Tag Archives: England

LEAVE WINS (ENGLAND VOTES TO LEAVE BUT OTHER NATIONS IN THE UK VOTE TO REMAIN)


Here is the text of our Brexit Press release:-

LEAVE WINS (ENGLAND VOTES TO LEAVE BUT OTHER NATIONS IN THE UK VOTE TO REMAIN)

The English Democrats delightedly welcome the result of the EU referendum as the majority of the People across the whole of the United Kingdom have democratically voted for the sensible option of leaving the EU. We especially welcome the result in England where we have been campaigning. In England the turnout was 73%, the highest of the 4 countries in UK and England has voted by 53.4% to leave the EU.

It is now incumbent upon David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to activate Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to begin the process of disengagement from the EU. If, despite the result of the EU referendum, he is not prepared to do so then he should resign forthwith and not wait until October.

The important thing is that the democratic vote of the People should be honoured without reservation.

The English Democrats now call for those parts of the United Kingdom, namely Scotland and Northern Ireland whom have voted to Remain to have the democratic Will of that Nation and Province also honoured.

Under the current uneven Devolution arrangements the UK’s membership of the EU is a ‘reserved matter’ which means that has to be decided by Government of the United Kingdom, not by the devolved assemblies or parliaments.

The English Democrats support the right of the Nation and Province which voted to Remain to do so. We therefore call upon the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to not only to activate Article 50, but to negotiate to enable the Remain voting Nation and Province to Remain within the EU whilst England and Wales leaves.

Robin Tilbrook, the Chairman of the English Democrats said:- “I am delighted with the result of the EU referendum vote but concerned that David Cameron and his clique will now try to subvert the democratically expressed Will of the English People and of the Welsh People.”

Robin continued:- “As a democrat I am also calling for the democratic Will of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Peoples be fully honoured without reservation and that their Will to Leave or to Remain should be honoured.”

“For the English Democrats it is very clear that the United Kingdom is now dead. It is no longer possible to argue that Britain speaks with one voice. We will work to ensure that the will of the people of England is carried out. We believe in England not Britain.”

Robin Tilbrook

Chairman,

The English Democrats

The rise of political Englishness – BREXIT or EXIT?

The rise of political Englishness
I always think it is a good sign of changing currents of opinion when you can see even people who in many respects would be political opponents concede the way things are changing.  Although they may put it in language that is different, and regard the outcome in a completely different way.  A really good example of this has recently been published. 
So good is it that I thought I would confine this blog article to providing a link for you to read the whole article which contains various graphics that would be difficult to reproduce in a blog article.
Here is a link to “It’s England’s Brexit” >>> http://wp.me/p5XgA2-j3
I think you will find that it fully lives up to the billing that I have given it.

The English pay £140 each for the EU

The English pay £140 each for the EU


Scotland’s taxpayers are no longer a net beneficiary of EU largess and now pay in £64 per person more than they get back from Brussels, according to a new economic analysis published.

David Bell, Professor of Economics at the University of Stirling, calculated that Scots now pay more than £1.4 billion towards the EU every year and receive almost £1.1 billion back through the UK’s rebate and funds such as Common Agriculture Policy payments.

However, the English on their own contribute more than that averaging £140 for each and every person in England.

In comparison, the Northern Irish pay a net sum of only £31 per person, while the Welsh are net beneficiaries to the tune of £164 per person because they receive that much more than they pay in.

Here is a link to the original article>>> http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14537100.Scottish_Labour_considers_becoming___39_independent__39__party/

Book review – Displacement

The story of  a man resigned to being a victim because he does not realise he is a victim

Author Derek Turner

Obtainable from  Amazon

Review by Robert Henderson

In his last work Sea Changes Derek Turner offered a large canvas on which he painted both the predicament of the illegal  immigrant and a Britain afflicted with a paralysing political correctness with which traps both the British elite and the ignored and secretly despised  working-class into an ideological web far removed from reality.    With  Displacement, a novella rather than a novel,  we have a more intimate work which illustrates through Martin Hacket  a dismal deracinated England which has left the English with no sense of  national feeling or any sense of having a land they could call their own. It has even robbed them of any sense that their predicament is in some way wrong or even just plain odd .

Displacement is set in South London. Martin is young , blond and  a member of  the white working class, an endangered species in his London.  Like the rest of his class Martin has been robbed not only of his sense of historical and territorial  place  but  materially deprived. He  has a job as  courier on a bike and, because he knows no better,  he thinks himself lucky to have the menial job  because  such jobs normally go to graduates.

The world Martin inhabits is unreservedly  tawdry. Everything  that once gave the white working class a sense of belonging, worth and respect has been removed by the massive  postwar immigration. A  surreptitious colonisation of Britain has occurred. His family is one of the few white English faces left in the road in which he lives.  Their  few white English neighbours  are not of his class, merely  the advance guard of a possible gentrification.   Martin wishfully thinks of a life in the suburbs.  He used to dream of somehow finding the money to move there when he  had a girlfriend Kate,   but  allowed that dream to die after they broke up because he  knows  he could never  afford any sort of  property.

Martin  lives with his father and elder brother Mike.  His father is a vessel  adrift from its anchor. He worked on ships as a deckhand until the company  which employed him  went belly up. Since then he has been unemployed.  But it is not just his work which has gone. A natural Labour voter he no longer has a meaningful Labour Party to vote for or a union to which he can belong .   Mike is a drug addict and minor criminal.

Martin’s  release from the  dreariness of  a  London in which  the native English have been reduced to just one ethnic group is twofold. The first means of escape is  free running.  This frees him from the clutching mediocrity of his social and physical world, giving him not just a physical release but a sense that he is above the fray the society in which he  lives.  His second release is through  poetry which he both reads and writes.   Martin  is not academically inclined and never got much out of school, but he has  a desire to express himself  and free verse  can be like free running,  something which is not constricting,  something he can bend to his will rather than being bent by circumstances.

Against all the odds Martin becomes a sort of celebrity, or  at least he has his fifteen minutes of fame.  Whilst free running  Martin is seen by  people in the buildings he scales.  This causes alarm amongst some, because he  runs in a  white hoody which with his blondness  gives  him a ghost-like appearance.  Martin  is also seen on a building housing a senior politician, something  which attracts the notice of the police who fear he is a security risk. The media takes up the story without knowing who  is  the   person  responsible.  Martin’s ex-girlfriend  guesses that he is responsible .  She is excited by Martin’s sudden if so far anonymous celebrity, reconnects with him and  arranges for a public school educated journalist by the name of Seb to interview Martin about his free running.

Seb visits Martin and his family  in the spirit of  an anthropologist visiting  a tribe of hunter gatherers.   Except for Kate , whom he tries unsuccessfully to seduce , Seb  does not have any real interest in Martin and his family and friends; they are  merely props for an article which will validate his ideas about the white working-class, an out of date , redundant species, Morlocks robbed of their purpose,  with  Martin cast as the ugly duckling who is changed into a swan by his free running exploits, something celebrated in prose of excruciating pretension  such as ’From  his concrete eyrie he can discern the essential unity of humanity’.

The article is deeply offensive but  Seb diffuses the anger  of Martin and his friends and family  by introducing Martin to a publisher of poetry .  What Martin does not appreciate is that this is an act of heavy patronage, a re-enactment of that extended to working-class authors in the quarter century after the Second World War, which is a continuation of the offensive patronising  tone of Seb’s newspaper article.

The real  tragedy is not the mean circumstances in which Martin  finds himself, but the fact that he accepts his lot without questioning : he does not ask  why he  cannot set up home in decent circumstances because housing is beyond expensive; why he cannot get the sort of job his father’s generation could get,  manual most probably but paying well enough for a man to raise a family; why his father has been reduced to idleness through no fault of his own. Most   importantly he does not question how it is that where he lives is almost entirely  dominated by people who are not like him when only  a few decades before the place he lived in had been solidly white working class.

Martin is a man resigned to being a victim because he does not realise he is a victim. He  sees the mediocrity of the world he lives in but accepts it as just how things are. He does not even have what Winston Smith in 1984 had,  vague  memories  of what  was before the  dismal world  in which he lived.  Winston however ineptly had an urge to challenge the status quo; Martin has  no urge to change things  only to find a way to escape the grind of his daily existence with poetry and free running, which both gives him a focus on something  untainted by the rest of his life and literally lifts him above it.  Yet even that consolations will be fleeting enough because free running is for the  young.  It will not be too many years before Martin is too old to find his freedom there.

Jo Coburn’s interview of me on the BBC 2 Daily Politics


On Thursday I was invited up to do our very limited entitlement to coverage on BBC News 24 and the Daily Politics Show because of our Conference coming up and, as usual, the BBC did its best to paint us as: “sad, bad and mad”, its generously taxpayer funded fashion!

Here is a link to Jo Coburn’s interview of me on the Daily Politics on Iplayer >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06chkm8/daily-politics-17092015 My bit starts at 24:30. 

And here it is on Youtube >>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzD3ir9HMSo&feature=youtu.be
 


You can see we have now got into a situation where the BBC is using our People’s money and resources to advocate opening the flood gates to the no doubt tens of millions of refugees and economic migrants that would wish to come here if given the chance!

England is already the most densely populated country in Europe and probably the third most densely populated country in the world, after Bangladesh and South Korea! We simply haven’t got the space and resources to sustainably be taking on still more vast numbers of migrants for whatever reason they have come here.

Last year alone the Government’s statistics (which are no doubt vastly under-played), claim that we had over 330,000 come here. That is more than a new Doncaster or Newcastle Upon Tyne that will have to now be built to house just last year’s intake alone. So yet more of England’s green and pleasant land will be concreted over. We are already having to build the equivalent of a new London to house the over 8 million immigrants that have already come here.

The one issue this really raises is where does this end? If the answer, which would be the English Democrats answer, is that we need to vigorously defend our borders, is the right answer then the next question is what are we prepared to do in order to police those borders?

Steve Uncles, our Police Commissioner candidate for Kent, made a facetious comment on the not at all serious “social medium” of Facebook and wrote about using a machine gun.

That is not of course English Democrats’ policy, nor would I approve of that happening gratuitously. However where you have large numbers of fit young men of military age trying to break down our border barriers by force and throwing stones at police and injuring them, as we had at Calais and the Hungarians are now putting up with, where is the line to be drawn? Are we really prepared to see our soldiers and policemen injured by illegal immigrants determined to force their way into our country?

I wouldn’t however have said or written Steve’s posting myself, even in jest on Facebook, but the fact of the matter is that the media do not generally report anything that we say that is serious and sensible. They are only looking for something that they think that they can attack us over. Once faced with a media attack there are only two options:- fight or flight. In my opinion in politics and in life generally, flight is usually the worse option.

I support the solution of Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, in vigorously enforcing borders. If necessary that must include the option of our border guards, who ought to be armed (like almost all the others across the world). They should have orders that permit them to fire whenever they think it is necessary to maintain law and order and defend themselves at our border controls.

I do think it is an interesting example of how hypocritical the members of our British Political elite are that they are more than happy to have police armed with machine guns guarding them, no doubt against us, but they are not prepared to stand up to nasty remarks about them made by the unrepresentative and undemocratic mass media or to properly protect and enforce our border controls.

So far as the behaviour of the mass media is concerned and, in particular, the BBC, I think that nobody can do any better than to listen to this YouTube clip illustrating the extent of blatant bias in the BBC. Also, if you listen carefully to the last caller, in order to get on the air at all the BBC are cunningly censoring who does get on. The caller had to pretend that he was a supporter of refugees crossing in to Hungary. Here is the clip>>>

 
What do you think?

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

More evidence of England paying the piper (but not calling the tune)!


More evidence of England paying the piper (but not calling the tune)!

 

Even MPs who represent English seats but who are not English like the Welsh Mrs Cheryl Gillan sometimes stick up for their constituents.  What do you think?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm150609/debtext/150609-0002.htm
9 Jun 2015 : Column 1081
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con):
“I hope that the Government will resist the call for the triple lock, quadruple lock—or whatever we are going to call it now. I asked the House of Commons Library to look at the disaggregation by UK constituent nation of the EU budget contributions and receipts. My right hon. Friend the Minister will be interested to know that it clearly shows that although the average cost across the UK in the last year for which figures were available was £48 per head, when that is disaggregated, we see that the real burden falls on England. The cost of membership is £72 per capita in England, whereas in Scotland, it is a mere £2; in Wales minus £74; and in Northern Ireland minus £160. So the devolved nations, which are effectively feather-bedded against the real cost of membership, should not be allowed to slant the results of any referendum by demanding an individual country lock on any result.”
The actual debate can be viewed here, with Mrs Gillan speaking about 14 minutes 37 seconds in:

http://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/035a053e-b29e-4a3a-a1d9-3916a6a5cce7?in=12:40:21
Alex Salmond misrepresented opposition to a Referendum on continued EU membership being determined by the vote in each nation as meaning, by extension, “that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should not get a vote at all.” The analogy with the USA is absurd.

This ‘disaggregation’ sets in context the positions of rUK in respect of EU Membership.

Bruges Group Meeting 1 April 2015 – John Redwood says he could vote to stay in the EU

Robert Henderson

Speakers:

Tim Aker  (Ukip  MEP)

John Redwood (Tory  MP)

Peter Oborne (Associate editor of the Spectator  magazine)

The meeting was very well attended with in excess of 200 people present, many of whom stayed despite having  to stand.  Particularly pleasing and encouraging were the number of young faces, which made up perhaps  a  quarter  of the audience.  The audience was very animated and a positive forest of hands were going up when questions were taken.

The order of the speakers  was Aker – Redwood – Oborne.  However, for ease of summary of their views both in their  speeches  and in answer to audience questions I shall  deal with them with them in this order:  Redwood – Aker – Oborne.

John Redwood

Redwood was so out of touch with the feeling of the audience that  he came close to being booed. As it was there were frequent cries of “no”, “rubbish” and general murmurings of dissent as he asked the audience to trust Cameron’s honesty in his attempt to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and put forward a plan for the OUT campaign which side-lined Nigel Farage . (The traffic of  audience disapproval   was countered by support for Redood , but judged by the noise made  those against him were  more numerous than his supporters).

Redwood said that he  believed  in Cameron’s honest intent  in  his negotiations  with EU. Consequently, he would not make up his mind whether to vote to leave until Cameron had completed his negotiations.   I think most people who have followed Redwood’s voluminous pronouncements  on  the EU will be more than a little surprised by his adoption of  such an equivocal position as the referendum approaches.    Redwood’s words were all the more unexpected because he began his talk by  denouncing  the fact that  membership of the EU  meant elected governments  –  most notably Greece at present – could not  do  what their electors wanted even if they wished to.  An important question arises,   if  Redwood  is  undecided about which way he will vote  how can he be  part of the OUT campaign?   Indeed, if Cameron gets concessions which Redwood deems enough to persuade him to vote to stay in,  presumably he will be campaigning with the stay in camp.

While Redwood’s unwillingness to directly dismiss Cameron’s stated aim as a sham is understandable, he is just a backbencher   who is unlikely to find a place in  a Cameron cabinet in a Parliament where his party only has a small majority.  These circumstances mean Redwood  has considerable freedom  to speak his mind.  In this instance he  could have said something along the lines of “The Prime Minister is sincere in his desire to reform the EU but I am  sure we all know in our hearts that this is a lost cause. Therefore, I have no doubt that I  shall be voting  to come out of the EU” or  even better  “ I  shall be voting to leave the EU regardless of what is offered by the EU  because for me the question  is not about renegotiating our term of membership but  of Britain being a sovereign nation state”.  Either statement would be consistent with what Redwood  has said over the past few years.

Redwood also  failed to  describe in any  detail what he would consider  would constitute  sufficient changes to the UK’s relationship with the EU to make him vote to stay in.  Neither Aker nor Oborne challenged him on this and no audience member who was called to ask a question raised the subject.  However, the subject is  academic in the long run because it really does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU.

Perhaps most  disturbing for those  who wish  the UK to leave the EU as a matter of principle, that is, those who wish our country to be a sovereign nation again, was Redwood’s strategy for the OUT campaign.  Redwood  adopted the line that Nigel Farage should not lead the OUT campaign because, he claimed, Farage is a marmite politician  who will alienate large chunks of the waverers  as we approach the referendum.  In fact, Redwood gave the impression he would rather see Farage completely excluded from the OUT campaign.

Redwood’s scheme for the OUT side  consisted of not frightening the voters with vulgar non-pc  talk about immigration or being  brutally honest  about anything relating to the  EU. Of course it is true  that the undecided and  faint-hearted supporters of leaving the EU will have to be appealed to in the right terms. The mistake Redwood is making is to imagine that the right terms will not include putting immigration controls  at the heart of  the OUT campaign.  Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the  major concerns of the British public and  when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin.  A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by  Channel 5  in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted and end to mass immigration. .

Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through  a subject on which they feel the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are also  opposed to mass immigration.  That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England  or England, Wales and Northern Ireland  vote to leave.  The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is , the less moral  leverage they will have for  either a veto over Britain leaving  the EU or another independence referendum.

Why is Redwood putting forward the  idea that Farage should be kept out of the limelight?   It cannot be simply to damage Ukip in the interest of the Tory Party  because there will be no general election for years (probably five years) . Could it be personal spite against Farage on Redwood’s part because they have quarrelled? I doubt it because I cannot recall Redwood and Farage having had a serious disagreement.   How about Redwood being  contaminated with the politically correct imprinting on the subjects of race and immigration  with the consequence that he thinks Farage’s views on these subjects are simply beyond the Pale? This is much more likely.  Interestingly, such a view echoes that of Douglas Carswell  who said of Nigel  Farage’s comments about foreign HIV patients costing the Earth:  “I think some of the tone that we deployed – for example the comments about HIV I think were plain wrong. Wrong at so many levels. Not just wrong because they were electorally unhelpful but just wrong because they were wrong.”

Redwood added fuel to the fire of the audience’s  discontent  by adopting a patronising tone adorned with a  supercilious smirk to anyone who disagreed with  him and refused to answer when he was asked to comment  on what he would  do and think if Farage did lead the OUT campaign.  The smirk became particularly  pronounced at this point.

Tim Aker

Unlike Redwood and  Aker   was very forthright and uncompromising, dealing pretty roughly with Redwood  whose positions  he treated with undisguised  incredulity as he pointed out the impossibility of the EU  giving Cameron anything substantial  and the folly of trying to sideline Farage.  He pointed out that without Farage and Ukip there would be no referendum, a simple  truth  because before Ukip began to make substantial inroads into the Tory vote  Cameron had  shown no serious interest in a referendum.

In his speech Aker made all the right sort of  political noises likely  to appeal to most  electors :  immigrants reduce the wages of the low paid; the unemployed of other EU states are being dumped on the UK;  the need for positive patriotism; a vote to remain in the EU would betray future generations;  billions in  Aid went to foreigners while  some of our own people went to food banks ; England was being Balkanised through the city regions being forced on the country by Cameron;  it is time to get rid of  the Barnett Formula and so on. All of this produced in Redwood and Oborne the kind of  facial expression  that people adopt when they have encountered an unpleasant smell.   That alone told you that Akers is  on the right path.

Peter Oborne

Oborne gave a very poor speech. It  largely  consisted of backing up Redwood’s objections to  Farage and Redwood’s   plans for the OUT campaign.  He described Akers as misguided and predicted that Farage  would bring to the ballot box only  the 14% or so who voted Ukip at the General Election.  That  claim was simple nonsense because  a general election and a referendum are chalk and cheese, and there are many  Euro sceptics in other parties, even some in the LibDems.  To assume that Farage would  cause such people to vote to  remain in the EU or to abstain is absurd.

However, Oborne  was strong on the need to have spending restrictions during the referendum campaign and made  the  interesting claim that  Rupert Murdoch will be coming out for the stay in the EU side because Murdoch has re-established his close association with the Tory Party.

What needs to be done

Nigel Farage must not be shouldered aside but put in the forefront of the OUT campaign. Not only is he an increasingly effective public performer, especially in debates,  unless he takes a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people such as Redwood and Carswell who have bought into the politically correct view of the world.  What this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest  explanation of what the EU represents .  It needs  Farage   to set that tone.

Immigration must be at the heart of the OUT campaign because it is (1)  the issue which concerns more voters  than any other issue and (2)  it  cuts across party and ideological lines in a way no other issue in the referendum will do.

Setting spending limits must be made a priority and should be agreed and  put into operation by the end of 2015. The Europhile political elite will doubtless try to  restrict spending limits to a short period before the vote is held.

The fixing of the EU referendum by the Europhiles has already begun with  the choice of a palpably biased question: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”  The bias comes from both the trigger word “remain” and the fact that the status quo has captured the  YES answer. Ideally a  judicial review should be launched as soon as possible. If Ukip  could fund it,  that would be a most  effective way of exercising control over the OUT campaign.

What should the question be? The original question put into European (Referendum) Bill  was “Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?”  That is much less biased because it does not overtly ask electors to vote for the status quo.

An alternative would be a double question with a box to mark against each question, for example

I wish Britain to be a member of the EU

I do not wish Britain to be a member of the EU.

Even that is not perfect because there is the problem of the order in which the questions come (being first gives a slight advantage).

Above all the OUT campaign needs to get its skates on as the referendum could be upon us quicker than we think, perhaps by the end of 2016 if Cameron has his way.

The Tories give a whole new meaning to democracy

If you won’t vote for an elected mayor have an unelected one

Robert Henderson

The Tories are currently bleating their heads off about how they  are all for bringing  politics and the exercise of  political  power to the people. Local democracy is, they shout ever louder, the order of the Tory day.  In the  vanguard  is Manchester, where a mayor and a “cabinet”  is to have the responsibility  for the spending and administration of  billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money  on  public transport, social care and housing as well as police budgets and, most dramatically, ultimately  the devolving of all NHS spending for the region.   When the process is completed local politicians will control more than a quarter of the total government money spent in Greater Manchester.

The political structure to support the mayor will be this:

“The mayor will lead Greater Manchester Combined Authority [GMCA], chair its meetings and allocate responsibilities to its cabinet, which is made up of the leaders of each of the area’s 10 local authorities.”

This is to be known as a city region. The mayor will not be an absolute  autocrat and can have  both his strategic decisions and spending proposals voted down by two thirds of the GMCA members – go to para 8.  On public service issues, each  GMCA member and the Mayor will  have one vote, with a  policy agreed by a majority vote. However, the mayor will have considerable powers and the requirement for over-ruling him  on strategic decisions and spending – two thirds of the GMCA members – is onerous to say the least.  That will be especially the case because the  councils of the  Manchester city region are largely Labour and the mayor, at least to begin with, will also be a  Labour man.

The casual observer might think this is a democratisation of  English politics. But wait, was not Manchester one of the nine English cities which firmly  said no to an elected mayor in a referendum in as recently as  2012? Indeed it was. Manchester voted NO by  53.2% to 46.8%  (48,593 votes to  42,677).  Admittedly, it was only on a 24% turnout,  but that  in itself shows that the local population generally  were not greatly interested in the idea. Nonetheless, 91,000 did bother to vote, a rather large number of voters to ignore.   Moreover,  low as  24% may be,  many a councillor and  crime and police commissioner has been   voted in on  a lower percentage turnout.

After the 2012 referendum the Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese said  the vote was  “a very clear rejection”  of an elected mayor  by  the people of Greater Manchester while the  then housing minister Grant Shapps said  ‘no-one was “forcing” mayors on cities’.   Three years later that is precisely what is happening to Manchester, well not precisely because  Manchester is to have an interim mayor (see para 11)   foisted on them without an election,   who will serve for a minimum of two years and a maximum of four years before an election for a mayor is held.( The period before an elected mayor arrives  will depend on how long it takes to pass the necessary legislation,  create the necessary powers for the mayor and create the institutions on the ground to run the new administration ). When the time comes for the elected mayor the interim mayor, if he wishes to run for mayor, will have the considerable electoral advantage that incumbency  normally brings.

Sir Richard Leese, now promoted to be  vice chairman of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, has had a Damascene conversion to the idea of a mayor : “It was clear that an over-centralised national system was not delivering the best results for our people or our economy.

“We are extremely pleased that we can now demonstrate what a city region with greater freedoms can achieve and contribute further to the growth of the UK.”

The  interim mayor will be appointed  on 29 May by  councillors meeting in private.  There are two candidates, Tony Lloyd and Lord Smith of Leigh. Both are Labour Party men.  This is  unsurprising because the body organising the appointment is the  Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, (AGMA) which  is comprised of the  leaders of the 10 councils making up the region. Eight of them are Labour.   The job description for the interim mayor included the provision that he must be a politician from Greater Manchester ‘ with a “proven track record” of “achievement at a senior level in local government”’ . These requirements  made it virtually certain that both candidates would be Labour politicians.

The exclusion of the public from the appointment of interim mayor  is absolute. Here is Andrew Gilligan writing in the Sunday Telegraph:

“ The two candidates for mayor  have published no manifestos, done no campaigning, made no appearances in public and answered no questions from voters or journalists. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph asked to speak to both candidates. “He’d love to,” said Mr Lloyd’s spokesman. “But he’s been told he’s not allowed to talk to the media.”’

A spokesman for Lord Smith said: “He can’t speak about it until it’s over.”

Perhaps as a result, the “contest” has been barely mentioned in the local press and has gone completely unreported nationally.

His precise salary, predictably, is also not a matter for public discussion. It is being decided by an “independent remuneration committee” which meets in private and whose members’ names have not been published.

Judged by the mainstream media coverage there has been precious little public dissent about this gross breach of democracy  from influential Westminster politicians. Graham Brady, Tory MP for Altrincham and chairman of the    1922 Committee,  has ‘questioned whether the process was “within the bounds of propriety”, saying that any arrangement which gave the interim mayor “two or even up to four years to establish a profile and a platform for election would clearly be improper and unfair”.’  But that is about it  and  the appointment of the interim mayor carries  on regardless.

There are many serious  practical objections to devolving power to  English city regions , but the naked disregard for the wishes of the voters  makes the practical objections irrelevant  if democracy is to mean anything.  Nor is the fact that eventually there will be an elected mayor of any relevance  because the voters have already rejected the idea. Even if  there was to be an election  for the mayor now instead of an interim mayor,  it would still be wrong because the voters of Manchester have already said no to an elected mayor.

This affair smacks of the worst practices of the EU whereby  a referendum  which produces  a result that  the Euro-elites do not want is rapidly overturned by a second referendum on the same subject after the Euro-elites have engaged in a  huge propaganda onslaught , bribed the offending country  by promising  more EU money if the result is the one the elites  want and threatened the offending country with dire consequences if the second vote produces the same result as the first referendum. In fact, this piece of chicanery is even worse than that practised by the EU because here the electorate do not even get another  vote before the elite’s wishes are carried out.

But there is an even  more fundamental objection to the planned transfer of powers than the lack of democracy.  Let us suppose that the proposal for an elected mayor for Manchester  had been accepted in the 2012 referendum, would that have made its creation legitimate?  Is it democratic to  have a referendum in   part of  a country on a policy which has serious implications for the  rest of the country  if  the rest of the country cannot vote in the referendum?  Patently it is not.

The effect of the proposed devolution to Manchester would be to set public provision in the  Manchester city region  at odds with  at the  least  much of Lancashire, parts  of Cheshire and  Derbyshire plus  the West Riding of Yorkshire.  For example,  Manchester could make a mess of their NHS administration with  their medical provision reduced in consequence and   patients from    Manchester seeking better  NHS  treatment elsewhere.  This would take money from the Manchester NHS  and place pressure on NHS services outside of Manchester  as they catered for people from Manchester.  Alternatively, Greater Manchester might be able to improve their health services and begin to draw in patients from outside the city region, reducing the public money  other  NHS authorities  receive and driving down the quality and scope  of their services.

A single city region having the powers that Manchester are going to have will  be disruptive to the area close to it, but  If other city regions  follow suit – and it is clear that the new Tory government intends  this to happen –  the Balkanisation of England  will  proceed apace, with city region being set against city region and the city regions being  pitted against the remnants of England outside the city regions.

Nor is it clear that  the first candidate city regions would be evenly spread around the country.  The cities which like Manchester rejected an elected mayor in 2012 were Birmingham,  Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Wakefield, Coventry, Leeds and Bradford.  Having been chosen to vote for an elected mayor It is reasonable to presume that these would be the cities which would be at the front of the queue for city region status.  They are all either in the  North  or  Central Midlands of England. Even in those areas there would be massive gaps, for example,  all  four  Yorkshire cities (Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford) are  in the West Riding.  The most southerly one  (Birmingham) is 170 odd miles from the South Coast.

There may of course be other city region candidates , but  it is difficult to see how such a policy could be rolled out across the country simply because there are substantial areas of England without  very large cities or towns. In fact, south of Birmingham there are precious few large towns and cities (London being  a law to itself)  which could form a city region in the manner of that proposed for Manchester.  The only  Englsh cities south of Birmingham which have a population of more than 250,000 are Bristol and Plymouth.   Hence, it is inevitable that England would be reduced to a patchwork of competing authorities with different policies on vitally important issues such as healthcare and housing.

The idea of giving powers to city regions  stems from the imbalance in the devolution settlement which leaves England, alone of the four home countries, out in the cold without a national political voice. It is a cynical and shabby  political fix for a problem which will not go away but may be submerged for the length of a Parliament  through a pretence of increasing local democracy in England.  Anyone who doubts this should ask themselves  this question,  if devolving power to the local level is so desirable why do Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland show no appetite for it?  The answer is that their politicians recognise that to do so would weaken both the  political clout of their countries and deprive their electors of a focus of national pride and loyalty.

There is also an EU dimension to this. The EU welcome anything which weakens national unity, and there is no better way of doing that than the time honoured practice of divide and rule. That is precisely what Balkanising England through creating regional centres of political power will do. The EU will seek  to use city regions (or any other local authority with serious powers)  to emasculate the Westminster government by  attempting to deal directly with the city regions rather than Westminster and using the fact of the increased local powers  to justify bypassing Westminster.

Once political structures such as the city regions are established it will become very difficult to  get rid of them because the national political class is weakened by the removal of powers from central government and the new local political power bases develop their own powerful  political classes.  If the Tories or any other government – both Labour and the LibDems have bought into the localism agenda – succeed in establishing city regions or any other form of devolution in England it will be the devil’s own job to  reverse the process of  Balkanising England. That is why it is vitally important to either stop the establishment of  serious powers being given to local authorities or  to put a barrier in the shape of an English Parliament between  Brussels and the English devolved localities.

 

 

 

Shamocracy – The Tories give a whole new meaning to democracy

If you won’t vote for an elected mayor have an unelected one

Robert Henderson

The Tories are currently bleating their heads off about how they  are all for bringing  politics and the exercise of  political  power to the people. Local democracy is, they shout ever louder, the order of the Tory day.  In the  vanguard  is Manchester, where a mayor and a “cabinet”  is to have the responsibility  for the spending and administration of  billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money  on  public transport, social care and housing as well as police budgets and, most dramatically, ultimately  the devolving of all NHS spending for the region.   When the process is completed local politicians will control more than a quarter of the total government money spent in Greater Manchester.

The political structure to support the mayor will be this:

“The mayor will lead Greater Manchester Combined Authority [GMCA], chair its meetings and allocate responsibilities to its cabinet, which is made up of the leaders of each of the area’s 10 local authorities.”

This is to be known as a city region. The mayor will not be an absolute  autocrat and can have  both his strategic decisions and spending proposals voted down by two thirds of the GMCA members – go to para 8.  On public service issues, each  GMCA member and the Mayor will  have one vote, with a  policy agreed by a majority vote. However, the mayor will have considerable powers and the requirement for over-ruling him  on strategic decisions and spending – two thirds of the GMCA members – is onerous to say the least.  That will be especially the case because the  councils of the  Manchester city region are largely Labour and the mayor, at least to begin with, will also be a  Labour man.

The casual observer might think this is a democratisation of  English politics. But wait, was not Manchester one of the nine English cities which firmly  said no to an elected mayor in a referendum in as recently as  2012? Indeed it was. Manchester voted NO by  53.2% to 46.8%  (48,593 votes to  42,677).  Admittedly, it was only on a 24% turnout,  but that  in itself shows that the local population generally  were not greatly interested in the idea. Nonetheless, 91,000 did bother to vote, a rather large number of voters to ignore.   Moreover,  low as  24% may be,  many a councillor and  crime and police commissioner has been   voted in on  a lower percentage turnout.

After the 2012 referendum the Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese said  the vote was  “a very clear rejection”  of an elected mayor  by  the people of Greater Manchester while the  then housing minister Grant Shapps said  ‘no-one was “forcing” mayors on cities’.   Three years later that is precisely what is happening to Manchester, well not precisely because  Manchester is to have an interim mayor (see para 11)   foisted on them without an election,   who will serve for a minimum of two years and a maximum of four years before an election for a mayor is held.( The period before an elected mayor arrives  will depend on how long it takes to pass the necessary legislation,  create the necessary powers for the mayor and create the institutions on the ground to run the new administration ). When the time comes for the elected mayor the interim mayor, if he wishes to run for mayor, will have the considerable electoral advantage that incumbency  normally brings.

Sir Richard Leese, now promoted to be  vice chairman of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, has had a Damascene conversion to the idea of a mayor : “It was clear that an over-centralised national system was not delivering the best results for our people or our economy.

“We are extremely pleased that we can now demonstrate what a city region with greater freedoms can achieve and contribute further to the growth of the UK.”

The  interim mayor will be appointed  on 29 May by  councillors meeting in private.  There are two candidates, Tony Lloyd and Lord Smith of Leigh. Both are Labour Party men.  This is  unsurprising because the body organising the appointment is the  Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, (AGMA) which  is comprised of the  leaders of the 10 councils making up the region. Eight of them are Labour.   The job description for the interim mayor included the provision that he must be a politician from Greater Manchester ‘ with a “proven track record” of “achievement at a senior level in local government”’ . These requirements  made it virtually certain that both candidates would be Labour politicians.

The exclusion of the public from the appointment of interim mayor  is absolute. Here is Andrew Gilligan writing in the Sunday Telegraph:

“ The two candidates for mayor  have published no manifestos, done no campaigning, made no appearances in public and answered no questions from voters or journalists. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph asked to speak to both candidates. “He’d love to,” said Mr Lloyd’s spokesman. “But he’s been told he’s not allowed to talk to the media.”’

A spokesman for Lord Smith said: “He can’t speak about it until it’s over.”

Perhaps as a result, the “contest” has been barely mentioned in the local press and has gone completely unreported nationally.

His precise salary, predictably, is also not a matter for public discussion. It is being decided by an “independent remuneration committee” which meets in private and whose members’ names have not been published.

Judged by the mainstream media coverage there has been precious little public dissent about this gross breach of democracy  from influential Westminster politicians. Graham Brady, Tory MP for Altrincham and chairman of the    1922 Committee,  has ‘questioned whether the process was “within the bounds of propriety”, saying that any arrangement which gave the interim mayor “two or even up to four years to establish a profile and a platform for election would clearly be improper and unfair”.’  But that is about it  and  the appointment of the interim mayor carries  on regardless.

There are many serious  practical objections to devolving power to  English city regions , but the naked disregard for the wishes of the voters  makes the practical objections irrelevant  if democracy is to mean anything.  Nor is the fact that eventually there will be an elected mayor of any relevance  because the voters have already rejected the idea. Even if  there was to be an election  for the mayor now instead of an interim mayor,  it would still be wrong because the voters of Manchester have already said no to an elected mayor.

This affair smacks of the worst practices of the EU whereby  a referendum  which produces  a result that  the Euro-elites do not want is rapidly overturned by a second referendum on the same subject after the Euro-elites have engaged in a  huge propaganda onslaught , bribed the offending country  by promising  more EU money if the result is the one the elites  want and threatened the offending country with dire consequences if the second vote produces the same result as the first referendum. In fact, this piece of chicanery is even worse than that practised by the EU because here the electorate do not even get another  vote before the elite’s wishes are carried out.

But there is an even  more fundamental objection to the planned transfer of powers than the lack of democracy.  Let us suppose that the proposal for an elected mayor for Manchester  had been accepted in the 2012 referendum, would that have made its creation legitimate?  Is it democratic to  have a referendum in   part of  a country on a policy which has serious implications for the  rest of the country  if  the rest of the country cannot vote in the referendum?  Patently it is not.

The effect of the proposed devolution to Manchester would be to set public provision in the  Manchester city region  at odds with  at the  least  much of Lancashire, parts  of Cheshire and  Derbyshire plus  the West Riding of Yorkshire.  For example,  Manchester could make a mess of their NHS administration with  their medical provision reduced in consequence and   patients from    Manchester seeking better  NHS  treatment elsewhere.  This would take money from the Manchester NHS  and place pressure on NHS services outside of Manchester  as they catered for people from Manchester.  Alternatively, Greater Manchester might be able to improve their health services and begin to draw in patients from outside the city region, reducing the public money  other  NHS authorities  receive and driving down the quality and scope  of their services.

A single city region having the powers that Manchester are going to have will  be disruptive to the area close to it, but  If other city regions  follow suit – and it is clear that the new Tory government intends  this to happen –  the Balkanisation of England  will  proceed apace, with city region being set against city region and the city regions being  pitted against the remnants of England outside the city regions.

Nor is it clear that  the first candidate city regions would be evenly spread around the country.  The cities which like Manchester rejected an elected mayor in 2012 were Birmingham,  Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Wakefield, Coventry, Leeds and Bradford.  Having been chosen to vote for an elected mayor It is reasonable to presume that these would be the cities which would be at the front of the queue for city region status.  They are all either in the  North  or  Central Midlands of England. Even in those areas there would be massive gaps, for example,  all  four  Yorkshire cities (Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford) are  in the West Riding.  The most southerly one  (Birmingham) is 170 odd miles from the South Coast.

There may of course be other city region candidates , but  it is difficult to see how such a policy could be rolled out across the country simply because there are substantial areas of England without  very large cities or towns. In fact, south of Birmingham there are precious few large towns and cities (London being  a law to itself)  which could form a city region in the manner of that proposed for Manchester.  The only  Englsh cities south of Birmingham which have a population of more than 250,000 are Bristol and Plymouth.   Hence, it is inevitable that England would be reduced to a patchwork of competing authorities with different policies on vitally important issues such as healthcare and housing.

The idea of giving powers to city regions  stems from the imbalance in the devolution settlement which leaves England, alone of the four home countries, out in the cold without a national political voice. It is a cynical and shabby  political fix for a problem which will not go away but may be submerged for the length of a Parliament  through a pretence of increasing local democracy in England.  Anyone who doubts this should ask themselves  this question,  if devolving power to the local level is so desirable why do Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland show no appetite for it?  The answer is that their politicians recognise that to do so would weaken both the  political clout of their countries and deprive their electors of a focus of national pride and loyalty.

There is also an EU dimension to this. The EU welcome anything which weakens national unity, and there is no better way of doing that than the time honoured practice of divide and rule. That is precisely what Balkanising England through creating regional centres of political power will do. The EU will seek  to use city regions (or any other local authority with serious powers)  to emasculate the Westminster government by  attempting to deal directly with the city regions rather than Westminster and using the fact of the increased local powers  to justify bypassing Westminster.

Once political structures such as the city regions are established it will become very difficult to  get rid of them because the national political class is weakened by the removal of powers from central government and the new local political power bases develop their own powerful  political classes.  If the Tories or any other government – both Labour and the LibDems have bought into the localism agenda – succeed in establishing city regions or any other form of devolution in England it will be the devil’s own job to  reverse the process of  Balkanising England. That is why it is vitally important to either stop the establishment of  serious powers being given to local authorities or  to put a barrier in the shape of an English Parliament between  Brussels and the English devolved localities.