Cameron at his disingenuous worst with floods pledge

David Cameron today once again successfully failed to bang on about Europe, as he said Britain has ‘to do better as a country’ to protect itself from future floods, the Telegraph tells us.

No doubt those people of the Somerset Levels who had time to listen in on the radio while trying to cope with flooding, evacuation and the turning upside down of their lives, will have been incredulous when Cameron said that officials are working on a plan to protect the Somerset Levels, although, as he put it, it is still not clear what the best solution for the area would be.

Here’s a radical thought, as a starting point, how about a return to the flood prevention activity that was wound down over the years by the Environment Agency to fit a political agenda created through the EU?  If those who managed to listen in to the pontificating buffoon were not already grinding their teeth in anger, then this may well have done the trick:

Dredging has a part to play.

At the end of the 1990s when the Environment Agency was established, there became rather an anti-dredging culture and some of the expert bodies said it shouldn’t be part of the picture. It has to be part of the picture.

Why won’t anyone acknowledge me?

Unsurprisingly, there was not a single word about why it was suddenly decided that dedging shouldn’t be part of the picture, or the concerted effort by the EU to inflate the price of dredging through waste management laws and restrictions on moving river deposits once on land. Far less any mention by the Telegraph’s Peter Dominiczak, who, like UKIP, passed up the opportunity to add value by providing context and sharing established facts.

There was no mention of Making Space for Water.
There was no mention of the Water Framework Directive.
There was no mention of the Floods Directive.
There wasn’t even any mention of the Natura 2000 strategy.

EU law has been changing the British landscape – literally – aided by environmentalist activists like Baroness Young, who Labour parachuted into positions of power to wreak havoc on the approach to flood prevention, because they shared the EU view of wanting to see reclaimed land, such as the levels, refilled with water to become habitat museums – this despite the fact that flooding the long since established farmland in this way kills the animals living there and results in a putrid, stinking swamp that cannot sustain fowl in any case.

Around the areas that have been flooded there will be some very lonely animals.  But there will be none so lonely, or so deliberately ignored, as the great big EU elephant in the room that the useless UK media and politicans from the four main parties are doing their best to pretend they cannot see and does not exist when it comes to the flooding issue, how it has been allowed to happen and acknowledging who was responsible.

Cameron’s trivial sideshow must not distract us from the real issue

The Daily Mail reports that, ‘millions of pounds in child benefit paid to families living outside the UK will be axed under David Cameron’s plan to claw back powers from Brussels.

Cameron has insisted that it was wrong that the British taxpayer is giving cash to 40,000 children who live elsewhere in the European Union, and went on to reveal that stopping migrant workers in the UK from claiming child benefit for their offspring back home would be a ‘key demand’ of his plans to renegotiate a fresh deal with the EU before staging an in-out referendum by 2017.

This of course underlines the vacuous nature of the supposed renegotiation.  The whole thing is a complete sham.  If the detail above is a key demand, we can see that the essential issue of ‘Who should run Britain?‘ will remain a no-go area.  There is to be no change, the UK will remain firmly under the control of Brussels and parliament will remain a hollow, rubber stamping shell of its former self.

The separation of the political from the economic is the only way to ensure people see the real issue that has to be addressed – yet which the political class is determined to keep off the table.

There are various economic settlements that can be negotiated to mutual EU-British benefit to ensure concerns about access to the single market are mitigated in the event of a Brexit, but political control of the UK is a binary condition… either the British have self determination, or we are ruled by a foreign entity.  That is the only issue and we must not allow it to be kept off limits by focus being diverted to trivial sideshows such as Cameron’s pledge today.

‘… just an old European country’ Britain’s self inflicted mediocrity ridiculed

So how is this EU membership lark working out for the UK?  Remember how we keep being told that being part of the EU increases Britsh influence in the world?

Sky News reports how the Chinese state media, the directed mouthpiece of the government in Beijing, has certainly not held back in giving its dismissive opinion of Britain:

The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study. This has gradually become the habitual thought of the Chinese people.

This is utterly humiliating.

While Cameron is in China, desperately trying to raise money for investment in projects that we British should be developing for ourselves and our strategic interests, and lending support to British businesses looking to make deals to sell to the Chinese, he is shilling for a Sino-EU free trade deal like an obedient little servant of Brussels.  This is what Britain has become.

Cameron postures like a statesman yet his hosts correctly mark him down as the pygmy that he is.  He and his ilk have turned the UK into a proxy for the interests of a supreme government on the continent.  Britain is not even in the room when the rules of the game are agreed.  Negative sentiments such as those in China’s Global Times, from increasingly confident nations that are sovereign and run their own affairs, are a consequence of our being subsumed into a homogenised, over regulated, backward looking political union that has in reality dramatically reduced British influence in the world and lessened us as a country.

The Chinese, like most other independent nations, respect strength.  And they don’t see strength in a country whose ‘leaders’ do not have  confidence in their nation’s ability to chart its own path, willingness to ensure its population is educated and competitive, to work in its own interest, to represent itself with pride on the world stage and to trade on its own terms.  Britain in the EU cannot ever be a trade partner with China, the partnership belongs to the EU.  That is why our Prime Minister is now a mere salesman, complete with a fake smile, sharp suit and a patter in rhetoric, but ultimately powerless and unworthy of respect.

Who can blame the Chinese for disrespecting our declining country when a shallow, lightweight hypocrite like Cameron talks a great game, but instead of leading and representing the British people, whores on behalf of the EU and begs for money like a Dickensian street urchin, attempting to strike deals while operating only with the permission of others in Brussels?

What makes this all the more disgraceful is that it is highly likely the UK is deliberately being positioned by our political class as weak; a position engineered in order to justify the continued EU membership they desire, under the pretext of it being the antidote to our malaise and diminishing stock. It is beyond treachery and is absolutely sickening.

Cameron channels his inner Clinton with ‘I feel your pain’ moment. But nothing will change

David Cameron, no doubt a huge fan of of former US President Bill Clinton, has said in response to public unease about the possibility of a large number of Romanians and Bulgarians coming to the UK without restriction from 1st January, ‘I share those concerns’.

Great!  That should do it.  Thanks Dave.

OK, in fairness, there’s more.  Cameron is attempting to construct a legend for himself by giving the impression he is going to reform the EU.  But for Cameron to achieve what he claims he wants, that ‘reform’ would necessitate tearing out the very foundations of the European project, by changing one of the Four Freedoms that underpin the march to ever closer union – namely the freedom of movement of EU citizens within the bloc.

As Richard explains over on EU Referendum, an article in the press today sets Cameron, a committed EUphile, at odds with the central tenets of the EU:

That piece is headed, “Free movement within Europe needs to be less free”, with David Cameron colliding head-on with the most fundamental of all the EU treaty provisions, one that goes right back to the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

With the Mail telling us that Mr Cameron “will today unveil sweeping new restrictions on access to benefits for EU migrants”, we learn that he “will insist that he shares the public’s ‘concerns’ about a renewed wave of migration from Europe”, declaring that “the founding EU principle of ‘free movement’ for workers has gone too far”.

Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, he writes in the Financial Times, Britain has championed the case for bringing nations which languished behind the Iron Curtain into Nato and the EU.  That is important to their prosperity and security – and ours.

Britain, he says, has also been one of the strongest supporters of a single market. It is in our interests for that it should grow, and for our citizens to have the opportunity to work in other European countries, he adds.

But, he now says, “things have gone wrong”. Since 2004, we have witnessed the biggest migration in Europe outside wartime. In Britain’s case, one million people from central and eastern Europe are now living here.

There is much more in a similar vein that Richard extracts and shares.  But then this leads us to an issue I raised recently where the EU is being blamed for inaction on the part of the UK government.

Where Cameron says he is, “changing the rules so that no one can come to this country and expect to get out of work benefits immediately; we will not pay them for the first three months”, he is only seeking to apply rules that the UK could have applied a long time ago.  Continuing with his theme, Cameron says that:

If after three months an EU national needs benefits”, he adds, “we will no longer pay these indefinitely. They will only be able to claim for a maximum of six months unless they can prove they have a genuine prospect of employment.

But again, this is what other EU member states already do.  Cameron is still constrained by EU law.  Brussels is not going to be the least bit concerned about the UK doing what, for example the Netherlands, already does.  Even where Cameron talks about testing benefit claims by migrants, it has always been the case that if EU nationals are incapable of supporting themselves in another member state, they can be returned home.  The UK has failed to apply such sanctions, something that UKIP has consistently ignored thus missing another open goal for attacking the failings at a UK level of both Labour and the Conservatives.

So there is nothing new under the sun when Cameron says that if people are not here to work, if they are begging or sleeping rough, they will be removed. They will then be barred from re-entry for 12 months, unless they can prove they have a proper reason to be here, such as a job. Those are the existing rules the UK could have long since applied, but failed to.

We have to get through all this nonsense and verbiage before we finally see Cameron get to the heart of this issue, which he has sought to bury as deep as possible in the detail, when he points out what EU Referendum has long explained and this blog has tried to reinforce – that all this is what we can legally do within the limits of the treaties Labour signed up to.

So after a trip around the houses, Cameron brings us back to his ‘reform’ agenda for the EU and that now is the time, he says, for a new settlement which recognises that free movement is a central principle of the EU, but it cannot be a completely unqualified one.

Having pointed out that other countries already see free movement as a qualified right, as the interior ministers from Austria, Germany and the Netherlands have said this to the European Commission, Cameron is actually showing us the EU has not changed its fundamental freedom and that his demands for reform come a long way behind those of other countries.  Quite how the EU can ‘return the concept of free movement to a more sensible basis’ when that freedom was always intended to be absolute and never existed on a more sensible basis, is curious.  But then, this is Cameron and he only has a passing acquaintance with reality.

Clinton felt the pain of an AIDS campaigner and Cameron is sharing the concerns of ordinary people who are paying the price for politicians giving away this country’s independence.  But ultimately nothing changed for the AIDS campaigner and nothing will change for the British people.  Not, that is, unless the UK asserts independence and frees itself from the political construct that has cost us so much for comparatively little benefit.

The EU calls the shots and its bureaucrats will continue to have their own way.  Some countries are frustrated and their people angry.  But that is cancelled out by other countries being delighted at the largesse lavished on them in return for joining the club and extended the control the EU enjoys.

The only solution is for the UK to leave.  But that is something Cameron will never do.  He is the classic empty vessel.  As for his promise to remove jobless EU migrants, we’ve heard it all before…

A “filthy, dirty, posh wanker” or just a deluded idiot?

David Cameron has dignified a foul-mouthed and abusive outburst by Russell Brand with a typically juvenile response, reported as a story by the Guardian.  No surprise there.

The real story however concerns the substantive issue Brand raised recently, concerning disengagement from the political system by increasing numbers of eligible voters.  While some of the disengaged understand clearly what the problems are, others are disengaged only because they have a sense that things are not right, that politicians and parties are to blame and that as nothing changes there is no point in voting.

The reason why nothing changes, as we have explained in the two posts on Hard Truths here and here, is because our politicians have given away the power to govern this country to the EU.  They could not change things even if they wanted to, unless they first made the UK independent again.  Politicians have continued with the transfer of power despite knowing for decades that the EU undermines and erodes sovereignty and democracy by design.  Democracy can lead to outcomes that don’t suit the political class, so they simply use power to prevent the wishes of the people being followed.  It is this that is fuelling disengagement and anti-political sentiment.

So while it is self evident that you cannot believe in democracy and support the EU or membership of it, we find Cameron making a comment of profound and deluded idiocy – or cynical deception – in response to Brand’s call for ‘revolution’:

I’m a democrat. If Russell Brand’s got a better idea, he can let us know.

I have a better idea, Dave, and I’ll tell you right now what it is, let’s have democracy!  Not the sham that describes dictatorship by an elite as ‘democracy’, but the real thing that reflects the meaning on the word, demos kratos – ‘people rule’.

Whatever Cameron is, he isn’t a democrat.  Cameron wants to continue with the fraudulent notion of democracy that merely collapses ‘democracy’ into periodic voting, while isolating the political process from any form of control by the people.

Brand’s desire is for revolution.  We do need a revolution, but not of the kind Brand has in mind.  We need a peaceful withdrawal of consent to bring about a change of the system.  Resorting to violence plays into the system’s hands, because they can put down violence with far greater and better equipped violence.  Brand doesn’t seem to get that.   No, we need a revolution that leaves the state’s hands tied by making their systems unworkable and their rules unenforceable.

It can be done.  But it needs to be done in a way that keeps structures and rules intact, only under the control of the people, in order to avert anarchy.  The Harrogate Agenda has a strategy that can achieve that .  A post on that later this weekend.

Police and criminal justice opt-ins expose Tory lies over no more powers to the EU

Jacob Rees-Mogg has one of those tiresome ‘catch up’ pieces in the Telegraph, where he has a light bulb moment about something that Eurosceptic blogs covered months ago and explained was a government Eurosham.

This time it is the turn of the faux opt-out from the police and criminal justice power grab by the EU to come in for Europlastic criticism by one of the backbenchers who helps to prop up what passes for national government in Westminster.

Clearly Rees-Mogg has been and still is labouring under the delusion that the UK is a sovereign nation.  But, playing catch up, he now has moved as far along the track as seeing the potential of the UK to surrender sovereignty as a result of the opt-ins  to the police and criminal justice measures – and ponders what prospect there is for Cameron’s faux renegotation if Tory ministers cede ground on this power grab.

But he does offer some value in his piece (no comments enabled, presumably in the expectation he would be drowned in a torrent of digitial ink) when he posits on the opt-out, opt-in shenanigans that have been taking place in the corridors of Whitehall and reminds us that we cannot trust a word said by Cameron and his fellow quislings when it comes to matters EU:

The Government promised to inform Parliament of its intention in February but delayed until July. At that point there was much urgency which has hindered the efforts of the House of Commons to hold the Government to account. The claims made for the block opt-out and opt back in are exaggerated. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, says that the block opt-out is “first and foremost…about bringing powers home” and Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor, views it as “part of a process of bringing powers back to this country” yet many of the 94 measures that will be permanently opted out of are defunct or trivial while the 35 to be re-entered bring the full authority of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Commission and the European Parliament to bear.

This is a tangible transfer of power against an intangible return. As the report says: “Adherence to any legally binding EU police and criminal justice measure brings with it the risk of legal principles and practices of other jurisdictions influencing or interfering with our own, as the Court of Justice will have the ultimate say on how it is interpreted and applied.”

The only surprise and disappointment here is that Rees-Mogg is suprised and disappointed.  One would have thought he had spent enough time in Parliament to realise many in his party and almost all of his party’s senior leaders are utterly committed to the destruction of our nation state and full assimilation into an anti-democratic bureaucracy, regardless of what the British people may want.

But national sovereignty, seemingly unbeknown to Rees-Mogg, has long since been snatched away from us.  In recent weeks the evidence of that has been all too clear, as EU rules on taxation have prevented the UK from taxing profits made in this country and off-shored to jurisdictions in the form of transfer payments.

The politicians wail and moan and try to rouse a rabble of ill-informed ‘citizens’ to protest at the behaviour of the companies concerned.  But they pointedly refuse to explain why this is happening and why this country cannot stop it from happening as long as we are members of the EU.  It is one of the truths that must not be spoken because the politicians want more of this, not less.

Cowardice

David Cameron has today marked himself down as a coward yet again.

Following the CBI’s ludicrous assertions about UK membership of the EU being worth £3000 for each household in the country, Cameron has gone to the organisation’s annual conference to praise as ‘very positive’ their report which called for the UK to stay in the EU.  The Telegraph is reporting his comments.

Anyone can bandy figures around in the way the CBI is doing.  But when one scratches below the surface of what the figures include, it is easy to see this was a desperate attempt to service the vested interests of the CBI’s corporate membership.  Perhaps EU membership is valuable to corporates for the way it enables them to choose where they pay tax so they maximise profits. But these profits do not filter down to UK households.  They leave the UK economy and are sent overseas to the overseas bases of uber-investors.

Anyone Europhile can do a Cridland and go on radio and TV and say that alternatives to membership, such as Switzerland and Norway, aren’t as beneficial as membership, so long as they don’t have to back up their assertion with evidence.  Switzerland is not a good model because although they are independent they have to negotiate every deal they have with the EU.  And the problem with that is?  Norway is not a good model according to Cridland because, well, the only rationale he can come up with is the ‘influence’ lie that has already been comprehensively debunked, but is ignored by our biased media.

And as for that tired old canard that we export half our output to the EU, that too is a deliberate distortion.  That 50% figure includes goods destined for non-EU countries that only transit through other member states.  The lie has long since been exposed, but it continues to be retailed by the likes of the CBI and the BBC, as part of their political motives for keeping the UK in the EU.

But back to Cameron.  He has spent all his time as Conservative Party leader telling the UK what he wants.  That included saying he doesn’t want a referendum on EU membership because he feels membership of the EU is the right thing.  But having been painted into a corner he has had no option but to promise a referendum – so long as the Conservatives are elected into office in 2015.  Only now he talks of seeking ‘consent’ for the UK to stay shackled to Little Europe – a consent he previously said wasn’t required.  How times change.

The bullshit that emanates from Cameron’s mouth is the most putrid kind.  He told the CBI:

Be in no doubt that in the end you cannot stay in these organisations, give up quite a bit of your national sovereignty, unless you take the British people with you.

The British people were told about a Common market, about an economic area, so much has changed about this organisation and so little consent has been granted.

It is time to make those arguments, seek that consent and as Prime Minister of this country that is exactly what I am going to do.

It is an accepted fact that the British people were lied to.  The project is and always has been political union.  The economic argument, the supposed free trade area, was a seemingly acceptable by product which has fraudulently been advanced as the end in itself.  The ‘organisation’ as Cameron puts it has changed, but only in the way it was always intended to do so.  It has simply continued its objective of ever closer union on a path to becoming a single political entity.

Cameron doesn’t even have the guts to admit the truth, in much the same way he doesn’t have the guts to admit that in effect the UK no longer has sovereignty.  We no longer control our laws and we no longer control taxation of entities on these islands.  Without control of these essential pillars of governance, this country cannot consider itself in any sovereign.  We have not given up quite a bit of national sovereignty.  We have ceded control of that without which we cannot claim to be an independent nation state.

Cameron is deluded at best, an appalling liar at worst, if he honestly thinks he can reform how the EU works in advance of a referendum where the changes will be put to the British people.  He has more chance of pulling a living dodo out of his arse.  The whole premise is based on a lie.  No matter what happens, Cameron is going to declare that he has achieved reform and the likes of the CBI will be right there agreeing with him and spewing more lies – without any challenge from the sick-inducing media which is utterly biased in favour of the EU.

It’s not just Cameron and the CBI that are deserving of white feathers.  The BBC deserves one for its prominent coverage on all its radio and TV news of the CBI’s laughable findings that my household and yours are each better off by £3000 every year as a result of EU membership and that CBI members believe the benefits outweigh the costs.  Compare that to the almost zero coverage of the contrary view from Business for Britain that more business leaders now say the costs of EU membership outweigh the benefits – and that despite Business for Britain wanting to remain in the EU!

Ed Balls also deserves – among other things – a white feather.  This supposed economic genius tells us that there is ‘no future for Britain to walk away from our biggest market’ when the EU is not a market, it is a political construct.  He knows the difference, but is part of the agenda and hasn’t the balls to tell the truth.

We are surrounded by lies and deception and spin.  And we are nowhere even close to a referendum fight yet.  We have been sold out by cowards who do not have the guts or honesty to admit that the only question that matters and needs to be addressed is this…

Who should run Britain?

Nothing else matters.  Everything else can be dealt with.  The fight we are in is only about this single, essential matter.

Should the British people run Britain, or should we do what suits the narrow interests of the political climbers and the money grubbing corporatists, and leave the EU to run Britain?  It is all about sovereignty.  Do we rule ourselves or submit to rule from abroad by people whose interests undermine ours?  It is the honest question that Cameron, the CBI, the BBC and Labour dare not ask.  They are cowards.

David Cameron hid personal links to Common Purpose

The Telegraph reports tonight that:

David Cameron is facing questions over his ties to a charity linked to the campaign for tougher regulation of the Press.

The Prime Minister officially declared in a newly published register of ministerial interests that he is patron of an initiative run by Common Purpose, a leadership organisation whose founders set up one of the most vocal lobbying groups for media regulation.

The initiative, Dishaa Venture, aims to build links between India and Britain and was launched in Bangalore by the Prime Minister in July 2010. He addresses participants in its programme each year.

However, Mr Cameron failed to declare the post for at least two years despite two opportunities to do so in official registers.

It is inconceivable that Cameron is unaware of the controversy and question marks over Common Purpose, and its secretive activity to recruit ‘leaders’ which it ‘educates’ to ‘lead beyond authority’.  So if this report is correct this is a very disturbing development.

Common Purpose’s origins are solidly Marxist and its activity is designed to circumvent democratic control and accountability.  It seeks to take control of the establishment by recruiting middle managers who are helped into senior positions from where CP’s influence can be exerted and its graduates given support and cover from being held to account.

It has increased its sphere of influence throughout local government, the civil service, the police and other pillars of the public sector.  That a nominally Conservative Prime Minister has been involved indirectly with CP for the last two years – an organisation that has worked tirelessly in support of the EU and been behind various left wing initiatives and campaigns – and has just happened to omit this from the register of interests, shows the rot goes to the very top.

Tax sovereignty – ducking and diving

On the day that Alex Cameron QC became the first barrister to be recorded and filmed in an English law court, giving an eloquent and gently earnest display before the Court of Appeal in an effort to secure a reduced sentence for his counterfeiting client, Kevin Fisher, Alex’s brother and Prime Minister David Cameron, gave an equally eloquent if rather more earnest display at the summit of the Open Government Partnership on the subject of tax avoidance and tax evasion.

Ultimately, despite their lofty positions, neither Cameron demonstrated sufficient grasp of the law and relied upon arguments that are completely flawed in the hope people would be taken in by them.

Alex failed to convince the Appellate bench that seven years for his client’s role in what is thought to be the largest ever plot to make fake pound coins in the UK, was unduly harsh and the appeal was thrown out.  David?  Well, let’s pick up Richard’s summary…

What Mr Cameron cannot do, of course, is admit that he has no strategy whatsoever “to keep corporate taxes coming in”. He cannot admit to the essence of this paper on the Thin Cap Group Litigation, a case which makes it very clear that the EU’s three freedoms – capital, establishment and services – prevent any action on the part of national governments to prevent corporates offshoring their tax liabilities.

The government cannot possibly admit that the losses of such huge sums lost to the taxman are attributable to EU treaty law. Apart from anything else, it would destroy Mr Cameron’s carefully fabricated claims about the benefits of EU membership.

Perhaps the truth of it is that both Camerons understand the law very well indeed.  But both of them, in their roles, deployed a mixture of smoke and mirrors, distraction and misdirection in an effort to conceal the reality of the situations from the judges and the British people respectively.

The Camerons, in their separate roles, are simply ducking and diving in a way that would put Del Boy and Rodney to shame.  What we have are an extremely wealthy and privileged version of the Trotters, in wigs, gowns and sharp suits.

In very calculated fashion, David Cameron is trying to confuse people, by linking tax avoidance, which is perfectly legal and acceptable, and tax evasion, which is not.  By appearing to clamp down on evasion, and further linking it to ‘money laundering’, he is trying to convince us that he getting to grips with public concerns.

But what has been concerning the public is tax avoidance, thanks largely to the demonisation efforts of various parliamentarians and media entities.  They see money being earned by huge corporates.  They see the revenues exceeding the costs.  Then they see little or no corporation tax being paid on the profits made here, because the corporate is structured to pay royalties and levies to another part of the company based elsewhere in the EU – where only then are profits taxed, by that nation’s authorities, with those tax receipts going into that nation’s revenues rather than ours.

The reality is, as part of the European project’s objectives of eroding borders and creating a de facto single state, several freedoms were enshrined.  These stop nation states from interfering with a company setting up entities anywhere in today’s EU, moving its money around the EU as it sees fit, and making payments (such as royalities and charges) between its various branches within the EU.

But on this reality, on this explanation as to why Amazon, Google, Starbucks etc, can make large profit on their activities in the UK without the UK Exchequer being able to tax it, David Cameron is doggedly, relentlessly and utterly silent.  It is the truth that dare not speak its name.  It destroys most of his argument about the economic benefits of EU membership – which are used as justification for accepting the erosion of sovereignty, the erosion of what little democracy we had, and submission to the will of unelected and unaccountable foreign structures and bureaucrats that make our national parliament and local government nothing more than an executive of the EU machine.

Multinational corporations may benefit, but it does little for the UK taxpayer.  That isn’t something that plays well with ordinary people, who are expected to bear all the pain and sacrifices that have to be made to ensure the corporations and their political friends can enjoy the fruits of regulation they make in their own interest.  That’s an admission Cameron will never make.

Cameron is in crisis

Speculating in the late afternoon on the possibility of the government being defeated in last night’s Commons vote, which was designed to establish ‘the principle’ of using military action against Syria, John Pienaar argued such a defeat would represent a terminal loss of authority for David Cameron.

Well, it happened.  Cameron’s motion to prepare the way for military action was defeated 285 votes to 272. As the Daily Mail excitedly points out, the last time a Prime Minister was defeated over an issue of war and peace was in 1782 and the vote plunges him into a ‘deep political crisis’.  The Telegraph tries to play down the gravity of what the events in the Commons mean for Cameron’s authority, while saying the vote was unprecedented they only went so far as to say the Parliamentary vote ‘may also undermine Mr Cameron’s international reputation’.

What is disturbing is that the Government benches managed to secure as many as 272 votes for the principle of military intervention at all, particularly when all that was presented in evidence was an emotion-fuelled ‘judgement call’ based on a flakey summary from the Joint Intelligence Committee, which lacked any hard proof and relied as much on a lack of evidence that the rebels were to blame as it did on evidence that the regime was responsible.  It was in no way a sound basis for launching military action.  The dearth of hard information from the intelligence community and lack of certainty about who was culpable and what the consequences would be of intervention meant it was utter folly to bring the matter before the Commons and press for an agreement in principle to loose off a variety of missiles.

What would be unprecendented would be Cameron being able to rebuild his authority.  It, along with his credibility, has been shattered in stunning fashion.  The floodgates are now open, and for all his bluster this vote has solidified internal Conservative Party opposition ranged against him on a variety of issues.

Cameron, who achieved his sole aim of becoming Prime Minister, despite failing to navigate his party to an election win against one of the most unpopular and disliked governments of the modern era, has also now failed to navigate his own little military adventure for his vain legacy.  He has shown he cannot seal the deal.  He is now just a figurehead that has detached from the ship, to bob around on the political ocean, swept along by various tides and swamped by the big waves of the day, not in control of events and not at the front of anything.

This really marks the start of the end for his political career.  The Conservatives may defy the odds to bounce back, but Cameron is now too damaged and the ruthless power brokers in the background will now be looking at who could succeed him.  The Tory party dynamics have just changed dramatically.

The most powerful rebuttal yet to David Cameron’s deceitful ‘Norway Fax Law’ claims

If, dear reader, you read nothing else this week, please click on the image below and take a few minutes to read the most powerful rebuttal yet to David Cameron’s claims – also made by others such as Nick Clegg, Roland Rudd, John Cridland and others – that Norway outside the EU has to accept EU laws without having no say over them.

The rebuttal of Cameron’s falsehoods and description of the reality for Norway comes not from a mere observer, but the State Secretary at the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Anne Beathe K. Tvinnereim.

Tvinnereim not only shoots down Cameron’s claims with factual reality, she also corrects the previously reported pro-EU motivated claims of Norway’s Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide.  While the pro-EU sycophantic UK press – particularly the BBC – uncritically reported Eide’s claims that Norway has no influence over EU laws (most of which originate at global level where Norway represents itself and has direct influence), it transpires they were challenged in Norway itself and were a personal opinion not reflected by the majority of Norwegian people.

For the reality that Cameron, Clegg, Cridland, Rudd and other EUphiles pretend does not exist, so they can keep the UK trapped in the political clutches of the EU, click on the image above to read the whole piece.

Thanks for that, ‘Dave’

The loss-making editorial department of the BBC, otherwise known as the Guardian, has spent some money sending Nicholas Watt to Kazakhstan to cover David Cameron’s trip there.

Clearly the visit the trip is essential for British interests, which is why Cameron had plenty of time to chillax and massage his ego by holding a question and answer session with some of Astana’s youth.

Addressing the most pressing issues of the day, Cameron was asked which character from the Harry Potter series of books and films he would like to be.  His reply was very helpful for putting some genuine issues into context:

My daughter is nine years old, she’s just started to read all the Harry Potter books so I’m sort of rediscovering them all over again.

I can think of all sorts of characters you don’t want to be and I suppose in the end you know if you’ve got any sense you want to be Harry Potter. That must be the correct answer.

I suspect people in Britain might want to paint me in a different role but I’ll let them do that, I won’t make the work easier for them.

According to Watt of the Graun, this was a clever reference to ‘he who must not be named’, the evil protagonist character who Harry must overcome, known as Lord Valdemort.

It was kind of ‘Call me Dave’ to allow we serfs to paint him in a different role, as it is not as difficult as he may think.  However, far from being the powerful and cunning Valdemort, Cameron more readily fits to a tee the role of another Potter character, Lucius Malfoy, father of Harry’s arch-rival at Hogwarts school, Draco Malfoy.

After all, Malfoy Snr has delusions of grandeur coming from his wealth and breeding.  He has married into another well-connected family.  He likes to strut about throwing his weight around and trying to intimidate others.  He has the finer things in life and looks down on others as somehow inferior.  But he is shown in the Potter series to be a weak quisling who meekly takes his orders from Valdemort without question, is unable to do anything without express permission or instruction, aspires to a seat at the top table but has no influence whatsoever in the decisions Valdermort makes, and ultimately runs away like a coward when the going gets tough and his boss looks set for defeat.

This neatly mirrors the relationship between the EU and the UK and the relationship between the Barroso/Van Rompuy/Schulz axis and Cameron himself.  For David Cameron to imagine the reality is anything other than that is a greater fantasy than the Harry Potter series itself.  For that perfect and illustrative analogy about this country and its leader’s position in the EU we offer Cast Iron Dave our thanks.

What kind of dunces are they turning out of Eton?

This in today from the BBC…

Doesn’t Cast Iron Dave realise that the UK is not at the top table of a number of international institutions because British governments have handed our place over to the European Union to ‘speak for us’ as one of 27 nations with often conflicting interests and needs?  For an ‘instinctive Eurosceptic’ he does seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time parroting the EU’s line and encouraging us to be fully assimilated, paid up members of it.

Perhaps it’s because our glorious media prefers not to remind people about the independence this country has given away, and certainly doesn’t want to shine a light on inconvenient facts such as those that show countries like Norway and Switzerland have seats at the top tables of more international institutions than the UK, as members in their own right, speaking for themselves with confidence on the world stage.

It will only be a matter of time until there is an attempt to replace UK and French membership of the UN Security Council as permanent members with an EU seat instead.  What then for Cameron’s drivel about the UK’s place at the top table?

Cameron claims that Eurosceptics are in ‘denial’ when we claim that the UK could go-it-alone and succeed in the global economy.  The fact is Cameron is not only in denial when he claims that the UK cannot, he is deliberately and knowingly lying.  There is absolutely no need for the UK or any other nation to surrender control of itself when everything EU membership supposedly delivers can be achieved through simple cooperation between neighbours.

Actually, perhaps it’s not dunces that Eton and Oxford are turning out, but rather deceitful Europlastic quislings who argue that Britain is not sufficiently capable of speaking for itself on the world stage and not strong enough to manage its own laws, trade relationships or control its own borders when other smaller and less well resourced countries manage perfectly well.  Yes, that sums up Cameron to a tee.

Bring Cameron his booze, fags and easy women

The Barclay Brother Beano carries an unsurprising post election piece, headlined thus:

Start behaving more like Nigel Farage and less like a ‘public school toff’, David Cameron told

David Cameron should behave more like Nigel Farage and less like a “public school toff”, according to the Prime Minister’s former local council leader.

The suggestion from Keith Mitchell, former leader of Oxfordshire County Council, underlines the depressingly shallow mindset of the Conservatives.  Instead of enjoining Cameron to start behaving like a conservative (which he isn’t) and pursue policies that people in the country want to see (which he won’t),  the solution proposed to win public support is to mimic the behaviour of the party whose support among the total electorate in last week’s elections was 6.5%.

Clearly Mr Mitchell hasn’t put very much thought into this.  The mental image of Cameron knocking back pints, smoking cigarettes and chasing younger women around is too much to deal with.  Far better that we have Cameron behaving like the aloof, ignorant, social democrat enemy of representative democracy that he is, so support for him and his band of self serving Europlastics continues to decline.

Nigel Lawson awakens from his long Euroslumber

Okay. Let’s… I tell you what, let’s forget the fact that you’re coming a little late to the party and embrace the fact that you showed up at all.

That line from the West Wing is my message to Nigel Lawson today. I’ve always had something of a crush on Nigella Lawson, and I’m now starting to become fond of her old man too (not in that way).  First he speak sense on climate change, now he is speaking sense on the UK’s membership of the EU.

Setting aside the fact Lord Lawson’s u-turn on the EU is akin to him declaring that, in spite of the warnings and raft of evidence that was available to him, he is thoroughly disappointed that his expensively acquired tulips bulbs did not blossom into the beautiful roses he was convinced he would get, he makes the powerful point that any changes David Cameron might be able to secure from the EU will be equally as inconsequential as the crumbs from the table hailed by Harold Wilson as the outcome of a successful renegotiation with ‘Europe’ in the 1970s.

After years of delusion and self deception, it has finally dawned on Lord Lawson that the EU is a purpose-built bureaucratic construct, with the sole objective of drawing power to itself and eroding the sovereignty of nation states to the point they cease to exist in anything but name.  That aim has never changed, it’s just that Nigel is now saying he can see it for what it is and rightly concludes the UK should have no part in it.

However, what is disappointing is that there is no mention in his comments to suggest Lord Lawson acknowledges the fundamental problem with the EU is that it is anti-democratic by design.  Its very reason for being is to subvert and replace democracy, because allowing the people to determine for themselves what they want would result in the EU’s collapse, which would not suit the corporatist interests it serves.

So Nigel Lawson has correctly identified the remedy, even if it is still not clear to him what the ailment is.  It’s progress of sorts.

Now we just hope more people will listen to this political heavyweight and see through Cameron’s pathetic charade of a loosely defined ‘re-negotiation’ before he declares success and recommends the UK stays part of the EU, regardless of how little control over our own affairs he repatriates from Brussels.

Cameron’s arrogance and idiocy shine through yet again

David Cameron has long been UKIP’s biggest and most insulting critic, famously employing his most smartarse comment when describing the party as made up of:

…fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly.

Today, having seen UKIP figuratively tear his party a new orifice, Cameron laughably attempted to portray himself as being above the very fray he personally stoked, by declaring:

It is no good insulting a political party that people have chosen to vote for.

One of the many things people in this country are sick and tired of is politicians attempting to dispense lessons to them that only the politicians didn’t understand in the first place.  It is utterly pathetic and it only serves to make Cameron look even more stupid.  He may as well have delivered his little monologue to a mirror, because that way his message would have been targeted at the correct audience.

Cameron in Thatcherite shocker!

According to a piece in the Daily Wail, when asked directly whether he was a Thatcherite, David Cameron replied:

‘No… Other people might call me that. I think the label’s now… it’s slightly become… labels now don’t quite mean what they did then.

‘I was a tremendous Mrs Thatcher supporter… The battles she won were so important for our country, but there are now different challenges and things that need to be dealt with.’

The shock in all this?  That some idiot saw fit to ask Cameron if he was a Thatcherite in the first place.

A cursory look at Cameron’s dismal record, his limp behaviour in opposition, his failure to win an election against the most unpopular Prime Minister in living memory, a quick scan of his front bench at the wets he surrounds himself with – especially that treacherous, backstabbing, europhile quisling and plotter-in-chief who worked tirelessly to bring down Thatcher, Ken Clarke – the accelerating departure from conservative principles, the vacuum that exists where conviction should reside, the two-faced rank hypocrisy, and an absence of any connection or empathy with ordinary people… yet some witless fool has the stupidity to ask if he is a Thatcherite?

For crying out loud.

How do you solve a problem like Dave?

It was interesting today to speak to three people who generously supported my Borough Council election campaign back in 2007.

These were Tory stalwarts, always willing to leaflet, canvass, buy raffle tickets and support events.  When I resigned from the Council and quit the Conservatives they were still there, plugging away, doing their bit to further what they believed to be conservatism.  I lost touch with them when I withdrew from party politics, but hadn’t forgotten them.

With the county council elections coming up, I asked them how the campaigning was going.  I admit to being shocked to find that they had all left the Conservatives two years ago.  There are people in every party that one can look at and think, ‘their heart’s not in it, they’ll pack it in before long’.  But these three were not people one could ever have imagined as capable of being so disaffected as to walk away.  Enough, it turns out, was enough.  Everyone has different motives for their actions, so naturally an enquiry was made about why they had all quit (they are all unrelated but long standing friends of each other).  The answer in each case was… David Cameron.

It transpires true blue, ‘instinctive eurosceptic’ Dave has managed to alienate members so much that these hardcore, grassroots supporters who are the engine room of election campaigns, had turned their back on the party.  They cited Cameron’s hypocrisy over EU membership, his refusal to cut spending so only the essentials are funded,  and his indecent haste to jettison conservative principles in favour of Lib Dem and consensus fudges that suit no one but the establishment.   And, they were adamant, they are not going back.  They have come around to sharing my view that Cameron isn’t conservative and what is on offer is materially no different from that advanced by the Lib Dems and Labour.

If this is indicative of the sentiments of conservatives who have left the Conservative party in their droves in recent years, it is hard to see the party continuing to function as an electoral force within a few years.  Nominal members who don’t campaign are nowhere near as important as those who gave their time and money to support candidates – and it is these who appear to be walking away.

Thanks to Cameron’s arrogance and the existance of a vacuum where his conviction and principle is supposed reside, the Tories are in serious decline.  The party is swiftly becoming representative only of the muddled views of its small cabal of power brokers and it is losing the very people who it relies upon at election time to secure support and get out the vote.

The problem the Conservatives have is that there are too few conservatives left in the parliamentary party.  So fixing a problem like Dave looks to be an impossible task.  If he is replaced in an effort to rejuvinate the party’s electoral fortunes, it will only be another stuffed suit taking the helm with the same immunity to the notion of representative politics, the same craven complicity to the global governance agenda, the same anti democratic pro-EU position, and the same reluctance to tackle the admittedly herculean task of reforming the economy and reducing the size and scope of government.

Voters have increasingly seen this and stay away from the ballot box in increasing numbers.  But now Dave and the other rent seekers are finding their legitimacy is being questioned by their own party members.  The foundations are crumbling.  But until there is a fundamental reform of the way government is controlled and run in this country – as per the demands promoted by the carefully developing Harrogate Agenda campaign – the elite will continue to pass power between themselves and become ever more distant from the real world outside the establishment bubble centred on Westminster.

The Only Way is Harrogate.

The Conservatives will never return to the ‘common ground’

She often comes in for a lot of stick, but Melanie Phillips often articulates the reality of a situation with supreme clarity. Consider this rhetorical contribution directed at the conservative-in-name-only in Number 10.

“Mr Cameron does not have to enter an alliance with UKIP in order to reconnect to Conservative voters. All he has to do — revolutionary thought! — is adopt Conservative policies himself.

Since the fall of Mrs Thatcher, British Conservatism has lost its way.

Mr Cameron wrote yesterday: ‘It’s not about being Left-wing or Right-wing; it’s about being where the British people are.’

Well, the British people want to get back from the EU the power to govern themselves. They want to live in a country that does not resemble an international transit camp, but where citizenship is based on a truly common culture.

They want to end ruinous and pointless green taxes, and to conserve the countryside against urban sprawl. They want armed forces that can actually defend the country and a drastic curtailment of international aid. And they want solid, unambiguous support for traditional family life.

That’s where the British people really are, Prime Minister. The problem is that you are somewhere else.”

So, sadly, are all but a tiny handful of senior Conservatives. While I wish well the genuine conservatives who in spite of everything remain in the Conservative party, my decision to resign as a Conservative Councillor and leave the party, because of the direction Cameron and his cronies were taking, has increasingly shown itself to have been completely justified.

What Phillips is saying is in her own way is what this blog has long said – the political class’ interests are wildly different from the interests of ordinary people.

The likelihood of the Conservatives rediscovering the common ground is so remote as to be negligible. The party leadership has been infested by people like Cameron, devoid of principle or belief, who want to govern for its own sake; and who think they alone should have the monopoly on decision making and therefore refuse the electorate’s wishes on a wide range of issues.

The concept of representative democracy is just that, a concept.  Something the Philosophy, Politics and Economics graduates learn under the likes of Vernon Bogdanor, before heading off into the world to maintain elected dictatorship.  Compare and contrast with the way things are done in what increasingly appears to be the last true democracy in the western world…  Until the status quo in the UK changes the politicians will never come close to sharing the common ground with the people.  Power to the people, Citizen Cam?  Not bloody likely.

A frank assessment and reality check

Some people might consider the op-ed in Germany’s Spiegel less frank and more brutal.

Either the commentary from a rabidly pro-EU newspaper on the continent offers a reality check for the UK’s doggedly pro-EU Prime Minister, and the deluded Conservative rump which continues to kid itself and others that they can secure the return of a handful of largely meaningless powers to the UK and launch complete restructuring of the European Union into the bargain:

His party still hasn’t forgiven him for failing to clinch an absolute majority in the last election. They see the coalition with the Liberal Democrats as a humiliation. The EU is their way of exacting revenge on Cameron for that. It’s part of the reason why Cameron sees Europe mainly as a party political problem.

By trying to satisfy his radical backbenchers with the referendum pledge, he’s launched into a game he can’t win. The EU’s other 26 governments won’t let him opt out of parts of the existing accords because that would prompt others to demand concessions of their own. The Europe-haters in Cameron’s party won’t be satisfied because the leeway they want from Brussels isn’t politically achievable.

Exclusively among the constituents of the EU only Cameron, his europlastic lobby fodder amd the majority of the British media believe in his fantasy renegotiation narrative.  The tragedy is they have come together and taken advantage of the wishful thinking of a largely uninformed public to con them into believing it is real and achievable and the only option that results in ‘less Europe’ and maintains access to the single market.  As Spiegel points out somewhat unhelpfully for the dreamers:

The important questions still haven’t been answered. What exactly does Britain expect of Europe? What laws and regulations does Cameron want to change? What parts of the treaty does he want to opt out of? And above all: How in heaven’s name does Cameron propose to persuade the German chancellor, the French president and all the other European leaders that he should get to pick the raisins from the cake while everyone else gets the crumbs?

The truth is Cameron has no idea.  His speech was a gambit to stop the leak of Conservative members to UKIP and arrest the groundswell of anti-EU sentiment among a frustrated public.

Nothing that Cameron can achieve will negate the issues that have been turning an increasing number of people against EU membership.  Power will remain in Brussels, laws and regulations will still be handed down for the British to implement, billions of pounds will be sent elsewhere within the EU at the expense of the vulnerable in this country, unfettered migration of low skilled, low earning EU nationals will continue, British economic interests and trade deals will continue to be compromised and diluted to suit the ‘common’ interests of other EU states.  In short, the UK will not belong to the British.