Will their hands ever be clean? Covid-19 Epitaph for the EU

Submitted by M.A. Richardson…

Lady Macbeth sleepwalks in the darkness and silence of the night, carrying a candle to light her way through the castle. In vain she tries to wash her hands of the blood of Banquo and others  she has killed and plotted against to attain the throne, a throne that would ultimately drive her mad and destroy all around her.

“What, will these hands ne’er be clean” “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” The clock strikes, one, two o’clock. It is indeed past midnight for the European Union and the candle must surely be snuffed out.

“What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?”

“Banquo is buried”. “…he cannot come out of the grave again” In this torment, this heavy weight of guilt at the brutal death of others, The Lady dies. We never learn how, only that it was with a cry, and surely in torment.

Maura Ferrari the head of the European Research Council, has today resigned. A nano-scientist, and true internationalist born in Italy, living in the US, he was appointed to his post by Mario Monti, an unelected technocrat who presided over the Italian debt crisis in 2011 after the earthquake of the Italian elections. Ferrari cites the lack of coordination on the part of the EU for their response to Covid -19 as the reason for his resignation.

Ferrari was born in Padua, Italy. In his first year as head of the Council, little did he know what a poison chalice he was to inherit. His resignation comes after only 4 months. That four months from January to April 2020 will change dramatically the social and economic structure of Europe, if not the world.

Both the WHO and the EU in their own ways have been negligent if not culpable in their reaction and inaction and contradictory advice on Covid-19. Ultimately, it is the Chinese Communist Party, who with the knowledge of person to person transmission, closed their own internal borders but left their external borders open and in doing so let this spread around the world.

Politically charged, this event could only ever be ‘handled’ by the elites, but ultimately like the virus itself, it was never something that could be controlled.   The death rate in Italy is frightening. Even as the moon rises night after night until it reaches as it did last night it’s super moon status, so the death rate from Spain overtakes that of Italy, as wave upon wave of this virus hits Europe.

The high-tide of Covid-19 sweeps through all of Europe like a tsunami, and the once grumbling but compliant populations and their internal governments realise this is not a time for inaction or reliance on Brussels, because Brussels is not listening. It cannot afford to listen. There can be no collective responsibility. Germany and Netherlands will never agree to a fiscal union of any kind that puts them directly on the hook for the debt of the Southern States who now so desperately need bailing out. Those richer nations will never agree to being the ultimate bank of the EU because if they did, another bail out would be needed and then another and another, until that union would impoverish those richer nations and its ever growing population already overburdened by migration.

Unless the poorer countries want to see their populations decimated and impoverished as they are starved of fiscal stimulus and the threat of mass unemployment descends, they must find a way to feed their own people. Each individual nation must ultimately take responsibility for itself, as if not, more people will die of poverty than they will of this virus. Each government must find their own way through as they realise that the response from Brussels is almost irrelevant in its inadequacy.

This virus does not discern between nation or class, and only those who can live comfortably in isolation can truly look down on the destruction as the elites in Brussels are doing. No one will remain untouched. Did Von de Leyen, that symbolic figurehead of the EU not see the irony of her campaign of hand washing beamed across the EU? Self-awareness is not a quality the EU have needed, because up until now they were not accountable. Merkel, like an ageing film star, hides behind her own image on that big screen, how convenient,  no longer able to face her public except through a gauze to soften and disguise what was once Mutti Merkel.

The truth is ugly and it is locked away in isolation in Brussels where they have plotted and schemed out of sight to dominate and control. To some extent they were successful. Successful in creating the myth, an image, but all it took was a virus, Covid-19 to shatter that image, to see what lies beneath. Nothing. An ideology, a dream become a nightmare, a mirage of unity of collective responsibility now shattered.  It is every man and woman, nation state for themselves. Globalism is dead.  Every nation state is looking after it’s own in this fight for survival, and they are, sometimes at the expense of others.

Just like all fading stars, all we have left is the residue. That grand experiment of Maastricht was over years ago. All efforts by Macron to put it on life-support will fail, as that great European project of subjugation of states into one nation has failed. When the lights are turned on, when this virus has taken its toll, she will say,”I am ready for my close up”,  but we will know it is a lie, a self-deception, we will see her for what she truly is: flawed, tainted, rabid almost in her death throws, a thing tormented by its own inability to be what it once was, yet even now desires to be.  This virus that has opened the cracks and like quick sand, sucks down everything that is caught in it. That EU flag no longer symbolises anything other than disharmony, disunity, inequality and in many cases as in Italy and now Spain, desperation, impoverishment and despair.

These nations already divided between north and south, by relative wealth and poverty and now abandoned by the one thing they thought would come to its rescue, the EU. These nations who have, piece by painful piece, given over their sovereignty, cultures and dignity to the EU technocrats. Europe, the great dream, the unifier after the Second World War,  for the greater good of the people, for all EU nations. That failed political and fiscal project, that land-grab, now must surely die as Lady Macbeth dies, in anguish. Not with a grand gesture but in torment as Macron’s dream of Empire of power of unity is now surely over except for the nature of that death.

Brexit will be but a gentle meander compared to the earthquake that is hitting Europe now, it’s vulnerability is exposed.  Through its handling of this virus Brussels has sealed its fate.  The south have born the brunt of Merkel’s unilateral open border migrant policy as she welcomed all refugees and by doing so opened the gates into Europe to all who would seek a better life economically at the expense of her own people. It was overwhelming then, it is economically impossible now. As peoples from impoverished, war torn countries, of diverse cultures and religions made their way to the shores of Pozzallo, Lampedusa, Bari, swamping the small towns and cities on that southern coastal periphery of Italy, they bore this invasion stoically and generously, but this had also unleashed the people smuggling gangs who profited from both the suffering of the Italian people coping with an already struggling economy and unemployment, while also exploiting those migrants, many of whom died at sea or were people trafficked through Europe and beyond.

As Monica, currently isolating with her family in Italy, a former barrister in Milan and now shop owner in Bari told me,

“Il popolo italiano è molto arrabbiato con UE il presidente del consiglio Conte sta mandando avanti le trattative ma se Germania e Olanda continuano con le loro idee non si Sa quale sarà il futuro dell’Europa.

“The Italian people are very angry with the EU, the Prime Minister Conte is continuing the negotiations but if Germany and Holland continue with their ideas, it is not known what the future of Europe will be.”

“Al nord il problema è più grave: stanno morendo in tanti, al sud molto meno. Per Salvini presidente la vedo molto difficile”

“In the north the problem is more serious: many are dying, in the south much less. For Salvini, president? I see it as so difficult”

“Infatti gli italiani sono già arrabbiati per la crisi dei migranti se ora veniamo lasciati soli anche ad affrontare questa crisi per noi non ha più senso rimanere in Europa”

“In fact, the Italians are already angry about the migrant crisis if we are now left alone to face this crisis for us it no longer makes sense to stay in Europe”

The Italians have no one ultimately to appeal to, so they must finally look inward for help and understanding of their own nation and its needs and wants. Its regions are surely better able to judge that than any faceless bureaucrat in Brussels. This is already happening as food banks and distribution are arranged by the Italian people and internal government structures.

After being abandoned by Brussels, and after many weeks of pain and suffering, they are finding a way, as will Spain, they will find a way and they will be the stronger for it. It is inevitable they will be changed for ever, but they will be one nation once more under their own flag.

As for the EU? Monica’s words say it all,

“If we are now left alone to face this crisis for us it no longer makes sense to stay in Europe.”

For Macron, Merkel, Barnier, Verhofstadt, Lagarde and all those Machiavellian bureaucrats whose reach exceeded their ability as they attempted to build an Empire at the expense of their own people, it is one long descent into madness and a suicide. This self induced death brought on by their will to power, to rule, they robbed countries of their dignity and culture until those nations have little self-confidence left. Luckily something remains. Hope, The will to live, to prosper to be independent and to once more love ones own country, cultures and people.

“Not all the perfumes of Arabia will sweeten that little hand”.

“Here’s the smell of the blood still”.

“Come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed”.

The Lady,

Shakespeare- Macbeth