Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Are European socialists waking up to the fact they’ve created a monster?

Remarkable events in Portugal, no? A democratically elected government is denied the opportunity to govern because its policies challenge the European Union. The left wing coalition won more than fifty per cent of the vote; out of the single currency, an end to austerity, bollocks to the Lisbon Treaty etc. But Anibal Cavaco Silva, the constitutional president, has banned them from taking office because it’s ‘too risky’.

As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard puts it in The Daily Telegraph: ‘Europe’s socialists face a dilemma. They are at last waking up to the unpleasant truth that monetary union is an authoritarian Right-wing enterprise that has slipped its democratic leash, yet if they act on this insight in any way they risk being prevented from taking power. Brussels really has created a monster’. I wonder if they are ‘at last waking up’. And I wonder how many Labour MPs will look at Portugal and conclude that we would be much better out of this fundamentally undemocratic and arrogant bureaucracy?

 

Illustration Image

Want more Rod?

SUBSCRIBE TODAY
This article is for subscribers only. Subscribe today to get three months of the magazine, as well as online and app access, for just $15.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in