Toby on Tuesday

'Turbulent Times'

                                                                                                                                                                                          Picture: Daily Mail

 

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

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

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

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

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday

'Making The Weather'

In one more memorable phrase, Winston Churchill described Joe Chamberlain as the politician who “made the weather”.   Of course in the past generation it has been Nigel Farage and UKIP who have made the weather, preparing the ground for our new pro-Brexit consensus.   But in his own time, more than a century ago, Joe Chamberlain was a phenomenon.   The industrialist mayor of Birmingham who became an MP and then entered the Cabinet started as a reforming Liberal, then split with his party over Irish Home Rule to create the Liberal Unionists before allying himself with the Conservatives, in the process creating the Conservative and Unionist Party.   His obsessions were social reform, the improvement of the lot of working class people, the Union of Great Britain and the global English-speaking Empire, now the Commonwealth.   And where all this matters is that Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s Chief of Staff and literally the most powerful man in the country, sees Joe Chamberlain as his inspiration for the direction in which Britain is now travelling.

Nick Timothy himself comes from Birmingham, where his father was a steelworker.   He went to grammar school there and then on to Sheffield University.   In time he became director of the New Schools Network and a special adviser to Theresa May at the Home Office.   Her confidence in him is absolute.   “Our Joe”, Nick Timothy’s biography of Chamberlain, tells of his ambitious improvements in Birmingham’s education, housing and social services while mayor there.   He tells how on Chamberlain’s 70th birthday in 1906 thousands of ordinary Brummies followed a cavalcade through the city to celebrate his achievements.   And on 14th June this year, 9 days before the Referendum, Nick Timothy declared, “I have strongly held views about Europe.   I have already voted to leave the EU, I think we should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights...”   Four months later he is at the centre of government, directing events from Downing Street, so Brexit will almost certainly be for real.

Now what does all this mean for UKIP?   What is remarkable is that Paul Nuttall, MEP for North-West England and until recently our Deputy Leader, is like Nick Timothy also a specialist in Joe Chamberlain’s Edwardian politics, which he studied at Liverpool Hope University.   Later, he went on to lecture at the University, joining UKIP in 2004.   So Paul has a fine academic mind as well as a broad historical vision.   And I recall a conversation with him some years ago when he declared that UKIP was really the old Liberal Unionist Party of Joe Chamberlain adapted for the new age which could become the voice of the patriotic Midland and Northern working class.   So he and Nick Timothy were working towards the same insight, which was extraordinarily prophetic when Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party would soon disenfranchise millions of loyal Labour voters.   Some could move to the Conservatives, but for most this will simply be a step too far.   Yet there is a home for these millions of Labour voters in a revitalised UKIP.   We won almost 4 million votes at the last General Election and can win millions more at the next under our new leader.   In Paul Nuttall’s own words, “There is definitely a future for a patriotic voice of the working class, and people aren’t getting that from Labour under Corbyn – that is where UKIP becomes relevant.”   And to underscore this point, there was an election the other day in the Headland and Harbour Ward of Hartlepool Borough Council.   Here is the result:

Tim Fleming (UKIP) – 496 votes (49.16%)

Trevor Rogan (Labour) – 255 votes (25.27%)

Steve Latimer (Putting Hartlepool First) – 155 votes (15.36%)

Benjamin Marshall (Conservative) – 41 votes (4.06%)

John Price (Patients Not Profits) – 36 votes (3.57%)

Chris Broadbent (Independent) – 26 votes (2.58%)

So, like Joe Chamberlain, Nigel Farage’s UKIP has made the weather.   Theresa May and Nick Timothy are wisely following.   Now we have to win elections and the Hartlepool Borough Council result is a small sign of just what is possible.  So for UKIP, despite our great Referendum achievement and its turbulent aftermath, the best may be yet to come!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Whose Policy?...'

“Just listen to the way a lot of politicians talk about the public.   They find your patriotism distasteful, your concerns about immigration parochial, your views about crime illiberal, your attachment to your job security inconvenient.   They find the fact that more than seventeen million voters decided to leave the European Union simply bewildering.”   No, that wasn’t Nigel Farage speaking.   It was the Prime Minister, Theresa May, addressing last week’s Conservative Party Conference.   And the truth is that the new Government has purloined not just great chunks of our General Election manifesto - on the EU, on taking the low-paid out of tax, on grammar schools and much more - but has even purloined our actual language too.   It seems extraordinary that the country has, within just four months, rejected the Blairite settlement of the past 20 years and finds itself with what is really its very first UKIP Government.

   

Of course that is what makes politics endlessly fascinating, but it does leave old UKIP with a serious challenge, not just the challenge of finding a new leader who can restore confidence to the Party, but who can also create a new identity, a kind of NewKIP.   It’s that new identity, which can retain the loyalty of the nearly 4 million voters who supported us at the General Election and add millions more, on which everything depends.

And here it’s worth a visit to the online journal HeatStreet for an article by the bookies’ favourite to succeed Diane James as UKIP’s new leader, Steven Woolfe, on http://heatst.com/world/steven-woolfe-mep-why-ukip-is-the-official-opposition-now/.   In this Steven writes, “....There are other areas of domestic policy which Theresa May is now talking about where UKIP has driven the agenda for some time.   The coalition government took the minimum wage out of tax altogether – this was a UKIP policy.   Increasing the defence budget to 2% of GDP, in line with NATO guidelines, was also a UKIP policy.   And only this week at the Conservative Party Conference, the Government announced a new scheme to build thousands more homes on brownfield sites – which was in our last manifesto   

On Sunday, Theresa May hinted at a possible bill to reform the House of Lords – something of which I am personally supportive...I hope the Prime Minister lives up to expectations and delivers on her promises, especially on Brexit and immigration controls.   There is still much to achieve in this post-Brexit world.   We in UKIP will continue to take a pragmatic view to everyday politics – we will continue to fight for what we believe in, but we will oppose and support the Government where necessary – to build a happier, more confident UK.”

So there you can see some of the ideas which will shape the new UKIP.   There is an immense amount of work to do as UKIP shapes its identity for the coming post-Brexit world.   But what is so marvellous is that politicians can even start to talk in these terms.   The days of Ministers being at the mercy of EU Directives and the so-called European Court of Justice are drawing to a close, which is the great liberation of our time.   And the extent of our escape becomes clearer as the whole EU project sinks deeper into the abyss.   Of course it existed primarily for the benefit of German industry and the German banks.   But where the British and US banks recapitalised and restructured themselves after the banking crisis, the German banks failed to do so.   

Of the two largest banks, DeutscheBank is now struggling with a $14 billion misselling fine imposed by the US Justice Department which could wipe out its remaining reserves, while Commerzbank is laying off 10,000 staff and suspending dividend payments.   And to think that Britain’s Euromaniacs saw the German economy as a role model into which we would need to integrate our own.   By a miracle the British people chose in June to avoid that fate and thus escaped disaster.   So in this post-Referendum world, in which we have what is in essence a UKIP Government, a kind of NewKIP will have a vital role to play under new leadership.   It will not be easy, but our journey has never been easy and we will make as great a contribution to Britain’s public life in future as we have in the past generation!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Democracy Dismissed'

As the new Brexit consensus unfolds, the time has finally come to ditch the old political descriptions of 'left' and 'right'.   The world of Clarke, Kinnock and Heseltine, Miliband, Clegg and Cameron could have been a century ago for all the relevance it has to the new post-Referendum settlement, yet we continue to use language that no longer reflects the culture in which we now live.  In fact the descriptions 'left' and 'right' first appeared during the French Revolution of 1789, when those National Assembly members who supported the old French monarchy sat on the president's right and those who supported the Revolution sat on his left.   So during all the subsequent phases of the Revolution the supporters of the status quo remained on the right and their opponents stayed on the left.   We all know that the Revolution degenerated into the Terror and the guillotine, the Committee of Public Safety, then Napoleon's military dictatorship and his failed attempt to conquer Europe.   But the pattern for future revolutions was set, with the ordinary people in whose name all those uprisings took place being ignored as the leaders' frenzied thirst for power unfolded.   

Today, those who still support Britain's membership of the EU are in precisely the same position as the courtiers of the old Bourbon monarchy, hankering after their extraordinary privileges which the public mood has decided must now be brought to an end.   They have colonised the BBC and much of the media, the House of Lords and great parts of our so-called "Establishment" and they see themselves as 'progressives' or 'centrists' or of the left, yet they are as imbued with the same spirit of entitled privilege as all those who sat on the right of the president in France's revolutionary Assembly.   So are the Kinnocks and Cleggs, the Clarkes and the Milibands of the left or of the right?   The truth is that the descriptions are meaningless and instead the true division is between those who now want our country to be a self-governing democracy again and those who do not.

Among those who see themselves as pro-EU centrists, none has been more vocal during his long career than Ken Clarke.  From the days when, while studying at Cambridge, he invited Sir Oswald Mosley of first the British Union of Fascists and later of the "Europe a Nation" movement to address the students, he has been relentless in his support for the whole crazy EU project.   

And in this week's "New Statesman" he gives an idea of the trouble that he and his friends are cooking up for the Prime Minister as she seeks to ensure that Brexit actually happens.   He describes her as a "bloody difficult woman" presiding over a "government with no policies".   He goes on to say, "Nobody in the government has the first idea of what they're going to do next on the Brexit front."    Dismissing the Referendum result as a "bizarre protest vote" he confirms that he will vote against its result saying, "The idea that I'm suddenly going to change my lifelong opinions about the national interest and regard myself as instructed to vote in parliament on the basis of an opinion poll is laughable."   And then he illustrates all-too clearly why the old language of politics no longer works for he says, "I don't want us to go lurching to the right.   There is a tendency for traditional parties to polarise, and for the right wing one to go ever more to the right, and the left-wing one to go ever more to the left." Yet what is right-wing about accepting the democratic vote of a clear majority of the electorate?   And what is centrist or left-wing about blatantly promising to ignore it?  The truth is that the old language no longer works and the Ken Clarkes of this world have just the same haughty and dismissive sense of entitlement as Louis XVI's courtiers.

So in the new settlement, the divide will not be between 'left' and' right', but between democrats and anti-democrats.   And there are far too many anti-democrats in all parties, not least in Labour and the LibDems.   The Conservative party definitely has its own ranks of anti-democrats who are already on manoeuvres to thwart Brexit.   Ken Clarke has now broken cover in the Commons, as has Michael Heseltine in the Lords.    There is trouble ahead from the ideologues like Anna Soubry and the disappointed like George Osborne.   And with a wafer-thin Government majority Brexit's passage will be far from smooth.   And what of UKIP?   Of course we will support Brexit at every stage.   And are we of the 'left' or of the 'right'?  The answer is neither.   We are determined democrats, working to restore self-government to the people of our country.   The old language no longer works. Rather, we are committed at every stage under our new leader to uphold the well-being and prosperity of the British people.   That is our pledge and nothing, least of all the attempts of a failed political class that has caused untold damage while claiming immense privileges for itself, will stand in our way as we work to achieve our goal!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby