Our Watchdogs of Democracy are not working

Of our two guardians of the minutiae of democracy, the Boundary Commission and the Electoral Commission, the EC is held in the lowest regard. Both have, to an extent, failed in their objectives, but the failures of the EC are by far the most egregious. I do not believe this is as a result of wilful conspiracy but of institutional inertia. Their faults lie in their evolution into institutions defending a monochrome political establishment rather than defending our democratic processes; their Commissioners and senior managers are not so much Common Purpose shills as unimaginative and semi-capable public servants utterly unable to understand the world in which they now function. Both are well past their sell-by date and are now in urgent need of reform.

Looking through the EC's website at its written Election guidance one is struck by its high quality. Clear, cogent, succinct, well written and helpfully presented and indexed; no manual of how to conduct fair elections could be better. Our teams of dedicated junior Town Hall officials who conduct the polling stations, counts and checks, who guard the ballots and facilitate candidates and their own teams openly inspecting every stage of the process cannot be faulted. We can have full confidence that the processes are tight enough to prevent the sort of abuses endemic in lesser nations.

Yet at the top level, their perceived bias against Leave-supporting political movements, a bias that culminated in their 'raiding' the Brexit Party's offices practically on the eve of the election whilst seemingly ignoring the most blatant breaches of electoral law by a Remain campaigner, as exposed by Guido, has destroyed any remaining faith that millions of voters had in the EC's impartiality.

Their reluctance to implement ID checks at polling stations is also seen as pandering to the Labour Party - who have long defended corrupt electoral practices in the big conurbations that favour their candidates. One cannot pick up a packet from the local Post Office sorting office on a Saturday morning without showing a passport or driving licence, so why resist this simple check for elections, which may happen only every two years? The Commissioners show an alarming bias to political partiality - for the most part, they are retreads from the Commons or local government of no great distinction who fit Betz and Smith's description

Here are different kinds of political ice cream for sale, but when licked they all turn out to have roughly the same unpalatable taste: a bland, socially progressive, anti-traditionalist, globalist, corporatist flavour.

The EC are also unable to get their collective heads around technological change. Our election rules were created in an age of 'push' media, when newspapers had circulations in the millions rather than the hundreds of thousands and the TV audiences of our three channels could reach over ten million. We've moved to an era of 'pull' media, when the audience decide individually on their own news, information and entertainment sources, timings and formats. The EC have proved incapable of adapting the existing rules and are unwilling to move. No, I don't think our electoral processes have so far been corrupted by external interference but clearly foreign powers have been experimenting in how to use technology and social media to disrupt democracy - and we must protect against it.

Political funding and its abuse are also once again under our scrutiny. Whether it's the buying of political influence by the mega-wealthy global corporates, Russian oligarchs or the abuse of Trade Union block funding, we cannot allow our democratic systems to be bought and sold. Recent attempts at funding reform by Hayden Phillips and Christopher Kelly failed because they were establishment solutions aimed at institutionalising the then-existing 2.1/2 parties into quasi-constitutional bodies - all in the name of  'stability', i.e. of preventing the sort of shake-up that millions of voters are now demanding.

This catalogue of failure, of serial incompetence, of second-rate actors not up to the job and of a complacent patrician elite with no interest in correcting these failures must end. We must have institutions that defend our democracy that have probity, integrity, transparency and the ability to protect and defend our most fundamental and hard-won rights at a time of profound change.

SMASHED

Well, you can read the news as well as I can. Just 3 MEPs for the Conservatives, but including Dan Hannan. I must say 9% of the vote was better than I was expecting - if May hadn't announced her resignation, I'm convinced we would have got no more than 6% and no seats. More good news in PTSD Adonis having been disappointed, but that's thin cheer.

For most people of course TBP's success is the single story. Nothing can detract from 28 seats - possibly 29 when the last two areas declare. If the party had been around a month or two longer I suspect they would have taken even more votes from both Labour and the Conservatives.

And of course the LibDems, the Remain party, with some 2/3rds of the Brexit Party votes, will also now move to consolidate their status as the Brexit opposition party with an eye to the next GE, with the advantage of an established party structure and existing parliamentary incumbency. They can sell themselves as "We're not Corbyn" and also take more voters from Labour and Conservative parties. The CUKs are nothing - forget their grandiose delusions of a 'pact' with the LibDems. Cable can tell them to join-up or FO.

All over Europe the victor has been .... democracy. Turnout up, apple carts overturned, politicians in tears, some dreams shattered, others come to fruition. Nothing earth shattering, but a clear message. The Conservative Party, like Labour, may have no future, the corpses of both parties picked over by the Teal and Orange insurgents, but for now will remain in government . Our MPs will be shitting themselves and will avoid a GE like a vampire eschews garlic.

Have a good day all - Today is a good day. 

                                       Predicted %             Actual %
Brexit                                        34                       32
LibDem                                     17                       20
Lab                                            15                       14
Green                                        11                        12
Con                                             9                          9
CUK                                           4                          3
UKIP                                          3                          3

Runners and riders for the Downing Street Cup

This is not quite a parochial post as the Leader chosen by the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party will also be the Prime Minister - so everyone has an interest in these hustings. Here are my initial opinions

Mediocity is one of the French bourgouis virtues (Assiduité, Economie, Mediocrité, Conjugalité, Tenacité, Optomisme, Dynamisme, Modernité*) but it's never been an English one. Yet this field of runners has more mediocre, almost unrecognisable, candidates than any other I can remember. And a good deal of utterly unrealistic self-love from those who have absolutely no chance.

Boris Johnson - Best election-winner but a man with flaws. He frightens the EU and is the biggest obstacle to the Brexit Party's ambitions. Can he be trusted to deliver? That's the question

Dominic Raab - Bland and clean with good Brexit credentials but does he have leadership charisma - the sort that comforts Remainers and wins Conservative voters back to the fold?

Michael Gove - Pretty well loathed by the public for being a didactic arse and by Tory Brexiteers for betraying Boris, his loyalty to May will not have helped him. No electoral charisma, a cold technocrat. Might make a decent Chancellor so long as he is sackable.

Andrea Leadsom - Decent all-rounder with a spine who was not afraid to stand up to the sanctimonious dwarf. Sufficient distance from May to be credible. But however unfair, illogical and plain wrong it may be, I have a feeling in my water that being a woman may disadvantage her this time around and next time she may be just a liitle too long in the tooth.

Jeremy Hunt - Another bland and clean minister of indeterminate age indeterminate accomplishments and indeterminate ability. I can't recall a single interesting thing about him.

Penny Mordaunt -  I like Penny. A lot. Her maiden speech still stands out for warmth, real humour, intelligence and a finely judged use of opportunity without seeming forward. She has myriad sterling qualities. However, the one she lacks - through no fault of her own - is ministerial / cabinet experience. Our next Leader (but one).

Rory Stewart - The Party's fantasist - both with a record of making stuff up and the delusion that he is electable. Said to be an original thinker. He has a weird face.

Sajid Javid - Clean and bland and calculating. He's nursed his career with an eye to the top spot and puts his credentials on public display in a noticeable way. But what does he believe in, apart from himself?

Amber Rudd -  Just No. Her delusion that she can partner with Boris is pure unrealistic fantasy, just like her support of May's treasonous deal

David Lidington - David would win prizes for mediocrity. If Blandness were an Olympic event, he'd take gold.

Matthew Hancock - Who?

James Cleverly - Another of the Dulwich School hopefuls. A real crawler. No real ability.

Steve Baker - A competent man with real beliefs. Also a trained engineer and ex-RAF officer. Ideologically sound. Superb ministerial material - but does he connect with voters?

Esther McVey - Again, a strong and capable personality with her feet on the ground. Much respect. Again, good cabinet material but does she have a natural sense of humour? Humour is important to me. Not essential, but I find those that have it are better people.

*All English Men Chew Toffee On Dreary Mondays has fixed these tedious virtues in my head for forty years. 

They think it's all over ...

Actually, you won't hear a peep about yesterday's election on the news or read a word in the nationals, because we've all got to pretend we don't know what happened until Sunday night, after the last EU subject nations have voted. Already it's safe to assume that the Brexit Party have scored big and Labour and the Tories have been creamed. However, steps are already underway to undermine the validity of that vote -

Change UK (CUK) claim that many of their members were unable to find their way to the polling stations as the little map on the poll cards was not in colour and didn't look like TomTom. "Change UK voters have been wandering the streets utterly lost, clutching their poll cards and were still looking for somewhere to vote at 10pm" said a spokesperson

Remain Alliance took the example of Dan Snow, who claimed a crocodile in a Brexit Party waistcoat was delivered inside his postal vote "I thought it was the postman playing a joke, but all over the New Forest hundreds of little Brexit Party crocodiles in Teal waistcoats have been gummed into the vote envelopes and in some cases they have eaten the ballot forms" said Dan

Momentum claimed a shortage of milkshakes had prevented many of their members from voting "The comrades won't turn out just to put a cross in a box" said Comrade Spart "They need a bit of street action, know what I mean? But it was warm and most of the milkshakes accidentally got drunk"

A Soros-funded 'migrants taxi' organisation claimed that rigorous checks by electoral officials were preventing illegal migrants from registering to vote "I mean honestly, we've arranged for over 1,000 Afghans, Iraqis and Somalis to come over in stolen boats in the past few weeks but barely a score have managed to get on the electoral register. The system is biased towards people who can read and write English and who have a legal right to be in the UK. This is unfair to global migrants"

LibDems claimed their vote had been sabotaged because there were more than three parties on the ballot forms "It was deliberately intended to confuse our supporters, who expect only three boxes and look for the one that isn't Labour or Conservative. This time the papers were as long as your arm with loads of boxes. This totally confused our members, many of whom reported making crosses at random on the form"

Guy Verhofstadt claimed Britain's vote was unfair because Belgium was not allowed to participate in the vote "Had perfidious Internationalist Britain acted fairly and invited the populations of Belgium and Luxembourg to participate in the elections, as is their right as loyal Europeans, the result may be very different. This constant pandering to British nationals is destructive and anti-European"

Update 11.50
...It is now!

Well, today's the day

For those of you voting today - which should be all of you unless like me you've already voted - I can only offer the advice given yesterday by Conservative Home to members of my Party.

Well, last night she barricaded herself into Number Ten and refused to meet any of her ministers. No doubt Hammond, Sedwill and others dependent on her for their own survival are even now urging her to hang in there, but I expect it's all over.

This election is good for one thing - bringing the Party's closet LibDems out. Osborne and Heseltine are both out, and Major is wriggling with frustration at feeling unable to publicly follow them.

May's utter stupidity means a Conservative vote in the region of 4 - 6%. Dan Hannan may be out of a job, but he should have been anyway by now, so nothing to be sorry for.

So taking ConHome's sage advice, I can only say to you all

 
Update
======
HM is visiting Heathrow today - and looking quite stunning

Three varieties of Remain fanatics

Of the Remainer minority in the Referendum, only a small number are the sort of Remainer fanatics so disturbed by losing that they are prepared to condone any trickery, any betrayal, any perversion of democracy and even violence to deny their defeat. And of that small number of fanatics, there are I think three varieties.

First are the (generally) youthful, naive and selfish. They are not driven by any ideological or economic concerns or any doubts over Britain's future as an independent nation but purely by what they see are their personal losses. They have a sense of entitlement to 'stuff' they imagine is free, such as Erasmus, or Euro railcards, that the EU have cleverly spent taxpayers' money to shower on them for just this reason. Their chance to lig around the EU like gypsies at someone else's expense may be curtailed, they fear. These are the milkchuckers, the silly street rabble draped in EU rags.

Secondly are the more altruistic who genuinely do have economic fears, or fears that we can simply not flourish as a nation without being part of the embrace of the Federast empire. For these I have the greatest sympathy. All I can answer to their fears is that many of them are contrived and invented by cynical users such as the former Chancellor or the current one who use such lies to manipulate public opinion. Their genuine concerns are being used to stir them to anti-democratic behaviour. I think poor Andrew Adonis is in this category; an effete, naive and foolish fop stomping his foot in well-intentioned frustration.

Finally are the ideologues, the zealots committed to the European Empire. These are the Grieves, Soubrys, Starmers and Thornberrys, the Boultons, O'Briens and Graylings. The civil service. The entire bien-pensant patrician establishment, the political class. Globalists all. Their nation means little to them in the scheme of things; they owe allegiance to supranational masters. Of all the remainers, these are the most deadly - and the sole class of remainer fanatic against whom we should exert our time and energy.

Robert Tombs writes today in the Telegraph about extremist Remainers but lumps all three types together as though they were a homogeneous rump. They are not. He's better I think at defining Leavers - but fails to demonstrate that Brexit is about so much more than Brexit.

Millions seem set on voting resoundingly for Brexit at the European elections. They are angry with politicians but not intimidated by the future. I realised that we might well vote to leave the EU when I saw a Eurobarometer poll (carried out by the EU itself) in 2013, showing that Britain was the only member country in which the majority believed they could better face the future outside the EU. This belief reflected a realisation that the EU was failing, and a confidence based on Britain’s history that it could succeed.

Watching the Brexit Party's London rally via iPhone clips on Twitter yesterday evening I felt, as a Conservative Party member, a little like a plump lamb at a kebab convention. But such thoughts are for the weekend. For today, congratulations to Nigel and TBP and all my fervent wishes for you to smash the polls tomorrow. 

Politicians still don't get it: They're not special

This week we're being treated to the spectacle of our Westminster politicians playing out games far divorced from the reality of most lives. The problem is that they still don't get it. You may have noticed that there's a Conservative leadership race underway, with a candidate meeting yesterday arranged for the press at which senior Tories preened and demonstrated just how out of touch they were with the real world. It was painful. They did a great job of telling us in what high regard they held themselves, and that it was unreasonable if we did not love them as much as they love themselves. Elsewhere, Tom Harris wrote a piece  explaining that matters such as picking a party leader were far above the capacity of we ordinary folk, and it was something best left to professional politicians. And today, William Hague takes a break from oil-wrestling with his driver to tell us to leave everything to the politicians - that we we can get on peacefully with our dreary lives without bothering our silly heads about these things.

Titanic's fate is a frequent meme for the future of the EU. But it is not only the EU that is sinking beneath the waves, but our own political elite. The expenses scandal ten years ago should have been the catalyst for widespread and fundamental reform of parliament, but instead they picked a few scapegoats to serve jail time and covered up the crimes of the rest. People haven't forgotten.

Over 180 years ago the Chartists foresaw the danger of not only the folie de grandeur that being in parliament could induce, but the proclivity to corruption, venality and above all the danger of neglecting to represent those they were sent to Westminster to represent. So the Charter set a maximum term for MPs of one year. It was the only one of the Six Points that we have not achieved since 1838.

What will it take to bang it into the heads of our Westminster elite that they're not special?

Light dawns on the Political Class

For the second time in about a week there are signs that the issues that are driving the electorate, and to which the political elites have been so far blind and deaf, are finally emerging into their consciousness. Today it is Janet Daley in the Telegraph who shines the torch - and I hope the 'graph will forgive me for quoting her at greater length than is normal here;

(Parliament's failure to deliver Brexit) is not the real democratic scandal. The discussion that should be dominating the public debate is whether true self-government within nation states can remain possible in an age of globalisation. In a world where international players dominate economic and geopolitical reality, can the idea of an elected government accountable to its own populations survive?

The Remain lobby says, in so many words, that it cannot. Indeed, this is their principle argument: the world is too big for parochial little guys who want to make their own way with their own leaders making decisions on their behalf. At least, that is what they say when they deign to argue at all. Mostly they just smear their Leave opponents as bigoted know-nothings. But the terms of that abuse all add up to this one significant point: Britain cannot go it alone in the way for which it has been renowned, with only its unique institutions and the judgement of its own population to guide it. The world is a different place now: you have to belong to a much bigger conglomerate whose authority must take precedence over your piddling little outfit if you are to have any chance of competing for business, making your mark, having your voice heard, etc, etc.

This may or may not be true. (Most of the factual evidence suggests that it is not.) Either way, it is the argument that must be called out. It must be seen for what it is with all its deeply unattractive implications. This is what the case for Remain really amounts to: the democratic nation state is the past. The corporatist global bloc is the future.

There you have it. It is a political division between Globalists and Internationalists, between those who believe in the supremacy of supranational organisations such as the EU, IMF and UN and those who believe in the supremacy of the nation State. Can we determine our own future or must our potential, our wealth, the rewards for our children all be decided in the boardrooms of the global corporates and the corrupt plenums of unelected technocratic supranationalists?

What is considered to be extraordinary but actually isn't is the extent to which we - the ordinary folk, the little people - are alive to the key issues when the patrician elite at the centre of power are blind and deaf to them. We, after all, are the first to be affected; we are neither dumb cattle nor ill-educated political fodder. We are intensely sensitive to the things that matter. As Daley writes

It is that inexorable logic that is sensed by so many of the dissident “populist” forces in Europe and even beyond the EU. For there is a critical loss of confidence in government in much of the democratic West: a sense that what was once one’s own country is being run by some world-dominating club to serve its own interests, and that this global hegemony regards ordinary people with contempt (“They don’t care what we think”.)

We have fought long and hard for democracy, for the secret ballot and universal suffrage, for the freedom to form and associate in political parties. That is why Farage's simple message - It's Democracy - resonates so strongly through every part of the electorate.

And Daley is quite right - until our parties align as either Globalist or Internationalist, we will not have a settled demos.

Boris and Nigel?

In terms of political big beasts, they don't come much bigger than Boris and Nigel. As the realisation dawns on the Conservative parliamentary party that they're about to get a severe thrashing, their minds are turning to self-preservation, and they're looking at Boris in a new light - as the only Big Beast the Party has got who can go toe-to-toe with Nigel Farage.

A general election before 2022 now looks inevitable. The country really doesn't want to vote for Corbyn, but the parties must give them alternatives for whom to cast their ballots. Remainer MPs in strongly Leave constituencies are finished - this parliament is (hopefully) the last we'll see of Anna Soubry and Yvette Cooper, and good riddance. However, voters will not be impressed if the Brexit Party puts up candidates in constituencies defended by solid Conservative Leavers - Raab, Paterson, John Redwood et al. And to do so could well split the votes of the centre-right, allowing Corbyn in by default.

Of course having both a Leaver Conservative Party and TBP on the Treasury benches would be a dream outcome - bringing government with principle and direction, a united voice talking to Brussels and an outward, Internationalist, bold and confident Britain to make a new place in the world. But we'll have to see.

For now, we're still campaigning for the EP elections in five days, and my party leader, Mrs May, has just launched her campaign with a glittering event held in the CCHQ launch venue pictured below,  attended by a reporter from the Daily Remain and a gerbil. Hey ho.

     

When the Liberal Party was wiped from British politics

At the start of the Great War in 1914, the British establishment prided itself on the nation's armament and munition capacity. Rifles and machine guns may have been contracted in large part to private companies, but it was the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich - the Arsenal - that made the big guns and the shells for the field and garrison artillery and the fleet. Small arms ammo was also made there - as it had been since the innocent cartridges that sparked the Indian Mutiny. The ROF was a sort of Gormenghast, in which three rival departments vied for space, resources and control. The Royal Laboratory made ammunition, the Carriage Department made gun carriages and the Royal Gun Factory made the barrels and tubes. Each had its own Superintendant and arcane system of administration. Should the Mounting Shed, in building 19, where the guns and the carriages were united, belong to the Gun factory or the Carriage Department? Should the Whitehead Torpedo Department come under the control of the Gun Factory or the Royal Laboratory?

Workers at the plant remembered the overtime paid during the Boer War, and no doubt a few looked forward to bulging pay packets in August 1914. But this would prove to be an entirely new form of war; more shells would be fired in one early Western Front battle alone than were used in the entire Boer War. By 1915 the Royal Laboratory had moved to seven day working, three shifts a day. Workers were exhausted - a 96 hour week was more normal than not. New sheds and stores were set up on Plumstead marshes, previously the burying ground for thousands of dead convicts in unmarked burial pits, and firing ranges, but it was not enough. The army in France ran out of shells for the guns.

The failure of government wiped out Asquith's Liberal government and cost the party 236 seats, including those of most of his cabinet. The Party never recovered.

A new Ministry of Munitions quickly set up filling factories across the country, in isolated places, timber huts and sheds thrown up in weeks. Shell-case and fuse making was contracted-out to industry, and girls earned £5 a week pouring molten explosive into the shell cases. It was enough. But the Liberal Party was destroyed for ever.

The anger felt in 1915 against the Liberals by a public unforgiving of their betrayal of our front-line troops - men from almost every family in the country - cannot have been dissimilar to the anger felt today at the Tories. No doubt Asquith imagined his party would take a temporary hit and all would be well afterwards. Clearly he was mistaken.

A naval gun under manufacture in the RGF

Control slipping from central States in small ways

Electric scooters are the pain de jour for western governments. The battery and motor technology that was supposed to support the develop of electric cars for which governments are planning and legislating has instead flooded the market with millions of cheap Chinese electric scooters. Incredibly popular with the urban young, they can be kept in the hallway of an apartment and need no expensive concrete car parks in the city centres. The only problem is that governments hadn't anticipated them, haven't legislated for them and now are in knots.

This Conservative government is a product of a deeply interfering political class who have legislated to regulate everything from smoking on the beach, eating medium rare beefburgers to watching internet porn, and has employed an army of street wardens to catch people dropping pieces of litter whilst turning a blind eye to the welter of gore on the street from stabbed children, spilt blood being less offensive to those in power one presumes than a dropped fag butt. 

The Police won't even turn out for a non-indictable offence these days but God help you if you don't pay the TV tax. It's all falling apart, common sense has divorced from their use of our taxes and electric scooters could be the straw that breaks the camel's back.  The Telegraph reports on how Paris is coping with the development (I won't call it a 'problem') and the answers are all unenforceable - unless one diverts police from anti-terrorism ops to scooter traffic control.

And God knows they must be having the vapours in Brussels trying to frame EU wide directives that govern scooter speed, motor power, battery capacity, fitting of winter tyres, compulsory reflectors, hazard warning lights and sound signal apparatus. Why do they need to? Well, they don't. But it's what central States do to validate themselves.

Technology is moving faster, though, than States can legislate. People don't see why we need such petty governance when laws against burglary aren't enforced. It's starting to slip away. 

Is this the real reason Oliver Robbins negotiated the Treaty?

One final comment - or rather question - arising from that remarkable documentary.

It was absolutely clear throughout the process that the EU side were stunned by the incompetence, weakness, unpreparedness, naivety and sheer stupidity of the British team led by Oliver Robbins.

Is it possible that that he was selected by Mark Sedwill not because he was the best that the civil service had to offer, but the worst? A head negotiator warranted to screw it up and produce a treaty advantageous to the EU? A humiliation of a treaty equal to Versailles?

Just asking.

Meanwhile, the Brexit Party scores 34% of YouGov's latest poll - more than Labour and the LibDems combined. And that's before May does a deal with Corbyn.

And can anyone explain why my London ballot paper has on it 11 independents who can each afford a £5,000 deposit?

'Standard Oil' time for the Global Corporates?

Blogs such as this are more often than not a good indicator of coming swings in political consciousness. For years we've banged on about the growing dangers to democracy and the need for Big Bang Localism, the malign influence of the global corporates, the disconnect between the powerful and the disenfranchised, the dangers of a patrician political class. Well, such things are by no means all mainstream, but it's astonishing just how frequently they are now popping up in the mainstream, particularly over the past year. 

Liam Halligan's piece in the Telegraph today is yet another that gives us a warm feeling of validation. It warns of the malign effects of the global corporates. In the Telegraph.

Doubts are being raised, more widely and loudly than at any time since the end of the Cold War, about the future of capitalism. With British youngsters struggling to attain living standards enjoyed by their parents, and after years of real-terms pay cuts, faith in market economics is slipping. Swathes of voters now view the UK not so much as capitalist, but corporatist or even “cronyist” – with good reason.

Liam covers familiar ground - our children poorer than their parents, excluded from the housing market, laden with debt, subject to the market dominance of oligopolistic service providers. Firms obese with QA cash, inflated assets, stock bubbles, the wealth of the 1% and the disadvantage of the 99% are all listed. He even recognises the Elephant.

But while inequality between countries has narrowed, inequality within countries, certainly the post-industrial West, has got worse That’s why, across much of the UK, stagnant living standards and escalating corporate profits are fuelling a sense that capitalism is skewed, with the benefits accruing to an elite few at the expense of the many. Our natural sense of opportunity and fair play has meanwhile been reversed. A recent government study found “an increasingly stark social mobility postcode lottery across Britain”, with life chances increased bound to who your parents are and where you live. That’s why, for millions, Corbyn’s dangerous rhetoric about aggressive renationalisation, punitive taxation and class war holds appeal.

For the Right of the political spectrum, that raises a challenge we must meet. It's simply no good parping like sheep that Corbyn is wrong; we must recognise our failure to regulate the effects of globalism and the power of corporatism, the failures of managerialism and the bleeding of the benefits of capitalism away from the vast majority of people in this country. In short we must take democratic action that reboots capitalism, and not allow Corbyn to destroy it.

Now Liam isn't quite as radical as we are - he recommends limited competition action against the oligopolies most disbenefitting the young

Very few policymakers I know acknowledge or even understand the issues I’ve just described. One who does is Andrew Tyrie, the former Tory MP who is now chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority. Last week, Tyrie gave an important speech pointing to “fragile public confidence in the benefits of market competition”. UK competition law currently “falls short of what consumers are entitled to expect”, he told the Social Market Foundation. Tyrie talked of “price discrimination against the vulnerable in energy, insurance and other essential services”.....

Every now and then, if capitalism is to survive, its supporters must overhaul the rules to tip the balance of power away from overbearing, all-powerful corporate lobbies and back towards ordinary people.

Today is such a time.

It's a decent start. 

Democracy is alien to the EU - voters are held in contempt

"We got rid of them. We kicked them out. We finally turned them into a colony, and that was our plan from the first moment"

I could not leave the subject of BBC4's astonishing EU documentary without mentioning Charles Moore's observations on the two programmes in this morning's Telegraph.He writes -

Perhaps most striking, however, was what was absent. At no point did Guy the Great and his rather foul-mouthed pals give the slightest thought to why all this was happening, which is that more than 30 million British people had voted on it, and the majority had decided to leave. Contempt for Britain was almost unqualified ...

Even more striking by its absence was any mention by M Verhofstadt and his fellow MEPs of their own voters. They never once even pretended to be interested in their constituents. I don’t think the word “democracy” crossed their lips. Their identification with the purposes of the EU’s machine, as opposed to its people, was complete.

These EU apparatchiks hold not only democracy but their own voters in contempt - and these astonishing programmes make it plain to see. But this contempt for those whom they are supposed to serve also induces a blindness, an unwillingness to hear, a shunning of reality that isolates these authoritarian demagogues from the world outside.

We're at top of the economic cycle and close to levels of full employment, yet taxes at 36% of GDP are at their highest for 40 years. We are overdue for a downturn, parts of the EU are already in recession and a cold economic wind is gathering strength. Parliament and government between them have created a Brexit debacle that will cost the economy much more than it need have done.

PwC forecast the effects of AI on the British economy costing 30% of existing jobs in the next fifteen years. We're better placed than others – they forecast 37% of German jobs will go – but this scale of impact requires visionary political leadership.

Already, before either cyclical economic or Tier II AI changes have begun to bite, the UK, in  common with much of the developed world, is already faced with mounting voter anger. Brexit is not the cause, but itself has its roots in causes including, but not exclusively

• Increasing financial inequality
• Static or declining living standards 
• People excluded from decision making
• Decline of working class power
• Globalism causing disempowerment
• Cultural loss – loss of cultural identity
• Attrition of social institutions, high anomie

Unless we understand the pathology of this deep malaise and take measures to counter it, all else is pointless. But in Brussels they're away with the fairies, victims of their own Prozac propaganda, plotting and scheming the expansion of their empire even as the world crumbles around them.

I think they will learn that sometimes, just sometimes, the voters that they hold in such contempt can bite back.

For the EU, Britain is either a Colony or an Enemy

"We got rid of them. We kicked them out. We finally turned them into a colony, and that was our plan from the first moment"

Having watched the first part of BBC4's extraordinary fly-on-the-wall documentary and last night's episode spooled on the recorder and ready to go, one thing is clear - everything we suspected about the EU is true. All our fears, dismissed as fantasy by the Remainers, are confirmed from the very mouths of the EU's apparatchiks themselves.

I haven't paid the TV Tax since 2015, but if I had, these two programmes alone may have assuaged the insult of the impost.

One thing is already very clear. As much as the EU team were congratulating themselves on having imposed on May, through Robbins, a surrender treaty as humiliating as Versailles,that turned Britain, in their own words, into an EU Colony, the consequences of our refusing to bow to their subjugation were also quite clear. We would become an economic and diplomatic enemy - our territory liable to incursions and claims, our economy liable to sabotage, out trade interests liable to frustration and blockage. Once we had made the decision to Leave, we were either a Colony or an Enemy.

This is why May and her treacherous administration, and all the betrayer MPs in the Commons, are so eager to sign away our nation as an EU Colony. They have neither the balls nor the aptitude to fight for this nation's freedom. May, Grieve, Thornberry, Starmer and Rudd would all have been at the front of the collaboration queue if the Nazis had invaded in 1940, to offer their co-operation in return for special treatment. They would have been the Quislings in the puppet parliament.

We cannot sign the surrender document - May's loathsome and treacherous 'withdrawal agreement' - or any contrived variation of it acceptable to the EU empire. We will not surrender. We will not cravenly give up this nation's proud achievements to become a Colony of Brussels. We WILL Leave.

If you haven't seen the documentary yet, I urge you to do so. I suspect it was never intended for transmission in the run-up to the EP elections, so damning is it to Remainers' lies. I suspect it was scheduled when even the BBC thought we'd be gone by the end of March. These happy accidents do happen.

Is Now the time we destroy the Political Class?

You may recall we previously quoted Betz and Smith of King's on the 'capture' of the British State by the political class -

"Here are different kinds of political ice cream for sale, but when licked they all turn out to have roughly the same unpalatable taste: a bland, socially progressive, anti-traditionalist, globalist, corporatist flavour."

"... At the same time a technocratic political elite has arisen that is willing to contract out decision-making to supranational organisations like the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and United Nations on just about everything from finance, the law, border security, and the environment."

"With the rise of the new political classes, a different political dynamic is emerging. Drawn from similar backgrounds (often middle-class, university educated, with little prior career experience outside politics itself), members of parliament increasingly sound alike, think alike and act alike. The evolution of a monochrome political establishment is producing a radical disconnect, which the Brexit denouement is throwing into stark relief. What we appear to be witnessing is the corrupt mutation of the notion of the representation of the people in parliament, into the substitution of the will of the people by the interests of the political class. We are entering the realms, no less, of state capture."

I think they understated one key aspect, which is now becoming very clear. When the only politicians we see and hear, the only politicians interviewed by the MSM, the only politicians speaking in Parliament are from this homogeneous amorphous globalist corporatist patrician blob, we really can't imagine our democratic representatives as being different. Well, all that is rapidly changing - and again, it's Nigel Farage that's doing it.

Mike Greene, the Brexit Party's candidate for Peterborough, is interviewed in the Telegraph, and even in print he is as refreshing as an alpine spring. On the disgraced and dismissed former MP for the city, Greene, himself a local lad, says

"She was a complete joke - had never lived here to my knowledge. I attend lots of business and charity functions and in two years I never saw her. What a let down. She went to prison for lying, came straight out and voted against the 61pc who voted for Brexit. It is absolutely right that she has gone and my passion for standing is to help deliver the democratic vote."

Well, that's the sort of straight talking we can expect from Nigel's candidates - it's the voice of authenticity. What would the representatives of the mainstream parties say if asked the same question? Probably something like

"Fiona has done valuable work for the constituency and served the people of Peterborough well as their MP. Unfortunately, she crossed the line and now is the time for another to take her place. We will continue both her service to the constituency and the strong duty she felt towards those things in which she believed"

You can hear the dififference; one is a crystal clear mountain rill potable at source, the other a polluted lagoon of putrescent sludge unfit for human consumption.

Mrs May herself is the sine qua non of the political class' hollow rhetoric; there has rarely been an MP so accomplished at dissembling, so practised at omission, distortion and misrepresentation. When faced with authentic, honest candidates who have all had careers and successes elsewhere in life before representing the Brexit Party, politicians such as May are exposed for what they are - dishonest betrayers of all they pretend to represent. If this is the start of the destruction of the Political Class, bring it on.

Mike Greene - an authentic political voice

Ten Years On ..

NB - Blogger / feedburner is acting funny at this end. Anyone else having problems please let me know via email (RH column). Ta.
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 The Telegraph is rightly celebrating a decade since the Parliamentary expenses scandal was uncovered, after a hard fight against both the Speaker Gorbals Mick and the Parliamentary watchdogs, who used every trick and turn available to stop us getting the information. That wasn't all that was going on - in London, albeit a year earlier, we were getting ready to elect Boris. Forgive me for recycling that post; it has echoes.

It's strange, I can't wait to cast my votes on Thursday. My ballot card is pinned ready on the notice board and I'm eager for the off. I can't recall when I've ever enjoyed an election so much - perhaps 1979 was the last time. Then, after nearly a decade of Vic Feather and Len Murray and shots of Congress House in virtually every news report the same feeling for a need for change was in the air.

In retrospect, the 70s and the Thatcher years were where the rot started. In 1974 Anthony Crosland told local government 'The party's over' - meaning the expansionist Client State fuelled by the economic boom of the 60s was over, a theme echoes by Keith Joseph in the years that followed. When Thatcher came to power in 1979, the central State expanded its powers beyond levels that had not even been seen during the dark days of the war, at the time the only measure to rein in the trots in the town halls, but ironically the foundation for Zanu Labour's Centralist control freakery from 1997.

Gordon Brown is even less capable than Jim Callaghan of steering the ship of state. As he attempts to tighten his grip on every aspect of citizens' lives, as he tries to convince his dying party and an angry nation that he's in control, the more control slips from his chewed fingers. Damned with faint praise by his own backbenchers, held on his back foot by the media, it's not now a question of if he goes but when. In fact, his Jonah abilities are so acute that I'm convinced every high-profile appearance he'll make between now and Thursday will knock points off the Labour votes - Livingstone must be praying he'll stay out of London.

Oh, and as for Parliament - we only jailed three. It wasn't enough.

Focus turns to Sedwill

Things are moving fast in the breaking down of old conventions. And the old adage about those who live by the sword are playing out - or the rule of karma for the gentler souls amongst our readers. Over the weekend, capo di capi Mark Sedwill has featured more in the press than Gavin Williamson, his most recent victim. In the past, it was considered not the business of the top mandarin and National Security Advisor to be the story.

Unlike Jeremy Heywood and Gus O'Donnell, Sedwill is feared and respected rather than liked. He has made few friends either in the press lobby or amongst MPs, including cabinet ministers. A technocrat, a cyborg security warrior, he is perhaps perfectly suited to the temperament of an autistic Prime Minister unable to connect emotionally with either voters or colleagues. He comes across as an alpha wolf, feeding with the pack, greeting and grooming, but ever ready to curl back his lips to expose his fearsome teeth and assert his primacy. Poor Gavin, who reminded me of our class idiot, ever entertaining but frequently caned, was simply not up to a scrap with a killer.

Thankfully the press pack are not ready to let it lie. They smell a story, and I think they are right. For some time Sedwill has been unable to kill claims advanced by Sir Richard Dearlove and Maj Gen Julian Thompson that the Sedwill-approved Selmayr-Robbins Treaty betrayed UK defence interests. Huawei is a part of the same campaign.

At the heart of it is Britain's future defence alignment - with a choice between an EU-led, Brussels driven military Axis or a US-led reformed NATO defence pact. The popular suspicion is that Sedwill favours the former whilst professional spooks and soldiers favour the latter.

Sedwill was caught out last year when Alastair Brockbank, then a Cabinet Office security adviser and now a member of Robbins' team, was captured on tape giving assurances that the UK would stay loyal to PESCO interests after Brexit, and would find a way to keep paying the EU to develop its army.

For the EU, defence is all about money, contracts and corruption. Military effectiveness is second. When one looks for the beef, there's a whole bullock being carved up right now. A trade off is rumoured whereby the Navy will contract out to Spain the building of new support RFA vessels in a quid-pro-quo for not niggling over Gibraltar. It's also being called protection money.  In Germany, not only are there plans to abandon the US made F35 5G aircraft for the Euro made 3G Eurofighter, and even to contract H&K to develop a new infantry rifle that uses neither the 5.56 x 45 or the 7.62 x  51 NATO cartridges. Europe's big globals sniff the billions of tax money swilling around and want the snouts in the trough to be solely from this side of the Atlantic.

At the helm of the UK sits Sedwill. It is quite right that we should subject him to far greater public scrutiny - largely through televised questioning by Select Committees, the sole recourse that Brexit MPs have left to expose the truth.

Sedwill - Williamson's nemesis

May in last ditch struggle to stop Brexit

The Telegraph reports that the besieged May is engaged in a last ditch struggle to block Brexit. Securing Corbyn's co-operation in sabotaging Britain's exit looks doomed to failure as even the Comrades are unwilling to leave their fingerprints on an act of electoral suicide when they can leave May to achieve this for the Conservatives on her own. The Telegraph claims she is planning a new referendum with three choices -

Mrs May and her advisers are understood to have 'war gamed' the possibility of giving voters a choice of her deal, no deal and remain, though Government sources insisted it would only become relevant if talks with Labour collapse and Parliament forces a vote on a second referendum.

It is exactly this three-way option that is designed to split the Leave vote and allow her to defy the Brexit vote. However, since it is so clearly biased, it is unlikely to be agreed even by the deeply Remainer Electoral Commission - it would earn them opprobrium from across the developed democratic world and mire them in legal challenges. In this form, a referendum would be almost impossible to engineer before the end of October - our final end-date for EU membership. Agreeing it would mean agreeing an extension with the EU.

There are two key problems with May's final defence of her Führerbunker; with Farage set to storm the EP in July, it is unlikely the unelected officials in Brussels will want to prolong this beyond October. The second is that May's political life is limited. The latest poll of members by Conservative Home with 82% demanding May's departure now means her claws will be dug out from the Number Ten doorposts before too long - probably after the EP elections.

The Party's members will only vote for a new Leader who vows to deliver the Brexit we voted for in 2016. The Chairman called upon us to show Unity. Well, I reckon 82% demonstrates a fair degree of bloody Unity.

Theresa May wipes out 1,300 Conservative Councillors

May's done it - she's creeping up on John Major's 1995 record losses for Conservative local government. With 10 councils yet to declare, she's more than decimated Conservative local government; she started with 5,521 local councillors and has eliminated some 1,300 -  24% of Tory Council seats lost.

In contrast Labour look to have lost about 100 out of 2,300 -  around 4%. However, Labour should have been drowning in seats. Last night McDonnell was predicting 400 Labour gains on TV - which meant he was hoping for at least 600.

Now Mrs May must realise this is a damning indictment of her leadership, but never explain and never apologise is the politicians' creed, so both she and the Party chairman have blamed Parliament's failure to pass the Selmayr-Robbins treaty for the debacle. Not her fault at all, they aver.

When the facts sink in over the weekend, when Local Associations stunned by the magnitude of the defeat turn their shock to anger, May's position will worsen considerably. Can she hang on until the Euros in a couple of weeks deal the death-blow? I hope so. I've got a bottle of Prosecco waiting in the cellar for her smug, silly medicated-to-the-eyeballs face trying to laugh off the 3 Conservative MEPs likely to be returned to Brussels.

In fact I'm already feeling quite chirpy - the massacre has somehow cheered me. Surely the end cannot now be far away?

Local elections - Westminster gets a Slapping

Early Doors post - will update as the day goes on 

Conservative and Labour parties have lied their arses off over Brexit, betrayed the nation and yesterday both received a decent slapping from the electorate - nothing earth-shattering, that's yet to come, but a clear enough message.

UKIP have taken an unexpected drubbing, support tainted I think by Batten's infatuation with Yaxley-Lemon. Surprising winners of the night have been the Independent candidates - winning almost as many seats as the LibDems. I suspect if there had been more sensible local independent candidates standing, they would have taken many more seats.

The rise of the Independents in the locals may be a one-off or may presage the start of something magnificent, a grass-roots push for Localism, untainted by the mendacious corrupt foulness of national politics.

And those of you who pushed so strongly for spoiling ballot papers look to have been vindicated. Not, as thought, because the returning officers have to declare the numbers of spoiled papers (which loses some meaning at ward level) but because conscientious, dedicated local council workers have to scrutinise each one individually - a process that takes a great deal of time. As an act of civil disobedience, it works - I've seen a very cross Labour apparatchik on the box frustrated at the delay to his result from the sheer number of spoiled papers that had to be checked, re-checked and confirmed.

May - Corbyn Pact

Now I guess we're getting a taste of how Poland felt on 23rd August 1939.

Götterdämmerung

It is apposite that today marks the anniversary of Hitler's giving effect to his decision to rid the world of his own evil by putting a bullet in his brain. For the previous weeks he had lived in a fantasy world, nominally still running Germany and moving phantom armies and ghost divisions in imaginary counter-attacks as the Germany actually under his control shrank to a few hundred metres around his coward's bunker. It is instructive how those on the verge of self-destruction somehow manage to exclude all realisation of that reality from their consciousness.

There is of course no direct comparison whatsoever between the Leader of my Party and that of the NSDAP; the sainted Theresa is as far from being a fascist monster as the Pope. But they do share the same insouciance when faced with impending self-destruction.

I know many of you enjoy telling me how dreadful Conservatives are, but I think you're mistaken. I think the vast majority of ordinary grass-roots Conservatives are decent, honourable, sensible and responsible voters with a high rate of democratic participation. We are betrayed by the Party leaders and general staff in Westminster. A privileged and isolated elite, these patrician destroyers are in the process of driving a party that has lasted 200 years to its death. All because of their stubborn stupidity, vain self-regard and one incredibly lethal woman - Mrs May.

The great question is whether she can manage to destroy our country before she follows our Party into the flames. By all accounts the talks with Corbyn's Labour have thrown everything into the deal, every red line, every Tory principle, just for the sake of this most incapable and disloyal of women, so that the utterly useless May can leave office after passing a deal. She's past caring what deal - any deal will do. She no longer cares for nation or Party, only for the shattered remnants of what can be rescued as a 'legacy'. 

For Conservative councillors and activists in local government, I am so sorry. You really do not deserve this double betrayal by our own MPs and CCHQ first of Brexit and now of Conservatism.

The stench of corruption from Germany's businesses

Back in April 2018 we ran a fairly lengthy piece on German corruption. The German government had in effect encouraged widespread business corruption with law changes that made it easy to get away with - and for the past decade, it has been pervasive, deep and substantial. We quoted a report that found

A staggering 43 percent of German business executives polled by EY (formerly Ernst & Young) think bribery and corruption are fairly commonplace in Europe's economic powerhouse. That's a big jump from just 26 percent in 2015.

So who cares if most of German business is bent, the nation's judicial system ranks with Greece in terms of probity, shareholder protection is amongst the lowest in the developed world and there is little creditor protection? Who cares that courts and lawyers are beyond the reach of most victims, who must passively take the hits from German corrupt dealing?  Well, we wrote

This deep and endogenous German economic corruption will not play well in the rest of Europe. The UK, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian nations, with low levels of corruption and high scoring of commercial rectitude and probity, will be feeling fouled by contact with German corruption - and will now be adding up the commercial losses that German crookedness has cost them. The southern nations will be aggrieved that they have been bullied, coerced and hectored by a deeply crooked nation wearing a false disguise of moral superiority. And eastern nations such as Poland and Bulgaria, countries Germany has robbed of billions of Euros in corrupt complicity with Gazprom, will be looking at concrete measures to get their money back.

Yesterday Matthew Lynn broke yet another tale of German corruption in the Telegraph. The latest scandal is fraud at Wirecard - a rapidly ascending start-up that replaced the moribund Commerzbank in Germany's DAX index. The Telegraph and the FT are reluctant to be too specific; one suspects m'learned friends are hovering, and even the linked piece in the Anti-Corruption Digest is careful. Lynn writes

We have an image of Germany as a very law-abiding country, and on one level that is certainly true. The streets are safe, and no one can pay a bribe to get out of a parking fine.... yet right at the top of the country’s biggest companies it is starting to look painfully obvious there is an honesty issue.

The Germans are fond of portraying themselves as the exemplars of responsible, socially conscious capitalism. In truth, however, the hypocrisy is starting to become nauseating. There is clearly something rotten within Germany’s business culture – and even worse, no one seems to want to do anything about it.

It is the sort of casual, 'who cares?' corruption that saw Martin Selmayr's crooked appointment to EU capo shrugged off and Germany's biggest industrial names reduced to international gutter reputations no better than bootlegging prohibition gangsters.

So don't be surprised that when the downturn begins to bite, the entire German commercial edifice comes tumbling down - and the German economy proves as much of a paper tiger as did Soviet military might in 1989.

Ships with Dicks

Huawei - Why May must go now

The Huawei mess is yet another mess wholly of Theresa May's making. There is a technology cold-war underway between the US and China, and we are being asked to make a choice. Making a choice is simply something of which May is incapable - and so she has repeated, in the case of the UK 5G network, exactly the brainless false-compromise that has betrayed Brexit.

Let's take the US side for half the network, she has decided, and go with Huawei for the other half.

Thus demonstrating her utter, fatal, unquestionable inability to serve in any great office of State, let alone that of Prime Minister. It is an approach so stupid, so flawed, so as to make her previous worst decision, to try to both Leave the EU and Remain at the same time, appear almost cerebral.

Dear God, how did such cretins ever succeed in getting elected?

Meanwhile
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A consistent Brexit narrative is gaining an wider araldite-like traction; Patrick O'Flynn in Spiked

The Tories, the party of government, are primarily responsible for all of this. We can see now that they installed a Remainer as leader and they negotiated a Remain version of Brexit, behind everyone’s backs. From very early on, Theresa May was sending Philip Hammond and Greg Clarke round to all the multinational corporations to say, ‘Don’t worry lads, nothing is going to change for you’. They promised the multinationals completely frictionless trade, which meant they would be making all kinds of concessions on other things. Brexit voters, on the other hand, were being told they would get the real deal. It’s been a massive con from the start.

 Yep we were right all along about the Globalist betrayers in government.

Globalists - Committed to 'Big State' global government, a world-wide constitution and harmonisation of laws and standards, open borders, the primacy of global economic activity and the global corporatists, worldwide legal, judicial and justice systems, abrogation of personal freedoms to a class of unelected appointed experts who will act in the general good, the growth of the 'citizen of everywhere', the rule of benign technocracy and managerialism over 'old fashioned' democracy, the supremacy of supranational State authorities – EU, UN, IMF.

When politicians betray their electors, all trust is gone

No one should be surprised that a Conservative minister who had signed the Official Secrets Act then leaked the outcome of a National Security Council meeting to the press. When ministers, civil servants and politicians have all betrayed Britain's electors, their self-destruction by bitter schism, internal betrayal, back-stabbing, blackmail and vicious in-fighting could never be far away. We are seeing the consequence of a breakdown of both Theresa May's and parliament's moral authority. A biased Speaker acting against the people, lying politicians discarding their election promises, the inane babblings of unelected effete popinjays such as 'Lord' Adonis (if you could buy him for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth, as my old ex-NCB tutor used to say, you could retire on the profit) and a State media abandoned by half the population for its lies and distortions are all signs that our patrician class are reaping the results of their betrayal.

The commanders have lost control of their occupying army. All discipline is gone, the troops no longer respond to orders. It's every politician for himself - grabbing what they can in their headlong retreat, pursued by a vengeful electorate determined to clear their stink from our democracy.

Our nation is at a point of great danger. These foul betrayers must go - and make way for a reform, a renewal of our demos, for only a great cull of these patrician betrayers can rescue Britain.

Belgian Globalist sneers at Britain

Belgian globalist and MEP Phillipe Lamberts sneered at Britain today, saying

"Global Britain has already happened and it happened through the EU not through nuclear bombs and nuclear submarines .... Brexit is a lose-lose so you cannot make a success of it"

Well, it could be worse. We could be Belgian.

So, the Globalists think they've won. We'll see.

Globalists - Committed to global government, a world-wide constitution and harmonisation of laws and standards, open borders, the primacy of global economic activity, worldwide legal, judicial and justice systems, abrogation of personal freedoms to a class of unelected appointed experts who will act in the general good, the growth of the 'citizen of everywhere', the rule of benign technocracy over 'old fashioned' democracy, the supremacy of supranational State authorities – EU, UN, IMF.

Varadkar's cringemaking letters

It seems that the Teasack is a dangerous man when left alone with some official letter-paper and a biro. It started when his letter to Kylie came to light; in his childish inward-sloping script Varadkar gushed 

Dear Kylie,

just wanted to drop you a short note in advance of the concert in Dublin.
I am really looking forward to it. Am a huge fan!
I understand you are staying in the Merrion Hotel which is just across the street from my office in Government Buildings.

If you like, I’d love to welcome you to Ireland personally

Leo
Teasack (Irish Prime Minister)

Now journalists want to see a letter he wrote to Melania Trump - but the Teasack's officials, wary of more cringemaking gushing being revealed, are so far refusing an Irish FOI request on grounds that it deals with 'International Relations'.

However, we can take a stab at the likely content;

Dear Dear Melania

How wonderful you looked today! How do you get your hair like that? You must tell me your secret. In fact, we should be besties and share all our secrets - I do a thing with yoghurt and cucumber peel which is very good for the private places! I loved your shoes - I could die for the chance of Manolo Blahviks like that, with the cute little bows!

Anyway must dash - Jean-Claude wants me on the phone (boring!)

Leo
Teasack (Irish Prime Minister)

Further requests are to be submitted for copies of the Teasack's letters to Beyonce, Lady Gaga and the blond boy from 'Talent'.

EU protectionism kills trade and innovation

I have commented before on a deeply protectionist, almost corrupt, culture of business in the EU that appears to offer advantages but in reality strangles innovation, stifles growth and deepens a sclerotic inefficiency that costs jobs. My old example was hairdressers; here a hairdresser must serve a three-year aprenticeship before she can pick up the scissors, whilst in the UK a 16 year old straight from school can hang her shingle without hindrance and get creative with hair. The result is that most women here look like their hair is styled by a Soviet camp tonsorist from a 1950s gulag, whilst Brit girls pioneer the world's most fashionable and glam hairstyles.

Over the Easter weekend I recalled another. I've known about this for three years but for some reason haven't written of it; it is the network of 'business only' suppliers here. It's the way in which buyers in these nations are forced to engage professional tradespersons by restricting or preventing other means of carrying out the work. Many firms simply won't deal with you unless you have a business registration number. There is no equivalent to UK Builders' Merchants for example - just the DIY stores or the 'profi' wholesalers. One can't buy glass at €8/m2 in stock pieces to cut yourself but must order each pane in a finished size at €35/m2 from a glass retailer. You can't have a palette of bags of mortar delivered next day or buy rolls of building membrane except at consumer prices.

There are ways round it for some things - Germans are slightly less constipated than Austrians, and consequently it's been cheaper, including transport cost, to order bulk plasterboard and insulation from Northern Germany than from the local stockists of the same-brand material down the road. It's always worth searching .pl and .si sites as both Poland and Slovenia sometimes carry German and Austrian made materials at a substantial discount.

The most absurd result of local protectionism is Travertine. I'm tiling the new bathrooms in Travertine stone tiles, quarried and cut in Italy, just to the south. You'd think they'd be cheap, then; wrong. You can't buy them for under €65/m2 anywhere here - but I can buy the same tiles from the UK for €22/m2. The transport costs were exactly the same. Now explain to me how it's cheaper to truck stone from Italy to the UK and back to Austria than direct to Austria?

Over the weekend I needed to order some German Häfele ironmongery for a project - you may know the name, we use it widely in the UK. No chance. Häfele only sell to the trade - and helpfully offer to put you in touch with a local profi to do the work for you. They even make their buyers sign a declaration to promise they won't resell the Häfele kit.

Well, you won't be surprised that all of these restrictive practices are unlawful in England - not illegal, but contrary to Common Law. Contracts in restraint of trade are unenforceable. My hinges are available here on the grey market for €24 a pair; I've ordered them openly from Birmingham, from a trade supplier, at £9 a pair and will have them within a week.

It's a small thing perhaps, but an irritating barrier to economic freedom. It's one of the reasons for the zero VAT threshold here - you're either a tradesman or you're not, with no room for the sub-threshold activity we have in the UK. But it will kill them - it's a system that can only work in the absence of the internet.   

Attenborough and other Eco-Liars

Readers may recall we don't have much time for Eco-hypocrisy and virtue signalling; back on 2017 we pointed out that Bloomberg's much acclaimed 'greenest ever' building actually cost around 250,000 tonnes of CO2 to build - a Carbon cost that will NEVER be repaid by energy-efficient plant over the building's entire life. It will be demolished as it stands - a vanity project, a rich man's virtue signalling, and a huge Carbon cost.

Well, another Eco-liar, it emerges is Attenborough. many viewers will have seen his heartbreaking footage of an Orang Utan attacking the backhoe that had destroyed its home. As the Daily Remain writes, these forests are cleared and replanted with Palm Oil plantations to satisfy the European market for 'clean' 'sustainable' and 'environmentally friendly' biofuels. He didn't tell you that, did he?

His home destroyed for EU virtue signallers to feel good about themselves

 CHRIST IS RISEN! Happy Easter All.

Lyra McKee's death at the hands of Remainers

The three-year long refusal by the losing Remain side in the referendum to accept the result has so far seen a bent Speaker and betrayer parliament of lying MPs using every effort to nullify the people's choice, the State media and all but one newspaper stoking the fires of anti-Brexit hatred and the illiberal metropolitan elites, who also think that 'chavs' and 'gammons' should be denied the vote, using every means to pervert, distort and disrupt our exit from the EU. Even the Deep State, a cabal of anti-democratic mandarins who will expect honours for their betrayal of a democracy that they should defend, have used all means both legal and unlawful to sabotage Britain's democratic outcome

Nowhere else in the world would such an unconscionable delay be tolerated. No advanced democracy in the world would permit this travesty of governance, this denial of a voice to the 17.4 million who won, to continue.

Tragically, the Remainers, in refusing so aggressively to accept a clear democratic majority, have inflamed weaker and more barbarous minds to violence. The death of Lyra McKee at the hands of a Remainer 'New IRA' gunman is a new low in our democracy.

We will catch and imprison the gunman, but make no mistake - it is the mass of bien-pensant Brexit Deniers, our betrayer MPs who have blocked Brexit, May's toxic Remainer government and our poisonous Remainer media who were equally responsible for pulling the trigger. For them there will be no forgiveness.

Toxic Theresa May election broadcast "cost us another million votes"

I was chatting on the phone last night to a London chum after I had accidentally caught the Conservative election broadcast transmitted just before the ITV evening news. I found it extraordinary that the thing had featured May at all - but half way through, there she was. There was no escaping the most loathed woman in Britain. I suspect about half the ITV audience flicked channels at this point. I mentioned this in passing on the phone later - to be told "Don't! The idiots have just cost us another million votes".

As the Telegraph reports today, Conservative canvassers out on the knock have been trying to pretend that Toxic May isn't the leader of the Conservative Party and that she hasn't completely screwed up Brexit. They have been met by angry shouty Tory voters either slamming the door in their faces or venting their anger over the parliamentary and government sabotage of Brexit. For anyone who missed it, the misjudged May broadcast is HERE. I won't embed it. There's some content for which we won't give blog-space. 

I think the difference between these local elections and the Euros is that for the former, Conservative voters are simply going on strike. They will not turn out to vote, far less to campaign or donate. Even if the Labour or LibDem loonies win Councils from us, who cares? Council tax has a legal ceiling (which most English Councils have hit this year) and stuff that Tory voters don't mind paying for - a decent school in their catchment area, pot-hole free roads and a local library - have either gone or can't be made worse by a Marxist administration. For the Euros, they will vote TBP. 

My guess is that an appalling local government result will galvanise final moves to oust May. I suspect many fellow Conservatives think the same. You really can't blame them.

Toxic May talks down to the nation - election broadcast

Reasons to be Cheerful ..

Ian Dury should be compulsory for all those suffering the Brexit Blues.

Today very briefly, I offer you Farage achieving top place in the pre-EP opinion polling (which as a loyal Conservative I should deprecate cough cough) and Boris achieving top place in an Express leadership opinion poll. Add to this the spectacle of the self-loving little Sadiq Khan making an utter arse of himself in London trying to get down wiv der yoof (actually most of them went to £45k a year public schools and live in Surrey with Mummy) who in turn are pretending to get down wiv der Man.

Enough to make one smile.

Macron's 'Five year' pledge is pure fantasy

Little Macron confirmed his status as a fantasist yesterday when he pledged that repairs to Notre Dame would be finished in five years. He featured on this blog previously for his vision of Europe based on the computer game Sim City, a teenage boy's pubescent make-believe fantasy world.

Using structural steel or reinforced concrete one can create large buildings quickly. Portland cement gains strength rapidly. Gypsum plasters set almost instantly. Off-site manufacturing of entire bathrooms and kitchens which are craned into place is increasingly common. Click-together polymeric components even avoid Tadeusz, his nailbag and hammer.

However, lime mortars and lime plasters mean slow building - as does ashlar or cut stone. Lime mortars cure by CO2, and this can take months. When cathedrals were first built, the building season halted in the Autumn, before the first frosts. Recent work was covered in straw and thatched and left to cure for several months. There are no accelerants for hydraulic lime.

The damage to cracked but uncollapsed rib-vaults at Notre Dame will be infinitely harder to repair than the collapsed ones. Those flying buttresses are presently pushing the roofless walls inwards, and a temporary but substantial steel structure will be needed to stabilise the nave - wind loadings could still collapse the fragile structure.

Not to mention finding sufficient European Oak timbers. As an aside, a Nelson-era frigate took about 600 oak trees to build - and we had a fleet of 900 ships. Those oaks were planted in the 17th century by Pepys expressly for that future purpose. We no longer have a reserve of large structural oaks. For the stone, old quarries must be re-opened, masons recruited from all over Europe and the cathedral close will be alive with the clink of stone on bankers.

My own guess is twenty years. At least between fifteen and twenty-five. Something in that scale. Notre Dame will be covered with a vast temporary roof and be encumbered within by a massive steel structural frame for a generation. Macron is a fool and away with the fairies.

And now for the first of my EP election memes - I return to Twitter for such events with all the enthusiasm of a plumber clearing a blocked toilet.  

Our cultural heritage is more important than foreign aid

I wept bitter tears of loss as I watched Notre Dame burn and in pain pleaded to God for his mercy.

It is early, but this morning the structure still stands, the photographs suggesting the rib-vaulted roof over the crossing had gone, and a further part of the stone vaulting over the Chancel. However, the roof over the Nave is still at great risk - the fire will have inflicted extremes of heat and streams of molten lead from the roof covering, the cold water used to extinguish the flames then likely to crack the stone. The timber roof structure dated from 1220 - 1240 and is alas now wholly gone.

Notre Dame's 13th century timber roof over the rib-vaulted Nave

When the Germans reduced the historic centre of Warsaw to rubble in the last war, the Poles swore to rebuild it exactly as it was, and even under a repressive and authoritarian Communist regime they did so. Every roof tile and window exactly as it was before the Teuton barbarians subjected it to HE. And this was exactly the right thing to do - for our European cultural heritage has a value above rubies; our nations and our peoples, our forbears and ancestors live in these stones and in this wood and in the craft and art and love with which they proclaimed for the world to see our being, our Sein.

Here's a clear message to government and to our pathetic failure of a Parliament, both antithetical to the interests of the People. Our cultural heritage is more important by a factor of magnitude than pissing away billions of our taxes to corrupt third-world tyrants in the name of modish liberalism. Notre Dame is a warning to you; you have a duty to use every effort, take every measure, spend whatever is needed, to secure our own cultural heritage from damage, neglect, negligence or malicious damage. Your failure will not be tolerated.

Mental derangement by Brexit

David Lammy isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. He's also what my old professor would have called an unlucky wight - a blundering ninny with the gift of making himself look foolish. So it's hardly surprising that Lammy should be one of those most publicly afflicted by an increasingly common condition - mental derangement by Brexit.

Boris Johnson writes with an amused tolererance in this morning's Telegraph about Lammy's uncontrolled outburst terming Johnson a 'Nazi'. In Britain this is not an offence. However, living in a country in which calling someone a National Socialist without justification in print or on screen is a criminal offence, it is instructive to contemplate that MP or not, if Lammy had said what he said here, he would find the handcuffs around his plump wrists.

And this in turn leads me to offer Remainers a crumb of comfort. Whilst the UK remains tied to the EU, calling me a Nazi in the comments will make a correspondent liable to detention and extradition using the European Arrest Warrant - if the offence includes an element of racism or xenophobia, which Lammy's jejune mud slinging appeared to have - and an appearance before a Napoleonic court of a sort unknown to British law. Brexit, my mentally deranged friends, will paradoxically free you from this risk.

And that is really exactly as it should be.