Bill Carmichael: Is this finally the end for the EU project?

Only months after Brexit delivered a powerful – perhaps fatal – body blow to the Euro-elite, the Italian people this week have done something similar.

Sunday’s vote wasn’t even close. Despite near hysterical warnings from the unelected pro-Brussels clique that seized power in Italy two years ago, the people voted by almost 60:40 to reject changes to the constitution, sparking the resignation of the Europhile premier Matteo Renzi.

The result continues a remarkable sequence of emphatic victories for people power against our unaccountable rulers in Brussels.

The people of Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, and the Irish rejected both the Nice Treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. They were both told they had to keep on voting until they came up with a result more in keeping with the wishes of their political masters.

Both the Dutch and the French rejected the European Constitution in referenda in 2005 – but their views were simply ignored and the changes they had rejected were written into the Lisbon Treaty (and they didn’t get a vote on that!).

Now this year, the Italians have rebelled and the Brits have voted to get out – and only a few swivel-eyed Lib Dems think our views can be ignored or we can be bullied into voting again.

More self-aware rulers would pause to ask themselves why, whenever ordinary people get the chance, they blow a massive raspberry to the deluded European project.

But the Eurocrats keep blundering on, demanding more centralisation, more bureaucracy, more money, more Europe, and thereby driving a huge wedge between the aspirations of 500million people and the direction the EU is determined to take.

You can only ignore the wishes of the people for so long before political institutions begin to disintegrate – and that is precisely what we are witnessing in the EU.

It is not difficult to see why Italians revolted – the euro has been an unmitigated disaster for their economy, ruining the life chances of an entire generation by stifling growth and driving up youth unemployment to more than 37 per cent.

Italy’s banks are holed below the waterline and there is little hope of any recovery while it sticks with the doomed euro. The whole crumbling edifice – Europe’s fourth largest economy – could come crashing down at any minute, probably bringing the rest of the EU with it.

The picture is similar throughout southern Europe – no growth, high unemployment, brutal austerity and growing popular discontent.

Meanwhile in Germany, Angela Merkel is trying to keep a lid on simmering anger over a massive crime wave unleashed by her open doors immigration policy.

Since the mass attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, in which hundreds of women were sexually assaulted, a leaked police report has warned of a massive increase in migrant crime, particularly drugs and sexual offences.

In the latest incident an Afghan asylum seeker has been arrested over the rape and murder of the 19-year-old daughter of a senior EU official in Freiburg.

Politicians try to play down such crimes and much of the German media tries to ignore them – but these tactics are not working any more. As across the entire continent people are not prepared to swallow the lies any longer.

Throughout Europe we see much the same picture – clueless establishment politicians beginning to panic in the face of a growing popular revolt.

I voted to leave the EU and the more I see of what is happening in Europe the more convinced I am that it was the right thing to do.

If we were not members now, would we be applying to join? No chance! Just ask the Swiss who recently withdrew a longstanding application for EU membership, with one state councillor saying “only a few lunatics want to join the EU now”. Quite.

The real question for the UK now isn’t if we are going to leave – as we most certainly will – but whether the EU will still exist in its current form by the time we finally cut ourselves free.