Allister Heath’s Magnificent Rant

This is How Civilisations Finally Die was published in yesterday's Telegraph. A soupçon of background:

Heath has been the editor of the Sunday Telegraph since 2017. His family background is British and French. He grew up in France, until coming at the age of 17 to study at the London School of Economics, and has largely worked as a Conservative journalist since. He was a staunch Brexiteer, arguing for a "real" Brexit, something that has never been delivered, and was a determined supporter of Liz Truss and her mini-budget of 2022. (Some may remember that the mini-budget proposed by Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss's Chancellor of the Exchequer, is still being blamed for everything that's gone wrong in the UK for the past fifty years, never mind that the Truss government itself was only in power for—what was it—42 days or something, before being replaced by the herpetological nuances of "fishy Rishi." Sorry to mix my zoological metaphors there.)

Anyhoo, Heath's rant, in the aftermath of Trump's UN speech, is a thing of beauty. I've included a "gift link" to the article, hoping it works for those who can't get behind the paywall, but if that's not working to spec, here are a few outtakes (I pass over the URL designation for the article, which I suspect came from Heath, and is distinct from the more sedate headline provided by the newspaper. The URL relates that "europes-pygmies-dont-realise-how-irrelevant-they-are"):

Our leaders are non-player characters in the story of our spiral into oblivion, standing by as we rush towards civilisational seppuku. Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen: all are political pygmies, interchangeable in their incompetence, cowardice and lack of vision. Even Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, the only semi-decent major Western European leader, hasn’t reversed her country’s own hara-kiri. Friedrich Merz, hardly Germany’s Thatcher, won’t save his country.

That's just for starters:

Western Europe’s pathologies are many, and they are metastasising uncontrollably. We are unable to grow our economies meaningfully, partly because we choose to regulate and tax all that moves. Our obsession with net zero has pushed up prices, bankrupted industry and impoverished families.

And:

We have embraced a naive anti-militarism, refusing to acknowledge that Europe’s holiday from history is over. Despite a combined GDP that is more than 10 times larger and a population 3.7 times greater than that of Russia, we cannot help Kyiv defeat the Kremlin. We keep having to beg America for assistance in undignified fashion, having learnt the wrong lessons from the Cold War. We couldn’t wait to surrender to the grotesque, Western-hating anti-Semitic butchers and rapists of Hamas, demonstrating to every rogue actor the hypocrisy of our human rights discourse.

Furthermore:

Europe still cannot rise to the occasion, even though Putin’s unhinged plan is unravelling, which helps to explain why Trump – again, pouncing on fragility – finally turned on him.

And, starting to wrap up:

Never one to leave weakness unpunished, Donald Trump mocked Britain and Europe mercilessly at the United Nations, our representatives forced to listen in sheepish silence. Many of Trump’s barbs hit their targets.

So far, there are upwards of 2500 comments. As usual, they cover all the bases. But the vast majority of them appear to agree with Heath, and to repudiate the wishcasting among those on the left who'd like to pretend that the only reason Europe isn't "laughing" at Trump is because they "fear" his malign influence so much.

No. Most of the people in Britain, one would think from reading this article, wish only that their own leaders could speak with the sort of clarity exemplified by Donald Trump (and—trust me—as a student of the English language myself, I realize how ridiculous that sounds) when it comes to two of the major issues of our time: immigration and energy.

I don't think there's any reason to believe that the folks in what's left of Europe proper don't feel the same way.

The next decade is going to be interesting, on both sides of the Pond.