Varoufakis can fak off

No, I haven't changed my mind in the last two years that Varoufakis is basically just a ridiculous Marxist conman. He never cared about his country. He rolled over and let the EU do whatever they wanted to Greece. In Germany (a country not know for its subtle, sophisticated humour) he was treated as a joke. And quite rightly too!

And the great man hasn't changed either. He still loves the EU, despite what it did to his country, and he condemns liberal "warmongers" without even conceding that the era of liberal "imperialism" is now well and truly over - because Ukraine is now fighting a defensive war, as is the West generally because it has now been so thoroughly poisoned by liberalism that it no longer believes in its own heritage.

And Varoufakis is indeed a very good example of a de-westernised westerner. His country gave the world Homer and Herodotus, but he prefers to pose like an ageing James Dean - not because he has any love for American values (constitutionalism, limited government, individualism, etc.) but simply because pratting about like an American pop-star is cooler than being a Greek.

(Tony Blair, for what it's worth, thought the same thing - only in all probability he genuinely believed in the American Dream, whereas Varoufakis very obviously does not.)

North and South

Is English history really just one long story of North vs. South, as James Hawes says it is? (He's trying to repeat his tale of two countries trick that - admittedly! - worked pretty well for his Shortest History of Germany.)

What about the most important division in English history - that between the two universities at the time of the Protestant Revolt? What about the Civil Wars that followed? What about the conversion of England, for that matter? Does Hawes' North-South divide map onto Celtic (or pre-Roman, at any rate) tribes? What about the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms?

I suppose I should give it a look - one of these days.

UPDATE: Certainly there's no obvious North-South division of political opinions - except perhaps on the issue of tax.

UPDATE II: The simple reality is that the "North-South" divide is at least as much an "East-West" one.