Germany declares economic war on Britain
Last December, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück mocked the “crass Keynesianism” of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At last week’s G-20 meeting, where leaders of the world’s top 20 economies met in Pittsburgh to discuss methods of stabilizing the global economy, Steinbrück took his Britain bullying one step further.
Reporting for the Telegraph,Ambrose Evans-Pritchard comments on what he calls Steinbrück’s “latest breathtaking provocations” (emphasis mine):
What he said, in effect, is that Germany will marshal its forces to ensure that a chunk of the British economy is shut down—whatever the social consequences. This is the closest thing I have seen to a declaration of economic warfare in Western Europe in my lifetime.
There is clearly a lobby in London that wants to defend its competitive advantage tooth and nail. Stern said that he sees “dark powers at work” in Britain. He accused the UK government of “doing its best” to sabotage stricter financial regulation at the G-20 in Pittsburgh. This resistance will be crushed. “We will effectively change the rules on the financial markets. Politics is sometimes like a locomotive which comes slowly up to full speed.”
Steinbrück is not some back-bench maverick or an ostracized extremist. He speaks officially on behalf of the German nation on the international stage. Some have argued that Steinbrück’s comments were only an attempt to pander to the Social Democratic Party’s alienated voters in the lead-up to the German elections, but under the light of Germany’s growing boldness, his ideologies become significant. Steinbrück’s rhetoric reflects a European Union that is starting to bare its teeth.
The deteriorating Anglo-German relationship portends Britain’s soon-coming withdrawal from the European Union. The separation between the UK and the EU is growing by the day.
Here is what we wrote October last year:
Britain is full of foot-draggers. When Gordon Brown earlier this year furtively signed the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum—knowing the public would nix it if given a chance—an Internet poll at the Daily Express found that a cool 99 percent of them disapproved. To say that British resistance to the European project is intense is an understatement.
On the other side of the Channel, it appears the Eurocrats have just about had enough of Britain’s continual “red lines” and requests for opt-outs, its repeated attempts to put the brakes on European integration. As we have said for years—and as Herbert W. Armstrong said for decades before us—the flirtation between Britain and the Continent was ill-conceived from the start and is destined to break up
Mr. Armstrong’s longstanding forecast that this relationship would eventually crumble was drawn from sure biblical prophecies.
To get a better understanding of where the trends in Europe are leading, read our articles “The Leper of Europe” and “G-20 Heralds Global Regulation.”
