HATTIE’S KITCHEN CABINET

POOR OLD Ed Milliband: one has to feel genuine sympathy with him for his latest  predicament. The 11 women members of his shadow cabinet have taken it upon themselves to hold separate meetings away from the men. The prime mover and instigator of this arrangement is none other than Hattie Harperson herself. According to the Mail on Sunday, she announced her challenge to Ed’s authority, to a somewhat bemused shadow cabinet at the end of a meeting.

            The deputy leader has never shied away from her demand for equal representation in cabinet and parliament for her sex; she is a potential Gordon Brown to Ed’s – I would like to say Tony Blair; but the analogy is just not credible. However the fireworks that consumed that earlier relationship now promises a reprise, if Ed is unable to put his deputy in her proper place before she takes full advantage of what she perceives as a weak leader and a loser.

            Hattie would never have made such a move under either Gordon or Tony; but Ed bless him, is a ‘new age man’ and is obliged to tolerate our arch feminists’ foibles. He dare not nip the problem in the bud…for it is fated to become his nemeses, if this shadow-shadow cabinet is allowed to mature and flourish without so much as a raising of an eyebrow in response.

            What recipes can be concocted by Hattie (with her sisterhood by her side) for her leaders discomfort? For Hattie’s ambitions are the same as Gordon’s. She wants to sit where Ed sits; but will sue anybody who suggests that any such stratagem exists: like a witch  concocting her potion (I am sorry, but this is Halloween), Hattie bides her time. For she knows what the country knows about her leader – but which her party cannot do anything about. David Miliband should have been the leader of the Labour Party, and Hattie knew with Ed’s election, her own career still had life left in it.

            There are two traps a Labour leader needs to avoid. They must defer to women and minorities or lose any chance of leading their party; and nothing symbolises this more than what the Mail on Sunday (MoS) reported happened when Hattie announced her intention to the opposition cabinet. An unnamed source told the MoS:

            'The blokes on the Shadow Cabinet just looked at each other as if to say, what the hell is all this about?

            'Harriet then said that as the Tories were now losing the women's vote, it was important that we made sure our policies appeal to female voters.

            ‘But even Ed looked a bit surprised and joked, “When are the men going to meet then?” and when nobody laughed, he said, “Sorry, not a great joke.”.

I CAN IMAGINE IT. Poor old Ed made a joke that both fell flat with the Harperson, and the male members. Following an embarrassing silence, Ed had to apologise for his attempt at humour. For while the male members were surprised at Hattie’s declaration, they knew better than to either laugh or challenge the politically correct line.

            Ed Miliband is not the strong leader that his brother would have been. Ed was fully prepared to kow-tow to the party’s union brethren, where his brother would have refused such an invitation. Ed grabbed  the union’s  poisoned chalice with both hands and from which he has copiously drunk in order to ‘lead’ the party.

            He even, upon election, sought to defy his cynics by declaring his intention to limit the union role in leadership elections. But he later backed away from this attempted  independence, when the unions, in all probability, whispered a few words in his ear. So he, just like every other pre- Blair Labour leader, was left in hock to the unions if they wished to advance in the party.

            All that this display of enfeeblement did was to convince Hattie Harperson that she could  use a politically correct  Ed Miliband to advance her own leadership challenge in the future. She knows that Ed is a frail and fragile politician who only  managed to occupy his party’s leadership via the trade union block vote.

            Every member of the Labour Party, including its leadership, are  enslaved to all forms of political correctness - whether of the female or minority variety. For feminism and the minorities are the new socialism. Socialism is no longer about class but feminism, and Multiculturalism.

            The sisterhood are gathering behind their leaders back to empower themselves. The wretched male members of the opposition cabinet now find themselves in a similar position to those who had genuine worries about mass immigration, but were cowed by the then Labour Party with their charges of racism whenever immigration was challenged.

            Now Harperson has silenced the men in the same way: now it is the men who dare not challenge this affront to their leader – for being called sexist to a Labour politician carries as much weight as racist; and will cause as much anxiety to them as challenging immigration once did to those who, like myself, spoke out.

            This move by Hattie has the hallmark of  the 1980’s inner party Machiavellianism, that almost destroyed the Labour Party. Then the Labour Party was lead by a weak (but brilliant politician). But Michael Foot, like Ed Milliband, never  even looked like a potential prime minister and, at the 1983 General Election authored what became known as ‘the longest suicide note in history’[i], which the 1983 election manifesto later became known.

            Under the present electoral arrangement for picking a leader, Hattie, who is married to a union functionary and newly elected MP, has all the right connections for winning a leadership battle for the soul of the Labour Party. She also believes, somewhat naively, that by being a woman she has the best chance of winning over those hundreds of thousands  women said to be deserting the Tories and the Lib Dems.

            The pre-Kinnock Labour Party never gave much thought to the electorate or what they wanted. They just wrote out their demands in the form conference motions and if the people did not like it, then they could lump it. The people, in other words, had to meet a socialist criteria if they wanted an alternative to the Tories; which is why the party was out of power from 1979-1997.

TODAY’S LABOUR PARTY is in danger of retreating back to those days. But this time the banner it carries is not inscribed with the Clause IV canon. Today’s standard is engraved with a recipe of  political correctness in the form a’ rainbow coalition’ of anti-racists, gay rights, women’s rights and ethnic minority rights. Today, it is not the working class that occupy Labour’s  thoughts but Multiculturalism and the various phobias that, if anyone who suggests they are wrong, are accused of having.

            Ed Milliband should never have been the leader of the Labour Party. Both party activists, and members, as well as MPs, all voted for his brother. Ed could have been a minister in a future Labour government, but he should have had the personnel insight to realise that his political ambition was limited by his personality and style – was he trying to impress his mother? Or was he determined to prove to his father Ralf ,the Marxist intellectual and LSE academic, who helped indoctrinate the baby boomer generation, that he was fit for purpose. These are questions for a future biographer. But as far as the British people, the party activists and membership, as well as the MPs are concerned; it was David who should be where his brother is today.

            Hattie would never have been allowed her freelancing if David Milliband had been elected, and she knows this. She only dare to challenge her leaders authority because she has the measure of the man and must have silently met his election with an inner  jubilation that she successfully kept away from the camera lenses when Ed was elected…at least Michael Foot had , under Labour’s system, a compendium of his party’s support.

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

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[i]  It was in fact Gerald Kaufman’s witticism.

IMMIGRATION AND EUROPEANIZATION – THE TWO FOLLIES

OFFICIAL FIGURES HAVE confirmed what Migration Watch UK and other concerned people already knew. The population of the UK will increase to 74 million by 2043. The yearly increase of 491,000 over the next decade compares with that of a city the size of Leeds. After years of denial by the previous government, whose immigration policies will account for this increase, the truth has now to be faced;  by 2043 our population will be greater than that of Germany.

            The pressure that such a yearly increase will have on our social infrastructure will lead to rationing of services and further resentment by the indigenous population. At a time when we are already suffering the burden of cuts to welfare, our armed forces, education, and the NHS (everything in fact apart from oversees’ aid), we will have the added burden of the fastest continued growth of our population since the 1960s.

            There are two calamities that our so called statesmen have inflicted on their people over the past 30-years, and should have faced some kind of penalty of a far greater severity than being elevated to the House of Lords.

            The first debasement they inflicted upon their nation and its people, was to tie us ever closer to a federal union with Europe: and secondly, they allowed unlimited immigration to take place and invented the ideology of Multiculturalism in order to strengthen the influx. Multiculturalism was the reprehensible response by the guilt ridden liberals within all parties who felt they had to make amends for our colonial past – a past that did more good than harm; but nevertheless, still did harm.

            On top of which we are obliged to accept the migrants from those corners of the world that were part of other European colonies. For instance, Portugal and France have allowed, like the UK, members of their former colonies to become Portuguese and French citizens. Which in turn means citizens of Europe, including the UK.

           

WE HAVE BEEN ILL-SERVED by our politicians in the UK. They have continuously perjured themselves when talking of  UK immigration - by denying that such a vast influx was ever taking place.

            Our overseers: those who we expect to protect our nation and its shores, have badly let us, the people of the UK, down; while we as a people, have just sat back and allowed our elected representatives to devise our future on our behalf without any kind of dissent.

            Eighty per cent of the people of  Britain (and this is a conservative estimate)  support an anti-immigration policy. Such people are not supporters of the BNP but are the indigenous people of the UK, who have instinctively known what the elected  politicians have  always refused to acknowledge – that the UK cannot allow unlimited immigration  without fermenting, at some point,  civil conflict.           It is not racism to want to keep your identity, culture, and nationality. The British people have seen their indigenous culture debased by Multiculturalism, and their patriotism described as xenophobia. We are, to use Margaret Thatcher’s words, “being swamped” by immigrants and steered toward becoming a county council within a Greater Europe.

            When space runs out in our towns and cities; it will be toward the country side that our politicians will turn for the expansion that an increase  in our population of 491,000 per year over the next decade, will require.

           

THERE IS A GENERAL belief that our politicians are innately corrupt or corruptible. After the expenses scandal, in some almost pitiful cases amounting to mere pennies, there is little the British people do not think them capable of. But even before the expenses brouhaha our politicians fell short of their predecessors in terms of talent and ability.

            As someone who grew up in the era of politicians who carried the designation statesmen with a conviction based upon merit, I find its use today somewhat diminished by the lack of any such merit within the corridors of Westminster.

            Political commentators today regularly use the preferment when describing government ministers, both current and retired. They give ill-deserved kudos to such people because they themselves rely upon them for their living. Of the most supine are the lobby correspondents who fawn and fret their way into their company in order to receive the occasional headline that will hopefully enhance their reputation.

            In the instances of  immigration and Europe, our modern day politicians have acted with such great folly that they deserve their well-got reputation. All Conservatives (even those who supported immigration)  knew where the previous administration’s policy of unlimited immigration would lead us - but all, for different reasons, remained silent. As the Conservative party fought for the centre ground, they feared the Powell curse. But what made Powell worthy of the title statesman, is that he spoke truthfully to the British people on a subject that required great intelligence and courage to so do. He believed the issue of mass immigration was of such a threat to this country that he forfeited a promising political career in order to warn his people of its imminence.

            By maintaining their silence on the subject, Cameron’s Conservatives were as culpable for the unfolding tragedy as the previous government. They could have lanced the BNP boil by making immigration a legitimate subject for debate; they could have directed the British people to today’s official figures a decade ago; they could have done so because we all knew a-priori what unlimited mass immigration would lead to.

            But image and spin displaced debate within the Conservative Party, as it had already done with the creation of New Labour a decade earlier. Both of the main parties must share, if not equal, then at least some portion of responsibility for the mess they had created between themselves regarding immigration.

           

THERE IS NO INTELLECTUAL footprint that any of our party leaders can leave behind. They are  at the will of advisors, spin doctors, and image promoters. They care only for the next day’s headline and the pollsters magic art.

            It is as if, dare I say, they put their rise up the slippery political ladder before their country. Sometimes true statesmanship requires that you go against current orthodoxy and, like Powell, warn the people of any damage a particular policy will do to your country; even if the country rejects your stand and paint you as the pantomime villain.

            With immigration, the Conservatives bowed too, instead of facing up to their demons. But alas a lack of courage and a formidable thirst for power betrayed the interests of the indigenous population of the country their party was created to protect.

            As for Labour; they abandoned their core working class vote the very minute they achieved power under Tony Blair. It was Blair himself who sought to create a new, New Labour constituency from a mass immigration, grateful to New Labour and prepared to support them: and if the opposition raised so much as an eyebrow – that devilish word “racist” would be hurled in their direction.

            Thus guaranteeing  the silence of all opposition, New Labour began the influx, an influx that to this day continues apace without any kind of resolution because of the European Union’s objections to such a prohibition.

SO OUR POLITICIANS have stitched our indigenous population up “good and proper”. They have sold the very soul of our nation to what Barroso was happy to describe as a “European Empire”. They have compounded their folly by first of all allowing unlimited immigration into our country and, as a supplement, creating the ideology of Multiculturalism to seed its future growth.

            To proffer the title of statesman to any of those connected with the policy of either mass immigration or European Federalism, is like proffering a chimpanzee with human intelligence.

            Both Immigration and Europe have been the two subjects that have driven our people to, if not despair, then to an up to now unvoiced resentment. The clouds of racism, Multiculturalism, and Europeanization have been allowed to settle over our indigenous people for far too long and it is about time that their needs were finally acknowledged by those who seek to govern us.

            David Cameron, like many of his generation, seek this country’s admission and diminution to   county council status within a Federal Union within Europe. They see it as an historical inevitability only delayed by the euro crises.

            If the British people still value their nationhood then they must pressure their government, of whatever colour, to disband their attempt to absorb a once proud nation into becoming a mere canton of a greater Europe.

           

            

GADDAFI IS DEAD

ANOTHER TYRANT IS DEAD, and whoever it was who found him is now a million quid better off ( if the stories of a reward prove correct). Good luck to whoever it was who found this villain from a graphic novel.

            It is now time for the long suffering Libyan people to celebrate their tormentors departure after 42 years of fearing the knock on the door, and struggling to curb their tongues for the sake of themselves and their families.

            Thousands of Libyans have been tortured in the most cruelly imaginative of ways, while hundreds of thousands more have been executed at the mere whim of the colonel’s paranoid personality.

            As with Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi threatened his countrymen with the unpalatable prospect of a family dynasty ruling over them for decades to come: but as with Saddam, such a prospect has now been put to rest.

            His end, when it came, was as brutal as he deserved. One of the troubles of revolutions is that the revolutionaries harbour their own forms of justice when it comes to ridding themselves of a particular ancient regime. Which is something the revolutionary Left are fond of glossing over – their idealistic panorama of the way they wish us all to live cannot be polluted by such a reality.

            Gaddafi was removed from a drainage pipe, wounded. He was then set upon by his captors who served him up their brand of revolutionary justice. Just Like Mary Antoinette, the Romanov Nicholas, the fascist Mussolini, and more recently the communist Nicolai Ceausescu of Romania - all of them found themselves on the receiving end of revolutionary justice.

            Revolutions are a bloody and brutal business and are to be avoided whenever and wherever possible. Gaddafi’s ego could not contemplate allowing the reforms necessary for his people; and so he paid with a brutal finale.

            He did however mange in his later years to convince some Western leaders that he wished to come in from the cold. As a result Tony Blair wasted no time in offering a rapprochement to the Libyan tyrant; and that most respected of liberal academic establishments, the London School of Economics, guaranteed that one of Gaddafi’s sons should receive a degree through cheating, while also accepting large amounts of the Libyan people’s oil money.

            This embarrassing display of  Heap-like cowering by our institutions, businesses, and so called statesmen, before this demented bully brought disgrace to this country. Both Blair and Brown sought to tame this animal, just as Blair believed he had done with the IRA. The one and the only trait Blair shares with the now late Colonel Gaddafi, is his ego.

            On the other hand, David Cameron did restore our reputation with the people of Libya. He gambled and won; and he deserves the rewards of victory both personally and politically. For the new Libyan government will, when handing out contracts, remember those nations like our own who took the risk and helped them be rid of Gaddafi.

THE BRITISH PRESS’S COVERAGE of  Gaddafi’s death embraces the colourful (the tabloids), the responsible (qualities), and the conscience driven (the Guardian and Independent).

            The headlines in the tabloids would have found much sympathy among the silent majority. The Sun announced “That’s for Lockerbie”; the Daily Star chimed in with “Mad dog is put down”. While the Times and the Telegraph suggest that he got what he deserved, but by using a more civilised and less popularist prose.

            However the Guardian  and the Independent are not so sure about the way he got what he deserved. Of course they both agree that he was a bully to his people, but nevertheless found themselves disturbed by the video images taken of his death.

            No doubt that in the coming days and weeks, when the emotions are played out; the human rights brigade will challenge the legitimacy of Gaddafi’s death. Indeed the United Nations (whose Human Rights commission allowed Gaddafi to be represented) has already announced its own inquiry into the way the butcher was butchered.

            No one, except this group of moral relativists, care how this man met his death. Compared to how he made many of his fellow countrymen and women meet theirs, he got off relatively lightly. The trouble is, is that such people have a far greater influence than their numbers suggest on our culture, and will be its ruin if politicians continue to fear their rebukes.

            The video of Gaddafi’s death is disturbing; and it should have been shown. Apparently the BBC are now facing complaints from their Guardianista viewers regarding their unedited showing of the finale.

            The trouble is, is that all other broadcasters throughout the free world also transmitted in full, Gaddafi’s end. If the BBC were to obey their liberal instincts and edit the demise, they would have been the only broadcaster to have done so and made themselves look foolish - but would have, nevertheless, still been admired by their fellow liberals.

THE WORLD has been relieved of yet one more tyrant and the world should be grateful for his demise. He was behind the downing in Lockerbie, the killing of a British policewoman, and the arming of the IRA. Yet our liberal’s remain discomforted by the way in which Gaddafi met his death.

            This country is, and has been for over forty years, in the grip of the kind of social liberalism that today’s Guardian displays - they even opened a web-site poll to discover how their like-minded would vote over the nature of Gadaffi’s death. Surprise, surprise …

            Libya now has  the chance of a peaceful and prosperous future. Her oil revenues will  hopefully be under the control of a democratic government who will, when elected, use them to benefit their nation and its people.

            Possibly, if all works out, Libya will become an oil rich nation whose largesse is evenly distributed among its people. Libya stands on the threshold of prosperity and social advancement. If the wealth is utilised properly by whatever government is elected to power, then the country will diversify and create new industries.

            Libya can call upon thousands of second generation and skilled Libyans, who’s parents sought the sanctuary of the West during Gaddafi’s reign. These exiled Libyans can help drive the Libyan nation forward beyond a dependence on oil and help create new industries that can compete with other nations.

            If everything is handled properly, and Libya stands the best chance within the Arab world of so doing; then this north African nation can prosper, and its people, after 42 years of tyranny, can inherit the prosperity that the many sacrifices made by those young men who were prepared to take on Gaddafi made on behalf of their nation.

            Libya deserves our blessing for its future. Both David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy took a chance by first of all finessing a UN resolution that allowed them to act against Gaddafi.

           

           

           

            

Oh Calamity!

England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. 
Gaunt - Richard II

THIS NEED NEVER HAVE HAPPENED; and it was through David Cameron that it did happen. It was a great misjudgement on his part to enforce a three line whip on his parliamentary party over a mere debate that carried with it no threat to his government. If  the government was facing a vote of no confidence; or facing defeat on a piece of  important legislation vital to his government’s survival; then it would have been shit or bust time and the nuclear option would have been seen as the only option left open to him.

            But 81 conservative backbenchers called their leaders bluff and voted for a referendum. This has left David Cameron’s leadership of his party weakened and prone to future rebellion (and not only on Europe). His defeat surpassed any suffered by John Major, and will have whetted the appetite for more defiance on issues that the Lib Dem part of the coalition demand that the Tories support; issues like, for instance,  European human rights legislation and the subservience of our own judges to it.

            Yesterday the revolt was about giving the people of this country the chance to vote on our continued relationship within or without the European Union. Tomorrow it will be yet another aspect of European interference in this country’s independence. Our sovereignty such as it is, has been almost given away via treaty after treaty; and the British people have been bypassed on each occasion.             The political elite sitting in conclave in London by means of the dinner party circuit have dared not ask the opinion of our people on anything regarding our relationship with Europe. Both the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties were acceded to without so much as  nod to the people who elected them. Instead the people were treated to the usual political flimflammery of their leaders.

            Vital to the continued existence of  our sovereign nation state, both Maastricht and Lisbon were dismissed as a kind of mere technical adjustment that did not require a referendum. But other members of the EU saw things differently. Ireland voted against the Lisbon Treaty, but were asked to vote again; and they agreed to its implementation. One wonders whether, if they had continued their defiance, they would have been asked to continue to vote until they came up with the ‘correct’ answer?   

            We, as a Eurosceptic people, have been ill-served by our politicians and the liberal establishment generally, regarding the EU.  We have been treated like the family’s embarrassing little secret that has to be locked away in the attic, for fear of causing offence to our neighbours sensibilities. We have been patronized and condescended too; we have been treated like the proverbial mushroom, which, you no doubt know, is kept in the dark and fed on bullshit: and when it comes to Europe there is bullshit aplenty to be spread around.

A PRIME EXAMPLE of such fertilisation was the rather limp appeal made by Cameron and his various ministers, who sought to salvage something from the referendum debate by suggesting it was the wrong time for any such consideration of our membership of the EU, considering the perilous state of our economy and the wholehearted concentration required to help bring it into balance.

            Everybody knows that our plight is inextricably linked to that of the euro and the European sovereign debt crises. The euro went ahead despite  having been forewarned of the minefield that such an arrangement presented to those who, through European idealism, proceeded with the project.

            The euro zone is in crises and we are, despite our determination to oppose and then withdraw from such a disaster, still part of its collapse. Yet our political leaders ,even after they have been found out, still seek to mock our intelligence by suggesting that this country’s economic crises is in some way separate from a debate on a referendum on Europe.

            We are pouring billions of British taxpayer’s money into the euro zone crisis; either directly or indirectly through the IMF; yet we are still expected to believe that a vote on Europe would be  ill-timed and a distraction. This thankfully did not, and will not wash with the British people; and now the vote is over, will no longer wash with David Cameron and those of his acolytes who deployed it both before and during the referendum debate.

            Tory leaders continue to spoon-feed us the euro- sceptical rhetoric in order to gain and then hold on to power. The Tory membership and the vast majority of  Tory voters are among nature’s Eurosceptics and are no longer so easily beguiled by their leaders oratory and promises made in opposition. The referendum vote will create ripples extending far beyond Westminster, and far beyond the Tory Party.

            The Labour Party will still need the working class vote, if they wish to secure a majority at the next election. It is true that New Labour abandoned the working class for the electoral fruits of large scale immigration. But Ed Miliband seeks to rekindle the historical relationship as he seeks to return the party to a more Left-leaning and ‘progressive’ path.

            What remains of the working class are, on the whole, small ‘c’ conservatives who, in many cases, live in areas plagued with crime and are tormented nightly by ASBO proud feral youths. They see criminals receiving what they would call ‘a slap on the wrist’ for ruining their lives; they see judges whose hands are tied by European human rights legislation, handing down inappropriate sentences.

            These people will never vote Tory, but UKIP is a different matter if Europe becomes a major concern by the time of the next election. If the Labour Party truly supported the British people as they say they do; then they would have been obliged, whether they support the EU or not, to have voted for a referendum and not brayed on about this being the wrong time for such a referendum… like the Tories.

            By parroting the Tory leadership, all the Labour Party leadership has done, is to convince the people once and for all that we are being  steered condescendingly toward a Federal Europe. What this debate and the current sovereign debt crises in the euro-zone has done, is to make it clearer than ever that the whole of the British political establishment are combined to bring our 2,000 year history as an island nation to an end.

            Why they are frightened of a referendum, has little to do with timing and more to do with the result of such a referendum. The leaderships of all our main parties support ever closer political and economic union. They believe, like their colleagues on the continent, that there is some kind of historical imperative at work which draws them hypnotically toward the abandonment of the nation state.

            David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Ed Milliband have all behaved, up until this referendum debate, like unelected ‘we know best’ Eurocrats. But what they all need to be reminded of is that they were elected to do the bidding of the people who elected them. Their authority is limited by the ballot box; they are not EU commissioners whose authority is unchallengeable; they are where they are because of the electorate and not the gravy train.

THE PEOPLE OF this country need a referendum on our relationship with Europe. Not since the 1970s has the British people been given any kind of say on Europe. Our politicians have woven deceit upon deceit in their attempt to keep us quiet; knowing as they do how a proud people of a proud nation feel toward any treachery that seeks to dismantle the foundations of our nation, and incorporate the remnants into a United States of Europe.

            Rather than give our nation away, we should fight to keep it. We should demand a referendum and distrust all euro-sceptical rhetoric from the leaders of all our parties. I believe that a referendum will have to be allowed eventually, simply because the sovereign debt crises within the euro-zone will continue to ferment into a global crises.

            Those 81 conservatives who defied their party whip were, I believe, the tip of the iceberg. There were many on the Tory benches who sympathised with their actions, but put government loyalty before their feelings on the issue. They justified themselves by parroting the official line - this was not the time for such a vote and the economy should be the one and only priority.

            Now whether they believed this or not matters little; in the event sufficient numbers defied the whips and challenged their leader.

            If a referendum is allowed and the result favours continued integration within Europe, then so be it. The will of the people would have been tested and would have approved of  the formation of a United States of Europe. As long as the people voted for it, then so be it. Those Eurosceptics like myself would remove ourselves from the battlefield and get on with our lives – but we must have a referendum!

           

AN ESTABLISHMENT FIX

TORY REBELLIONS RARELY live up to their billing; but will today’s be the exception that proves the rule. The referendum debate should have been a public display of the prime minister’s e-petition in action. The e-petition was meant to be a direct link between the people who vote, and the country’s primary debating chamber. It was meant to give the people the chance to make  parliament debate an issue close to the e-petitioners heart: providing the individual could gather 100,000 signatures, the Speaker of the Commons could allow the subject to be debated.

            I am sure that, from his behaviour regarding this afternoons debate, David Cameron, whose dislike of the Speaker matches that of his backbenchers, will be even less inclined to send him a Christmas card after Speaker Bercow allowed this particular debate to take place.

            I find it extraordinary that the prime minister has deployed the nuclear option, by imposing a three line whip on his backbenchers. This ultimate form of discipline is only used in exceptional circumstances, like an important piece of legislation or a motion of no confidence. It was never intended to be used for an occasion of such singularly unimportance in terms of legislation; for all an e-petition promises is the chance of a debate - there is no obligation on the prime minister to enforce the petitioner’s  will if the debate is won.

            A referendum on our relationship with Europe is another example of how distant our politicians are from the people who elect them. None of the main parties will be voting for this afternoon’s motion. David Cameron, Ed Milliband and Nick Clegg have all said they oppose this motion.

            We are a Eurosceptic nation governed by Europhiles; none of our party leaders want this debate (although Labour believes they have hit a rich  political seam, by seeking political advantage over Cameron’s Tories). It has been the intention of our political elites, for several decades, to cajole and wheedle this sceptical nation into a federal union with the rest of Europe. Since Margaret Thatcher’s demise, successive Tory leaders have had to work hard to try and convince us that European Federalism was off the agenda. But it never was as far as the European political elite were concerned; and the current euro crises has once more brought the possibility of  political and monetary union ever nearer. Which is why I cannot understand the insistence of those who say that this issue is a waste of time when we have to tackle our current economic crises – both are linked.

            We hear it all the time. Now is not the time for such a referendum. The people want us to concentrate on the economy…this is a side issue, blah, blah, blah. This is the voice of Europhile fear; and the three line whip is an expression of such fear.

            The Tory party has always threatened to implode on this issue: simply because Conservatism is about conserving; it is about defending the nation state, its culture and its history; and the true Conservatives are those much maligned Eurosceptics who remain loyal to a centuries old validation of their existence. But conservatism goes beyond any political party. It gathers around it people from all political ideologies. Both Tony Benn and the late Michael Foot; each from a distant planet compared to the Tories, but each of equal distance from the modern Labour Party on this issue of a referendum on Europe.

           

THIS AFTERNOON’S DEBATE (only allowed to take place at all, let us remember, by an external petition) is  probably the most important debate from the perspective of this nation’s history, that the House of Commons has had to consider since the Second World War - and it was all brought about by a young, talented, and over ambitious  Tory politician seeking to bring to an end a decade long Labour governance.

            Whether David Cameron lives to regret his decision to allow different public issues to be debated within parliament, remains to be seen. But, if anything, the events taking place on the continent of Europe make it all the more important for the British people to be given another say on Europe - the second only since the 1970’s.

            This fact alone should enlighten the British people to the true intent of our political establishment. Not since the 1970s have the people of the UK had any say in the way their relationship with Europe was to evolve. Whenever important treaties needed to be signed, our political establishment have collectively undermined the importance of such advances by use of such neutral and comforting adjectives as, an adjustment or technicality. Through such means were both the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties given free passage.

            This debate does matter because it will in all probability be this country’s one and only chance to determine its future: because there will never be a referendum on our relationship with Europe, if the main parties have their way - there will never be a time for such a vote as far as our current political leadership are concerned.     

A DEBATE THE PEOPLE WANT

THERE IS A PROPOSAL BY the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy to create a financial centre either in Berlin or Paris which would effectively mean monetary union involving those 17 European nations who are members of the euro zone.

            The debt crises within the euro zone, has brought forward, by several decades, the full reality of monetary union followed, no doubt in tandem, by its sibling – political union.

            For the political elites like Van Rompuy and Barroso, the debt crises represents an opportunity to effectively frighten Europe into a federal union without the need for any democratic debate or any national referendums. They believe they can steamroller, at least the 17 members of the euro zone into what Barroso has described as a “European empire”; but what we know as Federal Union, or…a United States of Europe.

            Tomorrow the House of Commons will debate and vote upon the need for a referendum over the depth of our continuing relationship with the continent, or whether we should leave the EU altogether.

            The time for such debate was never better chosen, as Herman Van Rompuy’s intervention testifies. We as a nation should be demanding, as any democratic country should, the chance to determine our nation’s future, while it still remains one. We cannot hand over such a decision to the latte filled rooms of Downing Street.

            Our elected leaders have no authority to give away our nationhood independently of the people’s approval. No election has bestowed them that right, and no election will bestow them the right. If we, as a free people, cannot be allowed to determine our own future, but have it determined for us by people without the authority to do so; then I call this a betrayal of democracy; a betrayal which gives every citizen the right to flout the very authority they gave to their elected representatives, and, if need be, take to the streets if our politicians refuse us a referendum.

I CAN REMEMBER during the Major government when the Tories were constantly at war over Europe; any warning by a Eurosceptic about European Federalism was greeted at best with condescension; while at worst a sceptics sanity could be brought into question. They were either humoured, or despised for upsetting the apple cart of government unity.

            Then, European Federalism was treated, publicly at least, as if it were a work of fiction by “xenophobic” Tories. No such blue print ever existed; it was the Little England mentality that had constructed it from nothing more than a psychological aversion to all things foreign.

            We were told, that from Maastricht to Lisbon, such these treaties were mere technical adjustment with no need of a referendum; and if the sceptics suggested otherwise…well, let’s face it; they have a screw loose, don’t they?

            But when it came to the Lisbon Treaty, David Cameron promised us, before the General Election, a referendum on its implementation if he were elected to office. But his rowing back since has only damaged the reputation of our law makers, himself included; which I hope his back benchers take cognisance of during tomorrow’s debate.

            What Herman Van Rompuy has done, is to help rehabilitate those Eurosceptics in their recovery from what were once deemed “demented” offerings, to the European debate.  From 1990-1997 the Tory Eurosceptics, with a few Labour sympathisers, were eventually drowned out of the European debate. The public believed that their leaders would not entertain any change to our status of nationhood and so the sceptics were neutralised and other issues became more important than Europe; and this is the argument that the Tory leadership hopes to put forward in tomorrow’s debate.

            They hope that the country’s own debt crises will count more than that of Europe’s and will suggest that parliament’s time should not even be used to consider such an eventuality as European Federalism. The British economy, they will demand, should be the

priority, and anything to do with Europe should be put on the back burner; and the proposer of such an motion should feel ashamed of himself for wasting parliamentary time over this issue. The government is trying wholeheartedly to bring the country’s finances under control; yet they have to waste valuable time in batting away the proposer of this  motions’ absurdities.

DO NOT BE FOOLED. This debate is as well timed as it is much needed. The debate for a referendum on our future within Europe, will no doubt be lost. But it will allow the British public to see just how much their views are distanced from the people they elect to represent them on the issue of Europe.

            In all parties; the conjurers art has been to neuter Europe as an issue for MP’s constituencies; especially among Tories and working class Labour voters; and this is what will be attempted in the debate tomorrow by, sadly, William Hague, who is set to open the debate for the government and will no doubt press for more important national issues to be considered; and will no doubt document the perilous predicament surrounding our country.

            It was, if you remember, William Hague who in March 2001, who said in delivering a party conference speech:

“We have a Government that has contempt for the views of the people it governs.

“There is nothing that the British people can talk about that this Labour Government doesn't deride.

“Talk about Europe and they call you extreme. Talk about tax and they call you greedy. Talk about crime and they call you reactionary. Talk about immigration and they call you racist; talk about your nation and they call you Little Englanders ... This government thinks Britain would be all right if we had a different people. I think Britain would be all right, if only we had a different Government…”

IN OTHER WORDS, at the time, William Hague expressed succinctly what the majority of the British people believed regarding the European Union. But he now serves a Conservative/lite  government sharing power with a liberal rival. Mr Hague’s words then are as relevant today(even more so), considering Herman Van Rompuy’s reported ambitions for Europe than they were then.

            Over 100,000 people signed an e-partition…the number David Cameron believed would be sufficient to trigger a parliamentary debate. The whole idea for an e-petition was Cameron’s; yet he now enforces a three line whip on his own backbenchers to prevent them voting with their consciences.

            All the prime minister has succeeded in doing through this folly, is to make his profession seem even more contemptible to the public than it already is. To promise the public that they can create a debate in the House, and then effectively try to gag such a debate by using an option that is more usually enforced when there is to be a vote of confidence, will prove counter-productive in the long run. I hope that the Tory benches ignore their whips threats and help give the people what they want…a chance to have a say on our relationship with Europe.

NEXT WEEK'S VOTE

Trying to dragoon people on a three-line whip will cause a great deal of resentment within the party and leave the public – who support a referendum on Europe – completely mystified about what we stand for.’

Conservative MP Philip Davies

NEXT WEEK, there will be a debate and vote in the Commons on whether the people of this country should be given a chance to vote, through a referendum, on our future relationship, if any, within the European Union.

            The Conservative MP, David Nuttal has tabled the motion for debate, and a three line Whip, demanding that every Conservative backbencher votes against David Nuttal’s motion on penalty of having their whip withdrawn has been registered by No10.

            An e-petition had collected over 100,000 votes - this being the minimum number required for a parliamentary debate to be considered.

            The debate itself was meant to take place next Thursday, but has been brought forward to Monday because the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, would have been in Australia with the Queen next Thursday; but, as he wished to open for the government in the debate, it has now been brought forward.

            There is now talk of panic within the government as up to 58 MPs are expected to vote in favour of a referendum, which is in probability why the Foreign Secretary changed his arrangements for next week - in order to dissuade by rhetoric what the Whips will fail to do by threats.

            This debate has been a long time in coming and the politicians within all the parties should vote with their consciences and forgo their selfish ambitions for one day and think of their constituents, who want a chance to vote on their future. The people of this country want this vote. They were promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty by David Cameron before the last election only to see it disappear through a spin doctors sausage machine soon after.

            This time the politicians can help restore the public’s confidence in them by voting with their consciences. If not; if they are cowed by the Whips; if they bow to the promises of preferment and so oblige their leader; then the public will look for alternatives to the Conservatives when they come to vote next time. By then, considering its current disposition, the EU may have crept far enough up the public agenda to allow UKIP to prosper and the Conservatives to fail miserably.

MUCH ANIMOSITY was created within his own party and the country generally by David Cameron when he retracted his ill-varnished pledge to allow a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. This is why I, a lifelong Labour voter, voted Conservative at (then) 60 years of age. For I felt that our nationhood was at stake, and Cameron’s Lisbon pledge was all I needed to steer a different course from my lifelong voting habits.

            Between now and next Monday, what one senior Conservative has described as “panic” (according to the Daily Telegraph, no less) will beset No10 – a state of mind already acknowledged by the presence of the Foreign Secretary in the debate.

            Apparently, any referendum would offer the following questions on the ballot paper: first of all, that we should remain as we are; secondly, that we should vote to remain part of the EU, but only by negotiating the taking back of the many powers frittered away by our previous governments on their people’s behalf without a vote. Lastly, we can decide to leave altogether from the EU.

            The latter is my preferred option because it leaves us a free country with the ability to make our own laws (exempted from any other nation’s rebuke). Like children wearing Halloween masks, our leaders tell us that if we leave the EU, our economy will suffer the consequences. It is comparable to being warned off the bogeyman.

            In a free market system, trade rules; it is a two way process. We buy what we need and sell what others want to buy. If, like poor old Greece today, we have nothing worth selling, then, like Greece, we should indeed join the euro zone and leech from the more advantageous borrowing conditions that such a club offers - but will have to be paid for by the more advanced nations in Europe, i.e. Germany - when the whole pyramid finally collapses.

            If we in the UK left the EU, we would be free from all of the bureaucratic demands placed upon our economy. We would be free to prosper without any restriction upon such prosperity. We could once more look to our own parliament to make laws that would remain binding because our politicians could never undermine them by allowing them to be overruled by an outside agency. We would be in full control of our destiny as a sovereign people with the skills and ambitions to succeed.

            If there is something another European country wanted from us that we produce; then no anti-free trade strategy (for this is what it would amount to) by Europe, would stand in the way; and if there was something we, as a nation needed, there would be no European entrepreneur who would not be prepared to, through a sense of European idealism, refuse any trade in order to turn a profit and keep his employees and their families solvent.

NEXT WEEK’S VOTE is important for the British people. It gives them the only chance to win a referendum on our membership of the EU. Although Monday’s debate is just that, a debate; and the vote that follows is just that, a parliamentary vote with no obligation on the government to order a referendum were they to lose; it would however once more highlight how out of touch our party leaders are with both the people in the country, and their own back benches, who, if they vote in sufficient numbers for David Nuttal’s motion, will bring nearer the day when a referendum on our future within Europe becomes a reality.

            At the moment the political classes all over the European Union are out of touch with their people; whether they are Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian citizens; they have all been left to pay for the folly of their leaders in allowing such mismatched economies as theirs  to partake of a monetary union and, through cheap borrowing this allowed them, incur insupportable amounts of debt - debt that they must have known, they would not be able to repay.

            Meanwhile, the citizens of Germany are resentful of their political class because they are being asked to make the major contribution, through their hard earned taxes, to the bailing-out of southern Europe.

            The French people are also being asked to help with the bailout, despite the credit agencies starting to down grade their country’s rating.

            It is time to pause and reflect over the whole wretched experiment. Before our politicians dig us even deeper into this mess, the people have a democratic right to a voice on such a fundamental issue of national sovereignty and national independence. Monday’s debate and vote will hopefully make our leaders fearful of the political cost of not allowing a referendum at the next election.