PUSHBACK

The launch by Leave Means Leave of a concerted campaign to regain control of Brexit marks a turning point in the August Stasis. The Telegraph published an opening salvo from founders Richard Tice and John Longworth yesterday, and today Nigel Farage fires off a broadside from the same broadsheet. We're not being asked to do anything as yet except signify support or donate - http://www.leavemeansleave.eu - but I guess up to 18 million voters are ready for some Brexit leadership, sadly absent from the Parliamentary Conservative Party. John Vasc explained succinctly the dilemna in a previous comment and I hope he will forgive me for quoting him here;

The Party rules on a new leadership election virtually guarantee that two Remainers would be selected by the current parliamentary party of majority remainer MPs, to be duly 'offered' as a 'choice' to the angry (majority pro-brexit) party members. Javid and Hunt, for example.

This balance would only change if a General Election were to sweep away some of the remainer MPs from their leaver constituencies - but the party is controlled by May and Lewis, so de-selection and replacement is unlikely to happen, and votes will then go to Ukip, which will lead to a Labour victory. 

The ERG know all this - it's a Gordian knot that cannot be untied - or even cut through.

And this leads us to the next stage. Taking back our party. 

The Conservative Party was the last party of which I was a member. Our club in Ipswich had a decent and well used bar and  a full-sized snooker table dominated by a monochrome print of Churchill. I was amongst a million or so members who left the party between 1979 and 1997 - in my case in the early 80s. It wasn't by any means a protest, but the blessed Margaret, for all her fine qualities, was also a ruthless centraliser who robbed Conservative local government and local associations of much of their purpose. So we left in droves. 

Well, I have now rejoined. That little biographical box heading the right column must be edited. Mrs May and Mr Lewis will be pleased to hear that I am back - and determined to join with my fellow Conservatives in regaining control of not only our Party but also our nation. 

Have a good weekend, all. 

Enjoy the Summer - and get ready for a rollercoaster Autumn

If  you can't take excitement, I recommend this Autumn that you rent a lonely cottage on the Norfolk coast, stock up with heavyweight biographies, a dog, and logs for the cool evenings and go into purdah until 2019. The rest of us will I suspect be glued to our screens and social media as the most event packed months I've ever known roll out.

Party politics is in turmoil, with both Labour and Conservative parties split, and conferences coming up from next month at which both leaders will be fighting for their lives.  Corbyn can't shake the anti-semitism charges - he's an eternal 19 year old undergraduate,  perennially emotionally immature, selling his smudgy Marxist agitprop outside the Union bar. May only remains in office whilst her successors decide the best time to defenestrate her. If I were Theresa, I'd already have moved my kit back to Maidenhead from Number 10 apart from a couple of suitcases. 

Our own economy is on the turn, with a downturn in London house prices the signal for a national bubble-bursting episode as the world economy goes into recession. Whilst US bib-and-brace jobs and wages are now doing well, silicon valley and its asset-less billionaires may be on the verge of crashing; facebook, twitter, google, instagram are all slowing and showing signs of vulnerability. It looks like cryptocurrencies are reaching a final crash and burn. The end of QE in the US and its coming end in Europe has already knocked billions from Lesser Developed Nations including Turkey, and Italy is set for a showdown in the coming months (£). 

Brexit talks are set to resume, with the Robbins plan already in tatters and recriminations from Brussels about British espionage. I should bloody well hope we are spying on them. At home the hystericals PTSD Adonis and 'Howler' Grayling are whining even more loudly, Remainer delusional skewed polls are still being churned out to bolster the faithful, Soros money is encouraging even more desperate legal challenges and every global corporate with a foothold in the UK is going all-out to sabotage the Brexit process. Even Alastair Campbell poor love is doing the rounds of the TV studios bullying anyone he can find into silence - but these aren't the Blair years any more, and folk just see a red-faced shouty buffoon rather than a whippet-lean SJW. Mandelson looks like an effete bloated degenerate just back from a Tunisian resort staffed by gazelle-eyed ganymedes and Major is known only to the young as like the old duffer from the post office who shouts at people who drop litter.  

Spain, with 34% youth unemployment, is being told by globalist puppet and convicted criminal Christine Lagarde that it needs 5m more African and maghrebi immigrants to sell cheap Chinese tat to tourists now being excluded from Europe's most popular destinations as local carrying capacity has been crashed. Good luck with that policy move, Christine. Sweden's forthcoming election is also likely to follow the trend throughout Europe of taking back control from the globalist elites and will upset a few more unelected EU officials. Juncker's sciatica is also getting worse, coming on just after his breakfast cognac and peaking at social events as he sways and stumbles through photo-opportunities.

I suspect there will be no shortage of events on which to comment between now and Christmas, but for now, enjoy the Sun, drink some wine and chill.

A NATO member can't be besties with Putin

I am a firm believer that NATO and Russia face greater common enemies than eachother, and there will come a time when we must make common cause against common threats. But that time is not yet here, so we are forced into a low-cost reprise of the cold war. Russia's gangster oligarchy has crossed the line with the Salisbury poisonings, and the matter is not yet ended. And as much as I deprecate the arrogant aggression of the EU in attempting to extend the Federasty eastwards, the EU after each provocation running to hide under the skirts of the US, the stupidity of Brussels doesn't lessen Russia's threat.

Two years ago I wrote "Let's admit it - Turkey is an enemy state". 

Already, a score or more of the most senior military officers arrested following the coup attempt have reportedly died in jail in mysterious circumstances. Typhus, no doubt. Or heart attacks. Franco was also very experienced at disappearing thousands of dangerous democrats, people who had won elections and those who stood for the rule of law and democracy. Erdogan's tyranny has been so blatant, so outrageous, that even the purblind fools in Brussels could no longer ignore it; media closed, journalists arrested, courts purged. Erdogan's reaction has been a petulant tantrum; the EU had already stalled on his earlier ultimatum to allow Turks open travel in the Schengen area, now this week they have voted to suspend accession talks.

This is a far more nuanced matter than the bare facts allow. I know, in London, many fine and upright citizens who are first or second generation Turks, from Cyprus or from the mainland. They run the vast majority of our kebab shops and are the backbone of Uber drivers at the basic level, but also contribute greatly to culture, society, arts, business and trade. Turkey becoming an enemy will leave many fine people dreadfully conflicted - though none I know would support Erdogan's repression.

Since then, the Islamification of the Turkish state has continued, Erdogan has given himself sweeping powers and he has increasingly turned to Putin's Russia as an ally. No doubt Erdogan and Putin can chat amicably about their respective gulags, methods of suppressing free speech and so on. This is simply unacceptable behaviour from a NATO member, more egregious than Erdogan's son's deep involvement in the stolen petroleum trade with ISIS, more dangerous than Erdogan's attempted theft of Syrian territory and more treacherous than use of a migrant tsunami to threaten Greece. 

Well, it seems Mr Trump has had enough. America's actions are pretty much destroying the Turkish economy. Erdogan will now no doubt demand more danegeld from the EU or else and seek greater formal ties with Putin. Either way, he confirms Turkey's status as an enemy state that must now be expelled from NATO. I suggest the US moves its nuclear base from Incirlik to either Greece or Cyprus. We can also shut down Western Union and halt billions of Euros leaving Europe. The die is cast.