More significant was the fact that she yet again failed to say anything meaningful about citizen rights, freedom of movement or the contentious issue of the exit fee, all of which are high up the European Commission’s list of priorities and preconditions for the negotiations to continue. Even her audience of just over thirty, most of whom were flown over from London anyway, yawned their way through a speech whose final, edited version actually contained the sentence “Britain’s future is… bright”. No wonder nobody from the EU27 bothered to turn up. [...]
In reality, of course, and I can’t resist just one example, pre-EU Anglo-Tuscan history is hardly so rose-tinted. In the 14th Century the Tuscan Bardi and Peruzzi families leant a vast sum of florins to the English King Edward III to pay for his wars. After a string of defeats he failed to pay the sum back, ultimately leading to the collapse of both institutions, which in turn resulted in a serious Europe-wide economic crisis. Oops! Most Brits have forgotten this, but, as a resident, I can tell you, the Florentines most certainly haven’t. In a speech about these ambiguous creative trade deals this faux pas was carrion for the Italian media. [...]
May spoke passionately, for example, about British people caring about sovereignty and democracy and in the process managed to somehow imply that this wasn’t true for other European countries. To make such an earnest gaff in one of the birthplaces of modern republicanism whose citizens are by and large proud European democrats, and worse still to do so as the representative of a country that still has a monarchy and no constitution, was nothing short of absurd.
No comments:
Post a Comment