Category Archives: quisling elite

Stand fast must be the order of the day for Leavers

Robert Henderson

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” .(The last sentence of  Orwell’s Animal Farm )

This is precisely where Brexit is heading.  The leave voting public look from leaver politician to  remain politician and increasingly find it difficult to distinguish between most of  them. This trait is exemplified by media reports which suggest some grubby deal is being cooked up whereby May agrees to resign as PM and the wavering leave politicians agree to vote for her agreement with the EU.

This trade off  fails to address the questions  of what May’s agreement contains, the likely behaviour of remainer politician and public servants if  May’s agreement  is accepted by Parliament  and the EU’s attitude to the UK   if May’s agreement is turned into a legally enforceable document.

May’s agreement leaves the UK in the hands of the EU.

The Spectator magazine  recently listed what they called the top 40 horrors of the agreement. Apart from the Irish Backstop, these include the following :

  1. May says her deal means the UK leaves the EU next March. The Withdrawal Agreement makes a mockery of this. “All references to Member States and competent authorities of Member States…shall be read as including the United Kingdom.” (Art 6)
  2. The European Court of Justice is decreed to be our highest court (Art. 86) both citizens and resident companies can use it.
  3. The UK will remain under the jurisdiction of the ECJ until eight years after the end of the transition period. (Article 158).
  4. The UK will still be bound by any future changes to EU law in which it will have no say, not to mention having to comply with current law. (Article 6(2))
  5. Any disputes under the Agreement will be decided by EU law only – perhaps the most dangerous provision of all. (Article 168) Arbitration will be governed by the existing procedural rules of the EU law – this is not arbitration as we would commonly understand it (i.e. between two independent parties). (Article 174)

These clauses of the agreement alone should make the agreement unacceptable to British politicians for they are the type of subordination required of a defeated enemy who has sued for peace.

The likely behaviour of remain politicians

The circumstances of a remainer  PM, a remainer dominated Cabinet and a remainer  dominated Parliament alone make it wildly improbable that  the  British Government  (of whatever complexion) after Theresa May’s agreement was  converted into a treaty will be any more robust in its dealing with the EU than May has been.  This is not merely a matter of weakness or inexperience by those calling the political shots in the  UK  Rather, it is the consequence of a remaner political elite which is determined to sabotage Brexit.

Nor  can we look to an early election to change matters. The House of Commons is probably 75% remainer. Hence, even if a General Election is held it is likely that a remainer  dominated Commons would be returned simply because it would require an almighty  and most unlikely throwing out of remainer  MPs.

The attitude of the EU

The  EU has given ample evidence since the Referendum that they  have no intention of treating the UK reasonably. Thieir behaviour has run the gamut of personal abuse to a rigid refusal to make any meaningful compromise with the UK or simply to accept the reality that the UK have voted to leave. The idea that they will behave more reasonably if the agreement made with May is enshrined into  a legally enforceable treaty is best described as ludicrous.

A taste  what the UK is likely to be confronted with if Parliament passes  May’s agreement  is demonstrated by the struggle which Switzerland is having with the EU.  They are meeting the same bone-headedly arrogant and unyielding EU attitude that the EU has presented to the UK since the Referendum, viz:

“All the terminology in this tiff will be uncomfortably familiar to the U.K. “Nothing is decided until everything is decided,” Commission officials say, and the Swiss can’t “cherry-pick” the benefits of the EU.. “

WTO terms is the only way to Brexit

All of these considerations make leaving to trade on  the WTO deal absolutely  necessary. Irreconcilable remainers have shown ever since the  Referendum that they were not willing to accept the result and are  demonstrating their resolution  in that intention  to prevent it happening as I write – a Sunday Express article   of 23 March  claims that the Government is already plotting to bind us fully back into the EU.  This is entirely plausible based on remainer behaviour since the Referendum.

Leaving under WTO terms serves two purposes : it is  the most efficient and rapid way of leaving  and is the most difficult for situation for   remainers to subvert because it immediately provides  a general trading framework.

The Irish Question

The Irish Backstop has not been made unnecessary or modified in any way.

If the  UK leaves to trade on WTO terms there will be no legal constraint , other than the WTO rules,   on  how the UK engages with the EU generally or the Republic of Ireland (RoI) specifically.  The UK government could offer the RoI a deal, namely,  to come out of the EU and retain the common travel area and frictionless trade between and with the UK or remain in the  EU and lose those advantages.

Given the RoI’s fervently  EU stance this might seem impossible at first glance but less so when the present circumstances are seriously considered.  The  RoI only joined the  EU (or EEC as it then was) because the UK joined.  They  did so for exactly the same reason s that it would make sense for the RoI to leave now, the large  amount of UK-RoI trade and the ability to  travel freely between the UK and Ireland.

To the trade argument can be added the fact that RoI  in 2016 moved  from being a net recipient of EU money to being a net contributor to the EU.  Their contribution in 2018 was more than £2 billion. With the UK leaving and removing a great wad of money from EU coffers  net contributors to future EU budgets will have to pay even more to make up for the loss of the UK’s contribution.

Of course leaving would raise the difficult  problem of the RoI  being in the Euro,  but the UK could  help the RoI to resurrect the Punt by lending financial assistance and perhaps even underwriting the Punt for a period.

If the RoI did leave the EU the Backstop problem would evaporate.

What happens if the RoI remains in the EU?  That would leave the EU not the UK with the problem of erecting a border between Northern Ireland and the RoI. The UK will not place  a physical border between the two so the only authority who could do so would be the EU.  Would they dare? I doubt it.

We desperately  need a modern law of treason

The UKL does not have a functioning Treason Law. It is sorely to be missed because without it what would have been called treason in most times in our history passes without any action being taken.

A recent  first rate example was Tony Blair advising major players within the EU how they should in effect thwart Brexit – see here and here . That amounts to treating with a foreign power without the authorisation of the Government.

A new treason law should make any attempt to assist a foreign power to the detriment of the UK treason.  That would cover much of the behaviour of irreconcilable remainers including politicians.

Such a law should not interfere with the normal democratic process. For example it would allow renainers to work for the UK to  rejoin the EU after the UK has left by making it the policy of a party and standing for election on that platform.   (That incidentally was the only democratically acceptable way for remainers to attempt to reverse Brexit, namely, let it take place and then try to reverse it in the way I have described).

The post-referendum position

The only reason Brexit is in such a mess is because  remainer politicians from Theresa May downwards have made  it  so.

The constitutional position is simple: by passing the Referendum Act Parliament contracted out the question of whether  the UK should remain in the EU or leave. Once the country voted to leave  Parliament (Lords and Commons) were obligated to put that decision into effect.

The referendum question was beautifully clear, senior politicians said publicly that the result of the vote would be  honoured by implementing it and after the vote the major parties promised in the 2017 election manifestoes  carried the same promise.  Parliament also agreed to the activation of the Article 50 procedure putting the UK on the leaving path. In short, there is absolutely no excuse for the grossly anti-democratic misbehaviour of  remainer politicians. They are not people acting in good faith to do what is best for the country. Rather they are  simply trying to enforce their will.

If Parliament passes May’s surrender document of a deal it will not only create great uncertainty,  but will also leave the UK securely attached to the EU, an attachment which will be  progressively tightened by a remainer dominated government and remainer dominated Parliament until within a few years the UK will be a de facto member of the EU . Like the animals in Animal Farm the uK  shall be indistinguishable from a full blown member of the EU.

The remainers throw away their best chance of sabotaging Brexit.

Robert Henderson

Astonishingly, the remainers have missed their best chance to hinder the Brexit  process by  failing to seriously oppose the motion  put down by Theresa May that a General Election be held on 8 June. The motion was passed on 19 April 201`7 by 522 votes to 13.

This is an extraordinary result on the face of it. What is even more astonishing is the fact that the remainers could have defeated the motion quite easily. All  they had to do was muster 217 votes or abstentions to overthrow the motion for an early election. Indeed, they could have done it simply by getting 217 MPs to abstain. The Labour Party, with 229 MPs, could have managed the matter on their own, as could a coalition of, say,  two thirds of Labour MPs, the Scots Nat MPs and the LibDem MPs voting against or abstaining.

Let me divert for a moment to explain the status of abstentions in this context. In this vote an abstention has the same value as a vote against. This is  because it is the total number of MPs who vote for the motion that matters, not the percentage of those who actually vote for or against a motion.

Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act  two thirds of the 650 member House of Commons have to vote for a motion proposing  an early election.   Two thirds of 650 is 434. Hence one  vote against   or one abstention can make a difference. If 433 MPs vote for the motion with, say,  only 100 voting against but with 117 abstaining,  the motion fails because it is one short of 434.

Even without any party opposing the motion a substantial number of MPs did not vote for it.  Only 13 MPs may have voted against the motion but 115 abstained.  This figure of 115  is arrived at as follows:

522  voted  for  the motion

13  voted against the motion

Therefore 115 MPs are unaccounted for after deducting  those who voted.  Six of these are:

The Speaker (who doesn’t vote unless there is a tie), Eric Kaufman (deceased, and his constituency was  awaiting  a by election), and 4 Sinn Fein MPs  (who don’t take their seats and consequently don’t vote.)

That leaves 109 other wilful or accidental abstainers.

As 115 votes were either not used or used to vote against,  it would only have required another 102 to either abstain or vote against the motion to stop the attempt to have a general election on 8 June. Had the various remainer Party leaders in the Commons put their weight behind a vote against.  the motion it is probable that the motion would have been defeated.

Alternatively, if  remain MPs of all parties had come together they might well have defeated the motion.

The fact that the remainer MPs failed to defeat the motion when it was well within their grasp to do so,  or indeed to make any public noise about doing so, suggests that they were more afraid of losing their seats than they are motivated to carry on the battle against Brexit. Ironically,  I suspect that was a false fear for many remainer MPs because they represent constituencies which voted to remain.

As far as the party leaders are concerned, voting against the motion could have been represented as reasonable both because Theresa May had said she would not call an election as it would be  destabilising and on the grounds that this Parliament is only two years old and the clear intention of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act was  to stop PMs calling elections to suit themselves and their party rather than the national interest.

If the remainer MPs had gathered enough votes and abstentions to defeat the motion it would have placed   Theresa  May in a very awkward position personally and removed  from her the possibility of using a larger majority after an early  General Election  to drive through Brexit. It  is indicative of a  lack of commitment  by remainers to their  cause when it involves any danger or sacrifice. That is very useful to know.  If they have looked  gift horse in the mouth because they did not fancy the state of its teeth once they are very likely to do it again when the pressure is on.

As historians look back at the remainers ‘ failure to keep Theresa May locked in the position she was in before the motion was passed  – stuck with a small majority and  a General Election coming in 2019 just as the Brexit negotiations and the UK’s departure are due to come to a head – they will surely shake their heads in astonishment .  No wonder for it is truly bewildering  that there was no attempt by one or more of the Westminster parties which support the remainer cause  to defeat the motion for an early General Election, thereby potentially greatly strengthening Theresa May and her government’s  position.

Don’t be fooled: EU enthusiast Teresa May is intent on subverting Brexit

Robert Henderson

In office for less than 48 hours,  Teresa May   showed her true colours and intentions for Brexit when she made the remarkable promise that Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will not be activated until there is agreement between Westminster and the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.   This has the effect of allowing the UK’s departure indefinitely. In a separate statement  SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon  has supported this idea.  May has also  visited Wales and said she wanted the Welsh government to be “’involved and engaged’ in Brexit negotiations.”

The fact that May’s first act after choosing a cabinet was to go running off to Scotland  to meet the  SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon before embracing  the patently absurd idea that both Scotland’s  wishes to remain in the EU and the majority UK wish to leave  the EU  could be reconciled shows this was planned before she became PM . Her visit to Wales, doubtless to be followed by one to Northern Ireland, reinforced the suspicion, if it needed reinforcing, that she is intent on sabotaging Brexit.

There is plenty of other  evidence of May’s duplicitous  intentions . At her first cabinet meeting she  said “we will not allow the country to be defined by Brexit”.  This is nonsensical if May is committed to Brexit.  Regaining sovereignty is what Brexit is about and sovereignty defines what a country is.

What is May’s motivation for this behaviour? Like a majority of Tory MPs  she does not want to leave the EU and is intent on finding a way of subverting  Brexit.  She can do this in two ways:

(1) May will  use the excuse of accommodating  the wishes of Scotland and, Wales and NI to   delay the UK’s exit as long as possible in the hope that  unforeseen events, for example,    the UK economy goes into  prolonged recession,   will  give her an excuse to hold another  referendum.

(2) May will agree terms with the EU which stitch us back into the EU with things such as free movement and she will justify  such an agreement  on the grounds that Scotland and NI and possibly Wales will not agree to anything less.

All of this would go against what the British voted for on 23rd June.  You might say neither this government nor Parliament  would tolerate such a rejection of popular will.  The problem is that despite the clear majority to leave  most MPs, including Tory MP s,  wish to remain inside the EU and two thirds of May’s cabinet are remainers.  The House of Lords is also solidly for remaining in the EU.  In principle Parliament could accept whatever deal is reached with the EU. If  it is several years down the line, as it almost certainly will be if Article 50 is activated,  this could mean that the voters will have been exhausted and confused by the whole process and fail to protest  effectively enough to prevent the stitch up happening.

There is also the possibility that May could distract or  “buy” the acquiescence of Tory Brexiteers  to a sell-out of the Brexit vote by giving them some red meat such as increasing defence spending and the permitting of new grammar schools.

But even if the British voter is outraged by such a betrayal  what exactly could they do to stop it happening?  At the next general  they could vote against any MP who voted to accept what might be called a Quisling agreement.  But who exactly  could they vote for? Ukip is the obvious party and there is now  a real opportunity for it to gain a serious Commons presence. But it is unlikely to form a government in the near future because history shows it takes a great deal to shift voters en masse to a new party and even in the event of Ukip potentially  holding the balance of power in a hung parliament,   if a coalition of Labour and the Tories was formed  UKip  would be left out on a limb.

It is true that May has appointed three leading Breiteers   to posts which will either directly or indirectly impinge on the Brexit negotiations. David Davis (Minister for Brexit) ,  Boris Johnson (Foreign Secretary), and  Liam Fox  (Minister for Trade Deals) to her cabinet .   Davis and Fox are long term Brexiters; Johnson is a Johnny come lately Brexiteer whose steadfastness on the issue is highly questionable.     But whatever they wish to do  these three will  probably be no  more than window dressing.

May has given Johnson a deputy  Alan Duncan who is a remainer and a close associate of May and has been known to refer to Johnson as ‘Silvio Borisconi’ .  Fox cannot agree any trade deals until the UK has left the EU and  David Davis is already at odds with May over her promise that Article 50 will not be activated until the devolved home countries have agreed to the terms of the deal agreed with the EU.

David Davis wants article 50  to be activated by the end of the year  while May has left the date uncertain because of her promise to Scotland, Wales and Norther Ireland to agree what is to be sought from the EU before entering negotiations . This puts her directly at odds with Davis and probably Liam Fox and Johnson. There is also dissention in cabinet over when Article 50 will be activated.

Another sign  of May’s insincerity can be  found in her appointment of  Amber Rudd as home secretary. Immigration is issue which won matters most to the public. It is what won the election for the leave side. Yet May’s Home Secretary is soft on immigration . In addition, Rudd and Boris Johnson have suggested  that there should be no net immigration target since it cannot be met. Unless Brexit permits full sovereign control of our borders it will not be Brexit as the voters understood it.

With all this going against a clean and honest Brexit it is not too difficult to imagine Davis resigning or  being sacked long before the negotiations with the EU are concluded. Fox could follow him out. Johnson is such a slippery individual anything is possible including a Pauline conversion to EU membership.  It is possible that the negotiations could end up in the hands of remainers.

I am against using Article 50 because it allows the EU to control matters and leaves  the UK as an EU member for at least two years after  the Article is activated, but  Davis,   Johnson, and  Fox are all signed up to its use so at present  it seems   unlikely that an alternative  way of leaving  will be used.  However, it is possible that could change once the public realises that for several years the UK would not be able to control EU immigration and that EU directives including new ones have to be followed.  The only thing which can be said for Article 50 is that it in theory means there is no going back. Once activated the UK is irrevocably on the way out. Of course the EU has a record of breaking laws when it suits them it is not out of the question that  a combination of EU power brokers and Europhile MPs could simply cancel the UK activation of Article 50 and leave the UK in the EU.

There are two possible alternative means of leaving the EU .  Clause 62 of  the Vienna Convention on Treaties  might allow a much quicker departure (3 months) on the grounds of a fundamental and unforeseeable change of circumstances  but only if all the member states of the EU agree to it . I suspect that would end  either in denying the UK to depart because on the grounds of such a change of circumstances  or embroiling the UK in some form of long-winded arbitration.

The other option would be for  Parliament to  do what long term campaigner for the UK to leave the EU Lord Stoddart has proposed, namely, repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act  and amendments to start the ball rolling. I would support this  followed by legislation to  both assert the Sovereignty of Parliament (not strictly needed but a belt and braces approach is just as well bearing in mind our Europhile judges) and  give a certain legal status to existing EU inspired UK law which can then be kept, amended or repealed as Parliament decides.

The future is more than ordinarily uncertain but one thing is certain. We  know  May’s  “Brexit means Brexit” is in all probability  a  bouncing political cheque which she cynically issued knowing it would not be honoured.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Film review – Brexit: the movie

Director  and narrator Martin Durkin

Running time 71 minutes

As an instrument   to rally the leave vote  Brexit: the movie is severely flawed .  It starts promisingly by stressing the loss of sovereignty , the lack of democracy in the EU and the corrupt greed of its servants (my favourite abuse was a shopping mall for EU politicians and bureaucrats only – eat your heart out Soviet Union) and the ways in which  Brussels spends British taxpayers money and sabotages industries such as fishing.  Then  it all begins to go sour.

The film’s audience should have been the British electorate  as a whole.  That means making a film which appeals to all who might vote to leave using arguments which are not nakedly  politically  ideological. Sadly, that is precisely what has happened here because Brexit the movie  has as  a  director and narrator Martin Durkin, a card carrying disciple of the neo-liberal creed. Here are a couple of snatches from his website:

Capitalism is the free exchange of services voluntarily rendered and received. It is a relationship between people, characterized by freedom. Adding ‘global’ merely indicates that governments have been less than successful at hindering the free exchange of people’s services across national boundaries.

And

Well it’s time to think the unthinkable again, and to privatise the biggest State monopoly of all … the monopoly which is so ubiquitous it usually goes unnoticed, but which has impoverished us more than any other and is the cause of the current world banking and financial crisis.  It is time to privatise money.

Unsurprisingly Durkin has filled the film with people who with varying degrees of fervour share his ideological beliefs. These include John Redwood,  James Delingpole, Janet Daley, Matt Ridley, Mark Littlewood,  Daniel Hannon, Patrick Minford, Melanie Phillips Simon Heffer, Michael Howard, Douglas Carswell  all supporting the leave side but doing so in a way which would alienate those who have not bought into the free market free trade ideology. The only people interviewed in the film who were from the left of the political spectrum are Labour’s biggest donor John Wells and Labour MPs  Kate Hoey and Steve Baker.

There is also a hefty segment of the film  (20.50 minutes – 30 minutes)  devoted to a risibly false  description of Britain’s economic history from the beginnings of the industrial revolution to the  position of Britain in the 1970s.  In it Durkin claims that the nineteenth century was a time of a unregulated British economy, both domestically and  with regard to international trade, which allowed Britain to grow and flourish wondrously .  In fact, the first century and half or so of the Industrial Revolution  up to around 1860 was conducted under what was known as the Old Colonial System,  which was a very  wide-ranging form of protectionism. In addition, the nineteenth century saw the introduction of many Acts which regulated the employment of children and the conditions of work for employees in general and  for much of the century  the century  magistrates had much wider powers than they do today such as setting the price of basic foodstuffs and wages and enforcing apprenticeships.

Durkin then goes on to praise Britain’s continued economic expansion up until the Great War which he ascribes to Britain’s rejection of protectionism. The problem with this is that   Britain’s adherence to the nearest any country have ever go to free trade – the situation  is complicated by Britain’s huge Empire –  between 1860 and 1914 is a period of comparative industrial decline  with highly protectionist countries such as the USA and Germany making massive advances.

Durkin then paints a picture of a Britain regulated half to death in the Great War, regulation which often  continued into the peacetime inter-war years before a further dose of war in 1939  brought with it even more state control. The period of 1945 to the coming of Thatcher is then represented as a time of a British economy over-regulated and protected economy falling headlong  into an abyss of uncompetitive economic failure before  Thatcher rescued the country.

The reality is that Britain came out of the Great Depression faster than any other large economy aided by a mixture of removal from the Gold Bullion Standard, Keynsian pump priming and re-armament, all of these being state measures.  As for the period 1945 until the oil shock of 1973,   British economic growth was higher than it has been  overall in the forty years  since.

The legacy of Thatcher  is problematic.  Revered by true believers in  the neo-liberal  credom she is hated by  more for the re are still millions in the country who detest what she stood for and  for whom people spouting the same kind of rhetoric she used in support of Brexit  is  a complete turn off. To them can be  added  many others who instinctively feel that globalisation is wrong and threatening and talk of economics in which human beings are treated as pawns deeply repulsive. .

Even if the film had given a truthful account of Britain’s economic history over the past few centuries  there would have been a problem. Having speaker after speaker putting forward the laissez faire  position, saying that Britain would be so much more prosperous if they could trade more with the rest of the world by  having much less regulation, being open to unrestricted foreign investment   and, most devastatingly,  that it  would allow people to be recruited from around the world rather than just the EU or EEA (with the implication that it is racist to privilege Europeans over people from Africa and Asia) is not  the way  to win people to the leave side.

There is also a  truly  astonishing  omission in the film. At the most modest assessment immigration is one of the major concerns of  British electors  (and probably the greatest concern  when the fear of being called a racist if one opposes immigration is factored in), yet the film avoids the subject. There is a point  towards the end of the film (go in at  61 minutes) when it briefly  looks as though it might be raised when the commentary poses the question “Ah, what if the  EU proposes a trade deal which forces upon us open borders and other stuff  we don’t like?   But that leads to no discussion  about immigration but merely the  statement of  the pedantically  true claim that Britain  does not have to sign a treaty if its terms are not acceptable. This of course begs the question of who will decide what is acceptable. There a has been no suggestion that there are any lines in  the sand which will not be crossed in negotiations with the EU and there is no promise of a second referendum after terms have been negotiated with the EU or indeed any other part of the world. Consequently,   electors can have no confidence those who conduct  negotiations will not give away vital things such as control of our borders.

As immigration is such a core part of  what  British voters worry about most ,both in the EU context and immigration generally,  it is difficult to come up with a an explanation for this startling omission  which  is not pejorative. It can only have been done for one of two reasons:  either the maker of the film  did not want the issue addressed or many of those appearing in the film  would  not have appeared if the  immigration drum had been beaten.  In view of both Durkin’s ideological position and the general tenor of the film,  the most plausible reason is that Durkin did not want the subject discussed because the idea of free movement of labour is a central part of the neo-liberal  ideology. He will see labour as simply a factor of production along with land and capital. He even managed to include interviews conducted in Switzerland (go in at 52 minutes )which  painted the country as a land of milk and honey without  mentioning anything about the fact that the Swiss had a citizen initiated referendum on restricting immigration earlier in the year.

The point at issue is not whether neo-liberalism is a good or a bad thing,  but the fact that an argument for leaving the EU which is primarily based on the ideology is bound to alienate many who do not think kindly of the EU, but who do not share the neo-liberal’s enthusiasm for an  unregulated or under-regulated  economy   and  a commitment to globalism, which frequently means  jobs are either off-shored or taken by immigrants who undercut wages and place a great strain on public services and in practice results in mass immigration , which apart from competition for jobs, houses  and services,   fundamentally alters the  nature of the areas of  Britain in  which  immigrants settle and,  in the longer term, the  nature of Britain itself .

The excessive  concentration on economic matters is itself a major flaw because  most of the electorate  will  variously not be able to understand , be bored by the detail  and turn off or  simply disregard the claims made as being  by their  nature  unknowable in reality. The difficulty of incomprehension and boredom is  compounded by there being  far  too many talking heads, often  speaking for a matter of seconds at a time.  I also found the use of Monty Python-style graphics irritating shallow and  a sequence lampooning European workers compared with the Chinese downright silly (go in at  37 minutes).

What the film should have done was rest  the arguments for leaving on the question of  sovereignty.  That is what this vote is all about: do you want Britain to be a sovereign nation ? Everything flows from the question of sovereignty : can we control our borders?; can we make our own laws?  Once sovereignty is seen as the only real question, then what we may or may not do after regaining our sovereignty is in our hands. If the British people wish to have a  more regulated market they can vote for it. If they want a neo-liberal economy they can vote for it. The point is that at present we cannot vote for either . As I mentioned in my introduction the sovereignty issue is raised many times in the film.  The problem is that it was so often  tied into the idea of free trade and unregulated markets that the sovereignty message raises the question in many minds of what will those with power – who overwhelmingly have bought into globalism and neo-liberal economics –  do with sovereignty rather than the value of sovereignty itself.

Will the film help the leave cause? I think it is the toss of a coin whether it will persuade more people to vote leave than or alienate more with  its neo-liberal message.

 

 

Article 50 is a poisoned chalice – Don’t drink from it

Robert Henderson

Those who think that British Europhile politicians   will  play fair if Britain votes to leave the EU in June will be horribly disappointed. The public may think that if the British people have voted to leave the EU and that is an end of it regardless of the wishes of the Government.   Sadly, there is every reason to expect that Brexit will be anything but a clean break from the EU.

To begin with there has been no commitment by Cameron to stand down as PM if the vote goes against him.  Quite the opposite for he  has publicly stated several  times that  he will stay on and many  Tory MPs, including some of those in favour of leaving like Chris Grayling ,  have said that he must remain in No 10 whatever the outcome of the referendum .

If Cameron stay on as PM after a vote to leave Britain would be in the absurd position of having a man in charge of  Britain’s withdrawal who has shown his all too eager  commitment to the EU by the feebleness of   the demands he made during  his “renegotiation” and his regularly repeated statement before the conclusion of the “renegotiation”  that he was sure he would get new terms which would allow him to campaign for Britain to remain within the EU.   

A post-referendum   Cameron  government entrusted with negotiating Britain’s departure from the EU would mean that not only the  PM  but  the majority of his  cabinet and ministers below  cabinet  level  will  be  drawn from the same pro-EU personnel as he has today.  In those circumstances Cameron and his fellow Europhiles would almost certainly try to stitch Britain back into the EU with a deal such as that granted to  Norway and Switzerland. If that happened Britain could end up with the most important issue in the British  public’s mind –  free movement  of not only labour but free movement of anyone with the right to permanent residence in the EU – untouched .

But if Cameron leaves  of his own accord soon after a vote to leave Britain could still end up with a Europhile  Prime Minister and Cabinet.  Why? By  far the most likely person to succeed him  is Boris Johnson. If he  does become  PM there is every reason to believe that he will also do his level best to enmesh Britain back into  the EU.  Ever since Johnson  became the Telegraph’s  Brussels correspondent in the 1990s he has been deriding the EU, but until coming out as a supporter of voting to leave in the past week he has never advocated Britain’s withdrawal.  Johnson also gave a very strong hint  in the  Daily Telegraph article in which he announced his support for leaving the EU that his support for Britain leaving the EU was no more than  a ploy to persuade the EU to offer  more significant concessions than those offered to Cameron. Johnson has also been a regular advocate of the value of immigration.

The scenario of Cameron or Johnson deliberately subverting the intention of a referendum vote  to leave are all too plausible. There has been no public discussion let alone  agreement by leading  politicians over what the British government may or may not negotiate in the event of a vote to leave.   Nor has there been any suggestion by any British politician or party  that whatever the terms offered by the EU the British public will have the right to vote on them in a referendum.  Britain could be left  with  an agreement decided by the British Government and the EU which might do nothing of what  the British public most wants and  has voted for, namely, the return of sovereignty and  the control of Britain’s borders.

Then  there is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.  Both Cameron and Johnson are committed to doing so within the terms of the Lisbon Treaty of  2009.  Far from a vote to leave in the referendum putting Britain in the position of a  sovereign nation engaging in a negotiation for a treaty with the EU  it traps  Britain into an extended period of negotiation whose outcome is dependent on the agreement or non-agreement of  the 27 other EU member states and the  EU Parliament.  Let me quote  the Article in  full:

Article 50

  1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
  2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
  3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
  4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

  1. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49. (

Article 50  means that Britain could spend two years negotiating and get no treaty because the Council of Ministers could veto it through Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) or the European Parliament reject it. Britain would then have the option of either asking for an extension (which could be indefinite because there is no limit mentioned in the Article) or leaving without a treaty.  There is also the further complication that if a treaty was agreed by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament it would still have to be agreed by 27 EU member states,  either through Parliamentary vote or  in the case of a few including France, a referendum.  Moreover,  even if a treaty is agreed and accepted by all EU member states, this would leave  Britain up in the air for what could be a considerable time as each of the 27 members goes through the process of getting  the agreement of their Parliament or electorate.

The OUT camp must make it clear that  it would be both damaging and unnecessary for the UK to abide by this Treaty requirement. It  would allow the EU to inflict considerable damage on the UK both during the period prior to formally  leaving and afterwards if  the price of leaving with the EU’s agreement was  for  UK to sign up to various obligations, for example, to continue paying a large annual sum to the EU for ten years . It would also give  the Europhile UK political elite  ample opportunity to keep the UK attached to the EU in the manner that Norway and Switzerland are attached by arguing that it is the best deal Britain  can get.  If there was no second  referendum on the  terms  negotiated for Britain leaving the government of the day could simply pass the matter into law without the British voters having a say.

The Gordian knot of Article 50 can be cut simply repealing the European Communities Act and asserting the sovereignty of Parliament.   No major UK party could  object to this on principle because all three have, at one time or another,  declared that Parliament remains supreme and can repudiate anything the EU does if it so chooses.

If the stay-in camp argue that would be illegal because of the  treaty obligation, the OUT camp should simply emphasise  (1) that international law is no law because there is never any means of enforcing it within its jurisdiction is a state rejects it and (2) that treaties which do not allow for contracting parties to simply withdraw are profoundly undemocratic because they bind future governments. There is also the fact that the EU and its predecessor the EEC has constantly breached its own rules, spectacularly so in the case of the Eurozone.  Hence, for the EU treaties are anything but sacrosanct.

Grassroots Out (GO) public meeting of 19th February 2016 at the QE II Convention Hall in Westminster

A recording of the meeting can be found here

Speakers: David Campbell Bannerman (Tory MEP),  Gerard Batton (Ukip  MEP)  Cllr Helen Harrison (Nation coordinator of GO), Bill Cash (Tory MP),  Ruth Lea (Economist ) John Boyd (Campaign against Euro-federalism – CAEF   ),  Tom Pursglove (Tory MP) , Kate Hoey (Labour MP), David Davis (Tory MP),  Nigel Farage (Ukip Leader) , George Galloway  (Respect)

The meeting was chaired by Peter Bone (Tory MP)

Report by Robert Henderson

The  meeting was  encouraging for those who hope for a vote to leave the EU.  2,000 odd people crammed themselves into an arena which could probably  only seat  1,500 so that hundreds were left standing. Despite this very few left during the  better part of two and a half hours of speeches.

It was a strong hand of speakers. The various speakers  gave the  audience a good spread of personality: David Davis, who was relaxed, witty and authoritative. Bill Cash unusually animated – for some reason he seemed to be in a rage – Ruth Lea calm, Nigel Farage forthright, Kate Hoey energetic   and  George Galloway booming.

They  pressed hard on the important issues which Cameron had left untouched during his “renegotiation” : national sovereignty, democracy and control of our borders, but several of the speakers  also raised issues which have  long been kept under wraps by the Left, namely, namely, the undercutting of wages by mass immigration from Europe, the pressure on public services , housing, and schools from immigration.

Perhaps the most interesting speech came from John Boyd of the  Campaign against Euro-federalism. Interesting because  CAEF was “ founded in 1992 to address the labour and trade union movement and win that movement back to the anti-EU position it held from the 1960’s until 1988.”   Labour against the EU will seem an oddity to many, especially the young, but until  the  Party threw down its traditional aims  in despair after  being out of office  for so long  after 1979, it was natural  for  Labour to object to the EU as being both undemocratic and a capitalist club. Long before Britain joined  what was then the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1972 the labour movement including the trade unions had been opposed to mass immigration because it undercut wages, embraced protectionism and saw the nationalisation of industries such as the public utilities, railways and coal mines as simple national common sense.   Nor was patriotism a dirty word for Labour then. Men such as Attlee and Ernie Bevan were deep-rooted and natural patriots.

All those ideas and ideals fit quite naturally into the psyche of the working man and woman. It would not be a massive emotional shift for the Labour Party and the unions to come out for Brexit on the grounds that whilst Britain is within the EU immigrants will compete for jobs and reduce wages in Britain (the free movement of labour), vital  industries cannot be preserved (the ban on state aid,  and  the single Market) and   pay and conditions be protected  by law (the free movement of labour and trade agreements made by the EU). In his speech Boyd pointed to the dangers of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Treaty (TTIP) currently being negotiated by the EU with the USA which bids fair to reduce the pay and conditions of workers and upend the NHS.  Boyd was also very firmly against the free movement of labour.

Galloway undoubtedly brings baggage with him, not least over financial matters  – there have been questions over various charities he has run  and recently   a limited company of his has liquidated owing HMRC a reported £100,000 in tax  –  but in a campaign such as this which is centred on a single  issue and one of the   of the greatest moment,  those who would be strange bedfellows in most circumstances  can sleep together without undue difficulty. He  is indubitably a  gifted public  speaker  who will appeal to not just Muslims  (as long as Galloway persuades them to vote OUT  it  doesn’t matter),  but to  working-class people  generally, a huge constituency which has been more or less ignored by mainstream politicians in the past  quarter century.  He might even sway a substantial number of  those in Scotland.

The important thing to fix firmly upon is that what matters here is beautifully simple: it is to win the referendum. How it is won is irrelevant in terms of why people vote to leave the EU.  It does not matter  a jot  if people seek different things from a Britain freed from  the EU.  There are free traders  and laissez faire disciples who see Britain’s departure from the EU as a freeing  of Britain from the bonds of EU regulation and restriction,  there are those who simply want to resurrect British sovereignty by leaving,   there are those on the Left who see the EU  as a capitalist club. More generally, a large majority of the British people want an end to unlimited immigration from the EU.  These varying ends can be fought over after a vote to leave is obtained.

Will GO play a large role in the referendum campaign? Can it persuade the Electoral Commission to designate it as  the lead organisation for the OUT campaign?  It has got three things going for it.

1.It can reasonably claim to have the broadest political range amongst its leading members of the various OUT organisations.

2. Nigel Farage committed Ukip, the oldest and largest anti-EU in Britain, wholeheartedly to Grassroots Out at the meeting.

3. As yet GO has not fallen prey to the type of internecine squabbling and argument which has afflicted the other groups advocating Brexit.

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.

Shamocracy – The Tories give a whole new meaning to democracy

If you won’t vote for an elected mayor have an unelected one

Robert Henderson

The Tories are currently bleating their heads off about how they  are all for bringing  politics and the exercise of  political  power to the people. Local democracy is, they shout ever louder, the order of the Tory day.  In the  vanguard  is Manchester, where a mayor and a “cabinet”  is to have the responsibility  for the spending and administration of  billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money  on  public transport, social care and housing as well as police budgets and, most dramatically, ultimately  the devolving of all NHS spending for the region.   When the process is completed local politicians will control more than a quarter of the total government money spent in Greater Manchester.

The political structure to support the mayor will be this:

“The mayor will lead Greater Manchester Combined Authority [GMCA], chair its meetings and allocate responsibilities to its cabinet, which is made up of the leaders of each of the area’s 10 local authorities.”

This is to be known as a city region. The mayor will not be an absolute  autocrat and can have  both his strategic decisions and spending proposals voted down by two thirds of the GMCA members – go to para 8.  On public service issues, each  GMCA member and the Mayor will  have one vote, with a  policy agreed by a majority vote. However, the mayor will have considerable powers and the requirement for over-ruling him  on strategic decisions and spending – two thirds of the GMCA members – is onerous to say the least.  That will be especially the case because the  councils of the  Manchester city region are largely Labour and the mayor, at least to begin with, will also be a  Labour man.

The casual observer might think this is a democratisation of  English politics. But wait, was not Manchester one of the nine English cities which firmly  said no to an elected mayor in a referendum in as recently as  2012? Indeed it was. Manchester voted NO by  53.2% to 46.8%  (48,593 votes to  42,677).  Admittedly, it was only on a 24% turnout,  but that  in itself shows that the local population generally  were not greatly interested in the idea. Nonetheless, 91,000 did bother to vote, a rather large number of voters to ignore.   Moreover,  low as  24% may be,  many a councillor and  crime and police commissioner has been   voted in on  a lower percentage turnout.

After the 2012 referendum the Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese said  the vote was  “a very clear rejection”  of an elected mayor  by  the people of Greater Manchester while the  then housing minister Grant Shapps said  ‘no-one was “forcing” mayors on cities’.   Three years later that is precisely what is happening to Manchester, well not precisely because  Manchester is to have an interim mayor (see para 11)   foisted on them without an election,   who will serve for a minimum of two years and a maximum of four years before an election for a mayor is held.( The period before an elected mayor arrives  will depend on how long it takes to pass the necessary legislation,  create the necessary powers for the mayor and create the institutions on the ground to run the new administration ). When the time comes for the elected mayor the interim mayor, if he wishes to run for mayor, will have the considerable electoral advantage that incumbency  normally brings.

Sir Richard Leese, now promoted to be  vice chairman of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, has had a Damascene conversion to the idea of a mayor : “It was clear that an over-centralised national system was not delivering the best results for our people or our economy.

“We are extremely pleased that we can now demonstrate what a city region with greater freedoms can achieve and contribute further to the growth of the UK.”

The  interim mayor will be appointed  on 29 May by  councillors meeting in private.  There are two candidates, Tony Lloyd and Lord Smith of Leigh. Both are Labour Party men.  This is  unsurprising because the body organising the appointment is the  Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, (AGMA) which  is comprised of the  leaders of the 10 councils making up the region. Eight of them are Labour.   The job description for the interim mayor included the provision that he must be a politician from Greater Manchester ‘ with a “proven track record” of “achievement at a senior level in local government”’ . These requirements  made it virtually certain that both candidates would be Labour politicians.

The exclusion of the public from the appointment of interim mayor  is absolute. Here is Andrew Gilligan writing in the Sunday Telegraph:

“ The two candidates for mayor  have published no manifestos, done no campaigning, made no appearances in public and answered no questions from voters or journalists. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph asked to speak to both candidates. “He’d love to,” said Mr Lloyd’s spokesman. “But he’s been told he’s not allowed to talk to the media.”’

A spokesman for Lord Smith said: “He can’t speak about it until it’s over.”

Perhaps as a result, the “contest” has been barely mentioned in the local press and has gone completely unreported nationally.

His precise salary, predictably, is also not a matter for public discussion. It is being decided by an “independent remuneration committee” which meets in private and whose members’ names have not been published.

Judged by the mainstream media coverage there has been precious little public dissent about this gross breach of democracy  from influential Westminster politicians. Graham Brady, Tory MP for Altrincham and chairman of the    1922 Committee,  has ‘questioned whether the process was “within the bounds of propriety”, saying that any arrangement which gave the interim mayor “two or even up to four years to establish a profile and a platform for election would clearly be improper and unfair”.’  But that is about it  and  the appointment of the interim mayor carries  on regardless.

There are many serious  practical objections to devolving power to  English city regions , but the naked disregard for the wishes of the voters  makes the practical objections irrelevant  if democracy is to mean anything.  Nor is the fact that eventually there will be an elected mayor of any relevance  because the voters have already rejected the idea. Even if  there was to be an election  for the mayor now instead of an interim mayor,  it would still be wrong because the voters of Manchester have already said no to an elected mayor.

This affair smacks of the worst practices of the EU whereby  a referendum  which produces  a result that  the Euro-elites do not want is rapidly overturned by a second referendum on the same subject after the Euro-elites have engaged in a  huge propaganda onslaught , bribed the offending country  by promising  more EU money if the result is the one the elites  want and threatened the offending country with dire consequences if the second vote produces the same result as the first referendum. In fact, this piece of chicanery is even worse than that practised by the EU because here the electorate do not even get another  vote before the elite’s wishes are carried out.

But there is an even  more fundamental objection to the planned transfer of powers than the lack of democracy.  Let us suppose that the proposal for an elected mayor for Manchester  had been accepted in the 2012 referendum, would that have made its creation legitimate?  Is it democratic to  have a referendum in   part of  a country on a policy which has serious implications for the  rest of the country  if  the rest of the country cannot vote in the referendum?  Patently it is not.

The effect of the proposed devolution to Manchester would be to set public provision in the  Manchester city region  at odds with  at the  least  much of Lancashire, parts  of Cheshire and  Derbyshire plus  the West Riding of Yorkshire.  For example,  Manchester could make a mess of their NHS administration with  their medical provision reduced in consequence and   patients from    Manchester seeking better  NHS  treatment elsewhere.  This would take money from the Manchester NHS  and place pressure on NHS services outside of Manchester  as they catered for people from Manchester.  Alternatively, Greater Manchester might be able to improve their health services and begin to draw in patients from outside the city region, reducing the public money  other  NHS authorities  receive and driving down the quality and scope  of their services.

A single city region having the powers that Manchester are going to have will  be disruptive to the area close to it, but  If other city regions  follow suit – and it is clear that the new Tory government intends  this to happen –  the Balkanisation of England  will  proceed apace, with city region being set against city region and the city regions being  pitted against the remnants of England outside the city regions.

Nor is it clear that  the first candidate city regions would be evenly spread around the country.  The cities which like Manchester rejected an elected mayor in 2012 were Birmingham,  Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Wakefield, Coventry, Leeds and Bradford.  Having been chosen to vote for an elected mayor It is reasonable to presume that these would be the cities which would be at the front of the queue for city region status.  They are all either in the  North  or  Central Midlands of England. Even in those areas there would be massive gaps, for example,  all  four  Yorkshire cities (Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford) are  in the West Riding.  The most southerly one  (Birmingham) is 170 odd miles from the South Coast.

There may of course be other city region candidates , but  it is difficult to see how such a policy could be rolled out across the country simply because there are substantial areas of England without  very large cities or towns. In fact, south of Birmingham there are precious few large towns and cities (London being  a law to itself)  which could form a city region in the manner of that proposed for Manchester.  The only  Englsh cities south of Birmingham which have a population of more than 250,000 are Bristol and Plymouth.   Hence, it is inevitable that England would be reduced to a patchwork of competing authorities with different policies on vitally important issues such as healthcare and housing.

The idea of giving powers to city regions  stems from the imbalance in the devolution settlement which leaves England, alone of the four home countries, out in the cold without a national political voice. It is a cynical and shabby  political fix for a problem which will not go away but may be submerged for the length of a Parliament  through a pretence of increasing local democracy in England.  Anyone who doubts this should ask themselves  this question,  if devolving power to the local level is so desirable why do Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland show no appetite for it?  The answer is that their politicians recognise that to do so would weaken both the  political clout of their countries and deprive their electors of a focus of national pride and loyalty.

There is also an EU dimension to this. The EU welcome anything which weakens national unity, and there is no better way of doing that than the time honoured practice of divide and rule. That is precisely what Balkanising England through creating regional centres of political power will do. The EU will seek  to use city regions (or any other local authority with serious powers)  to emasculate the Westminster government by  attempting to deal directly with the city regions rather than Westminster and using the fact of the increased local powers  to justify bypassing Westminster.

Once political structures such as the city regions are established it will become very difficult to  get rid of them because the national political class is weakened by the removal of powers from central government and the new local political power bases develop their own powerful  political classes.  If the Tories or any other government – both Labour and the LibDems have bought into the localism agenda – succeed in establishing city regions or any other form of devolution in England it will be the devil’s own job to  reverse the process of  Balkanising England. That is why it is vitally important to either stop the establishment of  serious powers being given to local authorities or  to put a barrier in the shape of an English Parliament between  Brussels and the English devolved localities.

 

 

 

The Tories give a whole new meaning to democracy

If you won’t vote for an elected mayor have an unelected one

Robert Henderson

The Tories are currently bleating their heads off about how they  are all for bringing  politics and the exercise of  political  power to the people. Local democracy is, they shout ever louder, the order of the Tory day.  In the  vanguard  is Manchester, where a mayor and a “cabinet”  is to have the responsibility  for the spending and administration of  billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money  on  public transport, social care and housing as well as police budgets and, most dramatically, ultimately  the devolving of all NHS spending for the region.   When the process is completed local politicians will control more than a quarter of the total government money spent in Greater Manchester.

The political structure to support the mayor will be this:

“The mayor will lead Greater Manchester Combined Authority [GMCA], chair its meetings and allocate responsibilities to its cabinet, which is made up of the leaders of each of the area’s 10 local authorities.”

This is to be known as a city region. The mayor will not be an absolute  autocrat and can have  both his strategic decisions and spending proposals voted down by two thirds of the GMCA members – go to para 8.  On public service issues, each  GMCA member and the Mayor will  have one vote, with a  policy agreed by a majority vote. However, the mayor will have considerable powers and the requirement for over-ruling him  on strategic decisions and spending – two thirds of the GMCA members – is onerous to say the least.  That will be especially the case because the  councils of the  Manchester city region are largely Labour and the mayor, at least to begin with, will also be a  Labour man.

The casual observer might think this is a democratisation of  English politics. But wait, was not Manchester one of the nine English cities which firmly  said no to an elected mayor in a referendum in as recently as  2012? Indeed it was. Manchester voted NO by  53.2% to 46.8%  (48,593 votes to  42,677).  Admittedly, it was only on a 24% turnout,  but that  in itself shows that the local population generally  were not greatly interested in the idea. Nonetheless, 91,000 did bother to vote, a rather large number of voters to ignore.   Moreover,  low as  24% may be,  many a councillor and  crime and police commissioner has been   voted in on  a lower percentage turnout.

After the 2012 referendum the Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese said  the vote was  “a very clear rejection”  of an elected mayor  by  the people of Greater Manchester while the  then housing minister Grant Shapps said  ‘no-one was “forcing” mayors on cities’.   Three years later that is precisely what is happening to Manchester, well not precisely because  Manchester is to have an interim mayor (see para 11)   foisted on them without an election,   who will serve for a minimum of two years and a maximum of four years before an election for a mayor is held.( The period before an elected mayor arrives  will depend on how long it takes to pass the necessary legislation,  create the necessary powers for the mayor and create the institutions on the ground to run the new administration ). When the time comes for the elected mayor the interim mayor, if he wishes to run for mayor, will have the considerable electoral advantage that incumbency  normally brings.

Sir Richard Leese, now promoted to be  vice chairman of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, has had a Damascene conversion to the idea of a mayor : “It was clear that an over-centralised national system was not delivering the best results for our people or our economy.

“We are extremely pleased that we can now demonstrate what a city region with greater freedoms can achieve and contribute further to the growth of the UK.”

The  interim mayor will be appointed  on 29 May by  councillors meeting in private.  There are two candidates, Tony Lloyd and Lord Smith of Leigh. Both are Labour Party men.  This is  unsurprising because the body organising the appointment is the  Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, (AGMA) which  is comprised of the  leaders of the 10 councils making up the region. Eight of them are Labour.   The job description for the interim mayor included the provision that he must be a politician from Greater Manchester ‘ with a “proven track record” of “achievement at a senior level in local government”’ . These requirements  made it virtually certain that both candidates would be Labour politicians.

The exclusion of the public from the appointment of interim mayor  is absolute. Here is Andrew Gilligan writing in the Sunday Telegraph:

“ The two candidates for mayor  have published no manifestos, done no campaigning, made no appearances in public and answered no questions from voters or journalists. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph asked to speak to both candidates. “He’d love to,” said Mr Lloyd’s spokesman. “But he’s been told he’s not allowed to talk to the media.”’

A spokesman for Lord Smith said: “He can’t speak about it until it’s over.”

Perhaps as a result, the “contest” has been barely mentioned in the local press and has gone completely unreported nationally.

His precise salary, predictably, is also not a matter for public discussion. It is being decided by an “independent remuneration committee” which meets in private and whose members’ names have not been published.

Judged by the mainstream media coverage there has been precious little public dissent about this gross breach of democracy  from influential Westminster politicians. Graham Brady, Tory MP for Altrincham and chairman of the    1922 Committee,  has ‘questioned whether the process was “within the bounds of propriety”, saying that any arrangement which gave the interim mayor “two or even up to four years to establish a profile and a platform for election would clearly be improper and unfair”.’  But that is about it  and  the appointment of the interim mayor carries  on regardless.

There are many serious  practical objections to devolving power to  English city regions , but the naked disregard for the wishes of the voters  makes the practical objections irrelevant  if democracy is to mean anything.  Nor is the fact that eventually there will be an elected mayor of any relevance  because the voters have already rejected the idea. Even if  there was to be an election  for the mayor now instead of an interim mayor,  it would still be wrong because the voters of Manchester have already said no to an elected mayor.

This affair smacks of the worst practices of the EU whereby  a referendum  which produces  a result that  the Euro-elites do not want is rapidly overturned by a second referendum on the same subject after the Euro-elites have engaged in a  huge propaganda onslaught , bribed the offending country  by promising  more EU money if the result is the one the elites  want and threatened the offending country with dire consequences if the second vote produces the same result as the first referendum. In fact, this piece of chicanery is even worse than that practised by the EU because here the electorate do not even get another  vote before the elite’s wishes are carried out.

But there is an even  more fundamental objection to the planned transfer of powers than the lack of democracy.  Let us suppose that the proposal for an elected mayor for Manchester  had been accepted in the 2012 referendum, would that have made its creation legitimate?  Is it democratic to  have a referendum in   part of  a country on a policy which has serious implications for the  rest of the country  if  the rest of the country cannot vote in the referendum?  Patently it is not.

The effect of the proposed devolution to Manchester would be to set public provision in the  Manchester city region  at odds with  at the  least  much of Lancashire, parts  of Cheshire and  Derbyshire plus  the West Riding of Yorkshire.  For example,  Manchester could make a mess of their NHS administration with  their medical provision reduced in consequence and   patients from    Manchester seeking better  NHS  treatment elsewhere.  This would take money from the Manchester NHS  and place pressure on NHS services outside of Manchester  as they catered for people from Manchester.  Alternatively, Greater Manchester might be able to improve their health services and begin to draw in patients from outside the city region, reducing the public money  other  NHS authorities  receive and driving down the quality and scope  of their services.

A single city region having the powers that Manchester are going to have will  be disruptive to the area close to it, but  If other city regions  follow suit – and it is clear that the new Tory government intends  this to happen –  the Balkanisation of England  will  proceed apace, with city region being set against city region and the city regions being  pitted against the remnants of England outside the city regions.

Nor is it clear that  the first candidate city regions would be evenly spread around the country.  The cities which like Manchester rejected an elected mayor in 2012 were Birmingham,  Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Wakefield, Coventry, Leeds and Bradford.  Having been chosen to vote for an elected mayor It is reasonable to presume that these would be the cities which would be at the front of the queue for city region status.  They are all either in the  North  or  Central Midlands of England. Even in those areas there would be massive gaps, for example,  all  four  Yorkshire cities (Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford) are  in the West Riding.  The most southerly one  (Birmingham) is 170 odd miles from the South Coast.

There may of course be other city region candidates , but  it is difficult to see how such a policy could be rolled out across the country simply because there are substantial areas of England without  very large cities or towns. In fact, south of Birmingham there are precious few large towns and cities (London being  a law to itself)  which could form a city region in the manner of that proposed for Manchester.  The only  Englsh cities south of Birmingham which have a population of more than 250,000 are Bristol and Plymouth.   Hence, it is inevitable that England would be reduced to a patchwork of competing authorities with different policies on vitally important issues such as healthcare and housing.

The idea of giving powers to city regions  stems from the imbalance in the devolution settlement which leaves England, alone of the four home countries, out in the cold without a national political voice. It is a cynical and shabby  political fix for a problem which will not go away but may be submerged for the length of a Parliament  through a pretence of increasing local democracy in England.  Anyone who doubts this should ask themselves  this question,  if devolving power to the local level is so desirable why do Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland show no appetite for it?  The answer is that their politicians recognise that to do so would weaken both the  political clout of their countries and deprive their electors of a focus of national pride and loyalty.

There is also an EU dimension to this. The EU welcome anything which weakens national unity, and there is no better way of doing that than the time honoured practice of divide and rule. That is precisely what Balkanising England through creating regional centres of political power will do. The EU will seek  to use city regions (or any other local authority with serious powers)  to emasculate the Westminster government by  attempting to deal directly with the city regions rather than Westminster and using the fact of the increased local powers  to justify bypassing Westminster.

Once political structures such as the city regions are established it will become very difficult to  get rid of them because the national political class is weakened by the removal of powers from central government and the new local political power bases develop their own powerful  political classes.  If the Tories or any other government – both Labour and the LibDems have bought into the localism agenda – succeed in establishing city regions or any other form of devolution in England it will be the devil’s own job to  reverse the process of  Balkanising England. That is why it is vitally important to either stop the establishment of  serious powers being given to local authorities or  to put a barrier in the shape of an English Parliament between  Brussels and the English devolved localities.