Tuesday 15 December 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'Going Postal'


This is my final post before the New Year, so where better to close 2015 than with a cool look at this month’s Oldham West and Royton by-election?   Our candidate there was the highly credible John Bickley, but to understand a Labour heartland constituency like this the best place to begin is the Oldham Council website.   Under ‘Postal Voting’ this reads, “You can have a postal vote instead of going to your polling station.   We can send it to any address, even abroad.   The ballot paper must be returned by the day of the election.”   

When Tony Blair introduced postal voting on demand in 2001 he knew just what he was doing, as did the public sector unions and Labour Party client communities at whom the change was directed.   So did Jim McMahon, former leader of Oldham Metropolitan District Council and Labour by-election candidate, and it would be fascinating to know just how many postal votes were in fact sent abroad and to which countries.   So it is in this context that we need to read the by-election numbers.  

The following table really says it all:




Of the 27,706 votes cast at the by-election, a low 40.3% turnout, 7,115 (25.7%) were postal votes.   Given its mastery of the system, it is a safe bet that the vast majority of these were for the Labour Party.   And so the by-election marked solid progress for UKIP but not the hoped-for breakthrough in Labour’s heartland.   Both the Conservative and LibDem vote collapsed and it continues to surprise me that neither party is pressing to repeal the 2001 postal voting legislation which the Labour Party continues to exploit in a way that is certainly irregular if not illegal.

And what of UKIP?   Over the next four years we must persevere in the knowledge that a Corbyn-led Labour Party will entrench itself still more in constituencies like Oldham.   And we must offer an upbeat message about what Britain can become at a time when the politics of identity are all-important.   The narrative over the dysfunctional EU is nearly won now and so we need to build a new narrative of a post-Brexit Britain.   This will be of an outward-looking nation of brave, creative, enterprising men and women, well able to cope with all the challenges of the new world.  

If we find that we have to stand alone, so be it, as we have always been at our best when we have stood alone.   This is the positive message that can forge a renewed identity for UKIP, enabling us to win elections across the country however much our opponents twist and bend the rules to their advantage.   There’ll be more on this in the New Year.   In the meantime, a happy and peaceful Christmas to all the readers of this blog, website and facebook, who now number well over 3.000 every week!

Until 2016!

Toby

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'Reverence and Reclamation'
There have been three events in the past week that will help shape all our futures.   The first was the vote on bombing IS in Syria in which our one MP, Douglas Carswell, quite properly supported the Government.   The real challenge of course will be to deal with the cancer of jihadism in our own country, with the ability to control our borders again and the end of using human rights legislation to protect terrorists.   The second was yet another honourable second place for UKIP in the Oldham West by-election.   But the third, and in some ways the most significant, was the news that India had overtaken China to become the fastest growing economy in the world.   Thanks in large part to her one-child policy, China’s growth is slowing while India’s growth is now running at comfortably above the astonishing rate of 7% a year.
This was underscored recently by the one piece of good news to come from our beleaguered steel industry for many months.   This was the purchase by India-based Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House Group of Caparo Tubular Solutions, based in Oldbury in the West Midlands, which had fallen into administration.   As the steel industry across the EU finds itself at the mercy of growing energy costs and dumping by Chinese producers, Mr. Gupta is taking a counter-cyclical view and will be combining the company with his existing facility in Wales, “in order to create a comprehensive and robust model for the steel sector in the UK.”  So the time has come to rekindle the centuries-old love affair between Britain and India.   By this I don’t mean any unwanted Government “soft power” initiative to influence Indian politics, but rather to recapture the spirit of an earlier India where adventurous young Britons went to trade, to make something of themselves and often to find personal fulfilment.   
The East India Company’s first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, was so dazzled by the world he found there that in 1785 he authorised the first translation into English of the Hindu holy “Bhagavad Gita”, the “Song of the Lord”.   In his introduction to this, he wrote with great prescience, “Every instance which brings the Indians’ real character home to observation will...teach us to estimate them by the measure of our own.   But such instances can only be obtained by their writings, and these will survive, when the British dominion of India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which it once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance.”   And he sent his friend George Bogle to explore Bhutan and Tibet.   There Bogle had two daughters by a Tibetan wife and wrote in admiration of Tibet’s unique form of polygamy in which one woman could take multiple husbands!
So as both the Continent of Europe and the Middle East are drawn deeper into the abyss, it is time to rekindle the reverence for India that inspired those young adventurers of 250 years ago.   And it is time too to reclaim our immigration policy, so that criminals and terrorists from within the EU no longer have an absolute right of entry into our country, while doctors, scientists and indeed investors from India, now the world’s fastest growing economy, can be made welcome here for their benefit and for the great benefit of our people!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'Trade and Treachery'



Before James Bond, there was Richard Hannay.   He was the character created by John Buchan in five superb adventures set around the time of the First World War.   The most famous was “The Thirty-Nine Steps”, but the one with greatest resonance today was “Greenmantle”, written in 1916 as war raged across Europe.   In the story Richard Hannay, a uniquely resourceful British intelligence officer, faces an uprising against the West by Wahhabi Islamic fanatics, orchestrated by Germany and her Turkish ally.   And Buchan’s plot was based on fact, for in November 1915 Turkey had indeed called for a military jihad against Great Britain, France and Russia, so this was no figment of Buchan’s imagination.   And although Ian Fleming’s James Bond is a less straightforward and more obsessive character, there is no doubt that his inspiration came directly from Buchan’s Richard Hannay.
Now, during the First World War, Britain’s principal ally in the Middle East was the Hashemite dynasty, led by the moderate and experienced Sharif Hussein bin Ali.   His bitter rival for dominance of the Arab world was the house of Saud, led by the Bedouin Ibn Saud, a follower of Muhammad ibn al Wahhab, creator of Wahhabism with its aim of creating a new caliphate based on Mecca and Medina.   And what has continuing resonance is that it was a British traitor, Harry St. John (Jack) Philby, who as an intelligence officer in the Middle East and in defiance of his own Government’s policy relayed vital information to Ibn Saud, who was thereby able to defeat Sharif Hussein and create a Wahhabi supporting dynasty based indeed on Mecca and Medina.   And like father like son, for Jack Philby was father to the poisonous, narcissistic Kim Philby, another successful traitor in a later generation.
In a sense we are all now living with the consequences of Jack Philby’s treachery, for the West’s voracious appetite for oil and a ready market for arms sales, has led to the Faustian pact between the West, especially America, and Saudi Arabia.   For it is Saudi money that has funded so much of the growth of Wahhabism in the mosques and madrasas of the West.   And what is astonishing is that this is no new phenomenon.   Both the Foreign Office in London and the State Department in Washington are heaving with Arab specialists, who have known this all-too well for decades.   But somehow they have convinced themselves that courting the house of Saud would have no consequences for those home populations to whom they are answerable.  The challenge for any future British government is to let light onto what has really been happening in our country, a far greater challenge than any airstrikes in Syria.   David Cameron proclaims, “We have to hit these terrorists in their heartland right now” and yet he seems to have no idea at all where that heartland really is.   The great tragedy is that anyone who questions the Washington/London/Berlin/Riyadh orthodoxy is blackguarded and effectively precluded from the public sphere.   And the consequences of this orthodoxy are now all-too clear as the security of our people becomes increasingly fragile!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'







Last week, during a visit to London after Islamic State’s atrocities in France, I visited the Eurostar Terminus at St. Pancras Station.   What struck me most deeply was the eerie silence.   Apart from the security guards and the motionless trains, the place seemed deserted.   And as someone who has always loved France, her way of life, her art and her people, and of course her food and wine, I found this deeply disheartening.   It was as if the illusion of the Euro-dream had finally died.   I have always suspected that the Euro project would end in France and not in Britain, and this is now happening.   Despite the foolish attempts of Brussels and Berlin to prevent it, the return of border controls has ended the Schengen accord while the vast new debt being incurred to restore some security to France will breach every rule of the Eurozone – sic transit gloria mundi.
 
And as the Euro dream fades, it seems doubly strange that America’s State Department should continue to put pressure on Britain to remain in a project that now poses an existential threat to our national survival.   To the utopians in Brussels and Berlin, free movement of people across the EU is an article of faith, but on the ground it puts the lives of the innocent at risk.   Now one statistic of which I am quite proud is that this blog receives over 1,000 visitors a week from the United States.   And in a year’s time the citizens of America will go to the polls to elect a new President.   It would be wrong of me to advise our cousins there – for indeed they are our cousins – which way to vote.   But I would ask them to support candidates who feel able to grant to Britain that which America sought from Britain in 1776 – the right to be a self-governing democracy once more.
 
Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence contains some of the noblest words in the English language, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed – That wherever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...”   It is not difficult to understand just how divided Britain was over the American War of Independence, how many here sided with the patriots and how many chose to wear the buff and blue colours of George Washington’s army.   The patriots prevailed, as they were bound to do, and today I say to their descendants, Britain too must have her own Independence Day, for the sake of our shared heritage of free government and for the safety of our people!
 
Until next Tuesday!
 
Toby

Tuesday 17 November 2015

Toby on Tuesday

 'Bucket Cars and Bulwarks' 

  (Image from www.ww2incolor.com)



 
One of my oldest, dearest friends is Rodney Atkinson.  His brother Rowan is in the business of comedy but Rodney is in the business of tragedy, in particular the tragedy of Britain’s membership of the EU.   And Rodney has just published his latest and most powerful polemic.   Called “And Into The Fire” it is available through Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1882383346) in paperback or as an ebook by GM Books.   Now he knows his EU and he knows his Germany, having been a lecturer at the University of Mainz.   In essence his thesis is that, when Germany saw defeat looming in 1944, the Nazi Party recognised that hegemony over the Continent of Europe would need to be sought instead by peaceful means through the creation of a “European Union”.   Rodney’s evidence for this narrative is incontrovertible.   
 
He cites Theodor Heuss, Federal President of Germany from 1949, a leading Nazi who had designed concentration camps and supplied slave labour to the V2 project,.   He cites Heinz Twetschler von Falkenstein, appointed by Hitler as secretary of his “Europe Committee” and then in 1949 appointed to a similar role as Director of the European Division of the West German Foreign Office leading the negotiations for the founding of the EEC in 1958.   He cites Hans Josef Globke who had drafted Hitler’s Nuremberg Race Laws and went on to be Director of the Federal Chancellery of West Germany from 1953 to 1963.   And he cites Heinrich Hunke, Hitler’s Principal Lecturer for Education of the Nazi Party from 1934 to 1945, who went on to become Ministerial Dirigent of Lower Saxony and a leading German academic.   This will give you a flavour of Rodney’s densely packed book, full of astonishing information.   Its conclusion is that Germany has once again over-reached herself.   For she is being destroyed by the failure of the Euro, the very currency designed to bring the whole Continent under her control once more through the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank.   In achieving the ambition she first set herself in 1914, she has succeeded only in bankrupting herself and the whole Continent of Europe.
 
For my part, what I believe to be indisputably true is that in 1945 America took over from Britain the leadership of the West.   With Germany apparently defeated, the threat of a belligerent Soviet Union was seen as a far greater danger to World peace.   To this end, America was prepared to turn a blind eye to the murky past of so many of Europe’s leaders.   Indeed, she wished Germany to become a bulwark against Communism and so sought a restored Germany as a shield against Russia.   And Britain’s role in American eyes was to allow ourselves to be absorbed into the European Union as a further defence against Russia.   This mindset, which is as strong in 2015 as it was in 1945, explains why so many former Nazis obtained prominence in post-war Germany and in the creation of the European Union.
 
Of course none of this is to gainsay the sheer technical genius of so much German industry.   Perhaps Germany’s greatest engineer of the 20th century was Dr. Ferdinand Porsche.   He designed the Kraft-durch-Freude-Wagen, or “Strength through Joy Car”, which we know as the Volkswagen.   He went on to design the Wehrmacht’s jeep-like Kubelwagen or “Bucket Car”, the amphibious Schwimmwagen or “Swimming Car”, the Panzer tank and the flying bomb which Goebbels branded the Vergeltungswaffe-Ein or “Revenge Weapon One”, which we know as the V-1 or Doodlebug.   Despite the emissions scandal, Germany’s technical genius continues.   And as the old joke goes, “When you get behind the steering-wheel of a Porsche, you just feel that you want to invade Poland!”
 
Until next Tuesday!
 
Toby

Tuesday 10 November 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'Hertz and Hegemony'


Today I’d like to write about the BBC, or “Auntie” as she became known in the 1930’s (“Auntie knows best”) or the Beeb as Peter Sellers first called her.  But of course Auntie doesn’t know best and has always completely misjudged events on the Continent, not least in Germany.   In the 1930’s Winston Churchill was banned from the airwaves for his speeches alerting our country to the scale of German rearmament, while Lord Reith, the Beeb’s Director-General, was an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler.   “I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt” he wrote in July 1934 after Hitler had had his enemies in the Nazi Party murdered.   And in 1939, after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia he declared, “Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency.”   Now all of this would be of historical interest only if Auntie’s fawning instincts were not just as strong today.   And here I want to introduce you to Joschka Fischer, the dominant figure in Germany’s Green Party, Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005, Germany’s most popular politician and the leading architect of the new Europe.

Born in 1948, as a student Fischer became a member of the militant group, Revolutionarer Kampf (Revolutionary Struggle).   His radical “Putzgruppe” (Cleaning Squad) – the first syllable being an acronym for “Proletarische Union fur Terror und Zerstorung” (Proletarian Union for Terror and Destruction) - was involved in many a street battle and a photograph of him clubbing policeman Rainer Marx came to haunt him in later life.  In May 1981 the Hessian Secretary of Commerce was murdered with a firearm that in 1973 had been carried in Fischer’s car.   He maintained that he had given the car to the terrorist Hans-Joachim Klein so that Klein could fit it with a new engine.   Fischer then immersed himself in Germany’s nascent Green Party, being elected to the Bundestag in 1983.   His influence and popularity in Germany grew exponentially to the point where he was able in 1996 to write his first autobiography, “Wir sind die Wahnsinnigen” (We are the Mad Ones).   In this he declared, “Germany should now, as it has become peaceful and reasonable, get all that Europe and the whole world has refused in two gigantic wars – a sort of smooth hegemony over Europe.   A Superior Power that it is entitled to by its large size, its economic strength and its position.”   And two years later after the September 1998 elections, although the Greens had won just 7% of the votes, Fischer succeeded in negotiating a role for himself in Gerhard Schroder’s Social Democratic Government as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany.   The rest is history.

By 2005, he had opened the floodgates to new immigration into Europe by relaxing visa regulations for Ukraine, which his critics argued would allow illegal immigrants into Germany with fake identities   And after leaving office in 2005 his zeal has in no way lessened.   Now, along with his grisly gang of old friends, Jacques Delors, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Guy Verhofstadt and the rest, Fischer is running the so-called Spinelli group to push for yet more EU integration.   Last June, in an interview of embarrassing obsequiousness by the Beeb’s Europe editor Katya Adler, Fischer took the opportunity to say to David Cameron, “Don’t lose yourself in wishful thinking.   Angela Merkel will do nothing which will endanger the basic principle of the common market, of the EU...It would be an illusion to think that the UK would get special treatment because it is a major contributor to the EU budget.”   The voice of the Superior Power, first enunciated in Fischer’s 1996 autobiography, was as clear as ever.   But at least Britain has UKIP to question the narrative of Auntie Beeb’s Euro-federalists.   And in the 1930’s, we were lucky too in a robust anti-appeaser Conservative MP called Captain Leonard Plugge.   He got round Auntie’s monopoly by the simple expedient of creating his own radio station in France, Radio Normandy, broadcasting into Britain from a transmitter at Fecamp on the Channel coast.   Thanks to Radio Normandy Winston Churchill’s warnings were heard on this side of the Channel, to the horror of Lord Reith.   And Churchill took his revenge 20 years later when as Prime Minister he oversaw the creation of ITV as a direct challenge to Auntie’s monopoly.   But all that’s a story for another day!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 3 November 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'Bovine Spongiform Europepathy'


Those of us who relish the comic genius of the great P.G. Wodehouse can never forget the preposterous figure of Sir Roderick Spode.   He appears in “The Code of the Woosters” as the leader of the Saviours of Britain, otherwise known as the Black Shorts, and a parody of Sir Oswald Mosley who went on to found the Europe a Nation movement.   But the bullying, hectoring Spode has a dark secret.   The wealth that maintains him comes from the sale of ladies’ underwear and his company Eulalie Lingerie.   Once the secret is out, no one takes his campaign seriously again.   So it is only appropriate that the chairman of the EU “Stay” campaign, Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE), the 21st century equivalent of the Saviours of Britain, should like Sir Roderick Spode also have a background in selling ladies’ underwear - none other than Sir Stuart Rose, ex-Chairman of Marks & Spencer.   And of course in a farming constituency like Thirsk and Malton, the acronym BSE means something very different and more wretched still.   The memories of Mad Cow Disease have not gone away here, nor the extent of so-called “European co-operation” when that particular tragedy hit our farmers.   It is a measure of the sheer haplessness of the “Stay” campaign that the connotations of the letters BSE did not occur to a single one of its founders.

But behind Sir Stuart Rose, who is really only a front for BSE, lie some far more Machiavellian figures, Peter Mandelson for the Labour Party, George Osborne for the Conservative Party and, back from the dead, Nick Clegg for the LibDems.   And the word at Westminster is that they have already lost patience with the weakness of the “Stay” campaign and are starting to exercise their dark arts.   The old friendship between George Osborne and Peter Mandelson, which first flourished among the Greek islands on the yacht of the Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, has been rekindled to the point where, in the words of one Tory adviser, “George is goggle-eyed in the presence of Peter Mandelson.   He behaves like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”   And to prove the point, George Osborne, obsessed as he is with China, has just appointed Peter Mandelson as President of the Great Britain China Centre.   As to Europe, their plot is now becoming clear.   As well as the usual fear tactics and bullying already underway, it is to delay the Referendum until as late as possible in 2017.   By then EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will have set in train a series of treaty changes for further integration as the EU moves towards the superstate foreshadowed in June’s “Five President’s Report”.   At that stage the 19 countries that form the Eurozone will effectively become a single nation dominated by Germany.   However, those countries not in the Eurozone, including Britain, will be offered some kind of so-called “associate status” on a basis to be determined by Brussels and Berlin.   This will enable David Cameron to return to London claiming not so much “peace with honour” but rather “the best of both worlds”   On this basis, he, George Osborne, Peter Mandelson, Nick Clegg and the whole of their tawdry campaign will press for a “Stay” vote.   The truth, however, is that nothing at all will have changed for Britain, while the struggling Eurozone members will have been drawn yet deeper into the abyss.

Our Nigel himself put the reality of David Cameron’s negotiations in his customarily succinct way the other day when he wrote under the headline ‘Britain will be flattened if it stays in the EU’, “Instead of standing up for the national interest, Mr. Cameron has staked his premiership on supporting EU open borders;  European commissioners and courts that can overrule the British legislature and judiciary;  and a spiralling EU budget, which he recently boosted by handing over another £1.7 billion when Brussels came calling.”   And Nigel, in his witty and perceptive way, has spotted the sheer folly of Sir Stuart Rose’s Britain Stronger in Europe, just as P.G. Wodehouse spotted the sheer folly of his fictional Sir Roderick Spode’s Saviours of Britain.  Nigel I know is another avid reader of P.G. Wodehouse’s comic mastery for the simple reason that they both received their same fine, rigorous education at Dulwich College, albeit at different times!   So there must definitely be something in the water of that part of South London that brings out the insight that humour is among the very best weapons against bullies and tyrants.   And, like Nigel and P. G. Wodehouse, we shall all need to have our wits about us during the coming two years!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Toby on Tuesday
'Train wrecks and Turkeys'




Today, I’d like to talk Turkey.   Rather, I’d like to talk about how Britain can avoid being taken for a turkey or, put another way, how we need some cold turkey to wean us off our addiction to the whole toxic EU project.   I thought of these old sayings recently when reading a sobering report entitled “Is Turkey becoming another Pakistan” by the impressive Mark Almond.   Now, Mark Almond is a former lecturer in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford and visiting professor at Turkey’s Bilkent University.   He is now writing “Secular Turkey:  A Short History”.   He also has his own blog on markalmondoxford.blogspot.com, which is well worth a visit.   He is someone who knows his subject all too well.
And what his report says is, “...over the last few years a slow-motion train wreck in Turkey has become increasingly apparent...Like his allies in Nato, Erdogan (Turkey’s President) had expected the Assad regime to implode as quickly as other Arab dictatorships in 2011.   But unlike the rest of the West, Erdogan took sides in the sectarian politics of Syria.   Turkey’s sympathy for jihadists there and its blind eye to weapons supplies to Isil have bitterly divided the Turkish public...The Turkish state’s failure to forestall such terrorism and its army’s response to an Isil attack on the Kurdish town of Kobani last year are works of malign indifference.   This fuels suspicions among Erdogan’s opponents that his government is behind terrorist violence that so often has Kurds as victims.   It is all horribly reminiscent of how Pakistan’s Inter-Services Institute intelligence agency played a double game with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan...Intensifying internal divisions while playing politics in a neighbour’s civil war is a recipe for recreating Pakistan’s problems on Europe’s doorstep.   That would be a disaster for us as well as the Turks.”
Now, this is the background against which we need to view the continuing negotiations between the EU, led by Germany, and Turkey’s government over the growing migration crisis.   The Turks are a very tough people who can be relied upon to seek maximum leverage over what they justifiably see as an enfeebled and decaying West.  They will play hardball, using threats of unlimited migration flows as their pawns in this particular game.   The deal now being brokered by Germany on behalf of the EU, is based on fast-track Turkish accession to EU membership and several billions of Euros of subsidy in return for Turkey providing some brake on the migrant flow to Europe.   Britain’s role in these negotiations is precisely zero, but we will bear the consequences in terms of cost and migration whatever the outcome.   And the way in which our own Foreign and Commonwealth Office is continuing to push for Turkish membership of the EU in the face of the evidence of serious academics like Mark Almond represents an astonishing dereliction of duty.
So if you are seeking an allegory for our weakened defences and myopia on the subject of Turkey, then look no further than the Turkish scrapyard Leyal Gemi Sokum.   That is where HMS York has recently followed HMS Southampton, HMS Newcastle, HMS Cardiff, HMS Glasgow, HMS Exeter, HMS Nottingham, HMS Plymouth, HMS Brilliant, HMS Invincible, HMS Ark Royal, HMS Oakleaf, HMS Edinburgh and HMS Gloucester to be scrapped on an open beach.   This is how our new “European Armed Forces” are taking shape.   The bean-counters in Whitehall have found a low-cost alternative to the specialist facility at Swansea Drydocks where just one Royal Navy ship, HMS Cornwall, has gone to be recycled.   No doubt, someone in Whitehall thought that this would help to “create goodwill” with Turkey, but in truth it represents yet another threat to our country on a par with Turkey’s planned EU accession.   In other words, the time has come to stop dancing the Turkey Trot and start protecting our own safety as a nation once more, however much this inconveniences Berlin and Brussels!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 20 October 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'The Jellicle Choice'






“Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity
There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity
He always has an alibi and one or two to spare
Whatever time the deed took place, Macavity wasn’t there!”

Anyone who has seen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats’, his brilliant adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’, will remember Macavity: The Mystery Cat. He was the arch-villain of all cats and, like David Cameron, a “cat of such deceitfulness and suavity” who always slipped away from trouble, leaving others to pick up the pieces. But very soon this particular cat will be found out for his “renegotiation” that’s no renegotiation and his “EU reform” when there’s no reform.
Last week I wrote about Nigel Lawson and his Conservatives for Britain campaign. Since then, Conservatives for Britain, Labour for Britain and Business for Britain have joined forces in a new Vote Leave campaign. And strengthened by the presence of some very determined UKIP luminaries, they have finally dropped the mantra of ‘Reform or Leave’. Wisely, they have recognised that there will be no reform and to leave the EU is the only option now that a European Superstate looms with open borders to some of the most dangerous countries on the planet. In particular our one MP, Douglas Carswell, and our former Treasurer, Stuart Wheeler, have thrown their lot in with the new Vote Leave campaign. You can find out more if you google www.voteleavetakecontrol.org.

Now, in UKIP as a party we have already committed ourselves to the Leave.EU campaign (www.ukip.org/leave_eu_campaign), which has been working away steadily for unconditional withdrawal from the whole toxic EU project. But the truth is that both campaigns have a vital role to play and, in Nigel Farage’s own words, they are “complementary” and not “contradictory”. The Vote Leave campaign is in essence a sophisticated London-based organisation aimed at those vital opinion-formers in the capital, hence the involvement of Douglas Carswell and Stuart Wheeler. By contrast, Leave.EU, like UKIP, is a non-metropolitan campaigning organisation aimed at the countless millions of ordinary voters, some 4 million of whom supported UKIP in May’s General Election. It already claims 175,000 members and Nigel, perceptive as ever, has predicted that in time the two organisations will merge. In his words, “My view is that I will support both. I’m not interested in being partisan about this and I’m really confident that at some point in time they will all come together.” Both campaigns include truly outstanding people who recognise that Macavity, in the form of our Prime Minister, will be sent back empty-handed from Berlin and Brussels, which no amount of “deceitfulness and suavity” will disguise. Farewell to the EU is the only way forward for Britain, so Vote Leave and Leave.EU are far, far better combining their forces. My hope and sincere belief is that Nigel’s wise words will be fulfilled!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 13 October 2015

Toby on Tuesday

'Once you pay him the Danegeld'







All members of UKIP know their Anglo-Saxon history and all know about Danegeld. This was the tribute paid in the 10th and 11th centuries to the Viking marauders to save our country from being ravaged. Of course it did no good. Kipling wrote a poem about it in which he declared,

“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!”

Of course the modern equivalent of Danegeld is our £13 billion or so annual contribution to the EU budget, similar in so many ways to our bloated Overseas Aid budget. And our EU tribute is soaring while our influence is as derisory as the Anglo-Saxons’ influence on the Vikings. I thought about all this when reading about the latest “Reform or Leave” campaign, this time from Nigel Lawson’s Conservatives for Britain.

Now, Nigel Lawson was a wonderfully gifted Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989, determined to reduce the shackles of the state and to energise Britain’s wealth creators. More recently, he has applied his great forensic skills to the global climate change industry. Of course his weakness as Chancellor lay in too great a trust in Germany’s economy, first in his policy of shadowing the Deutschmark and then in his support for the ill-fated European Exchange Rate Mechanism, an absolute disaster which almost obliterated Britain’s economy and drove around a million firms into bankruptcy. So I read his article announcing his presidency of Conservatives for Britain with close interest. What he wrote was,
“…now is the time for David Cameron and George Osborne to set out some red lines. My priorities would be fourfold: the end of the automatic supremacy of EU law over UK law; the ability for the UK to negotiate its own free trade deals with fast-growing countries such as India and China; the ability to control immigration from other EU countries to the UK; and the explicit renunciation by the EU of its absolute commitment to ‘ever closer union’…If we were able to secure those sorts of reforms I would be delighted.”

Now Nigel Lawson is no fool. He must know that these aspirations are in the realms of fantasy, while he makes no mention of our Danegeld, our annual tribute, which must surely concern the Treasury. When Michael Howard was Conservative leader, the party’s policy was to withdraw from the Common Fisheries Policy and to reclaim our coastal waters, with all the connotations of our again becoming a maritime and global trading nation. One of David Cameron’s first acts as Conservative leader was to drop this commitment and, to continue the maritime analogy, he can be relied on to do simply nothing that rocks the Euro-boat. So it just seems a little strange that the clever, experienced, well-intentioned people behind Conservatives for Britain cannot bring themselves to accept that “reform or leave” is not a sustainable position.

No acceptable reform is available and indeed David Cameron is seeking only the most innocuous of changes, as he is psychologically wedded to the whole EU project. Far better for Nigel Lawson and his colleagues to join forces with all those who accept that “leave” is now the only sustainable position, including our friends in Leave.EU, settle any differences and together work for Britain’s independence and prosperity, while the whole doomed EU venture descends swiftly into recrimination and chaos.

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Toby on Tuesday


'Welcome to the house of fun'



Peter Kellner is a former BBC Newsnight reporter who went on to found the YouGov opinion polling organisation of which he is now President. His wife, Cathy Ashton, also known as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, is a Labour politician who from 2009 to 2014 was the EU’s “High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and First Vice-President of the European Commission.” You couldn’t make up a job title like that but in the La-La Land that is the EU it all means something. Indeed Mr. and Mrs. Kellner as they are otherwise known are among the most favoured of the EU’s Nomenklatura, to use an old Soviet expression. And where all this is significant is that for the very first time a YouGov poll last week revealed that more Britons now want to leave the EU (40 per cent.) than to remain (38 per cent.) Despite the best efforts of those who govern us, including the pollsters, the determination that Britain should bid farewell to the whole toxic project has gone mainstream and the “Leave” campaign is about to hot up.

Now, the European Union Referendum Bill is working its way through Parliament. It went through the House of Commons before the recess and is now before the members of the House of Lords, including Baroness Ashton of Upholland. The formal first reading took place last month but this will be the critical month for the legislation. Next Tuesday 13th October the second reading and debate will take place and this is where the fun will start. All those Eurofanatics, with whom the House of Lords has been packed in the years of Blair and Brown, Clegg and Cameron, will do their utmost to rig the Referendum in favour of a “Remain” outcome, irrespective of the wishes of the British people. To start with, they will press for 16 and 17-year olds to be able to vote in the Referendum, even though they cannot do so in Parliamentary elections. Whether or not the voting age should be lowered is a separate matter, but you can just see the swarms of Eurozealots, all funded by the EU, buzzing round our schools agitating that the sky will fall in if Britain were to leave the EU as the majority now want. Students have better things to do than be subjected to this kind of propaganda, which will almost certainly be counter-productive anyway.

There will be all kinds of other shameless attempts, too, to tamper with the Bill in the House of Lords. All of which will of course only increase pressure for wholesale reform of the so-called ‘Upper House’. This is a wider issue, but the reality is that it now speaks only for a redundant political class, with just a few notable exceptions the random leftovers from the past generation who should have long departed the political stage. A reformed and elected House of Lords, drawn from the four nations that constitute the United Kingdom and constituted to reconcile the differences between them, must be the way ahead. But that’s for another day. In this post, all that I can say is “Watch out for fun and games in the House of Lords” – there’ll be plenty of those before the Referendum Bill finally becomes law. The Electoral Commission, which has behaved impeccably so far in ensuring that the Eurozealots from the three old parties do not fix the outcome, will have a busy time ahead, as indeed we all will!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 29 September 2015

Toby on Tuesday

‘We’re all in this together’

 

Funnily enough, it was the Guardian’s Assistant Editor, Michael White, who best summed up the mood at UKIP’s Conference last week at Doncaster Racecourse. Writing on Saturday under the headline “Teflon Nigel Farage bounces back again with help from foreign friends” he declared, “Nigel Farage bounced back on Friday from his own and UKIP’s General Election rebuff. Teflon Nigel always does. Election defeats and party splits, personal toxicity and even plane crashes – he climbs out of the moment’s wreckage clutching a gold watch and grinning…But in a bravura performance in time for the TV lunchtime news, Teflon Nigel brushed it all aside. Rested after a fishing holiday in Cornwall, he was in statesman mode…Most memorable was the Swedish Democrat MEP Peter Lundgren, a bulky road-haulier who had been drawn into politics for Farage-ish reasons. ‘In Sweden I would say Nigel Farage is like a god,’ he said at one point. Lundgren apparently derives social prestige as one of the very few Swedes to have Nigel’s mobile phone number (like half the pubs in Surrey), ‘Look whose number I have,’ he says when showing off at home. ‘If I could be half as good as Nigel I would be fantastically happy.’ After unforced testimony like that, what’s an election defeat here or there? Or splits in the Brexit ranks? Nigel the god duly walked on Doncaster water. ‘I was right,’ he said. He knows it.” Well, that’s quite a tribute from the Guardian!

And on the way to Doncaster, I was lucky enough to be a dinner guest of the good-hearted and generous-spirited people from Business for Britain. We were there to hear James Wharton, the young Conservative MP for Stockton South. He is only 31 but plainly has a wise head on young shoulders. He also has an impressive lack of vanity and ego, so deserves to go far. He earned his spurs with his private member’s bill for a Referendum on EU membership, which failed in the 2013-14 Parliamentary session but did him great credit. He is now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Communities and Local Government responsible for the Northern Power House and is clearly constrained in what he can say by ministerial responsibility. However, if David Cameron were to allow his ministers to campaign freely in the forthcoming EU Referendum, he would be an impressive advocate in the ‘Leave’ campaign. 

Yet the difficulty for so many well-intentioned groups like Business for Britain, with its “Reform or Leave” strategy, is that the days of fence sitting are really over, any so-called “reform” will be only cosmetic and the car crash that is the EU is now heading for terminal disaster. And to take the motoring analogy further, the crisis over Volkswagen’s “defeat devices” is an allegory for the whole rotten EU project. If it does now sink into the abyss, it is vital that Britain should not be dragged down with the other members.

So for Business for Britain and other moderate, reasonable and well-intentioned “soft Eurosceptics”, the moment has come to accept that no genuine compromise with the EU is on offer. And where this is relevant is that the Electoral Commission, which has been completely meticulous so far in handling the EU Referendum, will soon need to nominate a lead group for the “Leave” campaign. This will have to be an all-party group, so by definition UKIP cannot be the lead. What we shall do instead is support a credible all-party campaign, mobilising our membership and indeed our close to 4 million votes in May’s General Election for the good of our country as a whole. So far only one all-party campaign has shown its hand and that is Leave.EU. In the words of its founder Arron Banks, “The new campaign slogan better represents the question and fits with the strap line – Love Europe, Leave the EU.” In the absence of any other candidate for leadership of the “Leave” campaign, it is this group that will clearly have the support of UKIP’s members. If other candidates do come forward, including the public-spirited members of Business for Britain, so much the better but we are now at a fork in the road and time is very short.

It was our one MP, Douglas Carswell, who best summed up UKIP’s position at Doncaster when he said, “We must be prepared to work with anyone, left or right, politician or undecided…There are good patriotic politicians in all parties and we must work with them all.” And he declared that he was “very loyal to people called Eurosceptics in all parties, as we’re on the same side.” As at so many other times in our long history, Britain faces an existential crisis. The time has come to put our differences aside and combine for our country’s good. That is the message from Nigel and Douglas, it is a message that makes perfect sense and one to which all UKIP’s members and nearly 4 million voters will happily respond!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 22 September 2015

Toby on Tuesday

 ‘Poodles and Politikos’


This week, I don’t want to write about the tens of thousands of “refugees” pouring across Southern Europe, nor about the warning by the director-general of the Security Service Andrew Parker, head of MI5, that “Britain is facing an unprecedented threat from home-grown fanatics who are being turned into violent terrorists within weeks” and who “now see their home country as the enemy.” Instead I want to write about Sunday’s election in Greece where at the time of writing Alexis Tsipras’ left-wing Syriza party and Vangelis Meimarakis’ centre-right New Democracy party are running neck-and-neck. But the truth is that, with both parties committed to the Eurozone’s so-called reform and bailout package, turnout is likely to be low and the sacrifice of Greece on the altar of the Euro-project will continue whatever the outcome.

There is a very simple reason why Greece will never be allowed to follow the classic formula for failing countries weighed down by debt and depression, namely to default, devalue their currencies and then recover. The Capital and Reserves of the European Central Bank amount to some 100 billion Euros. Yet the ECB’s lending to Greek banks now amounts to some 126 billion Euros. A default by Greece would wipe out the ECB’s capital base and effectively bring the whole Euro experiment to an end. In addition, the exposure of the private German banks to Greece at the end of last year amounted to over 11 billion Euros, with the private UK and US banks having only marginally less exposure and Italian private banks’ exposure running at around half their level. But for Germany in particular, with its policy of driving their big banks to lend indiscriminately to purchasers of German exports, the situation is now perilous. 

I am grateful to one of my well-informed Thirsk and Malton colleagues for alerting me to the announcement just over a week ago that Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s largest, is considering cutting its workforce by some 23,000 jobs, nearly a quarter of its workforce. The reason was that that “a string of settlements and seemingly endless accusations of malfeasance underscored deep seated problems with the bank’s corporate culture.” And in Italy, UniCredit is set to cut its workforce by around 10,000, some 7% of its workforce, across Italy, Germany and Austria. The whole Eurozone is still dancing on the edge and Sunday’s Greek election, whatever the final outcome, will resolve nothing.

And the funny thing is that Britain’s equivalent of Alexis Tsipras, our very own Jeremy Corbyn, who had vowed to take on the whole system before becoming Labour leader, is like his Greek counterpart already buckling under EU pressure and committing his party to a “Remain In” vote for our hard-won Referendum. Whatever Mr. Tspiras’ brave words, office without power is the bitter cup from which all elected politicians in the EU have to drink. Power itself is reserved for the unelected civil servants in Brussels and the officials at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. So Mr. Tsipras is no different from any other EU politician and the evidence is already building up fast in Britain that the same could be said of Mr. Corbyn. Having promoted himself as the friend of Syriza and Europe’s other parties of the left, his brave words are, like those of Mr. Tsipras, just that! They may be very left-wing poodles, but they are both Brussels’ and Frankfurt’s poodles nonetheless!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Tuesday 15 September 2015

Toby on Tuesday

 ‘Golden Opportunities’


So the revolution has happened, at least within the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn is leader. He will get a supportive run from the BBC, both by statute and because he has promised to “put Labour at the forefront of the campaign to defend the BBC”, from Channel 4 News which openly shares his convictions, and from the Guardian and the Independent. So that’s a solid support base in the media before he starts. What I’ll try to do in this piece is to share some random thoughts about Mr. Corbyn and the consequences of his election. The first point, which is significant at a time when MP’s expenses are again in the spotlight, is that during the 2009 expenses scandal he was revealed as claiming the lowest amount of any Member of Parliament. Again, he claimed the smallest amount in 2010 when he declared, “I am a parsimonious MP…I think we should claim what we need to run our offices and pay our staff, but be careful because it’s obviously public money.” This is a distinction shared with UKIP’s Douglas Carswell, another thrifty MP and indeed a Parliamentary friend of Jeremy Corbyn’s. A record of care with public money will have positive electoral consequences in the years ahead, something that should not be overlooked.

As to the EU, the Corbyn Labour Party will openly and strongly identify itself with Greece’s leftist Syriza Party, which looks set to win the General Election there on 20th September, with Spain’s Podemos Party, with Portugal’s Left Bloc and with France’s Socialist Party. All these parties of the left are rightly horrified by the economic crises and chronic unemployment that have beset their countries, although for ideological reasons they cannot accept the clear need for them to leave the Euro, devalue and default, then let their economies recover. This must be the logic of their position although the Corbyn Labour Party is unlikely to endorse it. But he will immerse himself in the European left’s campaign to “end austerity” through more borrowing for large-scale public works. As to the EU referendum, he is unlikely to show his hand for a few months yet as he develops relationships with those other parties of the European left.

As for the Conservative Party, there is no doubt that David Cameron and George Osborne will use the Labour Party’s move to the hard left to seize the fabled “centre ground” of politics. For my part, I have always believed in a “common ground” rather than a “centre ground”, but the ‘heirs to Blair’ will stake out that point in the hope of a landslide General Election victory in 2020. Of course for UKIP all this presents a golden opportunity, as with the Labour Party now well to the left and the Conservative Party as a centrist managerial party, there is a huge vacuum that a popular centre-right UKIP can fill. The themes of nationhood and family are as strong as ever and a UKIP that campaigns for 30 years of integration after 30 years of immigration, for rebuilt armed forces, for a nation self-sufficient in energy using carbon capture and safe shale (with proper compensation for those affected), in which our fisheries can be reclaimed and our farmers assured of a decent price for their food, should win 8 million votes in 2020, up from 4 million in 2015, and countless Members of Parliament.

And one last thing – at the next General Election Mr. Corbyn will be just short of 71 years old. So the days of handsome young technocrats, epitomised by Tony Blair and David Cameron (who will be gone by 2020), are drawing to a close. And the age of weather-beaten veterans, their hoary faces lined with years of campaigning against the fashions of their time, may just have arrived. Heaven knows, we’ve plenty of weather-beaten veterans in UKIP (including myself) and, if nothing else, Jeremy Corbyn’s triumph could just give all our vintage campaigners a new lease of life as well!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Tuesday 8 September 2015

Toby on Tuesday

‘Voiceless and diluted’

 

Last Friday Nigel, firmly back in the saddle as UKIP’s leader, launched our campaign for the forthcoming EU referendum. Having pressured the Government into conceding the vote we must now ensure that it is free and fair. No doubt every trick in the book will be used to prevent this but fortunately we have the Electoral Commission on our side. Following their intervention, the actual question has been amended from “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”, with all the negative connotations of a ‘No’ vote, to “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”, with ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’ having no such implied connotations. Equally, the so-called ‘Purdah’ rules have been partly reinstated although UKIP will be watching hawk-like for any improper attempt to use public money to support the ‘Remain’ campaign.

And by Nigel’s side on Friday was UKIP Trade Spokesman William Dartmouth MEP, who had just put the final touches to his compelling case for ‘Leave’. Now entitled “Britain and the EU: A Dysfunctional Relationship – why it’s time to call off our relationship with the European Union”, it runs to a simple 20 pages, well illustrated and easily readable. Written in plain, straightforward language its theme is clear, “The best relationships make life better. They’re mutually beneficial, with two individuals working as a team to create something better than the sum of its parts. But not all relationships are positive ones. Some are dependent, dysfunctional and destructive. Britain’s relationship with the EU isn’t healthy.” And using the North American Free Trade Agreement as a precedent, the pamphlet touches on the powerful truth that “NAFTA is a very successful trading bloc – that doesn’t include the free movement of people in any sense. Trade, not travel: NAFTA stimulates trade without borders. Not the movement of people across them. You can maintain a trading relationship – a successful one – without the free movement of people.”

As to the laughable argument about ‘British influence’ William’s paper declares, “There is only one thing more destructive in a relationship than a lack of influence. It’s the illusion of influence where there is none. The UK has tried to block proposals from the EU Commission 55 times. And we have never, ever succeeded. The truth is that we have no meaningful influence. While our presence suggests that we have a voice, every new member state dilutes our influence further. Ultimately, to the point where it is worth nothing at all. Today, Turkey is next in line to ascend. With its population of more than 80 million. And its borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria.”

Simply written and clear research like this, alongside Nigel’s inspired oratory, will be among UKIP’s campaign resources in the coming months. The EU, with its dysfunctional single currency and failed ideology, represents a terminal threat to our country. Through a ‘Leave’ vote in the referendum we can extricate ourselves from this danger, revert to a straightforward trading relationship which we always had as a member of the European Free Trade Association and gradually become again the outward-looking nation we once were. And we must never forget that, without UKIP, none of this would ever have been possible!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

Tuesday 1 September 2015

Toby on Tuesday 

‘Our common European destiny’



Last week I wrote about the 1972 trade agreement between the European Free Trade Association, of which Britain was a founding member, and the European Community (now Union). Put simply, Edward Heath’s government deceived the electorate when it claimed that, to trade with Europe, we had to be part of a political union. With the EU referendum now looming, the time has come to explore the roots of this whole dysfunctional project.

Now, it needs to be recognised that one important strand was the Europe a Nation movement, begun in the 1950’s by Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana, one of the fabled Mitford sisters. After their failure with the British Union of Fascists and incarceration in Holloway Prison during the Second World War, they moved to Ireland and then to France. There they launched “The European” magazine, which formed part of their Europe a Nation movement. Following Germany’s defeat, they claimed that the nations of Europe should be subsumed into a European entity but still run on pre-war corporatist lines with governments and large corporations colluding for their mutual benefit. Free trade should be opposed at every turn in favour of economic micro-management, which effectively is what we have now 70 years after the end of the War. And if you think that this is all old hat, I suggest that you google www.oswaldmosley.com and look up Europe a Nation. There you will see that the “Oswald Mosley Directorate” and “The Friends of Oswald Mosley” are still hard at work, with their project now in sight of its final fulfilment.

And looking back after 45 years or so I recall a surreal private dinner to which I was invited to meet the Mosleys in I think 1970. My hosts were generous, cultivated people of the very sort to be dazzled by their charisma, as so many were in the 1930’s. As a young man, what struck me most about them was their eyes, his dilating with intensity, hers completely motionless and with the colour of cornflowers. The conversation was bizarre as he exclaimed, “There have been three great men in my lifetime, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Hitler I knew, Stalin I met and it is a great sorrow to me never to have known Mao.” Then Diana Mosley spoke of their wedding in Berlin in 1936 declaring, “We were married in Goebbels’ drawing room. Goering was our best man. He wore a powder blue uniform. The Fuerher could not be there but we called on him the next day.” Then they spoke of our common European destiny, of the new Europe that was in the making and how vital it was the Britain should play a leading part in it. He had written about it in his 1947 book “The Alternative” and had sought to build a National Party of Europe. Two years later Edward Heath achieved his, and their, goal.

At the end of the evening, I drove them back to the Ritz Hotel where they were staying. They talked more about our shared European destiny. After saying goodbye to them I felt distinctly queazy, to put it mildly, just as I have always felt queasy about the whole European project. What used to be called English liberty is a precious trust, to be nurtured and protected, and the memory of that evening has always stayed with me as compelling evidence of this!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Tuesday 25 August 2015

Toby on Tuesday 

‘Falsehoods and Fallacies’



UKIP’s greatest achievement so far is to have forced David Cameron into conceding a referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017. Without UKIP, a sense of inevitability would have surrounded our being drawn deeper into the swamp of the whole failing project. And the other day the shape of David Cameron’s negotiating strategy became clear when Andrew Lansley, the former health secretary and strong supporter of the EU, let the cat out of the bag. What he said was that the referendum was planned for September 2016 to avoid a clash with next May’s Scottish, Welsh and council elections. He added that “the government had choreographed a big row with the French after February’s European Council meeting…Public expectations from renegotiation need to be realistic (and be downplayed at the outset) and then be exceeded. Other EU governments should recognise the need for UK ‘wins’, preferably following some ‘rows’!”

Of course, all this nonsense is completely unnecessary, just as our membership of the EU was completely unnecessary in the first place. In essence the EU is a political, and not an economic, project which the British people joined on the basis of a clear deception. In 1960, the UK was a founding member of EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, along with Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland. Iceland joined in 1970, Finland in 1986 and Liechtenstein in 1991. But in 1973 the UK and Denmark left to join the EU, as did Portugal in 1986, and Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995. Yet the truly significant moment came as early as 1972, when EFTA signed its own free trade agreement with the EU. That is to say that, at precisely the moment when we were being told that, to trade in Europe, we had to be an EU member, the EU itself was signing a free trade agreement with EFTA, of which we had been a co-founder. And since then EFTA has itself signed free trade agreements with nations and customs unions across the world, from which the four remaining members, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, derive great benefit.

So with the so-called “renegotiation” underway, the time must have arrived to embrace our EFTA membership once more, an arrangement about which we can be positive instead of carping about the EU in a negative way. And the precedent for the UK must surely be that of Switzerland which has retained all the benefits of trading throughout the EU without losing control of its borders through the deeply-flawed concept of “free movement of people.” All this has been spelt out clearly in a powerful new pamphlet from UKIP’s Trade Spokesman, William Dartmouth, MEP for the South-West and Gibraltar. Entitled “The Truth about Trade outside the EU” and with the sub-title of “Why leaving the EU takes the UK into a world of new opportunity”, the pamphlet will be circulated throughout UKIP’s branches over the coming weeks. It is packed with compelling statistics, not least the chart that shows that, per head of population, Switzerland exports nearly five times the value of goods to the EU as does the UK. As William says, “Our future must not be built on falsehoods”. We must expect to be lied to and deceived to an astonishing extent over the next year by all those with an interest in our staying trapped inside the EU project. The counter-arguments and essential facts are all contained in William’s remarkable pamphlet, which I commend to anyone serious about reaching the truth behind our EU membership!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Tuesday 18 August 2015

Toby on Tuesday 

‘A complete collapse of intelligence’



Here in Yorkshire, we are exceptionally lucky in having two outstanding UKIP MEP’s in Jane Collins and Mike Hookem. They complement each other and both have brought practical experience of the real world to their new lives in the European Parliament. Mike’s background is in the Armed Forces, where you would have thought that he had seen something of the murky side of life. But our Armed Forces, still the finest on the planet, live according to their own strict code which could not be more removed from that of the EU. So even Mike was astonished by the scale of sheer criminality when the other day he was threatened with a handgun by an illegal immigrant in a camp outside Dunkirk. These migrant camps in Northern France, driven as they are by people-traffickers and other villains, are now the most potent images of our EU membership, images that no amount of hand-wringing by powerless ministers, desperate not to offend our so-called “partners”, can eradicate.

But today I want to write not about illegal immigration through Calais but rather through Istanbul in Turkey, which has received literally billions in “pre-accession funding” as it presses on with its application for full EU membership. Now, in order to seek influence across Africa and the Middle East, Turkey has created an e-visa entry regime. This is open to 89 countries including Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan. It requires just the completion of a simple e-form, a fee payable online and a flight into Istanbul using either Turkish Airlines or Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines. For its part, Turkish Airlines flies to virtually the whole Islamic world, including Somalia. And it is calculated that there are now some 100,000 temporary migrants in Istanbul, preparing for the next leg of their journeys into Greece and then on to Northern Europe, not least to Britain. For them, the Istanbul route is a fair bit more expensive than the boat across the Mediterranean, but a good deal more straightforward. It is also highly profitable for Turkey.

Even Frontex, the EU’s borders agency, has finally acknowledged that Turkey’s e-visa regime is open to “countries of origin for irregular migration to the EU…an increasing number of people arriving in the EU from Turkey…are using forged and fraudulent travel documents.” The truth is that the whole EU dream is turning into an unqualified nightmare and we will only regain control of our borders when we bid farewell to this terminal disaster. And it seems well-nigh incredible that our own weak Government, urged on by the U.S. State Department, is still seeking Turkish accession to the EU, despite the ongoing war against the Kurds. Now, as Mike Hookem knows better than most, this year sees the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War. Peter Weir’s 1981 film “Gallipoli”, starring Mel Gibson, still resonates after more than 30 years. As the film showed, the principal cause of the disaster of Gallipoli, the Turkish peninsula at the tip of the Dardanelles straits, was a complete collapse of intelligence. As we seek to stem the tide of illegal immigration from Turkey and elsewhere a century later, an equal collapse of intelligence, albeit of another kind, is again the dominating feature!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Tuesday 11 August 2015

Toby on Tuesday 

‘Brazen lies and false declarations’


 


Last week I wrote about the very best of the very best, those enterprising Yorkshire men and women behind Business for Britain. Creating top-of-the-range products and selling them across the globe, they build employment and prosperity here for the benefit of all. By contrast today I am going to write about the very worst of the very worst, or at least someone who must be a contender for that particular title, namely the late Sir Edward Heath. It was Edward Heath who, as Prime Minister from 1970-74, took Britain into the then European Economic Community. I don’t propose to write about the various police investigations now underway, but instead want to say something about his proven crimes. And of course his greatest proven crime, from which we continue to suffer, was to have given away our sovereignty on the basis of a brazen lie.

In 1970, Lord Kilmuir as Lord Chancellor wrote privately to Edward Heath about the proposed EEC accession. What he said was, “It is clear…that the Council of Ministers could…make regulations which would be binding on us even against our wishes, and which would in fact become for us part of the law of the land. For Parliament to do this would go far beyond the most extensive delegation of powers, even in wartime, that we have experienced and I do not think there is any likelihood of this being acceptable to the House of Commons. We should have therefore to accept a position where Parliament had no more power to repeal its own enactments (in other words that it was no longer a Parliament)… we could only comply with our obligations under the Treaty if Parliament abandoned its right of passing independent judgment on the legislative proposals put before it…In this respect Parliament has in substance, if not in form, abdicated its sovereign position.” Yet in 1972 Edward Heath declared on television that, “There will be no loss of essential national sovereignty.” Kilmuir’s letter, ignored by Edward Heath, only became public many years later. And when in 1990 Edward Heath was asked, again on television, whether he had known that his 1972 declaration had been false, he replied, “Of course, yes!”

As Prime Minister, Edward Heath also started negotiations with Franco’s Spain for the transfer of democratic Gibraltar to a fascist dictatorship, against the express wishes of its people. He offered Spain political and cultural access to Gibraltar to start the process of “persuading” the Gibraltarians to relinquish British sovereignty. Likewise, he had an obsession with the Chinese Communist Party, busy at that time executing thousands of dissidents a year. His defence of Chinese totalitarianism was, “You can’t have a democracy with so many people!” No doubt he had this precedent in mind when planning for a Europe of 500 million people in the “post-democratic age.” I can’t claim to have known Edward Heath myself, but I met him on several occasions, notably when he twice came to speak for me when I was standing as a Conservative candidate. It always puzzled me that he chose to address me as “Tony”. I mentioned this in a light-hearted way to someone who was close to him and he replied, “Oh, when Ted really dislikes someone he always deliberately gets their name wrong!” But what he intended as an insult, I have always taken as a badge of honour for, in a reasonable and balanced world, an insult from Edward Heath can only be seen as the ultimate compliment!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Toby on Tuesday 

‘Business for Britain’


 


This week I’d like to introduce you to Alan Halsall, a classic example of the very best kind of innovative Yorkshire entrepreneur. Now Alan has spent much of his career rescuing and rebuilding the Silver Cross company, based in Skipton. Founded in Leeds in 1877, Silver Cross had run into difficulties when Alan acquired it in 2002. Since then the company has been reinvigorated with nearly 100 employees, one-third of whom work abroad, making baby transport and other baby-related products. These include its iconic prams, pushchairs, car seats, nursery furniture, bedding, toys and gifts. The company sells in over 50 countries, is especially strong in China and has a retail boutique in the Ocean Terminal Centre, Hong Kong. Its offices are in Skipton, London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. And it has just entered into a shareholding partnership with China’s Fosun Corporation, which will strengthen its distribution in the Far East and its employment opportunities in Skipton. Silver Cross is now a truly global business of the future, based here in Yorkshire.

I mention all this because Alan is Co-Chairman of Business for Britain, a new national organisation with strong Yorkshire connections. What may have radicalised Alan is his own experience of trying to sell Silver Cross prams in France, where he believes French pram manufacturers are using spurious safety grounds to ensure that his prams are excluded from the French market in blatant flouting of the EU’s free trade rules. In his own words, “When we tried to export our prams to France we found that they were required to meet additional safety standards for the French markets, even though they conform to all EU safety standards required. As a result we had to pay thousands of pounds to ship the stock which we had sent out for sale to French stores back to Britain. We had to pull out of France. It was annoying and expensive.”

Now Business for Britain describes itself as “independent and non-partisan, involving people from all parties and no party.” Alan’s Co-Chairman is John Mills, one of the Labour Party’s key donors. If you google www.businessforbritain.org, you can find out more about the campaign but its stated position is, “It is clear that the EU needs to change. It is also increasingly accepted that if it refuses to do so then Britain should leave.” As well as having the finest possible Yorkshire Co-Chairman, Business for Britain’s regional operations around the whole country are being co-ordinated from Richmond by the excellent Julie Moody, who is really very good news indeed. So with Alan as Co-Chairman and Julie as Regional Director, Yorkshire brains, energy and creativity are at the heart of what must be a successful campaign.

As for my part, I shall be supporting Alan and Julie to the best of my ability alongside my good friend Martin Vallance of UKIP Richmond. There will be many Euro-realist voices heard over the coming months, but UKIP and Business for Britain will be two of the most eloquent. And as for Silver Cross itself, the truth is that Britain needs literally thousands of new businesses like Silver Cross, selling top-of-the-range products around the world, free from the dead hand of the corporatist and protectionist EU. To achieve this is the mission of creative Yorkshire entrepreneurs with a global outlook like Alan Halsall – they are the very best of the very best!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby