Let me start with a poem for J.D. Vance, using the rhythm of Chesterton’s poem ‘The Rolling English Road‘, the closest we have to a hillbilly elegy. To get the rhythm going, you’ll have to pronounce every syllable of “European Union”:
The European Union panjandrums start to weep
For J.D. Vance, Veep USA, has roused them from their sleep
With rocking speech, and rolling speech, that makes a grown man cry:
He tells the Munich audience that they must surely try
To fork out more for NATO, fight for liberty of speech
The day he comes to Germany, by way of West Palm Beach.
As Vance almost put it, the UK is not so much a state, as in a state.
I have two suggestions.
The first is provoked by President Trump. He caused a bit of a storm a month or two ago when he suggested that the USA should purchase Greenland.
This is the sort of thing we are not used to nowadays but was common in previous centuries. Jefferson paid Napoleon $15 million for the purchase of Louisiana. Alaska was bought for $7.2 million under Johnson in 1867. It was very amusing, and flattering to Westminster, when a Danish former minister for the autonomous territory of Greenland, Tom Høyem, who served in the 1980s, and is now 83, claimed that the UK had the right of first refusal if Greenland were to be put up for sale. Some journalists asked the Foreign Office and British Library about this, but, as far as I know, they did not get a reply. Too busy getting rid of the Chagos Islands, possibly. Well, the USA could afford Greenland, the UK could not. The story annoyed the Prime Minister of Greenland, Múte Egede, who has been using the full force of decolonising language to suggest that Greenland should become a mighty state on its own account. Denmark was guilty of genocide, etc. It is “now time to take the next step for our country” to remove the “shackles of the colonial era and move on”, etc. The Americans would like nothing better to get Greenland to move on. A humorous US representative Buddy Carter has even introduced a bill in Congress to rename Greenland “Red White and Blueland”.
Well, forget Greenland. My suggestion is that the USA should buy the UK. England, Scotland, Wales and Ulster could be the 51st to 54th states. Ach, why not have Eire as a 55th? That would certainly wind up the EU. It would do wonders for freedom of speech. The King could remain as a sort of Governor General. I would suggest a face-saving constitutional arrangement whereby the United States could be invited to join the Commonwealth: this would enable the King to pay homage to the President as Head of the States, but also enable the President to pay homage to the King as Head of the Commonwealth. Westminster could become a mere state parliament. Oxford and Cambridge could acquire some Harvard-sized endowments. All our disaffected youth could learn guitar in Nashville and take up football scholarships in Utah and Idaho. England would become the new East Coast of America. I leave you to contemplate all the many other side-effects of this. Somehow or other, we should try to get a Union Jack on the Stars and Stripes.
The second suggestion is provoked by the UK equivalent of Buddy Carter, a home-grown humorous politician. This is Craig McKinlay, former MP, now Lord, who suggests that while the Palace of Westminster is repaired, Parliament should be moved to a floating barge on the Thames. This is a cheap alternative to moving Parliament somewhere else, or rebuilding a kitsch theatrical simulacrum of the House of Commons chamber in Elstree Studios: all the other suggestions so far have been ruinously expensive, and so the matter of restoring the Palace of Westminster is continually delayed, creating more ruinous expense.
My suggestion is that we accept McKinlay’s idea. And then we should cut the mooring of this floating barge and let it float down the Thames out into the North Sea. Perhaps, it will drift across the Channel to France, where the French police can deal with a group of immigrants who, probably, will be all too delighted to return to the European Union. What I envisage is a sort of equivalent of the ruse in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the useless members of the doomed planet Golgafrincham (hairdressers, insurance salesmen, security guards, management consultants etc.) are sent off in Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B to Earth, notionally simply to be got rid of, but where, alas, they eventually become our ancestors. Highly ironic. Anyhow, by analogy: if we can get all the MPs onto a debating barge with green seats, I think it will be an easy matter to get a few Fletcher Christian and Bill Sykes characters, of whom there are still a few in the UK, to cut the ropes and send our representatives off like Captain Bligh to prosper elsewhere.
After this, we form an embassy composed of Russell Brand, Nigel Farage, Paul McCartney, perhaps also the Daily Sceptic Editor-in-Chief, and anyone else who understands America, and send it to Trump’s White House to negotiate a selling price. I advise that the ambassadors walk into the Oval Office carrying copies of Art of the Deal under their arms, perhaps also bringing a display folder with some nicely etched prints of stately homes and their golf-ready grounds. David Starkey and Niall Ferguson can accompany the embassy to make sure the constitutional arrangements accord with 1689, 1707, 1776, 1801 etc. And let’s do it quick, while the bust of Churchill is still near the President’s desk.
James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Looks and sounds like the German ptb should be dusting off the old ww2 ss uniforms for their next party convention!
Small black clip on moustaches available at the door!
More like the old Communists of the DDR. People remember them in the Eastern Lande,and that is part of the reason they vote for the ‘Faaaar Right’ AfD.
The Germans just aren’t world class at fudging things like us here in the UK. They are too rational.
We on the other hand are world leaders at proclaiming two opposing things and carrying on quite happily. We are pragmatists.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
“Rational” ——-Do you think covering a beautiful country in 40,000 huge industrial turbines and hoping to soon have 55,000 of them is the work of rational human beings?
Absolutely. A lot of money is made in this way.
Do you mean having all those turbines is rational because they make money for people or do you agree with me it is irrational to cover a country in this clutter?
I mean that the people operating the turbines have a perfectly rational interest in the money they’re getting because of this. That they must be built is demanded by a law which came into force under Merkel and as all mainstream parties agree with the climate change agenda, ordinary people don’t have any input into this process. All they can do to express their opposition to it is vote for a party opposed to it. The largest of these is the AfD and not even the AfD stands a realistic chance to influence actual government decisions for the forseeable future.
As one of the people in the climate movie put it: Climate change hoax is a bad term. It should really be called a scam. And scams work because the victims can’t help it.
I think there is a not insignificant correlation between rationalism and disregard for aesthetic beauty.
Perfidious Albion.
If only there was an EU wide election in June where those opposed to the Nut zero nonsense could vote for Parties opposing Nut zero. Even the EU could not ignore a 70% plus anti vote which was enough to see off Varadkhar.
Are you sure?
The Irish simply got confused and put the cross on the wrong box. It is an easy mistake to make.
They are Irish!
I had my doubts as I was typing my original message!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/2000-elderly-pawns-of-the-eco-nutters/
The 2,000 Swiss witches and the recently formulated new law on climate management passed by the ECHR.
There can be no question that the only sane action wrt the ECHR is to leave the Council of Europe or – even better – disestablish it altogether. Assuming the climate change CO₂ narrative was true, there’s absolutely nothing the government of Switzerland could do to improve the global situation in this respect short of declaring war on China, India and the USA and invading all three countries with armed forces in order to make them cut their CO₂ emissions and the chances of success wouldn’t exactly be great. This means the court ruling is outright disingenious.
And in doing so create even more C02, maybe even unclear, but don’t worry about any of that.
Neither of which will reduce CO2 output if the electricity is generated with gas or coal. Fortunately Germany’s neighbour, France, is happy for now to sell excess nuclear generated electricity to idiots who trashed their own nuclear power capability. However, when the EU rules about EVs start to bite in France they won’t have spare electricity to sell – which will royally screw up Germany meeting it’s Climate Protection Act requirements.
This is what happens when Ideology trumps common sense. But the pretend to save the planet house will all come tumbling down
You can live in cloud cuckoo land. You can pretend you are In Alice in Wonderland. You can Follow the Yellow Brick Road, but in the end there is only one world you are going to have to live in ——-The REAL ONE. ——-Reality has this very nasty habit of giving you a proverbial uppercut and knocking some sense into you. For all of these phony planet savers, Mike Tyson is winding up the big uppercut for you, and the sooner the better so we can get back to living in the real world.
Never tested it but some experienced street fighters swear by the open palm heel strike.
And the circus rolls on, as the sun weakens and we fall into 30 years of endless winters here in Northern Europe. I guess that’ll solve the immigration crisis. They’ll all be clambering back into their boats as the frostbite sets in.
Just one black shirt and an arm band away from doing it all over again.
Jawohl mein führer.
King Canute has left the building.
I do hope he is correct in his final paragraph, but there is a lot of pain to come before then.
Log burners in Scotland, anyone?