YES, the Brexit vote WAS a historic near miss Leavers - do tell the sadly uninformed Remain people.
By the time readers will have read these few paragraphs, you may be left with the breathlessness of an airline pilot who’s just realised he landed his plane slipping yards below the belly of another one taking off in the opposite direction.
They call it a near miss, don’t they?
To make you grasp what British people spared themselves in what I call 'the historic UK near miss with Europe' – I ask you to consider the following.
Please don’t quit halfway through - because the shocking bit comes at the end.
Picture this - the UK Treasury Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie is sitting at an ordinary meeting to discuss finance.
Midway through, some foreign technocrats enter the scene and demand immediate attention.
Midway through, some foreign technocrats enter the scene and demand immediate attention.
Well, as it happened these men are from the EU Commission and the ECB and have the power to question the chairman at will.
Here’s the conversation as it unfolds:
“Mr Tyrie, will you and your party back ‘our man’ as next British Prime Minister? We mean, now.”
The question, in its absurdity, takes the chairman aback, and he replies: “Gentlemen, we do have a Prime Minister in power, we’ll vote at the next General Election”.
“No, Sir,” impatiently replies the foreign technocrat.
“Let us be straight here: either you back ‘our man’ as next British PM now or we will bankrupt your county in no time, is that clear?”.
The foreign technocrats leave, and it becomes apparent to the UK Treasury Committee that this coup d’etat has already been presented as an “offer they can’t refuse” to top British politicians and MPs.
In fact four days later the incumbent Prime Minister suddenly resigns and the technocrats’ man enters Downing Street.
These events didn't happen in the UK. However, if you think this fictional scenario sounds like an absurd B movie script - then look at what happened on November 9 2011, in my home country Italy.
Instead of Mr Tyrie, it's Italian Senate Budget Committee Chair Massimo Garavaglia, a government coalition partner.
The EU technocrats remain who they were, and ‘their man’ is EU hawk Mario Monti, who in fact became unelected Italian Prime Minister just seven days later on November 16.
GETTY • YOUTUBE
The ground for this coup against the democratically elected government of ‘EU disobedient’ Silvio Berlusconi had already been set, when Deutsche Bank and the ECB unleashed a massive attack against Italian state bonds, thus creating the very national panic that forced Italian voters to accept this obscenely undemocratic turn of events.
What makes the above story bloodcurdling is that it happened to one of the richest nations on Earth - a member of the G8.
A nation that before getting entrapped in the European Unification was sovereign, and boasted possibly the most advanced constitution in the western world.
Now Remain people I turn to you: what on Earth happened to democracy, the rule of law, sovereignty in this absurd realm called the EU to make something like that not only possible, but even applauded as a “great leap in reforms” by EU unelected institutions?
And mind you, the 2011 Italian EU-orchestrated coup was not an isolated incident.
EU technocrats also quashed French, Dutch and Irish referendums between 2005 and 2008, because those people had voted ‘the wrong way’ (not to mention poor Greece in 2015).
Also, since the day of the financial coup d’etat in Rome in 2011 the Italian electorate has been denied the right to choose a Prime Minister up to the present day, always thanks to the orders and dealings of this supernational Mafia in Brussels.
This EU thrashing of Italian democracy got so bad to the point where the Troika (ECB, EC, IMF) even sent letters to our State President Mr Giorgio Napolitano instructing him what to do day-by-day (just forget the Constitution, will you Mr Giorgio?).
It’s all documented beyond a shred of a doubt.
This story demonstrates that European unification since the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 has literally “normalised the unthinkable”.
So here I go back to the beginning of this column: had Britain succumbed to past and present pressures to become a full member of this sordid club called Eurotechnocracy, then one day some Godfather posing men would have barged into Whitehall to “normalise the unthinkable” in Britain too.
The UK always maintained a safe distance from this abomination of democracy, and finally voted out of it altogether.
One of the greatest near misses in recent history. Lucky you. Now go tell those Remainers.
Paolo Barnard is an Italian journalist and economist
Paolo Barnard is an Italian journalist and economist
