Tag Archives: UKIP

IS DOUGLAS CARSWELL A PLANT?

IS DOUGLAS CARSWELL A PLANT?


Douglas Carswell’s attitude to the £3.2 million which UKIP is entitled to under the so-called ‘Short Money’ rules is, on the face of it, inexplicable. 

It could be that he is deliberately using his position to damage UKIP but another possible explanation is the old adage “there is no fool like a clever fool”. 

Douglas Carswell appears to be ideologically a Thatcherite ultra who objects to taxpayers’ money being spent on almost anything but in particular on politics. In some ways this might be considered to be commendable, but is obviously a profoundly impractical idea when he represents a party like UKIP which must seriously need that money. I gather UKIP may have spent something in the order of £10 million on the General Election compared to the much bigger Conservative Party, with far greater brand awareness and electoral credibility, which apparently has spent over £60 million.

The Short Money payments would also be extremely useful for UKIP to be used as part of the organisation and preparation for the In/Out EU Referendum. In short the decision to reject it caused by Carswell’s intransigence can only be described as obtuse.

It is however interesting that Douglas Carswell had a track record of being a thorn in David Cameron’s side. Also when he went over to UKIP and caused a by-election, it was interesting that the Conservatives didn’t put in a big hitter against David Carswell, but instead put in a virtually unknown actor, who, despite their polling research on the English nationalist sentiments of many residents of Clacton, didn’t raise the English nationalist issue at all, either in the by-election or in the General Election. Could it be that the leaders of the Conservative Party wanted the highly disruptive, egotistical, ideological obsessive Carswell disrupting the ranks of their enemy? It would surely have been feasible to encourage him to jump and with “plausible deniability” to enable him to get re-elected.

In case it might be said that ‘surely nobody would be that devious?’ I am aware of cases where outside of politics exactly that has been done where people who are trouble are given excellent references for them to go and work for competitors. In one particularly repellent case, a teacher, who had been caught, as it was put, “interfering with small boys” whilst working for a State school, in the days of the Greater London Education Authority, being given an excellent reference to get him out and to get him working in the private sector, with a view to damaging the private sector’s reputation once he was caught there!

Whether it is so or not however having Douglas Carswell in UKIP has certainly been an un-mixed blessing for the Europhile Conservative Party’s leadership!

The only point it gives me significant reservations about this theory is the fact that David Cameron himself doesn’t appear to be sufficiently clued up and or, indeed, sufficiently Machiavellian to have done such a thing. Could it however be significant that this all happened whilst that Wizard of Oz, Lynton Crosby, was in town?

UKIP AND THEIR MISSING ENGLISH MANIFESTO


UKIP AND THEIR MISSING ENGLISH MANIFESTO


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

General Election

While this election has been not only very long and was fixed in the calendar for several years, it has been interesting to see that there has been much more polling evidence than usual, particularly with Lord Ashcroft’s polls.

It has also been interesting to see that despite the £100 million or more that the Establishment parties and UKIP have spent between them on billboards, leafleting and social media based canvassing and telephone canvassing it seemed to have made very little difference between the two main parties until the last moment; more of that later!

These were interesting elections in the second tier of parties about the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP. Now we see their results!

So far as UKIP is concerned the result was a devastating disappointment. Not only has UKIP proved a disappointment to English nationalists, as per one of my earlier blog articles, but won’t even have satisfied their British nationalist supporters.

The SNP’s results in Scotland have brought the end of the Union very much back onto the agenda. One of the burning issues of the next five years will therefore I think be the need for a voice for English nationalism.

In the last 18 months it has been UKIPs time in the sun. Their failure to deliver leaves, I think, the way wide open for the only English nationalist party to come forward.

The English Democrats are now an experienced party of campaigners dedicated to England and our English nation and will not be blown off course by the winds and noise of political storms and while we may not agree with the Scottish National Party on the vast majority of their policies, the one thing that we do agree with them on is the need for an effective voice for our Nation.
 
In an imaginary play we might have:-
 
Stage directions: Enter – triumphant SNP contingent.

Exit – dejected Liberal Democrats and UKIP contingents.

Enter – determined band of English Democrats with Cross of St George flat flying to cries of horror and alarm from the British Media Establishment chorus!

UKIP FAILS THE ENGLISH TEST

UKIP FAILS THE ENGLISH TEST


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

English Democrats’ Spring Conference 2015

We had a good Spring Conference with the Party very united and we adopted the proposed policy amendments and we re-elected our National Council. I also was filmed by the BBC as I delivered this speech:-

Ladies & Gentlemen welcome to our 2015 Spring Conference in York.

York is one of our most beautiful and ancient historic cities where many of the pages of English history have been written.

Not very far from here, King Harold Godwinston destroyed the last great Viking invasion led by King Harald Hardrada in 1066 and also his own brother Tostig, the rebel Earl of Northumbria was killed.

It is also not far from here that earlier Viking invaders spread-eagled the last Anglo-Saxon King of Northumbria. Spread-eagling was a sort of Viking cross between torture and human sacrifice in which the victim was tied down on the ground and his chest opened to display the inside of his ribs as the feathered wings of the eagle, whilst Odin’s sacred birds, the ravens, swooped down to feast on his still living heart and lungs. Think about that ladies and gentlemen next time you see a pub called the Spread-eagle! And if you do go inside raise a glass in memory of our Anglo-Saxon forebears who fought off the Vikings to create the new English Nation which united on the 12th July 927 at the Council of Eamont – near modern Penrith!

So here we are ladies and gentlemen in the very heart of England holding an important meeting for the future of our country. Our numbers here today show that we still have much work to do, but we shouldn’t be daunted or down-hearted about that task. I think events are moving in our direction.

It is noticeable after the Scottish Referendum that many more people in England have woken up to the unfair way in which England is treated and even William Hague who once told the BBC in discussion with Jack Straw that he hated and feared English nationalism has begun to make conciliatory gestures towards English nationalism. Incidentally Jack Straw, who was recently exposed using the current arrangement to enrich himself, once said that “The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent”. But William Hague said that “English Nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism” and even he, ladies and gentlemen, even William Hague, hating the idea of England, as he evidently does, nevertheless has at least made a half-hearted effort to tinker with the procedures of the House of Commons to give some recognition to English interests.

That EVEL proposal will of course come to nothing and is probably meant as nothing more than what Conservative HQ call a “populist positioning policy”, which you and I, ladies and gentlemen, might well translate with the Army expression “bullshit battles brains”. It is only a device to bamboozle English voters to vote Conservative. So ladies and gentlemen let us not forget David Cameron’s insult to the English when it comes to the ballot box. This is what he said about his national identity “I’m a Cameron, there is quite a lot of Scottish blood flowing through these veins” and this is what he said about people like us “I’ll take on the sour Little Englanders, I’ll fight them all the way”.

Ladies and gentlemen when even our enemies are having to give ground on our agenda we know that our Cause is making headway.

This year is also the 800th Anniversary of Magna Carta. Magna Carta is one of the greatest legacies of our Nation to all the peoples of the Earth. For in it our Nation first devised the idea that even Kings are subject to Law. No previous nation had ever dared to think such a thing. For example in Ancient Rome, ladies and gentlemen, the Will of the Emperor was the supreme law! In most other States throughout history there hasn’t really even been a concept of ‘Law’.

This year also there is a much less well celebrated but important historical anniversary – the 750th anniversary of the first English Parliament. That is the Parliament summoned by Simon De Montfort, the Earl of Leicester. Recently I was being interviewed by the Financial Times and was able to point out to them the very spot in the walls of Westminster Abbey which triggered the events which led to the first English Parliament. King John’s son, Henry III was building his vast and magnificent remodelled Westminster Abbey and he had spent so much on it and on his other building projects that he ran out of money. Being the government he thought that he had the right to take as much out of the pockets of the English as he wanted – just like our own government today!

But he was in for a rude shock as his excessive demands led to rebellion and to the first English Parliament which took place in the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey 750 years ago. The Chapter House is still there and I am looking into whether we could hold a meeting of our English Parliament there!

We have come here at least in part to prepare for the launch of our general election campaign for May 7th 2015. We recognise this is a General Election in which patriotic English people are likely to give UKIP, the “Believe in Britain” party, a chance, but after the election we need to be positioned and understood to be the “believe in England” Party. This is because, Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in England. Do you believe in England?

We stood in the Police Commissioner by-election in South Yorkshire last year and still got a credible result of 8,583 votes and retained our deposit but the statistics that shows our potential is:-

UKIP:

Number of votes: 46,883

Spent: £157048.65

Cost per vote: £3.35

English Democrats:

Number of Votes: 8582

Spent: £9567

Cost per vote: £1.11

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

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

Ladies and gentlemen those of us who spend far too much time on the internet, Facebook and Twitter, even those of us who are trying to push our message I think will have come across huge numbers of over enthusiastic UKIP supporters who think that UKIP is going to be forming the next government!

I have got a message for them and for those English nationalists who think that UKIP may be the answer, despite its un-English stance. That message is:- No they won’t!

This election is an election where, for the first time ever, there is a great deal of detailed information on the likely outcome. Lord Ashcroft the former Tory donor, has spent literally millions of pounds in having opinion polls done in virtually every constituency in the United Kingdom. So we have a very clear view of the current picture and so the likely outcome of this General Election.

In the past opinion polls have generally been done on opinions across the whole country, but as the results for the Social Democrat Party showed in the 70’s, you can have a full quarter of the vote but if your vote is spread out across the country you will win hardly any seats. It is for that very strong electoral reason that the British Establishment have clung on to “first past the post” system, which gives them a disproportionate number of seats, especially given their increasingly limited support. It is the “first past the post” problem that UKIP have to contend with. It is because of “first past the post” and its effect of constituencies on the result that Lord Ashcroft’s polls suggest that UKIP will win between 3 and 5 seats.

Despite some recent UKIP spin, one of the seats that they appear to be increasingly unlikely to win matters perhaps more to them than any other because it is South Thanet, the seat that Nigel Farage is standing in.

I think you can already see fault lines developing in UKIP from the comments made by Douglas Carswell that he supports multi-culturalism and has criticised Enoch Powell’s views on the problems of mass immigration whereas Mark Reckless supports starting to think about repatriation of immigrants. So it’s easy to see that without Nigel Farage to hold them in check as Leader in Westminster, UKIP is likely to descend into open civil war and one of the issues they will fight over is the question of English nationalism.

Turning from UKIP to the likely consequences of the General Election, Lord Ashcroft’s polls show that the Conservatives and Labour are likely to win a very similar number of seats and that that number is likely to be well short of a majority in the House of Commons. This means that it seems unlikely, as things stand at the moment, that either Party will be able to form a government without assistance from smaller parties. It follows from this that the really important battle may well prove to be how many Liberal Democrat seats are lost and also equally important how many Scottish National Party seats are won.

So far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned, Lord Ashcroft’s polling suggests that they may well lose all but 20 of their seats. One of their seats that is in the balance is that of Nick Clegg at Sheffield Hallam. That is a constituency where there are a lot of students, many of whom will not have forgotten Nick Clegg’s dishonesty over student top-up or tuition fees. To add to the mix, the English Democrats will be standing in that seat and our candidate is Steve Clegg. Stand up Steve. So we will have Steve Clegg of the English Democrats hopefully higher up the ballot paper than Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats! It may only need a couple of hundred Liberal Democrat voters to make a mistake to decapitate that Party. What do you think of that ladies and gentlemen?

So far as the SNP are concerned, some opinion polls have put the number of potential wins for the SNP, out of the 59 seats in Scotland, at 56, almost wiping out Labour, wiping out all but 1 of the Liberal Democrats seats and wiping out the Conservatives in Scotland. Remember that whereas the first past the post vote will reduce UKIP’s vote to small numbers because it is spread out, the SNP are in the opposite position because the 45% of the Scottish who voted for Independence are concentrated in Scotland, whereas their unionist opponents are split which means that the SNP will win more seats than is proportionate.

If the Liberal Democrats are reduced to 20 then on the current opinion polls it will not be possible for either the Conservatives or for Labour to form a government with only an alliance or coalition with the Liberal Democrats. That means that they would have to form an alliance with the Scottish National Party.

The Scottish National Party have made it clear that they would not support a Conservative administration and therefore we may well see a coalition, or a “confidence and supply” agreement, between Labour and the Scottish National Party. You can be very sure that the price of such an arrangement will be deeper in-roads into English national interests.

To add to the interest in the outcome of this General Election it may be that Labour will need to also bring in the other parties that the SNP are in alliance with, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Sinn Fein.

It may interest you to know that it has been reported and it has not been denied that senior Labour figures have already been in talks with Sinn Fein to see whether they would come into such an arrangement. I wonder ladies and gentlemen whether such a government shouldn’t be known as the Government of Anti-English Conspiracy?

I wonder if anybody here thinks that these prospects for the General Election, coupled with the effects of the fixed term parliament act which means that the arrangement, once in place, is likely to last 5 years, however ineffective and unpopular it becomes, that after that even the most politically comatose Englishman and Englishwoman won’t be roused out of their lethargy and political slumbers to support the only English nationalist party? Ladies and gentlemen do you think that they will also stop Believing in Britain? I do ladies and gentlemen.

So ladies and gentlemen as I said I believe in England. Again I ask do you believe in England? Well then ladies and gentlemen let’s live up to our motto and put England first. Who is with me?

Leaving the EU


On the 18th February I attended, at David Campbell Bannerman MEP’s invitation, a conference that he had organised at Europe House, the former Conservative Party Headquarters at 32 Smith Square in London. The conference was entitled ‘Alternatives to EU Membership: What are the UK’s options?’

The conference was extremely well planned, supported and very interesting with a series of interesting speakers. We had the history of the relationship between the UK and the UK and, indeed of Europe, generally extending back over the last 2,000 years from Adrian Hilton, AKA the blogger, Archbishop Cranmer. His speech can be found here >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMc4AElHRAw&list=PLhBwLqL-Q9j9LAg45qcCuWJCZVfcjRvyM&index=2 and is well worth listening to.

The meeting was chaired by Tim Montgomerie currently of the Times and formally of Conservative Home, who was kind enough to welcome me personally and assured me that he supported an English Parliament and wished the campaign every success.

We heard from Ruth Lee, from Martin Howe QC and interestingly from Heming Olaussen, leading No to EU campaigner, and also Thomas Aeschi, member of the Swiss Parliament for the Swiss Peoples Party, as to what the situation is in terms of resistance to EU membership in both those countries. Also from David Campbell Bannerman himself and also from Sir Bill Cash MP.

There were also impressive contributions from Matthew Elliott, John Mills, leading Labour Eurosceptic, and Dr John Warmould, an expert in the motor manufacturing sector, recorded messages from Owen Patterson MP and Niall Gardner, of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, an entertaining speech from UKIP’s Earl of Dartmouth MEP and also a great speech from Christopher Chope MP. All of these speeches can be found by following the YouTube links.

The upshot of the meeting was also useful for the Eurosceptic Cause, as it became clear there is really a very simple option which does not depend on anyone else agreeing to anything. We could simply leave the EU and there would be an automatic access to the fundamental agreements governing world trade under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation.

Other options would simply give rise to the sort of confusion which did not help the ‘Yes’ side in the Scottish Independence Referendum, as we would be left arguing that we need the agreement of particular people and trying to convince people that the negotiations would proceed favourably.

Bill Cash pointed out that because the UK does not have a written Constitution and the fundamental rule of parliamentary sovereignty (that one parliament cannot bind the next), means that there is nothing constitutionally to stop us simply repealing the European Communities Act, which means that the UK is automatically out of the EU.

Therefore with that simple constitutional step the UK would be back amongst the trade nations governed by the World Trade Organisation. No doubt also, given the balance of payments, we would also be able to get favourable terms with the EU in due course in any case. The only part of the economy which needs special consideration is the motor industry which may need special support negotiated with the industry leaders.

This clarification is of course great news from the point of view of the campaign to leave the EU, since it makes all the arguments much simpler and much easier for everyone to understand.

What do you think?

UKIP ‘believes’ in “Britishness” not Englishness!


UKIP goes for “Britishness” not Englishness!


There has recently been a development within UKIP which I didn’t think I could leave unmentioned. Nigel Farage has given several important speeches recently, but has written the article which appears below for the Daily Telegraph. In all these he has made clear where UKIP’s national identity/nationality lies.

I have recently read an excellent book about UKIP written by Dr Matthew Goodwin and Dr Ron Ford called “Revolt on the Right”. It is such an excellent read and analysis of UKIP’s situation and of the whole of what the authors call “the radical right”, that it is well worth reading. Here is a link to purchase a copy on Amazon >>> Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain (Extremism and Democracy): Amazon.co.uk: Robert Ford,.

The interesting thing is that the authors of “Revolt on the Right” compellingly compare UKIPs position with the growth of the Right across many other Western European countries, such as the Front National in France. It is noted that all share some common characteristics. These are Euro-scepticism; hostility to mass immigration; attachment to traditional values; hostility to the current political elite; and assertive nationalism.

UKIP of course shares all these points but had been making noises about being interested in England and Englishness. This all began back in late 2010 as a serious effort by UKIPs leadership to destabilise the English Democrats using various dirty tricks.

So for several years now there has been an ambivalence about UKIP’s talk about England, the most extreme example of which we saw only a few weeks ago when Paul Nuttall said that he personally supported an English Parliament as his punch line on Question Time.

Now all that is over and UKIP has nailed its flag to the mast. The only element of the radical right agenda that they had waivered on was which national identity. Now that is clear, as you can see reading Nigel Farage’s article below. There is no more prevarication or hesitation and we can see the colours of the national flag that they have unfurled!

English nationalists should no longer be under any delusions about UKIPs national identity.

Here is the article:-

Nigel Farage’s appeal to Britons: believe in Britain


Ahead of the general election, Ukip leader Nigel Farage sets out his party’s vision

This election campaign has been incredibly dull so far. Labour is trying to claim our National Health Service, as if they own it. The Tories are trying to grab at the economy, as if they haven’t presided over a doubling of the national debt in just five years, and failing to erase the deficit. Pretty predictable stuff.

And that’s because these two parties – the legacy parties – have forgotten that there is a country out there.

There’s a country beyond Westminster, crying out for attention, respect, and assistance at a time when politicians are trying to convince them that everything is absolutely fine.

But it’s not fine. Now more than ever, this country needs a positive political party, with firm ideas for the future of this country. I believe that at this election, Ukip will be that party.

When you look at somewhere like Castlepoint in Essex, this election presents voters with a stark choice.

Ukip’s candidate is a local lad, Jamie Huntman, a timber merchant, who is deeply patriotic, involved in his community, and known as hard-working, straight-talking guy.

He’s a man who, in spite of this country’s woes, despite the ruling classes telling us we can’t be a great nation again, still believes in Britain.

We believe that the backbone of this country – small business owners, families and indeed the legal migrants who come here to better their lives – know that we no longer have a capitalism that works for all.

Instead, we have corporatism, lavishing attention on big corporations while ignoring the little man. Only Ukip will address and tackle this imbalance.

We’ll turn the other cheek to insults and negativity and focus instead on what we could deliver for the country if we have enough MPs.

No one will have a majority after this election. They all know it. But the thing they fear the most is a sizeable number of Ukip MPs in that chamber, holding them to account for you.

And when we say we believe in Britain, we believe in the whole of Britain. We’re the only political party with representation in all four corners of the United Kingdom.

The Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru are obviously regional parties. Labour has increasingly become a regional party in the North – though voters in the one-party state they tried to create there are now beginning to revolt. The Conservative Party is now a regional party of the South.

Ukip, on the other hand, is doing as well in the North as we are in the South. We’re a party that represents the whole country and, even more importantly, we have broken the class divide in British politics.

And our greatest, most recent growth has been in Labour areas. So far from the narrative and amusing conference line from Mr Cameron, that if you go to bed with Nigel Farage you wake up with Ed Miliband, the truth is that from Birmingham to Hadrian’s Wall, we are the challengers to Labour.

Ukip will put at the heart of its campaign not just the cost of living crisis, because we know that Britons are feeling the pinch, but also the cost of government crisis.

We will have a costed manifesto that deals with these issues, which includes taking those on the minimum wage out of tax, reducing energy bills, and by ending our costly membership of the EU.

But we’ve got to ask ourselves as voters: at what cost do we keep electing the current, Westminster college kids?

At what cost to our freedoms? At what cost to our communities? At what cost to the confidence and belief in the values that underpin British civil society?

These are the big questions the political class don’t want you asking. They’ll try to bore you into submission, or convince you that you’ll let someone else in if you vote for us. Ask Douglas Carswell or Mark Reckless about this. If you vote Ukip, you get Ukip. Nothing else.

A Britain which can govern itself. A Britain with an ethical immigration policy based on the Australian-style points system. A Britain that doesn’t weaponise the NHS, but makes it work for those who need it. A Britain that is more than just a star on someone else’s flag. Ukip believes in Britain, and we know you do too.

We believe in a Britain that can trade freely with the world, honour our troops, work without a nanny state, stop propping up dictatorships through aid, and stop spending your money on white elephant projects like HS2.

I believe in a Britain that has confidence, stands proud, projects a national identity based on our Judaeo-Christian heritage, and our tremendous natural resources.

We believe in a Britain that is the fifth largest economy in the world, not because of our governments, but in spite of them.

A Britain with room to grow, not based on debt, but on real, tangible assets: our fisheries, our gas supplies, infrastructure like Manston Airport, and the prospects of our youth and people who come here legally and integrate and become the best of British themselves.

Not only have we found a way to inject £3 billion more per year into our NHS, but we also want people to have a say in how the NHS is run.

We want to scrap hospital car parking charges, acknowledge that the future for the NHS relies on the innovation and dedication that we will get from British graduates (not middle managers), and invest in research and cleaning up our hospitals.

This is why I’m pleased to say that we would scrap tuition fees for students studying science, technology, engineering, maths, or medical degrees.

And we’ll also fight for a right of recall for MPs who have failed voters.

We’d reverse the opt-in to the European Arrest Warrant, because Britain believes in “innocent until proven guilty” and we believe in Britain.

And we’d reward our Servicemen and women with a National Service Medal, social housing priority, and jobs when they return to civilian life.

We’d toss out ideas like the bedroom tax, and the mansion tax, because they’re two sides of the same coin, equally unconscionable and intended to divide us.

And we’d say no to propping up a government that refuses us an immediate EU referendum – no to any coalition deals with the establishment parties who have taken us so far into this mess.

But we need you to come with us on this journey. So I urge you, when you go to the ballot box, when you send in your postal vote: believe.

Believe in Britain. Believe in real change. Believe me when I say this is not just another election and yours is not just another vote.

If you hold onto those beliefs, if you want that change, then we believe, that together, we can achieve great things.

Here is the link to the original >>> Nigel Farage’s appeal to Britons: believe in Britain – Telegraph

South Yorkshire Police Commission By-election update


South Yorkshire Police Commission By-election update

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

Labour:

Number of votes: 74060

Spent:£123459.61

Cost per vote:£1.68.

UKIP:

Number of votes: 46883

Spent: £157048.65

Cost per vote:£3.35

Conservative:

Number of votes:18536

Spent: £18231.51

Cost per vote:98 pence.

English Democrats:

Number of votes: 8583

Spent: £9567.

Cost per vote: £1.11.

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

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

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


South Yorkshire Police Commissioner by-election

David Allen – English Democrats

Today is voting day in the South Yorkshire Police Commissioner by-election – which is an election using the Second Preference voting system.


Our English Democrats’ candidate David Allen is head and shoulders above the other candidates in this election as was shown in the BBC Radio Sheffield debate broadcast yesterday.  To listen to this please click here >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p028ltd5


The debate begins at 02:02:40

 

Anyone who doesn’t vote is wasting this opportunity to make a difference! 
 
Should we also frankly say that anyone who doesn’t vote is an Idiot who is handing the election to those very people who have betrayed the trust placed in them?

 
As Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot) says An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs. Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education. In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education (although citizenship was also largely hereditary). “Idiot” originally referred to “layman, person lacking professional skill”, “person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning”. Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), was considered dishonorable. “Idiots” were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term “idiot” shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment–individuals who are “stupid”.

A strange thing about the way the so-called main stream media operate in the “United Kingdom” today

A strange thing about the way the so-called main stream media operate in the “United Kingdom” today

In the run up to elections there often appears to be a sudden surge of media stories claiming that the British political system is offering a real choice. 
 
The article below by Janet Daley entitled “Politics is now a bare-knuckle fight again” is very much a case in point.  
Instead of any sort of analysis Ms Daley makes wild claims of there being some great philosophical difference between David Cameron and Ed Miliband.  

By implication she is dismissing the alternative view that both of them are simply careerist members of a political class that hyper inflates relatively trivial differences between their respective parties in order to excite some interest from supporters who are thereby deceived into thinking that there is a real difference between their policies.  Also that their rhetoric is meant to placate some vocal critics like UKIP for David Cameron or Len McClusky of Unite for Ed Miliband.  As it used to be put, when I was in the army, “bulls**t baffles brains!”.  

I would suggest that in fact a more considered study of both parties would be far more likely to come to the conclusion that the British political system is more like a Punch and Judy show where both parties are substantially the same but make a great show of a fight on the “stage”. 
 
Consider Labour’s and Conservative’s policies towards England:-  Both the leaderships want us to remain in the EU; Both want to continue very similar policies on immigration;  Both wish to spend more money than they actually receiving in tax revenue, thus in the long term beggaring the country in order to, in the short term, give themselves political advantage;  Both believe in Liberal Internationalist, Neo Colonial,  Military interventions across the world; Both believe in vast additional borrowing to pay Foreign Aid; Both intend to build over vast swathes of English countryside to deal with a housing crisis which is fundamentally caused by having allowed probably over 5 million immigrants into the country in an almost wholly uncontrolled manner over the last 10 years!  Where’s the difference Janet?

Despite all this Janet Daley’s article shows she wishes to puff up what are fundamentally piffling differences over a little bit of tax here or there!

See what you think.

British politics is now a bare-knuckle fight again

For the first time in a generation, voters will have a chance to make a real difference at the general election in 2015
By Janet Daley

  Politics is back – by which I mean real politics when people with actual differences of opinion are up to a fight for public support and the approval of the electorate. The centre ground, once decreed to be the only territory on which elections could be won, is now a no man’s land, a demilitarised zone, an empty space evacuated by the serious parties in preparation for a genuine fight to the death over fundamental beliefs. After those two starkly contrasting party conferences, we know that what will be on offer at the next election is a choice not just between rival sets of government policies, but competing philosophies of the good society and radically differing ideas of how government should encourage virtuous b_ehaviour.

In two equally astonishing leaps, the party leaders have embraced diametrically opposed positions on the role of government and the responsibility of the private individual. Ed Miliband’s Principle of Together is nothing less than the old model of socialist communality in which the desires of the individual must always be subsumed under collective need, and the state is the distributor of economic fairness. David Cameron’s vision is of a country in which personal responsibility for oneself and one’s family is paramount, in which hard work is rewarded and self-determination is a social ideal. This isn’t just a political or economic disagreement: it’s a profound ethical parting of the ways.

By accident or intention, everybody has effectively accepted that the ceasefire is over. The entire national conversation about how we should be governed no longer needs to be held within the confines of soft Left consensus. The Tories will talk unashamedly of free market, low-tax low-spend, small government Conservatism, and Labour will unequivocally endorse big government, state-sponsored collectivism. Political discourse has not been as visceral as this since the 1980s. There will be an urgent and meaningful debate about the principles which determine the conditions in which life is lived. Isn’t that wonderful?

For the first time in a political generation, you the voter – whom this is all supposed to be about – will have a chance to make a real difference. Instead of a phony war between political leaders who were marketing themselves as slightly improved versions of each other, there will be two radically opposed conceptions of what government is for, and what responsibilities ordinary people should be expected to assume. If you are old enough to remember, you may say that we have had this argument before: the general election of 1983 put the choices as starkly as they could be put, and the country made its judgment so decisively that Labour had to re-invent itself to get back into the discussion. True enough. Yet here we are again, being offered a re-run. And what makes it particularly interesting is that it may not turn out the same way.

Maybe the country is made of different stuff than it was back then. Perhaps it has been softened up by Labour’s extension of welfare dependency into the middle classes and by the remarkably effective media assault on market forces. Nor do the times seem quite so desperate: the lights are not going out and the nation is not being regularly held to ransom by lawless trade unions. Yes, it could end differently this time. But at least we will get to talk about it. There will be a chance once again to debate the most important social questions of our time and to bring the democratic process back to life.

What that means is that everybody’s voice will matter. The most pernicious aspect of the “centre ground” mentality was that it was, ironically, so illiberal. It narrowed the acceptable limits of political possibility to a tiny range of received opinions. Anyone who could not subscribe to that set of premises or social attitudes was simply beneath consideration. Either you agreed with the consensus or you were not fit to participate. (Or as one particularly enthusiastic proponent put it, you are so out of touch with modern life that you might as well go away and die.) Bizarrely, the centre ground merchants became, in the end, so mutually affirming and autocratic that they seemed not to notice how ugly their certainty had become.

Never mind that the tenets of the orthodoxy were in fact mutually contradictory – the promotion of gay marriage being at odds, for example, with respect for ethnic minority cultures, or the regard for women’s rights clashing with the rules of some religions – and so could not actually be enforced with any consistency. Politicians all had to make the same untested incoherent pledge to a vague liberal niceness. It was the sympathetic intention that mattered – not the logic or the fact that the programme was actually impossible to implement. It is on the practical implementation that these two competing world views will be tested. The Miliband option offers little so far in the way of detail except for commitments to yet more public spending while at the same time accepting the need (more or less) to cut the deficit.

But the Tories, even hamstrung by coalition, have begun to show the country what their approach might mean. Iain Duncan Smith has argued from the start that his welfare reforms were not just designed to cut government spending. His case has always been that welfare dependency is more than a waste of money: it’s a waste of life. It is human potential that is being squandered as well as taxpayers’ wealth. That is a microcosm of the brave new Conservative pitch: the clearest practical justification of the claim that the Tories are now the real party of compassion and social justice.

As I say, the country may not be ready to buy this. It may not see the economic or moral sense in allowing people to keep more of what they earn in the first place, instead of taking a large portion of it away, and then handing it back to those the state believes to be deserving. It may have become convinced that people do not necessarily know what is best for themselves and their families, or that, left to their own devices, they will make only self-serving, anti-social choices.

But at least we can go at it now for all we are worth: make the case, have the full-blown, bare-knuckle barney without having to pretend that there are no real grounds of contention. The outliers at the more extreme ends of the spectrum who had been forced out of mainstream political discourse altogether – the Occupy movement, the Ukip recruits and beyond – can come back on to the pitch. The democratic process will be able to encompass the red-blooded as well as muted shades of pink. And oddly enough, with a reasonable amount of good will, this will make democratic politics more genuinely liberal than it has been for decades.

  Here is Janet Daley’s article >>> British politics is now a bare-knuckle fight again – Telegraph