printIn an interview with the German weekly Junge Freiheit, I ventured that,”Step one in reclaiming [European] national and individual sovereignty (the ultimate goal) is secession from the European union. Judging from their voting patterns, Europeans seem to grasp that adding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to their national governments has benefited them as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.”
Of course, there is something fundamentally perverse about the idea of the British partaking in “European elections.” Come to think of it, the notion that each ostensibly sovereign European country belongs to this overarching suprastate and must obey it is equally abhorrent.
My comment about “voting patterns” has, nevertheless, been borne out.
“The overall result,” writes Sean Gabb of The Libertarian Alliance, “is a big increase in numbers for parties which are hostile to the EU goal of ‘ever closer union,’ and even to the existence of the EU in its present form or in any form at all. In Holland, the Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, came second. In France, the National Front, led by Marine le Pen, came first. The Danish People’s Party also came first, as did the Flemish separatist party in Belgium. In Hungary, the conservative party, Fidesz, came first, followed by Jobbik, which is describes as a national socialist party. In Greece, the leftists party Syriza (Euro-sceptic) came first, and the nationalist party Golden Dawn came third. In Finland and in Austria, Euro-sceptic parties did well, as they also did in Germany.”
Commentators and politicians are suspended between a rock and a hard-place, to use that cliche of in-betweeness. Do they diss the voter or do they revise their rejected positions? Some have just settled for the well-worn battle cry of “racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry.”
Back to Gabb: “The big winner of the [British] elections was the UK Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage.”
UKIP topped the poll, winning 27.5 per cent of the vote. The Conservatives, who are currently in a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, came third—though this is largely because of a strong Labour performance in London, where native British are now a minority.[ Labour doubles its MEPs in London, BBC, May 28, 2014]. Significantly, the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-European of the main parties, were almost wiped out, losing all but one of their seats in the European Parliament.
UKIP must now be regarded as one of Britain’s major parties. This a huge achievement—and a useful reminder to depressed American patriots that new parties can succeed.
UKIP’s key policies: to leave the European Union, to end mass immigration, and to strip Political Correctness out of law and administration. … Whatever some people may think of UKIP, it is our best hope for pulling down the current order of things. I with enthusiasm, others with reluctance, have a duty to unite behind it. …