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