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How British Politics is Failing

January 19, 2019

HOW BRITISH POLITICS IS FAILING

The web based comment blog “Unherd” hosts interesting contributions from politically minded commentators. The one below is interesting.

It is a recent contribution from Peter Kellner. Peter Kellner is the Blairite Director of YouGov, the internet based opinion pollsters. His opinion on the interpretation of statistics is well worth considering. So when Peter Kellner says:- “I wouldn’t bet a great deal against changes that could be immense, and which not everyone will like”, we should take notice. Also, as he is an enemy of English Nationalism and he is fearful of the consequences – so that should be encouraging too!

Here is Peter Kellner’s article:-

HOW BRITISH POLITICS IS FAILING

Something odd, and possibly dangerous, is eating away at the fabric of British politics. Brexit, of course, has much to do with it, but the consequences could be with us long after the current crisis is resolved, one way or another.

Signs of the malaise can be clearly seen in an exclusive survey for UnHerd conducted by Deltapoll. It shows a remarkable lack of faith in both main party leaders, not just by voters generally but by high proportions of their own voters. Loyalties are being tested as never before.

In the past, one party leader has occasionally had a shaky reputation among their own supporters on one or two characteristics. In the early 1980s, many Labour voters thought Michael Foot was weak; towards the end of her premiership, many Tories considered Margaret Thatcher out of touch. But I have never seen so many supporters of both parties simultaneously hold such low opinions of their own leaders across the board.

The responses of all voters shows that both leaders have strongly negative ratings on all counts. That is unusual enough. But when we look at the figures, showing how Conservative voters view Theresa May, and the figures, showing how Labour voters view Jeremy Corbyn, the scale of the drama becomes clear. The positive scores for May range from 57% of Conservative supporters who say she is strong, down to 40% who back her on Brexit. Her average score among Tory voters is 45%. Labour voters give Corbyn positive scores ranging from 64 to 38%; his average is 50%. Among all voters, the averages are, of course, even worse: May 26%, Corbyn 28%.

To put these figures in context, a successful leader would expect average scores of around 80% among their party’s own voters and 40% among the general public. For both leaders to fall so far short of these figures should set off alarm bells in both parties.

Here, though, is the paradox. Precisely because both leaders have terrible ratings, the scale of the problem is less obvious than it would be if only one was doing badly. In that case (as when Foot led Labour and towards the end of Thatcher’s premiership), their party would have support well below 30% in the polls and facing a landslide defeat. Instead, nothing much seems to have changed since the 2017 election. An average of recent polls shows the two parties still close together, and with almost as many supporters as 18 months ago. The high commands in both parties, though plainly struggling over Brexit, see no wider reason to panic.

In truth, they should be terrified. For the poll shows that the disenchantment with the main parties and their leaders has spread throughout Britain. Within Westminster, it is rare to find any backbench Labour or Conservative MP who, giving their candid views in private, will say their leader is any good or that their party is in anything other than deep trouble. But some hope this despair is a feature of the Westminster bubble, and that real voters away from London have not changed their views of politicians and parties that much.

In fact, it is increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that millions of voters Left and Right are losing faith in the people who either govern us today or aspire to do so in the future.

Which brings us to the possible long-term consequences of current public attitudes. In any country with a different electoral system, the chances are that support for both Labour and the Conservatives would have crashed by now. Across Europe, countries with more proportional voting systems have seen the traditional big parties slump in recent years – even with leaders less widely derided than Britain’s.

Here, first-past-the-post creates a huge barrier to entry. Elsewhere, small parties ranging from the Greens to the far right have obtained a foothold in their parliaments with as little as 5% support, and then managed to increase their credibility. Here, they can’t. In 1983, the Liberal/SDP Alliance won 26% and only 23 seats; in 2015 Ukip’s 14% gave them just a single seat.

The party that might have benefited from the Tory and Labour travails is the Liberal Democrats. But they paid a heavy price for their role in the 2010-15 coalition government. While their support has picked up a little in recent months, they are still scarred by decisions they took almost a decade ago.

It is, of course, possible that when the Brexit drama has played out, normal service will resume. Perhaps May and Corbyn will both be replaced by leaders who have greater personal appeal to the electorate.

I am not so sure. My reason is that May and Corbyn’s truly awful ratings do not flow solely from their personal attributes. Both lead deeply divided parties, and these divisions are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. The fault lines will remain: inward-looking nationalism versus outward-looking enterprise with the Tories; ambitious socialism versus progressive capitalism with Labour. A leader that combined the strategic ability of Napoleon with the genius of Einstein and the moral courage of Mandela would still struggle to win public approval if they could not reunite their parties. The Deltapoll figures providence symptoms of a deeper crisis.

In short, both main parties are more fragile and less stable than for many decades. First-past-the-post could save both Labour and the Conservatives from the consequences of their current divisions. But it is no longer ridiculous to image a different future. Once the adhesive glue of our electoral system starts to crack, things can change with bewildering speed. A century ago, amid the stresses of post-First-World-War Britain and the divisions within the Liberal Party, realignment happened quickly. Labour climbed from fourth place in 1918 to government in 1924.

Will Brexit end up having the same glue-cracking effect? And if it does, will the beneficiaries be existing herbivores such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens; or some new centre party created by disenchanted Labour and Tory moderates; or carnivores on the outer fringes of Right and Left? Is the century-long dominance of Britain’s Parliament by competing forces on the centre Right and centre Left about to end?

Ask me again in 10 years’ time and I shall tell you. Meanwhile I wouldn’t bet a great deal against changes that could be immense, and which not everyone will like.

Here is the link to the original article>>>https://unherd.com/2019/01/how-british-politics-is-failing/

Bring Justice to Labour Law Breaker

January 18, 2019

Please help us prosecute Dan Jarvis MP, the Mayor of the Sheffield City Region for electoral fraud!

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/bring-justice-to-labour-elected-law-breaker

On May 3rd 2018 South Yorkshire mayoral elections took place. Dan Jarvis MP for Barnsley central was elected. Unknown to the voters Mr Jarvis was being investigated by South Yorkshire police for electoral fraud. Unfortunately this information was hidden from the voters during the campaign by a conspiracy of silence within the “mainstream” media including the BBC and ITV in particular.

Mr Jarvis was being investigated because he and his agent had provided a false and incomplete home address in his nomination papers. This is against the law. In addition, Mr Jarvis and his agent contrived to camouflage his actual constituency home address by indicating that the Sheffield Trades and Labour club was some sort of home or constituency office. I

In addition, Mr Jarvis suggested to David Allen that owing to his military background he was not bound by electoral law. David contested this and asked him to provide his exemption from the law and that if he did so the matter would be dropped, and David would apologise. Mr Jarvis has produced no such exemption! (Because of course there isn’t one!).

Most shocking was the determined and successful media shutdown. Indeed, David was told before the BBC Radio Sheffield debate by the show’s producer that if David mentioned anything regarding Dan Jarvis being investigated by South Yorkshire police he would ‘cut it out’. He also insinuated that the media conspiracy of silence had a general sanction too. Also David was ‘no platformed’ from some of the Mayoral election hustings debates.

David believes that the Establishment’s efforts to protect Mr Jarvis during the election campaign would have had an effect on the ability of voters to make a proper choice at the ballot box. In short, it was a deliberate attempt to interfere in the democratic process.

Mr Jarvis had already challenged the rules by threatening not to stand as the mayoral candidate after the Labour NEC told him he could not be both MP and mayor of South Yorkshire. In this instance Jarvis realised the importance of his parliamentary seat and its salary. The Labour NEC relented and allowed him to stand for both. It is hard to imagine after this why Mr Jarvis would then think that with the advice of the highly professional electoral staff at Sheffield city region it was a good idea to submit nomination papers clearly in contravention of the law, or indeed that no one would notice.

In cases of election fraud there is limitation of one year on the time available to prosecute. So far South Yorkshire police and the CPS have refused to confirm if any action is to be taken against Mr Jarvis and/or his agent despite several requests to do so. The combination of these actions in concert with those listed above would tend to suggest that the powers that be hold the voters of South Yorkshire in contempt and it appears that the law might apply only when it suits. It is because of this that we intend to take up a private prosecution where the state has failed, so far, to act.

David says that he has personally seen nationalists guilty of electoral fraud severely punished by the courts and their liberty removed and listened to the presiding judge berate the convicted electoral fraudster that even the smallest infraction of our democratic process should and will be punished without restraint.

Recent high profile cases of nationalists flouting the rule of law have seen torrents of self -righteous opprobrium poured upon them by the press.

David says:- “Let’s see if these bastions of moral rectitude are as keen to point out their love of the rule of law should Jarvis come before the court or will they just confirm their establishment credentials and rank hypocrisy?”

Please help us in our cause to see if the rule of law is not only applied to us but applies to them too!

The law is clear that whatever punishment the court decides to impose upon either Dan Jarvis or his Electoral Agent, the automatic civil penalty is that upon conviction there is an automatic ban of 5 years to hold public office and automatically the election for the Sheffield City Region/South Yorkshire Mayoralty is void and has to be re-run.

If Dan Jarvis is convicted, which seems highly, then additionally there will be a by-election for the Parliamentary seat of Barnsley Central.

Please help us make sure that it is brought home to even the entitled British Political elite that they have to obey the law and help us pursue Dan Jarvis and his Agent for deliberately breaking the law by giving a false address and shaming the mainstream media that refused to report this case before it had happened and remind them that they are not just the voice pieces of the British Political Establishment but should properly and fairly report the news.

Please help us raise the £10,000 needed to bring this case.

The address that has been given in Dan Jarvis’ Nomination Forms, of 76 Marsham Road, London, is unquestionably false, in the basic and obvious sense that there is no such address. Here is a link to the Statement of Persons nominated where you can see Dan Jarvis’ false address given as his home address >>> https://sheffieldcityregion.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Statement-of-Persons-Nominated.pdf

The “full home” address has to be given on nomination forms 1a and 1g. On 1g Mr Jarvis would have also formally signed the form in the presence of a witness.

It follows that either Dan Jarvis himself or his Agent, Paul Nicholson, or both of them are guilty of the offence of “a corrupt practice” pursuant to SECTION 65A(1)(A) OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE ACT 1983. The charge sheet might look like this.

On or before 6th April 2018 in the offices of Sheffield City Council in South Yorkshire Dan Jarvis (or his Election Agent) caused or permitted to be included in a document, namely a local government election nomination form relating to a candidate stated to be Dan Jarvis which was delivered or otherwise furnished to Dr Dave Smith the returning officer for use in connection with the Sheffield City Region Mayoral Election in South Yorkshire held on 3rd May 2018 a statement of the home address of the said candidate, which you knew to be false.

(This offence is labelled a “Corrupt Practice” and the successful election of a candidate found guilty (whether personally or by his agent) of a “Corrupt Practice” is void and anyone found personally guilty of a Corrupt Practice is prohibited from holding any elected office for a period of five years.)

There is also an arguable charge under SECTIONS 3 AND 6 OF THE FORGERY AND COUNTERFEITING ACT 1981. The charge sheet for this might look like this.

Details of Offence on or before 6th April 2018 at the offices of Sheffield City Council in the County of South Yorkshire used an instrument, namely a local government election nomination form relating to Dan Jarvis which was and which they knew or believed to be false with the intention of inducing the Returning Officer, Dr Dave Smith, to accept it as genuine and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or another person’s prejudice.

(Upon conviction upon indictment of this offence which is called the “Misuse of a Statutory Instrument”, the person so convicted may be sentenced up to 10 years imprisonment.)

Turning now to prospective pleas in mitigation after conviction. No pleas will make any difference to the voiding of the election if Mr Jarvis wins it and the disqualification from elected public office for 5 years for whoever is convicted, but subject to that proviso other prospective sentences are open to the court and pleas in mitigation will of course be taken into account.

So one plea in mitigation might be that Mr Jarvis does have some connection with 76 Marsham Street (as opposed to “Road”). However 76 Marsham Street is a block of flats and there is no flat address given, nor of course the post code, so the address given will still be wholly inadequate. Furthermore we have carefully checked the Westminster City Council Electoral Roll and, so far as we can see, Mr Jarvis is not registered on the electoral roll anywhere in Westminster, let alone in 76 “Marsham Street”.

In his last two nominations for election to the Parliamentary Constituency of Barnsley Central Mr Jarvis has given an address which is stated in the “statement of persons nominated” to be in the Constituency of Penistone and Stockbridge.”

We have carefully checked the Barnsley Council Electoral Roll and again cannot find Mr Jarvis’ registered on the Electoral Roll as a resident anywhere in Barnsley Council’s District.

As it is a legal requirement to register on the electoral roll, this is curious. This alleged location of his “home address” is given on the published Notice of Persons Nominated for Election as the MP for Barnsley Central here >>> https://www.barnsley.gov.uk/media/5855/statement-of-persons-nominated-barnsley-central.pdf

If there is a pattern of giving wrong or false addresses then that might be corroborated by the fact that the address given in the “imprint” to Mr Jarvis’ election address in the Mayoral Election Booklet. This gives his agent’s, Mr Paul Nicholson, address as being the Labour Party headquarters, but Mr Jarvis’ address is given as, in effect, the side of the same building. The effect is (no doubt deliberately) deceptive to those who look at the booklet, suggesting that Mr Jarvis has a separate address in Sheffield. We doubt whether in fact Mr Jarvis has any real connection to the Sheffield address even if it is an actual real address rather than another false address, since we would have thought he is either working up in Westminster or at his constituency office in Barnsley Central.

Furthermore we understand that Mr Jarvis told fellow Mayoral Candidate, David Allen, that he had given the false address because of “security” reasons. Mr Jarvis claimed he was exempt from having to give his home address. We do not believe this to be true because any exempting must be in the Law (not overriding the Law). Also Mr Jarvis would not have to give a false address if he had a legal exemption. However that he has implicitly admitted that putting a false address was deliberate and we also believe now that he may have done so in the previous parliamentary elections too.

We think that this has been done out of an all too typical politician’s sense of entitlement that legal rules don’t apply to them (just like we saw in the MP’s expenses scandal).

What do you think? Please help us!!

Angela Merkel: Nation States Must “Give Up Sovereignty” to New World Order!

January 14, 2019

Angela Merkel: Nation States Must “Give Up Sovereignty” to New World Order!

Angela Merkel: Nation States Must “Give Up Sovereignty” to New World Order

The report below about Angela Merkel’s speech in November nicely encapsulates the so-called “Liberal Democratic” view of the idea of the State and of the idea of the Nation. This is particularly where she denies the validity of the idea of “the People” and also where she seeks to undermine the sovereignty of Nation States, saying instead that “the People are (merely) individuals who are living in a Country, they are not a group who define themselves as the People”.

This is very much the view of so many of the members of the British Political and Media Establishment who in their hearts have long rejected the idea of the Nation. As a result of Brexit they have been forced out into the open and their deep-seated hostility to the nation state and national popular democracy has been so pitifully exposed.

These people are a threat to our Nation, which is all the more serious because of their position within the Establishment.

The Roman orator and statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero once vividly described the threat of such people also said:- “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”

We need to work harder to ensure that there is a genuinely patriotic party able to challenge these people as part of the system.

Here is the report about Angela Merkel’s comments:-

Angela Merkel: Nation States Must "Give Up Sovereignty" To New World Order by Tyler Durden

“Nation states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty”, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who told an audience in Berlin that sovereign nation states must not listen to the will of their citizens when it comes to questions of immigration, borders, or even sovereignty.

No this wasn’t something Adolf Hitler said many decades ago, this is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel told attendants at an event by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin. Merkel has announced she won’t seek re-election in 2021 and it is clear she is attempting to push the globalist agenda to its disturbing conclusion before she stands down.

“In an orderly fashion of course,” Merkel joked, attempting to lighten the mood. But Merkel has always had a tin ear for comedy and she soon launched into a dark speech condemning those in her own party who think Germany should have listened to the will of its citizens and refused to sign the controversial UN migration pact:

“There were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are representing The People”.

“[But] the people are individuals who are living in a country, they are not a group who define themselves as the [German] people,” she stressed.

Merkel has previously accused critics of the UN Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration of not being patriotic, saying “That is not patriotism, because patriotism is when you include others in German interests and accept win-win situations”.

Her words echo recent comments by the deeply unpopular French President Emmanuel Macron who stated in a Remembrance Day speech that “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason.”

The French president’s words were deeply unpopular with the French population and his approval rating nosedived even further after the comments.

Macron, whose lack of leadership is proving unable to deal with growing protests in France, told the Bundestag that France and Germany should be at the center of the emerging New World Order.

“The Franco-German couple [has]the obligation not to let the world slip into chaos and to guide it on the road to peace”.

“Europe must be stronger… and win more sovereignty,” he went on to demand, just like Merkel, that EU member states surrender national sovereignty to Brussels over “foreign affairs, migration, and development” as well as giving “an increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources”

(Here is the original report >>> https://www.kas.de/veranstaltungsberichte/detail/-/content/-das-herz-der-demokratie- )

Greater Manchester - 2nd most dangerous place to live in England & Wales

January 06, 2019

On 29th December 18 the Daily Mail published the Home Office statistics which showed that Greater Manchester is the 2nd most dangerous place to live in England and Wales.

Within hours of the publication, Greater Manchester saw another Islamic terrorist attack within yards of the Manchester Arena entrance where on 22nd May 2017 another Islamic Terrorist massacred Twenty-two people, injured over 220, and more than half of them children.

The Response from Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, to the arena attack was “We are grieving today but we are strong. Today it will be business as usual as far as possible in our great city.”

Move forward to the events of 31st December 2018, just outside the entrance to the previous Islamic terrorist attack, again we hear the usual platitudes from the Labour Mayor “but the city is strong, united and resilient”. This echo’s the usual platitudes from his colleague the Labour Mayor of Greater London who stated after an Islamic Terrorist attack in London “Part and Parcel of living in a modern city”

Greater Manchester doesn’t need platitudes, Greater Manchester needs a Mayor who, as head of Greater Manchester Police, will be Tough on Crime, Tough on Causes of Crime, and support the Police in tackling Islamic extremism without being shackled by Labours’ political correctness.

Stephen Morris – English Democrats

Leading Remainer admits systematic lying to public

January 04, 2019

LEADING REMAINER ADMITS SYSTEMATIC LYING TO THE PUBLIC

LEADING “LIBERAL” TORY CONFIRMS HIS ELECTIONS BASED UPON SYSTEMATIC LYING TO THE PUBLIC

Matthew Parris, the former Conservative MP who has made many bigoted remarks about Leave voters, has just published the article below, in which he admits systematically lying to the public throughout his political career in order to get himself elected and also he admits deliberately acting in such a way to undermine popular democracy.

In reading his damning confession it is worth remembering that, not only are there others in the Conservative Party, such as Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve and indeed Theresa May, by whom I suspect very similar confessions could also have been made, but also there are many within the Labour Party whose conduct I suspect is exactly the same.

This kind of behaviour is wholly par for the course amongst elitist Westminster British Establishment supporters of “Liberal Democracy”!

Here is the article:-

Why I don’t, never have, and never will trust the people – by Matthew Parris (former Conservative MP)

It was late, and a friend and I were left to talk Brexit. He’s a keen and convinced Tory Brexiteer MP but to stay friends we have tended to steer off the topic. This, however, felt like a moment to talk.

The conversation taught me nothing about Brexit, something about him, and a lot about myself and the strain of Conservatism I now realise I’m part of — and which is part of me. Oddly, then, this column is not really about Brexit, but about trusting the people. I don’t. Never have and never will. Our conversation forced me to confront the fact.

My friend knows well enough why I’m a Remainer, but guessed correctly that I’ve puzzled about why he isn’t. I had not quite expected what I heard. He understands business and finance and is good at facts and figures, so I’d supposed his wish for a ‘clean’ Brexit would be all about the economic advantages. He’s a firm believer in individual choice, too, so I had supposed he would dwell on the need to ‘take back control’.

No doubt he holds to these strands of the Leave argument — but talking to me he hardly mentioned the practical benefits of Brexit. No, there was something else that seemed to drive his anxiety that we leave the EU. Otherwise, he said: ‘I just worry about our democracy, respect for our constitution and the effect that a betrayal of the 2016 referendum result would have on the people who voted for me and our party last year.’

He returned to this repeatedly, and I saw that he was sincere. As a democrat, and a Conservative who owed his position in Parliament to a little piece of England that he came from, that he knew, that knew him, and whose electors’ minds and feelings he had come to understand over the years, my friend felt with a quiet passion that he must not break his word to them, must not slither away from undertakings that had been given.

He felt the same about the electorate nationally, the British people’s trust in the Conservative party, and their confidence in politics itself. He felt, in short, conscious of an unseen bond between parliament and people, and fearful of the wider consequences should it be broken.

I did not say much, because I could see he meant it; and what he meant was not really the kind of assertion one can confound with counter-argument or counter-assertion. It was about weighing things and, the scales being within his own breast, the way the scales tipped was for him just a fact, and undeniable.

But for me they tip differently; and for me too that is a fact, and undeniable. I lay in bed that night thinking about this; and my conclusions follow. As I’m not running for office I shall not pull punches.

Tories like me, and I think we used to be in the majority, see good governance as an effort to live with democracy rather than to an effort to live by democracy. It is why we were so chary about referendums in the first place. We are wary of the populace and instinctively hostile to the instincts of the mob. We see the popular will as a sometimes dangerous thing, to be handled, guided, and on key occasions (and subtly) thwarted.

We know, however, that the people’s will cannot be overlooked. We see it as a corrective to the over-mighty and a warning to those who govern not to lose touch with popular feeling. But at the idea that the people should dictate the policies of government on a daily basis, we shudder.

Our kind of Conservatism is either in temporary abeyance, or going permanently out of fashion — I do not know which. Its decline since the middle of the 20th century has been so gradual as to mask its extent over time. At the beginning of that century it was possible for Arthur Balfour to remark: ‘I have the greatest respect for the Conservative party conference, but I would no more consult it on a matter of high policy than I would my valet’ without this being thought anything but wit; today its utterance would end a political career.

When I first went into politics, initially as a researcher, in 1977, it was commonplace among us Tories to see and describe ‘the will of the people’ not as our mentor but as a rock to be navigated. Capital punishment and judicial flogging were very popular with the public. The hanging debate at party conferences was an annual nightmare for our leading spokesmen, but I never heard it suggested, even by colleagues who supported the return of these punishments, that we should bring them back because the people wanted it.

As for colleagues opposed to both, our challenge was to find ways of ducking the issue. Once I became an MP, I did so by voting for the principle and against the practice. This subversion of democracy (in Theresa May’s phrase) caused me embarrassment, but not a second’s guilt. Sod democracy: hanging was wrong.

In the late 1970s, we Tories were painfully aware that popular feeling opposed any confrontation with the trade unions, but we believed this would prove necessary. Our response was, so far as possible, to tiptoe round the issue during the 1979 general election. We succeeded. Among ourselves we talked cheerfully about subterfuge. The Britain of 1979 and 1983 most emphatically did not vote for a massive confrontation with the coal miners. We made sure the electorate was never asked.

Even today, of course, politicians can and sometimes must dodge the popular will, and they know it. But who now dares say these things? And what today we do but no longer dare say we do, tomorrow we may not dare do. Tory paternalism is in long, slow retreat. People like me will stay where we are, increasingly exposed as our friends melt back. But what the heck.

Here is a link to the original article>>> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/why-i-dont-never-have-and-never-will-trust-the-people/

England Denied a Voice in Brexit Talks

December 20, 2018

Negotiation Table 1

Yesterday the UK Prime Minister had a meeting with the leaders of Scotland, Wales, & N. Ireland Parliaments. England was again excluded from those talks as the British Government continually deny England the same democratic rights they enjoy.

The English Democrats are the only party standing up for England, Campaigning for an English Parliament, with First Minister and directly elected MPs, to give the people of England a voice at the UK table.

Article from https://www.yahoo.com/news/uk-pm-may-urges-devolved-nations-back-her-000559962–finance.html

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May will urge the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to “listen to business” at a meeting on Wednesday and back her Brexit deal, which envisages continuing close ties with the EU.

A day after her government said it would implement plans for a no-deal Brexit in full, May was due to stress how her deal works for all parts of Britain, her office said.

“I am confident that what we have agreed delivers for the whole of the UK,” she was due to say ahead of the meeting.

“That’s why it is more important than ever that the devolved administrations get behind this deal and listen to businesses and industry bodies across all four nations who have been clear that it provides the certainty they need.”

May is due to meet the First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, new First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford and representatives of the Northern Ireland Civil Service at her Downing Street office.

She will update them on plans being made for every eventuality including leaving the EU without any kind of a deal, plans that include setting aside space on ferries to ensure a regular flow of medical supplies and keeping 3,500 armed forces personnel on standby to support contingency plans.

With just 100 days until Britain is due to leave the EU, May has yet to win the support of a deeply divided parliament for the deal she struck last month with Brussels.

She has said a delayed vote on her deal will take place in mid-January, prompting some lawmakers to accuse her of trying to force parliament into backing her by running down the clock as the March 29 exit day approaches.

Sturgeon, leader of the independence-minded Scottish National Party (SNP), has accused May of not listening to Scottish opinion and has likened her Brexit deal to taking a blindfolded leap off a cliff.

The Welsh Assembly also rejected the deal in a symbolic vote earlier this month. Northern Ireland has been without an executive since January 2017 when the governing parties, Sinn Fein and May’s allies at Westminster, the DUP, split after a fierce row.

A so-called backstop plan to avoid the reintroduction of a hard border between the Irish republic and Northern Ireland remains one of the principal obstacles to parliamentary agreement on May’s deal.

“From the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and Diageo , to Airbus and Manufacturing Northern Ireland, business and industry right across the UK want to us to deliver this deal as it gives them the clarity and stability they need to protect jobs and living standards,” May was due to say.

(Reporting by Stephen Addison; editing by James Davey)

Analyst on May's Brexit Plan: Isn’t at All Unlikely That UK Is Going to Break Up

December 14, 2018

British Prime Minister Theresa May has sensationally postponed a parliamentary vote on her Chequers Brexit plan, much to the outrage of the pro-Brexit factions in the commons. Sputnik spoke about it with Robin Tilbrook, leader of the English Democrats.

Sputnik: What do you make of Theresa May's decision to cancel the vote on her deal?

Robin Tilbrook: Wasn't it an astonishing turn around? We had not only the European Court of Justice saying that the Article fifty notices could be revoked, but we then have Theresa May coming forward and basically admitting that she couldn't possibly get her deal through the House of Commons, and then talking an absolute load of nonsense about going back and getting some more reassurances.

The most sensible thing that anybody seemed to say in the House of Commons was by Nigel Dodds; the leader in the House of Commons of the Democratic Unionist Party, who said that there was no way that these reassurances, would make any difference.

In order to get it through the house, she's got to find some other legal mechanism to deal with the so-called backstop.

It isn't at all unlikely that the UK is going to break up. We've had movements towards that sort of thing for quite a while, and the SNP are getting more and more excited, that that's the way it's going to go.

Public opinion in Scotland seems to be going towards independence, and clearly, if anything like the current deal offer goes through, then Northern Ireland is very likely to be separate from the main UK, so with either of those happening, you've got dissolution of the United Kingdom occurring.

Personally; as an English nationalist I don't find that a problem, because we're paying quite a lot at the moment to maintain the union and are mostly only getting grumbles and complaints in response for all our money.

Sputnik: Would we be in this situation with a pro-Brexit leader?

Robin Tilbrook: One of the most extraordinary things that's happened in the past three or four years is the sort of implosion of incompetence in the Conservative Party. The reason why we wound up with; as Jacob Rees-Mogg called it, a remainer who's remained a remainer as leader, was because the two leading Brexiteers knifed each other.

Particularly the loathsome Michael Gove backstabbing Boris Johnson, who would otherwise have become the leader. They would then have had Boris Johnson as a keen Brexiteer, with the number two in the cabinet in Gove as another Brexiteer.

I suspect if that had happened; we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are now.

Listen to full interview here

https://soundcloud.com/radiosputnik/theresa-may-delays-commons-vote-on-the-chequers-plan

Brexit has reopened two constitutional conflicts which must be resolved

December 13, 2018

Article by Jonathan Clark

https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2018/12/jonathan-clark-brexit-has-reopened-two-constitutional-conflicts-which-must-be-resolved.html

The British have, typically, little interest in constitutional law. Unlike the French, who regularly rewrite their constitution in revolutions or attempts to prevent revolutions, the British tend to assume that little changes and that all is well. Alas, the constitutional problems accumulate nevertheless. Dominic Grieve was right in a recent Commons debate to say that there are areas of the British constitution that need clearer definition. But what exactly are they? Why is the Brexit question so difficult to resolve through the familiar Westminster machinery?

The big issues of constitutional conflict are so fraught because they happen in legal grey areas, in which agreement and definition have never emerged. Today there are two such major areas, though many minor ones.

The first is the question of sovereignty: where does ultimate authority reside? It is many centuries since any significant number of people claimed that it resided with the person of the monarch alone. But the decline of that image was followed by the growing popularity of another, ‘the Crown in Parliament’, that is, the monarch, the Lords and the Commons acting together. This image never went away, but was upstaged by the doctrine of the lawyer A. V. Dicey (1835-1922) that ‘Parliament’ (meaning, increasingly, the House of Commons) was sovereign. Yet from the Reform Bill of 1832 into the 20th century, successive rounds of franchise extension strengthened another old idea, that the ultimate authority lay with ‘the People’, however defined.

From 1973, when the UK joined the EEC, it slowly became evident that the answer was ‘none of the above’: ultimate authority lay with Brussels. Parliament rubber-stamped increasing amounts of secondary legislation from an evolving super-state. In 2019, departure from the EU would remove that layer of command. This prospect inevitably reopens an old debate, which had never really been settled: was Parliament or the People finally supreme? Its re-emergence reminds us that Dicey’s doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty was the opinion of one commentator only. That opinion partly corresponded to contemporary practice, partly not.

Today, the tide is everywhere running in the opposite direction. Deference and duty daily fade; the key word everywhere is ‘choice’, and this means the choices of the many, not just the few. The transformation of communications places steadily more power in the hands of a steadily more educated, better informed ‘People’. But this trend has been matched by another, seen across the West in recent decades and at all levels: in increasingly complex societies, the executive has everywhere grown more powerful vis-a-vis the legislature. Political scientists have largely ignored this tide, but it has swept forwards nevertheless. It means that two powerful social forces now collide. Across western democracies, ‘ordinary people’ find means of complaining that they are ignored by elites who ‘just don’t get it’; elites decry ‘populism’ and exalt the opinion of ‘experts’, expressed to within one decimal point in forecasts of outcomes 15 years hence.

This collision reopens a second, equally old, question. What is a Member of Parliament: a delegate, or a representative? Edmund Burke famously outlined the case for the second: MPs, once elected, represent the nation as a whole; they owe the nation their best judgment; they are in nobody’s pocket. But another idea is just as old, and equally honourable: MPs are sent to Westminster by their electors to redress the electors’ grievances, and are accountable to them. Against Burke, we can set another intellectual, Andrew Marvell, MP for Hull in 1659-78, who was paid by his constituents and regularly reported back to them. Understandably, Burke’s high-sounding doctrine proved the more popular among MPs. But after he framed it, his constituents in Bristol threw him out for favouring Irish commercial interests over theirs, and he represented thereafter only his patron’s pocket borough.

Both ideas in their pure form are unacceptable. But how the balance between the two is to be struck can never be quantified or defined, and a crisis like the present makes the impossibility of a definition clear. ‘The People’ voted by 52 to 48 for Leave, and a larger percentage now says ‘just get on with it’; but about five-sixths of the House of Commons are for Remain.

Among Conservative MPs, something under 100 are evidently for Leave; of the other 200 or so, over half are on the Government payroll in one capacity or another, and more would like to be. So profound a dissociation between elite and popular opinion is rare. Worse still, public opinion polls and the growing practice of referenda quantify the problem as never before; the issue is easily expressed in binary terms (Leave or Remain); and the arguments have been fully rehearsed. Other countries show similar problems of relations between the many and the few, but in the UK these are brought to a focus. Since the constitution has failed to resolve them, public debate is full of expressions of elite contempt for the ignorant, prejudiced, xenophobic, racialist populace on the one hand; of popular contempt for the self-serving, condescending, out-of-touch Establishment on the other.

Before 1914, Conservative peers making technical points over a budget were manoeuvred by Lloyd George into a constitutional confrontation that could be memorably summed up as ‘Peers versus the People’. In this clash, the peers could only lose. Now, the Remainers have been manoeuvred into a constitutional confrontation that, if it goes much further, will be labelled ‘Parliament versus the People’. In such a conflict it can only be Parliament that will lose. In that event, the damage would be considerable.

These great questions of constitutional definition are seldom solved; rather, the issues are defused by building next to them a new practice. The present challenge is to accommodate that new arrival in the political arena, the referendum, and to turn it into a clearly specified, moderate, and constructive institution, as it is in Switzerland. Those concerned about daily policy should think again about a subject, once salient in university History departments but now everywhere disparaged: constitutional history.

Northern Ireland for UK Cabinet Ministers and Other

December 12, 2018

The English Democrats campaign for an Independent England. We are committed to government of the people, by the people, for the people. Those with power to affect our way of life must be answerable to the people. Democracy is much more than the ability to choose, from time to time, between broadly similar parties which compete amongst themselves for power. Real democracy is measured by the ability of the people to manage their political, economic, physical, and cultural environment.

Please read this interesting article from British politics and policy at LSE.

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Northern Ireland for English Cabinet Ministers and other beginners

Posted: 19 Nov 2018 04:00 PM PST
Brexit has exposed much confusion about the history and processes of Northern Ireland, both among the public and government ministers. In an effort to provide some clarity, Sean Swan offers an overview.
Given the importance of the Irish border in the Brexit negotiations, the lack of knowledge about Northern Ireland displayed by senior English politicians is depressing. Perhaps the ultimate example of this was when Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, admitted that she:
didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are Nationalists don’t vote for Unionist parties and vice versa. So, the parties fight for election within their own community.

The 2018 Annual Future of England Survey was conducted in each nation of the UK. It contained a question on national independence. 41% of Scots agreed with the statement “Scotland should become an independent country”; 19% of the Welsh agreed that Wales should be independent, and a similar 19% of the English thought that England should be independent. The response in Northern Ireland to the question should it be independent showed that only 4% agreed that it should – but 44% thought it should form part of a united Ireland and 43% thought it should remain part of the UK. This is unsurprising. Northern Ireland, unlike England, Scotland or Wales, is not a nation. It is home to two competing national identities. This is Northern Ireland’s first dirty little secret; its second flows from this – the real border runs not so much between Ireland and the Republic as along the 20 foot high walls – euphemistically named ‘peace lines’ – separating Nationalist and Unionist areas in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland has its origins in Unionist resistance to Irish Home Rule in the 1880s. That resistance quickly crystallised around the northern province of Ulster, where there was a Unionist majority. ‘Unionists’ were mainly Protestant descendants of those English and lowland Scots with whom James IV & I had planted Ulster in the early 17th century. The Catholic/Protestant division in Northern Ireland is thus not religious per se, rather religion serves as a cultural marker distinguishing ‘natives’ from ‘settlers’ (who speak the same language and are the same colour).
The aim of Ulster opposition to Home Rule was to either prevent it, or at worse, to prevent it being applied to Ulster. Following a series of failed Home Rule bills in 1886 and 1893, the Home Rule crisis of 1912-4 and the 1916 Rising, the 1920 Government of Ireland Act (also known as the fourth Home Rule Bill), was designed to bring Home Rule to Ireland, but with two separate parliaments: one for the 26 southern counties and one for six of the nine counties of Ulster. It became a dead-letter as regards the south as it was overtaken by the Irish War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the creation of the Irish Free State – a self-governing dominion within the Empire.

Ironically, the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, designed to deal with Irish Home Rule thus came to apply only to the Unionist area. Northern Ireland was created to be the largest area of the province of Ulster in which Unionists would have a secure majority, which turned out to be six of Ulster’s nine counties. This yielded a Unionist majority of roughly two to one, though many border areas and NI’s second city actually contained Nationalist majorities – who did not want to be part of NI. Part of NI’s tragedy is that it originated from Unionist opposition to Home Rule but, as a ‘Unionist state’, was ‘territorially over bounded’. It controlled six counties but only had a majority in four and a half of them.

For fifty years Northern Ireland existed as a semi-detached region of the UK. Ulster Unionists had not asked for a separate parliament, but a parliament they got. The British political parties did not organise there and Northern Ireland was kept at arms’ length from the politics of the British state. The only form of politics possible within the devolved parliament was the constitutional question and Unionist policing of a large dissident Nationalist minority. Elections were regularly held but elections in Northern Ireland were never anything more than sectarian headcounts. Despite elections, the government of Northern Ireland never changed. It was always Unionist.

Gerrymandering, particularly in Derry city which had a Nationalist majority, was almost a structural imperative. It was the only way in which Unionists could politically control areas in which they were a minority. Because the local election franchise was restricted to householders, giving somebody a house also meant giving them the vote. This provided a powerful incentive for discrimination in the allocation of local authority housing.

This situation was challenged by the civil rights mobilisation in the late 1960s. The movement challenged structures on which Unionist hegemony in Northern Ireland relied, and led to a Unionist backlash which rapidly degenerated into the Troubles. Truly horrible things happened during the Troubles – Bloody Sunday, the Kingsmill massacre, the Shankill Butchers, the Birmingham and Guildford bombings, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and random sectarian assassinations.

The Troubles were ended by a peace process which culminated in and was sealed by, the Good Friday Agreement. A large part of the Agreement consists of mechanisms to prevent discrimination. The Assembly created by the Agreement operates on a power-sharing basis; it is not controlled by a majority party; and seats in the Executive are allocated on the basis of party strength. This creates a form of forced coalition government. Members elected to this Assembly must designate as either ‘Nationalist’, ‘Unionist’ or ‘other’. Certain key votes require a minimum of support from both those designated as ‘Unionists’ and those designated as ‘Nationalists’. All of this is designed to deal with the issue of potential discrimination at the individual or community level.

Another important part of the Agreement deals with the key constitutional issue. Northern Ireland remains a part of the UK for as long as a majority so desires. Should that seem to have changed, a referendum will be held to give the people the choice between remaining in the UK or joining a united Ireland. Northern Ireland is thus conditionally part of the UK. At the individual level, both Dublin and London guarantee the rights of individuals in Northern Ireland to be, and to be recognised as being, British citizens, Irish citizens, or both. And this would not change even if Northern Ireland became part of united Ireland. This is important because it recognises the fact that there are two separate national allegiances in Northern Ireland.

The Agreement also created North/South institutions connecting Northern Ireland and the Republic (the North/South Ministerial Council) and linking the Republic and the UK (the British-Irish Council). Such institutions obviously blur the distinction between the UK and the Republic as much as they do the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The core of the Agreement was thus a blurring of all sorts of borders. It represents a form of post-Westphalian sovereignty in which the distinction between being an Irish or British citizen, whether within Northern Ireland or within these islands, was more symbolic than of any practical significance. This was in harmony with the general thrust of developments within the EU. Obviously, the existence of a common EU citizenship further blurred distinctions. Brexit, with its emphasis on borders, was always going to pose problems for Northern Ireland.

In terms of democracy or economic prosperity, there is little to choose between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. The 2017 Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Ireland as the joint 6th most democratic country in the world and the UK as 14th. In terms of prosperity, the UN Human Development Index ranks Ireland as 4th most developed and the UK as 14th. Not only can it no longer be argued that ‘Home rule is Rome Rule’, but Northern Ireland is today much closer to a model of ‘Rome Rule’ than is the Republic. Abortion and equal marriage remain banned there – though the reason for this currently has more to do with Protestant fundamentalism than Catholicism. Nor can it be maintained that Nationalists today suffer significant discrimination in Northern Ireland.
Whether Northern Ireland is part of the UK or of a united Ireland thus makes little difference in terms of prosperity or rights. What is at issue is symbolism and identity. What makes all this extra problematic is the fact that there is now no majority in Northern Ireland. The 2011 census showed that those of Catholic background comprise 45% of the population and those of a Protestant background 48%. Similarly, latest opinion polls showed 44% in favour of a united Ireland and 43% in favour or remaining in the UK. The real borders in Northern Ireland may run along the peace lines, but the symbolically significant border remains the one between North and South. The need to keep that border ‘soft’, ambiguous and invisible should be obvious and not have to be endlessly re-made.

The case for ‘special status’ for Northern Ireland rests on the reality that Northern Ireland is, and always was, different. Those who argue that giving Northern Ireland special status would strengthen the case of the Scots who want their own special status and a closer relationship with the EU, need to explain why Scotland should not have that right. Scotland, like Northern Ireland, voted to Remain. Brexit is an English obsession. Those who wish to maintain the existence of the UK state would be better advised allowing for and facilitating the real differences that exist between the UK’s component parts than in trying to force an Anglo-centric uniformity on everybody else. Of course, it would help if they knew just a little bit more about Scotland and Northern Ireland. Here’s a clue: Finchley is in England, not in Northern Ireland or Scotland.
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About the Author
Sean Swan is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Gonzaga University.

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Featured image credit: Pixabay/CC0 licence.