Get ready for an election

Barring a disaster, skulduggery or external events, Boris is near certain to be asked by HM to form a government in about four weeks. Parliament is then due to rise, returning on 5th September for about a week before rising again for the conference season. The next session is due to run from 9th October to 7th November - over the time of the expiration of the Art 50 extension. 

As many sage commentors are saying, we cannot deal with Brussels until we have a government with a majority in Parliament. The Lords is also in urgent need of reform to strip it of the political establishment who have 'captured' the house - meaning even if Boris succeeds in establishing a Commons majority, a Brexit solution may still be blocked by the Lords. For this particular problem, only threatening the Lords with creating 400 new Brexit Conservative peers overnight will offer success in the time available (NB I'm available).

Conservative constituencies across the country must decide now whether they need to deselect their sitting MP or not; a new party chairman appointed by Boris will surely work with Local Associations to ensure that every Leave constituency in which we Tories have a good chance is equipped with a Leave PPC.

We must also decide whether we will refrain from running in the mostly northern, Labour constituencies in which the Brexit Party can take best advantage of their Leave majorities - better a Brexit MP in the House than a LibDem by default.

How leaving the EU works in the middle of all this I simply don't know - but with the Commons as it is now tightly deadlocked, only the sharp edge of an election will undo this Gordian knot. In terms of constituencies, we have about 410 leave seats to 240 remain seats - and must ensure the next parliament reflects this.

Then there is the matter of an unbiased Speaker whom members can trust and in whom the voting public can have confidence. We may not be rid of Bercow until a GE. 

Of course given the national emergency looming, Boris may decide to cancel both the MPs Summer holidays and the conference season and engineer the necessary vote of confidence sooner rather than later- having a new Parliament in place before 31st October.

Whichever way it goes, I cannot see us moving without an election. So get your stout knocking shoes re-soled, all, and be ready for anything.  

Rhetorical question I guess ...

For whom, dear readers, should I vote?

EU woes upon woes

Comments to the post below that affirm Germany's effective management of the EU are all quite correct - as we have written here many times before. Yet it is the shackling of Germany to France that is at the heart of the EU dynamic - and that dynamic is currently undergoing one of its periodic stress tests. Comments doubting Germany's ability to rearm are also, I suspect, correct - based on my own experience of many German young people, albeit Bavarians, men and women who eschew militarism in any form. But of whom few would not support Germany's using her economic clout to achieve continental dominance. However even that is seriously in doubt - as AEP, who terms the Eurozone the 'global .. chief parasite" writes in the Telegraph. -

For anyone not up to speed on the shenanigans in Brussels, it's time for turn and turn about amongst the EU's unelected officials. The various presidents are up for appointment by their chums. For Juncker's job, the Germans want an utterly mediocre, unimaginative compliant nobody who will do as their other German, Martin Selmayr, requires. The French want their own man in the job. Or rather the bullish Dane, Margrethe Vestager, who shares Macron's agenda. However, her getting one president's job may not happen if another president's job is given to Verhofstadt. Clear?

With the downturn already biting at the EU, and no tools left for the ECB to use, and with the Donald ready to deliver a few well-placed kicks in terms of car tariffs and exchange rate action, with a potential oil-price crisis on the horizon, potential global sanctions against Nordstream II, Italy on the verge of launching a parallel currency and an irritated Visegrad group, the EU may find itself lumbered with a dreary and mediocre bunch of compromise candidates in the top officials' jobs at a time when authoritative leadership is needed to survive.

Mark Rutte has today warned the UK that Brexit will give us problems. Not a fraction of those that are about to descend on you, chum. 

EU hubris will reap destruction after Brexit

There was a reminder from Malcolm Rifkind of all people on Politico EU of all platforms of a risk of Brexit I had hitherto not clocked -

France and Germany know that for Europe to implement effective policies with maximum impact regarding Russia, China and other regions, the bloc will have to work closely with the U.K. — even after it is no longer part of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council and loses its power to veto EU initiatives.

In much of the foolishness, the idiocy, the recklessness born of hubris to which the EU is so susceptible - an army, a foreign ministry, their own seat at the UN, the panoply of a State - it has been the bulwark of UK common sense that has counselled against the grossest stupidities. Now of course they can act like kids in a sweet shop.

Juncker has been whining that he had no official presidential palace in which to host visiting dignitaries and neck cognac served by liveried flunkies. He has, quite rightly, been accommodated in a hotel when in Brussels. It's clear what he wants his legacy to be.

And without the UK veto, they are liable to mess up again in the Balkans, reignite the war they fomented in Ukraine and earn the vicious spite of Erdogan. They will send gobbets of EU army (four men, three flags and an EU plaque) where they are calculated to cause most resentment, and create mayhem as an 'enhanced' observer at the UN.

I predict that without the restraining hand of the UK, the little men from little nations playing with a power they cannot comprehend will reap their own destruction. Puff, hubris and braggadocio will bring them down. As it has always done. 

Will the EU try to get the Egmont Palace, currently used for event hire by the Belgians?

Peterborough - Labour voting fraud

It seems increasingly certain that electoral fraud won Labour its tainted Peterborough seat. An authoritative report in the Sunday Times which has been repeated in other sections of the serious media has started the discovery of widespread evidence of vote rigging and postal vote abuse. There is also clear evidence, as Conservative Home writes

In it, whilst he conceded the importance of tackling in-person impersonation and voter intimidation, Jackson focused on the challenges posed by postal vote fraud, as well as the evidence behind the Electoral Commission’s belief that it appears more prevalent "in areas which are largely or predominately populated by… those with roots in parts of Pakistan or Bangladesh"

The Electoral Commission's 'target list' of constituencies subject to enhanced scrutiny are largely those which have substantial Pakistani / Bangladeshi populations.

Whichever Conservative candidate wins through to Number Ten, they MUST push through reforms needed to regain for our electoral system the probity that an advanced democracy needs. This means not only radical reform of Blair's postal vote free for all, but the correction of our Electoral Quotient to the +/- 5% level essential for Western democracies, if not the +/- 3% adopted by advanced democracies such as New Zealand.

I'm aware of the deep anger and heat on this matter - so to ensure comments remain within the framework, I'm switching to comment mod for this post. Apologies in advance.

Just more of the same

I avoided last night's Oxford Union debate in which four undergraduates and a brown lad from the local grammar school debated wheelie bins or something. There's only so much one can take of these people. I'm desperate for a terrier puppy at the moment and have been spending time watching videos of dog tumbles, straining to discern minute differences between half a dozen wriggling pups in a litter. Pointless, of course.

More usefully, the Conservative Party's funders are reported to be reaching out a hand to the Brexit Party - if only to establish with whom they need to talk. It's far, far too early for anything else. If there is an electoral pact it will be born of need and desperation when a GE is imminent - and subject to the agreement of a Leaver PM and Cabinet. The best thing our big party funders can do right now is follow the grass roots membership and withhold any finance until we have the leader we need.

Meanwhile Mrs May is reported to be trying to commit billions of tax spending to try to rescue a legacy for herself in an act of such outrageous self-interest that she should be imprisoned for it. Let me tell the Prime Minister straight - you have been sacked. Put your personal stuff in an archive box, return your pass and your work mobile, and leave the building. Do not use your email account. Do not sign off on anything. If you delay, we will have Security escort you out of the building, which will be embarrassing.

Are mandarins plotting a coup to put Puppet Stewart in Number 10?

Sedwill has broken cover to reassure the public directly that he is cuddly and harmless - which worries me greatly. This is not a proper thing for the Cabinet Secretary to do at any time - but bang in the middle of a Conservative leadership election, it is downright suspicious.

And now even the Telegraph is pushing weird no-hoper Stewart as a potential PM - but the latest meretricious column, by Bryony Gordon, is heavily censored with all comments forbidden. They know how their readers will respond.

The Deep State may not be willing to accept the nation's democratic processes. The son of a senior spook, no matter how disturbed, who can be manipulated and the leadership election sabotaged to put him in power as a puppet of the grey men sounds absurd, tinfoil hat stuff, but these are incredible times.

Not one non-establishment online opinion favours Stewart - but he's come out of nowhere and is being bigged-up by the establishment media. Not one Leaver MP is backing him. He shouldn't even be in this contest. Something is going on, and it smells as rotten as week old mackerel.

Telegraph reader comments on the final encomium to the weird puppet for which they were allowed are below -

Britain - the world's champion of freedom and democracy

Today I offer only an observation, but one that stirs within me the embers of pride and a certain feeling of rightness. It is this. Despite having endured decades here at home of historical revisionism in which our nation's history is mis-portrayed as a uninterrupted reign of oppression and conquest, the freedom and democracy protesters in Hong Kong are unified behind a single symbol of freedom - the British flag.

I can only hope that this catches on - and after Brexit, campaigners everywhere across the globe for freedom, democracy and justice will adopt our national flag as an enduring symbol of those fundamental rights.

That's all.

Is it fair for this man to be in politics?

From time to time matters of real concern enter the robust and challenging world of politics. Today, having watched Rory Stewart's  performance and pronouncements I am more concerned than ever for the lad's mental heath. Those close to him should advise him to withdraw, rest and repair what can be repaired. It is simply not fair to allow a personality this vulnerable to be in politics. 

So far he has threatened a coup in the event of a no-deal Brexit, setting up his own vanity parliament somewhere near to the Palace of Westminster. Elsewhere he has made it clear he is an illiberal and authoritarian Statist. Stewart is quite simply wholly unsuited to democratic politics; he is a vain popinjay imbued with an immense sense of entitlement, a privileged scion of the patrician class, capable of displaying an alarming petulance when he doesn't get his own way.

Would you really want this disturbed little Nero anywhere near our nuclear codes?

It's the 19th Century again

I've drawn parallels here before between the political convulsions the developed world is undergoing and similar convulsions in the mid decades of the 19th century I do so with a degree of confidence that, just as we avoided 1848 in the UK, we will do so again. Serfdom didn't end in Austria until 1864 - around 350 years later than England - and its traces linger discernibly in the sparse alpine area in which I live. That's another post. This is about imprisonment. 

There came a point in the 18th century when we cut down quite noticeably the number of people that were hanged for trivial offences. The idea of prisons hadn't really taken off, so at first we sent the minor offenders as convicts to America, but that nation's independence put an end to it from 1776. Then, between 1788 and 1868, we sent them to Australia instead. Or rather we didn't. The following is from Mayhew and Binney's Criminal Prisons of London (!.pdf)- available online and I recommend it to anyone interested in penal policy.

Not only was the river wall packed thick with the corpses of convicts but so too was the land within the Arsenal - they filled that first, before they ventured out onto the marshes. The first burial ground, later the site of the Armstrong Gun factory now converted to extremely expensive luxury flats, was packed so full of deliquescent convicts that the stench sickened the arms workers.

We sent 164,000 convicts to Australia. But between 1776 and 1868, for 92 years, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 a year died on the Woolwich hulks alone - so nationally I am quite sure that many more convicts died awaiting transportation than were ever delivered to Australia. Disease, starvation and overwork killed them just as certainly as the hemp rope, but left the public with a warm feeling of virtue.

Today we have as many people in prison as we had in the late 1970s. Our population now is somewhat greater, so one could argue that we have made some advance. But for 50 years, not much. 'Porridge' may have reflected life inside in the 1970s but does not do so now. Drugs, Islamism, violence, suicide, privatisation and the utter disdain of the Uber and Netflix generation (even the Guardian can't really be arsed) for the welfare of the prisoner have made our prisons as offensive as were the Hulks to reformist Victorians.

When the Inspector of Prisons has to instruct the Secretary of State for Justice to take action at a prison in which 10% of inmates are at risk of self-murder we have reached a low point. Gaulk may be more concerned at his imminent deselection for the betrayal of his party's election manifesto, but even he must now take action.

And we must all be concerned. And we must not forget our obligations in the Corporal Works of Mercy - to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to give shelter to travellers, to visit the sick, to comfort the imprisoned, and to bury the dead.

The 'tump' at the upper left is marked by the twin masts in the engraving above 

Drugs? Pass the spliffy, Doris

I have a confession to make. Up to the age of about 35. I smoked a fair bit of whacky baccy. Yes, I did inhale - as deeply as I could. It started with Radio Caroline - from the circles of the oceans to the centre of your mind I think the jingle went - actually a leaky trawler somewhere off Clacton, but the 'pirate radio' thing plus hours of pure stoner programming plus natural teenage rebellion did it for me. Leb Red, Roccy, Afghan black, crumbly blonde - we were aficionados, hashish snobs. Between listening in intent rapture to vinyl on the hifi (those album covers came in very handy) and laughing to the point of actual pain, we put the world to rights. This blog I think is a legacy of the latter memories. No, I didn't touch class As. Ever. It was a matter of principal. After my mid thirties, hashish just put me to sleep quite quickly. Buying a sixteenth  therefore became something of a wasted investment; settle down, roll a spliff, open a beer, put a Steely Dan album on and Zonk - wake up three hours later with sofa-neck.

I suspect many of my age cohort, we 'gammon' Brexiteers, have a common experience. We really don't give a toss about drug use. It's the hypocrisy we can't stand; Gove, a cocaine-snorter (a tedious breed whom I avoid and will not befriend) who banned teachers for life for doing the same. No wonder Govey babbles so rapidly - it's his coke muscle memory. Shame he didn't learn either morality or honour from his Scottish foster parents. He was and is a shit.

Adultery we can also accept, if not condone. Even - whether from John Gielgud or George Michael - cottaging in public lavatories induces no more than a slight pursing of the lips and half shake of the head in puzzlement. Likewise porn. What we can't accept is kiddie-fiddling, dishonesty and hypocrisy - bad news for professional politicians for whom the latter two have become almost qualifying traits.

So Govey, your campaign is dead. Not for being a dreary unimaginative coke-tooting ponce, but for your two-faced hypocrisy and the fact you were forced to admit it before the Sundays splashed the story.

BBC Licence fee Referendum - pensioners vote to end concession

"It's no good, Tarquin, we can't sustain our levels of Executive Remuneration Packages for the thousands of skilled managers we need here at the BBC if we give licence discounts to the over-75s. We have to end it"

"Damn. That means inviting public responses - every charity will oppose it, as will MPs and politicians and of course the old buggers themselves. We won't get it through."

"We can, Tarquin - if we hold a Referendum!"

"Are you mad, Tony? If we ask 'Should we end free licences for the over 75s - Yes or No?' you know damn well what the answer will be"

"Ah, but we can finesse it. Ask several questions. Use first and second preference. I know some clever people who can design the thing for us so it looks fair, but will give us the 'End it' answer we want. It also has the advantage of nullifying all the 'Change' petitions and submissions from the charities - a referendum outranks everything else"

"Tony you're a genius! You deserve every hundred thou you get!"

=======================================================
BBC Consultation - We will do what you decide

Should we-

(a) Keep free licences
(b) Abolish free licences
(c) Change free licences by (i) giving over-75s a 50% discount OR (ii) raising the age to 80 OR (iii) means testing the free licence? 

Results - 84,761 responses were received

1. Keeping free licences was most commonly ranked 1st (48%) followed by Changing (37%) and Abolishing (15%)
2. Changing was most commonly ranked 2nd (55%) followed by Abolishing (25%) and Keeping (20%)
3. Abolishing was most commonly ranked 3rd (47%) followed by Keeping (30%) and Changing (23%)

When combining first and second preferences -

4. Changing was the winner with the greatest number of first and second preferences (44%) 
5. Keeping the discount had the second highest total of 37% whilst Abolishing had the third highest total at 19%

It is quite clear therefore that we now have an unassailable mandate to apply means testing of free licences for the over 75s. The old folk themselves have decided.
==========================================================

"Tony! There's a case of Lanson on its way to you. You're a bloody miracle! Any chance these people of yours can do us a second Brexit referendum?"

(NB the central section was taken almost literatim from the BBC's reporting of its consultation outcome at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/consultation/age/traverse.pdf)   

Boris promises to bribe the public sector

There is one part of the nation's demographic lost to the Conservative Party - the public sector. Home to agile, graduate, socially liberal Remainers, our schools, universities, hospitals, councils and every body or NDPB funded by tax are now solid Labour or LibDem territory. Not at the bottom, of course - not the young constables, cleaners, cooks and clerks - but the professional and executive ranks, say from £40k upwards, and all teachers and clinical practitioners.

These are the cohorts of our society least affected by globalism, most adapted to take advantage of AI changes, and who have suffered least from 'austerity' - which has meant closing libraries and school kitchens, not making managers redundant. They are not users of food banks, not customers of payday loan sharks, not precariously balancing food, heat or clothing against each other. These are the young, privileged new elite of Britain; the Netflix and Uber generation, with car leases and new apartments in Peckham who take one main and two weekend breaks abroad each year, visit restaurants and have surplus cash for entertainment.

So Boris is proposing to give away £10bn in tax benefits to them by raising the tax threshold from £50k to £80k. And it's quite clear who he's promising to bribe - as the Telegraph reports

Those who found themselves paying the higher rate included teachers, senior police officers and some nurses. The Conservatives subsequently increased the threshold from £41,900 to £50,000 in response to the concerns of Tory MPs. Mr Johnson's plans, however, go significantly further.

Personally I no longer have a stake in this - my post-retirement income is under the higher tax threshold. But I do care deeply for our nation, and for the welfare of all our people. The shittiest part of this public sector bribe is that the lowest-paid will fund it; the £10bn "cost of the move will be funded partly by increasing employee national insurance payments .." reports the Telegraph. Boris. you dickhead, take a look at this ONS chart -

Since 2008, the value of earnings of those on median pay (£28,400 in 2018 according to the ONS) has actually fallen.

This is not 'One Nation' Conservatism. This is naked, calculated subversion of public funds to bribe those who have electorally deserted the Conservative Party. I could not, this morning, cast my vote for Boris Johnson. For now, my vote is with Raab.

Update
=====
I've just split the effect by region (GOR) from the ONS tables. Below.
There was a news comment earlier that puts the gross cost at £20bn - net cost £9.6bn. Boris claims this money would go back into the economy; hmm. I suspect at this level a lot of it will go into savings, pensions and investments rather than into the tills of High Street shops, so perhaps a limited benefit for the country as a whole. And bugger all good if you're in the North East though your NHS GP (~ £100k) may look happier.

Reith lectures - ECHR

The third of five Reith lectures this year by Lord Sumption is a corker. For any of you willing to invest half an hour this weekend I commend most strongly listening to the podcast - a transcript is also available. Both are slightly marred by the lightweight inanities of Anita Anand (who she?)

Rarely do we get the chance to hear from either non-politicians or non-social media polemicists on matters of urgent threat to democracy. Here we have one of Britains most senior judges setting out with impeccable reasoning the threat posed by judges to what we have understood hitherto to be the preserve of democratic processes and decisions.

He also exposes the most fundamental difference between the supranational globalists ever seeking to expand the powers of unelected authority and those of us stalwart in our defence of democratic rights;

For those who believe that fundamental rights should exist independently of democratic choice, dynamic treaties have an obvious attraction. They create a source of law which is independent of democratic political choices. The European Convention on Human Rights is a classic dynamic treaty.

For a heavyweight case for the UK's withdrawal from the ECHR and the ECtHR - not Lord Sumption's first choice - here are all the arguments. Anand's irritating vacuous twittering is only a very minor impairment. Don't bother with the Q&A segment at the end. 

The first two lectures are also well worth hearing - challenging tangentially the moral certainties behind both Remain and Leave - and not always comfortable. There are two more to come - the next with a US (Washington, I think) audience on the subject of written vs. unwritten constitutions .

I haven't paid the TV Tax since 2015, but here at least is some of my money back.

May - good riddance

I can't wallow, I'm afraid, in the sort of political class hypocrisy that today will heap May with faint praise. Today she goes as Party leader, and good riddance to bad rubbish. There is, in all honesty, not one single positive thing she's achieved. Everything she touched turned to shit. A woman of no talent, no real ability, uninspired, mediocre and without charisma, it seems she got as far as she did on a mixture of raw cunning, ruthlessness and deluded self-love. She has been Britain's worst PM since Lord North. We are better off without her. Sadly she remains in Number Ten like a bad smell until we have replaced her.

Meanwhile the shock of Peterborough should be a reminder of what will happen to Britain if May's abject failure to Brexit is continued by her successor. If we're not out by 1st November - in time for the most glorious firework displays since the millennium - the Conservative Party is finished.

Don't waste a breath of sympathy on May. She's cost this nation scores of billions, created schism and disharmony, prolonged the uncertainty and has split families and workplaces. If she truly loved this nation she would have gone after her disastrous 2017 election. No, there is only one thing that May loves - herself.

Now she's gone, there are two more destructive narcissistic liggers we must bring into our sights -

Reprise

My late father was amongst those men whose real war started on the Normandy beaches on this day 75 years go. His battalion landed on Sword at 10am - their objective Caen. However, the Germans, as we know, mounted a vigorous defence and they took many casualties. My father was wounded by mortar shrapnel in the battle for the little village of Cambes on the 9th, and missed the taking of Caen. He was back however for the liberation of Belgium and the Netherlands and the fierce battles for the Rhine approaches and for the crossing itself - then onward, finishing the war on 4th May, nearly eleven months later, with the battle to take Bremen. A light infantryman to his boot soles, he must have appreciated Lord Wavell's words

The Infantry man always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, and he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms ... So let us write Infantry with a Capital I; and think of them with the deep admiration they deserve. And let us Infantrymen wear our battledress like our rue, with a difference, and throw a chest in it, for we are the men who win battles and war.

Other service arms are available, as they say.

Father's gongs - familiar ribbons that will be on display today

 And following yesterday's post I can't resist quoting AEP in the Telegraph today -

Does it worry me that US companies might gain access to NHS contracts? Of course not. Matt Hancock’s disqualified himself from the Tory leadership with his tub-thumping warning that "the NHS is not for sale".  Mr Hancock, the NHS already is for sale. Private firms secure 70pc of NHS clinical contracts. They run hospitals. European companies bid under EU procurement law - which recently forced an Oxford NHS trust to farm out its PET-CT imaging for cancer to a sub-contractor against the vehement protest of doctors. Europe’s 'big pharma' are not exactly pussy cats.

What is the ground - other than visceral anti-Americanism - for preventing US companies from also bidding for work, and bringing world-class competition? It does not undermine the NHS as a social welfare institution to put this tendering process on the table - which is what Donald Trump surely meant after correcting himself - any more than it is already being undermined. The Government can still regulate prices and the quality of service as it does now.

Chlorinated chickens do not bother me either, perhaps because I ate so many during a large stretch of my life in the US. The EU’s food safety regulator EFSA says there are “no safety concerns” at relevant doses. I happily eat Spanish salad leaves from supermarkets soaked in the same "pathogen reduction" rinsing.

Oh, and I understand there's some event in Peterborough today in which the Conservative Party does not seem to be involved. So hardly worth mentioning, then. 

NHS? The EU has already put it up for grabs

Two grunts have been emerging from the ill-educated Remain sector over the past few days - 'NHS' and 'Chlorinated chicken'. I guess like most silly Remain prejudices, these fears are born of ignorance and the mendacity of those who know better stirring up the pot.

Firstly, every supply, service or works contract for the NHS above a threshold value must currently, under EU law, be offered to every eligible firm in Europe. Threshold values are currently £181k for all supplies and services and £4.5m for works contracts. Search the OJEU database as I have just done, for NHS tenders, and it will return 514 pages of results, 34 contracts on offer from just yesterday alone, including the vasectomy service in Bristol and the pathology service in Worcester;

Now if a medical firm from Romania can bid to snip the testicles of Bristol's men, why not one from Boston or LA? If a Hungarian path lab operator can bid to analyse oncology samples in Worcester, why not one from Virginia or New England?

There's no rule that says contracts have to be awarded out of the UK - only that the bid evaluation process is open, fair and transparent (until you get to stuff over £20m or so - which is where EU corrupt practices, kickbacks, EU organised crime involvement and so on kick in) and Bristol's vas deferens could easily end up being severed under hands that have travelled no further than a few miles from the Avon.

Nor is there any rule that medical services performed in-house by the NHS' 106,000 doctors, 286,000 nurses or 22,000 midwives in commissioning groups, trusts and GP practices should be up for grabs - and no UK/US trade agreement will act to involuntarily privatise the NHS - God knows, the EU have been trying to do this for years without success. Just that instead of / in addition to EU firms bidding for contracted-out sevices and the supply of materials and equipment, US firms can also do so.

As for chlorinated chicken, well, if you've bought a ready-to-eat salad pack from your local supermarket in the past few days, you will have eaten chlorinated lettuce, in many cases using  chlorine wash stronger than that used to rinse Septic chickens.

So the Remainers can carry on grunting - hollow pots and so on.  

Britain's future is over the oceans

When they tell us that we are now in a multi-polar world, I think what they really mean is bi-polar. Or as our resident pedant may instruct me in the comments, simply polar. Sure, there are a number of aspirants in a runner-up class - India, Brazil, Russia, the EU27 - but the N and S are unequivocally the US and China. And we must all pick a side. It will never, I hope and pray, come to a 'hot' war, but economically, culturally, morally we are in conflict. What has emerged quite clearly since the Referendum is the extent to which support for the EU depends on a visceral hatred for the US; you've read it on here, in the comments.

This EU27 hatred for the US is by no means universal - Poland and Italy are fans, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany are not. However, it's what is driving their wriggling to escape NATO whilst continuing to enjoy US and UK military and intelligence protection for free. Nick Clegg's hollow claim that the EU has no interest in an army has been proved vacuous if not mendacious, as supranationalist ranting zealot Verhofstadt has been crowing with joy at its formation. And joining the extremists of the EU27 are our domestic extremists - Corbyn's followers. Their leader is not even a man himself who can be entrusted with intelligence secrets because of his close and enduring links to terrorist organisations.

The current State visit by the US President is a clear demonstration of where our preference should take us; away from the EU27, pro-China in its alignment and deeply compromised by Chinese penetration of every single one of their piddling accomplishments - including Galileo, which Beijing can shut down at will with the click of a mouse.

Our own future is not just across the Atlantic but over the oceans - as it has been since the 16th century. The past forty years was a blip, a wrong turn taken by political pygmies. The events of this week will do more than anything else to demonstrate that.

Minor earthquake in SW1

There's really only one story this weekend and it's not about politicians but about the British people. The latest Opinum poll for the Observer gives the following;

The paper reports that Electoral Calculus estimate that this vote in a GE would give TBP 306 seats - short of an overall majority - and the Conservatives 26. This Thursday's bye-election in Peterborough may give Farage his first MP and send shock waves throughout Europe. Without detracting from Nigel's accomplishments - which are momentous - these figures are less about Farage than about the British people, and the direction in which the country is headed. Politicians are either acutely sensitive and adjust their policies to the path the voters are following, or they are history.

And here I have a message for my Parliamentary Party. Sweeties, you're away with the fairies. You're buggering about playing games with the Leadership contest, with Florence of Belgravia and every other hopeless idiot using it as an aid to self-love and a marker for aspiration to future ministerial preferment. You're all on the verge of being swept away by a Teal tsunami. I hope you've got other careers on which to fall back (Florence can walk back to Afghanistan for all I care). 

Meanwhile dear Mr Trump is worth listening to; if you have a sensitive ear you will have detected a minor shift in tone. When speaking ad hoc and off piste, Donald is increasingly channelling his senior White House advisors. What we are hearing are the headlines lodged in his memory from secret Presidential briefings. Despite SW1 still trying desperately to pretend Nigel Farage doesn't exist and everything's still the same, the possibility that he may be the UK's next PM but one is clearly one of the US government's planned scenarios.

Democracy deniers - a paucity of intellectual rigour

The Euro Idiots de jour are Maciej Kisilowski and Anna Wojciuk - dissident Polish academics at odds with the democratic choices of their fellow countrymen. To read the risible trash they have penned for Politico EU is to gain an insight into the deep delusions of the Refuseniks, the democracy deniers.

Democracy, they insist is a sort of disease that can be 'contained' by right-thinking illiberal authoritarians such as themselves. Like Communism. And the way in which they can 'contain' democracy, they state, is to use the anti-democratic powers of the unelected EU to bully, harass, victimise and thuggishly sanction any signs of emergent democracy across Europe. To use, in other words, exactly the methods used by the Soviet Union to repress emergent freedoms in its satellite nations. These two Poles would no doubt have reasoned that Lech Walesa should have been sent to a gulag right at the start, for the good of Poland.

The utter vacuousness of their intellectual reach is exposed by their projecting their own stupidity onto Europe's democrats -

"You cannot “keep migrants out” and pay for the growing number of pensioners." 
Yes you can. That Europe needs millions of migrants to work the factories that will shortly all be automated was a Globalist's myth, a con. Open borders policies have one aim only - to help destroy national identity and to establish a Globalist hegemony.

"As a mid-sized nation-state, you cannot both “take back control” and strengthen your position in the global economy."
Ah, the Orwellian mantras that slavery is freedom, poverty is wealth. Only giving away your sovereignty to a supranational authority can make you a viable nation, they claim. This is utter bilgewater and like their previous point is offered without any supporting evidence. In fact there is much evidence to the contrary.

"You cannot make government more accountable to “the people” at the same time as you destroy independent institutions."
Again, a paradox against reason. By rejecting unelected anti-democratic self-appointed illiberal supranationalists you become less democratic, they claim. What they mean by 'independent institutions' is institutions free from any democratic control or oversight - like the organs of the Soviet state.
  
"And you cannot build an innovative economy while stifling critical thinking."
But surely under their Sovietised. illiberal and authoritarian anti-democracy, stifling critical thinking - i.e. thinking that opposes their bigoted orthodoxy, is the entire point of the 'containment' they are advocating?

This drivel is the thin intellectual gruel of the EU's cerebral giants. No wonder EU universities are utterly third-rate, with not a single EU27 university in the global top 20. And no wonder so many Poles are flocking to the UK to experience what world-beating universities, with four or five in the global top 20, can demonstrate to these illiberal democracy deniers.