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