“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Thus said Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, weeks before his boss’s inauguration in January. He was speaking of how the economic crisis would open the door for sweeping policy change in areas like energy, health care and federal regulation. Time has shown, he was deadly serious.

Across the Atlantic, the same crisis is viewed with similar opportunism by European bureaucrats. They are seizing the chance to reshape the Continent. “It’s now or never,” European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said. “If we cannot reform the financial sector when we have a real crisis, when will we?”

One of their most stunning moves has been to use the crisis as a pretext for advancing a long-term pet project: stripping the once-great Britain of its national sovereignty and global power.

If you haven’t followed this trend, you’ll be stunned by how the truth came out in a study paper out of Germany last month.

The German Institute for International and Security Affairs, an independent think tank that advises the German government, is predicting that Britain is finished. In an August report called “Great Britain at a Crossroads,” it explained why the island nation is rapidly about to lose what little remains of its global political significance. Embedded within the report was a startling admission.

Britain’s strong military always assured the nation “its seat among the great powers,” the paper said. No longer. In Iraq and Afghanistan, its armed forces are stretched to the breaking point. Outclassed and underfunded, Britain will soon have to abandon one of its premier armament projects, such as its nuclear fleet. That decision will “lead to the loss of whole industrial sectors,” striking a fatal wound to the already crippled British economy (translations from German-foreign-policy.com).

That’s not the only stressor on Britain’s economy, the German paper commented. Overreliance on its financial sector puts the UK in enormous trouble now that its tax revenues are projected to plummet 14 percent next year.

And on top of all that, the paper says—in not so many words: European leaders are about to deal the death blow to London’s status as a global financial capital. How? Through oppressive regulation.

“European Commission plans to apply stricter rules for monitoring financial markets,” it says, “could also lead to a significant loss of importance for London as a financial center” (my translation and emphasis).

That the burdens Europe is about to impose “could” drag London down is putting it charitably. With Britain already drowning from the financial collapse, Europe is preparing to hold it underwater with regulations.

Why? Eurocrats will insist that this is necessary to prevent another financial meltdown. But the facts suggest a deeper agenda.

Britain has long been a thorn in Europe’s side, a millstone around its neck as it has sought “ever-closer union.” Britain has been its most reluctant participant, constantly dragging its feet, drawing “red lines” and demanding opt-outs.

Now, Europe has seized upon the financial crisis as incontrovertible evidence of the UK’s fundamental untrustworthiness. Making matters worse, Britain has allowed its trade deficit with the EU to balloon over the past decade; it is now deeply indebted to the Continent, particularly Germany. “Seventy years after the beginning of the war, Germany has become the biggest creditor of the formerly victorious power” (German-foreign-policy.com, op. cit.; emphasis mine throughout).

From this position of strength, the German-led EU is eager to take Britain to task. We have already reported on the regimen it is about to dictate. In June, European leaders—an unenthusiastic Gordon Brown included—agreed to a massive regulatory superstructure. A European Systemic Risk Council will unite central bankers to help ensure big-picture financial stability, both across the Continent and country by country. More worryingly, under an umbrella called the European System of Financial Supervisors, three new pan-European watchdog organizations will begin overseeing financial institutions next year: a banking authority, an insurance and pensions authority, and a securities authority. This will create “a common supervisory culture and consistent supervisory practices,” the plan says, trumping the authority of member state supervisors and even directly supervising some firms. “In short, this body will have immense powers,” says the Adam Smith Institute, a UK-based think tank.

The Adam Smith Institute rightly says that “the proposals seem opportunistic, using the financial crisis to provide an opening for long-held political objectives.” It even suggests that the plan is so comprehensive that it must have been in the works long before the financial crisis. Europe is only pushing it now while Britain “is too weak to object.” “The EU is taking advantage of the crisis to extend its control over the British financial system,” chimed in Ruth Lea, director of another UK think tank, Global Vision.

It was only a few years ago that Britain’s bankers and businessmen were giddily boasting and toasting themselves as being “the world’s greatest global financial center, without question.” Virtually overnight, London has been reduced to having to prostrate itself before European overseers.

Clearly Europe is relishing the moment. Ready to put the Brits in their place, it is shackling them with burdensome regulations fully knowing that doing so will eliminate London’s global influence.

Watch for it now to implement strategies to shift that business to the mainland. Biblical prophecy directs us to remain alert for Europe to become the world’s financial capital, if only briefly, in this end time. With so much in flux right now, jittery investors are eager to find a new financial safe haven—away from both the United States and Britain. Contenders include financial centers in the Middle East and Asia. Prophecy informs us that the short-term, big-time winner will be Europe.

The UK did nothing to help itself with its own financial misconduct. But in the end its bigger mistake will prove to be its too-close relationship with Europe. The Continent simply doesn’t have Britain’s interests at heart, and never has. From its inception 36 years ago, this alliance has been a disaster for Britain. Once history’s greatest empire, the UK has surrendered its sovereignty piece by precious piece. Europe has almost entirely swallowed it within a single generation. Prophecy strongly suggests that Britain will wake up and leave the union—but by then it will be too late. It will have grown irreversibly weak.

We remember the words of Herbert W. Armstrong after the UK joined the European Community on Jan. 1, 1973. In the March edition of the Plain Truth newsmagazine that year, he warned that Britain would one day look back on it as “a most tragically historic date—a date fraught with ominous potentialities!”

He was right. To those paying attention, that day is now.