Category Archives: george osborne

Conservative political dishonesty over Brexit

Conservative political dishonesty over Brexit
As I made clear in a previous article I think that many members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party are making the error of thinking that their dishonesty over Brexit is going to be quickly forgotten just like all their previous lies to the electorate.  I think that they are making an order of magnitude error in thinking that this is the case. Brexit is the first time that the public had really focussed on a political issue for many decades. 
It is perhaps worth recalling that David Cameron of the Conservative Government promised repeatedly to implement the outcome of the referendum.  This was not least in the booklet which Cameron used £9m of taxpayers money to print and distribute to every elector in the UK promising to implement the outcome of the referendum.  Instead almost immediately after the referendum he and Osborne resigned. 
The Conservative Parliamentary Party, after a period of unprecedented backstabbing and careerist manoeuvring managed to choose two candidates for leadership, Andrea Leadsom and Theresa May, both of whom it seems lacked any personal leadership qualities whatsoever. 
The forgettable Andrea Leadsom when subjected to some nasty criticism over her comments about having children giving her motivation to do the best for the country, apparently spent the weekend in tears before giving up her leadership challenge (and was ironically rewarded by being made the Minister in charge of waterworks and floods!).
Theresa May was then anointed as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister on the back of promising to implement Brexit with her opaque slogan of “Brexit means Brexit”.  Since then we have been treated to a series of broken promises on top of her longstanding track record of claiming to support reducing immigration to the tens of thousands, when in fact allowing the largest influx of immigrants since Blair swamped us with millions of Eastern Europeans! 
Here are just some of Theresa’s whoppers (with acknowledgment to Guido Fawkes):-
“She broke her promises on calling an election and not triggering Article 50 until the UK had an agreed strategy – two decisions that the history books will not look upon kindly. She promised to put Dexeu in charge of the negotiation and make sure a Brexiteer was doing Brexit – that didn’t happen. She promised not to raise taxes – tax rises are coming in the autumn to fund her NHS splurge.
“There should be no general election until 2020.” General election: 8 May 2017.
“There should be no decision to invoke Article 50 until the British negotiating strategy is agreed and clear.” Article 50 triggered: 29 March 2017. Cabinet Brexit strategy agreed: 7 July 2018.
“If before 2020 there is a choice between further spending cuts, more borrowing and tax rises, the priority must be to avoid tax increases since they would disrupt consumption, employment and investment.” NHS spending increase, funded by “us as a country contributing a bit more [tax]” 17 June 2018.
In her 2017 party conference speech May made the promise again: “With our economic foundation strong – and economic confidence restored – the time has come to focus on Britain’s next big economic challenge: to foster growth that works for everyone, right across our country. That means keeping taxes low.”
“I will therefore create a new government department responsible for conducting Britain’s negotiation with the EU and for supporting the rest of Whitehall in its European work. That department will be led by a senior Secretary of State – and I will make sure that the position is taken by a Member of Parliament who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU.” Theresa May takes personal charge of Brexit talks: 24th July 2018.
“Now is not the time for me to set out my full negotiating principles – that will come later.” Not sure people would have inferred two years later.
“I will dedicate my premiership to fixing this problem [housing]…
 as Prime Minister I am going to make it my mission to solve this problem. I will take personal charge of the government’s response, and make the British Dream a reality by reigniting home ownership in Britain once again.” We’re on our second Housing Secretary this year, a damp squib of a housing policy and silence from May…
“The Conservative Party can come together – and under my leadership it will.” (sic!)
You can see why Tory members might have quite liked her promises to stay true to Brexit and not raise taxes are disillusioned now! Who isn’t?

Here is a link to the original article>>> https://order-order.com/2018/07/26/theresa-mays-promises-to-tory-members-then-and-now/

Quentin Letts calls for us all to send letters to the Conservative Freepost address


Quentin Letts calls for us all to send letters to the Conservative Freepost address. Here is Quentin Lett’s article:-

QUENTIN LETTS: Cameron’s £9million pro-EU mailshot stinks. So I’m sending mine straight back!


By QUENTIN LETTS FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Received your pro-EU propaganda leaflet in the post yet? As you may have heard, the Government is blowing millions of pounds on a public mailshot.

All British households are to receive a copy of this 16-page, glossy leaflet which instructs us — cue a fanfare of trumpets and shouts of acclamation from an obedient populus — in the glories of the European Union.

You lucky, lucky people.

As we speak, valiant employees of Royal Mail are working to bring us this vital document.

It is emblazoned with the crest of Her Majesty’s Government and brims with snapshots, statistics and claims about the positive effect of the EU on Britain.

A message from our rulers, my, my! Across the kingdom, children press their noses to smudged front windows, waiting for sight of their postie to see if this will be their lucky day.

The project is so vast, it almost demands the poetic treatment W. H. Auden gave to the Night Mail in that celebrated 1936 documentary film (‘This is the Night Mail, crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order. . . ’).

Steam trains may no longer be around, but articulated lorries are being loaded with pallets of these Cameroon EU leaflets at remote depots late of night.

Scandal

Sorting office machines chatter and click like crazy as the nation sleeps. Soon after dawn, postmen and women trudge the staircases of residential tower blocks or amble down provincial garden paths — no doubt whistling a cheery air as they step — to bring the uplifting news about Brussels.

‘Economic security, peace and stability,’ it declares. You can almost hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony pumping away in the background.

Such co-ordination of proletarian toil is enough, my dears, to bring tears to your eyes. Or perhaps not. For this £9 million junk mailshot is, to put it mildly, controversial.

There are some of us, and I would happily include myself in their number, who would call it a sorry and scurvy little scandal, one that could ultimately limit David Cameron’s premiership, damage the Conservative Party and dent our already battered trust in Whitehall.

The whole thing stinks — stinks like a Belgian wrestler’s jockstrap — and we should demand explanations from those who have authorised it.

It is hard to think of a more blatant stitch-up in public affairs since, well, the last time our country was given a vote on Europe back in 1975, when the Establishment presented the electorate an entirely false prospectus on what was then described as the European Economic Community.

Later, without any public vote on the matter, that segued into the European Community. And then the European Union. And these ruddy Europhiles expect us to trust them again!

The simple fact that such a mailing is happening at all reflects the intense ill-feeling — and, perhaps, of panic in Whitehall — that the public is refusing to be so gullible this time round.

The leaflet certainly appears to break promises made in Parliament by ministers less than a year ago.

The Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, and Europe minister, David Lidington, as good as stated in the Commons last June that no such mailshot would be undertaken by the Government.

I say ‘as good as’ because Mr Lidington’s exact words were ‘we have no intention of legislating to allow the Government to do things such as mailshots, paid advertising or leafleting’. The italics are mine.

I suppose Mr Lidington could claim that the Government did not, indeed, legislate for this mailshot. It just went ahead with it anyway. But if he did try to argue that, he would be guilty of the most disingenuous shading of the spirit of what he said.

As for that unconvincing figure Hammond (how can such an uninspiring little man have been given one of our great offices of state?), he noted that the Remain and Leave campaigns would do their own mailshots.

He added: ‘The Government has no intention of undermining those campaigns.’

Ladies and gentlemen, it has just done precisely that, undermining the Leave campaign with a nakedly pro-EU leaflet that has been funded by taxpayers.

If the Commons had any self-respect, it would accuse Messrs Hammond and Lidington of misleading the House last summer. Ministers who mislead the House were once obliged to resign. Alas, we now live in a Britain where ministers who lie on behalf of the EU get off scot-free. So much for the principle, or lack of principle, behind this leaflet.

Next is the cost: £9 million, says the Government airily, wafting aside objections as if to say that £9 million is a piffling sum.

Is it? The cost may well be higher when you consider production and distribution costs to 27 million homes from Land’s End to John o’Groats.

Schmaltzy

Since when has George Osborne’s Treasury become so careless of the pounds, shillings and pence? And would the public not prefer £9 million to be spent on, say, healthcare or schools or even on repairs to Buckingham Palace?

Instead, it’s being spent on millions of swanky leaflets telling us how to vote in the referendum.

Eurosceptic Liam Fox has called it ‘Juncker Mail’, punning on the name of the European Commission’s notoriously thirsty president Jean-Claude Juncker. With normal junk mail, of course, you can opt out of unwanted advertising (or try to — not that preferential mail schemes always work).

With Government communications, there is no such opt-out. The beggars send you the stuff even if you do not want it.

The timing of this public misinformation service has been highly questionable.

Some people believe it was announced last week in an attempt by spin doctors to obscure the row over David Cameron’s tax affairs.

Others claim, I suspect with rather more cause, that it has been issued sneakily just before spending limits are introduced on the two sides in the referendum campaign.

At this point you may ask: ‘Who is the top civil servant who would have authorised this leaflet?’

To which the answer, surprise, surprise, is Cabinet Secretary ‘Sir Cover-Up’ Jeremy Heywood. A sneaky, last-minute ambush of the Brexiters is a classic Sir Cover-Up tactic.

Then there is the content. It is a depressing (yet somehow simultaneously comical) mixture of dumbed-down rot and schmaltzy cynicism.

One photograph, in the manner of the children’s TV show Play School, shows a June calendar with a red circle round the 23rd, referendum day. Don’t forget to vote, children.

Political correctness has been observed, too. For example, there is a photo of someone who looks like a man doing a supermarket shop and carrying a taupe handbag.

A snapshot of a ‘UK Border’ sign, by the way, has the caption: ‘We control our own borders.’ Ha! I like it! If you think we exert any proper control of our borders, you really must be a politician.

So, what can we do with this darn leaflet, this flimsy wad of piffle, this stapled spiel of Cameroonish baloney?

Reading it is a fruitless enterprise, for you will not learn anything reliable and it may simply cause your pulse to race with irritation.

Can we scrunch it up and use it as litter for the hamster cage? But the paper is non-absorbent. How about paper darts? Wrong shape. Use it for wall cavities? As draught excluders? We could burn it, I suppose, but that might contravene EU carbon emissions targets.

Some have suggested sticking these ridiculous propaganda sheets into an envelope saying ‘return to sender’ and addressing them to Mr Cameron at 10 Downing Street, London.

But that will simply mean that we taxpayers pick up the postal bill — and anyway, the Royal Mail would probably cotton on and refuse.

Ingenious

There is, my friends, a better answer, and it comes from my friend Anthony, a vigorous and ingenious Brexiter. He suggests putting your EU leaflets in an envelope and addressing them to a Freepost address used by Conservative Party fundraisers for their fat-cat donors.

This will mean that the Royal Mail is paid by the recipient.

You might say that this is a little hard on the poor old Tory Party. Well, it is their ruddy leader who has sent out this leaflet. Let them have it out with him.

PS: And that address? It is Joanna George, Freepost RSBB-XRZT-ZTXE, The Conservative Party Foundation, 30 Millbank, London SW1P 4DP.

You can even enclose a little message, telling them precisely what you think of Mr Cameron and Sir Cover-Up’s leaflet.

I am sure they will be grateful for the feedback. After all, isn’t this a listening government?

Here is the link to the original>>> David Cameron’s £9million pro-EU mailshot stinks writes Quentin Letts | Daily Mail Online

Here is my letter:-

Dear Madam

Re: EU Referendum

I reject the propaganda leaflet for which your Leader, Dave Donald Cameron, misappropriated public funds to send to every elector in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It was a gross Breach of Trust and I look forward to the day when he can be personally surcharged for doing it.

Yours faithfully

R C W Tilbrook

Statement by the English Democrats’ Chairman on the budget

Statement by the English Democrats’ Chairman on the budget

It is very disappointing to see the British Government yet again using its position over England to pick on the English by disadvantaging English students by entirely removing grants when these are still available in Scotland and Wales.  The attitude displayed is of contempt for the English People who are just seemingly viewed as the source of all the cash that the British Establishment chooses (all too often) to waste elsewhere.  

Also George Osbourne’s much trumpeted “English Devolution” is of course nothing of the sort.  It is not the national Devolution which has been given to the Scots and Welsh.  It is merely a little measure of mere decentralisation introduced, ironically on a top down basis, by the most over centralised State in Europe.

Robin Tilbrook

Chairman,

The English Democrats

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Honourable George Osborne MP is anti-English – shock?

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Honourable George Osborne MP is anti-English – shock?


The article from the Telegraph below is about the admiring reaction of one of Labour’s “thinkers”, Jon Cruddas MP, who is commenting on George Osborne’s adoption, as he sees it, of the latest version of the British Establishment’s efforts to try to break England up into “Regions”, viz “City Regions”.

For any English Nationalist, the fact that a leading “Conservative” politician would want to break England up into Regions, will cause no surprise whatsoever, after all it was the Conservatives who introduced the whole concept of regionalising England and implemented their original scheme under John Major under the EU Maastricht Treaty.

For the general public however the problem with the Conservatives is of course their “skill” in misleading the public and lying about what they are trying to achieve.

They are a party whose electoral appeal depends strongly on people’s patriotism but they are not actually a patriotic party. On the contrary, they are a party of globalisation and international capitalism and are generally the big business party.

Their vote also depends strongly on ordinary peoples’ Euro-scepticism, but in fact the Conservative leadership, whilst willing to make plenty of noises of a Euro-sceptic variety, are arguably the most Europhile of all the parties in what they actually do in office. They are a party that took us into the EU on a deliberately dishonest prospectus by Edward Heath, and thereafter cemented us into the EU both under Mrs Thatcher (one of the leaders of the pro-EU group in our 1976 referendum) and then John Major with the Maastricht Treaty.

All the noises that Cameron and Osborne make about Euro-scepticism now are for blatantly obvious reasons, a combination of increasing problems with their genuinely Euro-sceptic back-benchers and fear of the electorate now given a genuinely Euro-sceptic option, i.e. UKIP, which although seems unlikely to get many MPs, nevertheless seems very likely to cut short David Cameron’s and George Osborne’s time in office at the General Election next year.

So the problem with the Conservatives is the fact that they are much more likely to be successful in deceiving voters into thinking that they are patriotic Euro-sceptics and for those that don’t think very deeply at all they may even think that the Conservatives care something for England.

For those who are that confused the antidote is this clear statement from the then leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague (who David Cameron recently described as the greatest living Yorkshire man!). Here is what he said in 2003:- “English nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism that can arise within the United Kingdom, because England is five-sixths of the population of the UK. Once a part of a united country or kingdom that is so predominant in size becomes nationalistic, then really the whole thing is under threat.”

So far as Labour is concerned, I think increasingly few people believe that Labour is patriotic, let alone pro-English. Emily Thornberry and the overreaction to her demonstrated, for all those who needed such a demonstration, that Labour’s leadership is not only anti-English but very nervous about being found out as being anti-English and somewhat incompetent about it.

The article also shows another instance of where the “mainstream” parties in the traditional democratic model are supposed to be competing, are in fact not competing, but instead are somewhat conspiring against the interests of the public and, in particular, the English Nation.

Here is the article. What do you think?

Jon Cruddas praises Tory adoption of Labour’s cities agenda


Labour’s head of policy review says the chancellor has made successful land grab of Labour’s agenda on cities and English devolution

The chancellor, George Osborne, has made a significant and successful land grab for Labour’s agenda of re-empowering English cities as the new engine of economic growth, the head of Labour policy review, Jon Cruddas, has admitted.

He has also conceded that Labour had probably not been as agile as its Conservative opponents in projecting its English devolution policy, adding that the party still faced its biggest challenge to build a movement for national renewal and optimism in a cold economic climate.

His remarks to a meeting held by Progress, the New Labour pressure group, in Westminster may reflect a frustration that one of the central themes of his policy review has not been given the prominence he wanted, allowing Osborne to reach a devolution deal with Labour northern cities, notably Manchester.

At one point in the summer it appeared Labour might have monopoly ownership of the English devolution agenda, especially after similar plans put forward by the former Conservative cabinet member, Lord Heseltine, had apparently been spurned by Downing Street.

Cruddas said: “On this I have been very impressed with what Osborne has done. They parked the Heseltine project for a couple of years. Then they realised from late July what was happening and for the last few months they have tried to backfill around this policy agenda, and I think they have done that very effectively. Personally, I think it is good for the country that the Conservative government is going there just as Labour is going there.”

He explained that Labour had spent two years re-engineering a growth strategy and solving the English democracy question through devolution to cities. “Osborne has been agile enough to see that and has made a major land grab about a lot of our policy. The question of England has been central to a lot of our thinking in our policy review and maybe we have not been as agile as our some of our opponents in putting that up in lights in the way that we should.”

He said the model of devolution to Greater Manchester was very attractive. He added: “I congratulate the government on what they have done, and, most important, I congratulate them on learning about the innovations of great Labour leaders – we should be speaking very confidently to that agenda because it is our agenda. It resets what we are about.”

He said Labour-led English local government in the past four years had saved lots of money and yet innovated the delivery of public services, claiming this represents a new model for social democracy. “Labour nationally should be incubating the best practices in English local government and distilling it into a new story of where the future of the country lies.

“Osborne was very successful in the past three months in grabbing hold of this agenda and our response should be we welcome this change in direction and working alongside this Labour innovation across our cities.”

Cruddas has also become an enthusiast for the way in which technology can empower citizens and innovate public services. He also praised another Conservative figure, singling out cabinet office minister Francis Maude, saying: “I must admit Maude has done a great job for the first couple of years in his department re-engineering government digital services.” He said the issue was how to take Maude’s reforms to the next stage using open data to codify new forms of citizenship as “the foundation stone of a new wave of radical public service reform”.

Discussing the politics of despair represented by Ukip, Cruddas said: “You have to confront it by a totally different story about national renewal of a country, especially in England. That is the only option available to us. It has to be based around a story about what this country could be rather than what it was in danger of becoming if these forces are incentivised by people running from them.”

Cruddas also aligned himself with those who favoured a bold manifesto offering a big picture of a new country, rejecting those who say “keep our mouths shut, turn up the dial on immigration and welfare and then we are in”.

Any cursory reading of Labour history is that it wins when it is bold, he added, claiming “we are in an epic era of change”.

He added: “My view is that you cannot waste opposition. It’s disrespectful to the electorate.”

Here is the link to the original Guardian article>>> Jon Cruddas praises Tory adoption of Labour’s cities agenda | Politics | The Guardian