Toby on Tuesday

'The Path Of Least Resistance'

Last week I wrote about Edward Heath, his acolyte Douglas Hurd and the conspiracy in the House of Lords to sabotage Brexit.   Today I want to say something about the risk of a similar plot in the House of Commons and to introduce you to David Lidington who last month became Leader of the Commons.   And what is extraordinary is how the same thread runs through so much of our politics and the same suspects re-emerge in new guises.   Now David Lidington is yet another Eurofanatic politician, who in 1987 became Special Adviser to none other than Douglas Hurd himself.   In 1989 they moved to the Foreign Office together.   In 1992 he was elected MP for Aylesbury with the support of his patron, who was by now Foreign Secretary.  With the return of a Conservative-led Government in 2010, David Lidington became Minister for Europe, where he predictably trotted out the Foreign Office’s Euro-fanatical line at every opportunity, and then last month he became Leader of the House of Commons.   And where this is relevant to Thirsk & Malton is that the other day our own pro-Remain MP Kevin Hollinrake was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to David Lidington.  So the picture is unfolding.   Now Kevin Hollinrake is a charming and genuinely likeable character, whom any of us would be happy to have as a friend, but his open wish to please everyone makes him politically dangerous a time of great risk like the present.   Taking the line of least resistance is the wrong response in a world where the dangers are growing by the day.

The situation now resembles increasingly what was happening in the 1930’s, when news from the Continent was routinely censored and evidence of growing atrocities was routinely suppressed.   And in just the same way, the Foreign Office and the BBC, two of the worst offenders then, are still offering a rose-tinted view of the realities of Europe.   Yet now as in the 1930’s the Poles, who are a hugely courageous and resilient people, are ready to offer a blinker-free view of developments in Europe.  That Poland has survived at all with Russia on one side and Germany on the other, both eyeing up its huge territory with hungry looks, is a miracle in itself.    And in the same spirit that brought so many young pilots to fly with the RAF in the Battle of Britain, which could well have been lost without them, brave Poles are now speaking out.   Jacek Wrona is a former Polish Central Bureau of Investigation officer who has just declared, “The worst problem for the police service is political correctness...Europe is at the end of its existence...Western Europe is practically dead.   These people live in a void, without ideas.”   And Dr. Rafal Brzeski is a military historian who has just said likewise. “The Germans have had enough of this, which does not mean the government has had enough.   There are two different approaches...The whole Balkans are flooded with weapons, and from the Balkans have come two million people.   Together with them came arms dealers, gangsters, drug dealers.  Buying a Kalashnikov in Bosnia and Herzegovina is as it was after the war with us.   You can buy one for peanuts.”   Predictably the governments of Poland and Germany have fallen out over absorption of the migrant flow.

And even ordinary Germans are starting to speak out against the suppression of the news.   ‘Bild’ magazine has just reported a high-ranking police official in Frankfurt as saying, “There are strict instructions from the top not to report offences committed by refugees.   It is extraordinary that certain offenders are deliberately not being reported about and the information is being classified as confidential.”   And according to Andre Schulz, head of Germany’s Association of Criminal Police, 90% of sex crimes there are not being reported – this in a country where the rape crisis has spread to cities and towns in al 16 of Germany’s federal states.   It is to prevent the virus of violence and terror within the EU reaching our own shores that we need to regain control of our borders as a matter of urgency.   Brexit-lite, or even worse no Brexit at all, for which so many members of both the House of Lords and House of Commons are now working, is a growing danger to the peace of our country.   However delightful a character our own MP may be, and I’m sure his own patron David Lidington is equally delightful on a personal basis, the failure to recognise and acknowledge what is really happening within the EU represents a political risk that none of us should have to face.   So Brexit really must mean Brexit!

Until next Tuesday! 

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Lords a Leaping'

 

For Edward Heath, Europe was a religion.   Those who questioned the project were to be cast into outer darkness.   But for those who colluded in its plots and schemes, no reward - political or financial - could be too great.   And the poison of what was in essence a false religion entered the bloodstream of our whole Establishment.   Britain was to be subsumed by stealth into a country called Europe and, if you objected, you were no longer a fit and proper person.    And if you thought that extreme Europhilia passed with Edward Heath’s death in 2005 you were mistaken, for his spirit lives on in the form of his acolyte, Douglas Hurd, now 86 and Lord Hurd of Westwell.  From 1968-70, he ran Edward Heath’s private office, from 1970-74 he was Edward Heath’s political secretary in Downing Street, in 1974 he became MP for what is now David Cameron’s constituency and Edward Heath’s PPS, from 1979-83 he was Minister for Europe, from 1989-95 he was Foreign Secretary and in 1997 he retired to the House of Lords, where for many years he sat on the House of Lords Appointments Commission.   And in 1993 as Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd signed the Maastricht Treaty under which our laws were wholly subordinated to the European Court and all Britons from the Queen down became “Citizens of Europe”, even though in her Coronation Oath our faithful and dutiful Queen had sworn to govern the British people “according to their laws and customs”.  Now where all this is relevant is that for all those years in which Douglas Hurd sat on the House of Lords Appointments Commission, any candidate for a life peerage who had expressed doubts about the EU project was ruthlessly excluded, while a motley collection of opportunistic Eurofanatics was welcomed with open arms.  And now that motley collection is seeking to overturn the settled will of the British people by rejecting the result of June’s Referendum.

 

Two of the most motley of them all are Lady (Patience) Wheatcroft and Lord (Michael) Heseltine.   Writing last week, Lady Wheatcroft threatened to derail Brexit, declaring “I hope that there would be a majority prepared to stall the bill through the one session of parliament that is possible before the Parliament Act can be invoked.   That would be a break with convention that the House of Lords does not stand in the way of a manifesto commitment.   But when it was a manifesto commitment to plunge into the unknown, I for one am prepared to go against convention”, while Lord Heseltine simply exclaimed, “We all know that the people are not sovereign.   Parliament is supreme.”   Because of the system of life peerages that developed under Tony Blair, the House of Lords, now loaded with Eurofanatics as it is, is where Brexit is most likely to be sabotaged.   And David Cameron’s 13 courtiers, nominated to the Lords only last week, will be among those busy derailing June’s Referendum result.   All this is why UKIP’s own internal difficulties now need to be resolved as a matter of urgency.   As part of an early resolution, I would like to see Nigel Farage become our Party’s President, in recognition of his extraordinary work in turning the tide of history, the excellent Diane James become our new leader and the charismatic Steven Woolfe become deputy leader with specific responsibility for campaigning in the North of England.   No doubt others will have their own ideas of how best to make up a dream team, but the elements are there in UKIP to form one and ensure that Brexit does indeed mean Brexit.

 

The other day, a leading article in the Spectator magazine rightly stated, “Brexit is neither an economic drag nor a stimulus:  it is simply the removal of a constraint.   What Britain now goes on to achieve depends entirely on the vision and ambition of those in power.   Politicians and businesses should snap out of their sulk, and see Brexit for what it is:  the greatest opportunity ever handed to a government by an electorate.”   UKIP’s task now must be to do everything possible to ensure that this opportunity is not squandered, at least not by self-serving former ministers and their chums in the House of Lords still in thrall to the false and failed religion of the EU.   And we need that dream team, I hope made up of Nigel Farage as President, Diane James as leader and Steven Woolfe as deputy leader, in place soon to take our party forward, building on the astonishing achievement of June’s Referendum!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Bordering On Disgraceful'

“I don’t see why my son should be denied a job with Goldman Sachs in London by a bunch of white trash in the North of England!”, she said looking at me with unfeigned contempt and not disguising who she had in mind.   She was the pro-Remain wife of a well-known pro-Remain High Court judge whom I recently met.   Remonstrating that the U.S. bank Goldman Sachs had threatened to relocate to Frankfurt in the event of Brexit, she explained that she had a son in Geneva who was hoping to return to London and a daughter working in New York.   All I could do was chuckle and reply that, when I last checked, Switzerland wasn’t in the EU and I didn’t think that America was either.   But it is a measure of the bile and fury of the embittered Remainers that we were having this conversation.   Now I was more than happy to be described as Northern white trash by the amiable High Court judge’s wife, but I thought that she could never have used that charming expression in connection with the splendid Priti Patel, one of the true stars of the Leave campaign.   And Priti Patel’s reward has come in being appointed Secretary of State for International Development in Theresa May’s new cabinet.

Born in 1972, when she was elected for Witham in Essex in 2010 Priti Patel was the first Hindu woman Member of Parliament.   Her parents were Gujarati Ugandan immigrants who left their country just before Idi Amin announced the expulsion of Ugandan Asians.   In the best tradition, they built up a chain of newsagents in the South-East of England and will have been thrilled to see their gifted daughter embark on a career in public life.  From 1995 to 1997 she ran the Referendum Party’s press office before moving to William Hague’s own press office.   Then from 2003 to 2007 she found herself working for Diageo, the British multinational alcoholic beverages company where she helped shape “a global strategy on responsible drinking”, something to endear her to all UKIP members.   Her political views too were entirely consistent with UKIP’s and it was not surprising when towards the end of last year she joined the Vote Leave Campaign Committee.   By then, just 5 years after becoming an MP, she was already Minister of State for Employment in the Department for Work and Pensions and a Privy Councillor.   And one campaign for which she became celebrated was for the scrapping of the Department for International Development, largely on account of the sheer volume of overseas aid that disappears in fraud and outright theft.   By appointing her to head that Department, it is hoped that the incidence of corruption can begin to diminish.

Now Britain is unique in the world in being the only country to spend 0.7% of our Gross Domestic Product on Overseas Aid, in addition to our broadly equivalent net transfers to the European Union.   This is happening at a time when the risk of terrorist activity, and particularly EU-related terrorist activity, is growing by the day.   Yet our border controls remain an unqualified disgrace.  By way of example, Italy has 4,772 miles of coastline and some 600 border patrol vessels.  Britain has 7,700 miles of coastline and just 3 border patrol vessels, up from 2 in 2009.   America’s border control force is the same size as her navy.   Small British harbours and isolated beaches in particular are being targeted by people smugglers and illegal migrants.   Small airfields go unpatrolled and the promised checks are not yet in place.   Illegal immigrants are simply arriving in vehicles belonging to people smugglers.   All this is well known, as is the way in which the UK Border Agency is being overwhelmed by the pressures it faces.  Now this is not UKIP policy but, with a sympathetic Secretary of State in place, there does seem to be a strong case to divert a large part of our International Development budget to countering the threat of terrorism both around the world and at our borders.   At the moment, there is little public support for a policy which, like the EU budget, is so susceptible to fraud.   But if it were used as a resource to fight terrorism both overseas and within the UK, not least at our borders, then that public support could return.   And the excellent Priti Patel, who fought so bravely in the Leave campaign and who indeed campaigned to abolish the Department she now heads, would have earned the thanks not just of UKIP but of our whole country.   And not even that charming pro-Remain wife of the pro-Remain High Court judge, so desperate for her son to work in Goldman Sachs, could accuse her of just being Northern white trash!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

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

Toby on Tuesday

'All Change' 

 

 

Secretary of State for Exiting the EU – David Davis

Secretary of State for International Trade – Liam Fox

Foreign Secretary – Boris Johnson

Environment Secretary (DEFRA) – Andrea Leadsom

 

They used to say that a week was a long time in politics.   Just now a minute seems like an age.   The Tony Blair era finally ended last week when the Chilcot Report passed judgment on the Iraq War and the “heirs to Blair”, Messrs Cameron and Osborne, passed into history.   And if anyone had forecast last Tuesday that we would actually have a Secretary of State for Exiting the EU and a Secretary of State for International Trade, the wise old heads would have declared “Dream On!”   Even our own Nigel Farage was moved to say, “The appointment of David Davis and Liam Fox to Brexit and International Trade roles are inspired choices.   I feel more optimistic now.”   But there they are and no one should doubt both men’s determination to achieve their goals.   David Davis is the very best sort of Yorkshire MP, highly intelligent, independent-minded and full of courage in pursuing his causes.   And no one should underestimate the scale of the challenge that he now faces.   Nearly 45 years of legislation, much of it damaging, will need to be reversed and there will be 27 other EU countries to create pitfalls and problems at every step.

 

So David Davis will have the complete support of UKIP Thirsk & Malton as he sets about his task.   The kind of issue he will face, and one in which both Andrea Leadsom’s and Boris Johnson’s departments will inevitably become involved, concerns the fishing industry.   Over the coming weeks I will write about some of the difficulties that will challenge the new Government and a major one will be the reclamation of our nation’s fisheries.   Now in a classic combination of aggressive EU legislation and weak British negotiation, French boats are allowed to fish up to six nautical miles from the British coast but EU laws prevent British vessels from fishing within 12 miles of the French coast.   As we take back our own 12 mile coastal waters and our 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone in the North Sea, it’s easy to see trouble ahead.   So our new Ministers will be able to depend on UKIP Thirsk and Malton as they seek to recover so much that has been squandered.

 

Paradoxically, these Ministers will probably receive far more support from UKIP Thirsk & Malton than from the sitting Conservative MP here.   As a Remain voting Cameron supporter, he may well not have the stomach for a fight when difficulties arise.   Among voters in Scarborough District Council, the support for Leave was 62% in the Referendum against 38% for Remain, so the imperative to reclaim our fisheries should be clear.   Yet there’ll be trouble ahead as we set out on the task.    It was the German philosopher Jean-Paul Richter who wrote that, “the French had the dominion of the land, the English of the sea and the Germans of the air,” by which he meant that Germany was the land of thinkers and philosophers.   The EU allowed France to keep its lands and Germany its ideologies (currently the EU), but our seas were taken from us and their return is vital if we are to become a maritime, open, trading nation once more.   Our own MP here may well not wish to fight for our fisheries, but UKIP Thirsk & Malton definitely does.   So our role in the years ahead will be to support David Davis, Liam Fox, Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom as we withdraw from the EU, to ensure that Remain-supporting MP’s like our own do not thwart them and, under our own new UKIP leader, to replace a moribund and irrelevant Labour Party in its old heartlands, particularly in the North of England.  That should be enough to keep us busy in the years ahead!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby

 Toby on Tuesday

'Weighed, Measured, And Found Wanting'

In January 2000, Council Directive 80/181/EEC passed into English law by statutory instrument without a debate in Parliament.   This made it a criminal offence to use the old Imperial system of weights and measures, imposing instead the immediate use of the Continental metric system.    The Brussels’ Commission’s argument was that the use of the Imperial system gave British exporters an unfair advantage in trading with the United States where the traditional system was also used.   Instantly, a great part of Britain’s economy was criminalised and faced prosecution.   One of the first to be brought to trial was Steve Thoburn, a market trader in Sunderland.   In February 2000, Trading Standards officers caught him selling bananas by the pound, his scales were seized, he was prosecuted for a criminal offence and found guilty of being in breach of Council Directive 80/181/EEC.   He and Neil Herron, a veteran campaigner against heavy-handed and incompetent bureaucracy, appealed, taking the case as far as the European Court of Human Rights, where the appeal was inevitably rejected.   The strain proved too much for Steve Thoburn and in March 2004, at the age of 39, he died of a heart attack with a criminal record.   At the time, Neil Herron declared, “This man had the courage to stand up and be counted and it was a pleasure to know him.   He was an ordinary person’s hero – an extraordinary ordinary person.”   While Steve Thoburn’s prosecution was underway, Tony Blair was busy taking Britain into the Iraq War but, despite Sir John Chilcot’s report, he can be confident that there will be no criminal record for him.   If you need an allegory for the sheer awfulness of the way our country has been run over the past generation, you need look no further than the contrasting fates of Tony Blair and Steve Thoburn. 

In 2003, Theresa May was Shadow Transport Secretary.  She had just achieved fame of a sort when she described the Conservative grassroots as “The Nasty Party”, which was an unusual way to make friends and influence people.   And this was the only time when I have had the doubtful pleasure of meeting her.   She would not remember the occasion at a Northern business conference in York, but I could never forget.  I asked her why it had been necessary to criminalise the use of pounds and ounces, and if it was necessary wouldn’t a civil rather than a criminal prosecution be more appropriate?   In her peremptory and charmless way, she turned to me and declared, “You (i.e. the business community) asked for it and anyway it’s a condition of our membership of the European Union!”   No doubt she thought the question an irritant and Steve Thoburn’s criminal record to be entirely deserved.   Here was Ted Heath in a dress, I thought, and nothing has happened since then to make me question that view.   And as she is now our next Prime Minister, anyone who thinks that she can be relied on to enact last month’s Referendum decision will definitely be disappointed.

The cases of the Metric Martyrs, as Steve Thoburn and others like him are known, continue to stain our legal system.   There have been so many breaches that prosecutions are rarely brought now, but when we ask for a pound of apples we are still inciting the shopkeeper or market trader to commit a criminal offence.   The brave Neil Herron continues with his campaign, saying that the Brexit vote finally gives us the opportunity to “strike down the repugnant piece of EU legislation.”   And here we come back to the immunity from prosecution that Tony Blair has always enjoyed.   In May 2000, three months after Steve Thoburn was criminally charged, Cherie Blair gave birth to young Leo Blair.   At the time, Downing Street announced that the baby’s weight was 6lb and 12 oz.   Insodoing Downing Street and the Blairs were likewise committing a criminal offence, as under the EU Directive the baby’s weight should have been given as 3.06kg.   But as we have all learned, there’s one law for the Blairs and one for the rest of us.   And as for Theresa May, she would probably say, “Don’t be so silly, if I decide something is a criminal offence or not, that should be quite good enough for you – and all those nasty people like you!”

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Trust the People'

The old Working men’s Clubs scarcely exist now, but for many years they were a vital part of Britain’s political life.   And it was in Birmingham at one of the earliest of these that on 16th April, 1884 Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, first coined the immortal phrase, “Trust the People.”   What he was saying was that the innate good sense of ordinary men and women in Britain contained far more political wisdom and insight than the advice of countless sophisticated so-called “experts”.   It was true then and it was true on 23rd June, when the majority of voters in the United Kingdom ignored Project Fear and chose finally to leave the wasteful and dysfunctional construct known as the EU.

And we have already had three specific gains from that vote.   Three major policy initiatives in Brussels had been held back until the week after our Referendum and all would have had an adverse effect on our country.   Thanks to Brexit, we have avoided the worst of their impact.   Signorina Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, did indeed launch her report calling for a European Army, but without the possibility of British participation it fell completely flat.   Signor Monti, Chairman of the EU’s High Level Group on Own Resources, pressed on with his campaign for EU-wide direct taxation and the issue to every one of us of a “European Tax Identification Number”, but again without the prospect of compliant UK taxpayers this again became irrelevant.   And Frau Merkel pursued her campaign for Turkish EU membership and visa-free travel to the Schengen Zone, but again the UK can now avoid the direct risk that this policy entails.   So the gains from Britain’s vote are building steadily and the prospect of a safe-haven Britain, protected from many of the EU’s self-inflicted troubles, is now a realistic aim.

UKIP’s task in the coming years will be to ensure that the integrity of last month’s vote is secured and that the Remainers are not allowed to undermine our democracy.   Here in Thirsk and Malton, our pro-Remain Member of Parliament has pledged his support in the Conservative leadership election to the pro-Remain Theresa May.   The Thirsk & Malton constituency is spread over three District Councils, Hambleton, Ryedale and Scarborough.   Together they returned 84,724 votes for Leave (57.42%) and 62,819 votes for Remain (42.58%).   Our role here will be to uphold the result for which over 57% of our electors voted and to offer a home to constituents from all parties and none who, unlike their Member of Parliament, supported Leave last month.   On this strong base our Association can grow, for in Thirsk & Malton UKIP is the only party to have learned, in the words of Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Winston, to Trust the People!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby