Category Archives: leave

English Democrats bring the Case to get a Declaration that the UK has left the EU as of the 29th March 2019

This is our only chance to complete what we voted for in the EU Referendum!

We are serving the legal papers required to bring this case but we really need all the support that Leave supporters can give us to make sure that we can match the expensive legal muscle whom the Government and Remainers will instruct against us! 

Please help as generously as you can! 

There is a donate button on our website >>> EnglishDemocrats.Party

Here are the draft Grounds:-

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
BETWEEN
THE QUEEN
ON THE APPLICATION OF THE ENGLISH DEMOCRATS
(REG. NO. 6132268)
Applicant
-and-
THE PRIME MINISTER (1)
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EXITING THE EUROPEAN UNION (2)
Respondents
________________________________
GROUNDS OF THE APPLICATION
_________________________________
1.     It is submitted that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has left the European Union as of the 29thMarch 2019 after the expiry of its two year Notice to Leave dated 29thMarch 2017.
2.     Much of the relevant law has been explored and ruled upon by this Honourable Court and by the Court of Appeal and by the Supreme Court in the case of R (on the application of Miller and another) – v – Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC5.  Consequently Parliament enacted the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. 
3.     The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland joined the European Union pursuant to Treaty in 1972 and subsequently the European Union Act 1972 was enacted to give domestic legal force to the Treaty obligations to the European Union.
4.     The current overarching constitution of the European Union was reformed under the Lisbon Treaty which was brought into direct legal force in the United Kingdom pursuant to the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008.
5.     Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty  reads as follows:-
“Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU)
1.     Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
2.     A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention.  In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union.  That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.  It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
3.     The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
4.     For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.
A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
5.     If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asked to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.”
                           
6.     On the 23rd June 2016 the voters of the United Kingdom, by a majority, and the voters of England by a larger majority,  voted, in the largest democratic mandate in the United Kingdom’s history, to leave the European Union. 
7.     In accordance with the United Kingdom’s “Constitutional Requirements” Parliament enacted the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017.  The Preamble to that Act states that it is:- “An Act to confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU” 
The Act provides:-
“1. Power to notify withdrawal from the EU
(1)  The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.”
8.     Pursuant to the statutory power granted by the European Withdrawal Act 2017 the Prime Minister duly served the Notice on 29th March 2017.  That Notice expired on the 29th March 2019. 
9.     Accordingly it is submitted that as of the scintilla temporis after the expiry of the said notice on the 29thMarch 2019, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has left the European Union.
10.In the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018 Parliament further enacted a transitional scheme whereby it proposed to transpose all EU law into a direct effect in the UK jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Scotland and England and Wales.  Much of that Act has not been brought into force.  The Act mis-describes its implementation date as “exit day”.  This is something of a misnomer since under the true construction of this Act it has no role, either purported or implicit, in determining the date of departure of the UK leaving the European Union.  Within the meaning of the Act, “exit date” is merely the implementation date for the Act’s transactional arrangements.
11.The Applicant is aware that there has been purported ministerial Regulation under the 2018 Act which may have been approved by resolution in both Houses.  However even if it has, it is submitted that such a Regulation cannot of itself be in any way definitive of the UK’s actual departure from the European Union.  The relevant wording of the Act makes this clear:- 
“European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018
An act to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and make other provision in connection with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU.
[26th June 2018]
1 Repeal of the European Communities Act 1972
The European Communities Act 1972 is repealed on exit day.
2 Saving for EU-derived domestic legislation
(1) EU-derived domestic legislation, as it has effect in domestic law immediately before exit day, continues to have effect in domestic law on and after exit day.
20 Interpretation
(1) In this Act—
“exit day” means 29 March 2019 at 11.00 p.m. (and see subsections (2) to (5));
(2) In this Act references to before, after or on exit day, or to beginning with exit day, are to be read as references to before, after or at 11.00 p.m. on 29 March 2019 or (as the case may be) to beginning with 11.00 p.m. on that day.
(3) Subsection (4) applies if the day or time on or at which the Treaties are to cease to apply to the United Kingdom in accordance with Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union is different from that specified in the definition of “exit day” in subsection (1).
(4) A Minister of the Crown may by regulations—
(a) amend the definition of “exit day” in subsection (1) to ensure that the day and time specified in the definition are the day and time that the Treaties are to cease to apply to the United Kingdom, and
(b) amend subsection (2) in consequence of any such amendment.”
12.Despite the express wording of the European Union (Notification f Withdrawal) Act 2017, expressly only empowering the Prime Minister to give Notice to withdraw the United Kingdom from the EU, the Prime Minister has purported to request an extension of the Article 50 date for departure and subsequently purported to agree an extension to the date of departure. 
13.It is submitted, in accordance with long and high authority of legal precedents and also recently and comprehensively in R (on the application of Miller and another) – v – Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC5 that, statute fully displaces any residual prerogative powers. 
14.In the premises the only power that the Prime Minister had, as regards Article 50, was the service of the Notice withdrawing the United Kingdom from the EU and giving two years notice.  That power was functus officio on the 29thMarch 2017. Accordingly, her purported request for an extension of the date of departure and the Government’s purported agreement to such an extension is and was unlawful and is and was null and void.
15.In the premises the Applicant seeks a Declaration from this Honourable Court that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland left the European Union upon the expiry of the Article 50 Notice on the 29th March 2019.
Statement of Fact
I believe that the facts in these Grounds are true.
Signed …………………………………           Dated ……………………..
            Robin Charles William Tilbrook

LEADING REMAINER ADMITS SYSTEMATIC LYING TO THE PUBLIC

LEADING REMAINER ADMITS SYSTEMATIC LYING TO THE PUBLIC 

LEADING “LIBERAL” TORY CONFIRMS HIS ELECTIONS BASED UPON SYSTEMATIC LYING TO THE PUBLIC

Matthew Parris, the former Conservative MP who has made many bigoted remarks about Leave voters, has just published the article below, in which he admits systematically lying to the public throughout his political career in order to get himself elected and also he admits deliberately acting in such a way to undermine popular democracy. 

In reading his damning confession it is worth remembering that, not only are there others in the Conservative Party, such as Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve and indeed Theresa May, by whom I suspect very similar confessions could also have been made, but also there are many within the Labour Party whose conduct I suspect is exactly the same. 

This kind of behaviour is wholly par for the course amongst elitist Westminster British Establishment supporters of “Liberal Democracy”!

Here is the article:-

Why I don’t, never have, and never will trust the people – by Matthew Parris (former Conservative MP)

It was late, and a friend and I were left to talk Brexit. He’s a keen and convinced Tory Brexiteer MP but to stay friends we have tended to steer off the topic. This, however, felt like a moment to talk.

The conversation taught me nothing about Brexit, something about him, and a lot about myself and the strain of Conservatism I now realise I’m part of — and which is part of me. Oddly, then, this column is not really about Brexit, but about trusting the people. I don’t. Never have and never will. Our conversation forced me to confront the fact.

My friend knows well enough why I’m a Remainer, but guessed correctly that I’ve puzzled about why he isn’t. I had not quite expected what I heard. He understands business and finance and is good at facts and figures, so I’d supposed his wish for a ‘clean’ Brexit would be all about the economic advantages. He’s a firm believer in individual choice, too, so I had supposed he would dwell on the need to ‘take back control’.

No doubt he holds to these strands of the Leave argument — but talking to me he hardly mentioned the practical benefits of Brexit. No, there was something else that seemed to drive his anxiety that we leave the EU. Otherwise, he said: ‘I just worry about our democracy, respect for our constitution and the effect that a betrayal of the 2016 referendum result would have on the people who voted for me and our party last year.’

He returned to this repeatedly, and I saw that he was sincere. As a democrat, and a Conservative who owed his position in Parliament to a little piece of England that he came from, that he knew, that knew him, and whose electors’ minds and feelings he had come to understand over the years, my friend felt with a quiet passion that he must not break his word to them, must not slither away from undertakings that had been given.

He felt the same about the electorate nationally, the British people’s trust in the Conservative party, and their confidence in politics itself. He felt, in short, conscious of an unseen bond between parliament and people, and fearful of the wider consequences should it be broken.

I did not say much, because I could see he meant it; and what he meant was not really the kind of assertion one can confound with counter-argument or counter-assertion. It was about weighing things and, the scales being within his own breast, the way the scales tipped was for him just a fact, and undeniable.

But for me they tip differently; and for me too that is a fact, and undeniable. I lay in bed that night thinking about this; and my conclusions follow. As I’m not running for office I shall not pull punches.

Tories like me, and I think we used to be in the majority, see good governance as an effort to live with democracy rather than to an effort to live by democracy. It is why we were so chary about referendums in the first place. We are wary of the populace and instinctively hostile to the instincts of the mob. We see the popular will as a sometimes dangerous thing, to be handled, guided, and on key occasions (and subtly) thwarted.

We know, however, that the people’s will cannot be overlooked. We see it as a corrective to the over-mighty and a warning to those who govern not to lose touch with popular feeling. But at the idea that the people should dictate the policies of government on a daily basis, we shudder.

Our kind of Conservatism is either in temporary abeyance, or going permanently out of fashion — I do not know which. Its decline since the middle of the 20th century has been so gradual as to mask its extent over time. At the beginning of that century it was possible for Arthur Balfour to remark: ‘I have the greatest respect for the Conservative party conference, but I would no more consult it on a matter of high policy than I would my valet’ without this being thought anything but wit; today its utterance would end a political career.

When I first went into politics, initially as a researcher, in 1977, it was commonplace among us Tories to see and describe ‘the will of the people’ not as our mentor but as a rock to be navigated. Capital punishment and judicial flogging were very popular with the public. The hanging debate at party conferences was an annual nightmare for our leading spokesmen, but I never heard it suggested, even by colleagues who supported the return of these punishments, that we should bring them back because the people wanted it.

As for colleagues opposed to both, our challenge was to find ways of ducking the issue. Once I became an MP, I did so by voting for the principle and against the practice. This subversion of democracy (in Theresa May’s phrase) caused me embarrassment, but not a second’s guilt. Sod democracy: hanging was wrong.

In the late 1970s, we Tories were painfully aware that popular feeling opposed any confrontation with the trade unions, but we believed this would prove necessary. Our response was, so far as possible, to tiptoe round the issue during the 1979 general election. We succeeded. Among ourselves we talked cheerfully about subterfuge. The Britain of 1979 and 1983 most emphatically did not vote for a massive confrontation with the coal miners. We made sure the electorate was never asked.

Even today, of course, politicians can and sometimes must dodge the popular will, and they know it. But who now dares say these things? And what today we do but no longer dare say we do, tomorrow we may not dare do. Tory paternalism is in long, slow retreat. People like me will stay where we are, increasingly exposed as our friends melt back. But what the heck.

Here is a link to the original article>>> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/why-i-dont-never-have-and-never-will-trust-the-people/

Is David Lammy the supreme Remainiac clown?

Is David Lammy the supreme Remainiac clown?

David Lammy has recently written about his idea that Brexit being the Will of the People is “bollocks”.  Here is what he posted on the 27th July:-

David Lammy

27 July at 16:36 ·

Why the government’s “will of the people” Brexit mantra is bollocks:

1. Vote Leave cheated.
2. It was based on lies e.g. £350m for NHS.
3. Only 37% of the electorate voted for it.
4. Scotland & London voted against.
5. 69% say Brexit is going badly.
6. Public supports a #PeoplesVote.
7. Brexit threatens peace in Northern Ireland, which also voted against.
8. Russia interfered and influenced the result.
9. The referendum was advisory and non-binding.
10. The government has no mandate for Chequers or No Deal – the only options left on the table.

Here is what I have to say in reply to him:-

1. “Vote Leave cheated” – No they didn’t.  The fact of the matter is that the main “cheat” was by Remain, as the Electoral Commission has recently reported, with the £9m mailshot by the Government of their dodgy leaflet. 

The system of controls on spending are in any case politically motivated and amorally illegitimate attempt to stitch up the result.  Any minor breaches of the expenses rules are of no significance as regards the outcome.  Personally I think Remain’s concerted campaign between the various entities that were campaigning for Remain are a much clearer instance of breaking the spending rules than the piffling instances that have been brought against the Leave campaigns by an Electoral Commission that is rapidly becoming a byword for bias.  See >>> https://brexitcentral.com/priti-patel-dossier/

2. “It was based on lies e.g. £360m for NHS” – For any Remain campaigner to claim that the Leave campaign based itself on lies is a breath-taking hypocrisy, given the absolute blatant nonsense that the Remainers talked about the catastrophe that would be Brexit and misusing the machinery of government in order to produce such nonsense.  In fact the £360m a week for the NHS is a good political figure to use because it is justifiable and it usefully triggered idiots like David Lammy into arguing about the exact number of pounds that was going to the EU, whilst revealing to the public that even the Remain campaign accepted that it was a vast number of millions.

The political usefulness of the claim was to trigger Remainers to argue about the detail. The factual defensibility is that the £360million is the total going to the EU per week. The rebate comes back with strings attached so it couldn’t be spent on the NHS. The NHS point is therefore key to the defensibility of this claim.  So far as England is concerned the rebate goes almost all to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in what is known as the EU ‘Conduit Effect’ so an English Nationalist could remove the NHS element of the claim and just add the expense of belonging to the EU to the £49 billion plus per year cost to English taxpayers of being in the Union of the UK.

3. “Only 37% of the electorate voted for it” – For David Lammy to make anything of that when no elected government has ever received the votes of 37% of the electorate, just shows the extent of his idiocy.  Since Parliament voted, including David Lammy, for a referendum in which this result would be decisive, his argument is not so much boll@cks as bullsh1t!

4. “Scotland and London voted against” – Is there any relevance to this comment?  So far as London is concerned London remains part of England which voted overwhelmingly to leave.   
So far as Scotland is concerned I am more than happy for them to make something of it and become independent.  The only relevance to his comment might be a definition of who the “People” are?  So far as I am concerned the only “People” that I am interested in are the English nation. England was and remains overwhelmingly in favour of Brexit. 

5.  “69% say Brexit is going badly” – Given the ridiculous incompetence, dishonest and lack of patriotism of the Conservative Government I agree they are making a mess.  If you follow my blog then you will have seen that I am rather licking my lips at the prospect of seeing the dying body of the Conservative Party circled by hungry vultures! 

6. “Public supports a #peoplesvote” – No they don’t.  We have already had a People’s Vote and that is it.

7.  “Brexit threatens peace in Northern Ireland, which also voted against” – I don’t believe that Brexit does threaten any peace in Northern Ireland.  One of Theresa May’s many mistakes was to get involved in commitments over Northern Ireland which she was never going to be able to deliver, given that she is dependent upon the DUP following her ludicrous decision to have a General Election when she didn’t need it. 

As an English nationalist I am more than happy for Northern Ireland to either become a separate independent state or to join with Southern Ireland.  In any case what opinion polls do show is that most English people would prefer to lose Northern Ireland rather than lose Brexit.  I would certainly agree with that opinion!

8.  “Russia interfered and influenced results” – Ridiculous nonsense for which there is no evidence of any actual influence.  Given our history it is utter hypercritical of British politicians to complain about outside interference.  Blithering on about this is probably however a measure of Remainer desperation!

For a well written and thoughtful  explanation of the result read >>>> https://quillette.com/2018/08/03/britains-populist-revolt/

9.  “The referendum was advisory and not binding” – Given the way that the British constitution is fitted together that remark, from a legalistic point of view, would have to be true of almost any democratic input. The issue is about legitimacy of the Establishment.  If the mask drops and the Establishment proves that voting doesn’t achieve anything, the only sensible future recourse is to the natural way of settling disputes i.e. force. 

10. “The Government has no mandate for Chequers or no deal – the only options left on the table” – I agree that the Government has no mandate for Chequers but it certainly has a mandate for “no deal”.  The mandate is, and it is a mandate from both political parties which also campaigned on this at the last General Election, to implement Brexit in full and unequivocally.  Personally I will be very happy with a “no deal” outcome. 

More generally I think David Lammy falls into the category of the type of Leftist that is simply not a democrat and therefore rather likes the internationalist, multi-culturalist, statist elitism of the EU.  So I am not surprised that he is on the side of remaining in the EU at all costs and of welshing on the Labour Party’s manifesto in the last election previous commitments to an in/out referendum.  David Lammy is not only thick but also dishonest. 

The perfect illustration of David Lammy’s intellectual initiative is shown in his staged appearance on Celebrity Mastermind where he was thrown as many soft balls as possible to try and build him up but he still flunked it! 

Here is the priceless link to Lammy’s lamentable Mastermind performance. 

The 13-Point Mastermind:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWwyVQ2IQuE▶

Enjoy!

‘The Times’ describes Leave votes as:- “Xenophobic Insurgents”!

 

The Times Political Editor describes Leave votes as:- “Xenophobic Insurgents”! 

I couldn’t let Francis Elliott, the Times Political Editor, get away with outrageously describing Leave voters as “Xenophobic Insurgents” without responding.
Here is my letter to him:-
Dear Mr Elliott
Re: Times Article, July 18th:- “Tory turmoil could lead to Far-Right revival” 
With respect, your heading betrays the unanalytical nature of your article.  You used the smear expression “Far-Right” which is intended to obscure rather than to highlight actual policy positions.  You then claimed a “revival” despite the fact that for several decades now there has not really been any patriotic or nationalist challenge to the British Political Establishment Lib/Lab/Con which has dominated “British” politics since the Second World War. 
You rightly discuss the likely consequences of the Conservative Party’s destruction of its own creditability over Brexit as either competent or patrioticor honest.  It is also true that, if Corbyn’s Labour was to be given a chance at government, Labour would prove to be internationalist, anti-patriotic, multi-culturalist and pro-immigration.  This is virtually a checklist of the very things that English blue collar workers most despise.  Such a Labour Government would be very likely to complete the divorce between the traditional “white working class” and Labour – a path which has already been trod by almost all of Labour’s sister parties in Western Europe!
The anomaly of the UK State is that it is a unique, unfair, unequal and illogical mishmash of nations.  This constitutional anomaly has to be sorted out before England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland can become fully normal modern democratic nation states. 
If in the process of sorting this out our politics can shed our grandiose “Legacy Parties” and replace them with a modern party structure where policies chime with the various blocks of ideological opinion rather than cut across them – as our current ones do – then so much the better.  Whether that amounts to “fertile ground for xenophobic insurgents” well that is – “hard to know”! I will leave you to resolve your own loaded question!
Yours sincerely
Robin Tilbrook
Here is Mr Elliott’s article
Tory turmoil could lead to a far‑right revival
Leave voters’ sense of betrayal over Brexit and fear of immigration create the perfect conditions for a new protest party
Our views on race, immigration and Brexit are full of contradictions. But taken together, this jumble of prejudices and ideas is about to change the shape of British politics.
The return to dominance of the two main parties, which saw Labour and the Conservatives share around 80 per cent of the vote, was one of the most surprising consequences of the referendum two years ago.
It left many in the centre ground pining for a new party. But it now seems likely that it’s on the right, rather than on the middle ground, that a new force will appear.
In three recent polls, Ukip has seen an uptick at the expense of the Conservatives. It could be the first sign of the governing party’s electoral coalition unravelling as voters react negatively to Theresa May’s Brexit compromise agreed at Chequers.
Although Ukip is the current beneficiary, the moribund party riven by factionalism looks no more able to revive itself than the Liberal Democrats. Prepare for a new organisation entirely.
At first sight, immigration doesn’t appear to be a factor in the discontent felt by voters. The number of Britons identifying immigration as the most important issue has declined steeply since 2016, while the number identifying Brexit has risen on a similarly striking gradient. But taken together, concern about immigration and the delivery of Brexit mark those who feel disenfranchised by the Westminster establishment, and explain the outrage felt by some voters towards Mrs May’s Chequers plan. It is an uncomfortable truth that just over a quarter of respondents in a recent British Social Attitudes survey said they were “very” or a “little” prejudiced towards people of other races.
Brexiteers react with fury to any suggestion that race played a part in the vote to leave the EU. They are also the first to suggest that a betrayal of the referendum result will unleash an ugly populist backlash.
Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire, is the latest to sound the alarm. “The Chequers deal has disenfranchised voters,” she tweeted this week. “People tell me . . . that it was the ‘last straw’ and if a charismatic figure stood heading a new party they would vote for him/her. Sounds like we could be heading for our very own Trump/Macron/Robinson.”
She was criticised for appearing to treat Tommy Robinson, former leader of the far-right, anti-Muslim English Defence League, as a mainstream politician. Robinson was jailed in May for contempt of court and his appeal against his sentence is due to be heard today. As Ms Dorries later made clear, her tweet was a warning, not an endorsement.
But Robinson’s anti-migrant creed has no shortage of high-profile supporters. Here is Donald Trump, speaking alongside Theresa May after their Chequers summit last week, on the damage the president believes migration is doing to the cultural fabric of Europe: “I just think it’s changing the culture. I think it’s a very negative thing for Europe. I think it’s very negative,” he said.
“And I know it’s politically not necessarily correct to say that. But I’ll say it and I’ll say it loud. And I think they better watch themselves because you are changing culture. You are changing a lot of things. You’re changing security.”
Sam Brownback, the US ambassador for international religious freedom, is reported to have warned Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s ambassador in Washington, that “if Britain did not treat [Tommy] Robinson more sympathetically, the Trump administration might be compelled to criticise Britain’s handling of the case”.
Mr Trump’s son, Donald Junior, has tweeted support for Robinson. A US think-tank, Middle East Forum, helped to organise a rally in support of him in London and sent a Republican Congressman, Paul Gosar, to speak in his support.
Robinson is just one possible candidate to lead whatever replaces Ukip as the repository of protest votes, powered by alt-right cash. Generation Identity, an Austrian nationalist movement, is hovering at the political fringe. With slickly produced YouTube videos and clean-cut provocateurs, it is waiting to leap on any grievance in Britain that can serve its narrative of an apocalyptic clash of civilisations.
It is worth imagining what British politics will be like if Mrs May does, after all, squeeze a version of her Chequers compromise through Brussels. For most of the period between March 29, 2019, when we formally leave the union, and the next general election in 2022, Britain will be paying its full dues to an organisation over which it has no control. What’s more, every politician other than Mrs May will have a vested interest in stoking discontent over the terms of our departure. It is probable that she won’t even be in No 10 to defend it four years from now.
If this isn’t fertile ground for xenophobic insurgents, it’s hard to know what is. For the Tories, it could get even worse. Those now urging a delay in our departure next March are ignoring one large obstacle. If we are still in the EU, Britain must take part in elections to the European parliament next May. These polls are already causing great anxiety in Brussels, where the Commission fears they could return a majority of Eurosceptic MEPs from across the member states, with fatal consequences for the federalist dream.
Senior ministers say that Brussels will find a way to refuse any request to extend our negotiating period because it fears that Britain’s participation in the Euro-election would only inflame the Continental populist revolt.
Just as likely, they know that the Conservative Party would suffer an almighty drubbing in such a poll because it would be outflanked on the right by a populist nationalist party offering a “real Brexit”. That day of reckoning may simply be postponed until the next general election. By then, Labour may find itself in a corresponding bind to the Tories, if a new centrist party ever gets its act together.
The outcome of that election will be determined by which of the two main parties suffers most from the unravelling of forces responsible for their current dominance.
Here is the link to the original article>>> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-turmoil-could-lead-to-far-right-revival-thw8slrq5

THE BBC THINKS “LEAVE” VOTERS ARE:- ‘POOR, THICK, OLD WHITES’?


THE BBC THINKS “LEAVE” VOTERS ARE:- ‘POOR, THICK, OLD WHITES’?

The BBC’s Freedom of Information specialist, Mr Martin Rosenbaum, has published an article which I produce below, in which he claims that the data shows that the poorer, less well-educated, or elderly “white” population voted more heavily for Leave than for Remain in the EU Referendum.

Although he does quote briefly Dominic Cummings who was the internet and data focussed campaign director of Vote Leave. Dominic Cummings says the better educated are more prone to irrational political opinions because they are more driven by fashion and by group mentality.

In effect Mr Rosenbaum dismisses this view since it does not suit his or the BBC’s agenda to acknowledge that in today’s England the better educated have been subjected to a more longer and more sustained effort to convert them to ensure that they emerge as left, liberal internationalists and far more likely to support the EU’s transnational statist agenda.

Mr Rosenbaum also ignores those analysts who have talked about “Clacton man” as being of the sort that he has characterising as Leave voters and also “Crawley man” who has higher education qualifications and is an aspirational, striving middle class person.

In my view however the most glaring failure of the article is so very typical of the BBC group mentality. This is over the question of what he calls “ethnicity”. The first point to make is that he has clearly made no effort to understand what the law means by the word “ethnicity”. This has been set out now for decades, clarified in the Mandla – v – Dowell-Lee [1983] UKHC7 case in the House of Lords Appeal Court, which in effect ruled that ethnicity was limited to self-identified sub-sets of a national racial group i.e. that Sikhs without any of their Sikh specific clothes or styles or equipment were indistinguishable from other North Indians, but because of their cultural markers and self-identification were an identifiable sub-set of North India and therefore an “Ethnicity”.

On this legal basis the English, for example, are an identifiable sub-set of British and therefore an ethnicity.

The English have also been specifically accepted by courts as a national identity, national origin, nationality and as a racial group.

Despite this long established legal position, Mr Rosenbaum uses the word ethnicity in a context which shows he has virtually nothing in the way of a definition behind the word except that they are perhaps non-“White”.

This leads him to the absurd position of talking about “Asian” as if they were all the same. So it is a monochrome world in which he cannot tell the difference between a Sikh, a Muslim, a Hindu, an Indian, a Pakistani, a Bangladeshi, a Gujarati, a Tamil etc! Nor does it seem that Mr Rosenbaum is able to tell the difference between the English, the Scottish or the Welsh. This leads him to ignore one of the key findings of the Ashcroft polls which was that of the top 30 Leave voting local authorities, 100% – that is every single one of them – were constituencies which had the highest proportion of people who responded to the 2011 Census stating that they were “English only”.

Isn’t it interesting and certainly typical of the BBC that its group think mentality even now still makes it impossible for it to understand or accept that the English had by and large and very sensibly realised that the EU was and is an enemy of “the very idea of England”?

So no Mr Rosenbaum. The English are not poor, stupid or uneducated, they are merely people who care for England and didn’t want to see England broken up into EU “Regions” and overwhelmed by unrestricted mass immigration from other parts of the EU. Also they don’t want or to be made to pay for the poor and economically failing parts of the EU – when we have got enough problems that need to be fixed before we can think about dealing with other people’s problems!

Here is the article:-

Local voting figures shed new light on EU referendum


The BBC has obtained a more localised breakdown of votes from nearly half of the local authorities which counted EU referendum ballots last June.

This information provides much greater depth and detail in explaining the pattern of how the UK voted. The key findings are:

The data confirms previous indications that local results were strongly associated with the educational attainment of voters – populations with lower qualifications were significantly more likely to vote Leave. (The data for this analysis comes from one in nine wards)

The level of education had a higher correlation with the voting pattern than any other major demographic measure from the census

The age of voters was also important, with older electorates more likely to choose Leave

Ethnicity was crucial in some places, with ethnic minority areas generally more likely to back Remain. However this varied, and in parts of London some Asian populations were more likely to support Leave

The combination of education, age and ethnicity accounts for the large majority of the variation in votes between different places

Across the country and in many council districts we can point out stark contrasts between localities which most favoured Leave or Remain

There was a broad pattern in several urban areas of deprived, predominantly white, housing estates towards the urban periphery voting Leave, while inner cities with high numbers of ethnic minorities and/or students voted Remain

Around 270 locations can be identified where the local outcome was in the opposite direction to the broader official counting area, including parts of Scotland which backed Leave and a Cornwall constituency which voted Remain

Postal voters appear narrowly more likely to have backed Remain than those who voted in a polling station

The national picture

Education

A statistical analysis of the data obtained for over a thousand individual local government wards confirms how the strength of the local Leave vote was strongly associated with lower educational qualifications.

Wards where the population had fewer qualifications tended to have a higher Leave vote, as shown in the chart. If the proportion of the local electorate with a degree or similar qualification was one percentage point lower, then on average the leave vote was higher by nearly one percentage point.

Using ward-level data means we can compare voting figures in this way to the local demographic information collected in the 2011 census. Of the main census statistics, this is the one with the greatest association with how people voted.

In statistical terms the level of educational qualifications explains about two-thirds of the variation in the results between different wards.

The correlation is strong, whether based on assessing graduate and equivalent qualifications or lower-level ones.

This ward-by-ward analysis covers 1,070 individual wards in England and Wales whose boundaries had not changed since the 2011 census, about one in nine of the UK’s wards. We had very little ward-level data from Scotland, and none from Northern Ireland.

It should be noted, however, that many ward counts also included some postal votes from across the counting area, and therefore some variation between wards will have been masked by the random allocation of postal votes for counting. This makes the results less accurate geographically, but we can still use the information to explore broad national and local patterns.

Age

Adding age as a second factor significantly helps to further explain voting patterns. Older populations were more likely to vote Leave. Education and age combined account for nearly 80% of the voting variation between wards.

Ethnicity

Ethnicity is a smaller factor, but one which also contributed to the results. Adding that in means that now 83% of the variation in the vote between wards is explained. White populations were generally more pro-Leave, and ethnic minorities less so. However, there were some interesting differences between London and elsewhere.

The ethnic dimension is particularly interesting when examining the outliers on the graph that compares the Leave vote to levels of education.

wards in Birmingham illustrate the pattern of ethnic minority populations being more likely to support Remain.

There are numerous wards towards the bottom left of the graph where electorates with lower educational qualifications nevertheless produced low Leave and high Remain votes. This is where the link between low qualifications and Leave voting breaks down.

It turns out that these exceptional wards have high ethnic minority populations, particularly in Birmingham and Haringey in north London.

In contrast, there are virtually no dramatic outliers on the other side of the line, where comparatively highly educated populations voted Leave. Only one point on the graph stands out – this is Osterley and Spring Grove in Hounslow, west London, a mainly ethnic minority ward which had a Leave vote of 63%. While this figure does include some postal votes, they are not nearly enough to explain away this unusual outcome.

In fact, in Ealing and Hounslow, west London boroughs with many voters of Asian origin, the ethnic correlation was in the other direction to the national picture: a higher number of Asian voters was associated with a higher Leave vote.

Overview

This powerful link to educational attainment could stem from the lower qualified tending to feel less confident about their prospects and ability to compete for work in a competitive globalised economy with high levels of migration.

On the other hand some commentators see it as primarily reflecting a “culture war” or “values conflict”, rather than issues of economics and inequality. Research shows that non-graduates tend to take less liberal positions than graduates on a range of social issues from immigration and multi-culturalism to the death penalty.

The former campaign director of Vote Leave, Dominic Cummings, argues that the better educated are more prone to holding irrational political opinions because they are more driven by fashion and a group mentality.

Of course this assessment does not imply that Leave voters were almost all poorly educated and old, and Remain voters well educated and young. The Leave side obviously attracted support from many middle class professionals, graduates and younger people. Otherwise it couldn’t have won.

While there was undoubtedly a lot of voting which cut across these criteria, the point of this analysis is to explore how different social groups most probably voted – and it is clear that education, age and ethnicity were crucial influences.

After these three key factors are taken into account, adding in further demographic measures from the census does little to increase the explanation of UK-wide voting patterns.

However, this does not reflect the distinctively more pro-Remain voting in Scotland, since we are short of Scottish data at this geographical level. It is clear as well that in a few specific locations high student numbers were also very relevant.

To a certain extent, using the level of educational qualifications as a measure combines both class and age factors, with working class and older adults both tending to be less well qualified.

But the association between education and the voting results is stronger than the association between social or occupational class and the results. This is still true after taking the age of the local population into account.

This suggests that voters with lower qualifications were more likely to back Leave than the better qualified, even when they were in the same social or occupational class.

The existence of a significant connection between Leave voting and lower educational qualifications had already been suggested by analysis of the published referendum results from the official counting areas.

The data we have obtained strengthens this conclusion, because voting patterns can now be compared to social statistics from the 2011 census at a much more detailed geographical level than by the earlier studies.

The BBC analysis is also consistent with opinion polling (for example, from Lord Ashcroft, Ipsos Mori and YouGov) that tried to identify the characteristics of Leave and Remain voters.

Local patterns

The data we have collected can be used to illustrate the sort of places where the Leave and Remain camps did particularly well: it is hard to imagine a more glaring social contrast than that between the deprived, poorly educated housing estates of Brambles and Thorntree in Middlesbrough, and the privileged elite colleges of Market ward in central Cambridge.

It is important to bear in mind, however, that most of the voting figures mentioned below also include some postal votes, so they should be treated as approximate rather than precise. It is also important to note that the examples are limited to the places for which we were able to obtain localised information, which was only a minority of areas. The rest of the country may well contain even starker instances.

Leave strongholds

Of the 1,283 individual wards for which we have data, the highest Leave vote was 82.5% in Brambles and Thorntree, a section of east Middlesbrough with many social problems. Ward boundaries have changed since the 2011 census, but in that survey the Thorntree part of the area had the lowest proportion of people with a degree or similar qualification of anywhere in England and Wales, at only 5%. And according to Middlesbrough council, the figure for the current Brambles and Thorntree ward is even lower, at just 4%.

Second highest was 80.3% in Waterlees Village, a poor locality within Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. This area has seen a major influx of East European migrants who have been doing low-paid work in nearby food processing factories and farms, with tensions between them and British residents.

Other wards with available data which had the strongest Leave votes were congregated in Middlesbrough, Canvey Island in Essex, Skegness in coastal Lincolnshire, and Havering in east London.

Remain strongholds

The highest Remain vote was 87.8% in Market ward in central Cambridge, an area with numerous colleges and a high student population, in a city which was strongly pro-Remain.

This was followed by Ashley ward (85.6%) in central Bristol, a district featuring ethnic diversity, gentrification and alternative culture.

Next highest was Northumberland Park (85.0%) in Haringey, north London, which has a substantial black population.

Other wards with available data which had the strongest Remain votes were generally located in Cambridge, Bristol and the multi-ethnic London boroughs of Haringey and Lambeth.

In the middle

The count for Ashburton in Croydon, south London, split 50-50 exactly, with both Leave and Remain getting 3,885 votes, but that did include some postal ballots.

Nationally representative

As for being nearest to the overall result, the combined count of Tulketh and University, neighbouring wards near the centre of Preston, was 51.92% for leave, very close to the UK wide figure of 51.89%. The individual ward of Barnwood in Gloucester had Leave at 51.94%. Both figures however contain some postal votes.

Given that a few councils provided even more detailed data down to the level of polling districts, it is possible to identify some very small localities that were nicely representative of the national picture.

The 527 voters in the neighbouring districts of Kirk Langley and Mackworth in Amber Valley in Derbyshire, whose two ballot boxes were counted together, produced a leave proportion of 51.99%. And this figure is not contaminated by any postal votes.

So journalists (or anyone else for that matter) who seek a microcosm of the UK should perhaps visit the Mundy Arms pub in Mackworth, the location for that district’s polling station.

Similarly, the 427 voters in the combined neighbouring polling districts of Chiddingstone Hoath and Hever Four Elms to the south of Sevenoaks in Kent delivered a leave vote of 51.6% (again, without any postal votes).

Switching areas

The data obtained points to 269 areas of various sizes (wards, clusters of wards or constituencies) which had a different Leave/Remain outcome compared to the official counting area of which they were part.

This consists of 150 areas which backed Remain but were part of Leave-voting counting areas; and 119 in the other direction.

The detailed information therefore gives us an understanding of how the electorate voted which is more variegated than the officially published results.

Scotlandvoted to Remain – but some wards backed Leave, analysis shows

Every one of Scotland’s 32 counting areas came down on the Remain side. Yet, despite the fact that most Scottish councils did not give us much detailed information, we can nevertheless identify a few smaller parts of the country which actually backed Leave.

A cluster of six wards in the Banff and Buchan area in north Aberdeenshire had a strong Leave majority of 61%. There is much local discontent within the fishing industry of this coastal district about the EU’s common fisheries policy.

An Taobh Siar agus Nis, a ward at the northern end of the Isle of Lewis in Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles), also voted Leave, if very narrowly.

And at a smaller geographical level, in Shetland the 567 voters in the combined polling districts of Whalsay and South Unst had an extremely high Leave vote of 81%. The island of Whalsay is a fishing community, where EU rules have been controversial and in 2012 numerous skippers were heavily fined for major breaches of fishing quotas.

London

Ealing and Hounslow are neighbouring multi-ethnic boroughs in the west of London with large Asian populations, where – in contrast to the national picture – non-white ethnicity was associated with voting Leave, particularly in Ealing. Both boroughs shared a varied internal pattern of prosperous largely white areas voting strongly Remain, poorer largely white areas preferring Leave, and the Asian areas tending to be more evenly split.

Ealing voted 60% Remain, with Southfield ward hitting 76%, but in contrast the Southall wards which are over 90% ethnic minority were close to 50-50.

In Hounslow the richer wards in Chiswick in the east of the area voted heavily Remain (73%), but the poorer largely white wards at the opposite western end in Feltham and Bedfont voted Leave (64-66%). Osterley and Spring Grove was also 63% Leave, the highest Leave vote in any individual ward in the UK with a non-white majority for which we have data.

The south London borough of Bromley narrowly voted Remain. Those parts which did not do so by a significant margin were the Cray Valley wards, largely poor white working class areas; and Biggin Hill and Darwin wards, locations to the south which contain more open countryside and lie outside the built-up commuter belt.

In Croydon in south London, places which voted Leave by substantial amounts were New Addington and Fieldway, neighbouring wards with large council estates.

Other areas

Beyond the areas with the strongest backing for Leave and Remain, examining the detailed breakdown of votes in various places gives greater insight into the pattern of support for the two sides – as can be seen from the following examples.

In several places (for example, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Portsmouth) there was a strong contrast between the Leave-voting populations of large, rundown, predominantly white, housing estates in the urban periphery, versus Remain-voting populations in inner city areas with large numbers of ethnic minorities and sometimes students.

Birmingham had several wards with large Remain votes, although the city as a whole narrowly voted Leave. These pro-Remain wards tended to be the more highly educated, better off localities, or minority ethnic areas which strongly backed Remain despite low levels of educational qualifications. I have written about this before.

In Blackburn with Darwen, Bastwell ward had the highest Remain vote at 65%, compared to only 44% in the area as a whole. This ward has an ethnic minority proportion of over 90%. Other Blackburn wards which voted Remain were also ones with high minority populations.

Bradford voted to Leave (54%), but the area included some starkly contrasting places which went over 60% Remain: the prosperous, genteel, spa town of Ilkley, and strongly ethnic minority wards in the city, such as Manningham and Toller.

Bristol voted strongly Remain on the whole (62%), but there were some striking exceptions, particularly the large, deprived, mainly white estates to the south of the city. Hartcliffe and Withywood backed Leave at 67%. Similar neighbouring wards (Hengrove and Whitchurch Park, Filwood, Bishopsworth and Stockwood) also voted Leave, as did the more industrial area of Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston to the north west of the city.

As a county Cornwall voted to Leave. But one of its six parliamentary constituencies, Truro and Falmouth, voted 53% to Remain, possibly linked to a significant student population.

In Lincoln, which voted 57% to Leave, Carholme ward stands out as very different – it voted 63% to Remain. This ward includes Lincoln University, and 43% of the residents are students

Middlesbrough voted 65% to Leave. As already noted, it had several wards with extremely high leave votes of over 75%. But one ward, Linthorpe, voted very narrowly to Remain – a comparatively well-to-do inner suburb which includes an art college; and another ward, Central, which contains Teesside University, nearly did.

Mole Valley in Surrey exhibited a dramatic contrast between two neighbouring districts with very different demographics and housing. The highest Remain vote was in the very prosperous location of Dorking South, which voted 63% Remain, but the neighbouring ward of Holmwoods, dominated by large estates on the edge of the town of Dorking, voted 57% Leave, the area’s highest Leave vote.

Nottingham voted narrowly to Leave, but the inner city ward of Radford and Park voted 68% Remain. This has both a comparatively high proportion of ethnic minorities and considerable numbers of students from two nearby universities. There was a lot of variation within the area. Bulwell – a market town to the north of the city with many social problems – voted 69% Leave

There was also a high Leave vote in the housing estate locations of the Clifton wards in the south of Nottingham.

Oldham voted to Leave at 61%, but Werneth, the city ward with the highest ethnic minority population, voted Remain (57%). Other wards with high minority populations also voted Remain.

central wards in Oxford had high Remain votes

In Oxford the cluster of polling districts which included Blackbird Leys and other deprived estates on the southern edge of the city voted to Leave at 51%. In contrast the central areas containing colleges, university buildings and student accommodation voted to Remain at over 80%.

Plymouth voted 60% Leave, but Drake ward which includes the university had the city’s highest Remain vote at 56%.

Portsmouth was another place with wide variation. Paulsgrove ward, with its large estate on the edge of the city, had the highest Leave vote at 70%, whereas at the other end of the spectrum Central Southsea, an inner city ward and student area, voted 57% Remain.

Rochdale voted 60% Leave. The place which bucked this trend by voting 59% Remain, Milkstone and Deeplish, was the most predominantly ethnic minority ward. Central Rochdale had the second highest Remain vote and is the other ward that is mainly not white.

Walsall voted strongly Leave (68%). The only ward which voted Remain, Paddock, is both a comparatively prosperous and multi-ethnic locality.

The most local data

A few councils released their data at remarkably localised levels, down even to individual polling districts (ie ballot boxes) in the case of Blackburn with Darwen and Bracknell Forest, or clusters of two/three/four districts, in the case of Amber Valley, Brentwood, Sevenoaks, Shetland, South Oxfordshire, and Tewkesbury.

This provides very local and specific data, in some cases just for neighbourhoods of hundreds of voters.

At its most detailed this reveals that the 110 people who cast their votes in the ballot box at St. Alban’s Primary School in central Blackburn split 56-52 in favour of Remain, with two spoilt papers.

It also discloses stark contrasts in some neighbouring locations. The 953 people who voted at Little Harwood community centre in north Blackburn had a Leave vote of only 31%, while the 336 electors who voted in the neighbouring ballot box at Roe Lee Park primary school produced a Leave percentage over twice as high, at 64%.

Postal votes

The very detailed data we obtained also provides some rare evidence on the views of postal compared to non-postal voters. Campaign strategists have often deliberated on whether the two groups vote differently and should be given separate targeted messages.

Most places mixed boxes of postal and non-postal votes for counting, so generally it’s not possible to draw comparative conclusions. However there were a few exceptions which recorded them separately, or included a very small number of non-postal votes with the postals.

These figures indicate that postal voters were narrowly less likely to back Leave than voters in polling stations. Data covering five counting areas with about 260,000 votes shows that in these places the roughly one in five electors who voted by post backed Leave at 55.4%, one percentage point lower than the local non-postal support for Leave of 56.4%.

The counting areas involved are Amber Valley, East Cambridgeshire, Gwynedd, Hyndburn and North Warwickshire.

The data

Since the referendum the BBC has been trying to get the most detailed, localised voting data we could from each of the counting areas. This was a major data collection exercise carried out by my colleague George Greenwood.

We managed to obtain voting figures broken down into smaller geographical units for 178 of the 399 referendum counting areas (380 councils in England, Wales and Scotland, with a separate tally in Gibraltar, while in Northern Irelandresults were issued for the 18 constituencies).

This varied between data for individual local government wards, wards grouped into clusters, and constituency level data. In a few cases the results supplied were even more localised than ward level. Overall the extra data covers a wide range of different areas and kinds of councils across the UK.

Electoral returning officers are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, so releasing the information was up to the discretion of councils. While some were very willing, in other cases it required a lot of persistence and persuasion.

Some councils could not supply any detailed data because they mixed all ballot boxes prior to counting; some did possess more local figures but simply refused to disclose them to us. Others did provide data, but the combinations in which ballot boxes were mixed before counting were too complex to fit ward boundaries neatly.

A few places such as Birmingham released their ward by ward data following the referendum on their own initiative, but in most cases the information had to be obtained by us requesting it directly, and sometimes repeatedly, from the authority.

(Here is the link to the original >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38762034)

MURDER OF JO COX MP – UNFORTUNATE COINCIDENCE OR POLITICAL ASSASSINATION?

MURDER OF JO COX MP – UNFORTUNATE COINCIDENCE OR POLITICAL ASSASSINATION?

Over the last few days we have had a torrent of outpouring of sentimentality, especially from the Left leaning media and political figures, but also some across the whole spectrum regarding the murder of Jo Cox. It goes without saying that the murder of Jo Cox, or of any person, is an abhorrent crime and in her case a very sad loss for her family.

Whether however the murder properly has any political significance to the whole country clearly depends partly on why it was done and also on reactions to it and especially the usages to which the murder is put by activists and commentators.

So far as why the murder occurred, we have so far heard wildly conflicting claims ranging from her having apparently intervened in a scuffle that was occurring between two men near where her MPs Surgery was taking place, in which she tried to intervene and the killer, Thomas Mair, turned on her. I am now doubtful about this version.

There is also the credible story that her murder is really a consequence of the budget driven policy “Care in the Community” whereby she has been attacked and brutally killed by a longstanding mental patient. That is a person who, in former days, would have been, in all probability, securely accommodated in one of the country’s then many lunatic asylums. These have since been sold off and largely turned into housing to the profit of various State agencies, leading no doubt to the payment of many bonuses to the often unworthy beneficiaries of the British State’s political patronage system and many useful dodges for our careerist political class.

The other version that we have heard was that it was a calculated political assassination with the gun man shouting either “Britain first” or “Put Britain first” as he stabbed and shot the MP. 

Furthermore even making due allowance for the apparent mental instability of the killer and the fact that Jo Cox record was very much of a campaigner for yet more mass immigration and, in particular, Syrian refugees, nevertheless she seems an unlikely person to pick to assassinate, as she was of virtually no political importance. Indeed I had personally never heard of her and I would think that is true of virtually all politically interested people who hadn’t actually had reason to meet her and/or didn’t live or have connections with her constituency.

The reaction of the media and, in particular, the BBC, was all too predictable and a distorted mirror image of what they always do when it is a Muslim who attacks. Then they immediately try to say that he wasn’t attacking because he was a Muslim, but he was attacking because he had “mental issues”. In this situation they were making out that whilst this killer did have mental issues, he was motivated by Far-Right Brexitism and therefore all Brexiters should hang their heads in shame and implicitly campaigning for Brexit should cease.

Amazingly the Leave campaign agreed to suspend campaigning! In my view betraying the trust that has been placed in them to lead as a designated campaign group to lead the campaign for a Brexit vote this coming Thursday. This may be down to loss of nerve or the inexperience of campaign leaders in the tactics deployed by the Left (all too familiar to those of us who have campaigned outside the Establishment) in attacking anyone who stands outside of the Establishment in the most vicious and unreasonable manner.

Whatever the reason it is deplorable that campaigning at a critical point in the EU referendum campaign has been put on hold and thus the momentum towards Brexit has been lost.

All concerned need to remember that there is never going to be another referendum on this. If the Leave campaigners lose this referendum the one thing that is certain is that the momentum towards Leave has alarmed the Establishment to such an extent that they will never again agree to a referendum. So in the words that Shakespeare so famously puts into the mouth of Henry V:-

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews , summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips ,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'”

FISHING FLOTILLA DEMONSTRATION ON THE THAMES


FISHING FLOTILLA DEMONSTRATION ON THE THAMES


On Wednesday I was part of a thoroughly enjoyable demonstration on the Thames outside the Palace of Westminster.

The above pictures show me with the organiser of the demonstration, Bob Spinks.

It was not only perfectly organised, but an excellent idea of his, making the absolutely “on the money” point, that the EU, far from being good for jobs, has actually destroyed many jobs, focussing in this particular case on the fishing jobs that it has destroyed and doing so in a colourful, interesting and provocative way.

So much so that Remain were unable to resist trying to do a counter-demonstration led by the appalling Sir Bob (“God-awful”) Geldolf, who was vividly pictured in the press flicking V signs at the fishermen illustrating his sense of entitlement. 

Geldolf’s boat had very high volume loud speakers which he was using to try and drown out everything that was being said on the Leave boat.

Amongst the journalists, Michael Crick said that it was the best political demonstration that he had ever been to. I think that is high praise indeed for Bob Spink’s efforts.

Let’s hope all this activity pays off in the early hours of Friday, 24th June!