[westminster] why labour could well be returned

Back to more mundane things and there's a storm brewing in the party political sphere.

1. Those who can see beyond party politics see that the EU is poised to pounce once Irish Lisbon 2 is passed, which they are obviously confident will be signed, otherwise, they would not have pressed for it. What is meant by pounce?

Regionalization of course, with the regional assemblies already in place. It matters not that the country rejected it last time, it's a fait accompli even now and EU money goes to the regions as a first priority. On top of that, it's aided and abetted from the ODPM via Common Purpose.

So, in other words, that is ready to go but it also needs the population to be fed up to the back teeth of Westminster politics, in order to usher in the new devolution, only partially at first, with no ostensible loss of sovereignty. The idea is that Westminster is scandal riddled, e.g. the expenses scandal, Brown's incompetence and Cameron's ineffectual Westminster club games. The EU will fix the mess.

2. Into this steps Dan Hannan who is virtually the only pollie, apart from David Davis and possibly John Redwood, [forgive me if I've left a few out], speaking for the small "c" conservative, the conservative libertarian small government type.

Now, a glance at the UKIP, LPUK and a major section of the Tories shows that these people are not, in general, numpties. In other words, this side of politics is far more likely to fragment and split off, while the Labour numpties will continue to vote for them no matter what state they get the country into.

Therefore, ignoring the by-elections, which have always been protest votes and don't really correspond to general election results, the Labour vote is going to be, on the day, fairly stable. As the voting system is first past the post, it matters not whether they have 22% of the vote if no other party gets more than that.

Right, you say, the conservative vote is considerably more than that at present.

Yes it is - at present. However, in steps Dan Hannan and as Harry Hook says:

I can't figure out whether he's being naively open, shrewd, or just has a death wish. Nonetheless... Dan's got some guts... as well as brains.

Everyone knows he is shooting from the hip and has now invoked Enoch, which is a particular trigger that certain conservatives are not averse to. David Cameron does not really know what to do with him. If he follows Brown's goading and disciplines Hannan, the question is - for what? There are many disgruntled Tories and these sorts of buzzwords start people thinking.

Therefore, Cameron does nothing but that doesn't look good in pro-Cameron Tory eyes. Possibly nothing untoward would happen before the election and Hannan would be spoken to by those inside - therefore collective responsibility reigns and the Tories come to power.

If it were to be handled badly though, Hannan would have no choice but to move out and sitting there are the UKIP and LPUK which, though the policies have differences, might be galvanized by someone of Hannan's stature representing the small "c" conservatives. It would represent the best chance for the smaller parties to find an accommodation anyway - don't forget that FPTP is no good for small parties.

If Hannan left, there'd be quite an exodus of thinking conservatives, even though no one is so far the recipient of hero worship - it's not Nu-Labour and Blair, with it's gaggle of Babes - that he could count on leading some new united party. Therefore, the split in the right wing ranks plays right into Labour's hands and they might just cross the line ahead at the general election.

That would be unthinkable for all the non-numpties out there in Britland but it is a possibility, aggravated by a devolved Scotland and partially devolved Wales plus ... and this is the big plus ... the EU Monster waiting in the background to pick up the pieces.

3. You can reject this thesis, of course but one thing I think you can't deny is that 2010 will be volatile and Britain will once again become interesting to the world, politically.

And don't forget the Parliament for England campaign.

[collective responsibility] and dan hannan's honesty

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said Mr Hannan was wrong in his criticism of the NHS. Daniel Hannan said: “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. We have a system where the most salient facts of it you get huge waiting lists, you have bad survival rates and you would much rather fall ill in the US.”

If you look at this post from yesterday, not that you need to as you already know fullwell, it's clear that Daniel Hannan was only speaking the truth.

Now this puts your humble blogger into a bind. I'm a paid up member of the Tories and the Tory bloggership, though wary of me as a bit left field, do see me as one of them in the end. However, my more major preoccupation is with the truth and the truth is that the NHS is $%^&*#ed. Every commenter yesterday said so, everyone I know and speak to here said so.

So, let's come back to David Cameron who himself is in a difficult position - he has a party line to uphold. A false party line which requires potential ministers and fellow MPs in general to lie to support the party line. Or was it that the problem stemmed from the comments being made whilst Dan Hannan was in America?

Are people seriously trying to say that America can't access its own material on the NHS? There's this thing, you see, called the internet. Half my readership is American and these guys ... well, let's confess it ... they're capable of talking, reading and listening and from that, horror of horrors, I actually learn about America and maybe, just maybe, they learn something about Britain. Yesterday, we all said the NHS was *&^#$%^ed. Are we being grossly disloyal to our nation bad-mouthing the NHS, on the grounds that an American might be reading our private words?

Look, not to put too fine a point on it - did Daniel Hannan breach the principle of Collective Responsibility to the Party Line? Was he disloyal to Britain? If something in Britain is totally $%*&^#$ed, should every Brit, in conversation with an American, say, "No, no, everything's fine over our way," whilst our American friend is looking at this post and seeing that it's not?

Where is the party line and where is collective responsibility when it's bleedin' obvious what the situation is? To anyone in the world.

I'd agree one needs to be loyal to one's organization when one is taking the shilling - one's firm, one's school and so on. But a country is not something you joined and signed on the dotted line to. It's something you were born or naturalized into. If you were born into it, I'd suggest you have far more right to say what you damn well like about it, wherever you are, with a view to making it right.

I've never bad-mouthed my country abroad and when I was in Russia, I never bad-mouthed Russia. But if I was pointedly asked about some aspect of that country, e.g. is it true that your NHS is not very good, then my answer might be, knowing the questioner had access to the web and can read a newspaper, "It could be better."

I suggest that that was the tone Daniel Hannan took. He strikes me as an honest sort of chap.

So where does that leave a flawed Westminster system where the important thing is not to tell the truth but to toe the party line? Surely that shows that the two party, adversarial system is seriously flawed? Surely it shows it's time to change it.

The question is - for what other system?

[the real eu] this is how they operate

Admittedly, this is a UKIP promotional, courtesy of Trixy but it needs to be viewed by all Brits. This is what Ireland is probably going to vote in next year - democracy, EU style:

Assuming that this man standing over Hannan, browbeating him, is Christopher Beazley, then wtf is he doing? He was supposed to have been elected on a eurosceptic platform. Iain Dale and commenters give a possible clue.

Further, from Daniel Hannan's blog:

A few minutes later, Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, rose to make a similar point. He reminded the Speaker, Hans-Gert Pöttering, that, when 14 MEPs were fined for demanding a referendum in the chamber, the stated reason was that they had misbehaved in the presence of a national leader: José Sócrates of Portugal. Yet when Cohn-Bendit and others behaved with outrageous boorishness to another national leader, Hans-Gert not only ostentatiously declined to restrain them, but joined in, upbraiding the Czech leader for daring to mention Communist Czechoslovakia (the complete transcript is available at the splendid EU Referendum blog).

People, this is lawlessness and blatant disregard for their own rules.

[lisbon] the last candle flickers in october

This will need to be confronted by the ordinary man and woman before October.

The press first, in the words of EU Referendum:

[In this recession], increasingly, the news is not generated by newspapers but by the various agencies. Much of the copy is now simply a "cut and paste" job, with a few tweaks, the less honest of the papers then simply adding their journos' names to the final result. Where this gets important is that a very few news agencies (and then a very few journalists within those agencies) are essentially controlling the print (and indeed much of the rest of the electronic) media.

Through this means, one sees insidious distortions and simplifications which completely change the context of the political debate. And, like water flowing through the cracks in the dam, they percolate everywhere, finding their way into thousands of print and online journals, influencing the way people think about the world.

So, while the major players on the No side put their view on the 2nd Lisbon vote, AP reported it as 'Ireland Votes Again' - distortion of the debate and 'the poisonous drip of misinformation'.

On the chances of a No vote second time around:

However, it seems to us obvious that Mr Ganley made a monumental mistake when he allowed his vanity to lead him into trying to form a pan-European party.

Flushed with the triumph of the No vote in the first Irish referendum he ought to have sat back and said that he was interested only in stopping the treaty. This could not be done in the Toy Parliament (a point that escaped Mr Ganley, I suspect) and, therefore, Libertas was not going to get involved in those elections but wait for the second referendum and campaign there.

At most, he should have campaigned only in Ireland, making that into a back-up referendum. He and his colleagues might have done quite well.

Instead, Mr Ganley decided to promote himself and his followers into a band of brothers dedicated to the salvation and reform of the European project. They failed miserably and deservedly. In the process, though, they destroyed Libertas's political credibility in Ireland and damaged, very severely, the chances of a No vote in October when the second referendum is likely to take place. (Smart money is on October 10 but no decision can be taken until the Referendum Bill is passed by the Dail in July.)

The battle in Ireland will be a tough one, made much tougher by Declan Ganley's recent antics and failure. We, in this country, must do all we can to help. This blog is standing by.

Courtesy of EU Referendum, here is the list of British traitors who defied public opinion and voted Yes to Lisbon, knowing full well, in the words of Heritagedotorg:

The new Treaty poses the biggest threat to national sovereignty in Europe since the Second World War, would threaten the future of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, and would significantly weaken the transatlantic alliance.

So what's new in this post?

Only a perspective.

Most anti-Union pundits concentrate on the threat to our sovereignty and to the corruption of the EU. Not many write of who would head it. Yes, I know Tony Blair has been mooted and Barroso but I mean who will really control Europe.

The powers that allowed and funded Hitler's rise are still there. The majority of the Thirteen Families are still there. The Round Table Groups are still there. It's not the very monolithic nature of the Union and the hoovering up of all semblance of sovereignty within the UK which frightens me the most - it's the presence of real evil in the heart of Europe, the posterity of the generators of strife over the centuries. They're the ones whose puppets will govern and the work they had Hitler doing, which went pear-shaped due to his imperfections, can begin again.

Do you honestly believe that the people who put Hitler in power were all killed in the bunker with him? Or did they just slip back into the shadows to wait for the next opportunity?

It's not just an economic zone we're on about here, it's not just the shape of your power sockets - it's the whole sordid agenda of 1929 to 1945 all over again. Make no mistake, if Lisbon goes through in Ireland, the implementation pan-Europe will be swift and complete. Then the real agenda will begin pulling what was the UK into the vortex with it.

It's not at all fanciful to suggest - just look at the whole nature of the European Project to date, the strongarm tactics, lies and spin, their very manner of going about business - that the very things Churchill spoke of those black radio nights will have to be spoken of again, only this time, minus a Churchill.

I'm in training and ready to rejoin Dad's Army but unfortunately, the enemy is already inside and in power in every region, in key posts in all fields. This time, Britain, no one is going to send up Spitfires, no one is going to rally us all together. This time, the vans will be sent to quietly mop up all known insurgents in a time of crisis - you, me and every blogger who has dared to speak out against this monstrosity.

Ireland must vote NO.

By the way, here's Vox Day's transatlantic interview with Dan Hannan, touching on why he [mistakenly] supported Obama, why he doesn't stand for a place in the UK parliament and including views on the BNP.

[clamour for change] who benefits most

Exhibit 1 – an article by Amir Taheri

Is England on the verge of revolution?

What has shocked the Brits above all is the extent of the corruption and its long duration. It seems that almost two-thirds of the 650 members of the house were involved in one way or another.

Rather than publishing the whole of its scoop at one go, the newspaper decided to offer it as a serial on a daily basis. This has had the effect of Chinese torture, with the nation holding its breath to see who would be in the next batch of villains to be exposed, and dispatched to the guillotine.

The amounts involved in these scandals are not high.

Exhibit 2 – an article by Martin Kelly

British Exceptionalism

Yet the expenses scandal is proof that the people do not consent to the development of a Latin American-style political elite. This is a very hopeful thing.

From now on, our politicians will just have to learn that their careers are time-limited; and that the best things in life are sometimes not as free as they'd like.

Exhibit 3 – a post by Sackerson

We are in one of those “generational revolutions” that Jefferson said were as important as anything else to the proper functioning of our democracy. We can no longer pretend that our collective behavior as a nation for the past 25 years has been worthy of us as a people.

Exhibit 4 – an article by Andrew Allison

What is needed in all elections in the UK is preferential voting. It was used successfully in the European Election in Northern Ireland. It is the fairest voting system in the world.

Exhibit 5 – the capitalized screed at the top of the right sidebar here plus this post, which nobody commented on.

Asharq also wrote:

England may not experience a classical revolution with barricades and gallows in public places.

… but that’s not the word I’m hearing on the street.

Going back to the original article, it’s the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ method, the ‘salami tactics’ and the media’s progressive revelations which characterize this whole matter.

The sheer incompetence of the ruling body and its utilities has got people speaking in terms of CHANGE and to me, is not an accidental matter and the rhetoric is time-tested. That was Obama’s rhetoric too, remember. Like Blair, sentences with no grammatical direct or indirect object. Like Stalin.

‘Yes we can.”

Can what?

‘Change.’

Change what?

‘Well, our situation.’

How?

‘Well, I don’t know, we’re without focus but we want change! Obama wil give it to us.’

1917

... failed to meet the aspirations of the people of the former Russian Empire. ... fed directly into the growing clamor for a radical change of government

1930s

... he used his so-called 'ideologies' to win over the support of the German people. ... the Monarchy of Germany collapsed amid clamour for change and an …

The motif is the fomenting of unrest and rage among the people. In a latin country, little is required to do that but in Britain, it is more difficult – it takes a long, slow build before people break out and kill anyone.

Greed and incompetence is the catalyst and the motive? How would Poirot go about it, to annoy Dearieme a little? Surely he’d ask the question: ‘Who stands to gain most from this unrest?’

Ancillary questions include: ‘What realistic chance would a change in the structure have, who would bring it in and in which form? How much further along the road to direct government would the people be? Would these pollies willingly instigate the abrogation of their powers, even to meet the national clamour? Have they done so as yet, despite Daniel Hannan’s eloquence? Just how can the people, with no right of recall, no means of calling for impeachment, effect such a change?’

The answer to the latter question is that they can’t. The only change to the political process is going to come from Westminster, when it's ready and if the people force a melting pot, then there are powers ready to exploit the mood.

How?

By the EU insinuating itself and quietly taking the reins post-Irish Lisbon II. I’m sorry to be such a cynic. After all, cynics are usually given short shrift, aren’t they?

May I continue?

Who, in Europe, gains by seeing the formal institution of an EU bloc and the regionalization of England? In other words, the breaking of the strong independent English tradition, weakened by successive waves of immigration, [which I’m not arguing against, merely noting it in terms of English power in the world arena], benefits who specifically?

Could there be any moneyed, loose grouping of people in Europe who might benefit by the dismantling of this country?

EU member states are "intensively" monitoring the risk of spreading civil unrest in Europe, as riots over the economic crisis erupt ...

Yes, Europe wide unrest. Mutterings, clamour, all over again. Will it lead to long-lasting democratic change? Will it hell.  One last thing - remember Sarkozy's comment that the EU is not a matter for the people through referenda - it is a matter for the parliamentarians to decide.

There it is.

H/T Lord T for the Taheri article.

[blogger behaviour] sometimes needs comments

There are reasons not to post this and then there are more reasons to actually post it.

In the context of our own financial worries, the girl who was murdered in Iran, the Iraq enquiry, the state of education, the burqa issue and so on and so on, this is a relatively minor gripe but it is still a gripe.

My position on the political compass is such that I don't like using left/right as designations and would prefer to say socialist, totalitarian, laissez-faire, libertarian or whatever. If forced to use left/right designations, I'd like to feel that I get a cross-section of opinion at this blog, probably more slanted to the centre-right [not my choice of terms] because there are more of those bloggers about.

Whether this is correct or not, I've noticed something happening which, at first, I put down to my own error - pushing the wrong button, not pushing hard enough, whatever. Either way, comments I've posted are sometimes not there when I return to that blogger's post's comments section.

Frankly, one's first reaction is to be miffed by this, particularly as it's not something I do to that person. If I delete someone's comment, then I explain why and my readers know that. Some bloggers go further than I do - they actually write, via email: 'Listen, James, I had to delete your comment because ...'

Fair enough. I don't agree he should have deleted it but it's his choice - it's his blog.

Now I'm the first to admit I'm quite disliked on certain blogs, particularly those I've savaged in the past and there are those who feel my views are too left field [without actually exploring it to the end with an open mind]. Again, fair enough. I know there's something in my manner which leaves many cool towards me, even if we fundamentally agree among ourselves, politically. All those are known knowns.

But leaving comments is when a reader has taken the trouble to come to that person's site, has looked at what he's offered and has decided to respond. On my blog here, people who come to visit are called 'Esteemed Readers' [see Mybloglog in the left sidebar] and the last thing I'm going to do is delete their comments, with two exceptions - ad hominem against another commenter and my personal ex-stalker.

I don't give a damn if you're Gordo's right hand man [or woman] or whether you're Daniel Hannan - all are welcome. I take pride over the appearance of my blog and like people to speak intelligently on an issue but sometimes they don't - they just leave a quick comment, often flippant and in passing on what was a serious topic. I don't have to like that but I'm sure not going to delete it. More often than not, it's a post which invites banter anyway.

It seems to me that some bloggers invite comments but when the comments don't accord exactly with their views, they are not allowed to stand.

Now the controversial part - of the five comments of mine which have been deleted in the past few days, all were at what you would call 'left-wing' blogs. Does that say anything?

What tends to happen with right-wingers who don't like my presence?

Well, take Dizzy for example, Julia M or Croydonian. They seem to put up with my comments, ignore them and hope I just go away and that's fair enough too. If I put a comment at Lord T's he doesn't like, he attacks, as he should do, as I would hope anyone would do.

Surely we politically blog for debate, for feedback, don't we? Surely we don't blog for our own narcissistic ego-pampering?

That's why just deleting someone's comments without any explanation stinks and says much about the blogger who does it. Having said that, I'll still visit and still try to leave comments.
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[the collapse] who are the main beneficiaries

Banks commit mass foreclosure fraud

There must be a lot of it if it is news that a judge actually bothers to check that the paperwork is correct:

He has tossed out 46 of the 102 foreclosure motions that have come before him in the last two years. And his often scathing decisions, peppered with allusions to the Croesus-like wealth of bank presidents, have attracted the respectful attention of judges and lawyers from Florida to Ohio to California. At recent judicial conferences in Chicago and Arizona, several panelists praised his rulings as a possible national model.

I fear even Vox may have missed something in his conclusion. Why has this been allowed to become so publicly the focus of the people's ire? Vox concludes:

The point, of course, is that there is no longer even much of a pretense at the rule of law in the United States. That has been replaced with rule by bureaucratic dictate.

... but his own WND were the ones to target the real enemy of the U.S.A., the CFR with their conniving SPPNA which effectively handed the powers to an overseeing body called the NAAC, controlled largely by the CFR. And it is hardly precedent that a small Jekyllian group has done such things before or that the Sherman Anti-Trust Acts were passed as a sop for the general populace.

Why is Westminster so spectacularly corrupt this time round or rather, why is it allowed to be seen to be so, on a scale never before revealed? Given that the people's ire is always directed by the powers which control, e.g. against Jerry in the last war, aginst the Jews in Germany and against Iran at this time - then why the bankers, the dodgy hedge funds and the JPMs?

Is it the maturing political minds of the population which are finally seeing the light or is there a reason for these targets becoming so open?

I can only think that one of two things has happened. Either they have already the fait accompli and it is scarcely necessary to consider the populace any more in the new Post-Democratic era or else one needs to follow the process. If the people clamour for the the banks to be curbed, who will curb them? The government. And who will do the nuts and bolts of this? The Fed who are the JPMs and GSes themselves.

Similarly, if Westminster is reconstituted, who assumes power? The EU, of course and the CBs. Why are ecopundits of note now conceding that the big one might be right around the corner - total collapse of the western system?

We seem to be three or four steps behind in this process and too late to halt it. I don't mean the collapse itself but to identify those for whom the collapse is of ultimate benefit. The mist is gradually clearing but is it too late?

Look at this piece of out and out deception in the U.S., courtesy of Karl Denninger:

From that interview (specifically, at 3:20 in):

1. Paulson told this person (who is writing a biography, apparently) that he intended to use the TARP money to inject into the banks and not buy toxic assets a full ten days before he testified before Congress.
2. He then testified before Congress to exactly the opposite.

This is about as clear an allegation of perjury (which, by the way, we've heard before - remember Kashkari making essentially the same allegation in his Congressional testimony?) as I've seen.

People like Paulson are well aware that pundits are watching. On our side of the pond, everyone has seen the Hannan youtube on Brown and many others about his outright deception and self-deception.

The bottom line is that they don't even seem to care if they lie any more. Only overconfident incompetents can do that.