EU 'slow, stingy and fearful'

As the virus still bites, the Grud reports

History shows that nationalism thrives in times of crisis. With the pandemic bringing mass death and economic catastrophe, the EU’s response has been slow, stingy and fearful

baseless optimism [!] began to crack on 11 September 2001 and became much more fragile with the financial crisis of 2008; but what nobody could have anticipated is that it would finally collapse under a plague with biblical resonances that has confined us all to lockdown for an indefinite period of time... 

a catastrophe generates fear, and nationalism presents itself as the ideal antidote, inasmuch as it forms, in the face of uncertainty, the refuge of a community bound by ties of blood [blood? sounds familiar -- soil and race too? ]... Historically, there is glaring evidence of this problem in Europe, where a strengthening of nationalism has unleashed conflict [he noticed!]...our big problems, as this crisis highlights once again, are transnational ones, but we have almost exclusively national instruments at our disposal to resolve them.

could the EU withstand two consecutive crises [2008 was the first] of such gravity? Bearing in mind that the last crisis was on the brink of wiping out the euro

 At least there is a chance of making a few bob before it all ends:

NB  Javier Cercas’s latest book, Lord of All the Dead, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean, is published by MacLehose.

I never thought I would ever get so many chances so soon to say I told you so, and I know this rant originally came from Norway:

Keir Starmer can you hear me? Polly Toynbee! Martin Kettle! Rafael Behr! Theresa May! Gina Miller! Dominic Grieve! Hilary Benn! -- your case took a hell of a beating! Your case took a hell of a beating!