Owl of Minerva sighted over Brussels

The Gru has an unusual piece from a (rather right-wing) analyst rather than banging on and on yet again. A McElvoy , 'senior editor of the Economist', leads with the alarming news that:

Fearing that a bounce in the polls will give Boris Johnson a mandate for a hard Brexit, Europe is starting to soften its stance

[The EU had] banked on Parliament rejecting no deal...Things do look more nuanced and interesting...my guess is that this summer the major member states will be more engaged in the key decisions on how to handle the threat of no deal. Until now, they have been happy to leave the pain to Brussels placemen. The timeline and the “Boris factor” are changing the calculation on the continent.

Declared unity in Europe is always questionable – there are too many faultlines, interpretations, passions and aversions for the harmony to be absolute or unchanging. The “Rhine divide” is a term popularised by the Princeton economist Markus Brunnermeier to explain the tensions between France and Germany in the Greek and wider eurozone crisis....Macron has to date thundered against any extension to the existing deal and suggested that the EU would do better to be shot of difficult Brits than put up with further months of dithering....The Merkel position, by contrast, reflects her preference for a calm approach when the going gets tough. So even on the backstop she calls for “fresh, creative thinking”

Putting aside whether we consider no deal to be an inherently bad idea [an unthinkable statement for Gru journalists], it is quite likely to happen....there’s a growing realisation that parliament may not reject this option, and that Brussels will have to face up to the prospect....With that in mind, the tone from Germany’s government has softened in the past few months.

[Overall] a Brexit “iron curtain” – in which a rupture in the trading relationship infects other aspects of cooperation – is invidious to both the UK and wider Europe’s interests. Brexit notwithstanding, we have much in common with the great European liberal democracies. It is always possible to make a bad crisis worse, which means that the Johnson era demands fresh reflection – and not only on the home front.

The online comments on this piece are very interesting too. They are substantial and  overwhelmingly hostile, as we might expect. The more interesting ones well demonstrate cultural cringe towards the EC -- it is united by a noble purpose, with sophisticated and personable leaders, it will put solidarity with Ireland above all else (it didn't during the eurozone crisis a rare critic noted), they are strong and united. There were confident cultural generalisations too about the Irish people,for example, which McElvoy would know about if only she had visited and talked to the people,or about the perception of cooperation and unity gained by travelling between France and Germany. Lots of class hate,mostly focused upwards this time, lurked not far beneath the surface.