Better Isolation Than Integration

It is always interesting to know what our critics in the EU think of us. Not much it seems, certainly not after Cameron's refusal to play the Merkozy tune last week. If that pompous, arrogant, idiot Verhofstadt, MEP and head cheese of the Liberals in the joke European Parliament (a perfect partner for Huhne), is anything to go by we are to be punished for Cameron's action. Verhostadt's reaction just goes to confirm the view held by many Britons that the continent is governed by people who prefer rule by an elitist clique rather than by democratic mandate. The ultimate evidence supporting this view is the way the EU elite has forced Italy and Greece to replace their governments with an unelected council which of course reflects the way the EU governing body is itself constituted. Perhaps that is why the EU is disliked so much in this country on those occasions when people are forced to think about it and at other times just dismissed from the people's mind. The EU elite think we are a bunch of coarse vulgarians. Maybe they are right but so what. At least we are democratic vulgarians who believe in the rule of law. Having only been around for less than 7 decades in their current form it is uncertain how much the continentals believe in the rule of law. I would prefer a country where everything is possible rather than one where nothing is possible unless you are in some way attached to the elite. An American friend who has lived all of his adult life outside the United States and most of it in France but with stretches in the UK and other places has returned again from France to live in London. He had been living in La France Profonde and felt isolated there but did not want to live in Paris because Paris is a closed, non-cosmopolitan city and he prefers the worldliness of London. So much therefore for the insults thrown at us by the likes of Verhofstadt. Such insults reveal not only their hatred for this country but also their jealousy. Members of this elite seem to hate their own countries too. Are their own countries so awful that they have to deny them? Verhofstadt comes from that unnatural country Belgium so I suppose one can understand his desire to be a citizen of anywhere else.