It was tribalism that finished Rome, and it will finish Brussels too

Whenever the subject of the EU comes up, someone is bound to compare it to the Roman empire. If the comparison relates to the beginning and subsequent development of that empire, it fails. But the end of the Roman empire in the West in the 5th century ad may well offer quite a good model of how EUthanasia will set in.

Rome entered the imperial stakes after defeating Carthage in the first Punic war (264–241 bc). The two greatest powers of the western Mediterranean had been fighting it out over control of Sicily, which became Rome’s first provincia when Carthage surrendered. After the second Punic war and the defeat of Hannibal (218–202 bc), the Carthaginian territories of Africa (roughly modern Tunisia) and Spain were added, to be followed in 146 bc by Greece (whose king had supported Hannibal). Asia (modern western Turkey) was then bequeathed (!) to the Romans by its ruler Attalus III …and so it went on.