A friend sends James K. Galbraith‘s thoughtful article, “From the Destruction of Greece to Democracy in Europe” (Boston Globe, 22 August):

Last year’s third bailout of Greece, imposed by Europe and the International Monetary Fund, does to Greece what Versailles did to Germany. It strips assets to satisfy debts….a quagmire of graft to support an illusion that Greece could “compete” as part of the euro. Already in 2010 the IMF knew it was breaking its own rules by pretending that Greece could recover quickly, sustain a huge primary surplus, and repay its debts….

Europe crushed the Greek resistance in 2015. Not because Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, thought his economic plan would work; he candidly told the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, that “as a patriot” he would not sign it himself. But Germany wants to impose its order on Italy and on France, where civil society continues to fight back….Greece was given collective punishment as a lesson. It was done to show that “there is no alternative.” It was done to stop any other attempt to develop, articulate, and defend a more rational policy. It was done to protect the power of the European Central Bank, the German government in Europe, and the policy-making authority, in face of a long record of failure, of the IMF. Greece is now a colony — the polite say “protectorate.”

The Downward Spiral

My friend describes this as “a slam-dunk on the European Union that exceeds anything Nigel Farage said.” (Farage is the UK Independence Party leader who helped win the Brexit vote on June 23rd.)

Galbraith praises Varoufakis’s Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25)—which sounds oddly like Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group (EFDD), but isn’t. It is supposedly “a transnational European progressive movement” that restores national voter control within the EU. But as the author seems to admit, DiEM25 has as much a chance as Bernie Sanders’ “Our Revolution.” The EU is not salvageable.

We think of Greece as the historic cradle of liberty. Once prosperous, her throat was cut by the socialists who stayed in power by dispensing ever greater largesse, and through the superstate they invented, the European Union.

Greece joined the EU in 1981, and adopted the euro in 2001. She was in time to be among the first wave of countries to launch euro banknotes and coins on 1 January 2002.  Amid the more or less free-trade community and during 1980s prosperity, Greece did very well for herself; in the 1990s, somewhat worse; after adopting the euro, dismally:

Churchill’s Hopes?

A colleague who read all this asked: “Would Churchill’s  goals for peace in Europe be achieved if everyone left the EU except Germany and France? My understanding is that he was motivated not by a single European state. He meant to eliminate seventy-five years of animosity and war between those two powers.” 

It is not possible to conflate Churchill’s time with ours in that way. He certainly did not believe that the path forward after World War II lay in a federal union. He said so plainly enough. (See “Churchill’s View” here.) The ideas of sovereignty, democracy and free trade—which Churchill espoused—are evergreen. Open borders, a European army, and unelected bureaucrats writing the laws of nations are not.

But the Greek debacle is nothing compared to what’s coming in Italy and Spain. I fear the world is in for upheavals that may prove impossible to handle by the current crop of platitudinous, principle-less, self-enriching, politically correct national leaders. And then what? Who knows? Those of us who will be dead may relax. As for the rest of you, good luck.

The campaign to Leave is heating up. Take Grassroots Out, a “combined operation” supporting Brexit—the campaign for Great Britain to exit the European Union. G-O fielded a broad spectrum of speakers in London February 19th. Along with UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage were Conservative Sir William Cash, Labour’s Kate Hoey, economist Ruth Lea, and a London cab driver.

The most unexpected Leave speaker was the far-left former Labour MP and head of the socialist Respect Party. Mr. George Galloway was immediately queried about his new colleagues.

“We are not pals,” Galloway replied. “We are allies in one cause. Like Churchill and Stalin.” He did not say which was which. We report, you decide.

Leave colleagues? Mr. Farage offered Churchillian collegiality. “I don’t suspect there’s a single domestic policy, in many cases foreign policy, of which George Galloway and I would agree. But, look, sometimes in life an issue comes along which is bigger than traditional difference.” (See “The New Happy Warrior.”)

Boris = Lord Randolph?

The Leave campaign received more support February 21st. London’s then-mayor and Churchill biographer Boris Johnson announced he would campaign for Brexit, invoking his admiration for Sir Winston.

Anti-Leave Conservative MP Sir Keith Simpson retorted that Johnson’s decision was “more reminiscent of [Lord] Randolph [Churchill] than Winston. “Randolph was a more extrovert character. [He] made the political weather then catastrophically offered his resignation when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. [It] was accepted by the then-Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.”

Lord Randolph more extroverted than Winston? YGTBK, as they say on Twitter.

Johnson’s principled decision to support Brexit, defying his prime minister, is far more reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s resignation from the shadow cabinet in 1931. Churchill left over differences on the India Act. That cost Churchill eight years in the political wilderness. This might be Johnson’s fate if Prime Minister Cameron survives the June 23 referendum.

Lord Randolph’s 1886 resignation, by contrast, was thought to be less decisive. He quit over a trivial issue, expecting to be asked back with more power. Lord Salisbury made no such offer, destroying him politically. “Have you ever heard of a man who, having had a carbuncle removed from his neck, asking that it be put back?” Salisbury quipped.

Leave Pied Piper: The True Churchillian

… in this kerfuffle is Mr. Farage—not for representing Churchill’s view of European unity (a complicated subject), but for expressing Churchill’s attitude toward political opponents. (See also: “What Would Winston Do?“)

Mr. Farage invited Mr. Galloway to speak. He introduced Galloway as “one of the greatest orators in this country…a towering figure on the left,”  adding that they would work together in the Brexit battle:

On that night, yes, the Respect Party was on the platform, so was the Conservative Party [and the Labour Party]. The point about Grassroots Out is, we’re bringing people together from across the spectrum….[Mr. Galloway] said some very disabling things about me but, look, sometimes…etc.

Farage was displaying Churchill’s famous collegiality—a rare commodity among politicians today. Churchill based this on his belief that everyone in public office deserved respect for serving the country, regardless of how violently he disagreed with their politics.

Churchill and Bevan

Instead of Churchill and Stalin, Mr. Galloway might like to compare Mr. Farage and himself to Churchill and Bevan.

Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), socialist MP for Ebbw Vale, was a Welsh firebrand with whom Churchill frequently clashed. Bevan would label Churchill a servant of plutocrat oppressors of the workers. Churchill would call Bevan, founder of the National Health Service, “the Minister of Disease.”

Hearing that Bevan had died, Churchill launched into a soliloquy: “A great man, the founder of the National Health Service, a tremendous advocate for socialism and his party….”

Then he paused in mid-sentence. “Er, are you sure he’s dead?”*

_________

* Quotation from Churchill by Himself, 326.

A few years ago Britain’s Nigel Farage was a political curiosity, head of a fringe party, gadfly member of the European Parliament, an ex-commodities broker who never went to college, dismissed as a nutter by ruling elites in London and Brussels. On 23 June 2016, he was widely credited with a key role in the referendum favoring Brexit— Britain’s exit from the European Community.

“Our Nige,” his supporters call him—personable, chatty, good-looking, beer swilling, cigarette and cigar smoking—wants Britain, not the European Union, to govern British affairs. To flip an uncertain quote from his hero Winston Churchill, he has all the vices they admire, and none of the virtues they despise. He also has the Churchillian habit of saying exactly what he thinks, regardless of polls, focus groups and the establishment.

Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP officially, “kippers” to critics) has been rolling like the nascent Labour Party a century ago, which displaced the Liberals and dominated political thought until Margaret Thatcher’s time. In 2014 UKIP turned 21 years old—Labour formed its first government at age 23.

In 2013’s local elections, kippers finished third. Last May, UKIP became the first party since 1906 to out-poll Labour and the Conservatives nationwide, winning 24 of Britain’s 73 seats in the rubber-stamp EU legislature.

This October UKIP elected its first member of Parliament, Douglas Carswell, and nearly ousted a Labour member in a “safe seat.” In November it’s likely to elect another MP. The party’s rising 25 percent in national polls—a political tsunami suggesting they may eventually hold the balance of power. [Since the Brexit vote, things haven’t gone very well for the party, so as of 2016 this was very much up in the air.]

Mr. Farage insists he isn’t against trade or immigration—he wants national control over them. “Right now, we have an open door to 485 million Europeans, and can’t make our own trade deals. Iceland, with 350,000 people, has a free-trade agreement with China. You’re telling me 63 million Brits can’t do such things?” He wants more trade with the “Anglosphere”: the U.S., India, and “the Commonwealth we so shamefully deserted.”

Nothing fazes Nige, a razor-sharp debater who jousts joyfully with the “ghastly” EU bureaucrats. The 2009 appointment of Herman Van Rompuy as “President of Europe” was just so much red meat: Instead of a giant global figure, Farage said, “all we got was you…And I don’t want to be rude, but you know, really, you have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. And the question I want to ask is, Who are you?”

That earned him one of many fines, which, typically, he laughed off. “It’s been calculated that if I’m fined another 63 million times I personally will have paid the entire Euro bail-out fund.” A UKIP tea towel with Van Rompuy’s image proclaims, “genuine Belgian damp rag.”

UKIP has a libertarian agenda: lower taxes, an end to limitless debt and extremist environmentalism, drastic reductions in enterprise-stifling regulation, and no more military actions without a clue what the goal is: “What have we to show for our support of rebels in Libya, Syria, Egypt?” he asked American interviewer Lauren Lyster. “In Afghanistan and Iraq, we’re achieving, let’s be honest, nothing. I’m extremely tired of the UK joining overseas adventures where we never really think what the endgame’s going to be.”

With an understanding of reality American conservatives might emulate, Farage has learned that you can’t win big with a narrow base. He’s purged UKIP of extreme “full-mooners,” resisted the easy charge of racism. UKIP has an Indian-born Brit who says how hard it is to run a small business, a Caribbean-Brit who sounds like Adam Smith. Farage has a senior adviser named Raheem. In the 1980s there were Reagan Democrats; now in Britain there are Labour kippers.

Asked to advise Americans, Our Nige is careful: “I’m a guest in your country. [But] we both want personal liberty and the responsibility that goes with it. Yet your public finances are no better than the Eurozone’s.”

During the 2012 presidential debates he did venture what Romney might have said: “Look, Barack is a nice chap, but he’s proved he’s not up to the job. I have been successful in business….I’ve run a company, I’m the man you need…And let me tell you, it’s going to be tough. There’re going to have to be some very big cutbacks in the size of the state. But if you follow me, we’ll get this ship steady again.” One wonders if we’ll ever hear a U.S. politician campaign like that.

Of course he’s an easy target. “Farage makes me proud to be British,” wrote Alan Tyers on BT.com in May 2014. “UKIP’s popularity is testament to British tolerance. Where else would such half-baked views be granted so much airtime?” Four days later UKIP rolled up the European elections. People used to say such things about Ronald Reagan. And then…

The establishment parties are worried—“they’ve never held a job outside politics; they’re social-democrats, indistinguishable from each other”—and the media is digging. Recently, charges surfaced of Farage romancing a staffer—hotly denied by both. Then in October 2014, Farage’s “Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy” (EFDD) Group in the European Parliament collapsed. EUP president Martin Schulz (“acting more like the president of a banana republic”) coerced the resignation of a key member and disbanded the group.

Undaunted, Farage replaced his loss and EFDD announced, “we’re back.” The new member was a Polish MEP from a right-wing party led by a Holocaust denier, though the man himself says Hitler was evil and deserved what he got. So it goes. Back on the offensive, Farage declared, “…this will be the last European Commission that governs Britain because within the end of this five years, we will be out of here.”

Clearly Nigel Farage is more than a blip on the radar now. How he handles his challenges may determine whether the EU revolt is real, and whether UKIP can redefine British politics.

But nobody who has seen him in action is counting him out.