Week 38 2014

Tendring Topics ……….on line

‘Don’t tear our happy family apart!’

            That is the message that David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, leaders of the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour Parties, took with them on their separate journeys to Scotland last week in a desperate attempt to boost the number of NO votes in the referendum to be held in that country on 18^th September (only three days away as this blog is published!). This will decide whether or not Scotland becomes an independent nation or remains part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as it is at this moment.

            They have left it a little late. Over 150 years ago Benjamin Disraeli, destined to become a distinguished Prime Minister and to be regarded as the founder of the modern Conservative Party, declared in his political novel, ‘Sybil, or the Two Nations’  that Great Britain had already been torn apart ‘horizontally’ into a nation of the rich and a nation of the poor.  He wrote vivid descriptions of the squalor and abject poverty in which  working people lived in the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign.  Since then circumstances have improved for all of us. However, the yawning gap between rich and poor caused by that ‘horizontal tear’, dividing Britain into two nations grows wider year by year. This is a direct result of the actions and failure to take action of the political predecessors of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband.  It widened during the decade of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ rule, and is widening again today as the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats rewards the wealthy and penalises the poor!

            No government ever agrees to a referendum unless it feels confident that a majority will vote the way that that government prefers. Two years ago, David Cameron felt quite sure that a referendum on Scottish Independence to be held in September 2014 would yield a comfortable NO majority vote. He was happy to agree to its being held. He insisted on a simple IN or OUT vote because he thought, probably quite correctly, that there might well be a large number of voters who would hesitate to vote for full independence but would like greater autonomy for Scotland.   I have little doubt that he now wishes that he had offered Scottish voters that ‘middle way’.   If the Scots had been offered the choice of greater autonomy within a looser British federation, it would certainly have split the nationalist vote and might well have made it possible for the present system to continue unchanged.  Now – faced with the real possibility of a majority YES vote, he is having to offer ‘greater autonomy within the UK’ as a bribe to try to win over a few thousand still-undecided or YES voters. Thus, even if the Scots Nationalists fail to get a majority YES vote they will have achieved considerably greater autonomy – as well as having retained the possibility of full independence at a later date; not perhaps a win/win situation but far from being a total defeat either.

      
             The possibility that an independent Scottish Government might try, in at least one part of Britain, to narrow the gap caused by that horizontal tear that makes one nation into two, the poor and the wealthy, is one of the reasons why if I were a Scot, I’d be voting YES in that fateful referendum in a few days time.  Other reasons are the hope that independence might result in country free of nuclear weapons and without Trident nuclear submarines, and a country that wished to remain in a more closely integrated European Union but was questioning whether it benefited from membership of NATO and from a very one-sided ‘special relationship’ with the USA.

            Within the United Kingdom these are all issues that are not available for negotiation and (except for EU membership) on which we will never be given a chance to vote.  Oh yes – and it would be nice to live in a country virtually free of the neo-Fascism of Ukip!

And the effect of a YES majority on the rest of us?

           I don’t live in Scotland and, as far as I know, I don’t have a single Scottish ancestor.  I am about as southern-English as it is possible to be.  On several happy camping holidays though, my family and I have travelled the length and breadth of Scotland from the border to John o’ Groats and from the Isle of Skye to the east coast.  We liked the Scottish people and the mountains and the lochs – though we never learned to love the Scottish midges and few would deny that we generally get better weather at home on the north-east Essex coast!  We don't call a drizzle a 'Scotch Mist' for no reason!

            If the referendum on the 18^th yields a YES majority I’ll congratulate our Scottish neighbours and wish them well.  If I were half a century younger I’d be considering emigrating there! I can’t though ignore the fact that we English would miss them badly.  There would be no group of Scottish MPs to challenge the more outrageous of the coalition government’s policies. It is very likely that we would have to endure a Conservative/Ukip coalition government – perhaps a succession of them! We would probably leave the EU without bothering to go to the expense and trouble of a referendum. Outrageous Ukip demands would be likely to result in many responsible Conservatives repudiating the coalition, and the Ukip leader deciding that ‘because of the mess we have inherited from the previous Con/Lib.Dem. coalition government it will be necessary to have temporary single-party government under firm leadership, to ensure the speedy implementation of necessary emergency measures. The country’s political leader will adopt the traditional English title of Lord-Protector and will continue in office until those measures have been introduced and enforced’.

            No, I don’t really suppose that England’s future would be quite as dire as that in the event of a YES majority. During what is proving to be an unconscionably long lifetime I have discovered that, particularly where political issues are concerned, outcomes are very rarely as good as optimists had hoped – but are even less frequently as bad as pessimists had feared.   I do remember though how, in Germany in the late 1920s and early '30s, many people first dismissed Hitler as a funny little man with a Charlie Chaplin moustache and some really daft ideas – a bit of a fruit-cake in fact.  Later, major German industrialists and traditional military leaders thought they could control him and use him for their purposes – but he and his brown-shirted followers controlled and used them – and the Third Reich was born.  I hope that I didn’t spend seven years of my late teens and early twenties playing a tiny role in the destruction of that Third Reich, only to live to see comparable developments in 21^st century Britain!

 Our own by-election

            The possibility that Ukip could develop into an Anglicised NAZI Party and its leader into an Anglo-Saxon Adolf Hitler will certainly be in my mind when I place my cross on the ballot paper on 9^th October. United Kingdom Independence Party sounds innocent enough, and Nigel Farage seems a pleasant enough fellow – enjoying a fag and a drink, and not a bit like everyone’s idea of a scheming politician.  Quite so, but then who would have expected the mildly cranky National Socialist German Workers’ Party to become a movement of extreme right-wing nationalist thugs prepared to use any means – mass murder, torture, genocide – to achieve their ends.  Hitler too; we think of him as being an unscrupulous raving rabble-rouser, but he had an unquestionably magnetic personality and could be good company when he chose to be.  Certainly he too was no-one’s idea of a scheming politician.

             The national press is forecasting a landslide victory for Douglas Carswell and his Ukippers.  I can’t think why. Our former MP has deserted the political party that has loyally supported him and has forced a totally unnecessary by-election only seven months before a scheduled general election. That by-election will cost us taxpayers something like £100,000.  He presumably hopes to bask in the glory of being Ukip’s very first Member of Parliament.  That should guarantee him  a top job if and when Nigel Farage forms his first government!

            Douglas Carswell and his Ukippers are certainly working hard for his election and don’t appear to be short of funds.  I, and presumably all Clactonians, have been deluged by leaflets – I’ve had at least five of them (two a couple of weeks before his defection!) telling us what a wonderful fellow he is and how lucky we have been to have had him as our MP.  I have also had a leaflet from the Labour Party.  The Conservatives have been handicapped by not having a new candidate waiting to be selected, but they’ve chosen one now and I wish local man Giles Watling, actor and Frinton town and district councillor, success in this expensive, absurd and totally unnecessary by-election.

            I had a doorstep Ukip canvasser calling at my home before the Conservative candidate had been selected.  He was armed with a list of voters, a clip-board and a ballpoint pen. He seemed to have expected me to be an enthusiastic Ukipper and  may have been a little taken aback when I told him I was hoping that Douglas Carswell would be roundly defeated in this by-election, and that all Ukip contestants in all future elections would have the same fate.  I intended to vote for the candidate most likely to defeat him, and that - for this by-election and for the very first time in my long life – I intended to vote for the Conservative Candidate, whoever he or she might be!

Week 12 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

The Scottish Referendum

            The date of that referendum that will decide whether or not the Scots will remain in the UK or become an independent sovereign nation is getting nearer and nearer.  I think that the top politicians of our main political parties, once certain in their own minds of an overwhelming NO vote, are now a little less sure of the result.  Why else did they arrange for the head of BT to publicly announce his disquiet at the possibility of Scottish independence (a pity that he isn’t even British)?    Then there was the all-party announcement that an independent Scotland couldn’t hope to keep the pound sterling as its currency, would have to make a fresh application for EU membership and would find the process long and difficult, and that many financial institutions would probably relocate south of the border.

            Had I been a Scotsman and resident in Scotland I have little doubt that I’d have been an enthusiastic YES voter.  It is clear to me that public opinion north of the border is strongly opposed to virtually everything that many supporters of the Coalition Government stand for – payment for medical prescriptions, university tuition fees, indirect taxation that penalises the less-well-off, bedroom tax, and giving up our membership of the European Union.  Nigel Farage may get a triumphal reception in England but his one excursion into Scotland was brief and inglorious. How many Conservative and Lib.Dem. MPs are there north of Hadrian’s Wall?  How refreshing it must be to realize that a simple yes vote could shake off that Cameron/Osborne yoke for ever.  And, of course, I find Alec Salmond more honest and straightforward, and more convincing than any of that lot at Westminster.

            But I’m not a Scotsman and I live in East Anglia.  Consequently I rather hope for a NO vote in the referendum because I value the successful alternative course of action that the Scots display before us, and the fact that the Scottish vote makes it unlikely that David Cameron and his ilk will have a permanent majority in the UK parliament.

            I have just received what seems to me to be a very balanced view of the situation from a regular blog reader who is also a successful business man with interests on both sides of the Scottish border.  

I am now convinced that what the Scottish people want is autonomy, not separation.  It really is surprising that they want to keep the £ and the BBC and the Queen.  , It was wrong of Cameron to rule out that third option from the ballot paper.  All they want, is for the wealth which Scotland generates to be spent by the Scottish government, to raise their own taxes on whatever they consider to be appropriate, and spend Scottish taxes on whatever they think is right for Scotland – even if that means extending the welfare state.  They should also be seen as a “Partner”, not a “Regional council” on foreign affairs, EU policy etc. Currently it seems to me there is absolutely no consultation at all with them on National issues and, as a result, decisions are constantly made which almost everyone in Scotland disagrees with – but many in Scotland could finish up dying for.

I think when you are in Scotland, it is much clearer that this is a vote against “Westminster” – an expression they constantly use; not against Manchester, Newcastle or Liverpool, but against the political elite from both parties who have run the whole of the UK from a South-Central perspective for decades.  I think people in England feel either slightly offended that the Scots want to do their own thing, or else are completely uninterested – let them do what they want -  and don’t realise that it isn’t really a rejection of the “English people” or its traditions or way of life, but of the Westminster political system.  Maybe there should be wider support for that point of view, because the majority of people north of Milton Keynes and west of Shrewsbury think the same.  You wouldn’t believe the venom with which the staff of our East Durham customer regard the Tory government, with memories of pit closures still very raw

Actually I don’t believe that they will vote for independence, but if they do, I think that really will be the Cameron legacy. He played hard-ball, took a gamble and broke up the UK in the process.

I just hope, that if the vote is close, as I expect it will be, politicians will realise that they cannot just go back to business as usual and ignore the feelings of 2 - 3m people who may vote yes

I wrote the above on Saturday 8^th March.  Today (Monday 10^th) I have heard on the tv that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested much the same idea as my blog-reading correspondent.   Mr Brown is a Scotsman and I have to assume that, as a politician, he has a pretty good grasp of Scottish public opinion.

Perhaps then, as a southern Englishman who has nothing but good will for the Scots, I should be hoping that the No vote will prevail but by a sufficiently small majority to make ‘that lot at Westminster’ appreciate they’ll have to grant Scotland greater autonomy, and consider Scottish opinion before making pronouncements and decisions about foreign policy (including relations with the EU) and defence.

 Ukippers – ‘They’re dangerous, not just a laugh’, says article in ‘The Times’ .

            I have warned in this blog of the similarities between the rapid growth of Ukip during the past year or so, and that of the Nazi Party in Germany in the late 1920s and early ’30s.  Could Nigel Farage be a sanitised and Anglicised version of Adolf Hitler – and every bit as dangerous?  A well-researched article by Rachel Sylvester in The Times (still authoritative though now part of the News International Empire) suggests that he may be.  Here are some extracts from it:

It’s easy to sneer at Ukip. David Cameron called them “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”, Michael Howard dismissed them as “gadflies and cranks”. Nigel Farage’s barmy army looks like a one-man-pint-in-hand-band, combining golf club bonhomie with shock-jock prejudice — reactionary, swivel-eyed, out of touch.


Although the country is struggling at the edge of recession, Ukip has no economic policy and its leader has disowned his entire 2010 manifesto. Of the party’s 21 MEPs elected since 1999, almost half have defected, resigned, been suspended or gone to jail. The Ukip headquarters has been described as “Carry On Politics” — ill-disciplined and unprofessional. Even the leader’s wife, Kirsten, has described the party’s operation as a “freak show”. These rebels with a cause seem to revel in their eccentricity: at Ukip’s recent spring conference in Torquay there was fruit cake on offer to delegates at the door!

 This is not just harmless fun, a Monster Raving Loony Party in pinstripes. There is bigotry behind the comments blaming the floods on gay marriage and suggesting that women are sluts if they do not clean behind the fridge. There is cynicism and hypocrisy lurking below the surface, with MEPs happily riding first class on the Brussels gravy train even as they express their disgust at the House of Commons expenses scandal. They stay in smart Strasbourg hotels and dine in fine restaurants, slurping Château Margaux at taxpayers’ expense, while condemning the waste of money by the EU. The party is also facing a European Parliament investigation into allegations that it improperly diverted public money to pay its staff in London. With a higher profile comes greater scrutiny and there is a bad smell around the Kippers.

I have spent the past two months investigating Ukip with Alice Thomson and it is clear that these anti-Establishment insurgents are guilty of appalling double standards. There is also a clear streak of nastiness running through the party. And yet, I can’t help feeling that it would be foolish and dangerous for the mainstream parties to ignore the Faragistes. It’s not just that the insurgents could steal their votes at the European elections in May, almost certainly forcing the Tories into third place and possibly beating Labour to the top spot. Nor is the issue that Ukip is expanding its base in local government, raising the prospect that it could soon be involved in council coalitions, wielding actual power.

What really matters is that the rise of Ukip exposes deep social and economic divisions in Britain. It points to a profound sense of alienation among certain sections of the population. Mr Farage may be a flawed character, more knave than fool in my view, but he is like the canary in the mine who is picking up on the poison gas of class and wealth inequality. His party is full of idiots, but its success is a serious warning to the political establishment and the “metropolitan elite” that includes the media.

It is striking — but no coincidence — that, according to YouGov polling for The Times, Ukip is the most working-class party, with 52 per cent of its supporters coming from the C2DE social groups, compared with 46 per cent for Labour, 43 per cent for the Tories and 32 per cent for the Lib Dems. Its voters are also the least well educated of any party apart from the BNP — 52 per cent of Ukip backers left school at 16 or earlier.

Mr Farage is completely wrong in his analysis of the problems the country faces and the solutions he proposes. His party is cynically exploiting vulnerable people and playing on their worst instincts and fears. But the rise in Ukip reveals a deeper truth that cannot be laughed off or ignored. Britain is still two nations.

            It is only weeks now to the elections for the European Parliament.  Funny, isn’t it – that those who moan about the undemocratic nature of the EU Executive in Brussels and the Council of Ministers, are strongly opposed to increasing the powers of the European Parliament, the one unquestionably democratic European institution.  If you value freedom and democracy, turn out and vote in that election – but do not vote for UKIP!