Across Europe, people want their countries back – they have had enough of betrayal

A POLITICAL earthquake has hit Brussels. The walls of the established order are starting to crumble, shattered by a wave of public anger that was expressed in the elections for the European Parliament this week.

As the mainstream parties retreat, the failure of their federalist ideology has been exposed amid the falling debris.

Britain led the way in the popular uprising, with Nigel Farage’s newly formed Brexit movement taking almost a third of the vote and becoming the biggest single party in the European Parliament.

Labour collapsed, the Tories were annihilated. The same pattern was repeated elsewhere.

In Germany, a surge for the Greens brought the long dominant Christian Democrats their worst result in decades.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally topped the poll, and the two traditional centrist parties – the Republicans and the Socialists – almost disappeared.

Even more dramatic gains for the Eurosceptics could be found in Italy. The nationalist League was far in front, with 34 per cent of the vote, while the maverick, rebellious Five Star movement won 17 per cent, putting the Italian anti-EU forces in an absolute majority.

Populists also triumphed in Hungary, where Viktor Orban Civic Alliance gained no less than 52 per cent of the vote, and in Poland, where the right-wing Law and Justice party was victorious with 46 per cent.

Indeed, throughout Europe there were advances for anti-establishment politicians – whether it be the Greens in Ireland or the nationalists in Sweden.

As triumphant Greens edge out centre-left and centre-right parties, the EU will become even more polarised and divided, which will make it harder for parliament to function.

All this change is driven by widespread outrage at the disaster that the EU has inflicted on the countries of Europe.

Without any mandate, the unaccountable, power-mad cabal in Brussels has weakened the fabric of the continent.

National democracy has been pulverised by the quest for EU unification.

National identities have been undermined by mass immigration on an unprecedented scale, particularly after the German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the floodgates in 2015.

National economic interests have been sacrificed on the altar of the European single currency.

The EU fanatics like to paint populism as a form of extremism but, on the contrary, it is the natural response to the removal of democratic rights and freedoms.

Across Europe, people want their countries back. They have had enough of betrayal.

They prefer to govern themselves rather than be ruled by unelected officials.

They are tired of being labelled bigots simply for feeling a sense of patriotism, that noble ideal which is really an extension of love of family.

The real extremists are those EU zealots who show contempt for the ideas of national pride and sovereignty.

Yet, there is no sign that the Brussels regime, cocooned by its ideology, has woken up to the scale of the upheaval.

Just the opposite is true.

Since yesterday, the EU ruling elite and its cheerleaders have indulged in a gigantic propaganda exercise, pretending that the results are not that significant, that the populist insurgency has been exaggerated, that the barbarians have been held at the gates.

In this climate of delusion, it is as if nothing has happened.

An attitude of business as usual prevails, as shown by today’s Brussels summit, where European leaders discussed the preparations for choosing a new EU President and Commission, given that the term of Jean Claude Juncker will soon end.

In the time-honoured fashion of the EU’s institutions, another establishment stitch-up is probably on the way.

Beyond mouthing a few empty words about reform, Brussels bosses seem to have learned no lesson from the anti-establishment fury.

That is because they are so obsessed with the grand European project of political unity.

Since its foundation in the 1950s, the entire purpose of European Community has been the creation of a federal superstate.

Every policy, every treaty is focused on the mission of ever closer union towards the ultimate goal of a United States of Europe.

Nothing is allowed to stand in the way of this crusade. Even democracy and nationhood must be sacrificed for the sake of the integrationist dogma.

At the entrance to the Visitors Centre in the European Parliament, there is a plaque with the words, “National sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our time”, for which the “final remedy is the federal union of the people.”

That was written by the British diplomat Lord Lothian, a committed appeaser right up to 1940. His spirit still permeates the corridors of power in Brussels.

Federalism explains why the EU is so addicted to the abolition of borders through free movement, because the obliteration of national identities will promote the new concept of European citizenship.

Similarly, the creation of the single currency in 1999 was not primarily an economic initiative but a political vehicle to enforce integration by undermining national independence.

Through its arrogance, the EU is sowing the seeds for its own destruction.

Without change, Brussels will become ever more crisis-ridden, ever more in-debted, ever more unpopular.

The betrayal of the public is unsustainable in the long-term. In fact, collapse could arrive swiftly in the coming decade, either through another financial crisis or through another major country, like Italy or France, deciding to leave.

If the Brussels bosses had any sense, they would abandon their ideological project and instead make the union just a trading bloc of free, independent nations.

That is what Britain was meant to have joined in 1973 when we signed up for the Common Market, only to find we were sucked into the federalist quagmire.

The British people eventually woke up to this reality.

We had the courage to vote for independence – and Brexit is the spark that has helped to fuel the flames of rebellion across the continent.