust of the French (remember Hartlepool’s monkey-hangers)
And now we discover – by a leaked secret memo,
of course, G-d forbid we be told anything openly – that there are three EU
preconditions for even beginning to discuss alterations to the draft Withdrawal
Agreement; conditions that are for us a surrender in advance of the battle.
But though we are divided at home, the EU itself is not
united:
After chiding Ms Merkel for her many expensive policy errors, German AfD leader Alice Weidel’s speech to the Bundestag on 21 March went on to accuse her of “blind loyalty” (3:01) to the French, who want to deny Britain access to the single market. January’s Aachen Treaty on Franco-Germancooperation “had France’s fingerprints all over it” (3:40), benefitting the latter’s inefficient economy but sending much of the bill to the German taxpayer who, once Britain has left, will not be able to command a blocking minority in the Council to prevent fresh fiscal assaults on the biggest remaining economy.
Weidel quoted M. Barnier (5:26) as confiding to a colleague,
“My mission will have been a success when the terms are so brutal for the
British that they prefer to stay in the Union.”
We are not the only ones with national traits. The Germans
love tribal unity and have a lethal penchant for abstract theorising (from
Luther to Karl Marx to the Frankfurt School), but the French combine
theatricality with sharp dealing and calculating selfishness. Think of William
the Conqueror, turning his pratfall on the shore into symbolic seizure of the
land,
then ordering the Domesday Book to count exactly how much he’d grabbed; the 1789
windy Tennis Court Oath that blew off so many of the Revolutionaries’ heads in
the factious struggles that ensued; and Clemenceau’s vindictive 1919 Versailles
Treaty that ruined Germany and so set Europe ablaze a generation later.
Don’t expect anything but gaseous difficulties from a French
lawyer. Frankly, anything that our hapless Government tries to agree now can be
negotiated separately afterwards, when the costs of M. Barnier’s failure begin
to bite the Continent. Let’s go now, without permission – let’s take “French
leave.”
For all we wanted – what we were sold in the 1970s – was
honest dealing and fair trading. What we have had ever since has been
money-twisting and empire-building.
"Un Po Apres Le Temps
d'Autonne"
From “Le Jugement du roy de Navarre” by Guillaume de Machaut (1349)
Translation by "Sackerson"
A
little after autumn time
When
those who cultivate the vine
Pick
their grapes and fill the tun
And
with work that’s lightly done
Each
man offers to his fellow
Pears
and grapes and peaches mellow
When
in the soil the corn-seeds grow
And
the leaf falls from the bough
By
Nature’s or the wind’s design
In
thirteen hundred forty-nine
On
the ninth day of November
I
was closed up in my chamber.
Had
the sky been bright and clear
I
should have gone to take the air
But
the mountains and the meadows
Were
hid in fog and deepest shadows
So
I was taken by the gloom
Thinking
in my lonely room
How
all men everywhere are governed
By
cronies meeting in the tavern
How
truth and justice in the land
Are
dead, slain by the hand
Of
greed, who over them holds reign
As
if she were a sovereign queen
How
the rulers rob the ruled
Sack,
plunder and assault the world
Crushing
them in their distress
Merciless
and pitiless
Great
mischief seems it to my mind
When
vice and power are combined
