Category Archives: peter oborne

Proof of media collusion at the heart of the British political Establishment

Proof of media collusion at the heart of the British political Establishment


When Peter Oborne came up with the concept of Britain not so much having a competitive political and media Establishment but rather a collusive political and media Class, who work together, have similar interests, go to the same schools or universities, marry each other’s relatives, and generally represent a group whose interests are often starkly against the interests of the majority of people in the country, he could hardly have expected a clearer proof than the gloating article written by the Telegraph’s, Alan Cochrane, which I reproduce below.

If only Alan Cochrane and the British Political and Media Establishment could be charged in a criminal court with conspiracy against the People, then it is no exaggeration to say that Alan Cochrane’s article (if it came with the required ‘Statement of Truth’ and his signature) would amount to confession evidence!

What it shows, all too clearly, is that far from having an independent media with genuine professional standards of reporting the facts without fear or favour, instead what we have is a media that actively seeks to be propagandist for the British Establishment. Looked at this way, Alan Cochrane’s article is a searing indictment of the gross lack of professionalism at the heart of the British media, whose principal interest is in manipulating the electorate into voting for whatever the Establishment wants, rather than what is good for the People.

For all those of us that read newspapers or look any other mass media productions, whether it be radio or television, from the established media, it is a salutary lesson that we are probably giving undeserved attention to people whose object is too often to manipulate and deceive us into voting for whatever their agenda is, rather than making any serious attempt to tell the unvarnished truth so that we can make up our own minds!

There can be no clearer evidence of the corruption at the heart of the British Establishment except that is a contemplation of the evidence which was given in the Leveson enquiry. The most important aspect of which was many further examples of just how incestuous the relationship is between senior British politicians and the British media.

Here is the article:-

Alan Cochrane: my part in Alex Salmond’s downfall

The two-year battle to prevent the United Kingdom’s break-up was at times bitterly fought, and – as these extracts from his candid Scottish referendum campaign diary reveal – The Telegraph’s Alan Cochrane was right in the thick of it  


February 4 2012: The search for a leader of the ‘No’ campaign begins


I eventually got through to John Reid, the former Labour home secretary. It took umpteen phone conversations with his secretary and with the noble lord himself before he agreed to meet me. JR – they really are appropriate initials for the great man – took me to the Pugin Room in the Lords, where we had tea. He doesn’t drink now. He’s very funny about his drinking days.

When asked whether he had a drink problem, he always says: “Aye, my problem was I couldn’t get enough of the f—— stuff!”

I tried to interest him in taking over the anti-Nationalist campaign, but right from the start he said he wasn’t interested, wasn’t the right man and wouldn’t do it, no matter who asked him. He suggested all sorts of people who would be better than him, former chancellor Alistair Darling and Jim Murphy, Labour MP for East Renfrewshire, being the two most often mentioned.

His initial reluctance, he says, is because he’s still chairman of Celtic, which he’s due to be for another six months or so. And he doesn’t have to explain why that would stop him being a unifying figure in a campaign to save Britain.

Half of West Central Scotland, the Rangers half, would say: “We’re no’ listening to a bloody Tim like John Reid.”

David Cameron knows he has to keep Ed Miliband on side in the fight for the Union because it will be Scottish Labour’s foot soldiers who will have to do most of the work.

So if Cameron recruits Reid, he risks losing – or at least annoying – Miliband. Jesus, talk about wheels within wheels. I think it’s worth the risk as Reid would be great at tackling Eck’s bombast Alex Salmond’s nickname is “Wee Eck”]. But I think I’m going to lose this one.

February 14 2012

After months of b—–ing about over whether I should be working for DC as a special adviser and then nothing happening, I told them at Christmas that I’d rather forget it, if they don’t mind, as I want to get on with the rest of my life.

I don’t like people describing me as a Tory, as I’ve hardly ever voted for them, but I like Cameron, and I’d have worked for him on fighting independence. Still, I’m probably better where I am.

So it was a bit of a surprise when, out of the blue, I got an email from Julian Glover, the new speechwriter at No 10, telling me that the PM had said I should be shown a copy of his speech due to be delivered in Edinburgh on Wednesday. I made a couple of minor suggestions: one was not to compare Scotland to Latvia, as this would annoy the natives; and that his offer to think about more powers if the Scots voted against independence would be the story. And so it proved.

Bigger surprise later, when I was asked whether I could have dinner with the PM at the Peat Inn in Fife. Oh, very well, I said. As if!

DC came in an open-necked shirt, with a sweater around his shoulders. The rest of us were in suits. Very relaxed. Moderately priced burgundy. “We can’t spend too much taxpayers’ money,” he said.

Kept asking things like: “If I say X, what will Salmond say to that?” And made clear that while he might be able to do a deal on timing or on teenagers voting, there was no way – absolutely no way – that he would agree to a second question.

If it came to it, DC said he had his final option of Westminster holding the referendum. “Let him boycott it,” he said.

He also asked what Salmond’s final position would be, and was told by Andrew Dunlop [Cameron’s special adviser] that it would be to hold an illegal referendum and tell the PM: “I’ll see you in court.”

DC loved my line about my son and daughters, and how I don’t want them to be foreigners to each other just because some live in Scotland and some in England. Everyone likes it – German newspapers, French TV. The Nats hate it, so it must be good.

When we meet at breakfast the next morning, DC says he might use it in his speech. He had been for a run with the cops. Looks fit, not tired at all. I gave him a spare Caledonian Club tie, which looks very like the SNP one, and he says he’ll wear it next time he’s up.

The night before, as we ate venison, DC moaned about the fact that he couldn’t go deer stalking any more. I suppose he doesn’t want to hark back to the grouse-moor-image days of Harold Macmillan, or to be seen out with a rifle. But apparently he’s a very good shot: the journalist Bruce Anderson was with him once when he got a left and a right.

DC says that recently he fancied a bit of shooting, so took his 12-bore out into a wood near his home and bagged a couple of pigeons. It must have been quite a sight – the wood had to be surrounded by coppers with guns. Whether that was to protect the ramblers from the PM or the PM from the ramblers wasn’t clear. Anyway, he misses shooting/killing things. It’s changed days if a council hoose lad like me can go deer-stalking but the Old Etonian PM can’t!

May 25 2012: The ‘Yes’ launch

What a load of tartan cobblers that Yes launch was – 500 people talking and singing to themselves. Nothing coherent, just this nonsense about freedom! And, Jesus, Brian Cox [the Scottish actor] ain’t going to convert anyone. He was positively scary. Hannibal Lecter has nothing on him.

June 6 2012

Had lunch with Alistair Darling in Centotre [an Italian restaurant in Edinburgh]. First class, but very fiery spicy sausages. Now confirmed as the Better Together leader, he is in good heart and confident of seeing off Eck.

Got the impression that the Union launch won’t now be until the end of June. But he agrees that the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee has done us a whole lot of good. He cannot see much light ahead and bad economic news must mean – surely – that voters will stick with the UK.

June 25 2012

The Save the Union campaign – “Better Together” – launched at Edinburgh Napier University, where Eck used to stage his spectaculars. But this time there were no free bacon rolls.

It was quite a good launch; they had ordinary people instead of phoney celebs. But Charlie Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, didn’t show – said his parents are ill. Charlie is a brilliant performer and campaigner but he is totally unreliable. They’ll have to ditch him.

January 17 2013

Astonishing lunch invitation from Rory Bremner, the impressionist/comedian. He’s planning a show about Scottish politics. Boy, that is going to be difficult. Tapas lunch to talk Scottish politics.

The problem Rory has is that there’s only one personality: Eck. He didn’t appear to “have” him yet, as he didn’t “do” him during lunch, although he kept doing Blair, which is really brilliant. He said that before he’d done Blair for the first time, Blair had joked that he could have a knighthood if he didn’t do him, and then after he did do him for the first time, he was offered an OBE, which he turned down.

March 14 2013

Did another session with Rory Bremner, who’s still having a go at Scottish politics. He talked in a funny voice for several minutes and I hadn’t a clue who it was. Apparently, it was Alex Salmond; I’d never have guessed.

October 21 2013

Had a long chat with Darling, who is a bit less than confident. “I’ve always thought it would be a close result,” he says. “Maybe 60/40.” How do we galvanise our bloody support? I’m sure people would visibly support the cause if we gave them the opportunity. What about car and window stickers?

March 24 2014

Polls all over the place. ICM says Nats catching up, TNS says “no, they’re not”, and then YouGov says “well, yes, they might be”. However, the latter is still suggesting it’s 60/40 against independence. Big “Don’t knows”, but I think I can guess what’s happening. People don’t want to appear to be anti-Scottish, so may be saying either they’re voting Yes or that they don’t know. I reckon they’ll mostly vote No in big numbers. Christ, I hope I’m right!

April 15 2014

Incredible day. That complete idiot Philip Hammond gave an interview in which he said that everything was negotiable after independence, which means – as the Nats seized on – that sterling and Trident could be on the table. Stupid, stupid man.

Darling manages to have a laugh and says if the Tories behave like this during next year’s election, Labour will walk it. I think he’s right and I also think he may well fancy his chances a bit more of a new career with Labour.

May 5 2014

Amazing email from some young lad who says he works for Gordon Brown, who, apparently, has read Yes or No? [Cochrane and George Kerevan’s book on Scottish independence], likes it and wants to meet. Of course, I say I will, but then I wake up in the middle of the night thinking that maybe this is a hoax.

May 13 2014

Got another email from the Great Broon’s laddie, and I’m meeting Broon at the Sheraton. What’s this all about? He must want something.

May 14 2014

Astonishing meeting with Gordon Brown. He was sitting alone, except for his two protection officers, in that vast Sheraton lounge. They moved to the next table when I turned up, leaving Gordon to talk to me alone. He’s actually read my bit of the book and cross-questioned me carefully about my background, slagged off poor old Kerevan for being a Trot, and interrogated me about my family, especially the girls.

He said he’d been offered a place at Oxford but chose to go to Edinburgh. “I wish now that I had gone. I think I missed something by not going.” I said he hadn’t done badly, PM and all.

His main theme was essentially that the Better Together team, and especially the Tories, were pitching the campaign as Scotland versus Britain, which he, rightly, says is wrong. It should be that Scotland will be better if it remains within the UK. Osborne and Cameron etc were wrong – totally wrong – in their approach. Basically, he thinks everyone is wrong except him.

May 15 2014

Through to Glasgow for drinks with DC. He was in sparkling form, although he looked a bit knackered. He came into the room and immediately took off his tie. He looked slim and fit and held court with the Scottish editors brilliantly. Lots of jokes about the Cup Final, which somebody had told him was between Dundee United and St Johnstone.

He thinks the referendum campaign is going OK, but that Eck is more interested in process than in debating the issues. He said he wanted the debate only because it would be against an English Tory; I said he could forget about the Tory bit, as it was only the English bit that Alex wanted to highlight.

He was very preoccupied with giving Holyrood more powers. I said he was pre-empting Tom Strathclyde’s commission, which he denied, and went on to say – incredibly, to my mind – that there was nothing wrong with different tax rates in the different parts of the UK.

Eh? Did I hear right?

He made a very good joke about Salmond and Nigel Farage. Someone asked him whom he disliked most – Salmond or Farage. And he got on to thinking about both of them standing on the cliff edge at Beachy Head. Who would he push off first?

“Oh, Salmond,” he said with a grin. “Business before pleasure.”

May 21 2014

Dinner with the Darlings, and what a feast. Maggie is a great cook – fish lasagne preceded by the kind of duck/pancake dish that you normally only get in Chinese restaurants. Great craic, too.

I told Alistair all about the Brown encounter. His most prominent reaction was to shake his head in bemusement and wonder at the rubbish Brown talked.

He was also very funny about his conversations with Gordon. Broon would castigate him about something that had been said in his book, to which Alistair would say: “But Gordon, you always say you haven’t read my book!”

And Gordon always says he never reads the newspapers and yet he can quote whole pages back to you.

Both were very sad about Gordon. Not just the Darlings, but many of Brown’s friends and former friends are worried about him, stuck in that house in North Queensferry all week with the boys, while his wife is in London.

June 6 2014

Lunch with John Reid in Glasgow. He insisted on curry at the Koh-i-Noor. Delicious, but I can’t eat curry at this time of day. Great craic, much of it slagging off Broon.

John Reid told me that he once pushed Brown up against the wall in the Members’ Lobby, when they were both in the Cabinet, and threatened to punch him unless he stopped seeing conspiracies everywhere. Wish I’d been there to see it.

What I didn’t know is that, according to John, Brown begged him to stay in his Cabinet when he took over from Blair. No way, said Reid. But he does admit that Brown can be a brilliantly successful player in this campaign.

August 6 2014

the first television debate

Who would really have thought it? Darling smashed Eck in the first debate last night.

Everyone on the Nats’ side, including that eejit Blair Jenkins, supposed boss of the Yes campaign, had been crowing about how much of a hammering Darling was going to get. I wasn’t especially worried as these debates never add much to the sum of human knowledge or affect the result much. But I texted a “break a leg” message to Alistair all the same.

However, it wasn’t needed. Salmond was hopeless. It looked like he hadn’t done any preparation at all and got absolutely skewered on the pound, which Darling returned to again and again.

Darling’s best moment – and the one that had the overconfident Salmond stuck for an answer – came when he asked his opponent to “contemplate for one moment that you might be wrong”. Of course, Alex Salmond never believes he’s wrong – so he was stumped.

The Nats are shell-shocked this morning. Their hero has been hammered. Is this their worst moment? I bloody well hope so. BT have got to get cracking now and keep up the pressure.

August 25 2014: the second television debate

Disaster! Darling hammered. The whole thing was terrible. It was pretty clear that the Better Together side were playing for a draw and, as Alex Ferguson would have told them, if you play for a draw, you get a hiding.

I texted Darling beforehand but my “break a leg” message didn’t seem to encourage him. The BBC b—–ed up the thing in spades.

For starters, Glasgow’s Kelvingrove gallery was much too grand a venue, and instead of having Glenn Campbell, the moderator, between the two contestants, they made him stand to one side. Stupid. The upshot was that he couldn’t hear – or at least didn’t seem to be able to hear – what Salmond and Darling were shouting at each other. Worst of all, it will put new heart into the Nats.

Afterwards, I tried to gee him up, but Alistair simply replied to my text with the understatement: “Audience two-thirds Nat.”

September 8 2014: 10 days before the vote

I got a call from Bruce Waddell, a former editor who now appears to be Broon’s apostle on Earth. (Who’s paying him, I wonder?) He says that the great man wants to talk to me and that I could expect a phone call within 10 minutes.

Sure enough, almost on the dot of 10 minutes later, Gordon comes on the line, in fairly friendly tones, to give me a précis of the speech he’s due to make. However, that’s not before he gives me a b——ing.

“The last time we talked, you didn’t seem to accept what I said. I hope you will this time, because your views carry a lot of weight with the other political journalists in Scotland.”

Gosh, why is Gordon being so nice? He proceeded to tell me – or, rather, repeat – his view that Cameron and Osborne had been presenting the campaign as something akin to Scotland versus Britain, instead of the two visions of Scotland. “It has been absolutely central to what’s been going on here that we [Labour] have got to have a vision of Scotland’s future,” he said.

“Although the campaign on the pound has worked over the summer, we don’t want to always be relying on the negative. We have to make our country feel proud.”

Brown then told me about the blueprint he was to announce later – a firm timetable for the new powers for Holyrood, with work beginning immediately after the vote, on September 19, then preliminary agreement by St Andrew’s Day on November 30, and draft legislation ready by January 25 2015.

These dates will p— off Eck mightily but are a great gimmick by GB; only he could have thought of them. But more importantly, only he could have delivered this promise and got people to believe that something was in the offing.

September 14 2014: 4 days before the vote

Brilliant, brilliant story. The Queen, after the weekly service at Crathie Kirk, walked over to some well-wishers and told them that she hoped everyone “would think very carefully about the referendum”.

But that was only half the story. This was a completely deliberate and put-up job by the Palace.

My old pal Jim Lawson was the only reporter outside Crathie Kirk when the royal party came out, and, as usual, he and the photographers were corralled some way away from Her Majesty and the usual crowd of royalists who gather there every Sunday. But on this occasion, the police were told that the press – Jim and the snappers – could go over to where they could hear what was going on, and that’s how the story about the Queen’s remarks got out.

It was a bit of a coup for the Palace and the Queen herself. There is absolutely no doubt that she did it deliberately; and knew exactly what the effect would be – it was the splash everywhere. Fantastic.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was provoked into it by Salmond saying last week, when there was a bit of a stooshie about whether she should speak her mind on the issue or not, that he thought she would be “proud to be Queen of Scots”. That implied some sort of support for independence.

A very bad move by Our Great Leader, and one that must have convinced Her Majesty to speak out.

After the referendum

By any standards, it was a pretty conclusive result. Astonishingly, however, the weeks following the referendum have been dominated not so much by a “we wuz robbed” feeling among Nationalists – that was always likely – but by a sense almost of guilt among the Unionist community that they’d won.

At the root of this strange phenomenon was the Vow: a piece of brilliant tabloid journalism in which the leaders of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties promised “extensive” extra powers for the Holyrood Parliament.

It has since been transformed in the public mind into something resembling Magna Carta. Talked of in hushed tones, it is normally now referred to as “the solemn Vow” which must be honoured, and which Nationalists insist pledges so much devolution as to make it indistinguishable from “pure” independence.

If Alistair Darling was the overall star of the marathon campaign, the man who won most of the plaudits for the sprint in the final weeks was undoubtedly Gordon Brown. No team player he, the Great Clunking Fist showed, with remarkable displays of passion and emotion, that he can remain a tremendously influential figure on the British political scene.

I’m delighted that separation was comprehensively defeated and that my family and I are to be allowed to remain British. That, for me, was what this battle has been all about. It wasn’t about politics, it wasn’t about journalism. It was about who I am.

Here is the original article >>> Alan Cochrane: my part in Alex Salmond’s downfall – Telegraph

UKIP – THE ICE BREAKER?


UKIP – THE ICE BREAKER?

In this EU election the media have openly behaved with shameless and blatant bias in consistently attacking UKIP as if their role was purely as propagandarists for the British Political Establishment and have no role as a public information service. More understandably the British Establishment parties have also behaved appallingly.

The attacks were very obviously grossly unfair, but also to anyone who has carefully thought about the spectrum of opinion amongst our People is likely to be highly counterproductive.

For instance, they regularly insisted that UKIP is racist for being against mass immigration. Interestingly UKIP has repeatedly said it is not against mass immigration merely against the EU making the rules on immigration. This much more technical and constitutionally orientated point is of course of far less interest to a large proportion of the population than being outright against mass immigration. So in this situation the media and Establishment have unintentionally and ironically given a dramatic boost to UKIP!

One of the significant things however in this election has been that the Leftist, multi-culturalist, internationalist, globalist, “diversity” obsessed, media luvvies have come out from cover and exposed themselves and their agenda to the extent that hardly anybody that I have met for some weeks now has failed to notice just how biased and politically attached the media has become.

Indeed, in a recent comment on the Daily Politics Show, Andrew Neal told that particularly objectionable and shrill, multi-culturalist, Mary Creagh, Labour MP, that in the last few weeks the media had thrown all the usual smears against UKIP but that their support had proved “teflon” and that it was simply not working. The most interesting aspect of this comment is of course the open acknowledgement that the media as a whole had adopted a deliberate strategy of trying to influence the outcome of the EU elections.

Some people have said to me that the media should be all about reporting the facts so that people can make up their minds. Whilst of course this would be a good thing if they were like that, the simple reality is that that is not at all the way in which the media behaves, any more than our MPs behave as if they are democratic representatives of the People! (rather than our masters!)

The media has degenerated into a state where its commitment to democracy is mere lip service and its actual aim is to push its own agenda. The most brilliant exponent of this fact of British political life is that of Peter Oborne who is the author of the idea that we are in fact ruled by a “Political Class” (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Triumph-Political-Class-Peter-Oborne/dp/141652665X).

This political class includes the most important people within the “national” mass media and also establishment party politicians and who do not compete with each other but rather cooperate. Such differences that there appears to be between them are usually both minuscular and concocted.

An interesting insight into the consequences of people at last opening their eyes to what is actually going on around them is given in the article below in which the two Leftist academic authors fret that the “white working class”, who have so long continued to imagine that the multi-culturalist, internationalist, pro mass immigration, Europhile, Labour Party in any way represents their interests, might be now awakening.

The realisation that Labour no longer cares for them, which inevitably accompanies the first time that such voters have not drifted along and voted tribally as their father and grandfather before them will, the authors think, and I would agree, lead to all such people never again idly voting upon the old tribal basis, but instead they will be starting to think which party they cast their vote for.

What do you think?

Here is the article:-

Ukip has divided the left, not the right, and cut Labour off from its ‘old’ support

Labour and Ukip voters agree on more economic issues than you might think, presenting a strategic problem for Ed Miliband

According to conventional wisdom, Ukip has “divided the right”. By targeting Europe, immigration and politicians in Westminster, Nigel Farage is tearing off a section of the Conservative base that David Cameron desperately needs if he is to triumph in 2015.

But while it is true that Ukip is currently winning over most of its support from people who voted Conservative in 2010, this actually tells us less than commentators often claim.

In 2010 Labour was at a low ebb, Gordon Brown was extremely unpopular and traditional Labour voters were angry about immigration and the financial crisis. Defining “the right” as 2010 Conservative voters is therefore risky. A lot of those who voted Conservative in 2010 may not have been natural Conservatives at all, backing Cameron despite their misgivings about his party, as a vote against a failed and unpopular Labour government.

A more sensible way of defining left and right is in ideological terms. Ever since Clement Attlee’s 1945 Labour victory, British politics has been structured around a conflict over the economy and the proper role of the state.

The left has favoured higher taxation, redistribution and greater state intervention. The right has favoured free markets, low taxes and a small state. This is still a central dividing line today.

Ed Miliband’s most celebrated policy announcement called for state regulation of gas and electricity prices, and he has shown a distrust of big business, and a desire for greater taxation of the rich, and greater government help for the less well-off. The Conservatives, meanwhile, retain their traditional faith in free markets and private enterprise.

If Ukip is just dividing the right then we would expect to see Ukip voters falling consistently on the Conservative side of this longstanding divide. But as our chart below shows (based on new data from the British Election Study), the opposite is in fact true.

An average of 71% of Ukip voters agree with five leftwing ideological statements, far above the Conservatives (43%) or even the Liberal Democrats (65%). They are only a little behind Labour (81%).

When Ed Miliband argues that big business takes advantage of ordinary people, employees on zero-hour contracts are being exploited by management, that the rich exempt themselves from the rules that apply to others, and that ordinary workers are not benefitting from a recovery for the rich, Ukip voters agree with him. On these core economic issues, Farage and Ukip do not divide the right. They divide the left.

This raises an obvious but also awkward question for progressives. If Ukip’s struggling, pessimistic and left-behind voters find these economic messages appealing, why are they supporting Farage, not Miliband?

The problem for Labour is that these voters no longer think about politics in general, or Labour in particular, in economic terms. Labour has encouraged this: New Labour played down traditional leftwing ideology in favour of social liberalism and pragmatic centrism. Now many voters with longstanding “old left” economic values associate Labour more with “new left” social liberalism: feminism, multiculturalism and support for immigration.

Ukip’s rise has exposed this division on the left and made it harder to heal. Many of the “new left” voters attracted to Labour by its social liberalism cannot stomach Ukip voters’ strong opposition to immigration, which they regard as an expression of ignorance and prejudice, and so refuse to engage with “old left” voters on the economic issues where the two groups share common ground.

Conversely, “old left” voters retain a strong distrust of Labour’s middle-class elites, after decades of feeling ignored and marginalised as New Labour chased the middle-class swing vote, and cannot abide lectures from privileged “new left” activists about the virtues of immigration and diversity.

Tony Blair’s winning recipe in 1997 was to bury the traditional “old left” Labour ideology, gambling that he could expand Labour’s coalition without losing traditional support, as the voters who endorsed it had nowhere else to go. Nigel Farage’s rise has made this Blairite balancing act impossible. Ukip has divided the left, splitting the old from the new, and cutting Labour off from struggling voters it seeks to champion.

(Click here to see the original >>> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/16/ukip-divided-left-right-cut-labour-support ).

BRITISH Government can’t even look after the British

There is a recent and excellent article by Peter Oborne which appeared in the Daily Telegraph on the 19th February.  Whilst unfortunately it still shows that the Peter Oborne is both still fixated on Britishness and he has fallen into the common layman’s error that there is such a concept as “British Law” (whereas in fact there is the jurisdictions of England and Wales, of Scotland and of Northern Ireland, together with Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, etc!)

The point that he makes so well is the blindingly obvious one that not only is the British Government uninterested, unwilling and, indeed, incompetent to look after the interests of England and Englishness, but it is not even capable of showing an interest in looking after British interests.  The sooner it is consigned to history the better!

Here is Peter Oborne’s article in full:-

The US has bullied our banks into handing over a billion dollars

Quietly and without notice, Britain has surrendered control over its trade with Iran

“Recently, a friend of mine purchased a small quantity of Iranian saffron from a Birmingham merchant for £30 over the internet. This transaction was legal according to British and international law. It did not contravene any United Nations resolution. He transferred the funds via PayPal, the international payments firm. The money was paid in pounds sterling. What happened next was outrageous. PayPal sent him a menacing email informing him that he was in breach of US law, and asked him to sign a form admitting that he had behaved illegally.

At this point my friend rang me in alarm. He is a British citizen, had done nothing wrong under British law, yet here he was being threatened by the United States as if he was a criminal. When I looked into the matter, I quickly discovered that my friend’s experience was the tip of an enormous iceberg. It is not just private individuals who are persecuted in this way by the United States. Private companies suffer from exactly this harassment, as do banks.

Without protest, Britain has given away control over its trade with Iran to a department inside the US Treasury called the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). This body monitors US sanctions by pursuing foreign companies involved in trade with Iran. It has already persecuted major British banks, including RBS, HSBC, Barclays and Lloyds. In total, these banks have paid out more than a billion dollars in penalties, even though they have done nothing wrong under British or international law.

The most significant example is the British bank Standard Chartered, which specialises in doing business in the Middle East and Asia. It felt obliged to pay an incredible $667 million to OFAC and other agencies. In fact, Standard Chartered was blackmailed by the US authorities. The bank was given a choice between being cut out of all business with the US, or complying with its sanctions regime against Iran.

I am certainly not saying that sanctions are wrong. Indeed, it is essential to stress that in Britain we do have our own sanctions against Iran, for instance against companies or state entities alleged to be involved in nuclear weaponry. But these have been agreed democratically, in the sense that they are open to scrutiny and criticism in and out of Parliament. In a system that relies on rule by consent, this gives them legitimacy.

What is deeply troubling, however, is the presence of informal, secondary sanctions which the United States has inflicted against Iran by bullying British banks. These might as well be secret. Bankers never talk about them. Parliament has not debated, or even discussed, these sanctions. They haven’t been announced, let alone agreed, by any minister. They are not government policy. And yet the United States has enforced an informal banking boycott of Iran, unilaterally imposed on Britain and other foreign countries.

The response of the Government is very troubling. In the normal course of events, one would expect ministers to defend very stoutly any company or individual prevented from going about their lawful business by a foreign power. But neither Downing Street nor the Foreign Office have lifted a finger.

It is important to stress that this supine approach is new. Contrary to legend, Margaret Thatcher stood up strongly against United States pressure. According to my colleague Charles Moore’s superb biography, the Reagan administration tried to stop a British company, John Brown, selling turbines to a Russian gas pipeline project that would supply much of mainland Europe. Mrs Thatcher probably disliked the idea as much as Reagan. But she was adamant that British companies should not be subject to American laws, so insisted that John Brown fight its corner. Her defiance worked. “Maggie Thatcher has made me realise that I have been wrong,” Reagan eventually acknowledged. A new agreement removed sanctions and allowed John Brown to sell to Moscow.

But that was Thatcher. We are talking now about Messrs Cameron and Hague, who show no such determination to defend British interests against foreign threats. Indeed, by a perverse irony, it is actually easier for a US company to trade with Iran than a British one under the Coalition. This is because the bank of a US exporter to Iran can process payments without threat from OFAC, so long as the deal has OFAC approval. The bank of a British exporter will be persecuted, even though it has the approval of the British Treasury.

Though most bankers refuse to talk about OFAC, one insider told me it operates like this. “OFAC tells the British bank that it will suffer consequences (for example, loss of a US banking licence, or blacklisting) if it doesn’t agree to a settlement. The bank must agree to cooperate with the authorities by ceasing all business with Iran. It must then pay a penalty stretching to millions of dollars. It is also made to promise not to reveal the terms of the agreement or the process that led to it – even though the US authorities can do so if they wish.

“This is like plea-bargaining. The case isn’t taken to court: presumably the banks judge that they will be penalised less if they settle with OFAC. And this threatening process creates an example for others, so it is no wonder that the rest of the banking industry falls into line.”

So far as I can discover, it is impossible for any British bank to evade this US sanctions regime. Even if the contract with Iran is written under British law, and specifically outside the scope of US jurisdiction, that seems to be no protection to any company targeted by OFAC. Any bank that has an operation in the United States, or makes any transaction in US dollars, places itself within reach of punishment.

The effect of this financial blockade is to ensure that the British banking industry cannot provide trade finance or money transmission services for entirely legal trade with Iran. Even medical or humanitarian goods can’t be paid for. Most banks are so terrified of the United States that they will close down the account of any customer who even has a connection with Iran. The flimsiest and most unproven suspicion is enough for banking facilities to be withdrawn. The boycott has been enforced by British banks, even though it is against British policy, because of American threats.

The same imbalance exists in other areas. For example, Tony Blair negotiated a treaty which gave the United States powers to extradite British citizens, which it frequently exercises, yet we are unable to do the same in return. The failure of British politicians to protest is extraordinary. Prime Minister Cameron and Foreign Secretary Hague speak out eloquently when the European Union is accused of intrusion on British sovereignty. But when it comes to the United States, they are completely silent – and this silence means assent.

Perhaps they are happy enough that Britain should be a client state of America, but unhappy to pool sovereignty with the European Union. If so, they should come forward and say so. One thing is certain. The current shameful and humiliating situation would never have been tolerated by a prime minister, such as Margaret Thatcher, who stood up for British interests. It is time that David Cameron started to behave more like the Iron Lady, and less like Tony Blair”.

 
Here is a link to the original article>>>The US has bullied our banks into handing over a billion dollars – Telegraph