The laxative benefits of political churn

Paul Goodman of Conservative Home is, on the face of it, a textbook professional politician. From student political organiser to researcher, SPAD and MP, to ex-MP and political writer, with a bit of journalism on the side, the broad brushstrokes of his career are little different to the vast homogeneous mass of professional politicians with no real experience outside politics. He stood down from parliament during the expenses scandal. Not, I hasten to add, because of it. The Telegraph's only finding at the time was that

Paul Goodman claimed modest mortgage interest payments on a second home in High Wycombe. Underclaimed by £1,384 in 2006 and was reimbursed by fees office

Paul wrote one of those pieces yesterday for ConHome that strikes one immediately as 'right facts, wrong conclusions'. He notes the number of losses from the Commons, both recent arrivals and seasoned veterans, and postulates

Meanwhile, the shift from the elected representative to the professional politician model has been good news for constituents.  The days when the local MP could ignore the latter, or visit his seat only occasionally, vanished a long time ago.  That’s the effect of consumer competition for you over the years, with the emergence of the SNP, UKIP, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats. We are moving from a model in which many MPs sat from late youth until early old age to one in which more serve for one or two terms – as the Editor of this site did.

Though I can't quite reconcile this with the quote someone has included on his Wiki page - "a House in which professional politics predominates, entrenching and empowering a taxpayer-dependent political class distinct and separate from those who elect them...for better or worse, this future Commons isn't for me". It seems he can't quite decide between the old patrician class and modern career professional politicians.

There is, of course, an alternative option. Neither.

Having read and digested the tens of thousands of comments on this blog for over ten years, the one thing I am sure of is that voters despise equally both members of the patrician political establishment and the privileged elite of professional politicians. They have both been responsible, as Paul quite rightly points out, for robbing the people of their rightful political power -

If you send much of your power outwards, to the EU; sideways, to the courts; and downwards, to the devolved institutions, then don’t be surprised if voters become resistant to backing you and funding you – especially in the wake of the Iraq War, “expenses” and the financial crash.

Paul mourns the loss of middle-ranking ministerial experience from the Commons because of recent 'churn'. I think he's wrong. Why entrench the failures, betrayals, sell-outs, mendacity and inadequacy of the past forty years? Why retain experience when clearly they have not only been getting it wrong but acting contrary to the interests of the voters, largely to their own benefit?

I have often pointed out that the only one of the six demands of the Charter of 1838 remains unmet

1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
2. The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
3. No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
4. Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
5. Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
6. Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period.

Bribery and intimidation - today the corrupting effect of establishment power, and the brutalising consequences of social media - remain a threat. But it is a frequent clear-out of the Commons that will keep it healthy, and not the institutionalising of status, privilege and entitlement.

We are in the process of reclaiming power - the power they have given away - winning it back from the EU, from the courts and from the unelected quangos and NDPBs, from anti-democratic and unaccountable supranational rule-makers and from an elite who have captured the State. It will take time to get a Commons that reflects these aspirations, but we are making a start.

And then none of them be missed

The cull begins - the long awaited clear-out of the Commons. Like Brexit itself, it won't be an event but a process, but we have 56 who are going even before the starting gun is fired. Only Kate Hoey, I suspect, will be missed. 

It's slightly strange, but they're mostly nobodies. MPs who hold themselves in such high regard, who imagine themselves to be so special, whose inflated sense of self-worth has led them to disobey the country for three years, are for the greatest part nonentities. Their delusion is caused by the power of parliament, by their mistaken belief that it is them, individually, rather than the institution that is important. Dissolution will bring them crashing down to earth with enhanced gravity.

The election itself will continue the clear out. I will have the record button primed for the declaration from Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford - if Yvette Cooper makes it through I'll eat my hat. Though Portillo himself has grown into a pastel-coloured gay icon since his defenestration and the extent to which, in government, he was loathed has faded with time, I doubt many in 2019 will be so fortunate.

Nigel makes the front pages of both the Telegraph and the FT (for any who are not aware, the FT is the pro-Remain, pro-authoritarian organ of the globalists, and shares writers with 'Marxism Today') and the debate you had here in yesterday's comments has moved into the columns of the MSM -

Whilst the Guardian is clearly upset by our description of the Conservatives yesterday as 'the people's party led by the people's Prime Minister delivering the people's choice' - today their front page screams 'Corbyn: The Tories don't represent the people, we do'. The election on the 12th, of course, will show who really represents the people. I doubt it will be Mr Corbyn.

ELECTION

Thay have all, finally, agreed to a general election.

To the dismay of his MPs and the probable fury of the Noncefinder-General Mr Watson, who hid away when the vote was taken, Corbyn has caved in to the people's demands for a general election. He had little choice. With the LibDems and the SNP ready to trigger an election, it would not have been a good look for Labour to have opposed this and lost. Shortly after Labour's humiliation in parliament, Corbyn did a little-girl skippy dance down the carpeted steps of the palace for his Instagram followers, but his glum, drawn face gave the lie to his Prozac-cheerful words. Helping elect Corbyn to the Labour leadership was the best £3 I have ever spent.

So we're off. In a day or two the short campaign will start in earnest and everyone who wants all MPs to lose their jobs will have their wish; they all cease being MPs when parliament is dissolved. Many will not return. I suspect there will be many Portillo moments on election night. It is the last we will see of Grieve, Letwin, Soubry and the other wreckers, and worth it for that alone. 

Both the Labour Party and my own party I suspect will try their hardest to pretend this is a normal election, fought on the grounds of an end to austerity and a new spend bonanza for the entire public sector funded by Wonga for Labour and a war on crime with increased police and prison spending, plus a cash boost for the NHS from the Conservatives. Voters, I think, won't be fooled. This will be the Brexit election, and each of the parties' narratives on Brexit will be critical - currently they go something like

Conservatives - Pro Brexit; the people's party led by the people's Prime Minister delivering the people's choice

LibDems - Will not accept withdrawal from the EU whatever the people say or how they vote, and however illiberal and anti-democratic this appears

Brexit - Standing for a no-deal Brexit and, er, that's it really

Labour - Anti-Brexit in London and the metropolitan areas, equivocal in Wales and the North. Official policy is to campaign for a Blair Referendum, negotiate with the EU then stick their tongues out and run away and revoke Article 50. Or something. No-one actually knows.

Of course this has utterly buggered all the pollsters' models and predictions. The telly Swingometer will have to be 3D. They won't have a clue how the most important election since the war will pan out. Anything is possible.

Of course I've avoided the matter of how TBP and the Conservatives interact; we just don't know. Personally I favour an election pact, but the Prime Minister has ruled this out. If by standing against eachother, the parties split the pro-Brexit vote and Corbyn and the Libdems win, neither Farage or Boris will ever be forgiven and it will destroy both TBP and the Conservative Party. I'm waiting for CCHQ to indicate how they intend to go.

Housekeeping
===========
It's a good time to re-state comment guidelines. Your comments on the issues in the posts may be as robust as you like short of defamation or illegality but link-dumping and trying to hijack posts for election prop will earn deletion - as will crude insults and slurs directed at me.

Right. That's all. Carry on.  

Nemesis of the haute-remainers - John Gray

Today is yet another crunch day for Brexit. So many crunch days for Brexit have come and gone that I am not getting excited; either the Commons agrees an election and the EU deigns to allow an extension, or something else happens. 

It's always good to take the chance to step back and look at the bigger picture. The Telegraph is absolutely right today in drawing attention to an essay in New Statesman America by John Gray. As the unfortunately-acronymed NS is core leftie-thinking fodder, it will be uncomfortable reading for many of those Gray terms 'haute-remainers' - the Blairs, Adonises, Grieves and others. I commend it to you.

I have said all along that Brexit was not primarily about the EU but about a wider democratic correction in the UK that re-balances power away from an establishment elite* and back to the voters. This year the BBC, in a rare act of political prescience, featured Reith lectures by Lord Sumption covering the effects of State capture by this political elite on the relationship between law and democracy. Gray's focus is the way in which the Conservative Party has reacted and changed, as it has throughout its history, to ensure it comes through intact. The same cannot be said of parties embracing the haute-remainer cause.

Gray's essay is too crammed with succinct and tight analysis to usefully select any single paragraph to quote summation, so here then, as a sample of the essay rather than a precis, is just one -

The haute-Remainer mind is an example of what the 20th century’s subtlest and most original conservative philosopher called political rationalism. Michael Oakeshott (1901-90) used the term to describe totalitarian ideologies such as Leninism and National Socialism, but he was clear that any kind of political tradition could succumb to rationalist ideology – including conservatism. (His own version of conservatism – an ultra-liberal variety, in which the ideal role of the state was that of an umpire – itself did.) The core of rationalism in politics is an idea of politics itself. Rather than being a practice in which people negotiate the terms on which they co-exist with one another, politics means the imposition of an idea. The idea is self-evidently true; anyone who questions it is ignorant and stupid, or else wilfully malignant. Though they claim to embody reason in politics, haute-Remainers cling to a view of the EU in which facts are secondary or irrelevant. They fulminate on the dangers of Brexit without ever mentioning that Paris has been convulsed by riots while Barcelona has become the scene of mass demonstration, burning streets and police violence. No mere fact can be allowed to cloud the vision of a sacred institution.

Let's see what the day brings.  

* E.g, at random, from 8/4/2010, and in many scores of posts before and after ..

"The Downfall of the Political Class
The public have been way ahead of the moribund old parties on this; we've been sick of the loathsome political class for some time. This hasn't stopped either party from fielding blow-in dags who have no experience other than politics or political organising for seats in the next Parliament, but their time too will come."

An independence ref for Scotland may be a deal worth doing for Brexit

Charles Moore in the Telegraph this morning answers many of the points raised by readers here over a general election. The polls show that Brenda has changed her mind, old tribal loyalties have been over-ridden by Brexit, a divided Labour party split by bitter infighting and an electorate that understands why Boris needs an election now (unlike Heath in the Winter of 1974, who didn't) all mean that now only an election can move Brexit forward.

Moore suggests that a deal with the SNP may be the way to get a Commons majority for a simple Bill to over-ride the FTPA (and vote down any Remainer wrecking amendments). He doesn't say what would induce them to agree to such a deal - but we can all guess that the price would be Boris agreeing (if he wins the election) to a second independence Referendum. Polls also suggest that the SNP seats could increase to 50 - at the cost of Conservative and Labour seats there - surely also an attractive inducement.

My own feeling is, why not? Scotland's status as part of the United Kingdom is a matter for the people of Scotland. Personally, I think the demand for independence is less than people think. I suspect many Scots are quite alive to Sturgeon's calamitous period of governance though they like the idea of self-government. They will be aware of the massive failings of self-government now coming to light - most being due to the SNP's eyes being bigger than their tummy, as nanny used to say. And if there is a suspicion of an independent Scotland repeating the disaster of the Darien Scheme, by say creating a crypto-currency or gambling Scottish tax revenue on the craps tables at Vegas, Scots may well decide to keep ahold of nurse for fear of finding something worse.

Wargaming the options looks like being one of those games of 3D chess. And everything depends on what the EU Council decides next week. 

Would Scotland want to hand her fishing waters over to the EU?

Rogue parliament -v- The People

They're Frit; hiding behind the walls of Westminster afraid of democracy, terrified of of the electors, scared of the ballot box. Of course they don't want an election - their rogue parliament and their bent little Speaker are the democracy-deniers, denying the people the outcome for which we've voted. Poisonous betrayers and collaborators such as Bloody Blair, Grieve and Starmer are using wealth, privilege, power and lawfare to frustrate, sabotage and undermine our democracy, to deny the people's democratic rights.

They twist, turn and wriggle like greased snakes, using every wile, every deviant artifice, every low trick to frustrate Britain's exit from the EU. The pretence at not wanting to leave without a deal is exposed - they have a deal, they even have time to debate it in parliament, but no. They don't want to honour their election promises, honour their pledges - they will twist, cheat and wriggle, swallow their solemn pledges, their manifesto promises because their simple aim is to deny democracy.

This rogue parliament has placed itself in opposition to the people of Britain. We must clear it out, flush the odious feculence from our parliament. We demand an election NOW.

VE 75th anniversary drink-up
=====================
I hope I will be able to raise a glass next May. My late father walked from Normandy to Bremen, and although it took him eleven months, from 6th June 1944 until May 1945, his tardiness was I think excusable as the entire Wehrmacht was trying to kill him at the time. 

A step closer to robot coal mines in Yorkshire?

The scientists and energy experts amongst you can feel free to chuckle at what is probably my naivety, but I keep returning to a notion that surfaces in my mind from time to time. Again this morning, a  greenie on the Today programme has been explaining how we can phase out domestic gas boilers and cookers. Well, we could look at conversion to eco-friendly gas fuels such as Hydrogen, she said.

Add to this the wall that electric vehicle roll-out will hit when there is simply not enough electricity being generated to replace petrol and diesel fuels; I have long suspected that Hydrogen fuelled vehicles are the VHS of sustainable transport, and battery cars are the Betamax technology.

But where do we get all that Hydrogen from?

Well, it's what we always used to burn in our homes before North Sea gas came along. Older readers will recall the mass-conversion of domestic cookers to methane when that fuel came on line - surely it's also possible to convert them back, if we reverted to a mix of Hydrogen, Methane and CO in our gas networks?

Coal gas, or Town gas as it was called, as almost every town in the country had its own gas plant, is obtained by heating coal in the absence of air. And we've got billions and billions of tons of coal under our feet. And now of course the dirty and dangerous work of getting it out of the ground, even from under water, can be done by robotic mining machines, piloted by technicians sitting at their terminals on the surface.

It may still be a pipe dream, but I feel that we are creeping closer and closer.

Robot miners are already in use ... in China

Lords escape exposure - for now

It seems to have escaped the notice of the mainstream media that even if the government's WA Bill made its way through its Commons stages in the three days allotted, it was doomed to destruction in the Lords. I suspect that the government knew this all along - and was giving the saboteurs and collaborators in the upper house the opportunity of condemning themselves in the eyes of the people to the same extent as have their establishment cronies in the lower house.

Radical Lords reform has now become truly a popular cause. We all want rid of the hundreds of failed politicians, their mouths stuffed with taxpayers' gold, failed Eurocrats, deep state perverts, anti-democrats, democracy deniers, bloated quangocrats and corrupt political funders who have bought their ermine, who share the red benches with effete placemen incapable of winning a seat in parliament and those who traded their honour and dignity for the dross of a devalued title. The entire upper house with a few honourable exceptions has been captured by the privileged elite, the political establishment, Europhiles and supranationalists, globalist dags and liggers. As it is currently constituted, it would never have passed the WA unmutilated in a million years.

Our democracy is ill-served by such a venal, defiled assembly of crooks, thieves, liars, peculators, barrators, hypocrites, seducers and deceivers, the filth of the eighth malebolge. They must go. Paradoxically the hereditary peers, before their chamber was polluted with the carrion of the political gutters, did a fine job of revising and amending legislation; these real peers, free in life from the need to lie, cheat, steal and defraud to achieve wealth and place, were as a caucus as dedicated and knowledgeable a body of pubic servants as one could have desired.

Well, we have lost the chance it seems to have this foul and putrid nest exposed to the sunlight of public scrutiny as part of the Brexit denouement. There will be another occasion.

Saboteurs and their bent little Speaker intend to destroy democracy

Yesterday in the Commons we saw yet another unedifying and shameful exhibition of the chaos created by the bent, biased and bullying parody of a Speaker who infests the Chair and the dags, fools, malcontents, anti-democrats and illiberals who pollute our democracy. My contempt for them is unbounded. They are lower than the soles of my shoes. They share not one single redeeming quality, not one ounce or scruple of responsibility. They have betrayed the voters to whom they lied, betrayed the democracy that gave them their privileged places and betrayed the nation that suckled them.

This has gone far beyond conventional political rivalry between two factions both of which share a fundamental allegiance to a system and parliament. The Remain faction, led by their bent little Speaker, have abandoned the responsibility of democracy.

They are anathema and should be cursed and denounced throughout the land.

The enemy within - the democracy-deniers

I have posted here previously on my concerns over a potential lack of confidence in democracy amongst the young. Several polls have suggested consistently that there is a gulf between the younger and older in our nation in the degree to which the fundamentals of democracy are valued. I hold that universal suffrage, the secret ballot and the right to associate and form political parties are together one of the most profound achievements of human civilisation; some folk don't share this faith in fair decision making in our society.

The benign rule of technocratic experts is a model of anti-democracy much beloved of supranational organisations. Why bother with popular opinion, campaigning for elections, allowing actual people to vote as they like? Surely like-minded well qualified experts can rule their subjects to ensure the best possible outcomes for the maximum number? It is not extraordinary that those who who belong to or support such organisations should believe this, but I am genuinely mystified as to why this form of anti-democratic serfdom would appeal to any subject person with more than one brain cell. Yet apparently it does - and the young, who should in a healthy society be the most intolerant of all of authority, would seem to be amongst them.

I am old enough to remember Franco ruling a Spain that had been politically and culturally shut off from democratic Europe since 1939. When tourism could be resisted no longer, from the early 1970s, the social impact was akin to dropping a lump of Sodium in water. The harsh, backward rule of a Catholic church complicit in fascism (unelected technocratic experts who thought they knew best what was good for people), a population fearful of the secret police and the night-time hammering at the door, could not withstand the bikini and the transistor radio. Democracy is contagious.

And in my heavy-smoking days when Spain sold cheap fags, the £60 cost of a day-return trip to Barcelona with easyjet was exactly equivalent to the saving of UK duty on just one single carton of cigarettes. The aircraft left Gatwick at about 7am and Barcelona at about 4pm, allowing for a leisurely lunch in the Ramblas and to be home in time for Eastenders. There were always little tents and roped off areas in the large expanse of flat, scrubby wasteland between the city and the airport; only later did I find that they were exhuming the remains of the victims of Franco's death squads, clearing the ground for development. That made me value democracy even more.

I am fearful of the anti-democrats within our nation; the propaganda lies of broadcasters, the intolerance of the snowflake generation, the violence of the Soy Boys, the coarse, bullying ignorance of those who would sell their democratic inheritance for a Eurorail pass. The anti-democrats, the democracy-deniers, are truly the enemy within, and we must defend from their assaults with our every breath our democratic rights and freedoms.

People -v- Parliament III

Yesterday our rogue parliament had one chance to redeem itself. Whether or not you agree with Boris' deal, it was the very best that was available and leaving the EU without some sort of agreement is a damning failure of statecraft for a mature democracy. Up until now, the public perception of blame for the Brexit fiasco could be split between an intransigent Brussels and a petulant parliament. Yesterday that all changed. Now it is solely our own anti-democratic MPs who will go down in history as narcissistic zealots of the worst sort, jejune attention seekers bloated with hubris and self-righteousness, inflated with pompous self-worth and messianic delusions.

Yesterday they had one chance to redeem themselves. Had they swallowed the government motion even at this late stage, they could have won back a large part of the utter contempt in which they are held by the people of this country. The nation's relief at closure, at moving forward, would have acted to lift substantially the opprobrium covering parliament like a steaming blanket of ordure.

Instead they have condemned themselves to nemesis at the hands of the electorate, an electorate revolted and disgusted by their abuse of democracy, their abuse of the ordinary people of this nation. Letwin has no future anywhere. Business, industry, finance and the penumbral shadows of the grey men of the deep state were all behind this deal; everyone in this country with any power and influence backed this resolution. Letwin is now friendless, unless one counts the few mentally-ill ranters and painted idiots clustered on College Green. They are hardly in a position to compensate for the directorships and sinecures he will now have lost now after his constituency voters have also scorned and rejected him.

By their actions yesterday, parliament and its little bent Speaker have shown that they are not worthy even of the pretence of polite regard. The contempt shown to them by the government and Conservative benches yesterday should be repeated until they are gone. The time for the polite pretence of listening to their deluded bombast is past. Let their inanities echo around an empty chamber for another week or so, with their gurning fool Bercow squirming in the Chair. We can't be bothered with them any longer. They are nothing.

Will they or won't they?

It's now up to MPs. Either they swallow the Boris deal and we leave at the end of the month, or they vote it down and we're in unknown territory again. Personally I reckon Boris has played a blinder. Juncker would not have made clear his support for no further extension if he had not been reasonably certain that at least one of the 27 was so much on his wavelength as to veto the necessary unanimous decision of the council that would be necessary.

I won't rehash all the acres of newsprint on this. It's not a good treaty and it's not a treaty that will last for long, I suspect - but it gets us out and it starts the process. As a contributor keeps reminding me, after forty years Brexit is not an event but a process and if it takes ten years to unwind completely then so be it. But we must start somewhere and here is the best we can get.

I can offer only the same message as the Express this morning.

Catalonia, Kurdistan .. we either believe in self-determination or we don't

As our own struggle to free ourselves from the adhesive embrace of the anti-democratic nascent empire of the EU reaches its climax, I think we must spare a few thoughts from those elsewhere equally determined to assert their freedom and identity.

The right to self determination was first penned in modern times by Churchill and Roosevelt in August 1941, long before America entered the war and when Britain faced its darkest hours. The Atlantic Charter is a document of enormous hope and of confidence in the triumph of good and right over the dark and evil authoritarianism that had enveloped Europe;

..Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

After the victorious alliance founded a permanent United Nations organisation, Article 1 of the New UN Charter signed in 1945 stated

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

Of course what constitutes a 'people' is open to debate, but I believe that most of us will be able to recognise a genuine claim to a distinct identity and one that is contrived. Thus we can agree that Scotland, Wales and Ireland are distinct from England, but perhaps not that Wessex is so distinguished. The Kurds have a strong claim to self-determination, their people spread across largely artificial borders drawn after the Great War so that they are divided between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The Catalans in the east of the neck of the Iberian peninsula have a claim at least equal to the basques in the west.

Self determination is an anathema to the global supremicists, who would abolish all national borders, all distinct national identities, to achieve a homogeneous mass of subjects of global government, global corporatism and global law and administration at the hands of a priestly caste of unelected experts. They dismiss self determination as 'nationalism' just as they dismiss democracy as 'populism'.

Well, I'm on the side of self determination. As a democrat and a localist you would expect no less of me. And the EU? They will side with those suppressing freedom, those imposing the authoritarian rule of conquest on their subject peoples. You would expect no more from them. If the Catalans imagine they will find support in Brussels, they are cruelly deceived.  

Are we there yet? II

Yes, it's a question we've asked before. This time, no one seems to know. Everyone on our side is terrified that Boris will have given away too much, whilst the Remainers are praying that Boris won't concede enough to allow the EU to change May's Surrender Treaty, thus giving them scope for a second cancelling Referendum (which they will lose if it allows a single Leave option).

No one can get angry until the deal is published. We don't know what the deal proposes. Journalists know no more than I do - they stood outside the Berlaymont last night counting the lit windows and reporting the times at which the lights went out (most by 2.30, it seems).

So our barrels are charged with powder and shot, slow match is burning, and we are waiting. Ready to douse the match and fetch the shot-screw or otherwise.

The BBC's hubris will lead to nemesis

Channel Four news has broadcast footage of their reporters being scoffed at and refused interviews by both Boris and Arron Banks - the Arron footage is classic. They imagined that the public would be outraged that politicians had dared to defy the power of the news, but instead most folk just shrugged. Everyone knows that C4 News is deeply biased against both the Conservatives and Brexit - what do they expect?

When Boris went straight to Facebook to take public questions the BBC's Nick Robinson accused him of using methods common to dictators "down the ages". Up to a point, Nick - only those from the 20th century onwards, surely. Unless Tiberius had technology available to him we know nothing about. Robinson's jejune petulance and public silliness was because Boris had shown that ministers don't need the BBC.

The only reason a government minister gives a TV or radio interview is if their government / party gets more out of it than it costs them. There is no public right for angry Remainer journalists to harangue, insult, bully and demean their Brexit opponents in public just because they have control of the airwaves. There is certainly no obligation on anyone in public life to subject themselves to it.

The BBC's naked bias over Brexit has cost it the right to be a national broadcaster funded by the licence fee. The Charter must not be renewed in 2027 - and the sooner the lumbering behemoth adapts for life after the TV tax, the less the grief for all. 

Brexit to the sound of trumpets

Well, HM has just broadcast our Party's draft election manifesto to the nation - and it didn't cost a farthing of our permitted election spend. I lost count at 24 Bills - it may be 26 - and every single one a feel-good, popular measure that reaches across traditional party allegiances and touches the parts of voters that other parties cannot reach. Labour, the Illiberal Anti-Democrats and the Scot Gnats will be furious - and I'll be listening to the debate in a couple of hours to laugh at the dribbling meltdown on the opposition benches.

That's the price of not enabling a general election - every single day they delay allows the government to use the entire machinery of Whitehall and the State to build voter support.  Their spittle-flecked fury this afternoon will go down like a lead balloon with the electorate - they will just be reinforcing Boris' narrative that the Remainers are unhinged, bigoted saboteurs with little self control and no potential whatsoever to fulfil the duties of HM's Loyal Opposition, let alone be seen as a government in waiting. 

Carry on, Corbyn. You're doing a fine job.

Internet shopping post-Brexit

I am an inveterate internet shopper. This is generally because I am an ingrained price-chaser and source stuff from across the world - including knock-off Poulsen luminaires from China, still a third of the cost of the originals even with shipping and customs duties and VAT added. So I am used to the process, which is simple and efficient here. The Post drops you a card with a URL and reference, one logs-on to the website, enters a few details, scans a couple of documents and makes a SOFORT transfer and then the goods are delivered. Not a problem a few times a year - but what about those regular weekly / monthly purchases from UK suppliers or UK eBay?

Well, those regular suppliers, you won't be surprised to know, are already ready for Brexit. Everything bought via the internet from outside the EU needs a customs sticker as the delivery of a couple of memory sticks from 7-day shop yesterday shows -

After Brexit the value will be the critical factor. No VAT is payable on imports under €22, and no customs tariff on imports below €150. UK suppliers who are VAT registered will in future make sales to EU customers free of UK VAT. Thus purchases under €22 will (I expect) be 20% cheaper - like my memory sticks.

One of my other regular monthly buys is from Screwfix (the Kingfisher group's success story).  Screws, fixings, blades and discs, sealants, adhesives mostly - much cheaper than local. They offer free delivery to Europe on orders over £50 and looking at my order values over the past year -

They're all well under the €150 customs duty limit - the UK cost will (I expect) be 20% lower, local VAT will be payable at 20% so the net result is zilch.

There will always be a few exceptions that will no longer be economic. Pallet deliveries, mostly. I've become used to booking my own pallet deliveries online, for as little as £160 a pallet. Stone floor tiles from Italy, a nation whose border is fifteen minutes drive away, cost no less than £65/m2 plus delivery (a minimum of €200 per pallet load) from any of the EU27 but can be bought from the UK for £27/m2 plus delivery. Yes, the exact same tiles from the same quarries. I need another 14m2 for an unfinished bathroom so will have to figure this out after Brexit. 

But so far, the personal impact of Brexit looks to be .... nil. Bring it on.

The EU army's theatre of operations ...

It's a slow day so let's have a bit of fun. Let's presume there is a future shake-out of military alliances, with the EU choosing to go its own way, after having admitted Ukraine. Let's presume also that the neutral countries stay neutral, and that the UK, Norway and Iceland remain in NATO. Turkey? Well, not in NATO, clearly. And unlikely to have been admitted to EU membership. Which would lead Turkey to look to Russia for an alliance.

Now the military types amongst you will appreciate the position better than I, but if I were the EU, I think I'd want very much to have Turkey on my side rather than Russia's. With a population of 82m, 12m of which are men of prime military age and not soft and woke like EU youth, what's the bet that the EU will go-a-courting again? If they have to defend three fronts, will that cost them more or less than the 2% they're supposed to spend on NATO?

NATO blue, Russia red

NATO blue, EU green, Russia red

Turkey is a Rogue State and must be treated as such

Long time readers will no doubt recall I have been consistent for many years in promoting the dangers of our alliances with both KSA and Turkey, the two greatest fomenters of conflict, terrorism and instability in Europe. I have been consistent in advocating the expulsion of Turkey from NATO. Back in July I even congratulated the Telegraph's Con Coughlin for unusually lunching with the right MOD briefer and writing -

When Turkey joined Nato back in 1952, the idea was that it would help to protect Nato’s eastern flank from Moscow’s aggression. Now that is clearly no longer the case, and European leaders should join their American counterparts in facing up to the fact that Turkey under Mr Erdogan is a lost cause. The days when Turkey had a genuine interest in cementing its ties with the West by joining the European Union are long gone. Instead, we have a country that openly associates with those who wish to do us harm.

Consequently, now that Mr Erdogan has demonstrated that he feels more at home in Moscow than he does in Brussels, we should acknowledge where Turkey’s true interests lie, and terminate its NATO membership.

As far back as 2015 I was of the opinion that only internal action by the Turkish people to remove Erdogan could turn things around but was later forced to admit the failure of that course -

Well, the coup was tried - and failed. Tens of thousands of civil servants have been dismissed, hundreds of the most senior military officers imprisoned, and at least a score of them judicially murdered in custody ('fell out of a window' 'had a heart attack' etc). Erdogan appreciated his isolation and moved to make an ally of Russia, with $20bn of arms purchases. It is pertinent that at least some of that money comes from the EU, the billion-Euro bribes for not sending migrants across the Greek border.

Turkey's invasion of northern Syria can hardly come as a surprise to anyone. That a NATO member can undertake such unlawful aggression without the sanction of immediate expulsion is a disgrace. That Turkey can threaten Europe with a tsunami of 3.6m migrants if anyone objects to its unlawful invasion is proof if proof were needed that Turkey is now a rogue state.

Unshaven 
On the subject of baddies, a word of advice to shirt-and-tie characters who are desperate to cultivate a cool image with designer stubble. Like a teenager with a face full of bumfluff trying to grow a moustache, make sure you have enough facial hair before you try - or you just look dirty and unshaven. EU commissioner Johannes Hahn and XR's Rupert Reid please note. 

EU functionary Johannes Hahn and XR man with a suit Rupert Reid

Histrionics and small cows

Yesterday I felt a yearning as never before for a world free from reports that the EU 'insists' that the UK does this or that, that the EU 'refuses' consent for Britain to do something, that the EU finds 'unacceptable' a British position. The relief of being free of such impertinences will be like being free of a bully that blights our lives. The closer we get to Brexit, the more nakedly dogmatic and peremptory the commands from the Brussels Kanzlei are becoming, and the less heed we pay to them. It's like watching a clueless leash-holder shouting ineffectually at a dog who doesn't give a fig and revels in disobedience with a huge grin; 'heel! heel!' 'stop! stop!' shouts the fool as the dog drags him to explore an interesting smell.

The recent histrionics from both Guy Verhofstadt and Donald Tusk, surely two of the world's politicians least in control of themselves, only underlined the utter, bodging amateurishness of the whole EU. It's really no use the standing at the edge of the park holding the lead and shouting 'Come back! I order you!' as a joyful dog bounds off into the distance.

Guy Verhofstadt in particular confirms his folie de grandeur every time he gets on his hind legs with his pronouncements about 'Europe'

Some weeks ago I wrote to Der Spiegel's London correspondent about a reasonable and well considered piece he had written under the utterly false strapline 'Boris hates Europe'; he's a reasonable chap and responded "What can I say? You are right, there is a huge difference between Europe and the EU – and I hope and believe that my article makes that distinction. The cover catchline is a total different matter though. It’s not in my responsibility, and often even we writers only see it at the very last moment .." He promised to pass on the point to the magazine's subs and it seems to have had some effect - I haven't read the same error since. Someone needs similarly to point out to Guy with great patience the difference between a continent of 730m people that includes nations such as Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom and a little empire of 460m people within it. Perhaps only Father Ted would have been up to the task ...