Someone posted on Facebook a piece published in Der Spiegel about Brexit and written by two German journalists. It's in English so I'm not sure which audience it was originally aimed at. Perhaps it was written originally in German for Germans fascinated by what's happening over here at the moment. However, whatever the reasoning, it is a great read, and it gives some idea of how others see us. I would encourage you to read it HERE.
A few quotes from it which I find memorable:
"For non-Brits, the Brexiteers' chauvinist rhetoric may be hard to understand, but it is part of a long tradition".
What I think of as British exceptionalism is seen as chauvinist in Germany and perhaps it's a better description of this national feeling of being miffed at the loss of empire and standing.
"In the political turmoil that followed the Brexit referendum, all her competitors within the Conservative Party, including Boris Johnson, had eliminated themselves in almost slapstick fashion"
"At EU summits, a degrading ceremony became habit: When the heads of state met over lunch or dinner, May was allowed, like an amuse bouche, to make supplications or threats, and was then politely escorted out of the room".
"The British have become trapped by their numerous misapprehensions and contradictions -- and by their wishful thinking, which continuously bumps up against reality. Now, the country is paying the price for the fact that, from the very beginning, nobody really had a plan for Brexit because nobody really believed it would ever come".
It takes the PM to task for sending ministers round European capitals trying to break the EU27 unity:
"With this [trying to bypass Barnier], May made it very clear that despite all of those years of membership, she understood little about the EU.
"When London's negotiators realized there was no way around EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels, they tried to bypass him through special diplomacy and reach out to the conciliatory, but tough French. At one point, they approached the government in Warsaw, which was worried about the future of the hundreds of thousands of Polish workers in the UK. On another occasion, they sounded out Berlin"
But for sheer buffoonery what about this little anecdote on Boris Johnson:
"At this point, Boris Johnson was still foreign secretary, and one evening far away from home, he was chatting with a small group when the subject came to Brexit. One of the people present was David McAllister, who was the head of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, and, potentially more importantly for Johnson, someone with the ear of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"It got late, talk became looser, and at one point, Johnson asked McAllister: Ultimately, the Germans are going to help us, aren't they?
"Johnson's question revealed an almost naïve misunderstanding of political rules -- and spoke to the Brits' fourth major mistake. For a long time, they believed Brexit talks would be conducted like negotiations within the EU -- a contract would be prepared by officials or a problem would be worked over for months, and then the 28 state representatives would cut the Gordian knot, with Merkel at their center".
After reading it, a bit of Burns slipped into my mind and I looked up the precise wording of the poem (To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church) of which this is the last verse:
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
Isn't Brexit just such a foolish notion that Burns had in mind? It seems so apt doesn't it?
