Nigel Farage: EU Economic Governance is Anti-Democratic Dictatorship

Nigel Farage in his "I told You So" moment, European Parliament, Strasbourg, September 14th 2011.

(video at the bottom of the text)

Transcript:

Mr. Nigel Farage from Europe of Freedom and Democracy.

Nigel Farage:

During your speech Mr Barroso there was all pervading sense of gloom. And I saw for the first time even your own supporters shaking their heads. They don't believe in what you're saying, the European people don't believe in what you're saying, and I don't really think even you now believe in what you're saying. Because we all know the Greece is going to default.

The endgame for Greece is near. And you can't say you weren't warned. You were told the treaties were fatally flawed. You were all told that Greece should never have joined the Euro. And when I stood up here five years ago and talked about Greek bond spreads you treated me with such utter derision it was as if I've been let out of a local lunatic asylum. Now you've been warned all the way through.

So now what you've got is the economic governance, because everybody here in this front row supports more European economic governance. What is European economic governance? I'll tell you what it is: it's a plane, landing in Athens airport. Out of which yet an official from a commission, official from the European Central Bank, and an official from the appalling IMF. And those three people, the troika you call them, go in, they meet the Greek government and they tell the Greek government what they may or may not do. You have killed democracy in Greece.

You have three part time overseas dictators that now tell the Greek people what they can can't do. It is totally unacceptable. Is it any wonder that Greek people are now burning EU flags and drawing swastikas across them. Unless Greece is allowed to get out of this economic and political prison you may well spark a revolution in that country.

I suppose there is some good news at least, and that is that in Germany people are waking up, right up to the president people are saying all of this represents the death of democracy. None of this can work, and the German

people simply will refuse in the end to pay the bill. Your one achievement is you have split Europe between north and south. The Greeks now badmouth the Germans, the Germans badmouth the Greeks.

I have one last plea Mr. Barroso, will you please help Greece help her to get her currency back, help her to reschedule her debt. Help her out of the mess that you have put her into. Your policies have failed, stand up, be a man, admit it.

Mr. Farage, there is a blue card to you. Do you agree? OK.

Mr. van Lamber:

Mr. Farage, you are a very good speaker here, I admire your skills, but I have one question to you. You said well, basically by a dictator way of dictating to the Greeks what they have to do, we will spark a revolution over there. What I noticed over the Summer is that the closest we got to a revolution was in the streets of London. And that's not part of the Euro, so I'd like to see how you believe that we are going to get out if it's everyone on its own. Thank you.

Nigel Farage:

You are quite right, London has had some huge social problems. But they're not there today, are they? The difference is that in Greece these protests go on day after day, and I put it to you, that if you strip from people, if you rob people of the most powerful thing they possess in a free society, their ability to vote for and to fire their government, their ability to be the masters of their own destiny, if you take that from them, all they're left with is civil disobedience and violence. And so what you are doing in the name of economic governance is something that is incredibly dangerous and far from this European project being something that would engender peace, it is likely to do the very opposite.