Think Locally, Act Feebly

Global Village Idiots: Zapatero’s Socialist industry minister, Miguel Sebastián is resorting to good old fashioned European nativism, urging Spaniards to “shop patriotically”, as if they were cloth-cap wearing, lunch-pail toting old-fashioned factory worker reds who occasionally show up to work sober.

Mr Sebastián then did some simple calculations. Consumption was expected to fall by €7bn ($9bn, £6.6bn) this year, causing the loss of 120,000 jobs. If each Spaniard introduced the “Spain factor” into their shopping and purchased just €150 of Spanish-made suits or toys instead of foreign goods, then those jobs would be preserved.

That should do wonders for exports, and says quite a bit about the thought behind the call: when it doesn’t work, trade restrictions, even those within Europe, would have to be put in place to make the theory support the sentiment.

Between all the tribalism, small-thinking, and ego propping delusions, that benighted “globally thinking Europe” forming an “ever closer union” is looking more like a sitcom based on Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

Good luck with all that.