Watching the EU unravel (4)

Or it might be the good old instinct for (national) self-preservation that does for the EU.

It is all too easy to write this off as racism or xenophobia, which are officially Bad Things, and yes, a lot of racists and xenophobes are against the EU for no other reason, but there is, or will be, a backlash against Islamists in The Netherlands or in Scandinavian countries; against Romanian Gypsies in Italy; against 'scum' in France; against African refugees in Spain*, and, once the Irish economy has hit the skids, against immigrants to Ireland generally; who knows**? Not to mention the long-standing tradition they have in Germany and France of burning down homes for asylum seekers - attacks of such murderous viciousness that they really put the insult 'Little Englander' into perspective.

But you can't insult all the people all the time and get away with it. If they constantly deride Perfectly Ordinary People, who are suspicious about the EU, as 'racists' even though they're not, and to stifle all debate about the EU with cries of "Xenophobe!" then sooner or later that'll put up the hackles of Perfectly Ordinary People who will start to wonder what else the EU might have been lying about for all these years...

* Of course, not all of this is directly EU-driven, but it links in with the whole politically correct Geneva Convention-ECHR-human rights bullshit that the EU are trying to force upon us.

** I think that allowing Turkey in is yet another step too far - and as long as the French are against it, it's unlikely to happen - but part of me wishes they'd do it, just to speed up the inevitable demise thereafter.