A flurry of headlines over the past week paints a grim picture of Europe’s leading economies and the United Kingdom. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned last weekend that the German welfare state is "no longer financially sustainable". The Chancellor called for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to climb past last year’s record of £40 billion.
On the same weekend, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves was urged by leading economists to drastically cut public spending in order to avoid Britain needing a 1970s-style International Monetary Fund bailout. The Chancellor was warned that her looming tax rises risk a return to high borrowing costs that forced a previous Labour government to go with a begging bowl to the IMF.
On Tuesday, French finance minister Eric Lombard warned that France may need assistance from the IMF if the economic crisis of high debt, budget deficits and borrowing costs cannot be brought under control. “I cannot assure you that the risk of IMF. intervention does not exist,” he said in an interview on French radio. Fears of a new political crisis swept through France as the minority government of Prime Minister Francois Bayrou appeared likely to be ousted in a confidence vote next week.
Debts, Borrowing Costs and Political Disarray
France, with public debt now surpassing €2.8 trillion (approximately 112% of GDP) and budget deficits careening above 6% of GDP, teeters at the edge of a financial abyss. Its Prime Minister, François Bayrou, faces
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Net Zero, and the welfare state, are on unsustainable trajectories. The war in Ukraine is rather different. I’m not sure where the author has been during Trump’s sycophantic attempts at a peace deal, but nobody in Europe wants to be fighting Russia
Some are fighting back:
https://youtu.be/e54fB9lDUiQ
Far too late for any change of direction. Every single environmental or wildlife programme on terrestrial TV contains a political message promoting net zero. I don’t deny climate change, it has, is and always will be constantly changing, but the constant message of if we stop all activity that creates CO2 we will save the planet is automatically embedded. The vast majority including all the younger members of my own family wouldn’t dream it wasn’t gospel.
Note that the recent announcement of a new Russia-China gas pipeline is being pitched by Russia as turning its back on European customers
Last time I looked, the US party responsible for all of this still ruled about 50% of all US states and will likely also have another US presidency in the not-too-distant future and – as the German proverb goes – Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her (roughly The head of a fish rots first, supposed to mean that rotten leaders lead others into rotten situations).
Donald “Israel” Trump urgently needs to tackle his domestic political enemies at home instead of grandstanding at the expense of their vassals abroad, otherwise, his full name will – historicallly – not only be Donald “Israel” Trump but actually Donald “Israel Mayfly” Trump.
BTW, what’s the point of articles like this? Persistently rubbing one’s allies hard in the wrong way will eventually (one hopes) cause these to reconsider their allegiances but it won’t turn enemies into friends. So, we had a Jalta rerun en miniature but the British and French were excluded this time and it also wasn’t about the fate of Europe as prey of the winners of a certain past war but only about three (or so) provinces in Eastern Ukraine and even this had no practically discernible effect?
TV programme again boring… Read more »
Brilliant.
Hackneyed and partially factually wrong. “Russian gas” only became available in Europe well after the cold war. After his second tenure as chancellor of the FRG in 2005, Gerhard Schröder became a Gazprom lobbyist who was instrumental in introducing it to Germany.
The “the future will belong to really large colonial empires”, ie, all of Russia, India, China and Brazil, hype has been going on for so long that there’s a saying in Germany
Brasilien ist das Land der Zukunft. Schon immer.
[Brazil is the country of the future. Since ever.]
and besides, other European states had really large colonial empires in the past (Great Britain) or still control a sizable bit of them (France in north-west Africa).
Apparently, Putin’s war in Ukraine still doesn’t go well and Trumps efforts to end it all went pear-shaped. As none of them feels like taking on the War against Russia! party in the USA, they – or people in thrall with them like Doshi – bash their European muppets instead while doing their best to piss off the people living here, presumably based on the entirely wrong assumption that spineless sycophants will certainly kiss the hand that beats them.
Wrong guess, Tilak.
Not sure when NL started using their gas (huge gas reserves in the North), but this was well before the Cold War.
When will EZ credit ratings be seriously downgraded.
Some of the steps needed to get us out of this situation would normally be anathema to the elected government, because if they simply passed legislation to slash benefits, or stopped all subsidies for energy production, they would be committing political suicide; however, the current UK government is now so unpopular that they have nothing to lose, so they could take these steps with impunity. Unfortunately, they are cultists, and it looks like they will just continue on their present course, regardless of the consequences, either not comprehending what they are doing to the country, or on some ideological mission to destroy our society.
I couldn’t agree more!
What a sorry end to a once-great corner of the Eurasian landmass … Its leaders … pursue ideological purity while sacrificing the interests of their own citizens.
It’s clear that “our” leaders intensely dislike the people they rule, and that they would rather rule a different people, an imported people.
A good article, by the way.
The Endarkenment (possibly literal) approaches… and the High Priests of the neo-liberal consensus know no other way to respond.
Indeed. The only bright spot: when the Africans, Indians and Muslims take over, at least they will inherit a bankrupted set of entities (our ‘thriving democracies’ blah blah).
Brilliant article Tilak 👍
Very succinct and genuinely truthful as opposed to the manufactured truth Europe is force fed! (We’re treated like mushrooms, keep us in the dark and feed us on sh!t !)
Cock up or conspiracy? It’s over a quarter of a century since Blair started us on this path. I can’t believe it is pure incompetence.
It’s a murmuration… likeminded people moving in step and the same direction of others in the flock. Politicians, charities, QUANGOs, NGOs, Universities etc. forming a flying Blob which twists and turns to no obvious signal. No master conspiracy, no single cock up.
Flocking politicians. Who will be our hawk, our raptor?