Toby on Tuesday 

'Miracles and Mayhem'

 

As we approach Good Friday and Easter Sunday, let me introduce you to the excellent Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham. Alan is also a Canon of my college at Oxford and so, when my friend Nigel Farage stood as UKIP’s candidate at Buckingham in the 2010 General Election, I took him to meet Alan. Both are men of complete integrity and undoubted courage, so it was inevitable that the visit would be successful. I also suspect that Nigel was the only candidate to have taken the trouble to call on the Bishop in the run-up to Polling Day and also that Alan would then have remembered him in his prayers. Now, you will remember that on Polling Day itself, Nigel had his near-fatal plane crash. That he survived to make a full recovery might well be seen as a miracle. I have always been convinced of the power of prayer and the existence of miracles, so I just wonder whether there could have been a connection between all these events? My friends tell me that it will be a miracle if UKIP takes Thirsk and Malton in May, but you just never know…!

Now, as Easter approaches, we should all be praying for a series of miracles in the Middle East, where Christian communities who have lived peacefully for almost 2,000 years are being subjected to simple genocide by the malign combination of ISIS/ISIL, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. Not since the days of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (284-305AD) have Christians been hunted down as criminals with the threat “Convert or die!” Yet despite the grisly images of black-shrouded assassins holding aloft the severed heads of their victims, the Western liberal media have had next-to-nothing to say about these atrocities. They stand as a reproach to our folly and the failure of our politicians in the past fifteen years. In Iraq, 600,000 Assyrian Christians were recently driven out of their traditional homeland by ISIL, who have just released photographs of their destruction of a statue of St. George slaying the dragon – a message no doubt to England.

Harsh reality has exposed the delusions of our policy makers to whom we have entrusted our country’s safety. The ridiculous pictures of David Cameron preening himself in front of a mob in Libya in 2011 after the fall of Colonel Gadaffi, in emulation of his hero Tony Blair, are a stark contrast to the Foreign Office’s recent advice that the country is now a “no-go area.” And it now seems well-nigh incredible that just over 18 months ago it took a defeat in the House of Commons by 285 votes to 272 votes to prevent our ludicrous Coalition from intervening in the Shia-Sunni civil war in Syria by raining down bombs on Damascus in alliance with ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They argued in part that, in this way, they would reduce terrorist threats at home! They were firmly opposed by UKIP, while tribute must also be paid to the 30 Conservative and 9 LibDem MP’s who prevented Armageddon by voting against their own front bench. David Cameron and Nick Clegg should now be hanging their heads in shame. In a more honourable age, the Government would have fallen at this defeat, but the present regime knows how to hang on limpet-like to power, if nothing else. When the absurd Paddy Ashdown heard that Parliament had prevented the destruction of Damascus he declared, “I have never felt so depressed and ashamed,” embodying all the conceit and self-delusion of those who rule us.

In the light of this, it seems incredible that the Conservatives, LibDems, Labour and presumably the Greens are all still working for Turkish accession to the EU. Turkey, an Asian country with porous borders onto Iran, Iraq and Syria, and with a continuing war against its own Kurdish population, is already in receipt of many billions of Euros of “pre-accession funding” from the EU, i.e. the British taxpayer. By seeking Turkish accession the EU, with its policy of free movement, is literally signing its own death warrant and for this reason alone an early UK withdrawal from the whole crazy project is now vital. It will take a miracle to avoid this danger and restore our country’s safety, but miracles do happen, as we saw from Nigel’s plane crash and as we may just see in Thirsk and Malton on 7th May!

Have a very happy Easter!
Toby