Election gamble blows up in the face of British PM Theresa May. Or how settling for an insecure coalition cabinet with a stronger opposition could become a blessing in disguise for the UK as a whole.

British Prime Minister Theresa May of the conservative Tory party had it all figured out: with the extremely tough Brexit negotiations with the European Union ahead and with the Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, seemingly flat on its back, it seemed like an appropriate time to organize national elections in the United Kingdom.

According to her plan, these national elections would act like a two-edged sword.  When she would indeed have the sound victory based upon an absolutely majority that she anticipated, she would acquire a stronger mandate with respect to the EU negotiations and it would also rub her adversary Jeremy Corbyn deeper in the dirt of his own incompetence, she figured.

With the Tories as absolute majority leaders in parliament and Labour lying in tatters, she would be energized to take the tough stance against the EU that she deemed necessary to carry out the best possible results from these negotiations.

Things went... a little different:

The Tories won the elections by a small and non-decisive majority of  58 seats (319 seats against 261 for Labour, according to the latest polls) and they saw Labour gain a quite impressive 29 seats, in comparison with the last elections.

When one takes into consideration that Labour under the “clumsey leader” Corbyn seemed a lost cause  and that May seemed on her way to a landslide victory only a few weeks ago, it is clear that things went horribly wrong for Theresa May.

And the remarkable thing is that neither the Brexit nor the terrible terrorist attacks of the last few months in the United Kingdom seemed the direct smoking gun, with respect to this strongly disappointing election result.

The terrorist attacks – terribly brutal and vicious as they were – were of course condemned by all parties and it was not that the policy of either the Tories or Labour would have led to a different outcome. Besides that, all three attacks (i.e. the two in London and the one in Manchester) were executed by people living in the UK for a long time or even all their lives, so even the most restrictive policy regarding immigration would not have stopped these terrorist attacks at all.

To put it even stronger: the perpetrators were perhaps all part of the United Kingdom’s colonial heritage and not a consequence of the unhindered immigration of the recent years.

And the Brexit was not even the elephant in the room in the prelude to the elections. As Bernard Hammelburg, the savvy Dutch correspondent for Foreign Affairs of BNR Radio stated (if I recall him correctly): “the Brexit itself as an event hardly played a role in the British elections. The Brexit was a thing from the past, upon which all the important, gamechanging decisions were already taken. It was especially the unclear economic outlook and the feeling that not all would be hunky dory within the British empire after all, that drove the people – especially the youngsters – towards Corbyn’s Labour party”.

BNR Newsradio Foreign Affairs journalist Bernard Hammelburg
Picture copyright of: Ernst Labruyère
Click to enlarge

Whatever the reason was: fact is that the whole plan of Theresa May to improve her position via these elections blew up in her face.

Instead of having an absolute majority of at least 326 seats, she ended somewhere south of 320 seats. In order to find a workable majority directly after the elections, May called in the help of a Northern Irish splinter group: the Unionist Democratic Party. This party is far more populist and conservative than even the Tories would like to endorse. Nevertheless, calling in the help of this party seemed the only way in which she could continue her governmental plans at short notice.

This means that due to this UDP party participation her hands could be tied with respect to all kinds of political hot potatoes, like the Brexit (the difficult choice between a soft and hard Brexit), the open border with Ireland, immigration and the economic development in all the countries within the United Kingdom.

And on top of that she seems to have lost the confidence of many youngsters in the UK, in favour of Labour with its leader that initially “nobody wanted” and that really nobody among the powers-that-be took serious in the beginning.

Corbyn was considered a basket case, with a totally outdated political view that came straight from the Eighties of last century: a political Catweazle [Catweazle was the name of a fictious wizard from medieval times, who was transported to the 20th Century by a failed spell – EL]. 

But the tides have turned for both PM Theresa and Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn...

So what can Theresa May do, now it is probably not possible to maintain her tough stance against the EU (i.e. “a Brexit on our terms or else... no deal!”), as she is now stuck somewhere between the desires of a now very powerful Northern Irish splinter group, a strongly divided Tory party and a Jeremy Corbyn with much more power than before and with the momentum going his way?

Perhaps the best solution would be to grind off the sharp edges of her current Brexit-related policy by diluting it here and there with a dash of mildness and a spoon of compromise and humility. She knows that she has to take three totally different opinions into account (Labour, Tories and UDP) in order to get anything through the parliament in the coming years. 

She can’t always trust the hardliners within her own party for automatically voting in her favour, so she must be able to find a broader compromise than she did before.

In other words, she has to take Labour’s desires also into account to a certain degree and stick out a hand towards the man that she probably dislikes more than anyone else: Jeremy Corbyn. Will she be able to do that? Who knows?!

I think the best she can do, is creating a compromise that nobody loves, but nobody hates either. A compromise that is in the best traditions of Dutch politics with its outrageous number of (small) parties and its long, long history of coalition cabinets, that were always a difficult marriage between sense and emotion.

And probably, when Theresa May grinds off the sharp edges of her Brexit policy, the EU is also willing to abandon their plans to punish the UK for trying to leave the EU.

The toughest nut to crack will be the immigration issue, as well as the free traffic of capital, citizens and goods and services. However, even in these formerly non-negotiable areas of EU policy there might be a small opening.

Immigration already has turned into the hottest potato within the EU itself and the member states are already discovering that unlimited free traffic of citizens (i.e labour) has a series of serious drawbacks that cannot simply be ignored by the powers that be.

Politicians start slowly to discover that the EU citizens become more and more fed up by the EU’s neoliberal policy of the last thirty years, because it largely ignored the sense of security and financial / economic stability that almost every citizen requires, in order to have a decent living and raise a family in relative prosperity. That could mean a chance for the UK in the coming negotiations.

However, the most important factor will be whether Theresa May is able to sing a different tune or not? Will she be able to show the EU negotiators a little more humility than before, when she made it seem that she held all the cards and the EU leadership had to sing to her tune in the Brexit negotiations.

Even though the UK is still very much a stronghold in the financial and commercial services industry and not all financial companies are automatically choosing to leave London after the Brexit, May must understand that the UK still needs the EU more than the EU needs the UK after the Brexit. It is simple as that.

The UK is in my opinion quite vulnerable in the areas of agriculture, manufacturing and heavy industry, as well as the exports of manufactured goods, as the island cannot and will not be self-supporting in the coming years.

In some industrial areas, like the steel industry, the country still suffers from obsolete and hopelessly inefficient plants, that are no match for the cunning and efficient German industries or the heavily subsidized Chinese industries with their dumping of steel and other semifinished products. And nobody can eat or drink financial services alone.

So finding a viable and feasible compromise in the prelude to the Brexit can be a lifesaver for the UK in the end. The decision to start the Brexit can probably not be withdrawn without a massive British loss of face, but the way that it happens is very much in the capable (?) hands of PM Theresa May.

And then, this outcome of the elections, even though it will be a tough lump to swallow, could be a blessing in disguise: both for Theresa May and for the United Kingdom as a whole. And they can be a good chance for the EU to show a more friendly and humane face as well. 

A British mandate that takes the interests of more people into account is probably a better mandate in the end.

How will the negotiation game between the United Kingdom and the European Union end? Here could be some answers!

The negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union about the British “divorce” from the EU have officially started a month ago with the handover of the Article 50 letter from Theresa May.

And although the prelude to the actual negotiations, featuring the chairman of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and British Prime Minister Theresa May, was very rocky – when both had a dispute-laden official dinner at Downing Street 10 and sources around Juncker leaked some of these undisclosed discussion points to the German newspaper ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine’ – these negotiations will soon start for real.

Head of Service Michel Barnier of the European Commission and his team, as official representatives of the EU, will negotiate with PM Theresa May and assistant-negotiator David Davis, who represent the United Kingdom.

To the initial annoyance of the EU negotiators, PM Theresa May suddenly threw in the bombshell of organizing general British parliamentary elections in June, in order to get a stronger mandate for these tough negotiations with the EU. 

However, when the mandate of Theresa May is reinforced indeed after the parliamentary elections, these Brexit negotiations can take off in full force. And all signals do point in the direction of a stronger mandate indeed for May, as the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn  is virtually blown to smithereens in the prelude to these elections and the liberals of Nick Clegg could never take over the role of 'classic' Labour for most left-wing Britons.

Even though the stakes of the negotiations are extremely high for both parties involved, the starting point is relatively simple:

The target of both parties is: 

• (a.) to come to an orderly divorce regarding the partition of the mutual estate and a justified payment of the pending bills and financial obligations that the UK has with respect to the EU and
• (b.) to reach a series of trade agreements between the UK and the EU countries for the time after the divorce. 

The United Kingdom would like to start both negotiations at the same time, while the EU is adamantly in favour of finishing (a.) first, before starting with (b.).

Both the EU and the UK will initially try to reach the most favourable results for themselves with these negotiations, while trying to give as little away as possible to their opponents. Therefore these upcoming negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union can –and perhaps must – be considered as a (very serious) game. 

It is a game in which there can be clear winners and clear losers and in which both parties could lose dearly at the same time. But it is also a game in which both parties cannot both win clearly at the same time (i.e. at least in my humble opinion) and in which the “best result” for both parties is a compromise that probably all people tolerate, but none of the people really love.

I’ve written this down in the following negotiations schedule:

Chart 1 – wins and losses in the game

The stakes and chances for the negotiations game
Chart created by: Ernst's Economy for You
Click to enlarge

The reason that both parties can win the negotiations, but not both at the same time, is that the goals are simply too contradictory for a mutual win:

• Extremely favourable separation and trade terms with various opt-ins for the UK (i.e. an EU ‘a la carte’ option) and on top of that an effective end to unhindered immigration of EU citizens into the UK would mean a clear victory for the UK, but a dear loss for the EU;
• A divorce at such unfavourable terms for the UK that it would cause economic hardship and severe loss of prosperity for the country and would scare the other members of the EU away from only thinking of such a ‘~exit’ would be “great “ for the EU, but a terrible loss for the UK;

So the best outcome would be an outcome in which both parties sacrifice some points from their initial tough stance and give some pork away to their opponents, in order to reach a mutually acceptable result. However, this will probably take quite a long time and there might be some very tough lumps to swallow for both parties.

And last, but not least: the funny and at the same time very awkward thing is that both parties can totally lose this game – at least that is what I think. That would be when both parties get so alienated towards eachother in the negotiation process that they ‘punish’ eachother into a mutually terrible deal or perhaps worse: a huge political-economical (or even military) conflict.

These circumstances make it extremely important to play this game “hard and smart”, but with a keen eye for the opponent’s needs, concepts and visions.

I laid down a few assumptions for this game in the following three schedules, accompanied by my comments:

Chart 2 – greatest gain and most feared loss

The greatest gain and most feared loss in the game
Chart created by: Ernst's Economy for You
Click to enlarge

As I mentioned before, the UK wants an ‘EU a la carte’ with all the opt-ins, like free trade and free traffic of goods and finances between the UK and the European continent, but with an opt-out for the now mandatory free traffic of people. All privileges and no obligations towards the EU. 

The biggest fear of the UK in this game is that they get a very poor (or even no) trade deal with the EU members: a situation that brings the UK's citizens and companies economic hardship and massive loss of prosperity. 

Or, perhaps just as important, that the UK has to swallow an enormous lump with regards to the unhampered immigration of European citizens: that they have to carry the burdens of the EU membership, without having the advantages of it anymore.

Where the EU would like to have a trade deal with the UK that is as poor and hideous as possible, but without setting the whole situation on fire, the EU fears most a deal that feels like the dreaded ‘EU a la carte’ that the Britons want. 

When this would happen indeed, this could lead to other countries abolishing their EU membership, under the right circumstances and peer pressure.

The hardest thing is finding a viable and workable compromise here, that meets both parties’ requirements more or less, without both parties giving in too much.

Chart 3 – possible compromises and important influences for both parties

The possible compromises and important influences for both parties
Chart created by: Ernst's Economy for You
Click to enlarge

A few of the most important industries for the United Kingdom as a whole are the financial and commercial services industries, mainly situated in the greater London area. These industries are for me the cork on which the UK floats and these must be protected at all costs. Although the heavy industry and the manufacturing industry are also very important for the country, the UK is not so competitive in these areas. 

So perhaps the UK are willing to give in with regards to the latter industries, to the advantage of the commercial and financial services industries.

This is the reason that I think that a workable trade and divorce agreement with the UK can be found through the EU ‘protection’ of the greater London area and the financial and commercial companies in this area. When a trade deal can be reached here, the UK might be willing to swallow a few lumps with respect to UK immigration of EU citizens and moderate trade levies on other British industries.

A workable solution for the EU would probably be a trade deal that puts some moderate (but not extremely high) levies on British products and services. And such a deal should always incorporate a warrant for the current and future(?) EU immigrants in the United Kingdom, that they can live there and work there for as long as they want, without being hampered or forced out by the UK government or the British population as a whole.

There is definitely some manoeuvering room there, although negotiations should be held very cautiously.

However, what could negatively influence the circumstances for the negotiations is the British ‘once we were an extremely powerful and great empire’-complex, that makes that the UK feels much more powerful and strong than the country actually is at the moment. 

This complex could force the country to play high stakes poker with the EU, which could lead to the dreaded ‘both lose’ outcome of the game.

Other influences are the risk of a future ScoNIxit – an exit from the UK by Scotland and Northern Ireland as a consequence of an extremely unfavourable British trade deal – or an escalating conflict with Spain about the island of Gibraltar.

What could negatively influence the strenght of the EU negotiators is when countries like f.i. The Netherlands and Ireland act as partypoopers / dealbreakers for the EU, when they start to fear for their formerly prosperous trade deals with the UK.

The EU always had a history of acting like 28 (now 27) frogs in a wheelbarrow and henceforth there is a considerable chance that the UK tries to play the ‘divide and conquer’-card with its favorite trade partners, by covertly promising them slightly better trade deals and slightly lower import levies than the rest of the EU. 

These ‘rogue’ trade partners, with their then hidden agendas, could put fierce pressure on the negotiation process and could act as a fission fungus within the EU itself.

Nevertheless, at this moment the EU seems very much one block in the initial negotiations with the UK, as all countries seem to understand the importance of a tough deal for the UK.

 Chart 4 – The ‘first strike’ and the tipping point

The first strike in the negotiations and
the possible tipping point in the game
Chart created by: Ernst's Economy for You
Click to enlarge

As far as I can see from a distance, the current British stance towards the EU negotiators seems to be: “We are the UK and who are you?!”

The Britons seem overly confident in their aim towards their desired ‘EU a la carte’ condition, with plenty opt-ins and no EU immigrant issues for the distant future anymore. They currently try to get the best for free and don’t seem interested in what their negotiating partners think or want. They therefore utterly ignore the desires and demands of the European Union.

This is not a viable option as it will undoubtedly lead  to anger and alienation among the European negotiators. 

The Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk, who is a steady columnist for the Guardian, already heaved a sigh, when he pleaded in an Op-Ed that “the UK could not be considered a serious country anymore”:

And then there is Theresa May herself. Her claim this week that the EU is trying to influence the elections in Britain through a leak to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is the latest example of a long list of statements that simply make no sense. Britain is not the centre of the world, and the idea that EU leaders would sit together plotting a victory for Jeremy Corbyn is laughable.

Far more likely is that EU leaders decided to leak the proceedings of their dinner on Sunday with May in order to warn their own public about how irrational Britain has become. How the country believes itself to have the upper hand in a negotiation with a group of nations seven times its own size. How it wants to be part of the single market while refusing to recognise the authority of the European court governing that market. And, most alarmingly, how badly informed May still is about the practical consequences both of Brexit and of a no-deal crash out of the EU.

Joris Luyendijk is always quite critical and rocksteady in his approach towards the English and their habits, but what he says definitely makes sense here. 

However, I believe in a tipping point in this game, when the emotions are finally out of the way and when both parties finally try to avoid getting the scenario that they absolutely not want. 

Then is the time to do business, at last!

The EU on the other hand is akin more to Clint Eastwood currently than Clint Eastwood himself: 

“Do you feel lucky, British punkette?! Do you really think you can get away with a Brexit without being severely punished for it? Well, you’re dead wrong, woman! I’ll make you pay for it!”.

But the EU is no Clint Eastwood (because there is only one Clint Eastwood) and they won't manage to stay this tough for two years in a row! 

So in order to prevent from the divide-and-conquer scenario within the EU itself or from a full-blown trade war with the UK, the EU will leave this ultra-tough stance quite soon after the British elections in June. Nobody wants this British stew to simmer for too long and spoil it all. And that might be the tipping point for the EU.

It is an interesting negotiating game and a tough one... And the stakes of it are very high.

These are my ponderings about the outcome of this game. I am sure that some of these concepts might indeed play out, while others might deviate from reality in the coming months and years.

I would put my money on both parties chosing in the end for the ‘no winners, no losers’ scenario, as they gives the best chance for a workable compromise for both parties for the near future.

However, with emotions running very high during the negotiation process in the coming months and years, the ‘complete loss for both parties’- scenario could also play out.

Then we could be in for a hot spring of 2019!  Place your bets! Rien ne va plus!

Gibraltar and the domestic gains of old-fashioned, post-colonial sabre-rattling against a ‘vicious enemy’

I visited Gibraltar once in my life – in 1996 – during a fortnightly group roundtrip in a minivan in Spain. This roundtrip led us through the magnificent Spanish province of Andalucia and one day we visited indeed the most British part of Europe, located east of Dover.

I remember the beautiful view on the top of the mountain, the funny and energetic berber monkeys, the wonderful weather and the horrible British food – Shepherd’s Pie with overcooked carrots and greenpeas drowned in gravy –  which I suspect until this day gave our whole group a food poisoning that lasted for a minimum of two days for the lucky ones and among others much, much longer. But, to be frank, it could also be a fish dish in Spain itself, that caused our group’s discomfort.

And of course I remember how utterly British Gibraltar was, as a kind of open air museum crafted after the picture-perfect, proverbially British city that didn’t exist in reality. With red telephone booths, pubs, souvenir shops, restaurants featuring British ‘cuisine’ and other typically British paraphernalia for both tourists and anglophiles.

Now, twenty-odd years later, the same peninsula of Gibraltar is the subject of heavy, vocal sabre-rattling by both the Spaniards and the Britons.

Hardly the British government and diplomats delivered their Article 50-letter, effectuating the Brexit as a process, or the Spanish government smuggled a Gibraltar paragraph in the EU draft agreement that was the starting point for the orderly Brexit negotiations. The New York Times described the matter in the following snippets:

After it became clear Friday that the union’s remaining leaders might give Spain an effective veto over whether any deal applied to Gibraltar — a British territory long the subject of an acrimonious sovereignty dispute between London and Madrid — lawmakers in Britain and Gibraltar responded with defiance and concern.

Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, made his anger clear on Friday, calling Spain’s tactic “disgraceful” and “predatory.” He said in a statement about the insertion of language on Gibraltar into the European Union’s draft guidelines for negotiating a British withdrawal: “This unnecessary, unjustified and unacceptable discriminatory proposed singling out of Gibraltar and its people was the predictable machination of Spain.”

In Gibraltar, which has a clear frontier with Spain, the fear is different. It is that once Britain is outside the European Union, which guarantees free movement of people, Spain could demand concessions or make the border with Gibraltar harder to cross, effectively isolating the territory.

Although the mounting emotions about Gibraltar are perhaps understandable with both the Spain and British views and background in mind, the Spanish action – to make the negotiations with the UK an effective hostage of the future British plans for Gibraltar – was not so sensible from a political point of view. Especially as Spain itself has two exclaves – Ceuta and Melilla – on Moroccon soil; two exclaves which Spain is not likely to abandon soon.

On top of that, the situation around Gibraltar never stopped both the Spaniards and Britons from actively working together for 40 years within the European Union and its predecessors. And it also never stopped the British elderly from spending their finest years in Spanish holiday resorts and second houses, at the same time that their youngsters spent their holiday money in Spanish discotheques and pubs, while drinking (much too much) Spanish beer, wine and cocktails.

So the question is valid “what the fuzz is all about”?!

And while the Spanish action was already quite erratic to these eyes, the British reaction – especially represented by former minister and current Tory official Lord Michael Howard, as well as a few warmongering British newspapers – was straightforwardly bananas, as the following snippets from the Guardian show:

Theresa May would be prepared to go to war to protect Gibraltar as Margaret Thatcher once did for the Falklands, former Conservative leader Michael Howard has suggested, in comments that were immediately criticised as inflammatory.

Lord Howard’s suggestion that the prime minister would be ready to follow in the footsteps of her predecessor 35 years ago came alongside a government pledge to protect the sovereignty of Britain’s overseas territory.

Downing Street said May had called Fabian Picardo, the chief minister of Gibraltar, on Sunday morning to say the UK remained “steadfastly committed to our support for Gibraltar, its people and its economy”.

Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, also used robust language. “We’re going to look after Gibraltar. Gibraltar is going to be protected all the way because the sovereignty cannot be changed without the agreement of the people of Gibraltar ,” he said.

The highly provocative picture of a British aircraft 
carrier at full steam in the British Telegraph newspaper
Picture courtesy of Telegraph.co.uk
Click to enlarge

And the Telegraph put things in overdrive, with a picture of a British war vessel and the following bragging lines about the British military strenght in a possible war with Spain:

Britain's Royal Navy is substantially weaker than it was during the Falklands War but could still "cripple" Spain, military experts have said.

Rear-Adml Chris Parry, a former director of operational capability at the Ministry of Defence,  has called on the Government to "appropriately" invest in Britain's military capacity if it wants to "talk big" over Gibraltar.

It came as a former Tory leader suggested that Theresa May would go to war with Spain to defend the sovereignty of the peninsular just as Margaret Thatcher did with the Falklands.

Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom quickly downplayed the situation in the media, reputedly by “laughing off the Spain war talk”, but the tone was definitely set.

As this incident shows, a toxic combination of aggrieved pride and an inferiority complex, as well as unhealthy nationalism and an uncertain future under influence of arguably the biggest and most uncertain, economic step in recent British history, could quickly lead to mounting anger and dangerous envy among the British population. And this by itself could lead to irreversible steps on the path towards war: hence the Falklands war, with its massive bloodshed and skyrocketing emotions about a few dry and almost deserted islands in the South Atlantic Ocean.

By focusing on a mutual enemy – Spain in this case – the British officials can distract the attention from the mounting political and economic uncertainty and the quite unfavourable outlook, emerging from the inconsiderate, to these eyes even reckless Brexit that the United Kingdom entered into.

The promise of a war against a ‘vicious enemy’, who threatens a country’s social, economic and political interests, is a catalyst for exploding nationalism and national pride. It will probably lead to a population that stands behind the government as one man, more than willing to chew through a dozen economic, sour apples on behalf of the greater good and the national interests being at stake. That is the reason that I am not absolutely sure that the situation between the United Kingdom and Spain will not escalate further, before coming to a timely end (or not).

Is the current British escalation strategy a dangerous strategy? It is very dangerous!

Is it effective? Oh yes, it is very effective for domestic purposes, as it overcomes political differences within the population and leads to ‘one people united against the enemy’!

And might the British government – perhaps with Lord Howard as a straw man – have deliberately (ab)used this Gibraltar crisis as a powerful weapon of government mass deception and nationalist demagoguery?! 

Well, to answer that question I gladly turn to what Sir Francis Urquhart, the main political vilain from the (far superior) British ‘House of Cards’, would have stated in this situation: “You might very well think that! I could not possibly comment!” 

The European Union is dealt with the worst possible hand in its poker game against “Vicious Vladimir” Putin, Xi “the sfinx” Jinping and Donald “the Trumpinator” Trump, but must not lose its game in order to stay in the match.

In the noble game of poker it is not paramount that someone wins with a good hand.

But how he prevents himself from losing while being dealt with a really bad hand...

Ernst Labruyère - 21 januari 2017 

“Alea iacta est – the die is cast” as Gaius Julius Caesar is believed to have said in 49 BC. Donald Trump IS now the 45th president of the United States and WILL decide the future policy of the most important partner that the EU has. And when his maiden speech as president is a text book example for his policy in the coming years, the EU might be in for a very wild ride.

The editorial in the Dutch financial newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad (FD) was crystal, if not painfully, clear:

The call for an assertive Europe has been sounding louder and louder during the last couple of weeks. Reality is, however, that the European Union is hardly capable of fiercely rebutting Donald Trump’s statements. The new POTUS knows the weakness of its European interlocutors.

The European dependence of the US is simply too big – especially with regards to European strategic security – and even though the European consumer market is much bigger than the American domestic market: when the United States sneeze, the European Union almost immediately catch a cold! The EU could take Trump’s words to heart and do something about its own incapability. Yet, reality bites and the stakes are high that the EU is in worse shape next year than now already is the case.

This is an extraordinarily straightforward editorial from this (mostly) liberal-conservative newspaper and an extremely worthy one for thorough consideration. Where the interests of the European continent lay traditionally in the relation with the United States, this might come to a sudden end with the election of “elephant in the china shop” Donald Trump, who left little doubt about the direction of his policy: “America first... and second... and third”.

United States correspondent Gerben van der Marel of the FD reported it like this:

‘America first, America first.’ Donald Trump stated it twice, on purpose, during his historical inauguration speech. He did not even have to raise his voice to let the populistic message sink in easily. With Trump at the helm, the military and economic powerhouse seemingly wants to draw back behind its own borders.

The businessman painted the USA as a brutally robbed nation, helplessly whirling in a bloodbath.’We must protect our borders against the devastation coming from other countries, who make our products, steal our companies and destroy our jobs. Protection will lead to great wealth and power”. Every decision regarding trade, taxes, immigration and foreign affairs will come to the benefit of American workers and families, is promised by Trump.

The 70 year-old New Yorker established America as a loser on all fronts. “Many dozens of years we enriched the foreign industry, at the expense of the American industry. We enriched other countries, while the wealth, the power and the confidence of our country disappeared behind the horizon. The wealth of our middle classes is robbed and redivided all over the world”

At least there is not much opaqueness anymore whether President Donald Trump would be akin to Republican candidate Donald Trump in his presidential statements or that he would lower his tone of voice. Trump has entered the job like a raging bull with his horns forward, threatening to pierce and squeeze anybody standing in his way; beginning with the (mostly extremely docile) American press.

This caused a shock among the European leaders, who all hoped that President Trump would be a soft-focused version of his “Republican candidate appearance” during the whole election time. Still an elephant, but one with soft, fluffy socks on. No, Trump isn’t cuddly and he probably won’t ever be either.

While – since the start of the financial crisis in 2008 – the European Union could get away with acting like “28 (now 27) frogs in a wheelbarrow” without too much irreversible political damage, it seems that playtime is now over in world politics.

And so the European Union, represented by “Frogwrangler in chief”  Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany – undoubtedly the unelected leader of the European Union and by far the most influentional European politician – finds itself back in an high-stakes poker game, playing at a table with “Vicious Vladimir” Putin, Xi “the Sfinx” Jinping and Donald “the Trumpinator” Trump. And during the last thirty-odd years  the stakes have probably never been higher...

“Vicious Vladimir”, the Russian chessplayer, has the winning strategy and the bluff, as he showed in the Ukraine, Syria and Turkey as well as in his interference with the American elections; “Xi the Sfinx” has the patience, inconspicuousness and determination of the leader of an empire with a horizon of centuries, instead of days.

And “the Trumpinator”? He carries all the weapons and uses blunt force while playing to make his point.

Current second rate players like Geert Wilders (PVV), Marine le Pen (FN) and Frauke Petry (AfD) – who are not yet very significant – wait for their opportunity to appear in the limelight, to stir things up even more for the European Union. They all want to hijack the cash at the table and probably want to hand it out to their fellows and textbook examples Trump and Putin, who they consider to be determined heroes, in contrary to the cautious and reluctant European leaders they hate so much.

At this table is player Theresa “May or May Not” really the dark horse, whose ways are yet unpredictable. At this moment, Theresa May’s role is therefore perhaps the most interesting one.

Will she declare Donald Trump her unconditional love and chew through his rudeness and undisguised, protectionist nationalism, in order to cherish and maintain the special relation between the United States and the United Kingdom? Or will she remind herself that there is so much more that she shares with the current European Union than with the Republican-governed, sometimes really erratic and deeply religious United States, with their political bluntness and their disdain for real problems on earth, like the mounting fossile pollution, the expanding droughts and the soaring number of other climate-related incidents.

Even though the latter would make more sense, it seems not unlogic when she chooses to love the US unconditionally: at every price. The price for herself losing this high-stakes pokergame would be that the United Kingdom would sink into economic oblivion, as a consequence of disdain and negligence by both the European Union and the United States. This would probably lead it into the willing arms of China, in order to act as an unresisting bridgehead to Europe.

One thing is certain: Europe must get its act together and must do so quickly. It must improve its pan-European defence apparatus – inside, but also outside the NATO – and it must really invest in an independent, political defence strategy, as they can’t automatically rely on the goodwill and obvious benevolence of the United States of America anymore (i.e. as if they could ever...). The times of the EU as a spineless follower of US foreign policy should really be a thing of the past.

This also means that the EU must think about serious economic countermeasures against brutal American protectionism, further abolishment of important trade deals and mindless American climate policies that Trump might establish in the coming months and years.

Trump must be made clear that corporate imperialism has always been a two-way street during the last few centuries and that many American companies – like Nike, Apple, Facebook, Google, Uber and AirBnB and to a lesser degree General Motors and Ford – have reached near-monopolies at the expense of local, European Asian and African companies and millions of people all over the world.

And that Trump perhaps should not risk THEIR position on the huge European single market... Besides that, were it not the American companies themselves who massively outsourced their production jobs to the low-wage countries on their way to higher profits and higher shareholder satisfaction?! No European or Asian leader forced those companies to produce everything in China, Bangladesh or Mexico! Really! If Donald Trump wants to blame somebody for that, please look to “the man in the mirror” and his predessors!

But also the European Union must choose a viable, balanced stance in the mounting tensions between the United States and China regarding both the Spratly Islands and Taiwan-gate.

China must be warned (or else...) that it must not take its territorial aspirations too far in the South-Chinese seas “simply because they can” and brutally force other countries out of their way, but the United States must be warned too that the job of “policeman of the world” is not obviously theirs anymore.

The trust between Europe, Asia, the Arab world, Africa at one hand and the US at the other currently shows some serious dents, after too many failed attempts in nation building of the last few decades; the list of American-enforced political rubble in Asia, Africa and the Middle-East is mounting and mounting, with Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya as the most telling examples.

And Europe must make clear to Vladimir Putin that the current European borders must be respected at all costs and that he must stop his deployment of fuzzy intelligence tactics in Europe, but that Europe wants to improve the relations between the EU and Russia in the immediate future [as this would be a sensible thing to do – EL]. The same goes for the relations between the European Union and Turkey; inside the NATO and as a partner of the EU with too many common interests to quarrel about everything.

All in all, this sounds almost like a mission impossible to which even Tom Cruise could eat his heart out. But it is a mission that the European Union has to undertake in order to not become the victim in this high-stakes pokergame and lose its credibility in the world.

As I said in the beginning statement of this article: In the noble game of poker it is not paramount that someone wins with a good hand. But how he prevents himself from losing while being dealt with a really bad hand... 

It is obvious that Europe has the bad hand indeed, but they nevertheless have to deal with it!