Category Archives: Conservative

A strange thing about the way the so-called main stream media operate in the “United Kingdom” today

A strange thing about the way the so-called main stream media operate in the “United Kingdom” today

In the run up to elections there often appears to be a sudden surge of media stories claiming that the British political system is offering a real choice. 
 
The article below by Janet Daley entitled “Politics is now a bare-knuckle fight again” is very much a case in point.  
Instead of any sort of analysis Ms Daley makes wild claims of there being some great philosophical difference between David Cameron and Ed Miliband.  

By implication she is dismissing the alternative view that both of them are simply careerist members of a political class that hyper inflates relatively trivial differences between their respective parties in order to excite some interest from supporters who are thereby deceived into thinking that there is a real difference between their policies.  Also that their rhetoric is meant to placate some vocal critics like UKIP for David Cameron or Len McClusky of Unite for Ed Miliband.  As it used to be put, when I was in the army, “bulls**t baffles brains!”.  

I would suggest that in fact a more considered study of both parties would be far more likely to come to the conclusion that the British political system is more like a Punch and Judy show where both parties are substantially the same but make a great show of a fight on the “stage”. 
 
Consider Labour’s and Conservative’s policies towards England:-  Both the leaderships want us to remain in the EU; Both want to continue very similar policies on immigration;  Both wish to spend more money than they actually receiving in tax revenue, thus in the long term beggaring the country in order to, in the short term, give themselves political advantage;  Both believe in Liberal Internationalist, Neo Colonial,  Military interventions across the world; Both believe in vast additional borrowing to pay Foreign Aid; Both intend to build over vast swathes of English countryside to deal with a housing crisis which is fundamentally caused by having allowed probably over 5 million immigrants into the country in an almost wholly uncontrolled manner over the last 10 years!  Where’s the difference Janet?

Despite all this Janet Daley’s article shows she wishes to puff up what are fundamentally piffling differences over a little bit of tax here or there!

See what you think.

British politics is now a bare-knuckle fight again

For the first time in a generation, voters will have a chance to make a real difference at the general election in 2015
By Janet Daley

  Politics is back – by which I mean real politics when people with actual differences of opinion are up to a fight for public support and the approval of the electorate. The centre ground, once decreed to be the only territory on which elections could be won, is now a no man’s land, a demilitarised zone, an empty space evacuated by the serious parties in preparation for a genuine fight to the death over fundamental beliefs. After those two starkly contrasting party conferences, we know that what will be on offer at the next election is a choice not just between rival sets of government policies, but competing philosophies of the good society and radically differing ideas of how government should encourage virtuous b_ehaviour.

In two equally astonishing leaps, the party leaders have embraced diametrically opposed positions on the role of government and the responsibility of the private individual. Ed Miliband’s Principle of Together is nothing less than the old model of socialist communality in which the desires of the individual must always be subsumed under collective need, and the state is the distributor of economic fairness. David Cameron’s vision is of a country in which personal responsibility for oneself and one’s family is paramount, in which hard work is rewarded and self-determination is a social ideal. This isn’t just a political or economic disagreement: it’s a profound ethical parting of the ways.

By accident or intention, everybody has effectively accepted that the ceasefire is over. The entire national conversation about how we should be governed no longer needs to be held within the confines of soft Left consensus. The Tories will talk unashamedly of free market, low-tax low-spend, small government Conservatism, and Labour will unequivocally endorse big government, state-sponsored collectivism. Political discourse has not been as visceral as this since the 1980s. There will be an urgent and meaningful debate about the principles which determine the conditions in which life is lived. Isn’t that wonderful?

For the first time in a political generation, you the voter – whom this is all supposed to be about – will have a chance to make a real difference. Instead of a phony war between political leaders who were marketing themselves as slightly improved versions of each other, there will be two radically opposed conceptions of what government is for, and what responsibilities ordinary people should be expected to assume. If you are old enough to remember, you may say that we have had this argument before: the general election of 1983 put the choices as starkly as they could be put, and the country made its judgment so decisively that Labour had to re-invent itself to get back into the discussion. True enough. Yet here we are again, being offered a re-run. And what makes it particularly interesting is that it may not turn out the same way.

Maybe the country is made of different stuff than it was back then. Perhaps it has been softened up by Labour’s extension of welfare dependency into the middle classes and by the remarkably effective media assault on market forces. Nor do the times seem quite so desperate: the lights are not going out and the nation is not being regularly held to ransom by lawless trade unions. Yes, it could end differently this time. But at least we will get to talk about it. There will be a chance once again to debate the most important social questions of our time and to bring the democratic process back to life.

What that means is that everybody’s voice will matter. The most pernicious aspect of the “centre ground” mentality was that it was, ironically, so illiberal. It narrowed the acceptable limits of political possibility to a tiny range of received opinions. Anyone who could not subscribe to that set of premises or social attitudes was simply beneath consideration. Either you agreed with the consensus or you were not fit to participate. (Or as one particularly enthusiastic proponent put it, you are so out of touch with modern life that you might as well go away and die.) Bizarrely, the centre ground merchants became, in the end, so mutually affirming and autocratic that they seemed not to notice how ugly their certainty had become.

Never mind that the tenets of the orthodoxy were in fact mutually contradictory – the promotion of gay marriage being at odds, for example, with respect for ethnic minority cultures, or the regard for women’s rights clashing with the rules of some religions – and so could not actually be enforced with any consistency. Politicians all had to make the same untested incoherent pledge to a vague liberal niceness. It was the sympathetic intention that mattered – not the logic or the fact that the programme was actually impossible to implement. It is on the practical implementation that these two competing world views will be tested. The Miliband option offers little so far in the way of detail except for commitments to yet more public spending while at the same time accepting the need (more or less) to cut the deficit.

But the Tories, even hamstrung by coalition, have begun to show the country what their approach might mean. Iain Duncan Smith has argued from the start that his welfare reforms were not just designed to cut government spending. His case has always been that welfare dependency is more than a waste of money: it’s a waste of life. It is human potential that is being squandered as well as taxpayers’ wealth. That is a microcosm of the brave new Conservative pitch: the clearest practical justification of the claim that the Tories are now the real party of compassion and social justice.

As I say, the country may not be ready to buy this. It may not see the economic or moral sense in allowing people to keep more of what they earn in the first place, instead of taking a large portion of it away, and then handing it back to those the state believes to be deserving. It may have become convinced that people do not necessarily know what is best for themselves and their families, or that, left to their own devices, they will make only self-serving, anti-social choices.

But at least we can go at it now for all we are worth: make the case, have the full-blown, bare-knuckle barney without having to pretend that there are no real grounds of contention. The outliers at the more extreme ends of the spectrum who had been forced out of mainstream political discourse altogether – the Occupy movement, the Ukip recruits and beyond – can come back on to the pitch. The democratic process will be able to encompass the red-blooded as well as muted shades of pink. And oddly enough, with a reasonable amount of good will, this will make democratic politics more genuinely liberal than it has been for decades.

  Here is Janet Daley’s article >>> British politics is now a bare-knuckle fight again – Telegraph

Poor Nigel Farage? Syrian slip-up or miscalculation?

                            Poor Nigel Farage? Syrian slip-up or miscalculation?
 
Late December 2013 turned out not to be a very good time for Nigel Farage, not only did Nigel Farage’s one time close and only close personal friend who is in politics, Godfrey Bloom give an interview of outstanding frankness and grievous long-term damage to Nigel Farage,
(click here >>>  http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/20/ukip-godfrey-bloom-interview-punch )
but also his house was left without power over Christmas, leaving him and his family having to de-camp.  If these problems are not enough he also tried a flutter at Blair style “triangulation” and came an almighty cropper!  (If you will pardon the hunting expression!). 

But let us re-cap for a moment.  On 29th December 2013 Nigel Farage calmly announced that were he in power that he would open the “UK’s” doors to an unspecified but seemingly potentially very large number of “Syrian Refugees”. 

After the initial gasps of astonishment our left/liberal media types questioned whether Nigel wasn’t the same person as had been saying that “Britain is full”.  In reply to this Nigel Farage is reported as saying that “I have never ever said that Britain is full”.  The Huffington Post then obligingly published this article
(click here >>> http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/30/nigel-farage-britain-is-full_n_4518312.html) in which there is a link to a BBC news interview in which Nigel Farage explicitly says “Britain is full”!  Result massive damage to Nigel Farage’s credibility as an honest politician.

As if that wasn’t enough, it then became apparent that a large number of people who had previously said that they supported UKIP or were intending to support UKIP were appalled that UKIP appeared to be as slack on the immigration issue as any Lib/Lab/Con politician. 

The initial UKIP response, as can be seen from UKIP’s Facebook page, was to try to argue that what Nigel Farage had said was totally consistent with UKIP’s published manifesto.  Frankly this point is slightly disingenuous as is pointed out in the Daily Telegraph article below. 

Nigel Farage, as the storm continued, then made a quibbling attempt to try to make out that there was a significant difference between the word refugee and asylum seeker.  However as anybody who has actually looked at the issue would  know the only difference is that a “refugee” is somebody who is in the act of fleeing, whereas an “asylum seeker” is somebody who has actually made an application through the immigration authorities for asylum.  The distinction therefore is not only trivial, but merely a matter of where a person is in the process of seeking refuge!

The UN Convention in any case does not require the UK to take any Syrian refugees/asylum seekers since they should be seeking refuge or asylum in the first safe neighbouring state, rather than in a country many of thousands of miles distant. 

As the storm of protest amongst potential UKIP members and voters continued, Nigel Farage then tried to play down the level of his earlier commitment, seemingly claiming that the only refugees that should be accepted were Syrian Christians.  A group which, I might point out, although in a terrible situation, are not the only minority group in Syria who are being genocidally targeted by murderous Islamist gangs that our government was recently talking about offering significant logistical support to! 

Needless to say Nigel Farage’s comment provoked outrage amongst all the secularist, Jewish and Muslim groups which he had until recently been seeking to bring into the UIKP fold!

So all in all Nigel Farage managed to achieve one objective in getting lots of media coverage, but in doing so he managed to annoy not only the left liberals in the media that he was seeking to placate, but also any sensible ordinary English people.  That is people who are simply fed up with the open door policies of mass immigration which have so changed the character of our country without any democratic mandate to do so over the last 50 years.  This has happened at a particularly alarming and unsustainable rate during the period of the last Labour government whose intention, as we now know, was to “rub the noses of the right” into the (dog mess?) of diversity like an incontinent naughty puppy subjected to old fashioned house training methods! 

Why has this PR disaster happened?  Well from my discussions with Nigel, I think he has a great need to be liked and to be the centre of attention.  Also he came across to me as somebody very likely to want to be “nice” and with a nostalgia for Britain’s old imperial position as the world’s policeman.  I think his position on immigration generally and asylum seekers or refugees, in particular, has evolved in quite an opportunistic fashion from being someone who is quite comfortable with immigration.  As he often says his surname derives from a French Huguenot refugee and he is of course married to a German.

The issue of immigration was simply taken up as a populist positioning on the aspect of EU membership and the single European market:- free movement of people. 

So in short I think Nigel Farage was giving expression to his genuine view that Syrian “refugees” should be allowed to come here, but I suspect he also thought it would get a lot of extra coverage during perhaps a news starved holiday season and also some useful Blair style “triangulation”!

One of the things it does however show is that now that Godfrey Bloom is no longer Nigel’s confidant there is no-one else in the leadership of UKIP that Nigel will go to to sense check things before he makes any announcement.  I wonder if this is going to be a recurring problem?  In any case I bet Nigel regrets giving vent to this particular flight of fancy!

Here is Paul Goodman’s and the Telegraph’s take on the whole Farago.  What do you think?

Does Nigel Farage want to join the Conservatives?

By urging ministers to accept Syrian refugees, Ukip’s leader has played a canny game

 Why did Nigel Farage say this week that Syrian refugees should be admitted to Britain – a view apparently at odds with his party’s outlook on immigration, and certainly in conflict with the instincts of its supporters? There are three possible explanations.

The first is that he said it because he believes it. Such a straightforward explanation would fit nicely with the breezy, plain-speaking, straight-from-the-shoulder persona that the Ukip leader wants to project.

The second is that he was merely repeating Ukip’s present position. The party’s website helpfully explains that “immigration Policy is currently undergoing a review and update. The full policy will be published in due course.” However, its holding “statement of principles” explains that “Ukip would allow genuine asylum applications in accordance with our international obligations”. So what Mr Farage said was in accord with his party’s policy on the matter, such as it is.

The third is that – since politicians are seldom as simple as they like to appear – the Ukip leader is up to something. What could it be?

Let us consider the evidence of his former colleague and long-time Brussels flatmate, Godfrey Bloom. Interviewed recently, Mr Bloom – a member of the European Parliament, until recently representing Ukip – claimed that the party “is in the grip of an internal battle for its future”, that senior staff “are all stabbing each other in the back”, and grassroots members are being “purged”. He declared: “This is 1933 Germany, night of the long knives. I’m waiting to be dragged out of the pub and butchered.”

Who was the Führer in this bloody metaphor? Mr Bloom left little room for doubt that he had Mr Farage in mind. And as if evoking the Nazis was not bad enough, he went on to name an organisation that strikes almost as much fear and loathing into the hearts of Ukip members – namely, the Conservative Party. Mr Farage, he said, has always really been a Tory and is “desperate to be a Conservative again”. He is “looking for a deal with the Tories”. Indeed, “the deal has already now been done”. Ukip will allegedly stand down candidates in key seats, and its leader will be rewarded with a title and a seat in the Lords.

To be fair to Mr Farage, Mr Bloom is scarcely a disinterested observer. The former withdrew the whip from the latter, during the Ukip conference earlier this year, with an ease that demonstrates the dominance he has achieved within the party. Mr Bloom’s chief crime was to have hit a journalist on the head with a Ukip brochure. Mr Farage will surely have been tempted in his time to hit the odd journalist over the head with a Ukip brochure himself, but clearly felt that the timing and the manner were unhelpful.

Of course, Mr Bloom’s suggestion of a clandestine deal between Mr Farage and David Cameron – with the Ukip leader perhaps merging his party with the Conservatives, and certainly going to the Upper House – is preposterous. The Ukip leader has no time whatsoever for the Prime Minister, whom he sees as a conviction-free member of an interchangeable political class. But Mr Bloom undoubtedly touched a nerve.

Mr Farage has helped to build Ukip up from almost nothing. In 1997, it won just over 100,000 votes. By 2010, that had grown to just under a million. In between, it won some 15 per cent of the vote in two sets of European elections – beating both Labour and the Liberal Democrats last time round. It has come second in several by-elections, including a major contest in Eastleigh earlier this year, and now holds about 150 council seats. It would be surprising, at the next election, if Ukip were to reach the 10 per cent or so of the vote that it currently boasts in opinion polls. But it is hard to see it being squeezed back down to the 3 per cent it took last time round.

Because Ukip tends to take more votes from the Tories than from any other party, its showing could make the difference in 2015 between Mr Cameron remaining Prime Minister or Ed Miliband taking office. So far, so good for Mr Farage – or at least, so powerful.
But his strength is a wholly negative one. He may be able to turn Mr Cameron out, but he cannot put himself in. Ukip cannot possibly hope to match the third of the vote that remains the Tories’ electoral base. Indeed, first-past-the-post leaves it unlikely to win a single seat in the Commons. For all the distance the party has travelled, it remains as far from office as ever.

This leaves Mr Farage with precisely the choice suggested by Mr Bloom. Does he want to settle down in his snug in the European Parliament – making speeches, writing books, cracking jokes, provoking headlines and ending up as a “national treasure” (heaven help him), secure in his salary and pension? Or does he want to do something rather than just be something – that’s to say, become a man of government rather than a man of opposition?
Mr Farage is clever enough not to answer such questions directly, but also smart enough to show a sense of direction. Though scornful of the Prime Minister, he has been guardedly respectful of other senior Tories, such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. He has said that he could “have a conversation” with the London Mayor – who, more sweepingly, has described Mr Farage as “a rather engaging geezer” and, in a Bloom-type moment, as “someone who is fundamentally indistinguishable from us”.

Like the Ukip leader’s earlier attack on the vans advising illegal immigrants to go home or face arrest (which caused just 11 of them to leave the UK), the intervention over Syria was a reminder of Mr Farage’s desire to keep his party respectable – one with which a future Tory leadership could deal. It was also a sign of his growing electoral influence. Fear of what Ukip would say will undoubtedly have been a factor in the Government’s decision not to admit Syrian refugees. Mr Farage is able to have it both ways: first frightening ministers off admitting the Syrians, then attacking them for being hard-hearted.

The headlines he won for the move (and the discomfort he has caused Downing Street) may not be worth the anger it sparked among many of Ukip’s members and supporters – in narrow political terms, at least. Mr Farage seems to agree, since he backed down yesterday, stating that only Syrian Christians should be admitted.

But the Ukip leader seems to have his eyes on a bigger prize. Perhaps, at some point in the future, there will indeed be a Tory-Ukip rapprochement: not the unworkable electoral pact that some are proposing at the moment, but the assimilation of part of the smaller party by the bigger one – in much the same way that the Conservatives swallowed up the National Party and the Anti-Waste League during the early Twenties. And maybe the Ukip leader will be part of such a realignment.

But in the meantime, he has other fish to fry – winning headlines, tilting at David Cameron, striving all the while to push his party just a little nearer the mainstream of British politics. So was he speaking his mind on the Syrian refugees, or repeating his party’s position, or proving some of Mr Bloom’s fears correct? The answer turns out to be: all three at once.
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10542611/Does-Nigel-Farage-want-to-join-the-Conservatives.html)

 

England to be allowed its own national identity?

Today there is an interesting article, published in “The Scotsman”, which shows an encouraging glimmer of understanding that there is the potential for a winning synergy between Scottish and English Nationalism:-

“Reform requires us to address a crisis of identity”
By George Kerevan

“Lasting constitutional change will need co-operation from a sovereign, confident England – which does not exist”

REGULAR readers will know that I occasionally tilt against the failure of the SNP to hold a public debate on key aspects of post-independence policy. So you might think I sympathise with the recent call by Michael Moore, the mild-mannered Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland, for the SNP to say “exactly what independence would involve”. Indeed, the first question Mr Moore wants the SNP to answer is: “What regulation would be applied to our banks and who would enforce it?”

But Mr Moore speaks with a very forked tongue. For a start, he gave his speech on the day his party colleague, Vince Cable, was fulminating over Chancellor George Osborne’s decision to kick bank reform into the long grass. So Michael, can I ask what financial regulation your coalition agrees on, and when will it happen?

In the recent (lost) AV referendum, the tactic used successfully by the opponents of a fairer voting system was to harp on that the alternate vote system had not been fully explained. Rather than argue their own case, they implied the other side was not coming clean about theirs. Sadly, Mr Moore has adopted the same cynical tactic.

However, Mr Moore commits an even bigger sin – he can’t see the political wood for the trees. For the issue before the Scottish electorate is not independence. Alex Salmond is shouting through a political megaphone that he wants a referendum with three questions: the break-up of the UK, fiscal autonomy (de facto Home Rule), or the creaking status quo. Does anyone disagree on the likely outcome?

The SNP has stated unambiguously that in any constitutional settlement it will keep the pound sterling and share common (but non-nuclear) defence arrangements with England. What is that but Home Rule as the Liberal government defined it in 1914, when it enacted a Scottish Home Rule Bill at Westminster (only to see it shelved when the Great War broke out)?

So why is Mr Moore fixated by independence? Because he and his ilk view the SNP in isolation rather than as part of a general crisis of Britishness. The rise of the SNP and Plaid Cymru, the savage Troubles in Northern Ireland and the growth of populist and semi-fascist currents in England are all part of the same political mosaic. The British state, its economy and civic identity were the product of Empire. Two world wars, ensuing bankruptcy and de-colonialisation demolished this imperial project and, with it, a common notion of Britishness.

In Scotland, the end of Empire led a new generation in the 1960s to reinvent themselves as Scottish rather than British. This was accelerated by the indifference of London to the collapse of Scottish heavy industry. A similar, if diluted, process began in Wales.

In the forgotten Bantustan of Northern Ireland, the economic decline of the old Protestant ascendancy combined with the blind ignorance of Westminster to ensure a violent reaction by the Orange “British” working class.

In only one part of the UK was the appearance of a modern, post-imperial national identity thwarted – England. The big London parties allied to brand any manifestation of Englishness as culturally regressive, politically irrelevant or borderline racist. Why? The Tories were reluctant to recognise the end of Empire, while Labour feared a loss of electoral influence. This is a great shame, for the roots of Englishness lie in the rule of law and individual freedom.

By ignoring Englishness, the big parties grew blind to the need to reform the British constitution at root. Yet the evolution of politics, culture and economics over the past 50 years means that our national identities – Scots, Welsh, Irish and English – are not going to fuse into a homogeneous whole – quite the opposite. Which implies that we still need a new, post-imperial compact between these sovereign peoples if we are to make the British Isles congenial. The SNP is offering such a compact, if only Mr Moore and others will listen.

Of course, Mr Salmond does not use the words Home Rule or confederation. Spotting this, some Unionist politicians, including the normally sensible Menzies Campbell, have called on Mr Salmond to come clean that he has abandoned the SNP’s long-cherished goal in favour of “diet-independence”. But Mr Salmond is never going to use this formulation, and asking him to is tantamount to rejecting the SNP’s offer of Home Rule. First, Mr Salmond is too smart a politician to give up the threat of separation before he gets what he really wants. Second, he will not risk any division in the SNP’s ranks before he has delivered something tangible by way of fiscal autonomy.

But can Mr Salmond deliver Home Rule or will the SNP split? My reckoning is that the majority of party members view fiscal autonomy as the litmus test of sovereignty, not embassies or flags. The keeper of the fundamentalist flame, Jim Sillars, has already shifted to a more pragmatic position, preferring to remove any implied threats to English interests that might hinder the transfer of de facto sovereignty to Holyrood. Besides, internal resistance to Mr Salmond has long since been dissipated by the massed phalanx of MSPs and their paid advisers.

There are those in the SNP – like me – who doubt if a workable confederation with England will emerge, though I’m willing to give it a try. My view is that the Unionist political establishment – witness Mr Moore – is totally capable of looking a gift horse in the mouth. Even if Mr Salmond wins fiscal autonomy, lasting constitutional reform can only work inside an agreed framework of co-operation – on interest rates and security policy – between the sovereign nations of these British Isles.

But that implies a sovereign English parliament as equal partner rather than a grudging, dominant Westminster. And a sovereign, confident England does not exist. For the same Unionist parties that have put up a fighting retreat in front of Scottish nationalism are the very ones that have also refused to develop a modern, liberal English nationalism.”

Here is the Article on the Scotsman’s site
http://www.scotsman.com/politics/George-Kerevan-Reform-requires-us.6829467.jp?articlepage=1

A brief biopic of the author is here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Kerevan

I think that you will agree at least a glimmer of hope there but unfortunately still in the media conditioned mindset of thinking of English Nationalism as a threat.

Meanwhile, on the BBC News Politics site,we can see how very limited is the British Establishment’s interest in fair treatment for England.

Mark D’Arcy, the BBC’s Parliamentary correspondent in his “Viewing guide: The pick of the week ahead in Parliament” says:-

“Friday is private members bill day in the Commons, and topping the bill is the Report Stage debate on the Conservative backbencher Harriet Baldwin’s Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill. This takes a stab at giving a partial answer to the West Lothian Question by requiring that in future all bills put before Parliament should contain a clear statement of how they affect each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – including knock-on financial implications. She hopes that this would allow it to become accepted practice that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would not vote on England-only Bills. The Government attitude is interesting, to put it mildly. The Coalition Agreement includes a promise to set up a commission to look at the West Lothian Question (the issue of MPs from devolved parts of the UK being able to vote on English issues, when English MPs can’t vote on the same issues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) but that commission has yet to be set up. Ministers clearly don’t want the Baldwin bill, and she can expect pressure to withdraw it.

Having, somewhat to her own surprise, piloted the Bill through the the most perilous stage of the parliamentary life-cycle, the Second Reading debate, and through Committee where it was unamended, (although that may owe something to the broken leg suffered by Labour constitutional affairs spokesman Chris Bryant) Harriet Baldwin can now hope to send it off to the Lords. The main way of preventing this would be for opponents to put down a deluge of amendments at Report Stage – and talk out the available debating time. We shall see.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14737976

Which all goes to show that if England and the English Nation are ever to get fair treatment it will only be because there is a credible English Nationalist party forcing the pace!

Eddie Bone: A sensible prescription for an English Parliament

This article was published in The Yorkshire Evening Post on Saturday 27th August. Eddie Bone is a good friend of mine and a fellow campaigner for an English Parliament. The article makes compelling reading and it is nice to see the mainstream press allowing debate on such an important issue.

A DECADE ago, the people of England would not have been discussing the prospect of independence for Scotland.

However, independence is now clearly on the horizon following the historic and game changing Scottish National Party victory in May.

Most people when they’re asked about Scottish independence will say that the unfair system now operating in the UK needs to change and they highlight the Barnett formula which gives Scotland a bigger share of public spending. They might not understand this formula, but they see its effects.

They see things like free prescriptions in Scotland, while in England they have to pay.

They see the Scottish elderly getting subsidised care; they see free university education for Scottish students when English students are landed with thousands of pounds worth of debt.

The Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) knows a key concern for the English is the establishment of a different style of NHS created by unfair cutbacks being implemented on them. They now realise that the health service is being protected in Wales and Scotland but not in their communities.

The CEP has been campaigning for over a decade and in the early days most people viewed themselves as British and not English.

What we’re now realising is that more people in England are identifying themselves as English than British and, as national identities evolve, it becomes inevitable that the British identity will become less attractive.

If the Unionist parties fail to show the value of Britishness, then it will disappear.

Although the Union has given us all constitutional stability over the past 300 years, it now means that England doesn’t have a democratic voice.

This has meant most people are rekindling their love of England out of both want and necessity.

They do not want their children to suffer with tuition fees or their elderly relatives to suffer for the sake of feeling British. The chain that interlocks Englishness and Britishness will be broken altogether if it is twisted too hard.

This should make us all reflect on a line in a Rudyard Kipling’s poem when he writes “he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right”.

Although he is talking about a different time period, everyone in England is now awake to devolution and the talk of injustice.

People appear to accept that Scotland always had national institutional recognition, so when Scotland talks about independence, you’ll find that people are coming round to the idea that it might break away.

Yet it is a different scenario for Wales. It is seen as having more of a cultural nationality. The CEP has noticed an uneasy feeling since the Welsh were given more powers through the Assembly.

It seems to have unnerved the people of England and for the first time they are able to see that the break-up of the Union might actually impact on their lives. The domino effect of devolution has finally penetrated English consciousness.

We’re only beginning to feel the real impact of public spending cuts which will accentuate the problems.

Already 64 per cent of people in England are saying “give us a Parliament for England”. Yet what is more surprising is the quickly achieved percentage jump of people in England willing to discuss independence. It appears that the English just did not want to take responsibility for the break-up of the Union.

Now they can place it at the feet of the Scottish they appear happier to express their Englishness.

Our union of nations needs discussion not from a Scottish view as the British Broadcasting Corporation appears to want, but it also needs to be discussed from an English and Welsh perception.

The writing is now on the wall; the English are starting to enjoy Englishness again.

Most British MPs make the mistake that when they initially mention devolution to people in England, their eyes glaze over.

But if you mention the effects of not having a Parliament on issues like prescription charges, all of a sudden they become very vocal, their eyes become bright and they quickly say, we need an English government. And they’re right.

Eddie Bone is chairman of the Campaign for an English Parliament.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/debate/columnists/eddie_bone_a_sensible_prescription_for_an_english_parliament_1_3714541

Make St. George’s Day our National Holiday – Sign our Petition

Today the English Democrats launch their biggest ever online campaign. Our main website is now collecting the 100,000 signatures needed to force a debate in the Houses of Parliament on St George’s Day being officially recognised as England’s national day.

We set up one of the most successful Facebook Causes:- ‘Make St. George’s Day a Bank holiday! I am English & Proud! (English Democrats’ Cause)’. We now have over 705,000 Cause members! Our Cause calls for St George’s Day to be officially recognised as the National Holiday for the English. There is huge national support in England for this issue!

We are now collecting signatures for our E-Petition with the aim of forcing a debate in Parliament. We need 100,000 signatures to make it happen.

You can sign our petition by clicking here or following the link below:

http://www.voteenglish.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=220&Itemid=586

You can also join our Facebook Cause by clicking the link below, please make sure you’ve already signed up to Facebook causes first.

http://www.causes.com/causes/181031-make-st-george-s-day-a-bank-holiday-i-m-english-proud-english-democrats-cause?recruiter_id=150860020

There is massive public support for this issue but we need your signature on our petition to help build up pressure on the politicians to give the English the same rights as the Scots, Irish and Welsh nations enjoy to celebrate their Patron Saints’ Days.