The EU is a foreign policy circus

As a child I used to love the circus. I assumed I’d grown out of such pleasures, but whenever I read statements by EU officials, I realise that sometimes things never change. I still love the circus. Yesterday, Ringmaster Jean-Claude Junker, otherwise known as the ‘Amazing Drunk Man’, talked about the need to educate Donald Trump.

Today, it’s EU foreign affairs representative Federica Mogherini, otherwise known as ‘The Great Deluded Woman’. If she’s half as good at juggling torches of flame or riding tigers through an obstacle course as she is at defying both logic and the will of most EU citizens, then you’re in for a real treat.

Mogherini recently said, “You know, the European Union has a very principled position on the illegal annexation of Crimea and the situation in Ukraine. This is not going to change, regardless of possible shifts in others’ policies”. This just really takes the biscuit.

I struggle to determine whether these people take themselves seriously and struggle even harder to determine what they seek to gain by pursuing policies which bear no relationship to reality and manifestly hurt the economies of Europe. The people of Europe are struggling under the weight of an increasingly unstable and untenable currency, Eurosceptic parties are on the rise, a Eurosceptic woman, Marine Le Pen may well become the next President of France.

Women are being raped and men are being beaten because of Angela Merkel’s irresponsible refugee policy. The Italian people will soon likely stick two fingers up to the EU when they vote down Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Constitutional Reform.

The EU has its share of troubles on their plate and deep down they must know this. Any formal association agreement between Brussels and Kiev has been put on hold, possibly indefinitely. The same is true for a visa-free travel regime. So quite literally, Federica Mogherini’s statement amounts to nothing but empty words from an empty vessel.

But there is more to the circus than just that. Roll up, roll up for the amazing hypocritical men and women! Whilst the liberal elite of the EU are worried about ‘fascism’ in the form of Brexit, Trump and Continental Europsceptic movements, they are performing linguistic acrobatics to defend a Ukrainian state that is manifestly fascist. It really beggars belief.

Every time I try hard to find one reasonable, moderate or sane voice from the EU I end up disappointed. As the Stealers Wheel song goes, “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with EU”…well the song certainly goes something like that anyway.

There are simply no sensible voices in an institution that has lost the plot, lost its way and lost the support of most of the people it governs.