Toby on Tuesday

'Procured Polices'

By far the greatest ever of Malton’s MPs was the author, orator and statesman Edmund Burke.   He had two abiding themes.  The first was that you could only govern with the wholehearted consent of the people, always stressing how vital it was to go with the grain of the electorate.   The second was that, if societies were to survive, they needed to be continually adapting and adjusting to new challenges.   And when I was studying philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford two generations ago now, I founded a debating society named after Edmund Burke as a jollier and less self-regarding forum than the Oxford Union, which seemed to be stuffed with political careerists.   I was the first president.   And where this is relevant is that a few years later I was followed both by Theresa May and her husband Philip.   Now, Rosa Prince has just published her new biography, “Theresa May –The Enigmatic Prime Minister.”   And in it she writes, “May made more of an impression at Oxford’s second debating club, the slightly less rarefied Edmund Burke Society, where the themes of the debates were more humorous in nature.   In her last year at university, she was the club’s president, overseeing proceedings while wielding a meat tenderiser in place of a gavel...At the start of his second year, Philip succeeded May as president of the Edmund Burke Society.”   And as Prime Minister, Theresa May has often quoted Burke, so the lessons of all those years ago were well learned.   For by single-mindedly colonising UKIP’s defining policies on Brexit, grammar schools and the rest, and combining them with an aura of quiet competence, she has succeeded in throwing both UKIP in the Labour Party into disarray.   Last week’s two by-election results were masterstrokes of raw political positioning by the Conservative Party and it would be churlish to say otherwise.  The Conservative Party now holds a chain of seats from coast to coast across the very North of England, while a weakened Jeremy Corbyn still leads the Labour Party – perfect for the Prime Minister!  The new political landscape is clear, UKIP defined it but in so doing let others win the prize.    But that’s politics!

 

So the new political landscape is clear.   In many ways, the social, economic, security uncertainties of our times resemble those of the 1930’s.   With looming trouble across Europe and growing financial insecurity, the global threats abound.   And the 1930’s saw the predominance of a National Government in which the defining figure was the reassuring presence of Stanley Baldwin, winner of three General Elections.   And what Theresa May is now seeking to do is to emulate Baldwin’s National Governments with her theme of ‘One Nation Conservatism’.   The other day she readily agreed to become patron of the Stanley Baldwin Statue Appeal to raise the funds for a statue to his memory in his home town in Worcestershire.  And she wrote, “Stanley Baldwin should be recognised as one of the most significant figures of twentieth-century politics.   It was he who coined the phrase ‘One Nation’ to describe that fundamental aspect of the Conservative approach to politics, and he put it into practice with important social reform...As the Prime Minister of a One Nation Conservative Government, I am delighted to hear of plans to erect a statue in his honour in his birthplace and former constituency of Bewdley.”   What Theresa May, always cautious and measured, is seeking to achieve is a successful Brexit negotiation over the coming two years, the implementation of the new boundary review to remove Labour’s advantage in the size of constituencies and then a Conservative/National Government landslide in 2020, thereby emulating Baldwin’s own success.   Her themes will be competence, reassurance and carrying out the will of the electorate in effecting what have been UKIP’s policies.   So the defining question must be, “So where does all that leave UKIP?”

 

My own belief is that UKIP must now fulfil the role of that other defining figure of 1930’s politics, Winston Churchill.  The outsider, the pariah, excluded from the national debate and the airwaves of the BBC, he was seen then as an old-fashioned warmonger in a nation that wanted peace and comfort.  Where Baldwin was restful, Churchill offered no soporifics.   However unpopular, he warned of trouble ahead and the need to prepare for it.   And that is precisely what I believe UKIP must plan for now.   It won’t help us to win by-elections, but it can ensure that we serve our country well, just as we have done for the past 20 years and more.   Brexit must indeed mean Brexit and we must become a trading, maritime nation again.   As the terrorist threat grows, we must have full border controls sooner rather than later.   To demonise Donald Trump is pure folly.   He is a true friend to Britain, yet we trash him for seeking greater border checks while refusing to criticise Angela Merkel for inviting over a million “migrants”, including countless terrorists, into a Europe with open borders.   We demonise Marine le Pen, who is only asking that France should enjoy the same liberation from the EU project that we in Britain are achieving under Theresa May.   Holland, Italy too are seeking to reclaim their national democracies and we should recognise and welcome this.   And we should deny those with British passports who go to fight with Islamic State in the Middle East the right simply to return here and spread their poison.   And our Overseas Aid budget should be used instead to address issues of national security, not least the issue of foreign criminals who fill our jails while their countries of origin refuse to receive them back.   

 

None of this is reassuring or comforting, but is essential for our national survival.   So just as Churchill was vilified during the Baldwin and then the Chamberlain years, but was vindicated by history, so UKIP must now be prepared to follow the same lonely path, offering no comfort but instead the great prize of rescuing our civilisation, just as we have always done!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby on Tuesday

 

'The Road To Wigan Pier'

 

                                                 

 

 

George Orwell, author of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, “Animal Farm” and “The Road to Wigan Pier”, was among the greatest writers of the last century.   “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, his harrowing account of a Socialist dystopia dominated by the all-seeing presence of ‘Big Brother’, was probably his most celebrated and inspired work.   Yet knowing Wigan to be an inland town, I have often wondered about Wigan Pier.   But last week, driving to the UKIP Conference at Bolton’s Macron Stadium, I actually found myself on the road to Wigan Pier.   There was the signpost to it just outside Bolton.   Yet in truth the old Wigan ‘pier’ was a coal loading staithe on the Leeds-Liverpool canal, a wooden jetty demolished in 1929.   And Orwell used it to describe his bleak account of industrial poverty in Northern England during the 1930’s.   In brilliant prose, he achieved his aim of shaking the complacent, comfortable South out of its apathy.   But it is a measure of how much the North has changed since Orwell’s time that “Wigan Pier” is now a tourist destination and the name given to the visitor area around the revitalised Leeds-Liverpool Canal.  Yet although the industrial North no longer suffers the terrible degree of deprivation that it once faced, its social needs are still very great, many of the benefits of 21st century-life still do not find their way here and that was the theme of much of last week’s Conference.

 

The two speeches which struck the strongest chord as far as I was concerned were those from Paul Oakden, our Party Chairman, and Paul Nuttall, our new Leader.   And both were marked by the bruising campaign that our Party is now fighting in the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election.   In my recent posts, I have written about the fascist left in Britain which, having lost the argument, is seeking to subvert all the rules of civilised politics to maintain its grip on power.   Free speech is drowned out and language is twisted in an attempt to bully voters into submission.   So I was naturally delighted when our Chairman likewise used to term ‘ fascist’ to describe the Labour Party’s tactics in Stoke.   Our canvassers have been threatened, our organisers abused and our property vandalised, while the Labour candidate himself, Gareth Snell, has reached down not so much into the gutter as to some foetid swamp that lies still further below the gutter itself.   And if you want evidence of this, you need do no more than google “Gareth Snell tweets”.   To see ‘Liberal fascism’ or  the ‘fascist left’ at work, then look no further that Stoke-on-Trent Central.   What is reassuring is that Paul Oakden recognises this and is not frightened to use language to describe it that is no more than the truth.   By contrast, Paul Nuttall, hardened and strengthened by his bruising experience, gave a stirring account of his ‘NewKIP’, his new party that will exists primarily to drive the rotten and decaying Labour Party from its heartlands.   For this, he earned a standing ovation last Friday.   With new policies driven by the demand to transfer resources to counter social deprivation in the North of England and elsewhere, he made an impassioned call for much of the Overseas Aid budget to be used instead to help those in need in our own country with the rallying cry, “Charity begins at home!”   And I can think of a host of other policies that will draw voters to us in a post-Brexit political landscape, including the looming scandal of HS2 and the long-running scandal of the House of Lords, now seeking as it is to undermine the Bill to trigger Article 50.

 

By the end of this week, we will know the results of the two by-elections in Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent Central.   UKIP deserves to win both, but having heard Paul Nuttall’s powerful speech and compelling new vision in Bolton last Friday, I am especially convinced that in him the House of Commons would gain an historic voice for the new politics.   It would be a voice for honest good sense which would resonate with just the same countless millions of ordinary British men and women who came out and voted “Leave” in last June’s referendum.   So many of them have been turned off entirely from politics by the likes of Labour’s candidate in Stoke, Gareth Snell.   And when George Orwell made his heart-rending plea on behalf of those in the North who suffered so much social deprivation in the 1930’s, he cannot have imagined that the Labour Party would ever allow itself to be represented by the likes of Gareth Snell.   Rather he would have wanted the reforms needed now, just as much as then, to be spelt out by a patriotic, sensible and honest figure like Paul Nuttall.   Last week, we by chance found ourselves on the road to Wigan Pier.   On Thursday, let’s do all that we possibly can to ensure that Paul Nuttall finds himself firmly on the road to Westminster!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

 Toby on Tuesday

'Cronies And Cronyism

"There was no doubt of the integrity of the members of the House who had served as EU commissioners and it would be distasteful to call on them to declare their interest when speaking."   That was the finding of a House of Lords subcommittee in 2007 when ruling that former EU commissioners, the Kinnocks and Mandelsons of this world, need not declare their EU pensions when speaking in support of the EU, a condition of payment of those very pensions.   It is a measure both of the way in which the EU's tentacles have permeated every nook and cranny of British life, and of the self-serving nature of the so-called Upper House, that a subcommittee should have used the word "distasteful".   Readers of this blog might feel that the description should be applied elsewhere.   And all this becomes relevant as the Bill to trigger Article 50 faces its next challenge in the House of Lords.   Now the old, pre-Tony Blair House of Lords was an eccentric, indeed slightly bonkers, place of which P.G. Wodehouse would have been proud. 

All those backwood peers from the Shires gave it a strong rural flavour which for us in North Yorkshire was no bad thing. But because its composition was arbitrary and illogical it did not seek power.   Broadly it did no harm because most of its members recognised that they were there purely by accident and therefore never tampered materially with legislation coming up from the Commons.   In short, it was ripe for a takeover by Tony Blair and his cronies.   And the Blairite precedent was zealously taken up by the heirs to Blair, the Camerons, Cleggs and Osbornes, who ensured that anyone who questioned the Euro-project was openly and aggressively excluded from the lists of new peers.   And disgracefully, despite close to 4 million votes at the last General Election and being proved wholly right on the EU, all nominations for new UKIP peers have been contemptuously rejected.

To understand  the extent of damage done to the reputation of the House of Lords, you only have to google "List of life peerages 2010 - present."   The total figure amounts to nearly 270 new appointments, a degree of patronage that leaves the Stuart monarchs well in the shade.   And whereas in the past new peerages were usually granted to distinguished soldiers, sailors and other public servants, no one will have ever heard of most of the new peers, their obscurity justifying the assumption that essentially they are all placemen, party donors and various assorted cronies.   In summary, the House of Lords now consists of 689 life peers, the surviving 90 hereditary peers elected by a bizarre system of voting from among their own number, and 26 bishops, 805 in all.   Of these, 252 are Conservative, 203 are Labour, an incredible 102 are LibDem (largely put there by David Cameron to keep Nick Clegg sweet), 178 are Crossbench and 44 are others, including UKIP's three peers, while we can safely add the 26 bishops, Remainers all, to the LibDem list!   Indeed the excellent Bishop of Burnley, who has no seat in the House of Lords, late last month accused the Church of England of jumping on a "middle class establishment bandwagon of outrage and horror" over Brexit.   "As if set to auto-pilot, the C of E has joined in with those who are decrying the collapse of the liberal consensus." So if there are still to be bishops in a reformed Upper House, they should all take the brave Bishop of Burnley as their model.

Next week, many peers will use every trick in the book to try and derail Brexit.   Even if they are not successful, the very danger that they might seek to frustrate the will both of the Referendum and of the Commons must now prompt the demand for fundamental reform of what should be a revising chamber.    At present it simply perpetuates the failures and misjudgements of the past generation.   And in this context it's worth reading an article by Peter Zoeftig in UKIP Daily (www.ukipdaily.com/reforming-house-lords/) dated 6th August, 2016, in which he calls for the Lords to become a revising chamber elected by proportional representation to provide a further check on the executive.   This now seems an eminently sensible solution which UKIP would do well to pursue.   The 1911 Parliament Act under which the Lords surrendered executive power should stand, but its membership now needs to be put on a democratic footing on a basis that differs from that of the House of Commons.   And of course the House of Lords is now the only assembly in the world where convicted criminals are welcomed back once they complete their prison sentences. 

Their Lordships may think it "distasteful" for former EU commissioners to have to declare their interest and risk their pensions when speaking.   For most of us, however, the word "distasteful" is better applied to ex-jailbirds happily resuming their seats in our Parliament at our expense just as soon as they have been released from the slammer!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Toby on Tuesday

 

'Emotional Roots' 

 

 

                                                  photo:Daily Mail

Speaking in the House of Commons on Armistice Day – 11th November – 1947 Winston Churchill declared, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others!”   And last week in the same chamber the process began for Britain to regain her democracy.   Negotiations with the EU and its allies in our own country will not be easy, but thanks to the courage and integrity of countless ordinary British men and women our democracy will prevail.   The beauty of nation state democracy is that every four or five years, when our rulers make a hash of things, we can kick them out.   Yet in all those supranational institutions, of which the EU is the most egregious, the corrupt and incompetent simply cannot be dismissed.   Of course in so doing they sow the seeds of their own downfall, which is what is now happening across Europe.   First in Britain, then in America and this year across the Continent, nation state democracy is reasserting its strength and the self-serving supranational manipulators are in retreat.   What they seek to discredit as ‘populism’ is simply democracy at work.   And in regaining our democracy we must learn to regain control of the language of political discourse from those who have colonised it, always subjecting evidence and experience to the tyranny of political correctness.   After Brexit, that will be the great prize.

 

Now last week I wrote about what H.G. Wells called “Liberal Fascism” or “Enlightened Nazism”, with its call for global government, the end of national borders and supranational institutions.   And I mentioned Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 American publication, “Liberal Fascism:  The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.”   You only have to see last week’s riots at the University of California, Berkeley against the presence there of a supporter of President Trump to understand just what Jonah Goldberg means.   In essence, his argument is that “liberals” today have their emotional and doctrinal roots in 20th century European fascism and he presents his case with wit and authority,   Evidence, language, thought is only tolerated by the new Left when it supports the “progressive” narrative.  Yet the tide is turning and, with Brexit, views which were taboo last June can at last be openly expressed.   For example Germany has become the dominant force within the EU, prepared to break all the rules to assert that dominance, yet any criticism of German policy has until now been a no-go area.   

 

The truth is that Germany with its current account surplus of 8.8% of GDP distorts the whole world economy.   Indeed under EU law persistent surpluses for three years in a row above 6.0% of GDP are illegal, but Berlin has always treated EU rules with total impunity.   One benefit of Brexit will be to end the myth of “European solidarity” and expose the whole rotten edifice for what it is.   And this year the voters of Europe will follow Britain and reclaim their own nation state democracy, something that will underscore our own EU negotiations in the years ahead.

 

So for UKIP the challenge now is to develop a whole raft of new policies based on clear evidence and the practical consequences of what is proposed, rather than some politically correct fantasy.   And to return to President Trump, the truth is that in November the great majority of the American people were simply not prepared to risk seeing any member of the Clinton or Mezvinski families anywhere near the White House.   To understand why, you only have to google The Clinton Foundation, Bill and Hillary Clinton or Chelsea Clinton Mezvinski.   Instead the U.S. electorate either abstained, voted for a fringe candidate or put their trust in Donald Trump.   The coming years will see whether that trust was deserved.   But the real point is that towards the end of 2020 the Democratic Party will have another chance to field a credible candidate for the Presidency.   It’s called democracy and, in Winston Churchill’s words, it’s the worst form of government, except for all the others!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

 

'Liberal Fascism'

 

 

 

It was H.G. Wells (1866-1946), known as “the father of science fiction”, who first coined the term “Liberal Fascism”.   The author of “The Time Machine” (1895), “The Invisible Man” (1897) and “The War of the Worlds” (1898) had by the start of the 20th century been swept up on the tide of scientific and political fantasy that is still all-too recognisable today.   In 1900 he claimed that a World State was inevitable, a planned society that existed to advance science and end all national borders.   And the same spirit that inspired so much 20th century European political thought, both communist and fascist, brought him to argue in a 1932 speech to Oxford University Young Liberals that “progressive leaders must become Liberal Fascists or enlightened Nazis who would compete in their enthusiasm and self-sacrifice”... He wanted to “assist in a kind of phoenix rebirth of liberalism as an enlightened Nazism”.   Although European Nazism was finally defeated in 1945, the proponents of Liberal Fascism survive along with their ideas in both Europe and America.   Indeed it was to America that the New York author Jonah Goldberg addressed his 2008 polemic “Liberal Fascism:  The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.”   And in the past two generations, Liberal Fascism has prevailed, seeking to colonise thought and language and exclude those who disagreed with its ideology from the public arena.   It likewise colonised much of the media, in particular the BBC, and all political parties, including the Labour Party of Tony Blair, Nick Clegg’s LibDems and the Conservative Party of David Cameron and George Osborne, the “heirs to Blair”.

 

Now with Brexit there is a chance to expose clearly the failures of this prevailing culture of Liberal Fascism, which has so enriched its proponents and so impoverished those who do not form part of its narrative.   The key to it is internationalism, the end of nation state democracy and the end of national borders.   Multilateral and international institutions are, with global corporations, essential to its success, but it has no answer to how to deal with these institutions when they fail.   Evidence and experience are swept aside in order to uphold the ideology.   And the point is that these institutions only work when all involved live by the same set of rules.   Yet this rarely occurs and, in a rule-based society like Britain, we so often find ourselves at the receiving end of others using the institution wholly for their own ends.   Two examples from the EU, both involving Germany, the principal beneficiary of that organisation, are especially telling.   Britain had joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990 to demonstrate its pro-European credentials but, when in 1992 the Bank of England asked for the support of Germany’s Bundesbank to prevent a run on Sterling, the request was declined.  It was plain that no such thing as European solidarity existed.   Equally, when Chancellor Merkel invited over a million migrants into the EU, a major demographic decision for the whole Continent, she both failed to consult her EU “partners” and openly broke the terms of the EU’s Dublin Convention.   The whole experience of multinational organisations, adored as they are by the BBC, Channel 4 and much of the press, is that their proponents are impervious to the simple evidence and those who question them are treated as, in the words of Hillary Clinton, “a basket of deplorables” or, to quote David Cameron, “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.”

 

And of course a prime example of where all this translates into the prosperity and well-being of our citizens is in the United Nations target of members spending 0.7% of Gross National Income on Overseas Aid.   In order to show his “progressive” credentials, David Cameron enshrined this in law.   Britain is now the only country to have shouldered this burden at a time when our public services are under relentless pressure.   Under Margaret Thatcher, Aid spending ran at around 0.27% of GNI.   Now it is costing the UK taxpayer some £12 billion a year and rising rapidly, a burden akin to that of our EU membership.   The evidence is that so much Aid spending has always been, and continues to be, misappropriated.   Yet to question the policy, to argue that 0.27% of GNI spent well is infinitely preferable to 0.7% spent badly, is to be consigned among Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” and David Cameron’s “closet racists”.   This attempt to control the thought and language of politics is the vital core element in Liberal Fascism and those who doubt its wisdom are excluded.    Experience and evidence are ignored to uphold the ideology.   So while the fight for a clean Brexit continues, the challenge for the coming generation will be to drain the poison of Liberal Fascism from our body politic.   And for the real world of the future where policy needs to stem from clear evidence and the benefit of experience, the role of UKIP will be to become the party that drives forward this new and exciting agenda!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Tipping Points And Tooth Fairies'

So America has a new President and the free world a new leader.   I am an optimist about Donald Trump, believing that his canny Scots (MacLeod) forbears on his mother’s side will “trump” any German impetuousness from his father’s side.   But however you view him, nobody can deny that for a man who will be 71 in June he’s in terrific condition.   And compared to our very own, wholly unique Jeremy Corbyn, 68 in May, you can see where the years have taken their toll,   Now for the first time in countless years we have a US President who openly values and likes Britain.   His first act on taking office was to restore Winston Churchill’s bust to the Oval Office.   And talking recently to Michael Gove he declared, “I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing...I’m a big fan of the UK, we’re gonna work very hard to get it (a free trade deal) done quickly and done properly.   Good for both sides...People, countries, want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity...You look at the European Union and it’s Germany.   Basically a vehicle for Germany.   That’s why I thought the UK was so smart in getting out.”   Now America is Britain’s biggest single trading partner, accounting for 20% of our commerce with the rest of the world.   It buys some £46 billion of British goods a year while 3 million Americans travel here every year, spending over £8 billion during their visits.   So this endorsement from the new President is a miraculous sea-change from the dismal predictions of his “back of the queue” predecessor.

 

So today I want to introduce you to Professor Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt Malloch, the 64-year old Research Professor at Yale University School of Management and Chairman of the Roosevelt Group.   Indeed he is a descendant of the original President Theodore Roosevelt and is now about to be appointed as President Trump’s new Ambassador to the European Union.   And having Ted Malloch on Britain’s side during our Brexit negotiations will strengthen our negotiators’ hand during the complex discussions that lie ahead.   A devout Presbyterian, he has a degree from Aberdeen University and among his many publications are “Thrift:  Rebirth of a Forgotten Virtue” (2009), “Doing Virtuous Business” (2011), “The End of Ethics” (2013) and “Davos, Aspen & Yale: My Life Behind the Elite Curtain as a Global Sherpa” (2016).   And the other day he said, “Europe...is adrift without a soul and evolving rapidly away from its moorings...America is now alone in defending freedom and upholding the tradition of faith and reason,”   He went on, “The US isn’t part of Europe and doesn’t really have a say in that matter.   But it does have a great interest, and its preference is moving towards an alliance for nation states in Europe rather than a transatlantic, multinational alliance.”   With elections looming in Holland, France, Germany and possibly Italy, what Ted Malloch is saying is that America no longer wishes to support the EU’s old mantra of “ever-closer union”, but instead a Europe of independent nation states.

 

And Ted Malloch also believes that Brexit was the “tipping point” for the creation of a new Europe, which needs to take a “step back” from full union.   This is immensely important, not just because he has been advising President Trump on the EU but also because it sets the tone for a reconstructed Continent where the will of the electorate prevails over the grandiose, crazy schemes of its so-called leaders.   What we in UKIP have been saying for a generation now is finally coming to pass and the events of 2016 will be seen simply as precursors to yet more dramatic changes in 2017.   In Ted Malloch, President Trump will recruit a thoughtful analyst of the ills of the Continent, a man with a strong moral compass who will be a vital ally for Britain as we embark on our Brexit adventure.   And as one unnamed member of the Cabinet is reported as saying the other day, “Trump has come along like the tooth fairy – this is one massive, magnificent gift.   It’s transformative.”   With a true friend at last in the White House and a wise counsellor as his envoy in Brussels, supporting our own Brexit negotiations, Britain’s future is looking more secure by the day!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

 

'Free From The Shackles' 

 

 

Before anything else, a very happy New Year to readers of this blog.   And what a wonderful start to 2017!   In defiance of Project Fear, the figures for manufacturing output have reached a 30-month high, the Stock Market is hitting new all-time records, the Environment Secretary has announced a bonfire of damaging farm regulations post-Brexit and Sir Ivan Rogers, our so-called Ambassador to the EU and living embodiment of Whitehall defeatism, has finally resigned.   The liberation of Britain from the calamitous EU’s straitjacket is underway.   And during the coming weeks – better late than never – Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will at last be invoked and our country can start to awake from the nightmare of EU membership.  But forced to accept this, the hysterical Remoaners are now shifting their tactics to arguments over a “Soft” or a “Hard” Brexit, with arguments over the Customs Union, the Single Market, the Internal Market and the rest.   But the truth is that what Britain needs is a clean Brexit under which we can control our own borders, make our own laws, enter into our own trade deals, stop paying into the Brussels budget and reclaim our North Sea fisheries. 

 

And the background to this was spelt out vividly the other day in forecasts published by Oxford Economics.   In round figures, during the year 2000 Britain’s exports to the EU amounted £55 billion while exports to non-EU countries amounted to £45 billion.   By 2008 these figures had reached parity, with exports of around £50 billion to both EU and non-EU countries.   By 2015 the numbers had been reversed with some £45 billion of exports going to the EU and some £55 billion to the rest of the World.   And by 2020, Oxford Economics are forecasting £40 billion of exports to the EU and £60 billion to the rest of the World.   The reality is that the EU is in long-term decline as a market while growth in the rest of the World is soaring.   And our trade deficit with the EU is running at a massive £60 billion a year, while we run a £30 billion annual surplus trading with the rest of the World under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.   So there is nothing to fear and everything to gain from life outside the EU’s doomed construct.   And in a World of falling tariff barriers the simplest Brexit outcome would be to work with the EU under those very same WTO rules as we do with other countries.   On manufactured goods, the average tariff is just 2.4%, far less than the depreciation of Sterling since last June.   Indeed, we import so many German cars, so much French wine and so many Italian fashions that our Treasury would gain hugely from the imposition of WTO tariffs.

 

So a clean Brexit, operating under WTO rules, would avoid endless painful negotiations with Brussels while offering simplicity and clarity to the whole process.   And at the same time as triggering Article 50 during the coming weeks, our Government should introduce its Great Repeal Bill to Parliament with immediate effect.   This needs to be enacted at the very start and not the end of the Brexit process.   All EU-derived laws can then be incorporated into our own law and in the years ahead they can be adapted and unpicked by our own Parliament as and when necessary.   The World is changing rapidly, the failures of the past generation are all-too clear and a bright future beckons for a bold and independent Britain.   All that is needed is the will to make this happen and, under Paul Nuttall’s leadership, UKIP now has that will in abundance!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby