Category Archives: independence

Immigration  and the price of a liberal conscience

Robert Henderson

The  British media has been  excitedly  pointing what they describe  as the great generosity of the British public  or variations on that theme,  in offering to take  immigrants into their homes. The reality is rather different  for the  number of  people living in Britain who have offered a home to  immigrants is meagre,  a few thousand out of a British population  of approximately 64 million. Even this small number  is highly suspect  because  these are merely people who have offered to take refugees into their homes  without being tested  by the reality of having people in their home.   Moreover, many of those who have offered have not done so in an open ended fashion. Instead they have put their hands up for a few weeks or months or perhaps even a year, although the reality of assessing asylum claims is several years and conceivably much longer. Longer term

Much  of the enthusiasm for taking in immigrants has been  expressed not by  offering to lodge them in private homes but in lobbying councils to find accommodation for immigrants.  This is unlikely to cost those lobbying anything because such people will probably not be in need of  social housing or live in an area which will be flooded with immigrants.  Nor are they likely to  be sending their children to schools which boast “there are 93 languages spoken here” or be on the lists of GPs who  suddenly  have huge numbers of immigrants on their lists. It is also pretty unlikely that they or their children will lose their chance of a decent job to an immigrant or have their pay reduced because immigrants are willing to work for less.

The people who will  lose out are the poorer members of society.  They will find themselves competing with immigrants for housing, jobs, schools and NHS care.  The reality is those who advocate taking in immigrants, most of them from the Third and Second worlds, are stealing from the poorer of their own people.  Let me list what they steal:

  1. Employment, both by taking jobs and by reducing wages .
  2. Housing, both by  taking housing (including large amounts of social housing)  and by forcing up  house prices and private  rents.
  3. School opportunities by taking places and  by reducing the quality of the schooling  available to the British children through larger classes and   the  extra time and money   devoted to dealing with so many children who speak inadequate English.
  4. University opportunities, both by immigrants taking places (especially in subjects such as medicine) and by the reduction in the quality of the education offered through  immigrants having poor English and from inadequate students from  outside the EU being admitted simply because they are  cash cows for universities as they pay the full cost of their courses.  Students who cannot speak fluent English or who are simply intellectually inadequate  diminish the quality of the education for the British students.
  5. Healthcare. GPs surgeries are being swamped in many areas because of immigration and anyone who has visited a NHS hospital recently in places such as  London will have been astonished at the number of foreign patients there are  (I speak from personal experience).

More generally, when  immigrants arise in large numbers they invariably form ghettoes.  This means that Britons who live in areas anywhere such ghettoes formed rapidly find that the place with which they are familiar becomes somewhere alien .

If those who advocated mass immigration had to pay a price for their parading  of their conscience you may rest assured that their enthusiasm would vanish as quickly as the morning dew.  What should be the price?  Here are a couple of scenarios:

  1. If someone advocates taking in more immigrants they should have to take responsibility for that person permanently. By that I mean not only house them but meet all their reasonable needs such as food, clothing medical and educational costs.   They should have no choice about who they are allocated so there will be no choosing a westernised well educated  immigrant or two who speak good English.
  2. Another scenario could be the immigration advocate and their immediate family having their family home requisitioned and the advocate and his or her family moved to basic  accommodation in an area absolutely brimming over with the diversity such people always extol as being so desirable.  The income of the  adults involved would be reduced to the bare  minimum which the British state says is needed to live. Where there are children of school age , these would be sent to state funded schools which boast “93 languages spoken here”.

Would it be unfair to include the immediate family including children in the penalty? Well, consider this, all of the disadvantages which I suggest putting onto those who advocate Britain takes in huge numbers of immigrants have never had the slightest qualms in condemning the poor of their own nation to experience such conditions.  They would simply be experiencing that which they have not only placed on the white working class but that which they have claimed is positively beneficial to those unfortunate to experience the joy of diversity in its most invasive condition.

That should be the price of a liberal conscience. Sadly, at present the price is paid not by the eager propagandists for mass immigration but the poorer members of our society.

Britain will vote to leave the EU if the public message is right

Robert  Henderson

One thing about the coming EU referendum is certain: it will be a much fairer fight than that which occurred in 1975 when  the  stay-in camp had captured most leading politicians including all the party leaders,  all  the mainstream media and most of big business . In addition, the stay-in side then had funding which utterly dwarfed that of the get-out campaign and, not content with that advantage,  used the  government machine to  produce its own pamphlet on the renegotiations to go alongside  those of the stay-in and leave campaigns.  Perhaps most damaging was a lack of preparation for the vote by those who wanted to leave the EEC.

Today we have an established mainstream party  Ukip  unequivocally urging a vote to leave,  substantial support within  both the Tory and Labour parliamentary parties, including frontbenchers  and senior backbenchers. In addition influential business voices such as Lord Bamford of JCB Ltd and business groups  such as Business for Britain are raising their voice to both allay fears that  the British economy  would collapse  in a heap if we left the EU and advertise  the considerable  costs,  both economic and political,  which membership of the EU entails. There are even signs that the unions may be turning against the EU with the leader of Britain’s largest union Unit, Len McCluskey, suggesting that Britain might have to pull out if the EU’s labour  legislation is watered down as a result of Cameron’s renegotiation.

There is a further  important difference between 1975 and now.  In 1975 Britain had been in what was then the European Economic Community (EEC)for  less than three  years.  There was little for voters to go on to say  whether the EEC was going to be a good or bad thing.  Nor was the EEC anything like as intrusive as the EU is now.  Today the British people  know that the EU has not turned out to be the  driver of economic growth that was promised in the 1970s,  but a supranational  entity in  which the Europhile  political elites  are willing to ruthlessly enforce their will to achieve their end of a United States of Europe (is the only honest interpretation of the Treaty of Rome) regardless of the effects this has on  ordinary people, something of  which  the people of Greece are now only too savagely aware.

It is true that David  Cameron is  doing his best to fix the result. His government has announced that the civil service will not have to cease publicly commenting on the referendum  for the last four weeks of campaigning before the referendum  and the proposed referendum question  –Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union? –  is clearly biased because it emphasises  membership as the status quo  and gifts the YES vote to those who want to remain in the EU..  Perhaps most importantly, the spending rules in the referendum are slanted to favour those parties which will be likely to support a vote to stay in. But none  of these disadvantages are set in stone and   could be challenged  as the European Referendum Bill makes its way through Parliament or  by judicial review.  Moreover,  even if  all these pro-stay-in pieces of jigger-pokery remain unchanged  they will not be insuperable obstacles to a vote to leave because our circumstances are so  very  different  from those of 1975. .  There is also a possibility that Cameron will carry through his threat to insist that  all  those in his government  must  support whatever terms he decides to put to the country or resign. However, that would backfire if many did leave the government or  Cameron backed  down on his threat.   Either way he  would look weak and  strengthen the impression that leading  politicians are increasingly wanting to leave the  EU.

It is vital not to panic over polls which show that a majority will vote to stay in the EU.  Since Britain joined the EEC the polls have  regularly swung violently. The determining factor will be  political leadership or perhaps more exactly what the British elite – politicians, mediafolk, businessmen, academics –  say in public .  The vast majority of electors do not make their decisions by careful unemotional analysis of abstruse economic data or ideological belief, but on basic emotional responses such as fear and hope.   If there is support for leaving the EU, or even just an acknowledgement that leaving would not be a disaster for Britain,  from a broad swathe of those with a public voice,   enough of  the general public are likely to be persuaded to vote to leave to  win the referendum.

At the heart of the OUT campaign  must be Britain’s  complete inability to control her  borders while we remain in the EU.  Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the  major concerns of the British public and,  when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin.  A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by  Channel 5  in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted an end to mass immigration.  If  Britain leaves the EU it will not only allow the legal control of EU migrants but also removes from  British politicians any excuse for not controlling immigration generally.

Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through  a subject on which they feel  much the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are   opposed to mass immigration.  That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England  or England, Wales and Northern Ireland  vote to leave.  The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is, the less moral  leverage they will have for  either a veto over Britain leaving  the EU or another independence referendum.

The other central plank to for the campaign should be the fact that it does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation, because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU, most probably  in cahoots with a British government consisting of Europhiles. “Legal” guarantees such as Britain’s opt-out for the Social Chapter  were rapidly undermined by using EU workplace health and safety rules to impose much of the Social Chapter.

Nigel Farage does not need to be the campaign’s  sole leader , but he does need to be a very  prominent part of the leadership. If he does not take a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people who have bought into the politically correct view of the world. That would mean the immigration card will not be played with the vigour it demands or even played meaningfully  at all.

More generally, what this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest  unvarnished explanation of what the EU represents,   It needs  Farage at the forefront of the OUT campaign  to set that tone.  No one else will do it.

Britain will vote to leave the EU if the public message is right

Robert  Henderson

One thing about the coming EU referendum is certain: it will be a much fairer fight than that which occurred in 1975 when  the  stay-in camp had captured most leading politicians including all the party leaders,  all  the mainstream media and most of big business . In addition, the stay-in side then had funding which utterly dwarfed that of the get-out campaign and, not content with that advantage,  used the  government machine to  produce its own pamphlet on the renegotiations to go alongside  those of the stay-in and leave campaigns.  Perhaps most damaging was a lack of preparation for the vote by those who wanted to leave the EEC.

Today we have an established mainstream party  Ukip  unequivocally urging a vote to leave,  substantial support within  both the Tory and Labour parliamentary parties, including frontbenchers  and senior backbenchers. In addition influential business voices such as Lord Bamford of JCB Ltd and business groups  such as Business for Britain are raising their voice to both allay fears that  the British economy  would collapse  in a heap if we left the EU and advertise  the considerable  costs,  both economic and political,  which membership of the EU entails. There are even signs that the unions may be turning against the EU with the leader of Britain’s largest union Unit, Len McCluskey, suggesting that Britain might have to pull out if the EU’s labour  legislation is watered down as a result of Cameron’s renegotiation.

There is a further  important difference between 1975 and now.  In 1975 Britain had been in what was then the European Economic Community (EEC)for  less than three  years.  There was little for voters to go on to say  whether the EEC was going to be a good or bad thing.  Nor was the EEC anything like as intrusive as the EU is now.  Today the British people  know that the EU has not turned out to be the  driver of economic growth that was promised in the 1970s,  but a supranational  entity in  which the Europhile  political elites  are willing to ruthlessly enforce their will to achieve their end of a United States of Europe (is the only honest interpretation of the Treaty of Rome) regardless of the effects this has on  ordinary people, something of  which  the people of Greece are now only too savagely aware.

It is true that David  Cameron is  doing his best to fix the result. His government has announced that the civil service will not have to cease publicly commenting on the referendum  for the last four weeks of campaigning before the referendum  and the proposed referendum question  –Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union? –  is clearly biased because it emphasises  membership as the status quo  and gifts the YES vote to those who want to remain in the EU..  Perhaps most importantly, the spending rules in the referendum are slanted to favour those parties which will be likely to support a vote to stay in. But none  of these disadvantages are set in stone and   could be challenged  as the European Referendum Bill makes its way through Parliament or  by judicial review.  Moreover,  even if  all these pro-stay-in pieces of jigger-pokery remain unchanged  they will not be insuperable obstacles to a vote to leave because our circumstances are so  very  different  from those of 1975. .  There is also a possibility that Cameron will carry through his threat to insist that  all  those in his government  must  support whatever terms he decides to put to the country or resign. However, that would backfire if many did leave the government or  Cameron backed  down on his threat.   Either way he  would look weak and  strengthen the impression that leading  politicians are increasingly wanting to leave the  EU.

It is vital not to panic over polls which show that a majority will vote to stay in the EU.  Since Britain joined the EEC the polls have  regularly swung violently. The determining factor will be  political leadership or perhaps more exactly what the British elite – politicians, mediafolk, businessmen, academics –  say in public .  The vast majority of electors do not make their decisions by careful unemotional analysis of abstruse economic data or ideological belief, but on basic emotional responses such as fear and hope.   If there is support for leaving the EU, or even just an acknowledgement that leaving would not be a disaster for Britain,  from a broad swathe of those with a public voice,   enough of  the general public are likely to be persuaded to vote to leave to  win the referendum.

At the heart of the OUT campaign  must be Britain’s  complete inability to control her  borders while we remain in the EU.  Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the  major concerns of the British public and,  when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin.  A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by  Channel 5  in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted an end to mass immigration.  If  Britain leaves the EU it will not only allow the legal control of EU migrants but also removes from  British politicians any excuse for not controlling immigration generally.

Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through  a subject on which they feel  much the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are   opposed to mass immigration.  That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England  or England, Wales and Northern Ireland  vote to leave.  The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is, the less moral  leverage they will have for  either a veto over Britain leaving  the EU or another independence referendum.

The other central plank to for the campaign should be the fact that it does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation, because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU, most probably  in cahoots with a British government consisting of Europhiles. “Legal” guarantees such as Britain’s opt-out for the Social Chapter  were rapidly undermined by using EU workplace health and safety rules to impose much of the Social Chapter.

Nigel Farage does not need to be the campaign’s  sole leader , but he does need to be a very  prominent part of the leadership. If he does not take a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people who have bought into the politically correct view of the world. That would mean the immigration card will not be played with the vigour it demands or even played meaningfully  at all.

More generally, what this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest  unvarnished explanation of what the EU represents,   It needs  Farage at the forefront of the OUT campaign  to set that tone.  No one else will do it.

Bruges Group Meeting 1 April 2015 – John Redwood says he could vote to stay in the EU

Robert Henderson

Speakers:

Tim Aker  (Ukip  MEP)

John Redwood (Tory  MP)

Peter Oborne (Associate editor of the Spectator  magazine)

The meeting was very well attended with in excess of 200 people present, many of whom stayed despite having  to stand.  Particularly pleasing and encouraging were the number of young faces, which made up perhaps  a  quarter  of the audience.  The audience was very animated and a positive forest of hands were going up when questions were taken.

The order of the speakers  was Aker – Redwood – Oborne.  However, for ease of summary of their views both in their  speeches  and in answer to audience questions I shall  deal with them with them in this order:  Redwood – Aker – Oborne.

John Redwood

Redwood was so out of touch with the feeling of the audience that  he came close to being booed. As it was there were frequent cries of “no”, “rubbish” and general murmurings of dissent as he asked the audience to trust Cameron’s honesty in his attempt to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and put forward a plan for the OUT campaign which side-lined Nigel Farage . (The traffic of  audience disapproval   was countered by support for Redood , but judged by the noise made  those against him were  more numerous than his supporters).

Redwood said that he  believed  in Cameron’s honest intent  in  his negotiations  with EU. Consequently, he would not make up his mind whether to vote to leave until Cameron had completed his negotiations.   I think most people who have followed Redwood’s voluminous pronouncements  on  the EU will be more than a little surprised by his adoption of  such an equivocal position as the referendum approaches.    Redwood’s words were all the more unexpected because he began his talk by  denouncing  the fact that  membership of the EU  meant elected governments  –  most notably Greece at present – could not  do  what their electors wanted even if they wished to.  An important question arises,   if  Redwood  is  undecided about which way he will vote  how can he be  part of the OUT campaign?   Indeed, if Cameron gets concessions which Redwood deems enough to persuade him to vote to stay in,  presumably he will be campaigning with the stay in camp.

While Redwood’s unwillingness to directly dismiss Cameron’s stated aim as a sham is understandable, he is just a backbencher   who is unlikely to find a place in  a Cameron cabinet in a Parliament where his party only has a small majority.  These circumstances mean Redwood  has considerable freedom  to speak his mind.  In this instance he  could have said something along the lines of “The Prime Minister is sincere in his desire to reform the EU but I am  sure we all know in our hearts that this is a lost cause. Therefore, I have no doubt that I  shall be voting  to come out of the EU” or  even better  “ I  shall be voting to leave the EU regardless of what is offered by the EU  because for me the question  is not about renegotiating our term of membership but  of Britain being a sovereign nation state”.  Either statement would be consistent with what Redwood  has said over the past few years.

Redwood also  failed to  describe in any  detail what he would consider  would constitute  sufficient changes to the UK’s relationship with the EU to make him vote to stay in.  Neither Aker nor Oborne challenged him on this and no audience member who was called to ask a question raised the subject.  However, the subject is  academic in the long run because it really does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU.

Perhaps most  disturbing for those  who wish  the UK to leave the EU as a matter of principle, that is, those who wish our country to be a sovereign nation again, was Redwood’s strategy for the OUT campaign.  Redwood  adopted the line that Nigel Farage should not lead the OUT campaign because, he claimed, Farage is a marmite politician  who will alienate large chunks of the waverers  as we approach the referendum.  In fact, Redwood gave the impression he would rather see Farage completely excluded from the OUT campaign.

Redwood’s scheme for the OUT side  consisted of not frightening the voters with vulgar non-pc  talk about immigration or being  brutally honest  about anything relating to the  EU. Of course it is true  that the undecided and  faint-hearted supporters of leaving the EU will have to be appealed to in the right terms. The mistake Redwood is making is to imagine that the right terms will not include putting immigration controls  at the heart of  the OUT campaign.  Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the  major concerns of the British public and  when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin.  A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by  Channel 5  in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted and end to mass immigration. .

Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through  a subject on which they feel the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are also  opposed to mass immigration.  That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England  or England, Wales and Northern Ireland  vote to leave.  The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is , the less moral  leverage they will have for  either a veto over Britain leaving  the EU or another independence referendum.

Why is Redwood putting forward the  idea that Farage should be kept out of the limelight?   It cannot be simply to damage Ukip in the interest of the Tory Party  because there will be no general election for years (probably five years) . Could it be personal spite against Farage on Redwood’s part because they have quarrelled? I doubt it because I cannot recall Redwood and Farage having had a serious disagreement.   How about Redwood being  contaminated with the politically correct imprinting on the subjects of race and immigration  with the consequence that he thinks Farage’s views on these subjects are simply beyond the Pale? This is much more likely.  Interestingly, such a view echoes that of Douglas Carswell  who said of Nigel  Farage’s comments about foreign HIV patients costing the Earth:  “I think some of the tone that we deployed – for example the comments about HIV I think were plain wrong. Wrong at so many levels. Not just wrong because they were electorally unhelpful but just wrong because they were wrong.”

Redwood added fuel to the fire of the audience’s  discontent  by adopting a patronising tone adorned with a  supercilious smirk to anyone who disagreed with  him and refused to answer when he was asked to comment  on what he would  do and think if Farage did lead the OUT campaign.  The smirk became particularly  pronounced at this point.

Tim Aker

Unlike Redwood and  Aker   was very forthright and uncompromising, dealing pretty roughly with Redwood  whose positions  he treated with undisguised  incredulity as he pointed out the impossibility of the EU  giving Cameron anything substantial  and the folly of trying to sideline Farage.  He pointed out that without Farage and Ukip there would be no referendum, a simple  truth  because before Ukip began to make substantial inroads into the Tory vote  Cameron had  shown no serious interest in a referendum.

In his speech Aker made all the right sort of  political noises likely  to appeal to most  electors :  immigrants reduce the wages of the low paid; the unemployed of other EU states are being dumped on the UK;  the need for positive patriotism; a vote to remain in the EU would betray future generations;  billions in  Aid went to foreigners while  some of our own people went to food banks ; England was being Balkanised through the city regions being forced on the country by Cameron;  it is time to get rid of  the Barnett Formula and so on. All of this produced in Redwood and Oborne the kind of  facial expression  that people adopt when they have encountered an unpleasant smell.   That alone told you that Akers is  on the right path.

Peter Oborne

Oborne gave a very poor speech. It  largely  consisted of backing up Redwood’s objections to  Farage and Redwood’s   plans for the OUT campaign.  He described Akers as misguided and predicted that Farage  would bring to the ballot box only  the 14% or so who voted Ukip at the General Election.  That  claim was simple nonsense because  a general election and a referendum are chalk and cheese, and there are many  Euro sceptics in other parties, even some in the LibDems.  To assume that Farage would  cause such people to vote to  remain in the EU or to abstain is absurd.

However, Oborne  was strong on the need to have spending restrictions during the referendum campaign and made  the  interesting claim that  Rupert Murdoch will be coming out for the stay in the EU side because Murdoch has re-established his close association with the Tory Party.

What needs to be done

Nigel Farage must not be shouldered aside but put in the forefront of the OUT campaign. Not only is he an increasingly effective public performer, especially in debates,  unless he takes a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people such as Redwood and Carswell who have bought into the politically correct view of the world.  What this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest  explanation of what the EU represents .  It needs  Farage   to set that tone.

Immigration must be at the heart of the OUT campaign because it is (1)  the issue which concerns more voters  than any other issue and (2)  it  cuts across party and ideological lines in a way no other issue in the referendum will do.

Setting spending limits must be made a priority and should be agreed and  put into operation by the end of 2015. The Europhile political elite will doubtless try to  restrict spending limits to a short period before the vote is held.

The fixing of the EU referendum by the Europhiles has already begun with  the choice of a palpably biased question: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”  The bias comes from both the trigger word “remain” and the fact that the status quo has captured the  YES answer. Ideally a  judicial review should be launched as soon as possible. If Ukip  could fund it,  that would be a most  effective way of exercising control over the OUT campaign.

What should the question be? The original question put into European (Referendum) Bill  was “Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?”  That is much less biased because it does not overtly ask electors to vote for the status quo.

An alternative would be a double question with a box to mark against each question, for example

I wish Britain to be a member of the EU

I do not wish Britain to be a member of the EU.

Even that is not perfect because there is the problem of the order in which the questions come (being first gives a slight advantage).

Above all the OUT campaign needs to get its skates on as the referendum could be upon us quicker than we think, perhaps by the end of 2016 if Cameron has his way.

Reasons why Ukip will underperform in the upcoming election

Robert Henderson

Editor’s note: Robert Henderson recently sent me a link to his article, “British Future report says 25% of British adults want all immigrants repatriated” which discusses a survey showing a great deal of hostility toward immigration in the U.K. The question then is why are we reading that Ukip is losing ground in the polls and not expected to get more than a handful of MPs. The most recent poll, published in the Telegraph, has Ukip at 13% and 3 MPs for the May 7 election. Given that Ukip rankshighest of all the parties in the popularity of their immigration proposals, the question is why. Many of his points apply also in the United States and  elsewhere.
1. Political inertia.  The first past the post system makes it  immensely  difficult for new parties to get established as a real political force because most British constituencies have large in-built majorities for either the Labour or Conservative Parties.  This is because the nature of the populations in those constituencies are such as to make a winning vote for the  Conservatives or Labour  candidate very likely, for example, Labour safe seats will lie at the centre of major cities and towns and old industrial centres  where thy continue to capture the White working-class vote and those of ethnic/racial minorities. Safe Conservative seats will  tend to be in the suburbs and countryside.   In many constituencies people will think there is no point in voting for anyone but the almost certain winner and often will not bother to vote if they do not support the party of the probable winner.
In the years since the Restoration in 1660 and the formation of the Whigs and Tories only one entirely new party (Labour)  has every formed a government in the UK , although the Whigs transmuted into the liberals and the Tories mutated into Conservatives  during the 19th century.  The fate of the Social Democratic Party formed by four dissident leading members of the Labour Party  in the early 1980s is instructive.  It managed to win by-elections and in alliance with the then Liberal Party managed to gain 25% of the vote at the 1983 General Election. That gained the alliance a paltry  23 seats out of 650.    By the next general election the SDP was a dead duck.   The problem for the alliance was that their vote was spread much more evenly across the country than the vote of Conservative and Labour  parties.  The same applies to Ukip.
2. The fear of being called a racist runs very deep in Britain.  This is unsurprising because almost every week there are stories in the media about people, normally white Britons, being involved in a “race row”.  These incidents  will frequently  result in the person losing their job, and increasingly people accused of racism are being sent for criminal trial. The police also have a regular practice of investigating people for “hate crimes” without any  real intent to prosecute — the intention  being  to intimidate individuals and, by their example,  the general population.
3. People are subjected to incessant politically correct propaganda on race and immigration.  Those under the age of 35 will have had it blaring at them all their lives, including hard-core indoctrination at school.  [Editor’s note: Today, listening to BBC radio while driving through Scotland, there was a comment  on the drowning of 400 African “migrants off the coast of Italy. The comment managed to discuss the Holocaust based on survivor accounts (the Nazis came to our farmhouse and shot our dog in sight of the child) and the British involvement in the slave trade in the 18th century (where slaves were huddled together in overcrowded ships), both of which she recalled from her school days; the message was that the U.K. must be open to such people. Endless empathy and compassion needed.]
This propaganda produces a strange state of mind in many . They  do not agree with the propaganda but they  f eel that opinions which go against the propaganda are somehow beyond the Pale.   Fear lies at the root of it but it manifests itself not in a conscious focused fear but as a general sense that something should not be done or said.
4. The mainstream media  in Britain give far less time to Ukip in general and immigration matters in particular than they do to other parties and political subjects.  When Ukip speakers get onto television and radio  they are almost invariably face a more hostile questioning  than those from other parties.  If they appear on panels  with other politicians or commentators they are invariably in a minority, normally a minority of one with chairman who is biased against them.   If there is an audience the audience will invariably be packed  with people who support the politically correct view of the world. As for the written media, they get much less opportunity to publish their views than the parties who oppose them.
5. Ukip send mixed immigration messages because they try to fit what they propose into a politically correct envelope.  They advocate a points based system  such as the Australians have.  Unless the numbers are severely capped this could mean more immigration than we presently have.  Ukip are advocating a cap of 50,000 per annum on skilled workers  (which would be far  more immigrants more than the British want),  but are saying nothing coherent about immigration through family reunion, students and asylum claims which forms the major part of immigration to the UK from outside the EU.
Then there is the rhetoric. Ukip claim constantly that race/ethnicity does not matter.  They  say that that their scheme for “ managed migration”  shows they are not racist because they want everyone in the world to have the same chance of coming here if they meet the skilled worker  criteria.  The idea that Black, Brown and Yellow migrants are to be substituted  for White European migrants is unlikely to appeal to the British public.
6. Ukip also embrace the free trade mania.  As a prime  justification for leaving the EU,  Ukip place alongside control of immigration the idea that we should leave because this will allow us “to trade with the world”.  Having seen what  “trading with the world” in the context of globalism has brought them even within the EU — offshoring destroying huge swathes of British jobs,  iconic British companies sold to foreigners in the most cavalier fashion and  claims that free trade must  by definition include the free movement of labour  (the reduction ad absurdum of classical economic theory)  — many of the British public are unwilling to jump from the EU frying pan into the laissez faire globalist fire.  That policy will alienate many.
7. Ukip are also for shrinking the British state radically. In particular Farage has made it clear that he thinks the  NHS  should be  replaced by  an insurance system whereby treatment is free at the point of use but the state ceases to own the medical infrastructure and employ the staff. The official Ukip policy is not for this,  but as Farage is seen as Mr Ukip, most voters will think the party is for the privatisation of the National Health Service. That is electoral poison in Britain.
8. The muddled thinking of electors. Many of those who say they want an end to mass immigration also support staying in the EU. This is nonsensical because unless we come out of the EU, immigration cannot be controlled.  This reduces support for Ukip because the “we want to stay in the EU” trumps the desire for immigration control.
9. A widespread  lack of discipline within Ukip, both in terms of promoting Ukip policy and personal behaviour, from Westminster candidates , MEPs and councillors. This all too often provides opportunities for the mainstream media to represent Ukip as at best as amateurs put of their depth.

Devolution and the House of Lords

Robert Henderson

There is one important aspect of the devolution mess created since 1997 which receives little or no attention in the mainstream media or from mainstream politicians, namely, the role of the House of Lords.  As things stand  all legislation which affects England goes through the Lords,  while ever increasing swathes of legislation affecting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland avoid such scrutiny  because the legislation is initiated, debated, amended and either passed or not at the will of the three devolved assemblies. Yet another instance of how England is grossly disadvantaged by the unbalanced devolution in Britain.

Many will shrug their shoulders and say what does it matter, isn’t the Lords just a talking shop with no power?  The answer is an emphatic no. Government ministers sit in the Lords, the House  can initiate their own Bills, amend   or strike down completely  Bills  sent to them by the House of Commons ,ask  questions orally and in writing, including questions of ministers,  sit on  their own select committees and on  joint committees of the Lords and Commons . Members also have the great privilege of a national political platform to get their views to the public.

The power of the Lords to delay

The sharpest power  the Lords has is to delay.  This can be achieved   by being tardy over  their examination of Bills sent to them by the Commons, by heavily amending Bills sent to them by the Commons (this means they have to go back to the Commons for re-consideration) and  by refusing outright to pass Bills. (There is one important exception to the power of the Lords to amend or refuse outright to pass  Bills from the Commons and that is what are called money Bills, legislation  which involves   the collection or spending of money by the government. Such Bills have to be signed off as Money Bills by the Speaker. )

If the Lords does refuse to pass a Bill from the Commons in its entirety or in part, the 1949 Parliament Act allows the Commons to force through a Bill regardless of the wishes of the Lords in the  session of  Parliament in which the Bill was originally introduced into the Common. This procedure    typically  results in  a delay of  around a year.  When the Bill is reintroduced it is passed without the Lords having any opportunity to delay it further. This is a very rare procedure with only seven Acts have been passed in this way either under the 1949 Parliament Act or its 1911 predecessor.

Being able to delay Bills sent from the Commons is a  powerful weapon  because  government legislation may be lost for want of Parliamentary time if an election is looming or a session of Parliament (which normally lasts a year)  is coming to an end and other government business takes priority in the new session.   Even if time is not absolutely pressing, governments are generally anxious to get their legislation through quickly and will often accept a Lords’ amendment to Bills sent from the Commons simply to get the legislation passed quickly.

The political composition of the House of Lords

“As at 16 December 2014, the total membership of the House of Lords was 847. However, excluding those currently ineligible to sit (such as members on leave of absence or those holding particular posts), the ‘actual’ membership was 791. The average attendance of the House of Lords in the 2013–14 session was 497.”

The  791 Members eligible to sit in the House of  consisted of 679 Life Peers, 86 ‘excepted hereditary’ Peers and 26 Bishops.  Their political allegiances, where declared, were:

Conservative  230

Labour  216

Liberal Democrat  105

Crossbench  180

Bishops  26

Even on the declared allegiances  the House is heavily tilted toward the liberal left who are instinctively anti-English.  Not only do Labour and the Libdems  have a majority together over the Conservatives, those  who take the Tory whip  will more often than not have much the same politics  as the Labour and LibDem peers .  As for the officially politically  non-aligned, it is reasonable to assume that  most  of  the Bishops will also be of liberal left  because  the upper reaches of the Anglican Church has long shown themselves to be consistently  left of centre with their unwavering support for political correctness .  The crossbenchers   will also have a healthy component from  the liberal left  simply because  they are selected by those who generally subscribe to political correctness  with  the consequence that they  will do the very human thing of selecting those who resemble themselves.

The geographical spread and size of the  of the Lords is very  important. Peers can come from any part of the United Kingdom and there is no limit to their number.   This means that the Lords could easily become imbalanced, if it  is not already so, by the creation of disproportionately large  numbers of peers who were not English. Moreover, because peers are not elected , in principle,  a government could create any number of new peers to push through  legislation which is damaging to English interests, for example, to Balkanise England with regional assemblies regardless of the wishes of the English.

Less dramatically, because of the power to delay and force compromise from a government, it is easy to see how a House of Lords which was  against England controlling its own affairs could cause considerable difficulties if  the Commons voted , for example, to  end the Barnett formula or to set up an English Parliament  simply by delaying matters, for example, if General Election was due in less than a year’s time and sufficient numbers in the Lords thought there was a fair bet that the election would result in a change of government.

If England had English votes for English Laws

Would English votes for English laws solve the constitutional imbalance?  The idea  raises many problems such as how to define what is English only legislation while the Barnett Formula is in place because the Formula  determines what Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland gets from the UK Treasury  because it is linked to government  spending in England.  But the  Lords adds another complication because the proposal  as it has been suggested to date makes no mention of removing from the Lords’  the power of  scrutiny of any House of Commons Bills which are deemed English only Bills. If that were the case then there would still be the anomaly   that the Lords  could interfere with English only legislation while having no power to intervene over the equivalent legislation for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland .

The difficulty could be surmounted by giving English only laws the same status as money Bills but in reality, only an English Parliament and a truly federal constitution for each of the four home countries will permanently solve the problem of the imbalance of the present devolution settlement.

Devolving powers to Manchester is the thin end of the Balkanising of England wedge

Robert Henderson

The government have recently  announced the passing of responsibility for the £6 billion of NHS money spent   in the  Greater Manchester  area to a consortium of ten local councils.   This is in addition to the creation of a Mayor for Greater Manchester and  the devolved powers granted to Greater Manchester in November which are intended to place  around £1 billion in the same  local government hands  by  2019 to administer new powers over transport,   house building,  skills training and the police (the Mayor will replace the police commissioner). Contrary to some reports  The Mayor will not have formal responsibility for the NHS and Care budget spending, but will probably exert some unofficial influence in those areas.

Greater Manchester is to have an elected mayor  foisted upon it despite  voted against having one  in 2012 with the Tory minister responsible Grant Shapps  stating at the time  of the referendum that  “People should have the right to decide how they are governed in their local area. The whole point is to give people a say. No-one is forcing mayors on anyone.” That one is being imposed now tells you all you need to know about the real  attitude of the coalition government and their commitment to local democracy. It is a case of you can vote anyway you like provided we approve of your choice.  Shades of the EU’s way with referenda which do not go their way.

All of this has got nothing to do with improving local services and everything to do with fudging the issue of devolution in England. Our political elite are utterly  determined that England will not have a Parliament or government to represent her national interests. Labour and the LibDems are reliant on Welsh and Scots MPs for a significant number of their Commons seats and are concerned that an English Parliament and government could seriously upset the UK  political apple-cart by forcing the reduction of the per capita Treasury funding for Scotland, Wales and N Ireland, for example, by reducing it to the per capita funding for England (that would take around £16 billion a year away from the Celtic Fringe at present).

This shifting of powers to an English region is the beginning of a process  which all three major Westminster parties in one form or another all support.  The policy has two great advantages for the Tories, Labour and LibDems. It  allows  them to claim however absurdly that the imbalance in the UK devolution settlement has been addressed and creates  political institutions which once granted would be very difficult to abolish.

The mere  existence of  regional political institutions with differing  powers  would be a great barrier to an English Parliament and government. Such devolution  would create a patchwork of differing powers and provide a ready-made argument for why England should not have her own Parliament, namely,  that an English Parliament would not be able to legislate on a great swathe of  policies because so much had been devolved to the regions and so varied are the different devolved powers that no meaningful national legislation on those policies would be possible.

Apart from the Balkanising effect on England, there are the practical effects which would be obnoxious.  Because it would be impossible to have such devolution throughout the country so inevitably differences in service offered and the rules under which it is offered would arise. The  post-code lottery already afflicting much of public service, especially in NHS provision, would be greatly amplified. There would also be an ugly battle for resources by different regions.

There is a further good practical reason why such devolution is wrong-headed: the quality of both local politicians and their senior officers is generally poor. If anyone doubts this go and attend a few local council meetings and committees. They simply would not be up to the job of administering such responsibilities.  If local authorities whether singly or in concert as is proposed in Manchester are given extensive new borrowing powers there is every chance they will behave recklessly and run up debts which they could not service and  central government would have to bail them out. Spain is a gruesome example of  such misbehaviour by devolved governments.

The fact that it is Greater Manchester which is receiving the extra powers rather than individual councils or even just the councils for the city of  Manchester   suggests that what is being aimed at is a surreptitious resurrection of the goal of  Balkanising England  which was so roundly rejected in 2004 under Blair’s premiership.

Regional bodies such as those proposed for Greater Manchester will have some  ostensible democratic respectability because their members  will be  drawn from elected councils.  But  this democratic respectability will be specious  if there is a Mayor  of Greater Manchester  who is  not attached to any council heading the consortium. Individual councillors from each council will have little if any influence because you can bet the Mayor will form a council of the leaders of the component councils which will proceed to  stitch up deals  that are then  presented as a fait accompli to the individual councillors. Anyone who has had experience of a council which has adopted the “cabinet” system will be only too well aware of how councillors who are not part of the cabinet are left virtually powerless to affect any council policy or behaviour because they are effectively  excluded from decision making.

Scottish  Welsh  and Northern Irish  politicians will welcome such devolution within England because it lessens  the opportunity for England to exert  its natural power in the Union by making a national voice for England less likely. However,  they could find it a wrong-headed move if English regions start demanding some of the additional exchequer funding  over and above that provided to England that the Celts  currently receive.

These new powers for Manchester are not a done deal because the Tory Party may  well not be in power after the General Election in May.  Certainly in the case of the devolution of NHS power Labour have made it clear that they do not want  it to happen with the  Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham rejecting  the NHS Proposal viz:

“If I was health secretary I wouldn’t be offering this deal.”

“My worry is having a ‘swiss cheese’ effect in the NHS whereby cities are opting out.”

 “This deal is only being offered to certain parts of the country too and there’s a real concern that it could cause a two-tier service and challenge the notion of a National Health Service.”

What is proposed for Manchester is the thin end of the Balkanising of England wedge. It needs to be opposed on principle.

SNP 2014 XMAS NOVELTIES

UK Devolution Constitution jigsaw

A deceptively difficult puzzle. Simple in principle because where the pieces should go is very obvious, but some people, and British politicians in particular, find it impossible to finish because they say they cannot to see where an English Parliament fits in.

Unhappy families

Card game for all ages. The idea is to collect a set of cards which reflect the common family situation in Scotland after the rejection of independence. Players attempt to collect sets cards with characters like Mr Angry, the SNP voter, Mrs Relieved, the Unionist, Master Thoughless, the SNP voter’s son and Miss Realist, the Unionists daughter.

Oil and Gas Tardis

Fascinating fantasy toy. Based on the idea of Dr Who’s time and space machine, the toy consists of what looks a simple like a large working scale model of a North Sea Platform. Looked at from the outside it pumps out every decreasing amounts of oil, but when you go inside the model the amount of oil pumped swells to match SNP dreams of untold oil riches.

Independence vote inflatable

An plastic toy which consists of two inflatable bulbs marked 45% and 55%. Uninflated the 55% bulb is larger than the 45% bulb, but when the bulbs are filled with hot air the 45% bulb miraculously becomes larger than the 55% one.

Call my SNP bluff

Three players recite what is claimed to be SNP policy while the other players decide which is the real SNP policy amongst the three. Warning: players must make sure the two false policies amongst the three are outlandishly improbable otherwise it will be all too easy to spot the real SNP policy. New improved version with scope for even more fantastic policies.

Conversational Gaelic DVD

Learn the language of your ancestors and find yourself part of a community of dozens of fellow speakers of our glorious tongue. Warning: due to a lack of Gaelic words for items and ideas created after 1700, speakers may find the range of conversation extremely limited.

PLUS

Clearance of out of date stock ALL AT GIVEAWAY PRICES

Make you own currency kit

Allows you to name your currency, design your own coins and banknotes, create coins (3D printer included) and banknotes and set up a central piggy bank. Warning: the money will have the same value as that used in the game monopoly. Not to be confused with real life.
IndependenceWorld

Create your own independent Scotland virtual world. The beauty of the programme is that you can make it as improbable as you want and it will still seem plausible if you are an SNP supporter. Lose yourself in pure fantasy.

SNP Sovereign Wealth Fund Moneybox

Purely decorative. The box is designed without any money cache because none will be needed. Frightening realistic.

            Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! while SNP bombast lasts

England could be Balkanised by stealth after the 2015 General Election

Robert Henderson

It is quite clear what the strategy is of all Westminster Parties apart from the Tories and Ukip : they are desperate to Balkanise England.  English votes for English laws (EVEL) will not work for practical reasons such as who decides on what is an exclusively English law and the differing  powers granted to the Scottish parliament and  Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies. But it is probably necessary for it to be tried and to be seen to fail before the only honest constitutional solution – an English Parliament – is accepted  by the Tories.

The danger is that the next Westminster Parliament will result in either a Labour majority government because of the scandalous way constituency sizes are weighted to favour Labour and the fact that the Labour vote is more concentrated in certain constituencies than that of other parties or , much more probably,  a motley coalition between Labour, the LibDems, the Greens and most poisonously the SNP,  who could well return  20-30 MPs to the Commons.

We could  find after the general election that a Labour government or a Labour led coalition would not only deny England EVEL,  but would enforce some form a devolution upon England, most probably by devolving significant powers to greater metropolitan areas such as Greater Manchester, which would effectively be English regional government by subterfuge. This increase in the complexity of the allocation of powers in England would emasculate  any future attempt at EVEL and  by leaving as little as possible  of English administration at the Westminster level,  would make an English parliament an ever more remote possibility because the less power it would have the less press there would be for a parliament.

Once powers had been devolved within England the new regional political classes they would spawn would provide a serious barrier to taking back their powers and returning them to Westminster. Such regional powers would also set the parts of a balkanised England against one another and the populations of the various regions would  in time begin to defend what their region has rather than considering the national English interest.

The Westminster Parties which want England to be Balkanised do so in the knowledge that there is absolutely no appetite for  a developed England, a fact recently confirmed by an Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR)  report  The Future of England Survey 2014.  Their motives are driven by crude party advantage in the case of Labour and the Libdems which both rely heavily on Scottish and Welsh MPs to make up their numbers in the House of Commons and a desire  by all the pro Balkanisation of England supporters to  hamstring England to prevent her looking out for her own interests – which would include stopping the English subsidy to the rest of the UK – because they fear that it would  be greatly to their disadvantage.  There is also more than a little sheer anti-English feeling as is exemplified even in their leading politicians who in the case of  those from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland never cease to bang the victimhood drum over the wicked English colonial overlord.

Some MPs sitting for English seats  join in the insult of the English, most notably the senior Labour politician Jack Straw who was Home Secretary during the Blair Government. On a BBC programme  in 2000 Straw  stated that the English are “potentially very aggressive, very violent” that England had used their  “propensity to violence to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland”

If anti-English Balkanising government is elected to Westminster next year  without a majority of English seats there would be a dangerous constitutional situation where the English are effectively being misgoverned according to the dictates of the Celtic Fringe MPs. That could be the point where the patience of the English public runs out.

Devolution and an in-out referendum Part 2 – The hard facts to be put before the Celts

Devolution and an in-out referendum

Part 2 – The hard facts to be put before the Celts

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Robert Henderson in EditorialElections // 1 Comment
In part 1 I looked at the UK electoral arithmetic which suggested that England might well  vote to leave the EU  while one or more of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would vote to stay in the EU.  I then proposed a strategy to diminish the stay-in vote in the Celtic nations. This was to bring home the realities of life in and outside the UK for Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland.
The primary matters the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish should be reminded of before they vote to leave the UK are:
  1. Wales and Northern Ireland are economic basket-cases which rely heavily on English taxpayers to fund their public expenditure. To lose that subsidy would cripple them both. Nor would they get anything like as much extra funding from the EU – assuming it would have them as members – as they would lose from the end of the English subsidy.
Scotland is in a better position because it is larger and has, for the present at least, significant oil revenues.  But it is a very narrow economy relying very heavily on public service employment – a significant part of which deals with the administration of English public service matters – while the private business side of is largely comprised of oil and gas, whiskey, food, tourism and financial services.
The figures below are the latest official estimates of the tax raised in each of the four home countries to the end of the 2012/13 financial year. These figures should not be treated as exact to the last million because there are difficulties in allocating revenue to particular parts of the UK, for example, with corporation tax, but they are broadly indicative of what each country collects in tax.  I give two sets of figures to show the differences when oil and gas is allocated on a geographical and a population basis.
2012-13
UK                England    %           Wales      %       Scotland   %        Northern Ireland %
469,777   400,659 85.3%    16,337 3.5%   42,415 9.0%       10,331   2.6%
469,777   404,760 86.2%    16,652 3.5%   37,811 8.0%        10,518    2.6%
Compare this with public spending for each of three small home countries in the calendar year 2013 (I was unable to find expenditure figures for the financial year but they would be little different) :
Scotland      £53.9 billion  – difference  of £12 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
Wales            £29.8 billion   – difference of £13 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
Ireland         £19.8 billion   – difference of £9 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
NB differences between tax raised and money spent are based on Table 1 figures which give the most favourable interpretation of Scotland’s tax position.
The three smaller countries are accumulating debt at a much greater rate than England.  In addition, small countries which go independent would find raising the money to meet their overspends would be much more expensive than the cost of financing the debt as part of the UK
  1. The vast majority of their trade is with England. Barriers created by England’s departure from the EU could have very serious economic consequences any of other home countries remained within the EU.
  2. Much of what they export to countries outside the EU has to pass through England.
  3. All three countries would be net takers from the EU budget not contributors. The EU is unlikely to welcome with open arms an additional three small pensioner nations. There would be no guarantee that the EU would accept any or all of them as members, but even if it did the terms they would have to accept would be far more onerous and intrusive than they experience now. In particular, they would almost certainly have to join the Euro as this is a condition for all new members.
  4. An England or a reduced UK outside the EU would have to impose physical border controls because any part of the UK which seceded and joined the EU would be committed to the free movement of labour within the EU (more exactly the European Economic Area – EEA). That would mean any number of immigrants from the EEA would be able to enter either England or a reduced UK via whichever part(s) of the UK had seceded and joined the EU.
  5. Being part of the UK gives the smaller home countries great security because the UK still has considerable military clout – ultimately Britain is protected by nuclear weapons – and the size of the population (around 62 million and rising) is sufficient in itself to give any aggressor pause for thought. The proposal for armed forces made in the SNP sponsored White Paper on independence recommended armed forces of 10,000 regulars to start with rising to 15,000 if circumstances permitted.   That would be laughable as a defence force for a country the size of Scotland which has huge swathes of land with very few people on that land.  An independent Wales and N Ireland would be even worse off militarily.
  6. They could not expect to walk away from the Union without taking on a share of the UK national debt and of taxpayer funded pension liabilities proportional to their population, have a currency union to share the Pound, have UK government contracts for anything or retain the jobs exported from England to do administrative public sector work  for England, for example, much of the English welfare administration is dealt with in Scotland.
If this is done, with any luck the enthusiasm for leaving the UK to join the EU if England or England plus one or more of the other home countries has voted to leave the EU will diminish sufficiently to make a vote to remain in the EU unlike or at least reduce the vote to stay in to level where there is not an overwhelming vote to either stay in or leave.