Red September

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Agenda, Brexit, Brexiteers, Cable, Conference, Conservative, Corbyn, crises, Labour Party, May, Remainers, representation, Socialist, split

September is the party conference season in our sceptre isle, something which should not bother normal people most years.  This year, however, there are sinister political currents flowing.   We should be wary of this autumn’s neap tides.  Because for ordinary Britons everywhere they may become an inundation.

There are three political parties, three conferences.

Vince Cable

The Liberal Party Conference, which doesn’t really count because they are represented by twelve Members of Parliament and led by amiable geriatric, Vincent Cable.  It was last week, so you missed it, but don’t worry, so did everyone else.

This week, though – this week is the conference for the Labour Party, represented by 257 Members of Parliament.

Theresa May and Jeremy

‘Tis said among those whose delight is argument that the quickest way to lose your point is to bring Hitler into the conversation.  So I’m going to lose mine straight away, because to me, at least, this year’s Labour Party Conference resembles nothing so much as a 1930s rally of the Third Reich.  Leader of the party and aspiring Fuhrer is  Jeremy Corbyn; rather middle class-looking, much the sort of figure you would expect to tick you off for stepping on his flowerbeds, but do not be deceived.  He is a class A zealot who yearns to plant his red socialist standard in the Prime Minister’s parking space.

Corbyn sailed to power in his party on a tidal wave of idealistic students and far-left socialists who he encouraged to become party members so they could vote for him.  He charged them a special cheap membership fee of £3 a head.  This group persists and burgeons beneath the banner of ‘Momentum’, driving out more moderate members of their party.  I like to think of them as ‘The Momentum Youth’.

In its time the British Labour Party has had many different manifestations – this is one of the least pleasant.  Far from the centrist politics of their last Prime Minister, Tony Blair (think WMD), Corbyn’s affinities are unashamedly with the Trades Unions.  His declared intention to nationalise everything that moves is a transparent attempt to restore the Union despotism of the 1970s which brought his country to its knees.

The problem seems to be a reluctance to learn:  nobody, par exemple, who experienced the nationalised railways the first time around would want to see those dirty untended carriages or suffer those relentless strikes again.  No-one would want to buy from manufacturers ruled by their union conveners whose power could halt production lines at any time.  Yet it just might happen:  Corbyn might snatch power in a General Election soon, not because of his popularity as a potential Prime Minister but because of the inadequacy of the present one.

Next week will feature the Conservative Party Conference.  A genial bunfight in normal years, sometimes this can throw up great boiling geysers of schism and outrage, and this is potentially just such a year. The cause of such foment?

That damnable Brexit chappy!

Everybody knows a national referendum clearly showed a majority of the British people wanted to leave the European Union.  To some, however, that democratic defeat was like the proverbial red rag to a bull.  They have been trying, by fair means sometimes but mostly foul, to scare the socks off the general populace with horror stories and selective use of terms like ‘falling off the cliff’ and ‘crashing out’.  They have produced barrel-loads of ropey statistics and dubious long-term prognostications, while accusing those in favour of the decision of ‘populism’ (which is apparently some kind of offence, unlike Machiavellianism, their stock-in-trade).

So far, these tactics have been so transparently redolent of self-interest they have only succeeded in hardening attitudes in the country at large, but they prosper in the belly of the Conservative Party.  To Prime Minister Theresa May has fallen the odious task of reaching a ‘negotiated settlement’ with the disdainful bureaucrats of Brussels.  Her inability to come up with a recipe that is satisfactory to everybody has proved her undoing, and she is nobody’s favourite at the moment, espoused by neither the gun-toting-bring-back-the-navy-and-blockade-the-English-Channel ‘hard Brexiteers’, nor the hand-wringing ‘Remoaners’ who don’t want us to leave the EU at all.

The Conservatives at Conference have a recipe for crises such as these.  They deny any possibility of a ‘split’, they swear fealty to their Glorious Leader, and they stand in rapturous applause for the stirring words of her rallying call, while those whose work it is are eyeing her back for the exact position to deliver the knife-thrust.  Meanwhile, in a well-attended fringe meeting, her successor in title makes his pitch…

Conference Season in the UK is not always so entertaining, or disturbing, as the closing weeks of this September promise to be.   There is a real risk that the established political parties will be rent asunder by internal strife, delivering the UK back into the clutches of the Federal Republic of Europe against common consent.  If that happens there will certainly be hell to pay, and possibly even revolution.

In a parallel universe, Jeremy Corbyn may grasp the reins, plunging the country into a dark neo-communist age.  That would be a real ‘crash out’.  On balance, I think not.  The Momentum movement seems unable to shake off the taint of anti-Semitism, and in this country no-one likes racial prejudice.

Perhaps, after all, it is a matter of a few ripples in the lapsang souchong and there are halcyon days ahead.  Perhaps it is time for revolution, because none of the principal political parties represent the people anymore.  At my age, why should I care?  I can sit back and watch, popping my pills and drawing my pension as the political world passes by, and nothing is likely to cause me direct harm from all this, is it?  Yet somehow I do care.  Could that be because I have seen it all before, and what distresses me is our tragic inability to learn?

A Momentous Year

Tags

2017, Antarctc Ice, Armageddon, Brexit, Disaster, Doom, Farage, federalism, Global Warming, growth Rate, London Bubble, National Health, New Year, Remainers, Trump, UK, wealth, zealotism

A coke and a smile and it’s already 6^th of January, most New Year’s resolutions are well on their way to being broken and a whole new seedbed of freshly sprouting tragedies are preparing to break the soil of 2017.    So, will this year be better than last?

No.

At least, not in the eyes of the media harpies who sit on the branches  of the ‘London Bubble’, glaring balefully at me through the window of my northern turret.   Now these are interesting birds:  for they are gifted in their description of impending misery.  The instant I venture to share their wavelength they bombard me with carefully measured doses of doom, interspersed with worthy advice concerning avoidance measures.

Brexit, they persist in wailing, will be a disaster as yet beyond human experience, one we cannot possibly calculate in terms of the millions who will starve, the race riots that will injure us and loot our properties, or the unmitigated fury of the spurned bankers, who will all leave for France.   Have we not already been swept up in a tide of hyper-inflation, with savage price rises, critical supply shortages and assaults by irritable German Federalists?

Well again, no.

In fact, virtually every prediction for Armageddon has so far proved false, apart from the one concerning the lowered value of our dear old dusty English Pound, which, as it turns out, is a boon to industry, because at 2.2 percent the British growth rate for the past year is the highest in the western world.   Meanwhile, across the Channel, the European economies are either languishing or in trouble, one way or another.  The euro is showing all the early signs of terminal disease.

Without indulging in lengthy (and very boring) discussion of comparative ills, the political right is hauling itself up several electoral ladders, notably in the big European players – France, Italy, and possibly even Germany, with electoral processes due to chart their success this year.  Right-wing political thinking is broadly anti-EU, but political science is a lot like theology: a subject with no substance in itself which is guided and reinterpreted by those who administer it.  Where it exists it is upon an ideal or a myth, and the problem for the ministry of a fashionable creed is their vulnerability to being swept aside when events disprove their ineffable vision.  There is no in between:   saints or heretics; the Vox Populae judges only by results.

Britain’s greatest enemy in the execution of Brexit lies within itself.  Pandering to instinctive British obsequiousness, and unconvinced of its negotiating power or the cards it holds, the government seems to be falling over itself in attempts to ‘achieve the best deal’, regardless of its record in that department when David Cameron was lashed to the helm, and without any acknowledgement to the bigger world that waits to trade and interrelate.

Hot news!   You cannot ‘negotiate’ with zealots.  They don’t listen.  Whether Federalist or Islamist they are convinced of their cause in the face of all reason, and their pursuit of it will be relentless.   The only way for the European ideal to break down is the way it must, whether in months or years: by collapse from within.

Complications, EU rules and agreements founded upon them, are really a distraction from what will be UKs final recourse, just to walk away and close the door.   The vast amount of money, and work for the Civil Service, though, that will be expended in reaching that conclusion, is not for the EU.  It is to gratify powerful influences within UK.

Make no mistake, the greatest obstacle to a smooth and effective severance is rampant self-interest.   I can understand it, in a way.  In the long term, as everyone knows, the Carney Bank of England interest rate, which has lingered at fractions of a percent for some years now, must rise.  In most of the country such changes are manageable, but if you live in a two-bedroom flat in London which cost your lenders the north side of £600K a half percent rise is tantamount to ruin, especially if the property starts to devalue as well…

On a personal level, this is the year (so my harpies, in concert with the British Brainwashing Corporation tell me) I am sure to contract a significant disease – diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, Ebola, terminal flu.   All will be well, if I could only bring myself to take the wisest course the moment I experience early symptoms and consult my medical practitioner.  Okay, although due to the medical staff’s extensive holiday commitments the waiting list for appointments with my local General Practitioners’ exceeds one month.  By which time, of course, I will have expired.

Meaning, I suppose, I need not be too concerned that a piece one-quarter the size of Wales is about to break away from the Antarctic ice pack, or that due to billions of gallons of extra melt water filling up the oceans, the world is getting too fat in the middle and wobbling on its axis a bit.   This is no surprise to me.  Ever since acquiring extra weight in middle age my pirouettes are definitely more erratic.  A lesson for us all.

It will not be a bad year, 2017.   Whether we like or loathe Donald and his rug, the system will blunt his excesses I am sure, and all though the treatment may be painful, it will be beneficial, by and large, in the end.  If one thing, and one thing alone, could make 2017 a very good year it would be to see peace break out in Syria.  Those poor people have been bombed and shot at for too many years, and for once I find myself applauding Russia for its logical approach.  I hope that, at least, succeeds.

Happy New Year, everyone.

No – NO!   Put that drink down.  You promised!  God is watching!

UKIP – RIP?

Tags

Brexit, Conservative, Diane James, Elections, Eurpoean Union, federalism, Jeremy Corbyn, Lonmdon Bubble, Marxism, Marxist, Negotiations, Nigel Farage, referendum, Socialist, Theresa May, UKIP

The resignation of Diane James from leadership of the UK Independence Party, whilst perhaps not entirely surprising, is unfortunate.   Her reign of only 18 days must be something of a record for a political leader of any party, indicative perhaps of the struggles that seethe beneath the surface of UKIP’s emergent force.

I raise my tiny voice in concern because UKIP is important.  In a political Britain infected by the soporific sluggishness of the European Union it is a vital force for dynamic change – the change is happening, despite the doleful voices of the London Bubble – and the ability of Government to reflect that change at Westminster must keep pace.    The pace will be fast.

Theresa May’s approach to ‘Brexit’  (am I the only one becoming tired of that word?) is refreshingly bullish.  Her refusal to respond to the sententious attitude of Brussels that clearly casts the UK as a naughty schoolchild is gratifying and assures me for the present, at least, that the Article 50 negotiations are in good hands – for now.

At home, though, the auguries are less clear.   Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the opposition has redefined the Labour Party as an extreme left-wing socialist group unlikely to interest the greater part of the UK population.   Corbyn’s cabal is clearly determined to de-select unsympathetic centre-left MPs in favour of a more neo-Marxist trades union dominated parliamentary party, thus undoing what was possibly Tony Blair’s only beneficial contribution to Labour politics.   As a party Labour was unelectable before Blair came, and it is bent upon becoming unelectable once more.

The great majority of the British public do not want a rampantly socialist government.   It never will. Yet a credible opposition is needed, otherwise Theresa May’s Conservatives have carte blanche.   Effectively unopposed within the chamber of government  they can behave pretty much as they want, and the temptation to offer sops to more extreme right-wing factions within their party will be great.  At this moment the only opposition in play is provided by the Scottish Nationalists, a scattering of Irish MPs, and the doughty rear guard of a failed Liberal Party that was so misguidedly digested by coalition in the last Conservative period of office.

Who better, therefore, to occupy this newly created space?   UKIP mobilised the British population behind a cause and brought them out to vote as never before.  It presented a simple message to the voters that found sympathy – it had an ear to the real drift of public opinion and gave them a voice.   That initial dynamism focussed upon one issue and around one man; Nigel Farage.  And therein, maybe, lies the problem.

Not the only problem.   The massive task of gaining enough candidates to contest every seat at the last General Election rushed UKIP into assembly of a rag-bag of politically ambitious figures all interested in becoming MPs and glad to sign up for the first opportunity.  The only issue they had in common, however, was ‘Brexit’ and many had different visions of that.  Now that the figurehead of their party has stepped down those differing visions can have free play, and instead of grasping a golden opportunity their executive are squabbling amongst themselves.  Between now and Theresa May’s declared date for the next General election (2020) they have the chance to supplant Labour as the major opposition party.    The Liberals certainly won’t do it, and the Nationalist parties have their own agendas.

The UKIP aims as stated in their orchestrated campaign to take Britain out of Europe spoke to the Labour voter.   A sleeping giant was wakened, addressed in a language it could understand, and provided with the sort of common sense British politics has lacked for generations.  As a result the giant voted, and will vote again, for those same common sense arguments in a manifesto for the future of the Britain we have now.   The only problem is the lack of a Farage to lead them.  (Figurehead needed: please apply)

Believe it or not, I am not a convinced UKIP voter now, although I voted resoundingly for leaving the EU and I’m proud to see my country’s innovative and positive reaction to the referendum result.  I love to see the establishment confounded and I have always believed the European Federalist dream was just that:  a very expensive dream.   I might vote for a future UKIP;  I certainly will not vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s version of Labour.    I think there are many like me.

What do you think?

So, What Now?

Tags

Bankers, Boris, Brexit, Cameron, Conservative, EU, Labour Party, leave, London, Nigel Farage, referendum, UKIP, Unrepresented, Vote

Well, it happened!

Those of us who did not sit up through the night of 23rd June woke in the morning to a country that is new to most of us:  an independent nation no longer huffing obediently at the heels of the ‘burgers’ of Brussels.   The UK has voted to leave the European Union.

And the question that engages me is – what happens now?

I have no doubt that the creature emerging from its chrysalis is a shadow of the voracious caterpillar it once was, in those days before a grocer’s elitist son glued it to an over-tenanted portion of the northern hemisphere known as the Common Market, more than sixty years ago.  Small, damp and rather blousy, it must spend time drying its wings before it can become what?  A glorious and beautiful butterfly, or a trundling, zeppelin of a moth?   Does the Britain that now looks so crippled soar brilliantly into the sun, or sacrifice itself to the naked flame?

What comes next will depend upon who leads.  Prime Minister David Cameron’s rather pathetic attempt today to persuade his nation that he would fall on his sword was tempered by his intention to wait three months before doing it.  He will, in his own words, ‘steady the ship’, thinly disguised rhetoric for ‘I will delay this as much as possible’.  And those of us watching got the uncomfortable feeling he has not given up,  though we may rest assured that, even if he succeeds in his tactic, the Tory Conference in October will have a finely honed blade ready.  So who?

Boris Johnson seems the obvious candidate, Theresa May is also in the running, as is Michael Gove, despite his insistence he seeks no high office.   Exciting enough, but there is an odd further possibility, which I will explore, if only because I like odd possibilities.

There is no doubt the referendum on Britain’s EU membership was the result of discontent within the Conservative Party.  Nonetheless it would not have happened had not Nigel Farage’s UKIP party given it voice.

What occurred on June 23rd was a rare example of true democracy.  For a large proportion of UK population government is an irrelevance, something to amuse the ‘educated’ which costs them money, but about which they can do nothing.  They are unrepresented, principally because the British Labour Party is a grotesque, stuck in a quagmire of trade union megalomania and neo-communist dogma that was rejected by a thinking working class (there – I’ve used that damned word ‘class’) thirty years ago.   The referendum gave everybody a simple, straightforward access to a political process:  ‘yes’ or ‘no’.   It brought The Unrepresented from their houses, many of them for the first time in thirty years.  It gave them an influence otherwise lost to them, and it raised a political map of the United Kingdom which showed starkly how little Unity there really is.

In all of England only London really came out strongly in favour of the EU.   The Superdome, the Bankers’ Bubble stood tall amidst a seething sea of doubt and dissent.  Atom City against the real world.

It is futile to even imagine the Conservative Party, or any leader arising from it, will do more than quantify the risk that carpet of inconvenient intelligence outside the dome represents.  And then dismiss it.   But they’ve been wrong before!   Suppose they decide to reinforce their post-EU mandate by calling a General Election, and suppose Farage’s UKIP steps into the breach the Labour Party have left unguarded?   Could UKIP manage to draw those same Unrepresented from their houses – is it possible UKIP could form a government?

It is intriguing, and I admit very unlikely, but what a proposition a Nigel Farage-led government presents!   A commodities trader turned Prime Minister is a very Trump-like prospect for a future independent UK, and I relish the thought because the pot needs stirring, and I can think of no better man than Farage to hold the spoon.

So there we are.  Newly independent of Brussels, free of EU federalism.  Brushing fantasy (and Farage) aside, I honestly don’t know what the future holds, but I am experiencing the optimism of youth once more, and I love it!

Brexit; a Pointless Referendum

Tags

argument, Brexit, European Union, humor, June 23rd, leave, referendum, remain, spin

…and a year’s supply of free pate…

 

Referendums are exceptional in UK, but it is likely one will take place this summer.  In a very little time loyal subjects of HM Queen Ltd are going to be allowed to vote ‘remain’ so they can stay not quite part of the European Union.  Of course, an illusion of a free vote on such an important issue must be maintained, so there will also be an option to vote ‘leave’ the EU altogether.  My advice is, don’t bother with it.

Those who think for us are anxious that a substantial number will select that option.  But not too many.  It would be embarrassing, after all, if the ‘remain’ vote was 70 or 80%.  Allegations of ballot-rigging would abound, protest groups would make inconvenient noises.  No, a sixty-forty split in favour of remaining should be sufficient, and could be proclaimed a ‘landslide’.  The people would have made a truly democratic decision – wouldn’t they?

The truth is, most democratic choices are reached undemocratically.  Unless someone behaves exceptionally clumsily, the choice with the most money behind it always triumphs.

As an exceptional curmudgeon and inveterate old-stager, I look back with nostalgic affection to days when simple propaganda was the parent of choice – when we, the rebellious people could be persuaded by a leaflet or two, a ‘Government Information’ film, or an authoritative  educational lecture to see the error of our ways and return to the fold of opinion advocated by the great and the good.  A stentorian voice would instruct us to put aside foolish dreams of freedom and individuality, and we would obey.   A penny off the tax on alcohol, threepence off tobacco would induce us to simper pleasingly and rest content.

No more.

I marvel at the array of tools which augment the present day spin-artist’s box.  Democratic manipulation is an intricate art, and rather like the Rolls Royce which is the last fading symbol of British engineering, its function should be as undetectable as it is silent, working smoothly beneath a well-polished exterior.   To assist our informed choice all the arguments in favour of staying with the EU or leaving it will be put, all information our masters feel we need  will be fed to us.  Coverage of salient points and consequences which affect us most will be impeccably balanced while that big engine murmurs discreetly, driving the ‘remain’ vote relentlessly forward.

On the face of it, the ‘remain’ crowd have a difficult task to convince us.   Like so many innocent children the ideal of a Common Market grew up to be a hideous monster.  It has few pretensions to democracy, and many ambitions as a neo-communist state.

Das Kapital (formerly known as Brussels) makes the rules, issuing random edicts from behind featureless doors whilst exacting tribute of millions of pounds every day.   Membership has destroyed Britain’s fishing industry and well nigh a third of the world’s prime fishing grounds, inflicted a common agricultural policy which works very effectively if you own a French smallholding, and bestowed laws upon us which, though commendable in theory, make their simplest practical applications expensive and unworkable.

So tightly stitched is the bureaucratic sack not one of these issues was even up for negotiation when our Prime Minister and knight crusader, David Cameron, sallied forth to challenge the Faceless Ones; to throw down the gauntlet on subjects such as immigration and Benefits, promising us he would sow the seeds for ‘real change’ within the European Union.   The Faceless Ones made some noises.  Cameron came home with a purse full of very watered down concessions to feed to the serfs; concessions, it turns out, that could be contrary to International Law, and likely to be voted out anyway by the European Parliament once his referendum is safely over.

No ‘real change’ then?

Honestly?  None.  Affecting change in the EU is a thankless task, unless it is undertaken by the core members, France and Germany.  Every door knocked responds with the same bland ‘occupé’.   So how does that immaculate engine ensure GB votes ‘remain’?

 

Well, bearing in mind that the balance of argument must be preserved, the spinners turn to those who are making the argument:  thus, all who support the ‘remain’ cause should be seen as upright and dependable, with a fairly low bureaucratic profile.  Those arguing to ‘leave’ must be high profile, iconoclastic figures given to excitement, air-headedness and cant.  Of course, you can find examples of each character type in either camp:  the skill exists in massaging public perception.   Thus Boris Johnson of the wild hair who wants us to vote ‘leave’ is something of a coup for the ‘remain’ camp.  We British, you see, don’t really like the amiable eccentric, no matter how clever and politically astute.  We abominate political falsehood, yet we recoil from those who tell us the truth.

 

(aside:  a current British nightmare is the prospect of Donald Trump as President of USA, Boris Johnson as UK Prime Minister, and Vladimir Putin as President of Russia – it could just happen!)

 

For or against, all those to whom we bend an ear must make their case in interview.  And the interviews will be strictly impartial in all respects, except in the opinions of the interviewer.  A good journalist can always swing an argument in his favour, without putting a word out of place.

 

Then there is fear.  The remain camp have all manner of ‘fear’ arguments to justify membership.  If we leave, we are told, our economy will collapse, our export trade with Europe will become complex and difficult.   The value of the Pound will diminish.  There will be unaccountable natural disasters and we shall all have to move to Bradford.

 

A few examples, then, of the spinner’s craft.  These incipient messages are carefully managed and discreetly scattered so we hear them whilst still believing we are being offered balanced argument.  The advantages of unfettered immigration will be propounded – after all the British Isles can safely nurture a population of two hundred million before the entire country is concreted over and people begin to fall off the edge.  Wise and logical warnings – that our health service, our social services, our police force and our infrastructure are already stretched to breaking point – will be gently tilthed over by entreaties for common humanity and the need for compassion, thus paving the road for anyone who preaches prudence to be treated with righteous disdain.

Only if the vote to ‘remain’ looks seriously jeopardised will the big guns come out.   Only then will the vote-winners which are known to always sway the serfs be brought into play: higher interest rates and more taxation.   By the 23rd June, when the referendum takes place, the machine will have ensured that the balance is safely in the ‘remain’ pocket.  However, should a disaster occur and we outdistance the  opinion polls; should a ‘leave’ vote prevail, no matter:  the government will step back, enter a protracted exit negotiation, the EU will dangle a few more meaningless carrots and a second referendum with subtly altered wording will follow.

So, my message to anyone who is interested:  vote ‘remain’ on June 23rd.  It will save us all a lot of trouble.