Toby on Tuesday

'Project Fear *Cancelled*' 

 

They called it Project Fear, but with hindsight it was really Project Farce - the threats, the bullying, the duplicity, the use of the whole Whitehall machine to spread their lies, the trashing of our country by a pack of spivs known as the Cameroons or the Heirs to Blair.   But the nightmare is over and they have been found out.   David Cameron with his absurd threat of World War 3 has gone, his chums the ludicrous Lords Feldman and Hill have resigned and the egregious George Osborne with his threatened Punishment Budget was rightly sacked by Theresa May after just a 2-minute interview.  And the Brexit bonus is only beginning.   The stock market has soared, the more competitive pound is supporting our exports and the “back of the queue” is now front of the queue in planned trade deals with China, India, the US and the old Commonwealth.   With the psychological boost of regaining control of our country, Britain is fast on its way to regaining its place in the world as the most innovative, most enterprising and most stable economy of all.   

 

But I think that the reason why Theresa May has embraced Brexit, as she has finally done, is that her 6 years at the Home Office will have convinced her of the vital need to secure our borders against the existential threat from Islamic State-inspired terrorism throughout Europe.   The near impossibility of keeping the likes of the terrorist-linked Salafi cleric Abu Qatada al-Filistini out of our country in the face of EU legislation must have finally convinced her that UKIP had indeed been right all along.   And although we were told that with Brexit the French would scrap the Le Touquet Agreement and the Calais border camp would move to Kent, only last week President Hollande confirmed that it would remain intact.   The instigators of Project Farce must never again be allowed anywhere near the running of our country.

 

But one of the difficulties that we have in UKIP is that, whenever, we point out the great political truths, the old mantra of racism is thrown at us.   By way of example, Alison Pearson is a fair-minded, completely objective and gifted columnist for the Daily Telegraph.   And the other day she wrote, “A friend who grew up in Provence tells me that the population of his home town is now around 40 per cent north African origin, many of whom are unemployed.   The National Front enjoys huge support.   My friend lives in London because he thinks that civil war in France is brewing, and the political class is totally in denial...Anyone can put an army up against an army, but how do you fight an army you can’t see, whose soldiers wear no uniform, who are legal citizens of your own country yet who hate your way of life, and who may not even know each other?”  Alison Pearson can say this but, if a member of UKIP had written those words, he or she would immediately be accused of making racist comments and even risk prosecution.   And after 6 years at the Home Office, Theresa May will be all too clear of the need to regain control of our borders and, if the condition of a trade agreement with the EU is continuing free movement of people, I believe that there will be no such agreement.   The world is full of free trade agreements between neighbouring countries that do not involve free movement of people and the UK’s agreement with the EU should follow the example of these.   Otherwise, the security risk from EU-originated terror is just too great.   And there is nothing racist in saying this.

 

Yet as the terrorist threat grows, as Europol rightly predicts, we do need finally to nail the lie that UKIP is in any way a racist party.   Otherwise our message will always go unheeded.   And there is a solution close at hand, for among the candidates for the leadership of our party, all of whom are in different ways truly excellent, one stands out.   That is the charismatic Steven Woolfe, the 48-year old North-West MEP.   Of mixed race background himself, he is just the one to see off hostile journalists from the BBC, Channel 4, the Guardian, the Independent and the rest, when they start to accuse our party of bias, prejudice and racism.   With his legal career, formidable intelligence, great fluency and good Northern sense, he is the one to see off the cynics and the doubters.   It was David Cameron who charged UKIP with being a party of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” – well, the fruitcakes and loonies have won the referendum and seen off some of the most unpleasant and mendacious public figures of the past generation, and the racists may well be about to find themselves with the kind of multi-ethinc leader of whom those home counties manipulators, like all those behind Project Farce, could only dream!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby