Will the crane-hangers or head-choppers win Labour?

With faith voting preferences so clear, it is hardly surprising that the divided factions of the Islamic faith are now fighting for control of the Labour party. Iranian-backed Shia Moslems have just succeeded in dumping pro-Israel MP Joan Ryan, whilst in London and in other large cities Sunni Moslems have succeeded in selecting candidates supporting their branch of their faith. 

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This is a fight for the Labour party funded respectively by the head-choppers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the crane-hangers of Iran. The first stage is to deselect all pro-Israel MPs and replace them with candidates sympathetic to each of the two factions; the recent election to the NEC of nine pro-Islamic, anti-semitic Corbynistas ensures Sunni and Shia can access the policy-making engine of the party and oppose further rule changes that may disadvantage the takeover. 

The changes make even more certain that Labour will become the de facto permanent party of large metropolitan centres, with complete control of local government. The challenge for the Conservatives is to win-over the traditional Labour vote.

Selmayr's crooked appointment

Well, it's official. We all knew that the EU Commission was nothing more than a cabal of unelected officials trampling democracy, conniving with organised crime, losing billions to theft, fraud, nepotism, corruption and incompetence, and that Martin Selmayr's appointment as consigliere to the capo of capos was as bent as a 90p piece, but now the EU have confirmed it themselves.

Selmayr claims to be a clever lawyer, which doesn't say much. So does Blair. But even he must know that the knowing and wilful beneficiary of a crooked act is as crooked as the crooked scrotes who actually did it. Anyone with half a conscience would be humiliated to hell at holding a post gained so corruptly that the appointment would disgrace the equal ops policy of the Klan.

But with his capo reported as being increasingly out of action earlier and earlier in the day due to 'sciatica', the bent cabal from the Berlaymont increasingly need leadership, and Germany is happy to lend this consigliere.

Good luck to them. At least Britain doesn't have to stomach the cesspit stench for much longer.

Russian killer scum must be answered with severe sanctions

Back in March I made a right cods of this. My instinct and my initial post agreed with the official line that Russia was responsible for the attack on the Skripals, but scores of your comments protesting that this couldn't be the case, and the sacking of Tillerson across the pond, prompted me to add a postscript saying in effect 'not proven'. 

Well now I think it has been. And I'm even more disappointed with Russia than I was in March. It wasn't the attempted assasination of the ex-GRU Skripal, but the casual and careless way that Putin's thugs discarded the poison container in a public bin, where it was retrieved by some poor bloke who gave it to his girlfriend; she sprayed it on her wrists and died. These Russian scum are heartless killers, utterly careless of human life, and we must now make their nation pay for their barbarity. 

Both Russians and Africans seem to value human life far more lowly than do we Europeans; Russia killed 30m of her own people in the name of an ideological mistake. This inhuman brutality from the land of the knout, where men were still serfs six hundred years after Britons were free men, cannot be permitted in our continent. I've been happy to offer the carrot, but now is the time to use the stick. Russia must be tamed.   

And I've learnt also that I should have trusted my initial instinct.  

 

Cressida Dick wants to go fishing

Lucy McHugh's murderer remains unconvicted, and Hampshire police think they know who did it. They believe there is evidence on his Facebook account, but to get it, must apply to the US courts for access. Facebook only grants immediate police access worldwide to user accounts in the event of imminent serious harm to a child, or of immediate risk of death or serious injury, for example from a terrorist act. 

Cressida Dick has waded into the debate by voicing her opinion that social media companies should give unquestioned access to the police 'within minutes' of being asked. It is the sort of fatuous saloon-bar comment that is usually the preserve of the deeply stupid, and as such is hardly worthy of serious rebuttal. But this woman, remember, is the nation's senior police officer with operational responsibility for terrorism and the most serious investigations. 

Hard cases make bad law. I am sorry for the family of Lucy McHugh but would ask them to be patient; if there is sufficient evidence to do so, police will be given access to the suspect's account. There may or may not be evidence that will secure a conviction. No one else is at risk, and immediate access cannot reverse the family's loss and grief. There is no pressing reason for change.

Cressida Dick should learn that she polices in a democracy, not in a police State. I'm sure she would like the ability to access whatever accounts are of interest to officers, and allow them to go fishing to take down opponents of the State, critics of the police and those who fight for freedom of thought and expression. If she seriously thinks we should let her, she's lost her mind. 

Hard left tightens grip on Labour

Twenty four hours is a long time in politics. After joking about Eddie Izzard's future  in yesterday's post it emerged he had none - or not in the Labour party, anyway. He failed to hold a place on the 39-member NEC and instead the nine seats chosen by party members all went to hard left Corbynistas. William Hague writes a pile of guff in the Telegraph today hardly worth reading but he writes on the takeover of Labour

... the hard Left does not go in for compromise to anything like that extent. They see Labour as an organisation to be purged rather than a family to be united. For some of them, this is a winner-takes-all struggle in which only a complete victory counts. For others, in the age of social media, opinions count for more than outcomes – politics is a noticeboard rather than a chessboard.

His main appeal, for Brexiteers to 'compromise' - that is, to give way on all the red lines, is an appeal for the UK to be a partial EU member. Hague may also believe it's possible to be just a little bit pregnant, or to have lost one's virginity only partially. He's turned sadly into a patrician, establishment fool whose best lines are behind him. 

Labour's nemesis, the deeply destructive and archly corrupt Blair, is still prostituting himself for the crazed dictators, bent ministers, mafia-businesses and murderous gangs of the former Soviet statelets. His latest efforts, paid for by Azerbaijan, are to secure a landing place for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline. The Italians are naturally wary, and no doubt Blair will have to put the Blair Lie Factory into night shifts and overtime to contrive enough persuasion to overcome the objections. He must mourn the old Italian political hierarchy, when it was just a matter of directing sufficient bribe-money in the right direction. I spent £3 in order to vote for Corbyn as a 'supporter' precisely to destroy what Blair had created. Mission accomplished, I think. 

As I wrote yesterday, I think Corbyn is as finished as May, but also that both will be kept temporarily in power for different reasons. May because ditching her before March risks the national interest, Corbyn because Labour have no cuddly alternatives who can maintain the yoof vote. 

With the Robbins Plan now dead in the water, May needs to be strongarmed into accepting the ERG position. Once she has done so, we can ditch her.

Boris returns to Europe

Boris Johnson uses his Monday Telegraph column (£) to politely dismiss both claims and assurances given in Theresa May's weekend piece for the paper and Nick Boles' 'Better Brexit'. With conference approaching (and with the prospect of Arron Banks in attendance) Boris is clearly laying the ground for his keynote bombshell. On May's contrived Brexit belligerence he writes;

 I just hope you aren’t one of those trusting souls who still thinks it could really go either way. The fix is in. The whole thing is about as pre-ordained as a bout between Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy; and in this case, I am afraid, the inevitable outcome is a victory for the EU, with the UK lying flat on the canvas with 12 stars circling symbolically over our semi-conscious head.

So much for the Robbins Plan. On the subject of which, Boris alludes to the sabotage of Brexit by the enemy within;

It is now clear that some in the UK Government never wanted solutions. They wanted to use that problem to stop a proper Brexit. Solving Ireland would mean a solution for Dover-Calais, and they didn’t really want that. They wanted essentially to stay in, and to create a Brexit in name only.

And though the Damascene conversion of Nick Boles from fervent Remainer to Chequers-loathing critic, his preferred alternatives find little favour

The answer is not to lurch for a Norway or EEA option that is actually more humiliating than Chequers: it would mean taking even more rules from Brussels (on services, for instance) – and does not fix Ireland.

All of which usefully prepares the ground for a true alternative to the Robbins Plan, now being finessed by Boris and his cerebral chums of the ERG, and to be served up to the sound of trumpets and at the optimum moment. And that's his advantage - he's in control of timings, whilst Mrs May is subject to the timings of others. 

As for our Jew-hating Worzel Gummidge across from the Treasury benches, I have a feeling in my water that his moment has passed. He stopped being a thing sometime over the weekend. He's missed his tide, his star has turned. Yvette Cooper for one is working hard from one of her refugee-free homes to whip up her press presence; Labour's ladies at least have decided it's time for the Party's first female Leader.

Personally, my money's on Mz Eddie Izzard.

Frank Field and Trad Labour

I had a decent taste of Trad Labour in the People's Republic of South Yorkshire in the era of the miners' strike. The name was a joke, a pisstake of the Yorky Wolfie Smiths who postured and blustered and, like all empty pots, made much noise. The real heavy lifting was done by quieter Labour councillors and officers often drawn from the men that voters respected at work; pit deputies, mining and quarrying mechanical and electrical engineers, tutors at the local Tech, steel smelters, tool makers, railway engineers and the like. I liked those calm, confident men for whom nothing was impossible. They were committed to their class, to their county and to their country. They could coil a steel sheet as thick as your thigh, but it was the unexpected that fazed them. Emissaries from that there London came down to tell them not to say "Find us a cup of tea, will you, Pet" and similar things. They retreated into silence, and into the vacuum came Wimmin with green hair and Pronounced Views. 

I've never met Frank Field, but I like him. Just as I liked Tam Dalyell, whom I did know. Tam chaired the all-party Parliamentary Archeology group at the time of the Iraq war, and we enjoyed a lively correspondence on the dangers of damage to unique sites in Iraq by both sides, and I've kept a score of his brief notes scrawled on Commons compliments slips with which he encouraged, fortified and thanked those with whom he worked. 

It was no surprise that on the news of Mr Field's relinquishing the Labour whip yesterday, little Owen Jones proved his moral diminutiveness with a jejune, sulky, petulant Twitter post.

Well, I can guess the reaction of the Trad Labour lads I knew. They always had a very fine understanding of what was proper behaviour - and for a 76-year old MP who has represented his constituency since 1979, they'd know damn well that even his most bitter enemies in Parliament owed him gracious words. Field complained of Labour 'nastiness' and Jones has helpfully just proved his point.    

Knives, Thugs and Conditional Fee Agreements

By all accounts, the Met Police did well at last weekend's Notting Hill carnival. Knife arches, proactive and aggressive policing and lots of arrests meant not a single additional murder to add to London's score of 100-odd already this year. It came at a cost however; police officers have been complaining loudly at the roughness, shoving, elbows, rudeness, scuffles and minor sprains, strains and abrasions that they suffered. There was a fair bit of physical contact, and the officers didn't like it. Given the choice, and unless prodded from behind by their sergeants and commanders, many would go out of the way to avoid a tussle. Even with a certainty of a minor offender going free. 

I'm afraid getting 'stuck in' has always been part of public order policing. Men and women officers need to be decent rugby players not shrinking petals - and thankfully, many are. But with ineffective, confused commanders such as Cressida Dick, the Met is carrying too much dead beat dead weight, officers avoiding conflict and carving out cushy jobs for themselves. Dick's judgement has been questioned on everything from overseeing the shooting of a Brazilian electrician, proudly claiming 900 officers are patrolling the internet for 'hurty words' to scanning the opinion columns of the Daily Telegraph for unprofessional use of words and publicly pronouncing on those pieces that have passed her scrutiny. Her intellect is neither universally admired nor trusted. 

Below are two similar photos of officers being kicked whilst carrying out their duties; one at a student riot in Red Lion Square back in the 60s, the other from yesterday as officers attempted to arrest a man in a branch of McDonalds. 

The first was published on the front page of virtually every daily newspaper and attracted a tsunami of public disgust and questions in Parliament. The second features deep inside the Daily Mail behind the Kardashians and has gone virtually unnoticed. What's happened to our righteous anger at assaults against the police - our police - who are supposed to be us in uniform? Or have their bosses been responsible for alienating them from public support? The struggle between a centralising Home Office and Localities for control and ownership of the police has been going since the 60s, and the Home Office is winning. They want a national police service wholly answerable to the Home Secretary, which would be a disaster for both democracy and public trust in the police. 

We can't solve the local-central issue, but there is something that the government can do, quickly and I believe with cross-party support. One of the fears that police officers have is that if they react against public provocation, they will be at the mercy of some smart-arse lawyer such as the loathsome and now disbarred Phil Shiner scabbling damages from the taxpayer's purse and fat fees for themselves. And not only the police; soldiers, NHS staff, council bin men and just about anyone in the public sector is an entry-point for these reptiles into raiding our taxes to stuff their corrupt legal mouths with our gold. They advertise everywhere for 'victims' of the public sector. It's a scam and it's costing us billions - and only the skunk lawyers are getting rich.

Surely there's a simple solution. We must legislate rapidly to proscribe civil actions against public sector bodies from Conditional Fee Agreements ('no win no fee'). It was of course Blair who introduced this pernicious error in the Access to Justice Act 1999. Like much of what he did, it was wrong, and has created a disastrous legacy for our country. If you slip on a grape in Tesco and hurt your back, fine - CFA is a good way to go. If a copper sprained your finger whilst wrestling a Zombie knife from your hand, fund a civil action yourself. No legal aid. No CFA. 

Catholic church must now give control to the laity

It is simply dishonest of the Pope to pretend he didn't know about sexual abuse by Catholic clergy against children. Believe me, there is not a single Cardinal, not one Archbishop, nary a bishop and not a Monsignor who is not fully aware of the appalling evil these servants of God have inflicted upon the faithful.

Yes, I know because I attended an expensive Catholic boarding school run by brothers of the De La Salle order, and though personally subject only to feral violence from several and the vituperative hate of one of the bastards to whom I wouldn't heel (may you rot in Hell, Brother Alan), not all of my fellow pupils were so lucky. Sexual abuse of boys by the De La Salle brothers was widespread and well-known to a Catholic hierarchy that bought-off complainants, shifted abusers from school to school and used threats, violence and intimidation to keep us quiet. Men now in late middle age are only now facing the abuse of those times. One of my old school alumni has a quiet website where victims, some of whom believed for decades that they were alone, can find confirmation of the institutionalised abuse at the hands of the bastards.

Well, folk are resilient, and I guess most of us got over it. They didn't destroy my faith, or my Catholicism. I can say the words of the Nicene Creed in truth and belief. The abusers are now pathetic octogenarians or nonagenarians where they still live, no doubt dreading the fate of their souls. But please don't pretend the church wasn't fully aware of the abuse. Or that the fake sincerity of the Pope's 'regrets' can put an end to the matter.

Spiritual celibacy is a gift from God that comes naturally and rarely to a few. From shamans to gurus and other holy men, it occurs universally and when it does it is valued. It cannot be forced or induced. The Catholic church now faces a revolt from we, its owners. And we demand change. Clergy should be encouraged to marry. Women should be consecrated to the Priesthood. And more, we can no longer allow the church to be managed by the same people from whom the laity need protection. The management of the church organisation must be secularised.

In Austria and Germany, Catholics must by law pay a 1% income tax to the church. Failure to do so attracts criminal law penalties like any other tax evasion. It is the one Hitler law that both nations kept; Hitler confiscated the vast tracts of church land - agricultural, forestry and city centre real estate - for the State and in return granted the church the right to levy an income tax on the faithful.  It's what enabled the Bishop of Limburg to spend £26m on building a new palace for himself. So here in particular church members have a greater right than most to take over the governance of the church.

The current Pope is I believe a gift in time; few love him, and Francis is a Pope whom few Catholics respect overmuch or with whom few would regret clashing. It's the perfect moment to push reform. Bring it on.  

Arron Banks

Arron Banks, writing in the Sunday Times:-

Ukip has served its very valuable purpose. Its former leader, Nigel Farage, recently joined the Leave Means Leave campaign founded by Richard Tice, who co-founded Leave.EU with me. As a Tory-led organisation, it brings Nigel one step closer to home, and if we get a Brexiteer Tory leader, the right could be reunited. I’m sure he is in contact with leading Conservative figures, shaping things behind the scenes.

Ah OK. I can see where the money's going. 

Corbyn not the only politician who wants to control the media

Corbyn is endowed with a quality that one can describe as either brave honesty or naive stupidity. In coming clean with his desire to see the State establish control not only of mainstream broadcast and print media but also social media he is only saying what many of the political class both left and right only dream about. 

Corbyn's Big Idea is a nationalised British Digital Corporation, to ration our bandwidth and licence and monitor bloggers and authors of private websites, to broadcast State News, with its own PeoplesPedia to replace Wiki, and a British National search engine, that can filter out all those inconvenient references to Fabians advocating the gassing of the poor or the mentally ill, or saint Nye Bevan's gulag apologies when Stalin was slaughtering millions in the Holodomor. Somewhere in Corbyn's twisted reasoning, I'm sure, the entire internet is the work of 'Zionists' and must be purged to provide a home for Socialist purity. 

Finding a government or opposition front bencher who speaks for freedom of thought, speech and expression is as rare as finding teeth in a hen. If you're a politician, generally you loathe and fear not only the press but these days the ease with which anyone can post an opinion and even the proles get the same 280 characters as a cabinet minister. The dags and liggers of the old, dead politics equate universal media access with the rise of populism; not only are the wrong sort of people using democracy, they aver, but ordinary people are discussing things without our moderation!  

Well, the genie is out of the bottle and won't be recorked. They may look to China's grip on the internet all they like - it's too late for the West. About four hundred year too late. You see, Lilburne, Winstanley, the Levellers and many others already laid their necks on the block to secure such rights - and we will not see Parliament erode them. 

Brexit for Freedom - the next battles

Not all readers of this blog voted Brexit, and that's fine. Not all readers are members of political parties, but among those that align with UKIP or Conservatives, one or two of you are Old Labour, and that's fine, too. Because those things that unite us are far more important than those things that divide us. It was a paragraph in Sherelle Jacobs' Telegraph column today that gave me cause to pause and think about those values - those common values that keep me writing here and stimulate you to respond. She wrote -

.. we need to talk about “grassroots activism”. From verbal puritans turning free speech into a hate crime and invasions into our online privacy to our boarded-up high streets, people feel their personal agency and sense of belonging slipping away. Brexiteers should be campaigning for individual freedom, not just from Europe but in the humdrum of everyday life. They should be redefining community in local terms.

Well, as a Localist and a democrat, that chimes with me. My use yesterday of the term 'Patricians' for those we oppose is neither novel nor original. We were also reminded (hat tip Mr Drew) of Cicero's support of the elite patrician class against Caesar, whose leadership of the populares brought change to Rome that presaged her greatest years. 

Above all, Brexit offers hope to the young, those worst affected by the bigoted illiberal authoritarianism of the new puritans that seeks to censor, forbid, restrict, govern, ration and throttle what they say, think, listen and respond to on their 5G devices. Robert Nisbet was an American sociologist inspired by Burke and de Tocqueville  rather than by Marx or Engels;

Revolt has trumped tradition, and the price is paid daily with distinctively modern pathologies such as social isolation, moral uncertainty, and personal anxiety. True freedom, Nisbet insists, is not found in the empty spaces of an omnipotent state, but in a pluralistic society where a variety of social groups and institutions intermediate to the individual and the central state have real functions or responsibilities and, by definition, enough autonomy to carry them out, thus offering individuals a sense of purpose, identity, and belonging. The continual weakening of human association bonded by kinship, ethnicity, faith, work, locality, voluntarism, private pursuit, or shared interest by a jealous, power-hungry state creates what Nisbet calls “loose individuals.” These are untethered or atomized souls drifting from the safe harbor of community into the torrents of an impersonal, bureaucratized state that cannot, from its elevated seat of vertical power, replace the intermediary social bonds and moral community it has dissolved in ever pressing its claim for still greater responsibility for each of its subjects or citizens.

It is for the victims of the well-meaning but suffocating State that Brexit stands - again, mostly the young. The obsession of the modern state, here and in Europe perhaps more than anywhere, with constructed 'equalities', rights but not responsibilities, freedoms 'to' defined behaviours but not freedoms 'from' interference and restriction, multiculturalism and diversity, all of which actually rob the individual of the freedom to seek and form alliances and social institutions that have both authority and effectiveness. The modern citizen has become the casualty of an increasingly interventionist, paternalistic state always seeking to increase its power and influence for the sake of 'the Public Good'.

Nisbet wrote;

The greatest single revolution of the last century in the political sphere has been the transfer of effective power over human lives from the constitutionally visible offices of government, the nominally sovereign offices, to the vast network that has been brought into being in the name of protection of the people from their exploiters. It is this kind of power that Justice Brandeis warned against in a decision nearly half a century ago: "Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the governments' purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

When I look at the capos of the EU, at the Patrician class in the UK, at our political, judicial, public service and journalistic elites, I see these well-meaning zealots that simply don't understand the harm they have done, the freedom they have destroyed, the young lives they have manacled to their altars of illiberal authoritarianism. 

If Brexit means anything it means not only throwing off the chains of the EU, but emancipating the people of Britain, our youth and our future, from the slavery of these well-meaning inquisitors. With legislated fire and regulatory torture, they destroy lives whilst seeking to conform the human spirit into their didactic ideals of perfection.

Brexit is not the end of our battle. It is the start of another campaign.

Hague joins Leadership debate

William Hague joins the Conservative leadership debate with a plea not to make Boris Johnson leader by changing the rule book. It is a cri de couer from the deeply establishment ex-leader of a predominantly Remain parliamentary party to an overwhelmingly (and growing) Leave party membership. It also acknowledges unwittingly that party members can force rule changes if the parliamentary party remains unwilling to change; Arron Banks did not pluck the figure of 10,000 new ex-UKIP Conservative members out of the air; it is also the size of petition specified in the party constitution needed to trigger the start of a rule-change process, and I believe a coded warning.

Hague instead asks the party to trust its MPs to make the right choice of Leader.

However, the party Board may hold an easier and quicker answer to changing the process used by the '22 Committee - which opens the possibility of a compromise that may not be the 20-member open ticket, but will not be a process that excludes Boris from the membership ballot.

Given recent choices by the parliamentary party, Hague's plea is a big ask. Hague is also opposed to the involvement of members in 'open primaries' on the basis that the adoption of the process in the US gave America Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton - what he calls 'appalling' choices. Yes, William - but popular. His plea is deeply patrician, wholly establishment and antithetic to change, and will no doubt find favour amongst supporters such as the CBI and the global corporates. I doubt it will find much support amongst a Conservative grass roots membership who may themselves find the actions of many in the parliamentary party equally 'appalling'.

Robbins No.2, Jonathan Black, in power stance, selling the Robbins Plan to Cabinet members

PTSD Adonis and 'Howler' Grayling - your pain is real

You know I really wasn't jesting when I dubbed Adonis and Grayling with their blog monikers. I have the evidence of semi-hysterical radio and TV interviews with pitched, stressed quavery voices, staccato delivery, mental confusion and so on. Plus an assortment of tweets so ill-advised, jejune and illiberal that only some dreadful cerebral confusion could have caused them. And Since neither of these fine gentlemen could have been at the pharmaceuticals, I reasoned, they must have been overwhelmed at the Brexit vote collapsing their secure little universe.

Now it seems I am academically vindicated - Poltico EU claims

For Britain’s pro-European middle classes, Brexit is akin to a psychological trauma which has left many unable to behave rationally, according to two leading experts. Far from being hyper-rational observers concerned only with what is economically sensible, many have morphed into the “Remainiacs” of Brexiteer disdain.

They are acting no differently to what psychologists would expect from those suffering from chronic anxiety caused by loss of control and insecurity, Dr. Philip Corr, professor of psychology and behavioural economics at the University of London, and Dr. Simon Stuart, a clinical psychologist, told POLITICO.

The shrinks have even coined a clinical term for the condition - Brexit Anxiety Disorder, or BAD. But is it curable, or will 'PTSD' and 'Howler' stay that way for life?

Those suffering anxiety might return to more ‘normal,’ ‘rational’ behaviour if the context around them changes,” he said. Clinically, however, this is often a forlorn hope, because contexts don’t usually tend to change enough.

“In that case, what I’d try to do is help the person become more flexible — in short, to learn how to live with the anxiety, tolerate the uncertainty, and work out how they can continue to engage with what truly matters to them in life, rather than getting caught up trying to change things they can’t change.”

In other words, Remainers may just need to relax and get over it.

Modifying the powers of the 1922 Committee

Apologies for a techy Conservative Party post, but I suspect this will be of interest to all other new or rejoining members. The Party Constitution is a fairly simple document for anyone used to dealing with commercial or construction contracts. In relation to election of a Leader, s.3 of Schedule 2 requires;

Upon the initiation of an election for the Leader, it shall be the duty of the 1922 Committee to present to the Party, as soon as reasonably practicable, a choice of candidates for election as Leader. The rules for deciding the procedure by which the 1922 Committee selects candidates for submission for election shall be determined by the Executive Committee of the 1922 Committee after consultation of the Board.

In other words, as suggested below, the 1922 Committee could currently conspire to withhold from the Party membership as a whole the most popular candidates.

Christopher Hope reports in the Telegraph about efforts by a fellow Party member, John Strafford, to amend the rule to allow any MP with more than 20 nominations from fellow MPs to go on the ballot paper to the membership.  

I am sure all MPs and members of the party who, as I am, are committed to openness, transparency and full democracy will support these fair, equitable and sensible rule changes, which will benefit the image and electability of our Party and of our candidates.

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.

Nice whistle

Congrats to whichever Boris fans have found and distributed this meme - it's a decent photo, the suit fits, the hair is combed. He looks ... different.

Hmm. 

The vindictive spite of the PTSD Remainers

Many of you will know our fellow blogger Pete North, and whether you agree with him or not on Brexit I doubt there are many who would deny him a voice in the debate. Except of course those of the hysterical, vindictive and spiteful Remain side, who pay scant regard to democratic open debate or free speech. 'Howler' Grayling's legal serfs are pursuing Pete North for damages he certainly hasn't got - read the full story on his blog at  http://peterjnorth.blogspot.com/2018/08/ac-grayling-when-eccentricity-becomes.html

M'learned friends are welcome to scour this blog, but to save them the trouble, my own mentions of the carpet-chewer include the following;

...Barnier, and rude mechanicals and noises off as Andrew Adonis, AC Grayling and the other establishment PTSD casualties set up a louder than usual whine. Blair of course will be spreading his poison from Brussels today... 1.3.18

There is a concerted remainer media offensive this week; AC Grayling continues his painful public meltdown and so is deemed unfit to face the camera or microphones, but Andrew Adonis has already delivered a rather hysterical and disconnected plea on the 'Today' programme..4.1.18

At home PTSD Andrew Adonis and AC Grayling are ever closer to complete meltdown, Adonis throwing petulant tantrums at the BBC for no longer being 'binary' in its output; i.e. for no longer reporting that 'Remain' has an equal chance of winning. 9.4.18

... those of whom to be suspicious are the hysterics, carpet-chewers and effete womblies such as PTSD Adonis or 'Howler' Grayling who support the vile federasts ...23.6.18