Category Archives: Labour

MY SPEECH FOR AFTER THE COUNT TONIGHT

MY SPEECH FOR AFTER THE COUNT TONIGHT

Ladies & Gentlemen

I would also like to thank the Returning Officer and all his/her helpers who have worked on this election and also those voters who have voted for me and for the English Democrats.

I have enjoyed standing in this election and playing my part in flying the flag for England and for English nationalism.

I am going to be very interested in seeing what now happens. If, as the polls suggested, Labour is able to form a minority government only with the assistance of the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and possibly Sinn Fein and other Irish nationalists, then I fully expect many voters who voted for other parties to wish that they had voted for the English Democrats to be a voice for England. 

That voice will be sorely missed because for the next 5 years we may have a government which is more anti-English than any government that England has had since the Norman Conquest.

As I speak poor England is now being delivered into the hands of our Nation’s enemies.

I hope that the experience of the next 5 years will ensure that never again will anyone who cares for England vote for any party which hasn’t got “Putting England First” at its very heart!

Our General Election Press Launch – Even Sky News came too!




Our General Election Press Launch – Even Sky News came too!

As I mentioned in my previous Blog item, over the years we have tried hard to get our press launch covered. 

This has always previously been a struggle but this year we did get some interest, both from ITV and, in particular, from Sky, who actually sent a reporter.

We were briefly on the Sky News and also a more detailed report was done for Sky’s website. Here is a link to the article, click here >>> Coalition With Nationalists ‘Would Be Treason’

The text is slightly off what I said because I wasn’t accusing Scottish and Welsh Nationalists of being traitors to their countries, but my point was focussed more on Ed Miliband and the Labour leadership.

But leaving that aside, I think the Sky reporter has done a good job.

What do you think?

Rotherham – The creaking British Establishment shuffles into action 15 years late


Here is our PRESS RELEASE

Rotherham – The creaking British Establishment shuffles into action 15 years late


In Rotherham and many other towns and cities across England it appears that Labour’s “one party state” administrations have covered up a widespread problem of predominantly Pakistani/Muslim child rape gangs being allowed to operate with impunity. 

Whenever anyone has sought to challenge this, the very authorities who are paid to act turned a blind eye. They not only refused to help but bullied and discriminated against the very people they were paid to help. This was done for reasons of political correctness. 

When the Creasy report was published on the 4th we saw from the BBC the same mentality displayed in their inadequate reporting of the issue. They tried to make out that there is no element of race or religion in the matrix of either these crimes or the widespread cover-up. This is an official cover-up which may well amount to offences of a “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice”.

The English Democrats demand not only that every member of the child rape gangs be prosecuted, but also that every client of theirs be prosecuted too. Those unfortunate girls were widely prostituted and trafficked so that the gangs could make huge profits (an estimated £200,000 per girl per year). 

We further demand that all those guilty of these crimes be, wherever legally possible, deported after serving lengthy jail sentences.

There should also be an enquiry in the case of each perpetrator as to whether the members of their family have a legally enforceable right to remain in this country. If not they should be deported too.

So far as the Police Officers, Labour Councillors and Labour supporting Council officials, social workers and care workers are concerned, all should be barred from holding any offices of public responsibility and wherever possible they should be prosecuted.

We also demand extra Legal Aid funding should be granted to enable every victim to sue every perpetrator and every conspirator and the guilty authorities to extract full compensation for the horror of their experience.

Robin Tilbrook, Chairman of the English Democrats, who is a Solicitor, said:- “The victims of these child rape gangs may be entitled to compensation of £50,000 for each and every rape. For those victims who endured hundreds of rapes, potential compensation may well run into millions of pounds. The scandalously inadequate British Establishment owes these victims justice and the funding of their quests for full compensation.”

He continued:- “This scandal, running to perhaps over a hundred thousand cases, which reached up into the highest levels of the Labour Government, is one of the worst scandals in the whole of the developed world.”

He added:- “Journalists who knew what was going on and who were involved in covering up are also complicit in these crimes and should be debarred from journalism”.

Robin Tilbrook

Chairman,

The English Democrats

South Yorkshire Police Commission By-election update


South Yorkshire Police Commission By-election update

Here are the expenses for the South Yorkshire Police Commissioner By-election:-

Labour:

Number of votes: 74060

Spent:£123459.61

Cost per vote:£1.68.

UKIP:

Number of votes: 46883

Spent: £157048.65

Cost per vote:£3.35

Conservative:

Number of votes:18536

Spent: £18231.51

Cost per vote:98 pence.

English Democrats:

Number of votes: 8583

Spent: £9567.

Cost per vote: £1.11.

While I had already done a previous Blog item about this by-election, which can be found here >>> http://robintilbrook.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-lessons-of-south-yorkshire-by.html, I thought it was interesting that actually, contrary to some of the comments that I have seen about the relative position of the English Democrats and UKIP, that despite them spending over sixteen times as much money as we were able to spend in the election, and significantly more than even Labour’s spend, they were still not anywhere near beating Labour in South Yorkshire.

It was also interesting that UKIP spent more than three times as much than we did on each and every vote that they received. I think the moral is that if we were actually able to raise enough money to match UKIP’s spending, not only would we beat them, but we would have been more likely to win election than they ever could be.

Could that be something to do with the relative appeal of English nationalism as against British nationalism?


Will a SNP/Labour coalition A.E.C. aka “ice” the UK?

Will a SNP/Labour coalition A.E.C. aka “ice” the UK?


There is much talk and speculation in the media about an SNP and Labour minority coalition after the General Election.

This is particularly after Nicola Sturgeons’ ground breaking announcement that the Scottish National Party after the General Election will vote for English-only issues.

What she and the SNP seem to be looking to achieve is a coalition in Government with a minority Labour Party. There has also been talk of including the Greens, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein.

So for example we may have a House of Commons composed of Labour with 275 MPs, the Conservatives with 300 MPs and the SNP, on the latest opinion polls, with 54 MPs.

In that scenario the SNP and Labour together would then have overall a majority in the House of Commons and be able to form an effective coalition. This would be a Government under which the interests of England, would not merely be ignored and over-ruled but utterly trampled upon! Indeed it could be described as a Government of anti-English Conspiracy or an Anti-English Coalition i.e. A.E.C. (pronounced “ice”). 

So my question to you, dear reader, is how much in favour of English independence do you think the English will be after 5 years of being A.E.C.ed (aka “iced”)?

As you may have guessed I have been searching for a suitable expression with an element of menace to it.

I wonder if you think that the idea of the UK being “A.E.D.ed or “iced” has legs? Here is a definition of the meaning of “iced”from the OnlineSlangDictionary.com “to kill” as in “I’m gonna ice that punk”.

What do you think? Another alternative that I considered was to talk about a Government of Anti-English Conspiracy.

ARE THE FLAGS TELLING US ANYTHING?


ARE THE FLAGS TELLING US ANYTHING?

We have long-standing family friends who live in Ashbourne which is a nice old-fashioned market town in Derbyshire near the border with Staffordshire.

Around the corner from where they live there is a row of houses which are overlooked by the path which I use to walk my dog. I know your heart is sinking already at the thought of a long drawn out story, but in fact the nub of the matter is simple and very encouraging to any English nationalist.

When our friends first moved to their house about 15 years ago, I went out for a walk and looked down on this row of houses there was then one flagpole which flew the Union Jack.

About 10 years ago there were two flagpoles, one flying the Union Jack and the new one flying the Cross of St George.

About 5 years ago there were two flagpoles with the Cross of St George and the one flying the Union Jack.

Last Saturday there were seven flagpoles all flying the Cross of St George and that also included the flagpole that had previously flown the Union Jack.

I suspect that this is very bad news for the Emily Thornberrys of this world and all those who hate and fear the rising sense of English national identity!

But in case you are wondering, these seven flags appeared to have been flying for some time and not to have just been raised in the last few days in order to tell the Islington set to “go forth and multiply”!

THE LESSONS OF THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE BY-ELECTION FOR POLICE COMMISSIONER


THE LESSONS OF THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE BY-ELECTION FOR POLICE COMMISSIONER

 

The fact that is strangest to those of us that have an idealist hope that representative democracy can be a force for good is that over 85.12% of those registered on the electoral roll in South Yorkshire could not be bothered to get off their backsides to vote.  This is whilst they were living in the midst of probably the worst scandal in the whole of the Western world.  They could hardly fail to have been fully aware of it and of much of its ramifications and their idleness puts them as being somewhat complicit in the scandal.  Can it be imagined that if significant numbers had taken to the streets to object over the last 15 years, that even the conspirators at the heart of South Yorkshire Labour wouldn’t have re-thought their approach?

The extent of the scandal is this, for many years now isolated voices have been pointing out that there is a widespread problem of Pakistani/Muslim men sexually predating upon very young English girls.  Although it is now clear that many people within the upper reaches of Labour and, no doubt, of the local media were well aware of this happening.  Not only did they not do anything to prevent it, but they actively demonised anyone who raised it.

This case must be the most appalling example of institutionalised racism and bigotry that anyone could imagine taking place in England.  Given the current furore over Jimmy Saville (and for that matter Ched Evans, the Sheffield footballer, who appears to have taken advantage of a drunken, but at least adult girl), who can doubt the seriousness of what is now officially admitted to be, in Rotherham alone, at least 1,400 children raped, trafficked, abused and, no doubt, at least similar numbers in many other towns across England.

For example, Manchester is beginning to look like a place where Labour behaved in the same way, where Labour government officials, social workers and the police and local media all behaved in the same way.  In Manchester the numbers of girls may exceed 10,000.

It would appear that across England that the scandal may well encompass over 100,000 girls, most of whom were supposedly in local government “Care”, very often having been taken away from feckless parents to be put in a situation which turned out to be far worse.

The extent of the scandal is not just those local officials, police and local politicians who were aware of it and did nothing, or actively colluded in covering it up, but the scandal went as far into the heart of the Labour Government as the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, and was certainly known about by the Labour MPs of the various towns involved, as is clear from the Yorkshire Post article below.

Yet in the midst of this utterly appalling scandal, that any decent human being should be up in arms about, this is the very context in which 849,654 adult citizens living in South Yorkshire couldn’t be bothered to vote.  This figure does not even take account of up to 25% of those eligible to vote who care so little about the future of our country that they are not even on the electoral roll.  It is not as if there was no choice given to those people to vote against the corrupt Labour establishment.  No our candidate, David Allen, had come second last time.  We delivered a hard-hitting leaflet, which I show below, and there was a reasonable amount of media coverage and reporting of what was going on.

Why then was it that only 8,583 people voted for the only candidate genuinely committed to a root and branch tackling of this appalling problem?

Well one answer of course is the paedophile vote.  Labour scraped back in again with mostly postal voters (somewhere in the order of 80% of their vote was postal votes), and they got 74,060 votes.  Those voters would have been the paedophiles themselves, their friends and family and all those that had been involved in the cover-up and institutionalised neglect of their duty to these girls.  There were also, no doubt, some un-thinking Labour Party supporters.  The Liberal Democrats did not stand and that of course helped Labour, as their standing would have split the votes of unthinking Leftists.

Then there is also the fundamental lack of State support for these elections.  When Police Commissioner elections were being introduced by the then Police Commissioner, the aptly named Nick Herbert, I, and many others, lobbied him to have mayoral style booklets delivered to every elector, which would not only explain the role of the Police Commissioner, but also the voting system and every candidate would have an opportunity to put their electoral address into the leaflet.

The Conservative Minister’s calculation was they did not need the booklet as much as the other parties because they have got the most money and therefore could afford to pay for leafleting, but also there is the usual Conservative Party ‘bean counter’ mentality of keeping the costs down, even where that seriously undermines the purpose for which the money has been spent.

Elections are always quite expensive, not least because the returning officers send a notice of the election card to every elector.

All too typically for the British State the card that is sent has very little of importance or use on it and sending it is nothing more than a ‘tick box’ bureaucratic exercise.  Whereas if that note was replaced with a Mayoral style booklet we would have a realistic chance of getting some better involvement from the electors.  But no, Nick Herbert absolutely refused to support these elections in a way that would have made it likely that this ostensibly commendable reform would succeed.

Given the size of the electorate at 1,000,015 and the distances to be covered over the whole of South Yorkshire, comprising some 14 Westminster parliamentary constituencies, and that there is no support in making contact with the electorate for any of the candidates, it is obvious that the amount of money spent on the campaign is likely to make all the difference.

Unfortunately, but inevitably, the English Democrats had the smallest war chest for fighting these elections.  We had a well-designed, hard-hitting leaflet.  We did our best to raise the issue on social media, but in the end the amount of money spent was inevitably going to tell.

 
Labour had not only invested time and effort in the past in getting their supporters on the postal voting system, but also had relatively deep pockets and an urgent need to try to maintain their position in order to close off the prospect of senior members of the Labour Party being arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and various other conspiracy charges arising out of their disgraceful behaviour.

The Tories were there in their role of trying to keep the Punch & Judy shows going between Labour and the Conservatives and splitting any non-establishment opposition vote and got 18,536 votes.

UKIP stood, despite being a party that is opposed to the concept of Police Commissioners, a bizarre position for a party claiming to be in favour of democracy.  They put up a former South Yorkshire Police Inspector, who, even if he wasn’t personally involved in the scandal, must have known about it.  He was supposedly in “Community Policing” and engaging in buttering up the Imams in the various mosques of South Yorkshire.  He would have a vested interest in protecting his friends and former colleagues who are guilty.

However when it came down to money it has been stated that by senior people within UKIP that they spent over £150,000 on the election.  I have also heard others say that they spent up to £250,000 on the election.  In either case they spent at least 15 times as much money on this election as we did and still got nowhere near winning it.  Their vote was 46,883.  So UKIP may have spent over £5 per vote.

It was also interesting that the English Democrats counting agents at the various counts reported that about 40% of all the Second Preference votes were English Democrats, so it sounds as if, even if Labour had not succeeded in getting over the 50% mark, that UKIP would not have succeeded in winning the seat.

The lessons therefore of this election are that it is not enough to have the best policies, or the best candidate, or the best leaflet, or even the best social media campaign, what is required to win this was large numbers of potential supporters signed up to vote on the postal vote and also much more money.

In the absence of either of these two key resources, the English Democrats nevertheless did quite well to get 8,500 votes and to retain our deposit.  We also got significant additional publicity and were treated with respect by the media as a serious political party with serious political aims and a serious and sensible candidate.

Well done David Allen and the South Yorkshire English Democrats who made it all possible!

Here is the Yorkshire Post article I mentioned:-

 

Exclusive: MP and Home Office failed to act on Rotherham grooming 11 years ago

by Adrian Pearson, the Yorkshire Post’s Political Editor

ROTHERHAM’s horrific abuse concerns were raised with the Home Office and the town’s MP but never acted on, The Yorkshire Post can reveal.

Abuse campaigners have revealed how in 2003 they met with a senior Home Office representative to say the Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police could not be trusted and called for urgent Government action.

And in 2009 they wrote to Denis MacShane with a five page letter detailing abuse concerns made by a Rotherham family but received no response.

Mr MacShane has said he was never approached by constituents raising abuse concerns, and that was why he did not speak on the issue of Rotherham-specific abuse in the House of Commons.

The former MP said he has no knowledge of the letter, and that as it was not directly addressed to him but to a larger group he might not necessarily have had to act on it.

The letter was sent by charity Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation, then known as CROP, who said its own researcher had to stop work because of fears a serving police officer was passing information on to abusers.

Evidence of the 2009 letter, released by the influential Home Affairs Select Committee, comes as it emerges former Rotherham Council staff face criminal charges for misconduct in public office.

South Yorkshire Police chief constable David Crompton revealed he asked the National Crime Agency to look at council failings and those of his own force as part of its investigation into how abuse claims were handled.

The abuse charity PACE said it still could not understand why when the Home Office was informed of widespread abuse, incompetence or worse in public office and the possibility of police corruption, civil servants did nothing.

Minutes from the charity show that in early 2002 the Home Office knew its own researcher was under pressure to stop asking difficult questions, with records stating “The Home Office in London…know that she is being asked to falsify data and has other problems.”

The Home Office though told Rotherham charities and youth workers that the researcher’s work was to be axed and, it can today be revealed, banned them from publishing the provisional abuse inquiries.

From 2003 onwards briefing notes had been prepared for the then Home Secretary David Blunket and the charity was told “The Home Secretary is ready to read what CROP sends.”

In 2004 charity chair of trustees Hilary Willmer met with Sue Jago from the Home Office “in which she promised the Home office would give a high profile to the issues we raised”.

Ms Willmer last night said: “When we found out what was happening to these girls we assumed everyone would be horrified and there would be immediate action. We had to painfully learn that that was not the case, including when we told the Home Office.”

Ms Willmer’s charity revealed a family support worker was appointed but was forced to quit because of “she believes at least one police officer was undermining her work and potentially putting her personally at risk as he/she was being paid by pimps/groomers for information.”

It emerged yesterday that South Yorkshire Police has now referred 14 people to the IPCC watchdog and may make further referrals should the criteria be met. The force said Both South Yorkshire Police and the independent investigation will remain in constant dialogue with the IPCC.

Mr MacShane said he has no memory of the charity rasing concerns with him. He said he was among the first to speak out in 2012 when the claims became public, and said many serving officers will have questions to answer.

“No one ever approached me on this, not a single person came to me as a constituent on child abuse by Asian males. This notion that the whole world knew and there was a cover up is balderdash.”

He added: “The real people who have questions to answer are Rotherham police officers. It happened at a district level and all those who served at a district command from roughly 1999 to 2010 need to exam their records to see what they knew.”

The Home Office did not provide a comment.

Click here for the original article>>> http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/general-news/exclusive-mp-and-home-office-failed-to-act-on-rotherham-grooming-11-years-ago-1-6913834

Ever imagined that the courts are unbiased? If so, here is your medicine. Read and be cured!

Kirk here – beam me up Scotty!

Here is an excellent and all too true explanation of the institutional bias at the heart of the new style British judiciary. New Labour gerrymandered so many other things so why would anyone imagine they didn’t do so also to the courts?

Ever wondered why our courts have a Leftist bias?

 By Daniel Hannan

Why do we need a quango for barristers?

Judicial activism is a problem in almost every country. Judges have a lamentable, if inevitable, tendency to rule on the basis of what they think the law ought to say rather than what it actually says.

But here’s a puzzle. Why do they always seem to be biased in the same direction? Courts are forever striking down deportation orders, but did you ever hear of them stepping in to order the repatriation of an illegal immigrant whom the Home Office had allowed to stay? The imposition by Parliament of minimum prison tariffs for certain offences was howled down as an assault on judicial independence. But maximum tariffs? No problem there. It’s common for warrants to be served against Augusto Pinochet or Ariel Sharon or George Bush; never against Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong-un. A minister rules that a murderer should’t be released? Outrageous! A minister rules (in Northern Ireland) that murderers should be released? Quite right.

The US judge Robert Bork wrote a book called Coercing Virtue, which argued that judges were consciously seeking to advance an agenda that had been rejected at the ballot-box. It amounted, Bork averred, to “a coup d’état – slow-moving and genteel, but a coup d’état nonetheless”.

Judges are often open, when speaking extra-judicially, about what they see as their obligation strike down (in Lord Woolf’s phrase) “bad laws”. In one sense, judicial activism is inescapable. Someone, after all, has to be the final arbiter. As Bishop Hoadley of Winchester remarked three centuries ago, “whoever interprets a law may justly be considered the lawgiver, not he who first wrote or spake it”.

Still, why does the judiciary lean Left? Half a century ago, the popular stereotype of a judge was of a stern disciplinarian committed to the absolute defence of property rights. What changed?

Part of the problem is surely the appointments system. Judges used to be chosen by the Lord Chancellor – a system which on paper seemed open to abuse and which, for that very reason, was in practice almost never abused. Successive Lord Chancellors, conscious of their responsibility, would carefully avoid any suspicion of partiality. Then, in 2005, Labour created a Judicial Appointments Commission, which was charged with promoting candidates on the basis, inter alia, of “the need to encourage diversity”. While diversity is certainly desirable (diversity in the fullest sense – of opinion and outlook as well as sex and race), the vagueness of the criterion opened the door to favouritism and partisanship.

Indeed, the prejudice starts further upstream. It’s not easy to be a judge unless you’ve been a QC. The Bar used to be self-regulating, but New Labour changed that, too, creating a quango called QC Appointments. Here, too, one of the criteria is commitment to diversity.

It is vital to stress that this doesn’t mean having more diverse QCs – for which a good case can be made. It means promoting barristers who have a political commitment to “diversity” in the Leftie, public-sector sense of he word. The QCA’s general report, explains that “diversity competence” includes both awareness and action… being aware is not enough: there must be evidence of support for the principle and practice of diversity, or personal action.

For the avoidance of doubt the QCA’s “Approach to the Competencies” report explains:

The Panel sought evidence of a pro-active approach to diversity issues which in outstanding candidates ran like a consistent ‘thread’ through their language and behaviours.

You don’t need to be Richard Littlejohn to see that this is a political test. In the name of diversity, a less diverse cohort of QCs is being created, one whose members are expected to endorse the Left-liberal orthodoxy. Thus can a party that loses office retain power.

It’s worth remembering that the Conservatives were elected on a promise to abolish unelected agencies. Here is an especially superfluous example. Why, after all, should the state have any role in privileging some barristers over others? Couldn’t this be left to the profession itself?
Ministers have scrapped one QCA – the hopeless quango that was supposed to regulate exam boards. Why is the other still hanging around?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100263531/heres-why-the-courts-tend-to-lean-left/ 

Good News from Salford!

The People of Salford will now get the opportunity to change how their council is led and to elect their own Council leader – rather than have another ‘Buggins’ foisted on them by the gang of Labour local hacks!

By August, having started only in March, our English Democrats’ volunteers in Salford had collected over 10,500 signatures on our Petition to trigger a referendum for an Elected Council Leader (aka “Mayor”), under the 2000 Local Government Act. We actually only needed 8,805 but we expected the Council’s current leadership to try to block it – so we got enough extra to prevent them from doing so!

Very reluctantly and after ignoring the legal time scales and after considerable lobbying and even the threat of Legal Action by local English Democrats, Salford City Council have now acknowledged the petition and have confirmed that it is valid and that it has triggered a referendum to let the people of Salford decide if they want an Elected Mayor.

I would like to openly congratulate our North West chairman, Stephen Morris, and his Salford Team for being the first of our groups to successfully trigger a local referendum on this issue!

At our September Conference last year I launched our project of getting Elected Mayors throughout England, as part of The English Democrats’ mission to resuscitate English Democracy, and revealed that Mayoral Petitions had been registered in every relevant Local Authority in England by the English Democrats.

The race is now on to see which of our local groups will succeed in triggering the next referendum!

Here is an interview with Peter Davies, our Mayor of Doncaster, who is doing his honest best for his Town – perhaps every town will soon have its Peter?

Click here >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6SriGBU6xeI

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!