{"text":[[{"start":5.92,"text":"Last weekend, when the Spanish prime minister called some other European states “selfish”, even allies must have winced. This is not because Pedro Sánchez was without a case. Governments were proposing to (literally) isolate Spain after a surge of migrants into Ceuta. Some had got their facts wrong. It is just that many see him as a stickler for the national interest himself. He has rejected Nato’s ambition to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence, as Russia would not be “bringing its troops across the Pyrenees”. Nations on the other side of those mountains found that line wanting in solidarity."}],[{"start":41.36,"text":"Northern and southern Europe inhabit increasingly different mental worlds. The consuming focus of the north is Russia. Unless Vladimir Putin mellows in the autumn of his life, this will not change soon. The south, which has less exposure to that problem, can cite other priorities. One is climate change, which discriminates according to latitude. Sánchez once suggested that Spain’s efforts against it should count as defence expenditure. This summer’s wildfires make it harder to dismiss him as a sophist."}],[{"start":70.92,"text":"The feud between Sánchez and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, over Ceuta masks how similar the two countries are on defence. Earlier this year, she ruled out sending Italian troops to secure a post-conflict Ukraine. (And she is a Russia hawk by the standards of her country’s right wing.) Like Spain, Italy has only just met Nato’s longstanding 2 per cent target. In a recent poll, Italians were the only surveyed nation that opposed an increase in national defence spending."}],[{"start":99.4,"text":"There are exceptions, such as well-armed Greece, and ambiguities, such as whether France is northern or Mediterranean, but core defence budgets as a share of GDP are generally lower on the southern side of the 45th parallel. In peacetime, this scarcely mattered. In the future, it could be all-defining. It is one thing for Europe to disagree over economic management, as the then frugal north and high-debt south did for decades. It is another to disagree over what counts as an existential threat."}],[{"start":128.14,"text":"On its own, this would be enough to cause north and south to grow apart. But aggravating things is the migrant issue. Mediterranean countries are the natural point of entry for irregular arrivals from Africa. With luck, Europe will come together to defuse the problem. Picture the north subsidising the south’s border fortifications, and all of Europe taking an on-the-ground role in Africa to improve people’s lives at source. (France had a counterinsurgent mission in the Sahel until 2022.)"}],[{"start":157.56,"text":"The trouble is that even writing this scenario down brings home its fantastic unlikelihood. Chad’s fertility rate is around six births per woman; Spain’s is scarcely above one. Raw demographic pressure will push Africans towards Europe in numbers that even masterful policymakers would struggle to manage. If the southern frontier proves porous, northern states might demand harder internal checks on south-to-north movement within Europe. That is, no Schengen area or — which would be worse for European togetherness — a fragmented one."}],[{"start":190,"text":"North versus south is a political rift hardwired into the world. I wonder if Kemi Badenoch has to contain a laugh when Andy Burnham talks about Britain’s, which is close to non-existent by global standards. Nigeria, where she grew up, moved its capital from coastal Lagos to interior Abuja at least in part to bridge its north-south gap, which is grounded in religion and differing experiences of British rule. India changes — in income, in attitude to the Hindi language — as you move south. The split is ingrained even in the UK’s peer countries. Think of Italy or Belgium, or Germany. (In Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, a woman from Lübeck reacts to Munich as though it were Neptune.) The US fought a civil war along latitudinal lines. The once-Confederate states still vote differently to the north-east."}],[{"start":237.2,"text":"You find the north-south problem everywhere because different latitudes produce different weather, and so different crops, and culture is to some extent downstream of these material conditions. In all the above cases, there is a strong enough central state or fervent enough national feeling to hold things together. As a continent, Europe has little of either. In 2020, its north-south gap was shrinking. The derided “Pigs” had made budget cuts and other reforms that brought them closer to the northern economies, as was (and is) reflected in bond yield spreads. Complacency about Russia was almost pan-continental. The onset of war has opened the gap again."}],[{"start":277.2,"text":"A continent that was torn along an east-west axis for decades might be reverting to the more ancient north-south one, rooted not in the old Catholic-Protestant schism but in different threat perceptions. This matters because numbers matter. It is soothing to say that democratic Europe has 500mn-plus people — against Russia’s 145mn — but Italy and Spain are over a fifth of that. If the EU becomes more of a defence club, it is easy to see how Britain joins, but some existing members might drift to the margins."}],[{"start":308.04,"text":"The north skirts this subject, for fear of being seen to caricature Mediterraneans as carefree voluptuaries. The south, for its part, does not want to seem un-European. But there is a divergence of interest here, born of hard geographic fact. Those who aspire to divide the continent have all too much to work with."}],[{"start":327.36,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785980661_3352.mp3"}