Time for Irish to say 'See EU later'

By AM Sunday, July 28, 2013

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Dr John Coulter with a piece on Ireland and the European Union which first featured in the Irish Daily Star on the 15th July 2013.

It's time to end the Union! Bet you never thought you'd hear a Radical Right-wing Unionist like me saying that?

But the Union I want to quit is the EU which has now condemned the Emerald Isle to financial misery and economic disaster.

What Ireland now needs is a Nigel Farage politician with the balls to lead this wonderful island out of the doom and embarrassment of the European Union.

Farage is the dynamic leader of the vehemently anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party, which is on course to give Brit Premier, Dandy Dave Cameron, the mother of all political bloody noses in next year's European poll.

EU membership, according to Farage, is costing Britain £55 million per day, and many Northern citizens are having to foot this bill.

The Southern Irish – once the champions of the Eurosceptic tradition – have lost their national sovereignty and identity and have to survive on humiliating cash bailouts from a rapidly crumbling Eurozone.

Farage's Ukip will be the dark horse in the Northern euro poll. The down to earth MEP spent a few hours wandering around the loyalist working class bastion of East Belfast as if he was the area's natural MLA.

His recent meeting in the Stormont Hotel attracted people from working, middle and upper classes, as well as young and pensioners.

Farage's message is blunt, but simple – Ireland's future prosperity depends on the island leaving the EU.

Northern Ukip has achieved what the Northern Tories could not muster after two attempts – a wide cross section of religious and class support.

The Northern Tories are merely the Ulster Unionists' former Fur Coat Brigade and Alliance's wine and cheese brigade under another name.

In spite of the strong Eurosceptic mood in the Republic, the South still needs its own Ukip-style party.

I have constantly urged the South to re-launch the now defunct Irish Independence Party as the new anti-EU movement.

The original IIP floundered after one of its key politicians, Larne councillor and Protestant national John Turnly, was murdered by the UDA in 1980.

Many existing Southern parties are all seen as euro arselickers, a situation which the Shinners could capitalise on if they rebranded themselves as an anti-EU independence movement.

The two main barriers which Sinn Féin has to jump are that many people still see the party as the apologetic face of the Provo death squads, and that numerous families still recall the havoc which the Shinners caused during the bloody Irish civil war.

Farage has two main sticks he can rattle Irish cages with: immigration and trade. With Bulgaria and Romania set to become the EU's latest members in a matter of months, Farage estimates some 28 million immigrants are on their way to these islands.

Unfortunately, Ireland's greatest export at the moment is its young people, many destined never to return. Could Ireland become thedumping ground for Europe's ethnic communities?

Is there a chance Ireland could become Little Bulgaria or Little Romania, sparking a massive rise in the Far Right as jobs, homes and benefits are soaked up by migrant workers?

Farage's killer punch is the Swiss. Switzerland has developed a healthy trading economy outside of the EU – and its keeping its young people!