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Some of the great moments of history sneak up on businesspeople. Two years ago, Britain looked to be Europe's most economically rational country; now its companies seem to be rolling from one economic earthquake to another, with Brexit looking increasingly likely to be followed by the election of a near-Marxist prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn.
Looking back, two things stand out. First, there were some deep underlying "irrational" causes that business ignored, such as the pent-up anger against immigration and globalization. Second, there was a string of short-term political decisions that proved to be miscalculations. For decades, for example, attacking the European Union was a "free hit" for British politicians. If David Cameron had it to do over again, would he really have made the referendum on whether to stay in it a simple majority vote (or indeed called a vote at all)? Does Angela Merkel now regret giving Cameron so few concessions before the Brexit vote? Would the moderate Labour members of Parliament who helped Corbyn get on their party's leadership ballot in the name of political diversity really do that again?
Now, another rupture may be sneaking up on Europe, driven by a similar mixture of pent-up anger and short-term political maneuvering. This one is between the old West European democratic core of the EU, led by Merkel and increasingly by Emmanuel Macron, who are keen to integrate the euro zone, and the populist authoritarians of Eastern Europe, who dislike Brussels. This time the arguments are ones about political freedom and national sovereignty.
Eastern Europe's gripes are nothing a little anschluss couldn't cure.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:41AM
The whole issue with the Euro is that the EU was so eager to expand it allowed countries to enter that weren't up to the task. Also, EU countries more or less have to compete (loss of Greece is the profit for Germany). The whole Greece situation was the EU punishing them while recovering the losses that banks made by paying them public EU money. There are other solutions to the EU problems, but so far the only ones you hear are "moar market (protection)" (see your quote above). The inhabitants of the EU are screaming for these other solutions, but the EU does not listen... take this too long and you see the things we see in UK and now in Spain (although the Spain situation is a more internal struggle).