Theresa may has little choice but to accept the carthaginian terms now being imposed by the eu | thearticle

Delay always comes at a price. Today the Prime Minister is in Berlin and Paris to meet Chancellor Merkel and President Macron. She will be informed, in effect, that the United Kingdom has

already become a second-class, semi-detached, non-voting member of the European Union. Theresa May already knows first hand what it is like to be excluded from the EU’s decision-making. Now

the rest of us are learning how our insubordination is to be requited. Only if she accepts these terms will the EU even consider Mrs May’s request for an extension, the length of which is

entirely out of her hands and has still to be determined at tomorrow’s Brussels summit. For the duration of any extension, Britain’s membership will effectively be suspended. Donald Tusk’s

proposal of a year will probably be the only offer on the table. Macron has threatened to veto the short extension until June that Mrs May has requested — a request that was turned down last

time. But the year’s “flextension” will come with conditions. “If there is a wild Brexiter as a new Tory PM, they would be able to do nothing until after March 31, 2020, unless they

subscribe to the Withdrawal Agreement,” an unnamed senior EU official is quoted in The Times. “We will simply not hold talks. If a new British leader refuses these terms it will simply be

‘no deal’ on the date with plenty of time for us to prepare.” The source added that Mrs May would have to agree to hold elections to the European Parliament or risk a summary no-deal Brexit

at the end of May or in early June. The prospect of EU elections is seen in Brussels as proof of Brexit being kicked into the long grass, but it fills most MPs in Westminster with dread.

Both main parties, the Conservatives in particular, could expect heavy losses at the hands of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and UKIP. There is only one word for the terms now being imposed on

Britain: Carthaginian. They are all the more humiliating because there is nothing in the EU treaties to justify treating a member state in this way. The 27 are doing this partly because they

don’t trust Mrs May any more — and partly just because they can. In an excellent Newsnight report on Monday about Emmanuel Macron, Mark Urban interviewed the French President’s spokesman,

who assured British viewers that the only consideration that weighed with his boss was the importance of respecting the democratic wish of the British people to leave the EU. Maybe. Or maybe

Macron calculates that the worse things get for the British, the less likely the gilets jaunes are to march on Paris or to follow the siren song of Marine Le Pen. The French, like other

Continentals, are watching agog as the spectacle of Brexit unfolds. They see the British as a trusted, respectable uncle who has suddenly decamped to Las Vegas. At first they were amused;

now they are bemused. But is Brexit merely Britain’s mid-life crisis — or Europe’s too? As I suggested yesterday, our political institutions have suffered a loss of legitimacy and the vacuum

may be filled by charismatic individuals. One example is the Dutch populist Thierry Baudet, who has just sprung from nowhere with a new party, Forum for Democracy, that has just trounced

not only the far-Right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders but also the ruling liberals of Mark Rutte in provincial elections. Baudet claims to be his country’s leading intellectual and likes to

pepper his speeches with Latin, not to mention references to modern thinkers from Spengler to Adorno. But the jury is still out on whether he is really a democrat or just another demagogue.

Britain, too, once had a populist who had been a classical scholar. His name was Enoch Powell. And now we have Boris Johnson. The orator Cato ended every speech by reminding his fellow

Romans: “Carthage must be destroyed.” One does not need Latin to know what did indeed befall Carthage. Britain, which has saved Europe several times and has always played by the rules in the

EU, does not deserve to suffer Carthaginian terms for an indefinite period. But that is what we are going to get.