Last night I had the pleasure of being invited along (albeit as a stand in) to speak to the Bromley UKIP branch.
The last time I was in Bromley was in 2006 to help out in the by-election campaign on behalf of UKIP's Nigel Farage. It is nice to see a branch plodding away as so many do across the country working hard to prepare for the coming elections.
Posting on this blog has been quiet recently as I have been working to launch Independence Home, what I hope can become the UKIP equivalent of Conservative Home and allow supporters to keep up to speed wit hthe latest news and developments inside UKIP, British politics, and the European Union.
In this beautiful interview, Andrew Marr presses David Cameron over his "pledge" to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. UKIP are the only honest choice - vote UKIP on June 4th to make your view known.
Recent opinion polls put UKIP on between 15% and 17% nationally. In 2004 we managed to score 16% - 2.65 million votes. We are on course to deliver a repeat performance, possibly improving.
No doubt the current expenses scandal has upset a lot of people and UKIP may be a primary beneficiary of the protest vote, but the fact UKIP now represents the majority opinion of British people means our core support is also rising.
A BBC opinion poll showed that 55% of people now believe that Britain should leave the European Union and have a simple free trade agreement. UKIP's policy of active international cooperation, with national Parliaments at the very core of the process, is one more an more people are warming to.
Douglas Carswell has proposed an excellent reform to further keep the executive in check...
Here's a simple idea. Require every Whitehall department - and each associated quango - to have it's budget annually ratified by the relevant House of Commons select committee. No approval, no money.
Now that really would be a fundamental shift in power. It would also bind the hands of the opposition parties more firmly, since their fingerprints would be over the governments spending plans, either in approval or disapproval. It would require opposition parties to have firm principles over public spending in the long term. However it could present an unfortunate side affect of binding parties to such an extent that HM Opposition could not present a radically divergent spending programme at the election because of this.
It would, though, fundamentally weaken the executive, forcing it to justify every £1 it taxes and spends. And it would help empower Parliament - changing the composition of Parliament would mean something.
It strikes me, however, that this reform would make most sense under a system where the executive is directly elected.
UKIP has launched the first of its billboards around the UK as the campaign gets underway for the European Parliament elections on June 4th.
Just as 70 years ago we in Britain faced a threat to our democracy, militarily, so today we face a threat to our democracy, politically. The Churchill imagery won't pull on emotional strings of younger voters, but it is imagery which people of all ages can universally relate to.
Just as Churchill was a strong leader in the face of the military threat, so we now need strong leadership in the face of the political threat of the EU to British Democracy.
UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, takes on some Eurofanatics in a TV debate...
UKIP Political Broadcast highlighting our Save The Pub campaign...
Yet again the European Parliament is looking to arbitrarily amend its own rules to target specific people 'they' deem undesirable. 'They' being the pro-EU officials and MEPs. As the Guardian reports...
A concerted attempt was under way in the European parliament yesterday to rewrite the chamber's rulebook to deny France's veteran extremist, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a platform presiding over the opening of a new five-year term.
[...]
Under assembly rules, the oldest elected MEP chairs the first session of a new mandated parliament until the assembly's president or speaker is decided.
So the Parliament, a supposedly democratic institution (give me a second while I stop my sides from splitting!) has decided to change its own rules to prevent a specific MEP from fulfilling a procedural role. In Euroland it matters not that he is an elected MEP, just like the rest of them, and thus equal. No, because his views are deemed undesirable that gives justification to everybody else to persecute them. Utterly disgusting!
The Times reports...
Martin Schulz, the German head of the Socialists, said: “I am concerned by the fact that a Holocaust denier could preside over the opening session of the European Parliament.”
And what of those of us who might not like to see a socialist preside over the opening of Parliament? Of course, only politically correct and 'mainstream' views are tolerated. Minority views, on the other hand are not even tolerated, but find the establishment moving heaven and earth to trample over their 'equal' democratic rights and liberties.
But we shouldn't be surprised. The European Parliament did something very similar just a year ago as you can see in the video below, where the President of the Parliament sought the ability to ignore the Parliament's own rules of procedure, by which he is bound, in order to discipline a handful of MEPs who used legal and procedural means to protest against the denial of referendums on the Lisbon Treaty. You can read more here.
When the Parliament departs from the rule of law, it becomes despotic. That no attempt was made to cover this up in any way simply shows how disconnected, arrogant, and self-absorbed the European Parliament is.
A new poll shows that 55% of Brits would like to see the UK leave the EU and have a simple free trade agreement instead. And 84% believe the British people should have a say in a referendum before any more powers are handed over to the EU.
What is shocking and disgraceful, is that the only major party advocating these positions is the UK Independence Party!
Gisela Stuart, one of Labour's pro-EU MPs, seems to be turning decidedly Eurosceptic...
I have gradually changed my mind. The EU cannot continue with its current structure.
...The Convention failed. The old gang, led by the former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, got their way. We ended up with a botched compromise which was first called a constitution and has now been rechristened the Treaty of Lisbon. The people of France and the Netherlands voted "no" to the constitution, but their parliaments voted it through anyway. The Irish also said "no", but will be told to vote again until they give the "right result". "No" means "yes" and the EU carries on regardless: the direction of travel is always to give more power to the union and less to the member states.
...Over the decades more countries joined, accompanied by further integration – powers handed to the union were never returned. Those who challenged this were dismissed as eurosceptics, isolationist little Englanders or worse.
More and more laws are made or originate in the EU. The introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament might have resulted in a direct relationship with voters, but it didn't work out like that. The decision making is so slow and opaque that no one knows who is responsible for what. In the European elections in June, voters will have a ballot paper which does not allow them to choose any candidates, but instead presents them with a list bearing the labels of national political parties. Just how difficult it is to work out what line they will take once elected is best illustrated by the fact that Conservative MEPs will sit and vote with the European People's Party – the most federalist and integrationist group in Brussels.
Of course there are problems we can only solve collectively at European level, but it is important to distinguish between more co-operation and more integration and "common" policies. These have a bad record: just look at the Common Agricultural Policy.
The single currency is not helping economies in the way its proponents said it would. It has led to economic divergence rather than convergence, reflected in the dire state of Spain, Ireland, Greece and Portugal today.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the article is how Gisela ends it...
Europe is in crisis and many of the critical comments which used to be so typically British can now be heard elsewhere. The traditional response to crisis in the EU is "more Europe" – to force through integration that would not previously have been tolerated. This may happen again, but proponents of further integration and political union are playing with fire.
Europeans will never view the union as the citizens of California and Texas see the American union. Without this, political union in Europe is impossible. If the potential benefits of co-operation between Europe's nation states are to be realised, the EU needs to be closer to the vision of the former West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard, a fellow native of Bavaria: a commitment to free trade, but otherwise much less power to the union and much more for member states.
Well that is indeed precisely the UKIP position. Free trade and cooperation but not union. Not a relationship which strips powers from Westminster and places it in the hands of bureaucrats in Brussels. Well said Gisela, and you'll be welcome in UKIP anytime.
Read more...
Posts
All Comments
