The European political class treats the continent as if it were one big happy family with a population gaily marching in unison behind its leadership. The truth, Dalrymple points out,
is quite otherwise, which is why an example must be made of Britain.
The more integration there is,
the greater will be the tensions, between and within countries. There is a class that benefits mightily from the present arrangements, which explains the paradox of Catalan, Flemish, and Scottish nationalism: for these nationalisms are firm adherents to the ideal of European Union, namely a dilution of national sovereignty even greater than that which their nations already possess. The leadership of these movements want their place not in the sun, but at the trough. They are pied pipers to their populations.
As José Manuel Barroso,
once president of the European Commission, former Maoist student leader and then Goldman Sachs executive (the thirst for power being the golden thread that runs through this diverse career) put it, Europe — using the word to mean the European Union, which is now more or less standard — is an empire, though of a new kind.
Perhaps not so new, says Dalrymple:
a Habsburg Empire without the charm and æsthetic sensibility. From the Right it is attacked as a socialist enterprise, from the Left as a neo-liberal one: corporatist is the word for it, that happy union between regulatory bureaucracy and large corporations.
