Toby on Tuesday 

‘A Greek Tragedy’

 

As with so much of Western civilisation, the roots of the word “drama” are Greek.   It means “action” or “fiction represented in performance”.   And historians will see the drama of the Greek debt crisis as the precursor of the collapse of the whole Euro-project.   Of course on the other side of the drama lie the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank and the Berlin-based Euro-project.   I thought of this when I watched the first episode of Channel 5’s “Conspiracy” series on 12th June – “The Death of Hitler”.   Now we all like a good conspiracy theory, but the test is to separate the grain of truth from the rest of the entertainment.   You can watch it online for another year on www.channel5.com/shows/conspiracy – Episode 1.   And the part that I enjoyed most came near the end, when the roots of the EU were examined.   Much of this was presented by a greatly valued old friend of mine, Rodney Atkinson, a political economist with deep knowledge of and love for Germany, who speaks perfect German and taught for many years at the University of Mainz.

 

Now Rodney’s long-held thesis (another Greek word meaning “something put forth”) is that, in 1944, when defeat faced the Third Reich, the great German industrialists met to plan an eventual Fourth Reich based on German manufacturing and a new non-military pan-European project.   The mastermind behind this was a Nazi economist called Walther Funk, Reich Minister for Economic Affairs from 1938 to 1945, whose google entries make fascinating reading.   Just as his brother Rowan Atkinson has pushed the boundaries of comedy with immense success, so Rodney has pushed the boundaries of economic and political thought.   Not all of his intuitive leaps have hit the spot, rather as not all of Rowan’s ventures have succeeded, but those that have done so have broken completely new ground.    Rodney’s many staunch supporters have included leading figures, such as the late Sir Louis Le Bailly, Director General of the Defence Intelligence Staff, who understand fully the career risks that he has taken.   Now events are vindicating much of his work.

 

For my part, I suspect that the Euro-project has a variety of roots, many of them founded in the Cold War after 1945 itself.   But what is clear is that future generations will see it as a model of what to avoid completely in any future union.   By being too rigid, too prescriptive, too ideological, the project has failed on its own terms of uniting the Continent of Europe.   A project designed to bring friendship and prosperity has only brought division and poverty.    The rise of Syriza in Greece, of Podemos in Spain, of the Left Bloc in Portugal and, rather differently, of the Front National in France is due wholly to its inherent design faults.   It is the project’s plain inability to adapt to changing circumstances that has led to the collapse of trust and will ensure its downfall.   As for Britain, we must count our blessings that we avoided the currency union, we must limit the fallout from its looming failure and we must become a safe haven, a voice of sanity as the whole Euro-drama turns from comedy into tragedy!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

‘Middle East Wealth Envoy’

 

We all know that the EU is the great scam of our time, a scam that is finally being seen in its true light.   But behind it are some interesting characters who are worth studying and today I want to write about Tony Blair.

Now in a sense I was Tony Blair’s first victim, for in 1983 I found myself as Conservative Parliamentary candidate in Sedgefield.   This was the time leading up to the miners’ strike and I was looking forward to a lively campaign in the old Durham coalfield, with vigorous debate and democracy at its most outspoken.   You can imagine my surprise therefore when I found that the Labour candidate was an over-friendly London lawyer called Tony Blair!   I challenged him to an open public debate on our policies, including his policy of withdrawal from the then EEC!   His response was, “No, that’s the Old Politics.   But I want you to meet Cherie’s step-mother Pat Phoenix – Pat, come and meet Toby, he’s fighting a great campaign!”

For once, I was lost for words and I have followed the trajectory of Blair’s “New Politics” ever since.   So it didn’t come as a surprise to me the other day to read about his complex network of commercial deals interlinked with his “political” and “charitable” work.   Of course his role in recent years as “Middle East Peace Envoy” has been the perfect cover for his lucrative life as adviser to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi’s £42 billion Mubadala Development Company, acting for Qatar’s vast sovereign wealth fund and much more deal-making besides.

It would take Sherlock Holmes himself to untangle the extraordinary web of global charities, companies and advisory activity at the centre of which rests our former Prime Minister, always protected by his police bodyguard at a cost to the UK taxpayer of up to £16,000 per week..   For my part, I would definitely be interested to learn more of his advisory work for Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan and especially his advice on “managing his image after the slaughter of unarmed protesters!”

Now where of course this is relevant is in Tony Blair’s continued involvement in the whole malign EU project and his plan to play a leading role in the “Yes” campaign.  But really Tony Blair and the EU are made for each other and his campaigning for an “In” vote will emphasise this all too clearly.   And where this is also relevant is in the context of our “heir to Blair”, our very own David Cameron.

Now, our Prime Minister has already announced that he will step down as leader of the Conservative Party in 2019.   We know him to be committed to a “Yes” vote irrespective of the outcome of what he laughingly calls his EU “reform negotiations.”   And of course he will then almost certainly use his bulging address book to try and emulate “the Master”, as he calls him, for a comparable future.   “Green” issues will probably replace Blair’s “Faith” issues, but the result will be the same and the poor old British voter will yet again have been used as little more than a springboard for an ex-Prime Minster’s life of global wheeling and dealing –  so welcome to the New World Order!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”

 

Last week I wrote about UKIP’s one MP in the House of Commons, Douglas Carswell. Today, I want to write about our one Scottish Member of the European Parliament, David Coburn. But first, let me tell you what he is up against – the SNP and its mercurial leader, Nicola Sturgeon. To illustrate this, last week she was in the United States where she was a guest of the Daily Show’s arch-interrogator, Jon Stewart. Their conversation went like this:

Jon Stewart: “The SNP won 56 out of 59 seats…it was unprecedented.”
Nicola Sturgeon: “ I’ve ordered an enquiry into how come we didn’t win those other three. It reports directly to me.”
Jon Stewart: “Those other three? You think you’re Saddam Hussein? You want 99%? 56 out of 59 is pretty good.”
Nicola Sturgeon: “Well you know, I always think you should aim for more.”

Last week too, the EU Referendum Bill passed its next stage in the House of Commons. The House was virtually united on this, with even the Labour Party now supporting the Bill, and the voting was 544 for the measure with only 53 against. And you can guess where those 53 votes came from – of course, from the SNP. They never stop demanding another Referendum on Scottish independence, but when the whole of the British people ask for a vote for the first time in 40 years on our EU relationship, democracy for them stops there. Together, these two episodes sum up the SNP’s unique combination of thuggish totalitarianism and brazen hypocrisy.

UKIP’s response also has two strands, both typically sensible. The first is financial, as set out in our General Election manifesto. This recommends the end of the Barnet Formula for Scotland, where public spending runs at some £1,400 head more annually than the UK average, and calls for “substantial reductions in funding for Scotland, but, as the Scottish government is to have significant further powers over taxation, borrowing and spending in due course, it can make its own decision as to whether to raise taxes or cut public spending to balance the books.” The second response, which our Scots MEP David Coburn deploys with great skill, is humour. He has already riled his opponents with his somewhat politically incorrect jibes, comparing Nicola Sturgeon to Lady Macbeth and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett to Dame Edna Everage. And he says that Nicola Sturgeon’s “national socialism” is “killing Scotland” – “The SNP are worthy of the Stasi in East Germany” he says, “I find it terrifying.”

But there is serious purpose behind the humour and when the other day the SNP argued for a “double lock” on the EU Referendum, with a “No” vote” required in Scotland as well as in the whole of the UK before a “Brexit”, he declared, “We came into the EU as one United Kingdom, we came into the EU together, so we will leave together. The Scottish people clearly decided that they wanted to remain as part of the United Kingdom so any talk of the double lock mechanism makes a mockery of the Scottish people’s decision. We respected the result, now they must too.”

Of course, the one good thing that the SNP have done is to have swept away Labour’s rotten boroughs across Scotland. This is exactly what UKIP must do across the North of England, but all that’s for another day!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

‘Glass half full…’

 

I am a glass half-full man. Every situation presents challenges and it’s easy to take too bleak a view of events. Of course it’s outrageous that, under First Past the Post, it took UKIP 3.8 million votes to gain one MP. By contrast, it took the SNP only 25,970 votes for each MP and, in England, the Conservative Party needed just 32,900 votes and the Labour Party just 39,300 for each MP. Under PR we would have won over 80 seats but the upside of events is that our one MP is the formidable Douglas Carswell, who is really worth over 80 MP’s on his own. So in many ways our glass is indeed half-full, as one really good MP is worth 80 of the mindless hacks who fill up so much of the other parties’ benches.

And to prove this, you only have to read Douglas’ 2012 masterpiece, “The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy”. Despite its bleak analysis this is an optimistic book declaring, “The West is in crisis. Governments have grown too big, living beyond their means – and ours. The true costs of extra officialdom have been concealed. Parasitical politicians have been hopeless at holding to account the elites who now preside over us. As a result, Western nations are mired in debt and chronically misgoverned. Should we despair? Actually, no.”

And the same positive spirit was behind Douglas’ response last week to the Queen’s Speech when he said, “I may be my party’s only voice in the House of Commons, but I shall speak on behalf of not only my constituents, but the millions who voted for my party. I may have only one vote in the Division Lobby, but I shall use it to support Ministers when they do sensible things, to oppose the Government when they are being daft, and, when I think it is possible to improve things, to try to amend things to make them better. I imagine that I will oppose much of what this Government do. I regret what is not in the Queen’s Speech as much as I support what is in it. There is a failure to introduce meaningful political reform. There is nothing in it that will make the Government more properly accountable to Parliament and Parliament more properly answerable to the people. There is little in it to disperse power outward and downward, or to personalise public services in the way I think they need to be. When I challenge the Government’s shortcomings, however, I will do so cheerfully and in the belief that, yes, things are not good enough, but that is because they could and should be better. I will be optimistic and cheerful in opposing the Government when I need to do so, and I will support them when I think they are doing the right thing.”

The months leading up to the EU referendum will be exciting, even turbulent. But the informed optimism of Douglas Carswell will be a vital element in the “Out” campaign. And I recommend regular visits to his own blog, TalkCarswell.com, for wise, intelligent insights into UKIP’s one voice in the House of Commons, but a golden voice nonetheless. In the words of the old song, it is the voice of “One Good Man”!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

'Modest Concessions'

 

So the great prize has been won! Before the end of 2017 we shall all be asked, “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” The existential political question of our time, which leaders of the three old parties have resisted for 40 years, will finally be put. That this has been achieved is due above all else to the persistence of UKIP and in particular of one man, Nigel Farage, for whom it has been a lifelong obsession. Without UKIP, David Cameron would never have made the commitment and, whatever lies ahead, the fact that we now have this opportunity will always remain our party’s greatest achievement. Clearly, the question is designed to elicit a “Yes” vote, but the British people are far too shrewd to be deceived by this.

Of course, Britain has been here before. In 1975 Harold Wilson, like David Cameron driven by reasons of party management rather than any strongly-held belief, likewise gave our country a referendum. Like David Cameron now, he dressed up a series of modest concessions as major reform of the then EEC. The usual suspects, the Foreign Office, the CBI, the BBC, the CIA and Brussels itself weighed in with immense financial and other pressure, just as they will over the next two years. All the usual scare tactics were employed to maintain the status quo and Wilson was rewarded with a resounding “Yes” vote when the result was announced. So Harold Wilson’s 1975 renegotiation is plainly the template for David Cameron’s coming “renegotiation” and the identical allies are already being lined up to ensure the same outcome.

But somehow I think that this time the result will be different. Although the opinion pollsters are already proclaiming a “Yes” outcome, despite being left with so much egg on their collective faces after failing to predict the result of the General Election, I believe that Britain will vote “No”. What drives our pragmatic electorate is the impact of any policy on their collective pockets. Over the coming two years, public spending will face an unprecedented squeeze. The £13 billion plus net contribution to the EU’s budget, alongside a similar sum spent on so-called Overseas Aid, will prompt voters to ask why so much money is going abroad, often lost to crime and corruption, when we have such great needs at home? And the rise of Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the Left Bloc in Portugal and, rather differently, the Front National in France, will drive home the truth that the effect of Euro membership on those countries has been an unqualified disaster. When Britain voted “Yes” in 1975, it was a response to the post-war economic miracles of Germany and France, with a wish to share in them. When Britain votes “No” in 2016/7, it will be a similar response to the abyss into which Southern Europe is staring as a result of Euro membership and the need to avoid its contagion.

Of course, when we do ultimately withdraw from the EU, it won’t be plain sailing at all. As a country, we shall have to learn to shift for ourselves again, to take responsibility for our country rather than leave everything to unaccountable civil servants. We may just have forgotten how to do this and need to relearn the lessons. Yes, there will be disruption, but the disruption of staying inside this unworkable project will be far greater. If we succeed, the reward will be immense – nothing less than the recovery of our long-term self-respect and renewed pride in our nation!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby