Category Archives: english manifesto

Former Labour Cabinet Minister calls for proper recognition of English interests

 Former Labour Cabinet Minister calls for proper recognition of English interests

John Denham, the former Labour MP and a former Labour Cabinet Minister, who is now the Professor of English Identity and Politics at Winchester University has called for recognition within Labour of the English nationalist movement.  In doing so of course he admits that at present the Labour Party doesn’t properly recognise England at all, and is reluctant to mention the ‘E’ word, let alone give us our rights as English people. 
His article is a good one, and I put it below, but one area of course that is not mentioned at all is the idea of the English Nation. 
Labour are willing to discuss the idea of the Scottish Nation and the Welsh Nation, but they are not prepared to recognise the ideas that England has its own Nation – let alone the English Nation has its own country, namely England!
It has been interesting also to see that John Denham has encountered flak from Far-Leftists within the Labour Party who do not like him raising the ‘E’ word!
His intervention is therefore welcome for the health and progress of the English movement – even if he feels he can’t fully come out as an English nationalist yet!
Below is the article.  What do you think?

DevolutionEnglandEnglish Votes for English LawsJohn DenhamNational Education ServiceScotland Bill

20 years ago, Parliament was debating the Scotland Bill. Within months, both Wales and Scotland were well on the way to their own elected governments. From then onwards, England’s education, health, social care, bus, environment and agriculture policy was distinct from that of its neighbours.
Reading Labour’s recently published 2018 policy consultation, you would never know devolution had even happened. Of eight papers, only one – on health – can even bring itself to use the word ‘England’. The policy consultation is a constitutional dog’s breakfast that ignores the challenges of making policy within a devolved UK. Most documents seem to refer to England, but don’t say so. Others wander blindly across UK, devolved and unresolved policy areas without asking party members how to manage the complications that will inevitably arise.
Education policy is devolved, so presumably the ‘National Education Service’ is only for England, but we are not told that. No one could imagine Welsh or Scottish Labour writing policies that don’t mention Wales or Scotland, so why can’t our Labour Party talk about England? The consultation on housing, local government and transport – all devolved matters – is subtitled ‘giving people the power’. It talks about local devolution. Is this devolution within England, or devolution in every part of the UK? We can assume that it is about England, but why not say so?
‘Greening Britain’ (sic) covers energy policy (not devolved) and air quality (devolved). It covers agriculture, which will become hugely contentious – in theory, it is devolved, but effectively most policy is made in Brussels. With Brexit, the powers will be returned to us: should they go straight to the devolved administrations? Cardiff and Edinburgh say ‘yes’, but many in England would want to maintain a single UK market for farm produce. It’s an ideal question for policy consultation, but the document doesn’t even mention the issue.
The policy paper on poverty and inequality is mainly about UK-wide policy, though it covers some devolved issues. ‘Protecting our communities’ ranges across English, Welsh and UK responsibilities, without making the distinctions clear.
Labour will pay a price for this confused lack of clarity. We cannot change Britain, or any part of it, without an understanding of where power lies now and a clear view of where it should lie in the future.
The 1997 Labour government did not make a serious attempt – despite John Prescott’s best efforts – to shift power and resources out of London. England saw no constitutional change (except, ironically, in London). England needs devolution today because the last Labour government, of which I was a part, failed. Labour members should be asked about the governance of England as a whole: how power and resources will be devolved, how laws for England are made, and about England’s relationship with the rest of the UK.
The party must stop talking as though England and Britain are the same thing. This lazy confusion feeds nationalist propaganda in Scotland, discourages party members from thinking about England’s needs and makes us sound out of touch with millions of voters.
The confused policy documents obscure the reality that England is the only part of Britain permanently ruled by the UK government. It’s a constitutional arrangement that allows a Conservative government to bribe the DUP while taking free school meals from English kids. We should at least be asked whether we want this to continue, but the papers avoid any discussion of how England’s laws are made (including the thorny issue of English votes on English laws).
The idea of a federal UK raised in the 2017 manifesto has disappeared.
Wales and Scotland have radical traditions. England has its own. ‘’For the many not few’ echoes popular English campaigns for land and homes, for protection from exploitation, for justice and rights, using self-organisation and co-operation. Labour could draw on such stories that are embedded in communities across the nation, but only if we can call the country, England, by its name.
While not all voters are bothered whether we mention England by name, plenty do care. They know where they live, they are proud to be English and they want to know what a Labour government will do for England.
In narrow electoral terms, Labour hasn’t won the popular vote in England since 2001. By the time of the next election, we will have been behind the Tories for 21 years. We are 60 seats behind the Conservatives and we won’t be in government unless we win more English votes. In 2015, we were badly damaged by claims that Labour policy for England would be dictated by the SNP.
At the next election, we need an English manifesto that sets out exactly what Labour will do in England; the policy consultation should be the starting point for that manifesto. Labour has gained a narrow lead on ‘best party to represent England’ but that support is dwarfed by those who can’t identify any party that stands for England. Making it clear that we know what country we are talking about and not being afraid of mentioning its name won’t guarantee victory, but it would be a good start.

Here is a link to the original >>>https://labourlist.org/2018/04/john-denham-why-does-our-labour-party-refuse-to-talk-about-england/

UKIP AND THEIR MISSING ENGLISH MANIFESTO


UKIP AND THEIR MISSING ENGLISH MANIFESTO


In the General Election, as I told Russia Today in this interview click here >>>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzrCSDkjIac&feature=youtu.be, I think UKIP missed their historic opportunity.

UKIP’s leadership should have known, from the work of Professors Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford, in their book “Revolt on the Right”, that UKIP’s best opportunity was to move into being English Nationalists.

I had always thought that, as a result of my discussions with Nigel Farage and other leaders within UKIP, that in fact UKIP would never go for this, as their leadership are too much focussed on being an old fashioned British nationalist party.

I have of course been saying this to anyone that would listen within the system, including some influential people within the Conservative Party. I don’t think that it is any coincidence that the Conservatives had spotted that UKIP’s leaders unwillingness to commit to English nationalism was a potentially serious weakness in UKIP’s position.

In the run up to the General Election the Conservatives had begun to make noises that would please less critical English nationalists, such as commitment to English votes for English laws and Cameron’s comments immediately after the Scottish referendum, they had not gone as far as agreeing to have an England specific manifesto, despite the obvious need for such a specific manifesto in a partially devolved “United” Kingdom. What however did happen was they waited to see what UKIP would do.

In the event UKIP opened themselves up to being triangulated (in the Blairite language i.e. outmanoeuvred) on the English nationalist flank by the mistakes of launching a British manifesto with very few mentions of England in it and then they compounded this mistake by launching a Scotland specific manifesto and a Welsh specific manifesto and a Northern Irish specific manifesto, but none specifically for England.

Once UKIP had done this the Conservatives came out with their specifically English manifesto. Although this was a fairly thin piece of work and its detail would not satisfy committed English nationalists, it wasn’t aimed at us, it was aimed at ordinary English people who are feeling increasingly left out of the devolutionist way in which the United Kingdom is going.

Anecdotally I can say from talking to quite a lot of people it worked brilliantly. One of the best examples being a sub-post master living locally where I live in Essex, who told me that although he and his family were long term trade unionists and Labour voters, even he in the end couldn’t bring himself to vote for Labour and for the first time ever he voted Conservative in order to keep the SNP from having a decisive say over England and being able to get Scotland even more favourable treatment than it has already!

As English nationalists we must of course hope that the habit of voting along national lines will grow!

I do think Scotland’s history suggests it will. After all it was Labour that was riding the Scottish nationalist lion in the 1980s as a way of undermining the Conservatives there. Once people got into the habit of voting along national lines they were far more open to voting for a specifically Scottish nationalist party!

The ‘shy’ English nationalists who won it for the Tories and flummoxed the pollsters


The ‘shy’ English nationalists who won it for the Tories and flummoxed the pollsters

After the General Election I was called into the Russia Today Westminster Studio at Millbank Tower to give an interview on my view on what had happened. Here is a link to this video>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzrCSDkjIac&feature=youtu.be .

It is interesting to see that Professor Eric Kaufmann of the London School of Economics has produced a similar analysis. Here is the link to his analysis >>> http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-shy-english-nationalists-who-won-it-for-the-tories-and-flummoxed-the-pollsters/

What do you think?

UKIP FAILS THE ENGLISH TEST

UKIP FAILS THE ENGLISH TEST


When Nigel Farage got re-elected as Leader of UKIP there was a distinct move in UKIP, for a time, to portray itself as being, at least to some extent, an English nationalist party. 

Given the various dirty tricks and other activities that were going on with UKIP at the time against us, it seemed obvious to the English Democrats’ National Council that these moves were just designed to undermine the English Democrats, rather than a genuine change of heart.

Over the years since we have had various people say to us that UKIP is an English nationalist party and try to persuade us that we should therefore join forces.

It is obvious from looking at Twitter, Facebook and the internet generally that there are a great many others out there who had also thought of UKIP as being an English nationalist party.

During the course of this General Election the scales should have fallen from all those peoples’ eyes as UKIP has shown itself to be very clearly not an English nationalist party. Nigel Farage has even expressly denied being an English nationalist (and, indeed, even a British nationalist, no doubt to the somewhat surprise of his British nationalist members!).

Not only has Nigel Farage’s new UKIP (British) manifesto very limited mention of England or the English, but their slogan in this election was “Believe in Britain”. Also despite clear commitments in the past to produce an English manifesto it has not been produced. In stark contrast they did launch a Scottish-only manifesto. Last, but not least, we have had a series of very clear remarks from others in the leadership of UKIP that they are British Unionists and not about English nationalism at all.

Probably the clearest example is the comments of David Coburn MEP, who before he became elected as an MEP had for many years been UKIP’s principal organiser in London. Click here for a link to YouTube where we have recorded his very clear answer as to where UKIP’s national loyalties lie >>> https://youtu.be/QSuT0JjgSjY

In fact, of course, nobody should have been surprised, the answer was always in UKip’s name! I wonder if people would have understood that more easily if they had called themselves BRITKIP?

What do you think?