Blissfully skating on thin ice

Winston Churchill, whose massive work A History of the English Speaking Peoples entitles him to be recognised as a historian of note, had once commented that “the farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see”.

The cost of failure would be so devastating that nobody has really talked about it- Michael Falzon

The recent tiff between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron during a meeting on the eurozone crisis made the news, more so as Sarkozy had bluntly told Cameron: “We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings.”

Anglo-French rivalry has deep roots in history. Some argue it started with Joan of Arc, the Catholic saint who defeated the English. Up to that time, the English Crown held old claims to large parts of France, and England was embroiled in most continental wars.

Finally, Joan of Arc put an end to it. England was eventually united with Scotland and Britain became more than an island in a corner of Europe: it slowly developed its own mighty empire.

It was not always easy going. The traditional enemy of the UK was always France, an agricultural country – when agriculture was the main wealth of countries – with a population twice that of Britain.

At one point, Britain lost its north American colonies that, with the active support of France, declared independence. But Britain was the leader in the industrial revolution and for some 150 years after Napoleon, it proved to be unbeatable.

As its empire grew, Britain made sure no European country became strong enough to dominate the continent. During the time of Napoleon, successive British PMs financed one anti-France alliance after another, pulling in anybody and anything to prevent Napoleon’s dream of a united Europe.

After defeating Napoleon, it invented an unstable Belgium and supported the unification of Italy so that France had to look south while keeping an eye on Prussia and Britain.

And when France was beaten by Bismarck and Prussia became Germany, ‘Perfidious Albion’, as most French would put it, struck an entente cordial with France and fought two world wars to stop Germany dominating Europe.

Finally, the French and the Germans buried the hatchet for good and sowed the seeds that blossomed into the European Common market and now the European Union. Britain became a member of the Common Market after Charles de Gaulle had kept it waiting for so long. Nevertheless, its reluctance on European political unity is evident, what with images of Margaret Thatcher waving her handbag at European leaders and its refusal to adopt the euro and the Schengen Treaty.

When the US planned to invade Iraq, Britain left no doubt that it preferred to be a satellite of America, adopting a position that contrasted with that of France and Germany.

Even so, Sarkozy was not right when he told Cameron he did not want him to attend the eurozone meeting to save the euro. Saving the euro does not concern solely the eurozone, or indeed the EU. The UK, with its London financial centre, as well as the US, China, Russia, Brazil and India have an interest in the issue.

The cost of failure would be so devastating that nobody has really talked about it. Thankfully, the deal sealed in the early hours of Thursday morning goes a long way towards avoiding the dreaded scenario.

Cameron knows what the cost of failure would imply, in spite of the fact that he has been making the wrong noises – that irked Sarkozy so much – for the right reasons. Cameron needs to keep in check the eurosceptic right wing of his party: the ones who defied him in the House of Commons last Tuesday and voted in favour of a motion calling for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU; those who speak shortsightedly of the UK leaving the EU and who smugly gloat – not without a good dose of schadenfreude – that in this economic and financial storm Britain is safe because it had stuck to its beloved sterling. This is, of course, an illusion.

In spite of the anti-EU Tory faction, abetted by Britain’s silly tabloids, the people who matter in the UK probably have a much wider and realistic vision of global politics.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is right. What we need is more of Europe, not less.

The underlying cause of this seemingly eternal financial crisis is globalisation and the shift of power from the West that dominated the world for the past 250 years. The West now has no choice but to learn how to share economic power with the rest of the world.

And Malta? Actually, we are pretty insignificant in all this. But, to his credit, Lawrence Gonzi did support Cameron on this one.

Meanwhile, we continue to discuss political responsibility for the Arriva debacle, unsupported allegations of hacking and tenuous distinctions between stealing and leaking of documents – blissfully unaware of the thin ice that we are all skating on.

micfal@maltanet.net