Down with ideologies!

This is the only slogan I find palatable. For, contrary to a common misapprehension, it’s not the economy but ideology that drives modern European governments – all the way to disaster.

All ideologies are totalitarian by definition, in that they seek – overtly or surreptitiously – sway over every aspect of life. Any ideology is a deity that’s always athirst. Its adherents are ready to sacrifice everything at its altar: national security, social tranquillity, economic prosperity.

Another feature all ideologies share is that they are short of positive content. Whatever little they do have is distinctly secondary to the negative animus. This, however, is seldom advertised for public relations purposes.

Thus, when ideologues commit mass murder, they usually justify it by the pursuit of a greater good. That may be social justice, economic equality, religious or racial purity, supposedly threatened national survival – the possible ruses are endless. But ruses they all are. The only real purpose of mass murder is the murder of masses.

Modern European governments have refrained from genocide in my lifetime (I regard Russia as European only in geography, not in essence). But they are still ideological, and hence underhanded, in everything they do.

Anyone blessed with functional eyesight can detect the workings of an essentially socialist ideology behind the toing and froing of the European Union. Since any ideology can rise only from the ruins of the traditional order, its first aim is to create such ruins.

During the Third Punic War, Cato ended every speech in the Senate by saying: Carthago delenda est – Carthage must be destroyed. Replace Carthage with ‘Western tradition’, and any EU dignitary could say the same thing whenever he gets up to speak in Strasbourg or Brussels.

But they don’t. In common with other ideologues, they have refined the subterfuge of couching their doctrinaire aims in the jargon of economic benefits.

Ideology? What ideology?, they keep repeating, if not in so many words. We simply want to pool Europe’s resources to create widespread peace and prosperity. One country mines iron ore, another mines nickel, a third one produces the coal that fires up the steel mills in a fourth that then shares the steel around. What can possibly be wrong with such division of labour and economy of scale? Only one thing: this is just smoke and mirrors.

In 1952, one of the EU founders, Jean Monnet, summed it all up with frank cynicism: “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose but which will irreversibly lead to federation.”

Whenever this quotation is cited to disparage the EU, its advocates claim it’s apocryphal. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. One way or the other, no one can deny that the sentiment is true to life. The EU does all it can to create a pan-European superstate, while systematically damaging the European economies it ostensibly seeks to improve.

Socialism, for all its sharing-and-caring sloganeering, is all about rapaciously centralising power until it’s completely monopolised by the state. The EU, and most nations within it, are demonstrably moving in this direction. And any observer of modern history will know that economic benefits are bound to fall by the wayside all along such a journey.

One slogan inscribed on EU banners is ‘autonomy from the United States’. Anti-Americanism is one button Europeans like to push to produce a desired response. We don’t do things the American way, they announce proudly. That much is true; they don’t.

Thus, though the EU economy was $3 trillion bigger than the US one in 1990, it’s now smaller, even though the EU has 100 million more people. This isn’t to say that the US is free from the socialist contagion. She isn’t. But it’s less virulent there.

Socialism is all about power, and power must be projected. The way a central government goes about that task is suffocating the economy with extortionist taxes and countless regulations, with no regard for the consequences.

Go no further than this observation when trying to explain why America prospers while Europe stagnates – this even during the four years of Biden’s quasi-socialist administration. In the past five years, the EU has outscored the US almost three to one in regulations passed. Add to this probably as many again courtesy of national governments, and you’ll see why the EU is growing only geographically, but not economically.

Another factor is energy costs, which are almost three times as high in Europe. That gap will grow even wider when Trump acts on his credible promise to increase the production of hydrocarbons by boosting exploration, drilling and fracking.

Europe, meanwhile, remains fanatically loyal to the net-zero subset of the overarching destructive ideology. Like all such urges, this is impervious to any outdated arguments based on reason and facts.

It’s pointless telling the Eurocrats that there is no scientific basis for that madness whatsoever. You can cite any number of facts, such as that the Earth has been warmer than it is now for 85 per cent of its known lifespan, or that anthropogenic carbon dioxide only has a minuscule effect on climate, if any. They won’t hear because they don’t want to.

They know that hydrocarbons have fuelled the West’s prosperity. That’s exactly the problem – socialists are ideologically committed to decrying prosperity for others, while enjoying it for themselves. That’s why the Germans shut down all their nuclear power stations just as cheap Russian gas stopped firing up their socialist self-righteousness.

The unceasing offensive against nuclear energy is another proof of the ideology behind climate madness. After all, nuclear reactors don’t produce CO2 emissions. They generate abundant and clean energy whose supply isn’t affected by windless, overcast days.

Our own socialists have the same urges. That’s why Starmer and his ministers barely conceal their desire for Britain to, in their jargon, “establish closer ties with the EU”, but in fact to rejoin it as a supplicant, if not as a full member.

There have been periods, most notably in the 1970s, when belonging to the pan-European club could confer some economic benefits, if no other. But seeking membership at this time is too stupid even for our Westminster lot.

But they don’t voice such intentions for any rational reasons, however misguided. They are tropistically reaching out to their ideological comrades on the continent. Their shared brand of socialism calls for expansion ad infinitum, and certainly beyond national borders. That’s all that really matters.

Let’s not be too beastly to socialist ideologues, or rather let’s not single them out for special opprobrium. A good ideology is an oxymoron. All ideologies are equally bad, and they defy their etymology by having nothing in common with ideas. They reside in the viscera, not the mind.

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