Category Archives: parliament

A Federal Britain?

 I write as one who would not have disturbed the union and see devolution as the most pernicious and reckless act amongst many already perpetrated by the Blair government .  But it is done and cannot realistically be undone.  So the  question the English must now of necessity address is not how to put the union back together again, but how best to guard their own country and  interest.  This is a matter of  urgency,  indeed self-preservation, for  Labour  have made it clear that English interests will not merely be casually neglected by this government, but placed under active attack.

The sense of national identity and the political power of the Scots and the Welsh is enhanced by devolution. It gives them considerable control over their domestic affairs, strengthens their ability to deal directly with non-British agencies such as the EU and, most importantly, provides assemblies for the expression of their national aspirations.

 England, on the other hand, merely loses by devolution.  As things stand, she will continue to pay heavy subsidies to the Scotch, Welsh and Irish; Scotch, Welsh and Irish members will continue to vote on all English matters and  Scots, Welsh and Irish ministers will help to determine policy which affects only the English. On the other hand, English MPs will be denied an opportunity to vote on many important areas of Scots, Welsh and Irish legislation and English ministers prevented from forming policy on domestic Celtic matters.

What would be the most stable solution to this mess of devolution? As the UK is comprised of four peoples who think of themselves as nations, the only devolved system with any hope of long term survival is a federation in which each constituent part is legally equal and responsible for its own domestic affairs.  (It might even be possible to bring the Republic of Ireland within such a federation). 

How would it work? There would be  home rule in each of the four home  countries and expenditure on all domestic matters in each country  raised from within each country. The federal government would be restricted to general matters such as defence, foreign policy, the issuing of currency and  the servicing of government debt. Payment by each country for these matters would be proportionate to the population of each country. Any other system, which in effect could only mean England subsidising the rest of the UK must mean one of two things: English political dominance, which would incite the age old Celtic hatreds of England, or ever growing  English resentment of the Celts. Both would be a road to the dissolution of the UK.

There  would be no need for additional politicians or hideously expensive new Parliamentary buildings.  Indeed, the number of politicians could be  reduced. This could be achieved by the Commons being used as the English Parliament and the members elected to the English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish Parliaments coming together in the Commons (or the Lords)  when federal matters  were discussed.

However, the devil as ever would be in the detail. For example, in our present circumstances it is only too easy to see the quislings who rule us offering a deal on the  funding of federal matters which would be unfavourable to England, for example, England taking a disproportionate part of the burden of funding the UK national debt and defence.   

The other problem with a federal system would the inability of any of the Celtic Fringe nations to maintain a First World style of living  if they had to live off their own tax receipts, a position considerably worsened if  they took a proportionate share of the UK national debt. Even if Scotland had control of their part of the British oil and gas reserves, it is dubious whether they  could keep up a reasonable standard of living; Wales and Northern Ireland definitely could not. If the Celts had to pay for  a share  proportionate to their population of  (1)  the UK national debt, (2) the funding of the banking  bail-out, both that which has happened and may happen  and  (3) the federal  expenditure such as defence and foreign affairs together with taking responsibility for the PFI/PPP funding and local authority debt  in their own countries it is probable that their economies would simply collapse.

It is important to understand how  dependent the Celts are on England ) Approximately £15 billion a year  extra goes from England to the Celts each year because the per capita Treasury funding is around £1,500 higher than that given to England. Not only that,  but tax receipts in the Celtic Fringe are per capita substantially lower than they are in England.  In addition, the Celts have much higher proportions of their national GDPs  deriving  from public service employment . This means that more of the tax collected  from the Celts is simply a book-keeping measure because  tax deducted from public service employees’ wages is simply moving money from one government ledger to another.  It is only the tax taken from wealth which is freshly generated which really counts. ( for references to back the assertions in this paragraph see on this see http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/celtic-hands-deep-in-english-taxpayers%e2%80%99-pockets/)

To these easily quantifiable  benefits may be added a disproportionate Celtic share of government subsidies to bribe firms into setting up factories on inappropriate sites and a  large share of public jobs not related to domestic  Celtic affairs.  Scotland, for example, administers much of England’s social security, PAYE and schedule D tax and has a disproportionate number of army regiments; Wales plays host to the Vehicle Licensing Centre; Ulster contains the Short shipyard.

The benefits the Celts receive from their association within the UK extend to the intangible but inestimable advantages of free trade with England and the assurance which being part of a prosperous and advanced nation state of fifty eight million  gives foreign investors and  companies.  Most importantly for small peoples, the Celts  receive  the  protection of the British state, which would be nothing without England.

The removal of English subsidies would significantly reduce expenditure immediately. Companies would be less likely to situate themselves in Scotland because of reduced grants. Public service jobs would reduce as England repatriated work dealing with English people and issues. Defence expenditure would be concentrated in England. The result would be increased unemployment and soaring welfare demands. It is  also probable that the more able and better qualified Celts would emigrate, largely to England. 

An equal federal system  would indubitably seriously  disadvantage the Celts,  but it would still preserve the benefits of being part of a long established and wealthy state, which gives diplomatic clout, military protection and assurance of political and commercial stability.  This should impress upon the Celts the reality of their situation, namely, that they have long been pensioners of England and that  if  having home rule might be hard,  going it alone would be much worse. Hence, a federal system in which each of the four parts of the UK was granted the same powers and responsibilities could cement the Union,  because it would force the Celts to a realisation of what full independence could mean. Sadly, I think it would be impractical.

Why nothing short of an English Parliament will do

The  political alternatives to an English Parliament are all insufficient,  impractical or unnatural. The Tories supposed  preferred solution is to allow English MPs a veto  on matters which affect only England.  This  is impractical because it ignores the position of the executive. Such a system would mean in effect that no party elected without an English majority could govern. Suppose for example that the party divisions in the Commons were as follows: for the entire UK (659 seats) – Labour 339, Tories 280, others 40:  for England alone (525 seats) – Labour 230, Tories 280, others 15. The UK wide Labour majority would be robbed of any say over the expenditure of approximately three quarters of all public expenditure in the UK. Further complications  would arise if the English component of the Commons was “hung”, that is no parliamentary party had a majority of English seats. The worst possible situation would be a Commons in which the overall House and the English component were both “hung”, but with radically different balances  between the parties. For example, suppose that Labour and the  Libdems had an overall majority in the Commons, but did not have an overall majority between them of English seats.

There would also be the question of who would make policy to present to the Commons. Obviously it could not be a party without an English majority for that would be pointless. It would have to be the party with a majority of English MPs. This would mean in effect an English government within Westminster, which would have more practical power and  patronage that the UK government.

The other alternatives  are  an English Grand Committee, an English Secretary in the cabinet, a reduction in the numbers of non-English MPs and regional English assemblies . An English Grand Committee would solve nothing for of itself for it would decide nothing. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Grand Committees were of importance prior to devolution, if at all,  because each of the Celtic parts of the UK had a  cabinet minister with the powers of a viceroy, a budget to meet most of their domestic expenditure under the control of the cabinet minister and  a bureaucracy to carry  out ministerial policy. An English Secretary with similar powers would be an absurdity, because he or she would exercise more power than the prime minister for most of UK government expenditure and patronage would be under his control.

That brings us to regional assemblies. These present  daunting practical difficulties. There is no natural division of regions in England. Even those parts which are most commonly cited as having a strong regional identity – the South West, Yorkshire   and the North East – are far from being homogeneous. There is an emotional division between Cornwall and the rest of the South West.  Yorkshire is extremely diverse, the south with its large cities and very substantial ethnic population having little in common with the North Riding, which is largely rural.  As for the North East, anyone who knows the area will realise that the people are far from seeing themselves as a single entity and often display considerable rivalry, for example between Sunderland and Newcastle. As for the rest  of England, there is no obvious division anywhere. Moreover, traditional regional loyalties are much diluted by internal migration. In Cornwall, for example, less than forty percent of its population was born in the county.  There are local loyalties in England, but they are precisely that, local, being based on neighbourhoods, towns, cities and villages.

If Regional Assemblies were set up, all the complaints which are now levelled at Westminster will be replicated and most probably amplified, because local animosities are greater than national animosities. There will be accusations of remoteness – the likely representative  regions would be physically large – complaints of unequal spending within the  region and disputes about the distribution of centrally raised taxation. There is also the problem of subsidies. The richer regions would come to resent paying for the poorer in the same way that England resents subsidizing the Celts. Eventually this dissatisfaction would be given a political voice. Already there are political stirrings in London about  the amount of money which is redistributed to the rest of the country. For example, on 22/7/99 the London local paper, the Evening Standard, carried an article by the chair of the Association of London Government, Toby Harris. It began: ” For too long the taxpayers of England have been bank-rolling the rest of  the UK. Too much of the tax revenues generated by our households and businesses are recycled to the supposedly more needy regions of the UK, while too many of the capital’s own needs go unmet.” As London has an economy larger than Sweden’s, a reduction in her willingness to pay tax would have very serious implications for the poorer parts of England. Everything I have said about the problems facing the Celts  within a federal UK apply to English  Regional government. Regional Assemblies would lose whatever appeal they might have once it became clear that subsidies from the wealthier parts of England might cease or be reduced.

There is also the question of what powers Regional Assemblies could  be reasonably given. The natural tendency for Westminster will be to give them as little power as possible, indeed to produce bodies which are little more than local councils. Yet this will be easier said than done. The Scottish Parliament controls most domestic matters other than major tax raising. Even the Welsh Assembly deals with  a great deal of domestic legislation – those who doubt this should tune into Welsh Questions in the Commons. Time and again questions are rejected because they deal with matters now outside Westminster’s competence. It is difficult to see how English Regional Assemblies could be given anything less than the Welsh and improbable that they could be denied that which has been granted to Scotland. Indeed, it is improbable that the Welsh will be satisfied with a lesser status for long. This has profound implications. That Scotland or Wales may institute new laws which differ from those in England is one thing because they can claim to be a national governing entity: for English Regions to do the same quite another. To take an example, we could end up with different laws on abortion in the South West and Yorkshire.  Even  more problematic would be regional differences with commercial implications, such as different rates of tax or safety regulations. In effect, we would have not one system of English law but many.

Reducing the number of non-English members at Westminster is a non-solution. It is true that there is an imbalance which should be addressed because seats in England are on average substantially larger than those in the rest of the UK , for example, Welsh seats are around 14,000 electors short of those in England. . However, even if the imbalance is remedied, it would  not address Tam Dayell’s  West Lothian Question, namely why should non-English members vote on English matters when English MPs may not vote on Celtic matters?.

There are those who argue that no change is necessary because English MPs are always in the majority. This argument  is bogus because it ignores the reality of party discipline. It is highly improbable that English MPs of any political colour would regularly breach three line whips.  Most particularly, it is difficult to imagine Labour and Tory MPs sitting for English seats combining to defeat a Labour government. But the difficulty goes beyond the obvious. Any future Labour or LibLab coalition government would probably be substantially dependent on non-English seats.  Consequently,  such  a government would never introduce policies driven solely by what is best for England. Good examples of such behaviour  already exist in the present Labour government’s failure to take action to reduce either the number of Celtic seats in the Commons or the subsidies paid by England to the Celts.  The suggestion is a piece of casuistry worthy of a sixteenth century Jesuit.

Regional assemblies may appear to be off the political agenda at present but there are three reasons why they may reappear. The most potent is the fact they are the Euroenthusiasts’ preferred means of preventing England from realising her political potential . The groundwork for this has already been  done through the institution of eight Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and the creation of unelected  consultative bodies which roughly correspond to the physical areas covered by the RDAs. Interestingly, these divisions of England correspond to the English regions planned by the EU. It is true that the coalition government is committed to abolishing the RDAs, but it is a fair bet that something similar will take their place.

The second reason why regional assemblies may again become a live political option is that it suits both Labour and the LibDems, both of whom are less than dominant in England at national level.  They would see such assemblies as a means of building support and power in England. That would be particularly so if some form of PR was used to elect the assemblies. It would also have the advantage from their point of view of weakening England as a political force by politically Balkanising it.

The third reason is that should the Alternative Vote become the system for electing the Commons Britain would be in a situation of  more or less permanent coalition, with at least one of the coalition partners being in favour of regional assemblies. The fourth reason is that regional assemblies would kick the West Lothian question into touch for a while at least as the English were distracted by the novelty of the new assemblies. The fifth reason is the ambition of would-be politicians of any stamp  who will see new opportunities to get their feet under the political table and their snouts into the taxpayer filled trough.

Although people do not generally realise it, the process of English political regionalisation has already begun with the mayor and assembly for London . As London and its environs has an substantially larger economy than Scotland this is of considerable significance.

Regional assemblies in England would not utterly destroy English national feeling,  but they would  lead to the  development of regional political classes which would,  out of self-interest or ideological conviction, actively work to create bogus divisions within England. In the absence of a national English parliament, such regional voices would be difficult to counter.

Why are the British political elite so Hell-bent on denying England a Parliament?

The Scots have a parliament; the Welsh have an assembly; the implacable factions of Ulster shall run their own affairs if they can but remove their hands from one another’s throats; yet the English, the most politically mature of all peoples, shall possess no such means of political expression and  control over their own affairs, neither now nor ever. So runs the curious view of our political masters.

When I say our political masters I mean the entire British political elite,  for no mainstream party  advocates an English  parliament or gives any sign that it will do so.  This is more than a little strange, because a English parliament is not merely the most just but also the most obvious and economical solution to the inequality of democratic representation and opportunity wrought by devolution..

Why is our political class so  utterly determined that England shall be given no voice? The obnoxious truth is that our political elite  oppose an English  parliament  for Anglophobic  and  self-serving reasons, both domestic and supra-national. There is a general  terror amongst them of what they describe as English nationalism, but which in reality is a dread of English interests being realised and fought for. To that general motive may be added two particular reasons,  the knowledge of Euroenthusiasts that  a strong self-confident England would subvert their federalist plans and the Labour Party’s fear that an English parliament could  mean a near permanent Tory majority in England. Those things are obvious enough.  But there is something deeper, more subtle, more poisonous, whose acid growth has slowly corroded our entire public life, namely  elite sponsored Anglophobia which has its roots in the currently dominant elite ideology of the West, liberal internationalism.

For more than a generation there has been assiduously nurtured amongst our elite a habit of public belittlement of England and the English. The disease spreads far beyond politics and infects the worlds of mediafolk, academics, public servants, pressure groups and important businessmen.  These people I shall call the Public Class.  The habit has become so ingrained and so widespread, that gratuitous insult by public figures of all things English  and the energetic promotion of all peoples and cultures other than the English, has become the norm rather than the exception. Things have come to such a pass that it is now commonly suggested by the Public Class that Englishness does not exist and any attempt to protect English interests is treated as at best chauvinism  and at worst racism. We have the unsavoury spectacle of a native ruling elite actively denigrating their own culture and generally acting against the interests of the mass of their people. Historically, such behaviour is commonly found in monarchies, aristocracies and despotisms. In a supposed democracy, it is best described as bizarre.

This dangerous habit of mind for England extends to the one parliamentary  party, the Conservatives, which might be expected to rebel against it.  William Hague, an Englishman born and bred, gave the game away in an interview in the Daily Telegraph (8/7/98) when he stated “I am not an  English nationalist” and declared that he “is determinedly British rather than English” and was “dismayed to see so many  St George Crosses at the world cup.” It comes as no surpriseto learn that he has since rejected an English parliament on the ground that “it could prove a decisive step in the break-up of the United Kingdom” (translation:  Mr Hague is unreservedly willing to subordinate England’s interests to  preserving the union at all costs).

The bogus nature of the claims made by those who scream blue murder at the slightest public expression of English pride or defence of English interests is shown by the uncritical support the same people give to Scotch, Welsh and Irish nationalism. They also give the game away when they argue that England is so large in comparison with the other parts  of the UK that a Federation would be unbalanced. In other words, their fear is really that England would naturally dominate a federation. The argument about federal imbalance can be simply shown up for what it is, a demonstrable nonsense, by referring to the examples of the USA, Canada and  India. There are sixty Californians to every Alaskan; seventy bodies  in Ontario for each person in Prince Edward Island and one hundred and eleven inhabitants of Uttar Pradesh for every human being in Goa.

What exactly is this terrible danger our political elite see in their misnamed English nationalism? It is not that England would oppress her Celtic neighbours. It is not that England would engage in any form of aggressive action against the rest of Britain. The fear quite simply is that an England with its own voice and political focus would attend to its own interests. The political fat would then would be in the fire.

The prime political fact of the UK is that England  enjoys such a preponderance in population, wealth, educational opportunity, industry and commerce  that she inevitably dominates the other parts of Britain. In fact, England has such a predominant position that she could, if she but  had the political will, utterly dictate the terms of any future  Union or dismantlement of the Union. She has five sixths of the population. She has more than five sixths of the wealth, commerce and industry. An English parliament with the same powers as the Scots would account for approximately three quarters of total UK state expenditure. Most pertinently the English taxpayer pays massive subsidies to the rest of the UK.  An English parliament would eventually mean an end to these  subsidies. It is this fact above all others which frightens those who oppose such an assembly. The effect of ending these English payments to the Celts  would  be profound.

The Eurofederalists  share the fears of English interests being realised and defended, but their reasons are different. They understand that a strong, self-confident England would spell the end of their plans to embed Britain within the EU. That Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should have a means of national political expression is nothing to them, because these countries are too insignificant and above all too poor to resist the march of Eurofederalism. England with fifty million people and the third or fourth largest economy in the EU is a different kettle of fish. It is also a fact that opinion polls show the English to be considerably more Eurosceptic than the rest of the UK, many of whose peoples  harbour fantasies of being given massive subsidies by the EU  in the manner of the Irish Republic, as “nations within Europe”.

Before the 2010 election the Tory position was for “English votes on English laws”, a misnomer because what they really meant was all MPs except those sitting for Scottish seats voting, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies not have the same depth of devolved powers as the Scots’   “Wee pretendy parliament”, as Billy Connolly described the largely English-taxpayer funded edifice in Edinburgh.  Since the formation of the Big LibCon coalition, Cameron has made no mention of this. It is a fair bet that the proposal is dead while the coalition exists. If the proposal to shift from first-past-the-post to the Alternative Vote system for general elections becomes law, then Britain will probably be cast into a situation of perpetual coalition, one at least of the partners in which would be the LibDems or Labour. Neither would countenance a move to any measure which would give the English any political voice.  Hence, it is difficult to see how either English-votes-for-English-laws or any other move short of an English Parliament such as an English Grand Committee will be on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

The English-votes-for-English laws or anything else short of would have been of little use in immediately changing the disadvantage under which England constantly suffers, not least because the Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would be voting on much of the legislation because it would apply to them. However, it would be of great utility in forcing MPs to publicly address the imbalances produced by the present devolution settlement. That in turn could spill over into the question of our immersion in the EU which is the other end in the pincer movement between Westminister and Brussels to Balkanise the UK .

Ultimately the USA is the child of England: no England, no United States

Ultimately the USA is the child of England: no England, no United States. The nonexistence of the United States   would have made a colossal difference to the history of the past two centuries and to the present day, not least because  it is and has been for a century or more responsible for a tremendous proportion of global scientific discovery and technological development.

At this point I can hear the cry of many: why the English not the British? Was not the United States formed as much by the  Scots and Irish as by the English? There will even be those who will press the claims of the Germans. A little careful  thought will show that no one but the English could have been responsible, although many peoples and cultures have  subsequently added to the considerable variety of American life.

The English were the numerically dominant settlers from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 until the Revolution. Moreover, and this is the vital matter, they were overwhelmingly the dominant settlers for the first one hundred years. Even in 1776 English descended settlers formed, according to the historical section of the American Bureau of Census, nearly sixty percent of the population and the majority of the rest of the white population was from the non-English parts of Britain. This English predominance may not seem important at first glance because of the immense non-Anglo-Saxon immigration which occurred from the eighteenth century onwards. Would not, a reasonable man might ask, would not the later immigration swamp the earlier simply because of its greater scale? The answer is no – at least until the relaxation of immigration rules in the sixties – because the numbers of non-Anglo Saxons coming into America were always very small compared with the existing population of the USA.

When immigrants enter a country their descendants will generally adopt the social and cultural colouring of the  native population. The only general exception to this well attested sociological fact is in a situation of conquest,  although even there the invader if few in number will become integrated through intermarriage and the general pressure of the culture of the majority population working through the generations. Thus at any time in the development of the USA the bulk of the population were practisers of a general culture which strongly reflected that of the original colonisers, namely the English. Immigrants were therefore inclined to adopt the same culture.

America’s English origins spread throughout her culture. Her law is founded on English common law. The most famous of  American law officers is the English office of sheriff. Congress imitates the eighteenth century British Constitution (President = King; Senate = Lords; House of Representatives = The House of Commons) with, of course, the difference of a codified constitution. (It would incidentally be truer to describe the British Constitution as uncodified rather than unwritten). It is an irony that their system of government has retained a large degree of the   monarchical and aristocratic principles whilst that of Britain has removed power remorselessly from King and aristocracy and placed it resolutely in the hands of elected representatives who have no formal mandate beyond the  representation of their constituents.

 The Declaration of Independence is full of phrases and sentiments redolent of English liberty. The prime political texts of the American revolution were those of the Englishmen John Locke and Tom Paine. The American Constitution is  designed to alleviate faults in the British Constitution not to abrogate it utterly. The first ten amendments which form  the American Bill of Rights draw their inspiration from the English Bill of Rights granted by William of Orange. The  American Revolution was conducted by men whose whole thought was in the English political tradition.

The English influence is written deeply into the American  landscape. Take a map of the States and see how many of the place names are English, even outside the original thirteen colonies which formed the USA. Note that they are divided into parishes and counties.

 Above all other cultural influences stands the English language. Bismarck thought that the fact that America spoke  English was the most significant political fact of his time. I am inclined to agree with him. But at a more fundamental level, the simple fact that English is spoken by Americans as their first language means that their thought processes will be broadly similar to that of the English. Language is the ultimate colonisation of a people.

 Moreover, the English spoken by the majority of Americans is still very much the English of their forebears. It is, for  example, far less mutated than the English spoken in India. The English have little difficulty in understanding USA-born white Americans whatever their regional origin. Indeed, it may come as a surprise to many Americans that the average Englishman probably finds it easier to understand most American forms of often affect not to understand English accents, but it is amazing how well they understand them when they need something. Oscar Wilde’s aphorism that “America and England are two countries divided by a common language” was witty but, as with so much of what he said, utterly at variance with reality.

 There is a special relationship between England and America but it is not the one beloved of politicians. The special  relationship is one of history and culture. American culture is an evolved Englishness, much added to superficially but  still remarkably and recognisably English.

When you go to the cinema think of how often English legends such as Robin Hood are used by Americans. Reflect on how, until recently at least, American universities would give as a matter of course considerable time to the study of writers such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen. These things happen naturally and without self-consciousness because English culture and history is part of American history.

Shame On You, Mother Of Parliaments. Shame!

I currently find myself, somewhat late in life, a prospective parliamentary candidate in the Stevenage, Hertfordshire constituency for  the election on the 6th May 2010 for the English Democrats Party (EDP). The EDP are an English party that occupies broadly the same political position in England as the Scottish Nationalist Party in Scotland or Plaid Cymru in Wales.

Being part of a small, fairly new party, the EDP are eight years old, means that you have to do pretty much everything yourself. As a result my wife I found ourselves a week ago on Sunday, with the EDP candidate for Broxbourne, at a car boot sale to raise funds for our campaign. We were onsite and fully decked-out with four England car window flags fluttering in the wind, election posters on the car and our table covered in a large England flag.

English Democrats Car Boot Sale

Car Boot Sale

The car boot sale proceeded as car boot sales proceed with one exception. We were amazed at the number of  people who came up to us and told us how brave we were to do what we were doing! I was shocked. The individuals all spoke in low voices and were clearly afraid to speak up. How could this be? We were in England flying the flag of England. What could be more normal? And yet to these people, we were doing something dangerous, something that required fearlessness and courage, something that made a forbidden statement, that broke the law, that was somehow illegal, in England!

“There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is ENGLAND.” said Winston Churchill, himself, by birth, half English and half American. Being English you see is not a matter of genes or skin colour. It is a matter of the heart. Say those words again but this time imagine a stream of people coming up to you and whispering how brave you are into your ear. If you are not beginning to be afraid then you have not understood what is happening.

Five days later I was on my own manning a stall in the Town Centre of Stevenage. Once again the table was dressed with bunting

Stevenage Stand

Stevenage Town Centre Stand

and posters. No one came up to say how brave I was. instead three foreigners, two Irishmen and a Spaniard

came and all independently said much the same thing. “Its about time this is happening, good for you”. “The English allow themselves to be pushed aside too often. Well done for what you are doing”. “This is a good day for England. You English suffer from a totally make-believe guilt. Why, I do not know. What you are doing is good”. Notice that they were foreigners. They had no problem being upfront about telling the truth as they saw it. And most importantly no one could blame them for it. They had no reason to be afraid to raise their voices.

Whilst at the University of Chicago in the late 60s studying for an MBA at the business school  I took time out to attend two course in political science given by Professor Hans Morgenthau. Morgenthau was a remarkable teacher. A German Jew who left Germany before the second world war. He was a charismatic man whose lectures attracted huge numbers. Given in the largest lecture hall of the time, at the university, you had to get there early if you wanted even a space to stand let alone sit. Applying Morgenthau’s analysis to England to-day the result is clear. We have real problems in our democracy, a major group not only feel but are disenfranchised, violence is existential. It will take just a match to light the powder keg.

Sounds overly dramatic? Think again. A major group do feel frightened and disenfranchised. It is not only I who have noticed it but three different people from elsewhere have as well. The effect is not imagined. What is more, it is happening as a direct consequence of government policy. This is not a mistake. It is real and it is being done on purpose as a piece of viciousness that is difficult to believe. The analysis is valid and credible. I say credible because for a thousand years the only way the English have been able to protect their freedom from the ruling classes has been by violence. And this is not something that happened a long time ago. Only in the last century the women suffragettes, at the start, and the poll tax protestors at the end, had to fight for their freedoms. So it will happen, again.

The people responsible for allowing this state of affairs to happen are, without any doubt, those who have held seats as Members of Parliament (MP)  for English constituencies. Not Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish MPs, but English MPs. It was their job to make sure this didn’t happen. Why did they not do their job to protect democracy? We now know the reason. Those very few who did stand up for their principles were beaten down and overlooked for important positions. More profitable instead for MPs to ripp-off the taxpayer with their expense claims without, apparently, the integrity to know that it was wrong. Many have claimed that they were merely following the rules, forgetting perhaps that by blindly doing so they were showing themselves open to being corrupted by anyone who chose to create a bribery machine that had ‘rules’. They also showed they were not up to the job. They failed without apparently even knowing they were being tested. They were totally unsuited to the task, lacking the morale fibre, the power of independent thought and backbone needed by someone in their position.

So I say Shame! Shame on you Mother of Parliaments! Shame!. Bow your head in Shame! I live for the day when you will bow your  knee to the People of England! And by the Grace of God, and the votes of the people of England I will see that day!

As the English Democrats say “Isn’t it Time to Put England First”. Yes it is and a vote for the EDP will do that. So vote English Democrat and if you do not have an EDP candidate standing in your constituency vote for a party that is a member of the “Alliance for Democracy” – there are over 260 Alliance candidates, enough to be the largest party in parliament. If enough of us are voted in to Parliament we may even be able to head off the gathering storm! But that is the view of an optimist. Hans Morgenthau was a realist, his life taught him that!

if you want to know more, and especially if you would like to make a donation go to www.hertsengdem.org. In the mean time as you vote say, to yourself or outloud, the EDP mantra: “Not Left, Not Right, Not Black, Not White, Just English!”

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