Well, this is it

Whatever the outcome of today's epochal election, it will stand as a high water mark of error, poor practice, confusion, division, uncertainty and sheer nastiness. The post-vote washup will go on for some few weeks I expect, but here's my take for starters

Electoral Commission
This election has shown up the failings and shortcomings of the EC like no other. The problem is not that they don't have copious guidance (see postal voting below) but that (a) they have no teeth with which to enforce the rules and (b) that's probably just as well because there are widespread suspicions of their partiality. They're an analogue bureaucracy operating in a digital age. Complete rethink needed.

Postal voting
Prior to the Blair corruption only a very small number voted by post - members of HM Armed Forces overseas, expats, the chronically sick and disabled. Now some 22% of all votes cast are postal. Typically votes are cast two to three weeks before the end of the campaign, which itself is legislated at 25 days and far too long. Previously I think it was 17 days. Yesterday there was a social media eruption over a BBC reporter commenting on postal vote outcomes. When only 3% of votes were postal, this mattered less - but now the secrecy of postal vote outcomes prior to the close of polling is critical. Seats are won or lost by one vote - so even if a handful of electors are swayed by a leak of postal vote information, it corrupts the system.

Social Media
I don't do Facebook so can only comment from the perspective of other platforms and message boards. In many cases it has become toxic. The left in particular use every method of bullying, intimidation, Twitter pile-ons, fake accounts and disruption. Yesterday there was a hack on ConservativeHome's message board. Social media activity is unregulated except for spend by registered parties and supporters - but this is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese

Street thuggery
Again from the Momentum left, the sheer level of street thuggery and intimidation during this election has been unprecedented. Guido identified one organised assault on a ministerial visit (yes, assault - read the legal definition of the offence. It doesn't mean punching the minister in the face). This behaviour has been widespread, and largely confined to the left.

Broadcast media bias
Again, the broadcast media have shown their bias like never before. It has been naked. Politicians are also wising up to the reality that the big broadcasters have passed their zenith, and their bluster, bullying and shoulder-shoving is to disguise the increasing role the internet and alternative media are playing.

Corruption amongst local electoral officials
This has never, to my knowledge, been an issue before. This time around, due I guess to a deeply Remainiac local government sector, we have seen a rise in fake and corrupt voter registration, and yesterday the exposure of fake and corrupt voting credentials. The leak of postal ballot information is a disgrace. It really saddens me to say we can no longer trust unquestionably the integrity of local electoral officials.

Polls
Well, we'll know tomorrow how well the polls have performed. Again, we must look at the role of pollsters, and whether we're happy with what they do and how they perform.

I'll be back on line here in the early hours - about 4am here, 3am there. Fingers crossed.   

The fall of the BBC

The BBC's initial reaction to competition, when I was young, was to destroy it using the organisation's privileged broadcasting power. Thus was the entire Anglian region under 25 years old converted to Radio Caroline, the plucky gang on the trawler just beyond the UK 3-mile limit that broadcast defiance to the authoritarian BBC. Of course the organisation could not maintain a broadcasting oligopoly as technology advanced; demands for bits of the FM spectrum from a multitude of independent radio stations, the rise of analogue satellite TV and video rental. The BBC fought a rearguard action with some success until the internet came along. Then it was all over.

The BBC has been a long time dying. Its demise was on the cards, according to Parkinson's law, when it spent hundreds of millions on swish new headquarters, studios and executive office refurbishment. Big beasts take a long time to fall, and the BBC may still be with us after the next Charter renewal in 2027, but the era of expansion and an ever-increasing TV tax enforced through criminal law is coming to an end.

The Prime Minister clearly has a strategy. First, de-criminalise non-payment of the TV tax. This doesn't mean, as some MSM commenters have assumed, that payment would be voluntary - only that recovery would become a civil, not criminal matter. The 180,000 people every year hitherto prosecuted by the BBC in the magistrates' court would in future be defendants in the county court. As many of these simply can't afford the TV tax, the BBC has been happy until now to land them with a criminal conviction and fine, including the compulsory £15 'victim surcharge'. Those paying it are often foodbank users - the prosecutor is a £4bn a year behemoth. Just who is the victim here?

Using bailiffs or other recovery methods to enforce county court judgements for such low value debts will clearly challenge the BBC. TV footage of bailiffs seizing the pathetic belongings of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society (obviously this will not be shown on the BBC ...) will further turn the public against the broadcaster; cameras are banned from the magistrates courts, so their vindictiveness is currently hidden.

I expect there will be some sort of eminent, independent cross-party review of the Charter and its irrelevance in an age of digital diversity. There will be fudges and special interests will be accommodated. Expensive and unwieldy compromises will be enacted. It will take time. But this is the beginning of the end for the BBC as it is now, and the impact of its fall will smash the chains as effectively as did Stalin's gigantic statues when they toppled.

You really might enjoy this - Boris' final election video

The 'Commercial gents' have lost their importance

Readers of Patrick O'Brian will be familiar with the author's benign contempt in the Aubrey / Maturin novels for the 'commercial gents'; rich city merchants, florid and grandiloquent, who wear patriotism like a cloak but whose only real interest is their own wealth. They are never entirely above suspicion of being willing to trade or deal with the King's enemies, of putting profit above patria, and O'Brian paints them unsympathetically. Yet trade and commerce are indeed the nation's 'life blood' - and today only the extraordinary success of British business has placed the UK fifth in the world's GDP league. 

But not all trade and commerce is good trade and commerce. Not all of it benefits the country and its people more than it benefits its owners - and that's the test. Why should UK trade policy be developed for the benefit of global shareholders whose activities have frequently disadvantaged both the country and its people? This issue has become much clearer in the minds of the electorate during the three years of Remain sabotage of the Brexit vote, with the CBI now dismissed as no more than a creature of the global corporates, and the car makers rightly identified as global hippies with no anchor to any nation, who will screw EU and government subsidies to put their car plants anywhere that pays their global shareholders maximum profit. Let's take a look at them -

Here you have the true importance of car making in the UK - it's almost exactly the same size as Romania's car industry, and substantially smaller than Poland's. And if you expanded the graphic to the whole world, we're exactly nowhere. The effects of globalism mean that the 'commercial gents' have lost some of their importance - and in this election, and in any future trade talks, their voices may be the loudest but that doesn't mean we should pay them the greatest heed.

Take fish and British waters. Farage talks a load of bollocks about this - as the Speccie explains -

Farage’s current predicament is rooted in a disastrous strategic decision he and an inner-circle of yes men took on the day Boris Johnson unveiled his new Withdrawal Agreement. Within minutes (possibly before the document had even been published) they decided to rubbish Boris’s deal as “not Brexit”. Farage bet the farm on being able to win that argument in the country. His aim was that the Brexit party would then take permanent possession of the huge Leave electorate, much of which had coalesced around it at the European elections.

Soon the Brexit party resorted to depicting things that applied only in the transitional period as if they would be permanent. There were claims Britain would be locked forever in economic alignment with the EU, unable to pursue an independent foreign policy or be in charge of what happened in UK fishing waters. It was even said the new Northern Ireland-only features could spell the end of the Union.

This position led inexorably to the logic that the Brexit party, as the only true Brexit option, must stand in every British mainland constituency at the general election. All other options – from standing aside altogether with a warning to Johnson that the Brexit party would be on his back during the next phase of future relationship negotiations, to fighting only a limited number of safe Labour seats in abandoned former industrial and coastal towns – were dismissed. But despite stirring up some of his Twitter followers against the Boris deal, Farage lost the argument among Leavers as a whole.

But Nigel's disastrous and mistaken strategy for BrexitCorp™ doesn't mean that fishing and our waters aren't important - but how important?

France is already making clear that it will block any trade deal unless the EU continues to have a right of access to UK waters. That's how important it is. On our own side the commercial gents from the City keep telling us that fishing represents a piffling little piece of the British economy, that financial passporting and the access of the City's merchants to European markets are far more important, and if it comes to push versus shove we should sacrifice our fish and waters for the good of the City of London.

Boris today moves the final days of his campaign to the Leave towns of the North. Voters here aren't dumb, and if they vote BXP it won't be because they've swallowed Nigel's distortions. It will be because they don't trust Boris not to give away the UK's fishing waters during a post-Brexit trade deal for the good of the commercial gents. And that, Prime Minister, is your key challenge in the North - to make it clear that British waters aren't up for negotiation.

UK can lead Europe in climate adaptation

Looking at common ground around the climate issues, I'm becoming increasingly confident that there is emerging a consensus around mitigation / adaptation. The science of climate change is as poorly understood as the pathology of disease in the 17th century, when physicians flailed around with notions of humours, bile and flux but had no better cure than a low diet and bleeding. Business at least is aware that making epochal decisions based on such large degrees of uncertainty is not wise - but if climate change is happening, either warming or cooling - and it seems that it is, it makes good sense to make money out of the ways in which we adapt to it. I'm deeply indebted to our friends over at Capitalists@Work, who reached this conclusion some time ago.

Now it seems that even Christine Lagarde is waking up to the reality. I tend to think that many individuals are placed somewhere close to my own position; I'll happily do my best to reduce, reuse and recycle because it's a good thing to do. I think about my environmental footprint in decisions that I make. And I follow in my personal life what we always termed in the Construction industry BPNEEC ('Bipknec') - best practice not entailing excessive cost, which in practice often became best practice not entailing cost. If Saint Greta leads the black-clad 17th century puritans wailing that we're all bound for Hell unless we eat turnips and live in a puddle, most of us are somewhere on the spectrum where spending a little less time and money in the alehouse and on wenching seems a sensible thing.

Politico.Eu has the story and I won't repeat it. Suffice to say that the ECB has now rowed-back on brave promises to tackle the causes of climate change by the heroic use of instruments such as bond issues. They're now just promising to buy unbleached recycled paper for the office photocopiers and not invest any further euros of the ECB employee pension fund in coal-things. Doing heroic stuff is not our brief, Lagarde is saying. That's up to the EU. Meanwhile the EU is mired in a battle for the post-Brexit budget. At one end are the one-per-centers, who would cap the contributions of member states at 1% of GDP, at the other the Imperialists who want 1.4%. France says she doesn't care so long as everyone else continues to pay for the French agricultural system, Poland says she wants a budget that will make them as rich as Germany, because the others owe it to them and Germany says hands off our savings - and don't challenge our hegemony. In the midst of all this, any meaningful EU action on climate change is truly improbable, and Brussels will fudge it by passing on carbon reduction 'targets' for individual nations to meet from their own resources.

All of which means that a careful and coherent government steer towards investment in adaptation and mitigation, in R&D for the same and of course in the export of both knowledge and technology that delivers adaptation will literally pay dividends for the country with a government coherent and focused enough to deliver the strategy. I'm really hoping that the UK is that country - and Thursday's election will either enable it or consign us to the virtue-signalling cesspit of Euro policy.

Nigel's anger at BrexitCorp™ defectors

You'd have needed a heart of stone not to have empathised with Nigel's agony yesterday. After having set up BrexitCorp™ as the perfect vehicle for one-man control, he found himself powerless to prevent the resignation of four of 'his' MEPs. His private company structure may mean he can hire and fire candidates at will, even stand-down 317 from the hustings, but as he has discovered, once they are elected they are no longer 'his' politicians; they are their own creatures, and no contractual straitjacket on earth can prevent them from repudiating his control.

During the last months of the rogue Parliament, my own party experienced a great deal of this sort of thing. Every week petulant Remainer MPs would break-off to join some new party, some even managing to join two new parties within a week. No sooner had they ordered their new party letterheads than the name and logo would change again. At the time there was much angry agitation from Brexiteers that changing party after election should automatically trigger a by-election. I disagreed then and I disagree now.

What if their party change is overwhelmingly supported by their constituents? Why should everyone be put through the nonsense of a foregone conclusion? I'm much more in favour of a constituency's right to trigger Recall in such circumstances, provided the bar is set at the right height. Under FPTP a representative's seat is a matter for the voters, not for their angry ex-party officials. Under FPTP once elected they represent their constituents, not their party.

Now I'm not sure what the EP's rules are. UK MEPs are put in place on a party list system; if a party gets enough votes for 10 MEPs, the top ten names on the list get in. I suspect once they're in they're in - but this clearly doesn't suit for example parties structured like BrexitCorp™. I'm sure what Nigel would like, if numbers 4 and 7 don't suit, is to be able to sack them and substitute numbers 11 and 12 from the list. Happily, such control is inimical to democracy, even, I suspect, in Brussels.

Election fatigue

A week out from polling day and my motivation has plunged. Perhaps this is the low point of the campaign. Even Swinson's outrageous defence of giving the vote to 16 year-olds to game any second referendum just left me filled with contempt rather than anger. We're back to a binary contest, after those exhilarating weeks during which four parties each held some 20% of the vote, when Swinson dreamt of standing on the doorstep of Number 10 and Nigel imagined his drive to the Palace.

We've managed to get past the danger of Trump endorsing anyone in the election; he's flown away in a fit of pique that a playground gang of other NATO leaders were caught laughing at him. I really can't knock Trumpy, despite his manifold failings; Hillary would have been far, far, worse - and the US would have been mired in another trillion dollar war by now if Clinton had been in the White House, with a stream of transport aircraft bringing the coffins home. Better Trump, and families having their husbands and fathers home alive at Christmas.

Macron's desperation came through. He can only hold France together if everyone else continues to pay for it. His thrust to take greater control of the German treasury has foundered, and his defence strategy is centred on getting money, including NATO money, from all of the other EU26 to invest in French defence industries. Islamist terrorism is forcing his internal security to the limits, and the Gilets Jaunes are a continued irritant. No wonder he will be willing to use a fight over French access to UK fishing waters after Brexit (if the Conservatives win) to try to win back his collapsing popular support.

I'm hoping for a Conservative fireworks strategy - that we've been keeping the brightest bursts, the loudest bangs and the greatest impact fireworks in the box until last, to give a crescendo display over the next seven days. Our social media presence has also been risibly poor to date - our supply of talented 17 year-old video makers seems poorer than Momentum's.

One of the highlights of my social media week has been the piss-taking of the Guardian under the #TrollingtheGuardian tag. The newspaper's banning of a parody account on Twitter on copyright grounds has unleashed an amusing flood of pisstaking - leading to what one observer has termed ironic confusion, with the Guardian's real straplines reading like the Onion and the parodies having the flavour of authenticity.  Hey ho.  

Let's pretend that NATO exists ....

The United Nations, as I never tire of reminding the ignorant, was originally the name of the military alliance that opposed the Axis powers in WWII. Britain, the USA, Russia and China. And at the very end, elbowing their way in to ensure they wouldn't be left out, France. That's why these five nations are permanent members of the Security Council. The young seem to imagine the UN was created out of an upswell of global altruism drenched in love and egality. It wasn't. It was forged from the shrapnel of war. The Atlantic Charter, originally an agreement created and edited by Churchill and Roosevelt in the dark days of 1941, grew into the UN charter. It exists as a forum to prevent wars of aggression through international jaw-jaw

However when jaw-jaw fails we must most reluctantly fall back on war-war. And that's what NATO is for. Formed in a Bipolar world, it fell into decline when the globe became unipolar but today in a Tripolar world it needs a resurgence of commitment - from the old nations of the world and those since 1945 founded on democracy, nations that have eschewed national aggrandisement and aggression and are committed to a defensive alliance.

And that is the big problem. There has arisen in Europe a new empire, a nascent Reich, that has very much not eschewed aggrandisement and pushing out its borders to create lebensraum. It wants all of Europe from Sweden's Iron Ore to Ukraine's wheat fields, from North Sea oil to the Mosul oilfields of Iraq. It wants armed forces to win and govern its territories, global-scale arms research and manufacturing capability and more than anything else it wants the 2% of GDP that its member nations have hitherto committed (in theory, anyway) to NATO.

Britain wants no part of this madness. The US may not be perfect, but at least American citizens are allowed to elect their President. And they have law and courts not under political control. And America, as Churchill said, always does the right thing. Eventually.

And that is the background against which the members of NATO meet this week to celebrate 70 years. I guess those years break down as 40 years of genuine mutual commitment, 20 of splurging the dividend saved from the wall coming down, and the past 10 with France, Germany and the western European EU nations just going through the motions and pretending that they're still a part of it.

The EU's strategy is clear; while we're in their 'transition' phase, they want the US and UK to defend Europe from Russia and China, for free. Once they've got their own army they won't need us any more. Everyone knows this. It's hardly a secret. Yet mutual security is so important that for public consumption we must all pretend it's not the case. But I'd love to be  a fly on the wall to hear what they actually say to each other this week.

Marred

After this election campaign, the role of broadcasters will never be again as it was. Any reasonable person who watched Marr trying to humiliate the Prime Minister yesterday, without success, cannot fail to conclude that the usefulness of these things has passed. Marr was simply not interested in answers, only with throwing like spears as many barbed, distorted and wounding questions as possible, rat-tat-tat. As soon as Boris was deflecting the last one another was launched. It was not an edifying spectacle.

I can't quite track how the broadcasters assumed that they held this power and authority over our elected representatives - and by extension, assume they hold the same power and authority over we who elected them. But they are grievously mistaken. It's fine for us to disparage, undermine, scrutinise, reform and dismiss the elected political class- we're the voters. It's not fine for the broadcasters to impertinently pretend that they're acting in our name when in fact they're acting for a political establishment now under threat and fighting us for control of the nation. They're not acting for us, or for higher ideals, but for their own power and interest. And this election is the event that has called them out.

We don't elect a President in this country but representatives who ally themselves to a party. If the broadcasters have a job at all it is to present and probe the parties - taking whomever the party decides to put up to the microphone. If they imagine their job is that of attack dogs, establishing their own dominance and authority by savaging individual prominent politicians, they are mistaken. That's our job, not theirs.

Where should Leavers vote for the Brexit Party?

This is the advice for Leavers given by the Telegraph; vote for TBP -

1. If the Conservatives haven’t won the seat since at least 1992 (or since constituency creation);
2. If Ukip beat the Conservatives, and gained a vote share of over 20 per cent, in 2015;
3. And if the Conservatives got less than 30 per cent of the 2017 vote.

OK - so let's look at the two constituencies below

Hartlepool
1. Labour have held the seat since 1974..
2. In 2015 UKIP came 2nd with 28% of the vote
3. In 2017 the Conservatives got 34.2%

Result: Vote Conservative


Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford
1. Labour have held the seat since constituency creation
2. In 2015 UKIP came 2nd with 21.3% of the vote
3. In 2017 the Conservatives got exactly 30.0%

Result: Vote Conservative 

I think this is a fair and sensible algorithm for the Conservative and Brexit parties to use - what do you think? It's too late now for candidates to stand down, so it will mean the lower rated party must start campaigning for the other from now onwards.

Well, do we want to Leave or not?

BrexitCorp™ will deliver victory for Corbyn

This -

Sorry, but there's no polite way to say this. The Brexit party is set to deliver Corbyn an election victory and destroy Brexit. It's the same in a whole mass of Leave seats.

Can you show me any MRP polls that put TBP ahead of the Conservatives in any of these seats?

It's pure Farage vanity and childish conceit and it will destroy Brexit.

I simply don't know what else to say.

Déjà écrit

Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall

"I was on night duty last night between the hours of 8pm and 4am" testified the warder in a sing-song voice, "when my attention was attracted by sounds of agitation coming from the prisoner's cell. Upon going to the observation hole I observed the prisoner pacing up and down his cell in a state of high excitement In one hand he held his Bible, and in the other a piece of wood which he had broken from his stool His eyes were staring; he was breathing heavily, and at times muttering verses of the Bible. I remonstrated with the prisoner when he addressed me in terms prejudicial to good discipline"
 
"What are the words complained of?" asked the Chief Warder

"He called me a Moabite, an abomination of Moab, a wash-pot, an unclean thing, an uncircumcised Moabite, an idolater, and a whore of Babylon, sir "

"I see What do you advise, officer ?"

"A clear case of insubordination, sir," said the Chief Warder "Try him on No 1 diet for a bit"

But when he asked the Chief Warder’s opinion, Sir Wilfred was not really seeking advice He liked to emphasise in his own mind, and perhaps that of the prisoners, the difference between the official view and his own.
 
"What would you say was the most significant part of the evidence ?" he asked

The Chief Warder considered. "I think whore of Babylon, on the whole, sir"
 
Sir Wilfred smiled as a conjurer may who has forced the right card.
 
"Now I," he said, "am of different opinion It may surprise you, but I should say that the significant thing about this case was the fact that the prisoner held a piece of the stool"

"Destruction of prison property," said the Chief Warder. "Yes, that’s pretty bad "

"Now what was your profession before conviction?" asked the Governor, turning to the prisoner

"Carpenter, sir"

"I knew it ," said the Governor triumphantly "We have another case of the frustrated creative urge. Now listen, my man. It is very wrong of you to insult the officer, who is clearly none of the things you mentioned. He symbolizes the just disapproval of society and is, like all the prison staff, a member of the Church of England . But I understand your difficulty You have been used to creative craftsmanship, have you not, and you find prison life deprives you of the means of self-expression, and your energies find vent in these foolish outbursts. I will see to it that a bench and a set of carpenter’s tools are provided for you The first thing you shall do is to mend the piece of furniture you so wantonly destroyed After that we will find other work for you in your old trade You may go".

"Get to the cause of the trouble," Sir Wilfred added when the prisoner was led away, "your Standing Orders may repress the symptoms, they do not probe to the underlying cause ".
===================

Of course the inevitable happened, and the prisoner used his carpenter's tools to saw-off the head of the prison chaplain, Mr Prendegast.

No doubt in the wake of yesterday's tragic events, someone will dare to question the wisdom of not only releasing early from prison an Islamist terrorist, but of inviting him to participate in a criminology conference organised by the University of Cambridge at the exact site of the start of London's previous Islamist terrorist atrocity.

The week the gloves came off

That this is the most critical election since 1945 is not in doubt. Though it is being fought on the battlefield of Brexit, the war is about control of the state. The incumbent political class, with control of the Lords, the civil service, the NGOs, the broadcasters and media, the global business clubs and the universities, are naturally reluctant to see their power challenged by we oiks and upstarts. They really don't like democracy, and this election is rattling them. This is in fact a good thing - as rattled opponents make mistakes, and expose things they would rather keep hidden.

Yesterday it was the turn of Channel 4 News, which every sentient adult in the country knows quite well to be deeply biased towards the globalists and supranationalists and as a result their hatred of the Conservative and Brexit parties doesn't just seep into their news output but paints it. They thought they would be clever and 'empty chair' the Conservative and Brexit parties with lumps of ice. Hee Hee.

Two problems. The first, which is now the subject of an official complaint to Ofcom, is that broadcasters are under a legal obligation to ensure a balance between political parties during an election. Not leaders or particular candidates, but parties. In other words, the broadcasters don't have the power to dictate who appears to represent those parties on such events (which they clearly imagine that they do). We'll have to wait for Ofcom's post-broadcast ruling, but there is hope that this skirmish will bring the role of broadcasters out into the open. If Ofcom rule that broadcasters do in fact have this extraordinary anti-democratic power, it must be challenged in the courts. Secondly, I suspect that the public will turn against Channel 4 over this - we are less susceptible than they imagine to this kind of thuggish bullying.

Also this week has seen the unprecedented intervention of not just the Chief Rabbi and the Archbishop of Canterbury but the Hindu Council in warning against Labour's racism. Momentum's violent thugs and bootboys out on the campaign trail are threatening and intimidating candidates, and anyone brave enough to venture onto Facebook or Twitter will have experienced the hate and abuse online from those thugs with a note excusing them from games. Labour, after Corby's evisceration on live TV, have resorted to lying about the NHS.

However, it's the party stars who tell the biggest story. For Labour, we have hardly seen hide nor hair of Emily Thornberry, Kier Starmer, the Benn boy and their other southern metropolitan gobs, all of whom you couldn't avoid before the campaign. That's clearly because the party knows it's just about lost its northern leave voters, so want to keep those at risk of mistaking chip-shop mushy peas for guacamole away from broadcasters. And then there's Boris.

Have you seen Boris' recent appearances? His election broadcast last night? Is it me or is he misfiring like a badly tuned engine, without that mellifluous fluency and spontaneity that we are so used to seeing? Fraser Nelson imagines this might be due to the tightness of the leash on which they're holding him, but remember also that in barely four months in office there has not been an hour during which he has not been under the most unimaginable strain. Fingers crossed.

Remember, she's a woman.

Even the midst of this most critical of election campaigns there is room for the little wry surprises that evoke a smile. I've just seen a pic for the first time that immediately caused to spring into my mind the title of the post. Let me explain.

One of the key professional skills I mastered was that of leading a team. In delivering complex construction schemes it is a pre-requisite. If you asked me to teach it I couldn't - humour, self-confidence, supportiveness and all those sort of things came into it. And one has to do it time after time after time, and each time anew, with a fresh team. Sometimes a consultancy firm sent along an engineer / QS / designer / CDM supervisor with whom one had worked on a previous job, which was always a joy. And women were quite equal to men in every role. Except one that had me foxed. She was unhappy. The little signs were not hard to miss. But she was good, a valued team member, highly professional and I promise I acted utterly scrupulously in treating her not one mite different to any other member of the team. One Friday during a wind-down drink-up with another female colleague I mentioned the odd dynamic. "Ah" she said enigmatically when she had quite absorbed the situation "You need to remember she's a woman". I'm still not quite sure what she meant.

Many of you will recall this wonderful photo of McDoom -

Of course he looks like an utter plonker. It's a lesson to politicians, like Mr Ed's bacon sandwich, that the camera lens is the media's greatest satirist, and if you're visiting a combat zone or riding in an armoured vehicle appearance is everything. Only Mrs T got it absolutely right, with an Isadora Duncan style chiffon scarf in the turret of a Challenger tank. 

Now this is the first time I've seen the pic below of Theresa May. The jacket is very clever - it avoids wearing an actual combat jacket but affords an equivalent camouflage. But look carefully. She's not that fat; I swear she's wearing ballistic armour under it. I take my hat off. I never thought there would be one single aspect of May's premiership that would win my grudging admiration, but here it is. I should perhaps have remembered that she's a woman.

++++++BREAKING - SEE THE BLOGROLL++++++++

Within the last hour Dominic Cummings has posted a new blog entry - it should be right on the top of the blogroll in the RH column. 

This is possibly the most important blog entry you will ever read - please do so!

Every one of us - Kipper, BXP or Tory must pull together. The future of our nation is at stake -

If Boris doesn’t get a majority, then Corbyn will take control of No. 10 on Friday 13th in alliance with Sturgeon plus the Liberal Democrats. And if this Corbyn-Sturgeon alliance takes control, their official policy is to give millions of EU citizens the vote in the second referendum. They don’t plan to lose again and they’ve literally written into their manifesto that they will cheat the second referendum — apart from giving millions of foreign citizens the vote, they will rig the question so the ‘choice’ is effectively ‘Remain or Remain’, they will cheat the rules, they will do anything, supported by the likes of Goldman Sachs writing the cheques like they did in 2016, to ensure Remain win.

Wheels come off Magic Grandpa live on air

They take Holocaust Denial quite seriously here in Austria. Back in 2017 one of Jeremy Corbyn's party members, as Andrew Neil pointed out to him, did the unthinkable -

Then let me give you the case of Lesley Perrin. She was a Labour Party member. She posted a video denying the Holocaust and questioned whether the six million figure was accurate. And what did the Labour Party do? It gave her a written warning. No expulsion, no zero tolerance, just a written warning.

The Austrians have a law, the 1947 Verbotgesetz, under which idiots are still being imprisoned for giving the raised arm or being as utterly crass as Lesley Perrin. In fact Holocaust Denial here will earn you from between one and twenty years in prison. And the law, under §3h, specifically has all the bases covered - "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media". David Irving got three years for it. Lesley got a written warning from Jeremy. I wonder just how long the European Arrest Warrant, of which Lesley undoubtedly approves, will remain in force?

Corbyn's humiliation last night was an absolute classic. I watched it twice; the first time I really couldn't quite believe it was happening. It flayed the pretence and camouflage off him like the skin from a petulant saint leaving him utterly naked in the glare of the studio lights. Michael Deacon in the Telegraph has the best of the adjectives this morning - "waffly, defensive, confused, crabby, and clueless ... So tetchy, so sullen, so huffy. So sniffily passive-aggressive.... pitiful, and self-pitying" - and the best of it

He was behaving like the world’s oldest teenager: the smouldering victimhood, the muttering martyrdom. At any moment, I half-expected him to flounce out of his chair, stalk out of the studio, and stomp upstairs to his bedroom.

There will be some nervousness I expect at CCHQ at Boris' turn, which will be on 3rd/4th December if it happens - and it's likely that it must. Nigel must be conflicted, both relieved that BrexitCorp™'s polling means he's unlikely to be asked and miffed that, erm, he's unlikely to be asked. 

I was going to do a piece on Localist measures in the Conservative manifesto this morning but it would be as insipid as Earl Grey against Corby's live, on-air self-destruction.

Manifesto - Reform

Nigel Farage's hints at a future, post-Brexit, Reform Party speaks to many people; this blog has long advocated the need for some basic constitutional housekeeping, the necessity of clawing-back our democratic controls, of correcting the nation's drift into authoritarian centralism. I don't agree with Nigel on one major policy head - the need for a written constitution - and, to be perfectly frank, as a Conservative I find it hard to see the advantages of systems other than FPTP for the Commons. But if the Reform Party is a proper, democratic party with a constitution and voting and members and everything it will be of intense interest. Unless, of course, the Conservatives have already enacted the necessary reforms. I certainly support Nigel reprising his Brexit role, as a powerful lever to ensure parliament does the right thing.

And reform has not been neglected in the Conservative manifesto -

The failure of Parliament to deliver Brexit – the way so many MPs have devoted themselves to thwarting the democratic decision of the British people in the 2016 referendum – has opened up a destabilising and potentially extremely damaging rift between politicians and people. If the Brexit chaos continues, with a second referendum and a second Scottish referendum too, they will lose faith even further. It is only by getting Brexit done that we can start the necessary task of restoring public trust in government and politics:

• We will get rid of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act – it has led to paralysis at a time the country needed decisive action.
• We will ensure we have updated and equal Parliamentary boundaries, making sure that every vote counts the same – a cornerstone of democracy.
• We will continue to support the First Past the Post system of voting, as it allows voters to kick out politicians who don’t deliver, both locally and nationally.
• We will protect the integrity of our democracy, by introducing identification to vote at polling stations, stopping postal vote harvesting and measures to prevent any foreign interference in elections.
• We will make it easier for British expats to vote in Parliamentary elections, and get rid of the arbitrary 15-year limit on their voting rights.
• We will maintain the voting age at 18 – the age at which one gains full citizenship rights.
• We will ensure that no one is put off from engaging in politics or standing in an election by threats, harassment or abuse, whether in person or online.
• We will champion freedom of expression and tolerance, both in the UK and overseas.
• To support free speech, we will repeal section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2014, which seeks to coerce the press. We will not proceed with the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry.
• We will ensure redundancy payments can be clawed back when high-paid public servants move between jobs.
• We will improve the use of data, data science and evidence in the process of government.

The repeal of s.40 and the scrapping of the second stage of Leveson will enrage the Luvvies and Slebs behind 'Hacked Off' - and with luck their cosy private regulator 'Impress' funded by Max Mosley will now wither on the vine. That alone will be reason to open the champagne.

The commitment to protect those engaging in politics in 'real life' or online from threats, harassment or abuse has become necessary - not only the thugs of Antifa and Momentum like the boot boys of the SA, with those who have notes excusing them from PE doing their bullying from the keyboard, but the likes of Yaxley-Lemon on the other side. Like the ends of a horsehoe, they are closer to each other than to the rest of us. This would take care and finesse to get right, and I'm sure every one of you would monitor progress closely.

All in all, an excellent slate of manifesto commitments. Again, I commend them to you. 

Manifesto - The Salisbury-Addison Convention

You may wonder why political parties publish manifestos, or publish manifestos that contain such a wealth of detail. Primarily of course these are election pledges to the voters - a written contract, if you like. They are also a 'here I stand ...' document, committing the leader and every parliamentary candidate to a slate of policies. They are as well tick lists of measures pitched so electors may balance personal costs and benefits. Yes, they are all those things. 

But this detailed Conservative manifesto is, I suggest, something more. We have a House of Lords, deeply hostile to Brexit, an upper chamber that is utterly unrepresentative of public opinion, a chamber that has been subject to 'state capture'. Whatever government takes the reins on December 13th, it faces getting a legislative programme through the Lords. And here is where the title of the post comes in. The Commons itself says

The Salisbury-Addison Convention is a parliamentary convention to which the House of Lords has adhered since 1945 ... The House of Lords should not reject at second reading any government legislation that has been passed by the House of Commons and that carries out a manifesto commitment. In the House of Lords, a manifesto bill:

• is accorded a second reading;
• is not subject to ‘wrecking amendments’ which change the Government’s manifesto intention as proposed in the bill; and
• is passed and sent (or returned) to the House of Commons, so that they have the opportunity, in reasonable time, to consider the bill or any amendments which the House of Lords may wish to propose.

And that is one reason why so much is crammed into manifestos. Boris makes no specific commitment to reform or abolish the Lords in the manifesto, but, after the disaster that Bercow has proved to our democratic institutions, and after the vexatious abuse of lawfare by Gina Miller and others to subvert democratic legitimacy, the Conservatives make a clear pledge

After Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts; the functioning of the Royal Prerogative; the role of the House of Lords; and access to justice for ordinary people. The ability of our security services to defend us against terrorism and organised crime is critical. We will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government. We will ensure that judicial review is available to protect the rights of the individuals against an overbearing state, while ensuring that it is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays. In our first year we will set up a Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission that will examine these issues in depth, and come up with proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates.

So whilst there is no clear conclusion on what should be done about the Lords (and we all know that something needs to be done) they will face a level of scrutiny they have not faced under any government since the evolution of the Salisbury-Addison convention in 1945.

There is a warning here for the wreckers, the abusers, the illiberals and the anti-democrats. Our unwritten constitution is likely to be robust enough to renew and reform itself endogenously, from within. Wellington's rope harness.

Whilst I'm not shedding luvvie tears of wonder like Lily Allen over this document, it really is a winner - and contains also clear and specific measures for electoral and administrative reform and other things that I will look at in detail over the week. I commend it to you. 

The best laid plans ..

Well, I was expecting now to do a piece on the Conservative manifesto, but I'm afraid the party has rather cocked it up. Not only was the live video feed lousy and broken, but nowhere is there a link to the .pdf manifesto and costings supplement. I was also sort of expecting, as a party member, an email with a link to the document, but no such luck.

I shall have to write to that nice Mr Cleverly, who as Chairman is responsible for the housekeeping, I expect.

Sorry, nothing to see here.

Update
======
Not just me, then. The Chief Political Correspondent and Assistant Editor, Daily Telegraph, Chairman of the Lobby, tweets

 

Transgression

Possibly the most important piece of news of the day is easy to overlook. Our hero is no high profile politician or media personality, no minor royal with the emotional intelligence of a lump of mince, no virtue signalling pop star but a previously unknown 53 year old former policeman called Harry Miller. The story is featured in today's Telegraph. 

You will know me as a pretty laid back and socially liberal sort of blogger; if male readers choose to browse the internet dressed as Eartha Kitt or wearing outsize Victoria's Secret undergarments, I really don't care. I really, really, don't care. Being libertarian in outlook means so long as you're not harming anyone else, you can do as you like. However, I fundamentally believe that there are only two human sexes, biologically, and anything else can be classed as either make-believe or a psychological disorder. Now you may not have realised that writing that may lead to this blog entry being recorded by the police under their Hate Crime Operational Guidance (2014). Something similar led to plod banging at the door of Harry Miller -

Mr Miller, a married father of four, was investigated by Humberside Police earlier this year after a Twitter user complained that he shared a 'transphobic limerick'. Even though no crime was committed, his sharing of the limerick online was recorded as a 'hate incident' and he was described as a "suspect" in police reports, the court heard.

Mr Miller, who was previously an officer for the Humberside force, accused the police of "creating a chilling atmosphere for those who would express a gender critical position".

"The idea that a law-abiding citizen can have their name recorded against a hate incident on a crime report when there was neither hate nor crime undermines principles of justice, free expression, democracy and common sense," he said.

Mr Miller has succeeded in putting the police guidance before the courts for judicial review. The case continues. We must not only wish him every success but be ready to support the costs of an appeal should the case continue in the higher courts.

Baying at our power and booing democracy

On 6th November I wrote a piece that included

The events are designed to show how powerful and important are the broadcasters, and how trivial our political leaders. Silly little bar stools, demeaning sets and intellectually inadequate presenters with little understanding of democracy and frequently an inability to chair either effectively or impartially the debate make the things a spectacle like those in which secret incestuous caravan-park relations are revealed before a studio audience. TV debates are all about the broadcasters.

Well, last night was absolutely everything I hate about these staged spectacles. The set was taken from a game show, the vacuous presenter would perhaps have served to interview a minor royal with the IQ of a slice of bacon but for nothing more challenging, and the audience bayed and booed. The broadcasters have yet again insulted the gravity of our democracy with jejune malice and have turned a leaders' debate during the most important election in a century into an episode of the Jeremy Kyle show.

We must ensure that this is the last time the broadcasters insult our democracy, devalue the power of our vote and belittle our electoral process. A ninety-minute studio debate without an audience chaired by Andrew Neil would serve - but this lurex spangled game show must end.

Hong Kong - are the protesters losing support?

Am I detecting a change in temperature in support for the Hong Kong protesters? When they were waving union flags as an un-ironic symbol of freedom and metaphorically standing in front of the tanks, there was a groundswell of support for their courage and commitment to values we like to think we gifted our ex-colony.

However, things have turned ugly. Molotov cocktails and crossbows, violence directed at the police, beatings of those inclined to reason. In a week they've seemingly gone from victims to Boxers, to the extent that my sympathies have actually shifted towards the beleaguered police and even to China's (puppet?) ruler Carrie Lam, struggling both to restore control and keep the PLA out.

Or are the protesters just ramping up their response to a more aggressive and violent police tactics? In any event, this is becoming, in my perception, a shades of grey thing.

Maybe Peking has learned a thing or two since Tiananmen Square - now thirty years ago.

Water, water .....

One of the upsides of having a main residence in a place in which 2m of Winter snow is not unusual and the entire landscape is trying constantly to go from 45° to horizontal is that everyone is well prepared for it. Every village has its volunteer firefighters and a pump or two (and who are now finally ditching their disconcerting WWII German coal scuttle steel helmets) and council vehicles are short, powerful, high wheelbase trucks. Consequently, the biblical deluge of the past two days is treated as serious but normal; stuff happens. As scores of roads are closed by landslips, floods and fallen trees - find alternative routes. As 200 train passengers are trapped by blocked rail lines and fallen power cables - put them up in hotels and guesthouses, now empty in the off-season. Houses flood, cellars fill with water, schools are unreachable - get the people out, send the pumps in.

As the trickling bachl at the edge of my meadows has turned into a roaring torrent I have been watching the local news carefully, as one does. Never once have I heard anyone blaming it on the government, never once have I seen exploitative interviews with tearful victims. No one cares right now whether it's climate or weather. The whole approach is incredibly stoical. It shames me to say it, but it puts the sensationalist, unbalanced and virtue-signalling whining of the UK media to shame.

In fact, the Austrians have me chuckling. Breakfast TV here is 'Good Morning, Austria!' in which the presenters take their caravan around rural Austria and interview local cake-bakers, costume makers, cider brewers, men with big moustaches and so on between serious news pieces. Today they're broadcasting from an area of the Tyrol stricken with avalanches, mudslides, floods and closed roads and they have segued seamlessly into interviewing firefighters, disaster co-ordinators and experts in making your own candles from earwax ... judge for yourself; the first three minutes are enough.

And here is a matter-of-fact information list of local closed roads, so one may plan one's journey. I'll bet SatNav hasn't caught up yet -

Kärnten

• die B80, Lavamünder Straße, bei Lavamünd. Nur für PKW gibt es eine Umleitungsmöglichkeit.
• die B81, Bleiburger Straße, in Lavamünd.
• die B98, Millstätter Straße, bei Feld am See und zwischen Afritz und Feld am See
• die B81, Bleiburger Straße, in Lavamünd. PKW werden örtlich umgeleitet. LKW können nur großräumig ausweichen.
• die B85, Rosental Straße zwischen Finkenstein und Pogöriach
• die B88, die Kleinkirchheimer Straße, zwischen Radenthein und dem Kirchheimer Graben
• die B99, Katschberg Straße, zwischen Lieserbrücke und Trebesing, zwischen Leoben und Kremsbrücke sowie zwischen der Autobahnauffahrt Rennweg und dem Katschberg
• die B100 Drautal Straße zwischen Greifenburg und Radlach
• die B105, Mallnitzer Straße, auf der gesamten Strecke
• die B106, Mölltal Straße zwischen Mühldorf und Flattach und zwischen Stall und Latzendorf
• die B107, Großglockner Straße, zwischen Döllach und Heiligenblut und zwischen Winklern und Iselsberg
• die B110, die Plöckenpass-Straße, zwischen Mauthen und dem Plöckenpass sowie zwischen Oberdrauburg und Kötschach
• die B90, die Nassfeld-Straße, zwischen der B111 und Tröpolach

• die L65, die Hochrindl Straße zwischen Ebene Reichenau und Hochrindl
• die L26, Egger Straße zwischen Paßriach und Latschach
• die L103, Waidischer Straße im Ortsgebiet von Ferlach und Zell Pfarre
• die L3 Amlacher Straße in Greifenburg
• die L5 Baldramsdorferstraße zwischen Spittal Draubrücke und Gendorf
• die L19, Innerkremser Straße, zwischen Innerkrems und der Kremsbrücke
• die L32, die Stockenboier Landesstraße, bei Zlan
• die L38 Krastal Landesstraße zwischen Treffen und Puch
• die L37, die Ferndorfer Straße, bei Ferndorf
• die L113, die Diexer Straße, zwischen St. Ulrich und Gretschitz
• die Apriacher Straße (Gemeinde Heiligenblut)
• die Verbindung Winkl – Schlatten
• und auf der Innerfaganter Straße die Zufahrt zum Mölltaler Gletscher

In der Gemeinde Mörtschach sind einige Straßen wegen Lawinengefahr gesperrt. Und zwar die Ortswege nach :
– Oberstranach
– Pirkaberg
– Rettenbach
– Stampfen West
– Asten

• In der Gemeinde Großkirchheim sind alle Ortschaftswege gesperrt.
• In der Gemeinde Winklern sind alle Güterwege Richtung Penzelberg, Oberzwischenbergen und Unterzwischenbergen gesperrt.
• In der Gemeinde Rangersdorf sind alle Güterwege zu den Bergortschaften gesperrt.
• In der Gemeinde Stall im Mölltal sind alle Straßen gesperrt.

In der Gemeinde Dellach gesperrt sind:
Nordseitig (Gailtaler Alpen)
– Stollwitzweg (mit Oberstollwitz)
– Goldbergweg (mit Hofzufahrt Obermonseller, Hofzufahrt Knaller und Hofzufahrt Rüben) Wieserbergweg (mit Gurina und Sigile/Schrocker)
Südseitig:
– Hofzufahrt Urban
In der Gemeinde Kötschach-Mauthen:

• Plon – Buchach
• Lanz – Dobra
• Vorhegg – Kreuth
• Kreuth Ödenhütte (Maierle)
• Sittmoos, Nischlwitz und Zufahrt Huber
• Kosta
• Moser – Trattenschuster Weg
• Strenge
• Krieghof
• Kronhof
• Gratzhof
• Dolling
• Kreuzberg zu Lamprechtbauer und Krieger

In der Gemeide Kirchbach, die Bereiche:

• Schimanberg-Tramun
• Staudachberg-Hochwart
• Wassertheurerberg
• Stöfflerberg
• Forst-Straße
• Kattlingberg-Lenzhofstraße
• Rauthweg
• Oberbuchach
• AAW Stranig-Goderschach; Unterbuchachstraße
• Verbindungsweg Fitschweg
• Reißkofelbad-Straße von Grafendorf und Reisach

Wegen umgestürzter Bäume gesperrt ist:
– die B95, die Turracher Straße, zwischen Predlitz und Turrach
Ost-Tirol
In Osttirol sind zahlreiche Straßen gesperrt nach dem starken Schneefall. Auch drohen immer wieder Bäume umzustürzen.
Gesperrt sind
– die Felbertauern-Mautstraße von Mittersill bis Matrei
– und die B108, die Felbertauern-Straße, zwischen Matrei und Huben (zwischen der Hofstelle „Strimitzer“ und der Brühlbrücke)
Weiters gesperrt:
– die B107, die Großglockner Straße, zwischen Iselsberg und Winklern
– die B111, die Gailtal Straße, zwischen Rauchenbach und Kartitsch
– die L24, die Virgentalstraße, von Obermauern bis Hinterbichl
– die L25, die Defereggental-Straße, von Huben bis zum Staller Sattel
– die L26, die Kalser Straße, von Huben bis zur Ködnitz-Brücke
– die L74, die Rajach Straße, im gesamten Verlauf
– die L273, die Villgratentalstraße, zwischen Heinfels und Kalkstein
– die L324, Pustertaler Höhenstraße, in mehreren Abschnitten zwischen Oberburgfrieden und Abfaltersbach
– die L325, die Tessenberger Straße, zwischen Fronstadl und Hintenburg
– die L326, die Winkeltalstraße, auf gesamter Strecke
– die L358, die St. Veiter Straße, im Bereich Frezgraben
– die L359, die Asslinger Straße, zwischen Thal und Oberassling
– und die L388, die St. Justina Straße, zwischen Mittenwald und St. Justina
– sowie sämtliche Ortsstraßen in Inner- und Außervillgraten

CorbynNet - just wrong on so many levels

I pay about £17 a month for unlimited interweb at a consistent speed of 30MB - plenty for me, with Netflix, a couple of internet radios on all day and normal browsing. And neither a strand of copper nor a whisper of fibre optic in sight - it's all LTE 4G mobile, my router having a SIM card slot rather than an RJ11 socket. I don't need 5G, and as I don't own any sort of huge screen I don't need faster speeds. I don't even watch Netflix that much - last night, with the fire playing in the stove, I sank into the comfort of  a Portillo rail journeys DVD, an early one, before he started to camp it up for his considerable gay fan club. I don't think I'm untypical of the older internet user.

Clearly I think Labour's £100bn nationalised internet offer was aimed at the young, but to my mind it's mistaken on at least three levels. Firstly, is the UK seriously proposing to dig up all those streets and roads again to lay fibre into dwellings, rather than just into junction boxes which use copper for the final connection? Isn't this a bit, erm, steampunk, when the entire sparsely populated alpine region of Europe gets 4G using mobile?

Secondly, an anyone who has ever compared internet tariffs will ask, what does 'free' and 'fast' mean? Is it 10MB speeds for up to 2GB a month? Or 67MB for unlimited use? You see, Mr Corbyn clearly doesn't quite understand that demand for something free is pretty well infinite - which is why we have to ration free stuff like the NHS. And St Greta will not be pleased - the interweb already takes more than 10% of our power consumption.

Thirdly and most importantly, what sort of morons would vote to voluntarily hand control of their internet access to an overweening nanny government department? One journalist asked at Labour's press conference yesterday whether national CorbynNet would ban porn - and got a weaselly answer about controls to prevent harm to users. That means censorship. Now the young generation I know uses stuff like Tor, bitstreaming, online gaming, the greyer bits of the web where we olduns never venture and, I am pretty sure, lots of porn. Everything in fact that Labour's authoritarian illiberal nannies would want to ban. They'd have us all watching documentary films about cheese-making co-operatives.

End of Empire

With a monumental lack of irony, Donald Tusk claimed yesterday that Brexit marked the true end of Empire, as though anyone thought that such a terminal event was a bad thing. This utter lack of self-awareness amused me hugely on two grounds. The first was that Brexit will mark the end of Britain's subjugation and restraint by his own nascent EU Empire, the second that Britain's rejection of the role of military muscle that the EU had planned for us will almost certainly curtail the EU's own dreams of a European empire to rival the US and China. He knows so little of the UK, or has been so deluded and gulled by specious Remain propaganda, to imagine that there's anyone at all on the Brexit side who yearns for Empire. Since 2008, not one single comment on this blog has even mentioned it. It is, as the psychologists say, Projection.

China, too, having hardly laid the first belt-and-road asphalt, is already experiencing the pains and costs of Empire, and I don't mean just Hong Kong. The hundreds of billions invested in African ports, transport infrastructure, mines and natural resources will be increasingly at risk; from forfeiture if ever the bribe taps to the ruling elites are turned off, or at the hands of an emergent new kleptocratic elite seizing them for the new regime. Either China uses military force to secure the assets, or loses the vast investments - a dilemma that every ex-colonial power has faced. Long lines of communication means a low ratio of teeth to tail, something that the US, with 1.3 million persons under arms only a small fraction of whom are tasked to combat duties, has already found. And internally, China is at the stage of millions detained already in detention camps - universally the precursor to regime change.

I have published before a map of Tusk's imperial European ambitions which I find simply strategically unbelievably stupid. Turkey doesn't even have to start a tank - just to release 3m migrants launched into the EU's soft underbelly. A NATO without boots on EU ground can shorten supply lines and constrict all sea routes to the EU if required, closing the Med up like a boating lake.

So thank you, Donald. Trebles all round, I think.   

The fight is not over

This election is round one in an existential war to win back popular democracy. Ranged against the people of Britain are the globalist powers of the deep state and their dags who have infiltrated and taken control of our national institutions. 

The strength of the people has always been made manifest through the actions of what Robert Nisbet called our intermediate institutions - the little platoons that Burke found foundational in creating a national identity. Nisbet locates the chief cause of the feeling of lostness in modern man in the weakening of the intermediate associations that stand between the lone individual and the State; without our local bodies, our little platoons, our guilds, churches, watch committees and town councils, we are hugely vulnerable to the depredations of the central state. This is why I am so committed to Localism. The battles against the deep state globalists are not to be won in SW1 but in our parish halls and meeting places, in places real and virtual, by physical or remote contact. Popular democracy needs local moots.  

One of the most sustained assaults on popular democracy since the middle of the last century has been by the central state on our intermediate institutions. Many have been destroyed beyond any hope of resurrection - but our future lies not in replicating the past, but in creating new forms of local identity using the tools and relationships enabled by technology. Localism need not be limited by geography, defined by place but by purpose. This blog is also valid as a local moot. Your own family is an intermediate institution, and a powerful nexus of a belonging, an allegiance, a strength that the central State cannot defile.  

Robert Tombs in the Telegraph today also delineates the battles ahead;

All across the democratic world, more and more power has shifted away from elected national governments towards non-elected bodies – international organisations, law courts, treaties, quangos. Governments have voluntarily surrendered their own authority. But in doing so, they have limited democratic choice: voters are told that there are things they cannot do, choices they cannot make.

This has gone furthest in EU member states. A void has been created between rulers and ruled. Two networks of power, influence and patronage have grown up: one based on domestic politics, the other based on the EU institutions. These two networks – two establishments, one national, one trans-national, which include politicians, civil servants, academics, business lobbies, non-governmental organisations – overlap in every EU country.

It is those virtues that the technocratic elites claim as liberating - individualism, egality and the supremacy of central or supranational authority - that Nisbet found destructive of popular democracy;

What is often overlooked, as Nisbet points out, is that in making individuals independent of each other and of society, Rousseau would also make them dependent on the State. The State would ensure the individual's equality and liberty. But "liberty" in Rousseau’s terminology, of course, means submergence of the individual will in the General Will. The citizen will be "compelled to be free." He will be protected from the discriminations of society; the State, in Rousseau’s mind, is to be the great protector of the individual’s rights. But, in turn, the individual must be willing to relinquish any of his own wishes that conflict with the dictates of the General Will. There would be no room for rebellious intermediate associations. In Rousseau’s would-be State, even "religion must be identified, in the minds of the people, with the values of national life, else it will create disunity and violate the General Will." Thus does freedom become identified with obeying the guidelines of a central authority.

The struggles of the past three years to re-assert the supremacy of popular democracy are not the end of it. This election is but one battle, with a struggle ahead. All those who have fought so hard for UKIP or The Brexit Party have not fought in vain, nor are their efforts ended. That commitment to the powers of the people of this nation under democratic norms is still needed. Democracy doesn't always mean winning, as Tombs concludes

Democracy is not a system for discovering the "right answer" to political issues: we can rarely if ever 
be sure what the right answer is. Democracy, rather, is a system for creating consent and solidarity by allowing all to have an equal vote. For making people feel that the way they are governed, though not perfect, is at least one in which they are fairly consulted and their voices listened to. So that, even if they do not get their own way, they accept the outcome without trying to sabotage or evade it.

That is what we have come perilously close to losing. Next month we have the chance to regain it, with all the opportunities and risks that democracy entails.

With thanks, time to move on.

The debt owed to Nigel Farage cannot be understated. Without him, David Cameron would never have agreed the Referendum. And as a Conservative, I am doubly grateful; without Nigel we would never have reformed our party, culled the EUphiles and shifted course. At the time of the EP elections, I simply repeated here what Conservative Home had printed as advice to Conservatives - to refrain from voting.

Farage's commitment yesterday to withdraw from 317 seats won by May in 2017 clearly hurt him deeply and has stunned many readers and contributors. However, it was the right thing to do. Only the Conservative party can deliver Brexit. But I'm sorry to say it may not be enough for an overall majority; we must still fight over Labour seats in which the Conservative party can win. There will also be seats in which my party can never win. There will, no doubt, be an app soon available to advise on the best way to vote tactically in such seats to secure a pro-Brexit MP.

Yesterday at least has allowed us now to turn our guns onto Labour's reckless and hopeless spending plans, and the undermining of the power of the peoples' vote by the illiberal anti-democrats. And on globalist warmongers such as Hillary Clinton, who want to use their foreign influences to undermine British democracy in a last-ditch effort to prevent us casting them off.

Oh. And remember what happened last time that Labour had a cunning spending plan? Your grandchildren will still be paying for it in 2049.

  

Who owns BrexitCorp™?

It's all about Farage. He has become Remain's secret weapon and the columnists are saying so. "Nigel Farage would rather scupper Brexit than let somebody else deliver it" writes Dan Hannan in the Telegraph; Nick Timothy's take is "Nigel Farage has tragically turned into the Frodo Baggins of Brexit". Timothy in particular is scathing

So why is Farage campaigning against it, and against Leave-supporting Tory MPs? Some who know him believe – after years of being despised, ignored or patronised by senior Tories – he has a pathological determination to destroy the Conservative Party. But others insist he is motivated much more by ego. Drunk on his own publicity, and surrounded by sycophants, he is incapable of taking yes for an answer. And so he keeps campaigning for a “real Brexit”, even though in so doing he risks destroying the real Brexit that Boris is trying to deliver.

In Lord of the Rings, good fortune means the ring is destroyed despite Frodo’s submission to greed and vanity. But in real life, we cannot wait for a stroke of luck. Farage needs to stop, before he kills his greatest achievement.

It was surely the naivety of an obsessive that allowed Farage to imagine that he could negotiate with the Conservative party for a deal. BrexitCorp™ is not a democratic party but the sort of anti-democratic cabal that Farage has rightly himself fought against for so many long years; the BrexitCorp™ capos are appointed, not elected. Supporters are allowed to donate money to Nigel's firm but not to be members of a party and vote. Farage refuses to reveal the shadowy backers and owners of his company who stand to benefit if he gains seats in Parliament. The Conservatives will simply not openly announce a deal with a secretive privately owned company that could well blow up in their faces in a year when electoral law says the financial backing must be revealed.

Timothy demolishes point by point Farage's 'fatuous' claims that Boris' deal is not Brexit. "Farage’s claims about that are completely bogus. He argues that EU judges will still rule over Britain, and that we will not control our fishing, will be unable to trade as we choose, and will not be allowed an independent foreign or defence policy. None of this is true." he writes

But most of all, I suspect, Farage actually enjoys being an MEP and head of the largest group of MEPs in the European Parliament. No wonder he prefers the corrupt 'list' EP electoral system that gives voters no say in the individuals that their votes send to Brussels, making democracy a matter of his personal favouritism. Perhaps he really doesn't want it to end. His stubbornness is destroying his own legacy. As a letter today in the Telegraph states

Sir – Nigel Farage could have gone down in history as the man who stiffened the sinews of the Conservative Party and ensured that we left the European Union – but I fear he is more likely to go down as the man who caused us to stay put.

I know pride is at stake, but he must accept that after three years of political wrangling most people want to see a negotiated settlement. His desire for the Government to ditch the Brexit deal will simply not be realised. The only result if he persists with his present course is likely to be no exit from the EU, and a hard-Left Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn.

And this is my appeal. Nigel, give it up. For the sake of Brexit, stand your BrexitCorp™ candidates in 20 - 40 northern Labour seats but stand them down elsewhere where they risk putting Corbyn in power.

The pathetic vileness of the haters and baiters

There are dark forces in human hearts that we simply cannot allow to be released. Whether the objects of their hatred are defined by faith or racial or ethnographic identity, we have surely learned enough lessons by now of the dangers in pretending that their abhorrent views are in any wise acceptable. Corbyn has sheltered and succoured the most vile bigots and anti-semites, repugnant individuals who pollute his party. As a reminder of how unfit he is for public life - and all like him, the Muslim-baiters, the race haters, who either commit or allow those in their party to support these repulsive hatreds, I re-publish a post I made a year ago, on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht -

November 9th, 2018  
A pane of window glass is an odd thing. Just 4mm thick, and so fragile that a child's ball may shatter it, in our minds it is as much of a bulwark against the elements, against the chaos of the street, against the bad outside as nine inches of brick and mortar. Anyone who has had a broken front window pane will know the sudden vulnerability, the sense of unprotectedness, the anxiety and the naked exposure of that void. Until mended, we can't sleep. We imagine dark forms, of burglars, deviants and suchlike attracted like moths to the boarded gape - blind to the reason that the piece of plywood covering the hole is many times stronger than the thin, weak pane it replaces.

Eighty years ago today tens of thousands of our German cousins had their windows deliberately smashed, windows of not only their homes but their businesses. Synagogues were smashed and burned. Kristallnacht marked the change from social, economic and political discrimination to physical attack. Kristallnacht marked the start of the Holocaust.

The boundary, the constraint, the separation between discriminatory treatment, between scowls and insults flung in the street and on the trams to physical battery, to rape and murder, to violence and robbery and to organised genocide was just as thin and fragile as a sheet of glass. Eighty years ago it was smashed and the first thirty thousand of Germany's Jews were rounded up for the concentration camps, to be killed in an ad-hoc, haphazard fashion, from starvation, lack of care, overwork and shooting. It was to be another thirty-eight months before the Germans agreed the designer death factories at Wannsee - Vorsprung durch Technik - but already the fate of Europe's Jews was effectively decided.

NEVER AGAIN

I was in Villach yesterday, enjoying a beer on the broad, elongated space that stretches up the hill from the Drau to the church, paved in the same red catshead cobbles as a century ago, and called Adolf-Hitler-Platz until the British occupation force changed its name in 1946. The Christmas tree was already up, the size of the tree in Trafalgar Square, and carpenters were building the Christmas village, sturdy huts and braziers soon to be filled with the scent of burning pine, Glühwein and hot Leberkäse. As I write I can't actually remember what the space is called today - after having seen all the photos from March 1938, such as that below, it is forever Adolf-Hitler-Platz in my mind. Among this crowd, I wonder, were the Jews of Villach watching the procession? Still at that time with faith in the strength of their windows to protect them from rape, brutality and death?

The death of Labour

I've known quite a few Labourites down the years. In South Yorkshire being Labour was as much a part of life as the Yorkshire main coal seam 1km under our feet. These were Ian Austins to a man, believers in hard work, social responsibility, a mixed economy, a strong defence and Trident. Amongst them were the last batch of national servicemen and those who wore the pair of the UN bronze and distinctive blue and yellow ribboned campaign medals of the Korean war. They tried hard, really hard, not to say 'love' 'dear' or 'pet' when asking young women for a cup of tea, knowing but not quite understanding that this now gave offence.

In London, I knew a far greater variety of Labourites. There were communities - Irish, Jewish - who traditionally looked to the party as a collective defence against the abuses and depredations of the tribal English. There were the Windrush generation of Commonwealth immigrants who joined them for much the same reasons. There were a great mass of Londoners, minor consumers of the Welfare State, who wanted decent homes at affordable rents in which to live on their wages as bus drivers or council clerks. For the most part they were Ian Austins, too. There were the actors, poets and artists from the French and the Colony Room. Soho's last lamplighter. Those employed in higher and further education, where labour allegiance was a sort of membership worn lightly in case they should want to 'go into politics' if they failed to get that departmental headship yet again.

Of course there were the nasty Labourites, too. The bullying and grasping TU officials (including one bane of my own managerial life; when he was exposed in the 'Sun' as a serial groper and sex abuser and sacked by his own union, which he took to a tribunal, my rejoicing was great). There were the nasty local councillors bent with greed or corrupt with petty power, drunks, bullies, haters and frauds. All those who used the party as a ladder to support their own foulness. But one meets such people everywhere.

All the above one could tag as 'mostly harmless'. Many will have voted 'Leave' in the referendum. Many will only now, in this election, come to realise that their party is dead, taken-over by a cynical and dangerous cabal of Marxist opportunists who care nothing for their wishes and beliefs, who will not reward their loyalty. Even the Noncefinder General, himself not an attractive human being, has jumped ship. The Jewish Chronicle screams warnings. John Woodcock, Tom Harris and Michael McCann, former Labour bigwigs, say don't vote for Corbyn.

Lay up those silk banners. The party is disbanded. Labour is dead.

The only winners from TV debates are the broadcasters

I'm not a fan of TV debates in which the party leaders are encouraged to sneer and bark at each other like bare knuckle boxers. Inevitably these things are designed by broadcasters deeply biased towards the metropolitan political establishment, a social state in which the broadcasters have a privileged supremacy. The events are designed to show how powerful and important are the broadcasters, and how trivial our political leaders. Silly little bar stools, demeaning sets and intellectually inadequate presenters with little understanding of democracy and frequently an inability to chair either effectively or impartially the debate make the things a spectacle like those in which secret incestuous caravan-park relations are revealed before a studio audience. TV debates are all about the broadcasters.

'All politics is local' is not an aphorism understood by the BBC, ITV or Sky. As far as they're concerned, all politics is centred around SW1. For two years they've given us the bear pit of College Green, with its mentally-ill ranters and painted fools in the background, and a primitive forest of flags waving above the outdoor stages, a contrived palio of conflict designed to drive up the political temperature and crowd-out sense and reason from political debate. It's all about spectacle, about a gladiatorial knock-about. I'm sure that the parliamentary authority has offered a score of times to site temporary portacabins for the broadcasters on the river terrace and have been spurned - they want extremist behaviour, they want the threat of violence and they want noise, fear and the mob. It is the broadcasters more than anyone else who have whipped up the death threats, spittle and assaults on MPs and have deepened the division in the country. Do we really trust them to act any different in designing TV debates?

It is a truism that the best way to treat the broadcasters is to deprive them of the oxygen of publicity. To refuse to play their game. As Channel Four news has found to its cost. This is the most important election for almost a century - do we really want to contrive with the establishment TV barons in turning it into a game show?

And as any fair televised punch-up must include both the illiberal anti-democrats and BrexitCorp® I suggest that only making the nonsense both fair and equitable and agreeing a format that takes the heat, steam and hate out, in effect making the four-way debate a quiet, considered debate with no yowling studio audience and no black-tee shirted security guards to restrain the studio mob from attacking the guests is the only sensible way ahead.

Mad pitbulls and manipulative experts

Dr Keith Sutherland has a job at Exeter University. His piece in the Speccie detailing the shortcomings of citizens' juries and of deliberative democracy is therefore supremely professional and details the myriad technical faults of the process that makes it unsuitable for important democratic decisions.

In my time I've done plenty of design charettes with local communities affected by development. I recall one dreary November evening; it was cold, it was dark, and freezing rain made sodden and hopeless the scruffy hall at the edge of a council estate affected by our plans. Sheltering under a tree in a vandalised play area were a group of teens; even on such a night, being out and together was better than being at home. I was told of one 16-year old lad highly skilled on a BMX bike that his mother and stepfather had given him notice to leave the house; no job and no post-16 education meant he earned nothing for them, was just a mouth to feed, and so got pushed out of the nest. It was that brutal.

Inevitably those that came to the meeting were, as Dr Sutherland describes, overrepresented by partisans and activists. Boy, they hated young people. They wanted a public realm equipped with the design equivalent of barbed wire and searchlights, with the painful silent shriek of 'mosquito' transmitters on every street corner (these satanic devices emit a painful noise at a frequency that can only be heard by those under about 20 - advertised as 'teen deterrents'. I guess dogs would hear them as well - possibly accounting for so many mad pitbulls in these places) When I challenged the 'community' plod on his repeated description of the kids that hung around outside the shops as a 'teenage nuisance' and suggested that as they weren't breaking any law and were as much citizens as the rest of us, it would be more accurate to describe them as a 'teenage presence', I was practically lynched.  

Our architect, a gentle and artistic man, was so horrified he never attended further. He sent instead a duffer assistant, a talentless gofer who was useful in the office because he could work the CAD system.

Sutherland points out that 95% of those invited to citizens' juries never turn up; "Out of the 30,000 invitations sent out for Rachel Reeves’ climate assembly, only 110 will receive the golden ticket. Would you have any confidence in an opinion poll that relied on 110 volunteers?" he asks. A citizens' assembly that reproduced exactly the 52:48 Brexit result would need a minimum of 6,766 participants.

But Sutherland understates, professionally, the key reason that deliberative democracy is never suited as a replacement for democracy - that those using it are themselves biased towards a certain outcome and will seek to run the process to produce that outcome. The RSA, for example, a strong advocate of deliberative democracy, suggests that the cattle are well-briefed by 'experts' before they are allowed to raise their hands - on the basis that decisions such as Brexit should be made by 'informed' voters rather than we ignorant, stupid, uneducated and inexpert citizens.

Beware all those who seek to use any method other than universal suffrage and the secret ballot for our most important decisions. They don't have democracy in their hearts. 

Speaker : let's hope it's third time lucky

Readers may recall a post I made in September under the title 'Good riddance to a meretricious arsewipe'. After recalling my first experience with George Thomas and his successor, I wrote

After Weatherill came Betty Boothroyd - ex Tiller Girl, and to date our only female Speaker. She brought a twinkle and a touch of humour to the chair in a way that in no wise diminished either her dignity, the authority of the Speaker or her command of the chamber. For the matters of her term, 1992 - 2000, she was perfect.

Then came Gorbals Mick, an inadequate and corrupt machine politician with little merit who sought to suppress, by power and bullying, the expenses scandal from reaching the press. And after Gorbals Mick the arsewipe, that sanctimonious dwarf Bercow. Two lousy Speakers, Bercow the very worst in my long memory and possibly in the life of our Parliament.

The Commons meets this afternoon to select a new Speaker. I shalln't compare the candidates - they will only be proven in the Chair. We have had two lousy Speakers in a row - let's hope that either by design or accident, the next one will be the Speaker that parliament needs (though hardly deserves).

Only Boris can deliver Brexit

Somewhat busy at the moment with the election, but be inspired by a tidy piece by Dan Hannan in the Telegraph this morning -

Ask yourself how Britain can reasonably hope to move on from the nastiness of the past three years. The Liberal Democrats propose to annul the referendum, a policy at which even many convinced Remainers baulk. Cancelling the result wouldn’t restore the status quo ante; rather, it would institutionalise the alienation and anger that envelop our politics.

Labour, meanwhile, wants to string the argument out through another referendum – and, in doing so, to string out the uncertainty for our exasperated businesses. Jeremy Corbyn proposes, with a straight face, to secure a better deal from Brussels and then campaign against his own deal.

And the Brexit Party? Sadly, it has been becoming clear for some time that the party is less interested in the first word in its title than the second. It was always going to oppose any Brexit deal, even if that meant staying in the EU (which would, of course, keep it in business).

In order to justify itself, it has to insist that leaving the EU is “not Brexit”, that taking back control of our money, laws and trade policy count for nothing and that Boris, who was the leader of the Leave campaign, is somehow not a Leaver. Unsurprisingly, two thirds of Leave voters back Boris’s deal, with only one in 10 opposed.

Yep. Only Boris can deliver Brexit.