This time the Greeks must beware of Paris bearing gifts by Tim Gordon

EU summits to save the Euro seem to happen on a more or less monthly basis. Summits happen come along so often they must be called a ridge.

The June 2012 summit was a little different: it has been reported as a rebellion led by Hollande and Monti against Angela Merkel. Some have seen it as a rebellion against Germany to relieve the misery of those countries suffering from a so-called bailout.

Moreover, it has been reported as a victory for the rebellious colonies and a defeat for the Empress. Those lands ravaged by Teutonic austerity may have a hero, a Nevsky, in the new French president. His gifts for PIIGS but cultured not real.

French European policy since the last war, the whole French purpose of the EU, can be summed up as the denial of Europe as a German empire. France and Germany are equal partners, they say, and besides, it is not an empire: all those other members of the EU are sort of equal too.

But it is not really possible to describe the Euro in any other way than a system with Germany at the centre that exists for the benefit of German exports. Germany really is the only country to benefit, economically, from the Euro. The Euro does seem to give some kind of psychological and emotional benefit to peoples without much self-confidence, but this is illusory. The Euro gives Germany power over the Eurozone – and Germany should accept the responsibilities like a good, beneficient imperial should.

French and Italian and other governments have more reasonable complaint about the conditions of empire. But that is how it is. So, Greeks should beware of Paris when he says he is bearing gifts, because the gifts are not his to give. Hollande can rebel but can never call the shots. That is the first lesson.

I am very fond nowadays of going around quoting Karl Marx: the people who pay for an empire are the working classes of the imperial power. Therefore an empire collapses when the benefits that derive to the elites and the working classes of the imperial are no longer sufficient to warrant the price paid by those working classes. And just because I think it was Marx who said it does not mean it is not how it is. You pay for your empire as long as is profitable. When it is no longer profitable, you dump it.

As long as Germay profits from the Euro, Germany will do what it takes to keep the Euro alive.

So far what has Germany paid? That word “bailout” is a lie in itself. The bailout is not a gift, support, it is an enforced loan for a purpose not supported by the victim country. Germany benefits from the Euro because it locks a continent into a favourable trade relationship: it keeps German factories busy. What Paris thinks is neither here nor there. What is said in Finland can be fun but when it comes to it, the Finnish contribution to Germany’s Euro is comparable to Britain’s contribution to USA’s invasion of Iraq. All Paris has is a complaint and a series of petulant demands and peurile fantasies that are all that passes for socialism nowadays.

Alright, there is the conventional view. What a disappointment that HM Government still sees it as being in Britain’s interest that the Euro and with its German hegemony (if I can be forgiven for using such a 1980s word) is maintained and flourishes. It is not that it is German but that it is a single continental order essentially hostile to Britain and her friends that is the problem.

The Eurosceptic must put forward a series of policies that really can offer a way forward to the people of Greece, Ireland, etc, etc. Never mind the Euro, it is the people we need to save.

What policies should be the focus now of eurosceptic thought. Imagine Greece was a struggling business you had just bought. It is desperate because it has been mismanaged but is basically good. Would you run it as Germany is running Greece? Of course not. But Greece is not some struggling business but a decent nation of people who command respect.

It is a source of shame to Britain that our Government does not have an alternative policy but advances the silliness that while membership of the Euro would be bad, the existence of the Euro is critically important. It is the essential purpose of the eurosceptic movement to provide a superior policy to that of the Euro. Although we offered a warning against what has happened, we must now offer a way ahead.