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

Toby on Tuesday

 

"It's beginning to look a lot like..." 

 

 

“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.   In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.”   That was George Orwell, author of ‘1984’, ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ and ‘Animal Farm’, writing in 1941.   And if it was true 75 years ago, then it is many times so today when the Left has had three generations to colonise many of those institutions.   The narrative of our news outlets, in particular the BBC about which I wrote last week and Channel 4, and their palpable sense of anger and loss over June’s Referendum result, is all too clear.   And while the need to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is now seen as inevitable, the campaign to negate June’s vote has moved onto more sophisticated ground with arguments over the Single Market, the Customs Union, the Internal Market or whatever name you choose to describe the relentless power grab of the EU institutions.   This ignores deliberately the simple truth that what ordinary British, and especially English, men and women voted for in June was to get back their unique country, the land of Shakespeare and Newton, Nelson and Churchill, of Elizabeth 1 and indeed our own marvellous Queen, the wonderful country that had been taken away from them by all those self-styled intellectuals, so well described by George Orwell in 1941.

 

And as the whole Brexit process unfolds, there will be five simple tests to gauge whether Brexit does indeed mean Brexit:

 

1.  Will we have control of our borders?

 

2.   Will we be able to make our own laws?

 

3.   Will we be able to negotiate our own trade agreements?

 

4.   Will we have to continue paying into the Brussels budget?

 

5.   Will we be able to reclaim our North Sea fisheries?

 

And of these five, the final one, the return of our fisheries is of huge psychological importance.   The EU knew just what it was doing in 1972 when it took away our fisheries, for it was saying that Britain would no longer be a maritime, open trading nation any more, but rather it would become just one more Continental country, part of the European land mass.   And only by the return of our fisheries can that error be put right and our role as a maritime nation be reclaimed.  Now it is by these five tests that Brexit will be judged post-next year’s invocation of Article 50.   My belief is that those who were defeated in June will seek to ensure that not one of them will be properly fulfilled and that Britain will remain within the EU by some other name.  So this is why a strong and united UKIP under Paul Nuttall’s leadership is now needed more than ever.  And as the year draws to a close, it’s just worth remembering those splendid lines of Rudyard Kipling on Danegeld, the tribute once paid to the Danes to stop them invading England:

 

“We never pay anyone Danegeld,

No matter how trifling the cost,

For the end of the game is oppression and shame

And the nation that pays it is lost!”

 

Have a very happy Christmas and until next year!

 

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

 

'A Champion of Social Justice (sic erat scriptum)'

 

It’s a funny thing, but dear old Auntie BBC has always gone weak at the knees at the thought of any kind of National Socialist dictator.   In the 1930’s it was Adolf Hitler who made her go all wobbly, speaking only well of him and supressing any nasty news from Berlin.   And she always reached for the smelling salts whenever that dreadful Winston Churchill went on about German rearmament, banning him from the airwaves for being so naughty.   So it was last week on the death of Fidel Castro, who also liked to murder his political opponents and minorities, having children and women shot whenever they tried to flee his grisly regime.   And the roll-call of monsters who were in Havana last week says it all.   President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, President Zuma of South Africa, President Bouterse of Suriname, President Maduro of Venezuela, President Ortega of Nicaragua and President Morales of Bolivia were all there, while Kim Jong Un of North Korea declared three days of mourning and despatched a delegation to Havana.   Gerry Adams was there to represent Sinn Fein and Emily Thornberry to represent the Labour Party.   And for Jeremy Corbyn, “Fidel Castro was a massive figure in the history of the whole planet...an internationalist and a champion of social justice.”   

As for Auntie Beeb, she excelled herself with coverage that was beyond parody.   For Newsnight, she dredged up clapped out Rentamob leftie Tariq Ali to praise Cuba’s “social dictatorship.”   Snooker coverage made way for a special documentary to “Remember Fidel Castro.”   And BBC News drew heavily on grovelling interviews with former Guardian journalist and “Cuba expert” Richard Gott without disclosing that he had been on the KGB payroll through services provided to a Russian agent called Mikhail Bogdanov.   Good old Auntie – there’s nothing like a grisly dictator to get her all excited!

 

And the dictatorship of the EU definitely fits into the same category.   Auntie Beeb’s reporting of Sunday’s referendum in Italy, where the attempt by a government of EU-favoured apparatchiks to tamper with the constitution was soundly rejected, tells us all we need to know.   The purpose of Sunday’s vote was to clip the wings of Italy’s Upper House, her Senate, by reducing the number of Senators from 315 to 100, to strip them of the right to hold votes of No Confidence in the government and above all to end all elections to the Senate.   In future, its 100 members would have been made up of 21 regional mayors, 74 regional council heads and 5 members appointed by Italy’s President.   This Euro-fascistic and blatantly anti-democratic measure would have concentrated yet more power into the hands of Italy’s Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, and by default into the hands of Brussels and the European Central Bank.   Now, since the banking crisis of 2008, Italy’s economy within the Euro currency has shrunk by almost 10% and unemployment has soared, while outside the Euro Britain’s has grown by broadly the same amount and jobs have flourished.   So to defy Italy’s democracy openly as Matteo Renzi did with his power-grab was foolish to say the least.  The Senate that he was proposing would have made our own, very questionable House of Lords like like a model of popular wisdom and insight.

 

In truth, and this isn’t being reported on Auntie Beeb’s news, the Italian people were determined not to go the way of Greece, condemned by Brussels and Berlin to impoverishment and humiliation.  For Italy, this is a moment of liberation.   Beppo Grillo’s Five Star Movement campaigned on the simple messages of transparency in Italy’s shadowy politics and restoration of the Lira, Italy’s old currency, a precondition for any economic recovery in this proud country.   The state of Italy’s banking system is all-too well known, with the extent of Non-Performing Loans far outweighing her banks’ capital and reserves.   Brussels’ solution will no doubt be to seek more control, the imposition of a new “technocratic” government and strict penalties for both depositors and shareholders as part of a bail-in/bail-out by the European Central Bank.   For the EU, the ideology of the Euro-project must at all costs not be questioned.   The obvious solution, following the experience of the UK and of the US Treasury’s TARP programme, is for the Government in Rome to reclaim the Lira and then to recapitalise the country’s banks.   But to do this would be to bring the whole crazy Euro project into question and to accept that you cannot have a monetary union without large fiscal transfers from the stronger to the weaker parts.   In Britain, we can only be grateful that we are finally leaving this ill-judged project.   Defying economic and political gravity leads eventually to destruction.   And Sunday’s vote in Italy could just be the moment when reality finally starts to challenge ideology – although of course that’s not how dear old Auntie Beeb, bless her, will be reporting developments!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

 

'Once More Unto The Breach Dear Friends, Once More'

 

 

 

Finally, we have a new leader and a new leader of whom we can all be very proud.   The process has been tortuous, but the result full of promise for the future.   Paul Nuttall is the man for the hour.   With a strong academic background as a history lecturer first at Hugh Baird College and then at Liverpool Hope University, he will be able to hold his own against all those sneering pundits from the BBC and Channel 4.   Nigel Farage was a meteor, a comet hurtling through the political firmament, throwing out huge quantities of light and heat, torching any lesser planet foolish enough to try and block his path.   By contrast, Paul will be our Pole Star or North Star, the stable constant by which political voyagers steer their course.   He is precisely what will be needed in the coming years as the great prize of Brexit starts to slip away from our grasp and the Remainers use every subterfuge to prevent its happening.   Whatever our Government may say, the initiative is fading and it will be UKIP’s mission to regain and reinforce it.   Paul will be ideal leader for this great task.

 

And I hope sincerely that, having won the argument on Brexit, UKIP will now wage war on that other great evil of our time, the scourge of political correctness.   Unseen, undetected, with its roots in Stalinist doctrine, it has sought to colonise the western mind over the past two generations, just as the EU has sought to colonise Europe.   Like George Orwell’s Newspeak in his “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, political correctness exists to stifle empirical evidence and thwart political debate.  It exists to deny argument and, what is so disgraceful, has taken root in our universities where open debate is the principal reason for their existence.   The end of the curse of political correctness will be as great a liberation for the human spirit as our exit from the so-called European Union.   It is not racist to say that Britain should welcome those who can add to the civilisation and prosperity of our society and reject those who would undermine it.   

 

A software engineer from India should naturally be made welcome here.   By contrast, members of the Black Axe mafia from Nigeria, which uses voodoo rites and machete attacks and which is now firmly embedded in Italy, must not be allowed to use the EU’s freedom of movement rules to come here.   Nor is it islamophobic to say that the greatest threat to the peace of the world, and indeed to peace-loving Muslims, is the Salafi strand of islam, which receives so much funding from Saudi Arabia and which has penetrated so much of European life..   And Putin’s Russia should be seen, despite everything, as a prospective ally in what is now a clash of civilisations.   And nor is it homophobic to say that, if homosexual relationships are to have the tax and other benefits of civil partnerships on the grounds of fidelity, then so should heterosexual relationships.   Nor is it hard-hearted to say that poor countries need free and open trade without tariff barriers and not the corrupting culture of Overseas Aid.   And above all they need good government.   Nor is it anti-Scots to say that Scotland, with a population and economy broadly similar to Yorkshire’s, benefits disproportionately from the Barnet formula and the SNP needs to grow up and acknowledge just how privileged Scotland has become.   

 

And finally it is not anti-European to say that the EU is the greatest job-destroying, civilisation-wrecking, arrogant, incompetent project in the history of the Continent and its day of reckoning will arrive very soon.

 

The other day, the egregious Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, EU apparatchik and author of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, declared that Britain needed high levels of immigration because “native Britons are so bloody stupid”.   No doubt the purring pundits all nodded in agreement, but had a UKIPper said something similar about any other group, he or she would have almost certainly been reported for a hate-crime.   Of course the consolation is that the world of Lord Kerr is drawing to a close.   After the Referendum, UKIP’s task in the coming years will be to dismantle a failed ideology and replace it with new and sensible structures based on empirical evidence.   Paul Nuttall is the one to lead this great project and, with the Brexit vote and our leadership election behind us, for UKIP the best is yet to come!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby on Tuesday

'Apparatchiks and Agendas'

 

                                                                                                                                Picture: Daily Express

 

 For the first time in well over a generation, we are about to have the pleasure of a U.S. President who knows and loves Britain.   We are about to have the pleasure of a U.S. President determined to prevent an accidental war with Russia over its support for what is, despite everything, the legitimate government of Syria.   And if Argentina is foolish enough to attempt another invasion of the Falklands, we will have the pleasure of a U.S. President to whom the Falkland Islanders can look for support.   We will have the pleasure of a U.S. President happy to see Britain at the front of the queue for a trade deal which could even involve Canada in a North Atlantic Free Trade Association.   

 

And above all we will have the pleasure of a U.S. President open to the idea of reinstating Winston Churchill’s bust in the Oval Office from which it was removed by the overtly hostile Barack H. Obama.   Yet to listen to the wretched, self-righteous, self-regarding, narcissistic, wrong-headed and anti-democratic pundits who fill the media and the old political parties, some global catastrophe has happened.  The truth is that Donald Trump will be a fine President who will fulfil his promise to make America great again.   And when America is great, then Britain as her close cousin and true ally, will become great again too.   So to the whingers in Westminster and Whitehall I say, “grow up, seize the opportunity and be glad that UKIP and Nigel Farage have made this new dawn possible!”

 

But today I don’t want to write about the U.S. Presidency.   Rather I want to alert you to the next date in the calendar, 4th December, when the global rejection of the old, failed order gathers pace and Italy goes to the polls in its own referendum.   For Italy’s Prime Minister, the apparatchik Matteo Renzi, is trying to reduce the power of Italy’s Upper House, its Senate, and thereby increase his own hold over the political system.   And under Italy’s constitution, his plan must be put to a referendum.   Originally Renzi  declared that, if unsuccessful, he would resign although he is now backtracking on that pledge.   For the truth is that both Italy’s Northern League and its Five Star Movement, the chief opposition groups, are campaigning against this crude attempt to concentrate yet more power into the hands of the Brussels-driven bureaucracy.   So we can expect yet more turmoil in Italy, buckling as it is under the burden of the employment-destroying Euro currency.

 

So 4th December is likely to be yet one more stage in the collapse of the E.U. Project.   That day too sees a presidential election in Austria, itself unable to cope with its own migration crisis.   So Brexit was only the start of a long process that is sweeping the West.   It will be painful for those who have become used to living well off a failed ideological agenda which benefited only those who managed it, but for the rest of us it will be a liberation.   And it will be a liberation that we should all welcome, not only in Britain, but also across Continental Europe, where Germany’s intelligence services have finally confirmed that “hundreds of jihadists” are among all those “refugees” who have entered the E.U., and last week above all in the United States of America.   Democracy is doing its job across the West and, inspired by Brexit and the new U.S. Presidency, 2017 could just become the year when the West at last moves to ensure its own survival!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'The Bloodless Revolution' 

 

 

 

 

Until last week, probably the most unpopular judge in legal history was George Jeffreys, Lord Chancellor from 1685-88 under King James II.   An alcoholic, which he attributed to kidney disease, he was notorious for keeping brandy in his inkwell and then drinking it through his quill pen while passing sentence.   But we in Britain have always had a healthy scepticism about our judiciary.   And a few weeks ago I wrote about a bizarre evening spent sitting next to the wife of a prominent pro-Remain London High Court judge at a dinner.   She berated me for being a UKIPper, she berated “Northern white trash” for voting Leave, she asked those who were there if the younger members of our families had voted Leave and, when we all replied ‘yes’, she declared, “You’re all so complacent, you Yorkshire people, it’s horrific!”   And she moaned that her son’s hopes of getting a job with Goldman Sachs were now in ruins.   I almost said that the best thing her son could do if he wanted a useful and productive life would be to come and start a business in Yorkshire, but didn’t really want to risk another outburst.  But the truth is that most High Court judges have risen up under the Blair, Brown, Clegg, Cameron dispensation, for which devotion to the EU was an essential qualification, and we can only be thankful that their era is now passed.

 

But today I don’t want to write about the Article 50 case itself, but rather about how the judges’ supporters complained when their decision was subjected to perfectly proper public comment.   For if our judges want to behave like politicians, they mustn’t object when they are consequently subjected to the rough language of politics.   Strong words are the weapons of political life and, if they choose to play the game, then they cannot be immune to robust criticism.   Vigorous debate is central to Britain’s political tradition, which could be why they don’t like it.   Of course the strongest language of all was reserved for Judge Jeffreys, the “Hanging Judge”, notorious for his Bloody Assizes after the Monmouth Rebellion.   The last time before we joined the EU when a British government tried to hand power over to a foreign authority was under King James II.   Following the Battle of Sedgemoor he sent Jeffreys down to Taunton to deal with the rebels, the UKIPpers of their day.   There he found a total of 1,381 of those charged guilty of treason.   Of these some 170 were executed, beginning with Dame Alice Lisle, the last woman in England to have been executed by judicial sentence.  Jeffreys’ black cap, his sarcastic outbursts and his quill pen loaded with brandy entered the annals of judicial infamy.  And the public outcry was so great that in 1688 there followed the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution, the Brexit vote of its time, when James II was bundled off to France, never to return.   As for Jeffreys, he ended up in the Tower of London where he died the following year.  

 

So our High Court judges shouldn’t be surprised that, when they behave like politicians, they are treated like politicians and they should be reminded that strong words hurt nobody.   But what is clear from the whole Article 50 case is that there is serious trouble ahead for Theresa May both in the House of Commons and, more especially, in the House of Lords, groaning as it is with hysterical Remainers from all parties and none.   And if next month’s appeal to the Supreme Court doesn’t succeed, as it may well not, I would be very tempted in Theresa May’s position, to call the Remainers’ bluff, announce a General Election and, as part of her manifesto, to go not only for Brexit but also for a full and thorough reform of the House of Lords.   It is obvious that the so-called Upper House will use every tactic to delay and neutralise Brexit.   The Cameron/Clegg Fixed-Term Parliament Act is an obstacle, but one which may just have to be overcome.   In this way, as well as achieving Brexit, all the flotsam and jetsam of the Blair years can finally be removed from the political stage and the detritus of that failed era, the years of Blair and Heirs-to-Blair, finally consigned to history!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'With Liberty And Justice For All'

Today Americans go to the polls in their Presidential election. There are in fact four candidates who have ballot access in all, or almost all, states - Hillary Clinton (Democrat), Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Jill Stein (Green) and Donald Trump (Republican). And just as we in Britain rightly objected when President Barack H. Obama came here in April during our Referendum campaign to intimidate us with his bullying "going to be at the back of the queue" threat, so our American cousins would object if we were to pass judgement on any of the candidates in their election. However, we can comment on that rich harvest of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton's private server hdr22@clintonemail.com when they relate to our own country.   And there are some priceless gems among them which spell out how the world really works.   For example, six weeks after her appointment as Secretary of State in 2009, her aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote to her, "On economic policy, the UK is no partner and no bridge to Europe," while our very own  Cherie Blair, clearly freelancing at the time, tried to get Hillary Clinton to meet members of the Qatari royal family and wrote, "As you know I have good links to the Qataris."   So welcome to the new world order of the past generation, where those who have run the global power nexus plainly see their electorates as mere fodder, to be thrown a few treats every four or five years but otherwise simply as tools in their relentless greed for money and power.

But they have been found out and our Brexit vote was the catalyst.   Whatever the result of today's poll, the truth is that the world of the Blairs and the Clintons, the Camerons and the Obamas is drawing to a close.   The combination of venality and poor judgement has been their downfall.   It now seems extraordinary that it was only seven months ago that the preening figures of Cameron and Obama conspired to deny Britain our democracy.   One has gone, while the other has just a few weeks left.   And as for the Blairs and the Clintons, no swollen bank balance can compensate for the sheer collapse of their reputations.  Now closer to home we in UKIP have an election of our own, just as important to us as the US poll.   Like the American electorate we have four candidates too, Suzanne Evans, Paul Nuttall MEP, John Rees-Evans and Peter Whittle AM.  But all four are completely united as UKIP rebuilds for the next stage of our journey, seeking to replace Labour in the Midlands, the North of England and Wales.   And our election is taking place against the background of a thriving post-Referendum economy.   The false threats behind Project Fear have been exposed and a great national recovery has begun.   And I was struck by a letter in last week's Daily Telegraph from an Italian businessman from Siena, Tuscany called Viscardo Paganelli, in which he wrote:

"As an Italian businessman, I am seriously considering moving my business to the UK after Brexit.   The EU has proved to be a disaster for Italy, with youth unemployment at 45 per cent., a stifling taxation system, plummeting property values, and (according to official statistics) national unemployment at more than 12 per cent.   Many in Italy look to Brexit with the hope that it will be the beginning of a new era, in which democracy wins out over bureaucracy and arrogance."   Well, all I can say to that is "Welcome Viscardo - benvenuto to Britain.   You and your business are more than welcome here.   You might even want to join UKIP and help rebuild our country as a truly global, outward-looking nation well away from the failing EU project!" And whoever our friends in America choose as their next President, we in UKIP will carry on working for a safe-haven Britain, a friend to all but with secure borders in a deeply troubled world!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 Toby on Tuesday

'A House Divided'

With just a week to go before polling day in the U.S. Presidential election, it’s a good time to revisit some of the great Presidential speeches in American history.   And among the greatest was Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech given in Springfield, Illinois on 16th June, 1858.   Warning of slavery-based disunion three years before the outbreak of the American Civil War he declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.   I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free...”   Of course Lincoln himself lifted the theme of his great speech from St. Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus says, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand...”   And those words of wisdom still hold true, not least for UKIP as we approach yet one more leadership election.   If we in UKIP are to achieve our potential and replace the Labour Party in the Midlands, the North of England and Wales, then our watchword now must be unity, unity and still more unity.

The 23rd June Referendum was an astonishing achievement for our party, but now that Brexit has, apart from the remaining irreconcilables, become the new consensus, our task has in some ways become much harder.  The simple theme that set us apart from all other political parties has gone and our new Government has moved quickly to colonise the ground that we held until June.   So we have to mark out new themes based on the rebuilding of our economy in the old Labour heartlands and then exporting around the world through bold new trade deals.   But none of this will happen if any of us, least of all our MEP’s, indulge in publicly criticising their colleagues or anyone else in or party.  Of course the vast majority of our MEP’s work away quietly, serving their constituents and their country to the best of their ability, but they rarely get reported.  One example is my good old friend William Dartmouth, MEP for the South-West and UKIP’s trade spokesman.   As a matter of principle he speaks only well of all his colleagues, is invariably loyal and concentrates his energies on writing compelling publications on the folly of the EU project and Britain’s prospects for global trade once we cast off the shackles of the EU.    But of course you don’t hear about him on the BBC and other media, which have far more fun reporting on the rifts and back-biting within our party.   William won’t be standing for our party’s leadership, but there will be candidates who seek to be forces for unity and it is to one of these that we must now look.   Although UKIP Thirsk and Malton will not try to influence our members’ votes, the need for unity and discipline must clearly be overwhelming.

And a strong UKIP is needed more than ever.   Our role in the past has been to speak the unvarnished truth and this will be equally true during the whole Brexit process.  And the truth is that Brexit Britain must avoid being dragged down by the Euro-banking crisis and the Euro-terror crisis.   Last week, Italy’s Monte dei Paschi di Siena suspended trading in its shares as it embarked on a rescue package while, far more significantly, Germany’s Deutsche Bank’s woes deepened.   Bizarrely, David Folkerts-Landau, Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank, demanded a 150 billion Euro bail-out fund to recapitalise the Euro-banking system saying, “Europe is seriously ill and has to deal with the existing problems extremely fast otherwise a crash will be imminent.”    And last week too the terror threat on the Continent grew still further.   Yet the Brussels ideologues refuse to consider the restoration of national currencies or the possibility of securing borders within the Schengen zone, both of which are essential to Europe’s recovery.   So a strong, disciplined and united UKIP is needed more than ever if we are to serve our country as effectively in the future as we have done in the past.  For my part, I detect an outbreak of sanity in UKIP and a growing recognition that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”   And those words will guide us as we vote in what hopefully will be our very last leadership election for several years to come!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Turbulent Times'

                                                                                                                                                                                          Picture: Daily Mail

 

In a troubled and uncertain world, we are all looking for safe havens – safe haven countries and safe haven investments, which stay secure in turbulent times.  And with Brexit, Britain now has the chance to become, while still open to the world, the ultimate safe haven.   To obtain that outcome is the overwhelming task of our new Government and a renewed UKIP, which has done so much to place it in office, will be a vital element in achieving that goal.   For the great unspoken reason for ensuring our “Leave” vote on 23rd June was to minimise the risk of Britain being exposed to the fallout from two of the most destructive policy decisions in the history of Europe, the Euro currency and the Schengen border-free travel zone,   To call both of them turbulent is to understate the looming consequences of those two fatal policy misjudgements.   Both were based on a flawed ideology and the contagion from them poses an existential threat to us all.

Professor Otmar Issing was the very first chief economist of the European Central Bank and a towering figure in the creation of the Euro currency.   And last week, he finally broke cover declaring, “One day, the house of cards will collapse...Realistically, it will be a case of muddling through, struggling from one crisis to the next.   It is difficult to forecast how long this will continue for, but it cannot go on endlessly...The moral hazard is overwhelming...The Stability and Growth pact has more or less failed...there is no fiscal control mechanism from markets or politics.   This has all the elements to bring disaster for monetary union.   The no bail-out clause is violated every day...The decline in the quality of eligible collateral is a grave problem.  The ECB is now buying corporate bonds that are close to junk, and the haircuts can barely deal with a one-notch credit downgrade.   The reputational risk of such actions would have been unthinkable in the past.”   Now if one of UKIP’s economists like Tim Congon had said these things, we would no doubt have been accused, in the words of the late and unlamented David Cameron, of being fruitcakes and loonies, but those are the words of one of the original creators of the Euro currency.   Yet to speak ill of the Euro currency is still seen as a form of heresy in Brussels.

Sir Julian King is the new EU security commissioner, indeed appointed by David Cameron in one of his final acts in office.    And last week too he declared that Europe with its border free Schengen zone must prepare for a fresh influx of Isil jihadists fleeing Mosul as the Iraqi army moves in on their stronghold there.   In his own words, “The retaking of the (Isil) northern Iraq territory, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent (Isil) fighters.   This is a very serious threat and we must be prepared to face it.”   Even if a handful return, it would pose a “serious threat that we must prepare ourselves for.”  In essence, Europe with its open borders must prepare for a new influx of terrorists.   Again, if Nigel Farage or a UKIP migration spokesman had said these things, all those Eurofanatics who fill our media and Parliament would have continued to vilify us, as they have always done.  We would have been accused of alarmism and racism.   But this is from the EU’s own security commissioner and a Cameron appointee.    Yet to speak ill of the Schengen zone or of the free movement policy is to question the EU’s very ideology and, as with the Euro, is another form of heresy in Brussels.  We should remember these things when Article 50 is finally invoked and negotiations for Brexit start in earnest.

So as we rebuild ourselves as a party, seeking to replace Labour in the Midlands and the North, we must remember that, for those millions of former Labour voters, a sense of security is not just an attractive option but an essential condition for their survival.  For them above all Britain must become a safe haven.   To be represented by MP’s who still show more interest in Overseas Aid and the demands of economic migrants than in the needs of their own core constituents will no longer be acceptable.    And if UKIP can be seen as the ‘safe haven’ party, protecting our country from policy failures on the Continent and the fallout from a profoundly unstable world, then we shall have secured our own futures and will be able to contribute quite as much to the future of our nation as we have done in the past generation!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby