[WATCH] Farage entertains with dream to kill ‘EU monster’ and Greek exit

Nigel Farage MEP at the ITT conference, Hilton • Video: Ray Attard

The eurosceptic MEP Nigel Farage gave his audience at the Institute of Travel and Tourism's conference at the Hilton, a tour de force with his cabaret show of anti-EU chestnuts and nostalgia about cycling Frenchmen wearing berets and reeking of garlic.

Ultimately, he told his audience that what his United Kingdom Independence Party wanted was an immigration system that regulates the numbers and quality of entrants to the UK, and to “kill the monster that is the EU.”

“They want to homogenise us... let’s run our lives in our own parliaments, and be friends and trade with each other... I will not rest until we kill this monster that is called the EU.”

Farage, who recently triumphed at the European elections in the United Kingdom, said UKIP supported an Australian-style immigration policy that forbids people who have criminal records or life-threatening diseases from entering the country.

When asked whether a point-system would threaten seasonal labour that the tourism industry depends upon, Farage (whose family of French Huguenots were political refugees from the east of France, granted asylum in England) said he was opposed to an open door policy that grants social benefits to entrants from day one.

He said that England was “forbidden” from entering into its own trade agreements, still needing the blessing of bureaucrats in Brussels.

“Europe needs to leave the EU,” Farage said. “Far from being the project that will lead to peace and harmony, there is the danger of forcing people by corralling them into a new state, with a new identity and army... we would be creating a new Yugoslavia, forcing people into a new state against their will...

“The best way for peace and harmony is for Europe to be a group of self-governing, independent states.”

The MEP added that since the UKIP’s performance at the European elections, together with the rise of other eurosceptic parties and the far-right, meant that the inevitability of the EU state was no longer.

“After these elections, people are now saying the EU state is no longer inevitable. The point will come when Greece will break out of the euro, they will get back the drachma, they will have a massive devaluation of some 70-75%, and then you guys,” he said turning to his audience of travel agents and entrepreneurs, “are going to be quite busy, because Greece will become the number 1 tourism destination in the world. And that’s where I will be taking my holiday.”