This man reckons we might follow him out of the EU. It may not be as crazy as it sounds
Irreverent. Irrepressible. In the corridors of power
IT WAS the most disordered media scrum I’ve seen. Britain’s democratic decision to leave the EU had just been confirmed and I walked from my hotel to the Palace of Westminster looking for Nigel Farage. It was 6.45am and in the shadow of Victoria Tower scores of journalists were struggling to get their recording devices in a good position, photographers and TV cameramen were wrestling to get a view. One hit the ground and his expensive camera smashed.
At the centre of it was Farage, the spiritual leader of the Brexit campaign. He had pulled off a spectacular electoral upset. Yet he didn’t look any different from the man I had a pint with in the nearby Marquis of Granby pub a couple of nights earlier. At 7.30am, on Great College Street, I spoke to him briefly and he said he was going to have a coffee to celebrate. He seems an ordinary chap.
His dark predictions about Britain’s relationship with the EU had come to pass. Last week Ivan Rogers, the senior British civil servant charged with negotiating with the EU, resigned.
Mr Farage spoke to RTÉ’s Seán O’Rourke about the resignation. He made a prediction about Ireland.
‘If two or three years down the road and we are clearly better off... I think if we can do that, then the pressure on Ireland, the public opinion in Ireland is going to move in our direction,’ said Farage.
At this moment the evidence is against Ireland holding a vote on our EU status – not least because the political establishment is besotted by the EU project. And this dysfunctional Government and lame-duck Taoiseach are holding off on making a decision. Yet we will soon have to decide who is to be our closest friend? Is it Britain or the EU? For Britain is leaving the EU and we can’t stay close to both.
THE EU has to deal with the fragile commitment to its project of economic powerhouses like France, Italy and Holland. The UK is forging stronger alliances with China and the US. Unless Ireland gets on a war footing over Brexit we will be forgotten and destroyed.
Ireland, by taking on the burden of saving our dysfunctional banks alone, has taken many blows to sustain the European project. We were bankrupted to prevent financial contagion. We must now get incentives to stay with the EU, to prevent us joining what may be an exodus from the European movement. If not, we must choose to tie our fortunes to Britain. If that country’s fortunes improve with Brexit, the attraction of that path will increase.
An Ireland Thinks/Irish Daily Mail poll in October asked: ‘Once Britain leaves the EU, would you rather have free trade and open borders with either the EU or the UK?’ The poll showed that 40% of Irish people would choose open borders and free trade with the UK over the EU.
The EU establishment treated Ireland unjustly since the 2008 collapse of our banks. Ministers from those awful years speak with undisguised contempt for EU leaders like Jean Claude Trichet. We were forced to pump billions into our moribund banks, burning of bondholders was forbidden. The process bankrupted Ireland.
Just before Christmas a narrative familiar to Irish people was emerging from Italy. A major bank was in trouble. The world’s oldest bank and Italy’s third-biggest, BMPS tried to raise €5bn. The bank admitted it had just four months’ worth of liquidity left. The bank was doomed.
The Italian government prepared a bailout but announced that shareholders and holders of junior bonds, a risky class of debt, must contribute to saving the bank. The bondholders were to be burned.
The EU did much good for Ireland before 2008. As schoolchildren in the 1980s we would look at our geography text books and see ourselves specially designated along with southern Italy and Greece. The special EU funding soon made us no longer a deprived region. The brotherhood and cheap money, if we’d used it right, helped us grow.
We also have a long history with Britain, much of it a dark stain on that country’s reputation. Yet they are our largest trading partner and hundreds of thousands of Irish people live and work there.
As Farage astutely implies it will come down to euros in our pockets. If, as he says, ‘we [the British] are clearly better off, then it may be pushed to a referendum’.
If Britain is booming after leaving the common market, there will be envious eyes in Ireland. We have been relatively immune from immigration conflict. TDs have warned that Britain’s closed borders could transfer those border pressures here. The euro will continue to cause economic problems for members – if sterling retains its power, there will be questions. What if other powerful nations with new leaders, like the Netherlands, France and Italy, start to move away from the EU? There are many unpredictable months ahead that may rally an anti-EU vote in Ireland.
IRELAND has voted down two major EU referendums in the past 15 years. Nice in 2001 and Lisbon in 2008 were both re-run because the political establishment felt they knew better than the electorate. Senior politicians are infatuated with the EU. They are indoctrinated and can see no fault in it.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labour leader Eamon Gilmore romped home to the largest majority in Irish history in February 2011 while promising to burn the bondholders. They didn’t. Since then we’re used to seeing Kenny ingratiating himself with Angela Merkel and other EU leaders. He is being touted for a major European job.
Former minister Phil Hogan, after sabotaging his political career here, went to Europe as a commissioner in 2014. As Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development he receives a basic monthly salary of €20,832.54. He earns a total of €336,446.65 a year.
Nobody is quite sure what MEPs do but they earn a lot of money to do it. We once sent an MEP to Europe who, when at a meal was encouraged ‘bon appetit’, he gave his name in reply. He thought he was being introduced to a French chap called Bon Appetit.
But some very serious negotiations are coming – it will come down to Britain or the EU. Yet we have a dysfunctional, minority, donothing Government. Enda Kenny is on his way out and Fine Gael are soon to face a leadership campaign. The man with much of the power, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, won’t be negotiating. But he was part of the government that capitulated to the EU and accepted the bailout.
Ireland must get concessions on our border controls with Britain. If we don’t, smuggling of goods and people will explode. We must get trading concessions. There must be further deals on the oppressive EU/IMF loans that were forced on us to keep us within the tent.
If we can articulate a threat of our potential alienation from the EU project, we may have a chance. If we, as a peripheral country, can ally ourselves to those powerful countries, proper EU reform can come. Or suspicions that we are irrelevant may be confirmed.
We have no leadership and a Taoiseach who must leave his position soon otherwise we will continue to avoid a decision and be forgotten.