Dear Varadkar: Globalism, not Nationalism, is the Ideology that will Leave You with Nothing

It is rare that national media outlets refer to nationalism, and on the few times they do, they are almost always decrying it as an evil – and so was the case still when Leo Varadkar complained that his Government’s inability to provide housing to Irish families after a decade in power might drive people to nationalism. Implicit was the threat that such nationalism would be catastrophic to national wellbeing – that people turning to nationalism would find themselves ‘losing their jobs and their homes’. 

I don’t believe Varadkar was stating a direct threat (though we nationalists know that our livelihoods are threatened by leftist activists) but that he is stuck wedded to his Thatcherite views on the economy – sure Varadkar and the D4 class are doing very well out of the system as it is, so let’s not rock the boat.

The problem with that supine analysis is that many people have so little to lose precisely because of the economic policies that this Government holds dear – it is precisely that system which allows the likes of Varadkar and Rich Boy Barrett to live comfortably which denies the rights of the Irish people to exist in our own homeland.

Through the continued Plantation of Ireland with foreigners, through building ‘modular homes’ for Ukrainians and leaving the Irish to languish in hotel rooms or on sofas in their mother’s for years, through providing HAP and accommodation to every foreigner that comes here above and beyond what is provided for the young. These policies, more than tweaking planning regulations or VAT rates, are what is driving the Irish back into the same hovels British landlords had put our grandparents in.

It does not matter whether VAT is 20% or 23%, nor whether you have to undertake environmental studies before you break ground or not, when even if you were to lift those restrictions overnight and cut taxes to nought, prices would not come down in any significant way. Any savings from such action would more than likely end up in the pockets of the few developers building property, prices would remain high so long as foreign ‘investment’ firms buy whatever comes onto the market and foreign workers continue flooding into the country.

What’s more, even if the numbers of houses built were to double by years’ end, prices would not be guaranteed to come down. Rather we would have ‘business’ lobby for even more foreigners to be given visas, for NGOs to lobby for even more ‘refugees’ to be given asylum, and investment firms would simply continue to buy and hold.

Stopping immigration and sending foreigners home would not solve every issue, but it would ameliorate a great deal of them.