Richard Orange, “Denmark election: Right-wing Eurosceptics look set to form a new government,” Independent, 18 June 2015.Could there be a greater tribute to the incompetence and stupidity of the Eurozone leaders?
Ben Chu, “Desperate Greeks turn to Vladimir Putin for help as country teeters on edge of bankruptcy,” Independent, 18 June 2015.
First, there is the mind-numbing neoliberal economic incompetence that has caused depressions on the periphery of Europe (e.g., Ireland, Spain, Greece, the Baltic states) and economic conditions in the centre that are hardly much to boast about (e.g., unnecessarily high unemployment, asset bubbles, insanely high housing prices, unsustainably high private debt levels, etc.).
Secondly, there has been a steady rise of anti-EU right-wing parties in Europe and now we may well be seeing signs that some nations like Greece will be driven into geo-political alliances with Russia – just to avoid the anti-democratic Eurozone political and economic system.
In the UK in the recent election, the surprise result (actually probably not that surprising) was that the vehemently anti-EU UKIP party became the third largest party in terms of percentage of the vote (but owing to the first-past-the-post system in the UK only obtained one seat in the House of Commons).
One major reason why the Labour party lost was that UKIP attracted a significant number of Labour voters or swing voters who would have voted for Labour, just as I predicted here.
All in all, I see no reason to doubt that the EU is rapidly heading into a political crisis, and it will be exacerbated by any new economic crisis in the future.
