Thursday 27 November 2014

Internationally recognised stupidity


By now, the word is out that a Ukipist has is taken Westminster cathedral for a mosque. That a Ukipist Twitter activist is a total moron is not exactly news to me. Nor is it news that Ukipists harbour a fear of all things Islamic. But that's really not the story here. Ukipist stupidity is now internationally recognised. Reported in the Washington Post, the headline reads "British anti-immigration party mocked after mistaking Westminster Cathedral for a mosque".

Read it again. The "British anti-immigration party". From the outside, and over the Atlantic, without knowing the context of where Ukip came from, the perception of Ukip, from the message it sends is that Ukip is an anti-immigration party. That's now what it is perceived as. Not just to the yanks, but to anyone who doesn't particularly follow politics. Ukip has become an "anti" single issue party, and it isn't even about the EU.

That is a direct consequence of those ill-conceived posters back in May. That is the stigma Ukip has created for itself, and will likely never shake off. And not only that, their global ambassador here is a stupid, paranoid islamophobe. And that's now the face of euroscepticism here at home. This is supposed to be a "tee-hee" funny story, but when you think about it, this is no laughing matter at all.

Ukip jumps the shark


Ukip has jumped the shark. They have launched a new campaign advert claiming the Conservatives have failed on immigration. It points out the failure of Conservative ministers to succeed in their pledge to bring down net migration to "tens of thousands within this parliament".

It's a fair thing to say. The Tories did say they would bring down immigration. Turns out they haven't, but that is, as Ukip will never discover, easier said than done for any government. To make such a claim was a foolish error by the Tories.

But this advert tells us something. It tells us that Ukip thinks immigration is still their best bet for a campaign feature as we count down to the general election. This is a boneheaded. See, the thing is, it was the Ukip immigration posters that brought all the "anti-racists" out of the woodwork, who have been busy beavering away feeding into the public consciousness that Ukip are a racist party. It works too. You can fool quite a lot of the people a lot of the time. Whether it is or isn't a racist party is now irrelevant. Ukip is now on the backfoot to make the case that it isn't. This means Ukipists will have to spend more time defending their reputation than making their arguments.

You might argue that the controversial posters were a masterstroke that helped them cannibalise the BNP vote in order to do so well at the Euro elections, but after such rapid expansion, what Ukip now has is an ungovernable clan of moaners, united by nothing and prone to fragment if they come down firmly on a particular policy that isn't boilerplate "save the NHS" motherhood and apple pie stuff.

The inherent problem with this is that anyone who was going to be brought to the Ukip fold with this kind of politics already has. By staying the course on immigration, making the EU issue almost incidental, Ukip becomes primarily the anti-immigration party, which cannot grow much more than it already has, nor can it win, and can't win a referendum either. It appeals to a particular demographic; mostly grumpy old white men.

It is still a party campaigning on negatives, it still has no ideas to sell and beyond being a vehicle for a generic protest it has nowhere to go. Just look at the comments on the linked piece. "Anybody who votes LibLabCon at the next general election is a quisling." says a Ukipist. And I'm not cherry-picking either. Any thread on any vessel where Ukipists congregate you can find this boilerplate trash lifted directly from the Ukipist phrasebook. It is a limited repertoire.

Another remarks "As a Brit driven abroad for work due to Mass immigration it angers me that net immigration is used. It's white flight!!" Basically it's a racial concern; that British people taking full advantage of freedom of movement are people like them, escaping Britain because it's become a foreign land. In reality, people taking advantage of such freedoms are working abroad, experiencing life, starting businesses and making the most of life, primarily so they don't end up being miserablist Ukip scum.

Pandering to this element with more anti-immigration rhetoric does no bode well for our chances of leaving the EU, especially if these toxic idiots infest the comment pages to make the case for Brexit. These foul creatures are rapidly poisoning the well and will only cement the view from outside the cult that Ukip is a party of sneering losers, afraid of foreigners and would recklessly pull out of the EU overnight - and hang the consequences.

Any case for leaving the EU will have to be a moderate progressive one that expertly deals with the minutia of how it is done. Leaving it to the amateurs ensures we stay in the EU. As if our problems weren't big enough in fighting for Brexit, it seems eurosceptics have a lot of work ahead of us. We have a very short time to detoxify eurosceticism and reclaim it from Ukip so that decent people can be associated with it.

Ukip will go as far as it can with it's toxic anti-immigration agenda, with fools like Mark Reckless continually putting his  foot in it, until Ukip reaches peak exposure and peak appeal. It doesn't end well. Ukipists are deluded enough to think they represent the silent majority. They don't. Eighty per cent of Brits have no intention of voting Ukip and Ukip's growth since the euro-elections is tiny. As an anti-everything party is has no hope of ever broadening its appeal.

Odds are still on for a violent swing against Ukip. Sniffing around on a constituency by constituency basis, a lot of assumptions are going to prove false at the election. The general election is not going to be an extinction event for the Lib Dems, and while Ukip can affect the order of the runners up, it doesn't look like there are more than a couple of places where they can make a breakthrough, and it's by no means a dead cert that Mark Reckless will keep his seat.

It's looking like a two party squeeze as predicted, and because the Lib Dems will be hammered where they are not incumbent, any constituency where they finished second in 2010 will mean the incumbent MP keeps their seat. More than that, close to the election, the public mood will focus. We don't yet know the full effect as people take a long hard look at Ed Miliband and try to picture him as Prime Minister. Many may not wish to chance it, and who can blame them?

After the election, public interest in politics will tail off, as indeed it always does, and interest in Ukip will follow suit. By then, the whole of the electorate will have had the full dose of Ukip, and a belly full of their negativity, petulance and nativist isolationism. After which it will self-destruct in a bloody civil war. It can be no other way.

Whether something more palatable arises from the ashes is another matter. If it does, and it forms around an intelligible ethos, clarity of purpose and some detailed, credible policies, then I may pitch in and help it rebuild. But if it remains a diminished and sniveling anti-everything Fargista cult, then I will be glad to see the back of it so we can get on with fighting (and winning) a referendum. As it stands, Eurosceptics don't need scum like Ukip on their side - and the sooner they are out of the picture, the better.

Censorship at the University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia are well known for distorting debates and shutting them down. But this might just be a new low. A petition on change.org has evidently secured a victory in shutting down a Ukip public debate.
We are asking UEA to cancel the event and organise it at a location away from the University campus. This is in order to protect students who feel intimidated or degraded by the party. Help us keep our campus a safe, productive, and caring place, where we can all work together regardless of who we are and where we come from.

The University of East Anglia, and its campus, is home to thousands of international, EU, and national students who are representative of many cultures, countries, and languages. Our university is known as an advocate of diversity, integration, and tolerance. It is a safe place for people from all over the world to learn, discuss, and socialise.
That's right folks! Our kiddies need to have their feelings protected. They are seriously telling us that bright university students can't take on a Ukipist in a debate on their own turf and win. How pathetic? How sad!

It is not the job of a university to shield kids from ideas. They are supposed to expose them to more ideas. If you are going to shut yourself off from the world in such a fashion then you might as well go live in a cave and save yourself the tuition fees.

Ukip are scum with some pretty stupid ideas but they're not exactly Romper Stomper skinhead thugs. They're old men who just happen to think Jeremy Clarkson is right about everything. And what they're saying here is that they consider such people to be ideologically threatening; that they need their own ideas to be policed and protected to safeguard the purity of young minds.

This is the very worst kind of authoritarianism. It has no place in a free society. Ukip are a political party who engage in the democratic process. If you don't like them, you are welcome to do likewise by engaging them in debate, but shutting a Ukip debate down makes you more of a nazi than they are.

Tuesday 25 November 2014

The silence of the Ukip lambs

There's two possibilities here. Either I've become such an obsessive EU bore that I think the speech given by Owen Paterson yesterday was top story in British politics and it has been buried by the mainstream media OR, a Tory backbencher giving a speech on the EU to a bunch of think tank wallahs isn't all that exciting. Call me predictable, but I'm going to go with the former.

While the content of the Paterson speech is not, and will not for the foreseeable future be Conservative policy, it does put clear blue water between the right wing of the Conservatives and Ukip.

If Paterson can cultivate support for his ideas then we have a a pragmatic, sensible Tory right who can take us out of the EU and it's political constructs, to take us back to to a single market arrangement - which is what most Brits thought they were voting for in 1975. A fairly uncontroversial prospect that is easy to sell. This is as opposed to Ukip who have categorically ruled out any single market membership mechanism but have yet to outline what exactly it is they would do.

Naturally this does not give Ukip any wiggle-room. The issue Ukip ought to own outright has been snatched away from them. The party is now rudderless with a leadership that has nothing to say on the very issue it was set up to campaign on - and the silence from Ukip is deafening.

Meanwhile, David Cameron should welcome this timely interjection by Owen Paterson because it ought to convince Tory Ukip sympathisers that there is a movement within the party that represents the most realistic option for an EU exit - and one which can reasonably capture the centre ground in ways that Ukip cannot.

What it also does is reframe the debate. For too long the debate has been centered around dry economic issues, when at the heart of the EU debate lies something more fundamental. By making it a choice between the single market and full integration, including joining the Euro, it will be the first time an honest choice has been put before the public, where the realities of the EU project are brought to bear. A referendum on those terms is one we cannot lose. Little wonder then that the Guardian has been so reluctant to offer comment or allow a debate on Paterson's ideas.

Critics of the plan, including the front runner federalist advocacy groups, have been quick to leap on the "fax democracy" bandwagon, ever quick to convince us that Norway has no influence in EU decisions. Well, so what? Norway doesn't have influence in US government decisions either. Nor does the EU for that matter. That's how national governments work. We are saying that the EU is a federalist project with the ambition of becoming a new country, and while we would be happy to be friends and allies with that country, we don't want to be a county of it.

We need not reiterate how much more global influence we would have as a leading EEA member, with seats reinstated at the top tables, but we have not said the Norway Option is the final destination either. We have repeatedly made the case that unravelling ourselves from decades of integration will take almost as long. Thus for a quick exit from the federal aspects of the EU, we choose an off-the-shelf solution as a departure lounge mechanism. What lies beyond that is decades away - and a whole debate in itself.

The genius of the Paterson plan means that the usual dry economic arguments are entirely sidestepped by remaining in the single market, and the more nuanced and accurate approach to immigration means there is no danger of brand toxification as has happened to Ukip.

One might argue that the damage is so severe to Ukip now that it has nothing to do but to live with it's little corner of politics as a sanitised BNP, fighting its fringe culture war, divorced from the EU debate while others make the running. The more pragmatic members of Ukip will soon come to realise that sitting on the sidelines waiving a Ukip flag and complaining is not going to get them out of the EU, and working to further these ideas within the Tories will at least get them some of what they have wanted from the beginning.

Soon the gravity of Ukip's strategic errors will hit home if they haven't already. They've had their underpants pulled over their heads and been wrong-footed on what was their central issue. Were I Nigel Farage, I would be keeping a low profile too. Ukip has become a sideshow. Again.

Monday 24 November 2014

The woes of Ms Monroe

Readers will probably be aware that I'm not a fan of Little Miss Self-entitled, Jack Monroe. In fact, the very first post on this blog was a prediction of sorts that turned out to be quite near the mark.

But it seems she's landed herself in a spot of bother and has been thrown under the bus by Sainsbury's for her remarks on Twitter. She said David Cameron should resign for using his ‘dead son’ as a front to privatise the NHS. Or words to that effect.

Andrew Percy, a Tory member of the Commons health select committee, said: ‘This is not just a distasteful tweet, it is sick.‘If a Right-Wing politician or columnist had made such a comment, Miss Monroe would be writing hand-wringing columns about how evil or cruel such a comment was.’

Charlotte Leslie, Tory member of the health select committee, added: ‘Anyone of any integrity is left pretty speechless. 'Not only is this incredibly callous and hurtful from someone who is supposed to be in a position of some responsibility, it is also utterly inaccurate.

Andrew Percy rightly points out the hypocrisy of the left in general, but it should also be noted Ms Monroe is no stranger to using her, very much alive, son as a stage prop. And Charlotte Leslie is quite right too. Those who enjoy a privileged position in the public eye do have a certain responsibility.

Many people on the right have refused to jump on the outrage bus because we live in a time of "trial by Twitter" whereby good people have been brought down for saying much less, and to jump on the bus in this instance would be to perpetuate that current trend. I am not one of those principled individuals, because I'm more than happy to use the outrage bus as a means of dispensing with people who need to get got.

I was not in anyway sad to see Chris Huhne sent to Coventry, nor did I lose any sleep over the sacking of oaf, Godfrey Bloom, and, if I wasn't already having an awesome day today, the news of Monroe being thrown under the bus would be a cause of some celebration.

The simple fact is that there's rules to this here game. Rule number one is "don't say stupid things on Twitter that will wreck your career". It's a simple enough rule and there are plenty of reminders as to why you should not break it. Thinking before one speaks in the public domain is generally considered good practice.

While you or I might be able to get away with saying such crass and stupid things, those in the public eye do not have that luxury. If you wade into a swamp, you will get covered in leeches. This does mean I don't get to complain when one on my side is shot down, but this is just how the game is played now, and there will be casualties of war. That much is not going to change.

Some might argue that there is a higher principle of freedom of speech at stake here. I don't think that's true. You have a right to an opinion but you don't have a right to an egregiously stupid one without relentless mockery, and companies like Sainsbury's are perfectly well within their rights to distance themselves from such stupidity. And why wouldn't they?

Monroe is a ghastly creature, a sanctimonious hypocrite, a liar and a manipulative, calculating, nasty piece of work. She has enjoyed far too much privilege for far too long and it is long past the time karma caught up with her. There is a certain wisdom in a Twitter mob and if you live by the sword then you WILL die by the sword. The only pity is that the sword is a figure of speech.

Thank Ukip

Patrick O'Flynn of Ukip tweets "Cons now broken key pledges on all top 3 issues: getting rid of deficit, no top down NHS shake-up and net migration to tens of thousands."

He tweets that on this day in politics - which is all about the European Union. So here we have Ukip of all people not even in the game, when Twitter is alight with Brexit talk. Even the prominent Ukipists have been quiet today. Ukip have set about being a main political party and have all but abandoned any real focus on the EU. 

This is a good thing. Since most Ukip bletherers have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to Brexit, and have no policy on it, all we are likely to get from them is more embarrassing gaffes that hurt the cause.

The media trap was set for Ukip to paint themselves into a corner, and Ukip obligingly walked into it, and the recent outburst by Reckless makes it even harder to dig themselves out of the anti-immigration hole. If Ukip had a PR problem before, they have a really big one now. They can't say they weren't warned, but that's all water under the bridge.

If the silence from Ukip is a deliberate tactical ploy, it is the first sign of any strategic acumen from that  party. It can only mean they have finally understood how damaging Ukip is to the Brexit cause, and having poisoned the well, it's something they are best distancing themselves from if they want to achieve one of their main objectives.

The case for Brexit must be made by reasonable, rational people with good arguments and a positive vision. Ukip certainly doesn't fit the bill on that score, so I would like to offer my thanks to Ukip for staying out of the picture, and I encourage them to remain quiet so the grown-ups can get on with getting us out of the EU, without having to continually distance themselves from Ukip's clueless, xenophobic ranters. Keep up the good work Ukip.

Saturday 22 November 2014

Thoughts on libertarianism

Libertarianism is a big tent. There are minarchists who believe in the concept of a night watchman state (and no that's not as sinister as it sounds) and then there are those more concerned with civic and civil liberties, but do not extend as far as low taxes.

But there is also another school of thought in that good government is invisible government, which can be as big as it likes so long as it facilitates the creation of wealth and stays out of the way.

One of the great liberties in this country is the supremacy of the pedestrian in the street. My own encounter with a yellow cab in New York was a sharp reminder of this particular cultural difference. Say what you like about the officiousness of this country and it's adherence to petty rules, it is precisely those rules that have created the safest roads and the best driving standards anywhere in the world.

It's also a matter of standard road camber and regulation for signage universality. That didn't happen by accident. So much of what you see around you but don't acknowledge is regulated, and it's these little bits of invisible government that facilitate trade, greater freedoms and a safer existence.

The art of politics is the mechanism to mediate the line between nanny state and individual liberty. Sometimes it goes too far and that's why we have rudimentary mechanisms that are not democracy but based loosely upon the concept.

While libertarians are quick to scoff at the notion of a social contract, there is a tacit contract in that we accept a normative level of personal infringements for the common good. The law that says I can't keep my neighbours up til 4am with 90's acid techno is an infringement I accept with the expectation that I also have the right to a good nights sleep.

Granted, this example is reductio ad absurdum, but it goes to show that we each accept a degree of regulation. What lies between is politics. And this is why vigilance and participation is a necessary function of civics to ensure that good governance remains invisible and unintrusive.

The dogmatic notion that deregulation necessarily creates more wealth fails to acknowledge the complexity of the modern world and the fact that so much regulation is not only desirable but also essential. You might think it is in the manufacturers own interests to build a car that didn't kill the driver or for airline builders to build aircraft that fall out of the sky, but it is only through mechanisms of the state such as the air crash investigation bureau that findings have been transposed into global regulation, which means that when we do occasionally see a passenger liner fall out of the sky, we find it shocking because we have come to see it as unthinkable as well as inexcusable. Left to their own devices, they would still be killing us and getting away with it.

Of course to the dogmatists, this makes me a raging authoritarian. But like all dogmatists, because their ideology is a well mapped out schema of assumptions and absolutes, it means they never have to compromise or think beyond lazy assumptions, or mucky themselves with technicalities or the inherent contradictions of modernity. It is for the same reason the socialist cries "underfunding" each time there is an NHS scandal. It is the simple, easy and lazy answer. It is no more respectable than the libertarian who cries "red tape" for the failure of their business.

Liberty is a subjective term and there are many permutations. I wholly embrace the ideal of liberty, but the notion that in a world of internet, aviation, genetically modified foods and global banking, we can simply dispense with internationalism and global regulation and all will be well, is not just optimistic, it's childish.

Friday 21 November 2014

DDOS attack

EU Referendum blog is down again and it's a big attack. Somebody REALLY doesn't like us. Our host can't do anything about it so we are in the process of moving to another provider (again). As if I wasn't having enough fun already.

Rochester: no room for complacency


One thing I didn't say but should have is that Reckless's majority will not be a large one. But that was predictable. This leaves the game wide open for Rochester in May and it is not by any means guaranteed he will keep his seat.

What we see here is a very sharply focused vote with Ukip having galvanised all of the protest votes with only the Greens making a respectable job among the minnows. I'm not sure what it tells us for a general election and reading the runes on the basis of a high turnout by-election is probably not very sensible anyway. But this result doesn't prove very much for Ukip. Politics is littered with defectors keeping their seats. The test is in whether Ukip can defeat a sitting MP with a challenger. This we have not yet seen and we are not looking at a good sample here.

The result is in keeping with the Euro elections in that Ukip can now take all of the protest vote to the bank and any MP in a marginal seat is likely to lose to their next biggest opponent. I expect an analysis by constituency on that basis will be the best indicator of who is going to win.

This blog has long made the case that peak-Ukip is an inevitability. Mark Pritchard MP thinks it is almost upon us. I have a hunch he's right. There is room for a few surprises and Ukip can still do some damage but this result will bring minds into focus. The smears don't work, but careful and forensic analysis of what Ukip says, and what it does, will unearth the vulnerability everyone has been in search of. 

Left Foot Forward has finally noticed that Ukip has little in the way of substance and is trying to be all things to all people. The penny finally dropped for The Telegraph yesterday when they noted Ukip's lack of policy can and will hurt them. And what will hurt them more is their amateurish and stupid policies when they do finally release some. Meanwhile, the lack of message discipline will see more unforced errors from Ukip. All of which was predictable and predicted on this blog long ago.

Ukipists, of course, have had their heads buried in the sand and only the immediate poll results speak to their minds. When the bubble bursts the only people who will be surprised are Ukipists. And that is a matter of when, not if. There's a way to go yet, but if there is a fatal mistake to make, Ukip will make it. That you can bet the farm on.

Thursday 20 November 2014

Losing the plot on foreign aid


Ok. Here's the deal. Before we can decide how much foreign aid to give we must first remind ourselves what foreign aid is for. It is not a charitable donation to make ourselves feel good. It is a foreign policy tool that must be used toward specific objectives. Therefore, there should be neither a maximum or minimum budget for it.

In some instances, developing third world (West African economies) is in our national interests because it stems the flow of immigration. That kind of proactive investment costs less than putting up barriers and making immigration more bureaucratic.

We can also use it as a bartering chip to persuade Turkey to grant asylum to more Syrian refugees. Or we can use it to help build effective immigration administration systems and border patrols for North Africa. Targeted aid does serve a function. To set an arbitrary spending threshold makes no more sense in this instance than it does to set an arbitrary "must spend" threshold on golf balls or socks.

The notion that it should go toward a decarbonisation agenda means that money which could otherwise be directed toward foreign policy goals in the direct national interest is instead directed at baloney vanity projects, which serve neither us nor the developing world - and will likely be spent by supranational authorities who have nobody's interests at heart but their own. It is precisely this kind of boneheaded vanity politics that gives foreign aid a bad name and it's why we get little-englander Ukipists calling for foreign aid to be stopped.

Foreign aid is much like military procurement. You can't decide what kit to buy until you have defined the enemy. Similarly, we cannot define how much foreign aid to spend until we have adequately defined our foreign policy. (answers on a postcard)

Foreign aid is the art of buying political favours. If done cleverly, it works well. The Romans called it 'subsidies' and we did it quite effectively in buying peace and assistance with the Iroquois against the French in the New World. The problem is the lack of honesty about it, and dressing it up as something altruistic.

Presently our foreign policy is defined by our allegiance to the NGOcracy, a soft-left wing populism - which serves neither the national interest or any strategic foreign policy goal. It is wristband politics, and "decarbonisation" is essentially Western cultural imperialism to stop the third world industrialising; another form of rampant protectionism dressed up as care for the environment. Meanwhile the issue of real pollution, where most nations are poisoning rivers and lakes into oblivion, goes ignored - in favour of the fictional threat of CO2.

We need to leave the EU, but not for any of the reasons you thought

We need to leave the EU. Is it because according to Ukip we're paying billions a day for membership? No. Is it because we're forced to send aid money to space programs in "bongo-bongo land"? Nope. Is it because it's "swamping" us with criminal gangs and Roma? Not really. Is it because of it's harsh austerity policies placed on Greece and Spain? Nope. Is it because of how it's trade policy is bankrupting small African nations? Well, a bit yes, but still no. Is it because the CFP has made a complete economic and ecological mess of the North Sea? Nope.

The maladministration of the EU is well documented. As a eurosceptic of twenty years I can't begin to recall the multifarious reasons for disliking the EU. And it's not even about the loftier issues of sovereignty and nationhood either. This "we want our country back" shtick from Ukip is cute but it's naive.

For sure the EU is a federalist project, hell bent on becoming the United States of Europe, but that is an equally naive vision. It's so blindly optimistic that it is actually funny if you think about it. There is no shared European demos. There are cultural similarities but the notion that the French and Germans would ever consider themselves fellow countrymen is laughable and the idea there could ever be any political convergence between Italy, Spain and Germany is a howler. You just have to look at the EU's attempt to take a united position over Libyan intervention to see that a single foreign policy is a non-starter. Moreover, French defence industry interests trump any EU foreign policy cooperation - and always will.

As far as "ever closer union" goes we're about as close as we're ever going to get. Britain isn't the only nation that has a bone or two to pick with the European Union. The left wing have some eurosceptics among them too. Mehdi Hassan complains about the failed economic ideas of the EU, but these aren't really credible reasons for leaving the EU either. Were you to do a serious analysis of all the EU's criminal malfeasance you would be appalled, but I would argue that the effects thereof are only marginally worse than what our own governments do.

The simple fact is that large bureaucratic governments suck wherever they are. Whatever the EU's own ambitions, that government is never going to wholly replace our own. So essentially we have two useless centralised governments. This is why I am opposed to an English parliament and indeed the Scottish and Welsh assemblies. We are actually talking about triplicating governance and this is not forgetting our corporate scale "local" authorities.

These are obsolete ideas in an internet age. The world is shrinking while global markets grow. We would would never wish for a global government but there is a continuing need for global governance and international standards to facilitate trade, regulate it and to police it. Violent crime and robberies have decreased globally in recent years but internet crime has exploded, as has people trafficking, the global drugs trade, piracy and of course mass immigration. These are international problems that require international solutions, and so we must be free to negotiate the deals that best tackle the problems that affect us rather than have the EU do it for us.

Similarly, the majority of EU law isn't actually made by the EU. It is made at an international level, along with trade rules by ASA, Basel2, UNECE, Codex Alimentarius, WTO, NAFO and whole host of bodies few have ever heard of, where the EU takes our seat and negotiates on our behalf. Norway has more say than we do at an international level - and it's Brussels sitting by the fax waiting to be told what the law is. Moreover, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, a Norwegian minister, flatly denies Norway has no EU level influence. Norway has more influence than we do.

This is not to say that we simply close ourselves off from the EU or Europe. Leaving the EU does not mean leaving the single market and as a strong player in the EEA and EFTA we have enough clout to play the EU at it's own game while being free to join the global community. We would still keep the four freedoms of the single market. Those are good things, but we can easily lose the ECHR that prevents us putting rational constraints in where necessary.

This doesn't mean we lose workers rights or human rights. We could still be a large player in the International Labour Organisation (where EU labour laws come from) and Britain has always been at the very forefront of human rights in the modern era. It's offensive (and inaccurate) that the left wing suggests these concepts would cease to exist without the EU.

The EU is a relic of a the post-war world and it has nowhere to go. It has served its purpose. It's a talking shop to decide what to do with international law passed down to it, and our effort in Strasbourg amounts to narcissistic bickering about how to gold plate it before we accept it on national level - where we add our own gold plating. It simply doesn't have a purpose in the modern globalised world. Moreover, in its wilfully antidemocratic agenda to form a federalist EU, it has stoked the fires of grubby ethno-nationalism. Most of the emergent parties would never have broken into the mainstream without a healthy dose of funding from the EU. Europe has never looked less unified in the light of its own hubris. 

It isn't a even post-cold war Marshall plan for Europe either. It is the freedoms of the single market that have done more to increase the wealth of former Soviet bloc nations than this pointless entity with a blue flag. The EU handouts are inconsequential, and in fact the EU is taking credit for something that is not its own achievement - while bribing the citizens of Europe with their own money.

Like it or not, mankind is progressing more toward open borders, free trade and free movement of goods and capital. It is unstoppable. We don't want to waste our lives in queues at the borders, and there isn't any value for the consumer to be paying more just because goods cross a line on a map. But we can have all of those without surrendering what we are as a nation and we don't have to abolish the nation state to do it.

And then there's one critical thing. Our society is evolving beyond the need for leaders and flags and parties. We're becoming more educated and more advanced thanks to the internet and we don't see why we should have politicians speaking for us on matter of significance. Direct democracy is coming. It can be no other way. The people want their say and they won't accept a proxy speaking for them.

Our blueprint for real democracy, The Harrogate Agenda, is made of six demands to bring true democracy to Great Britain. Demand number one is that "The peoples of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland comprise the ultimate authority of their nations and are the source of all political power. That fact shall be recognised by the Crown and the Governments of our nations, and our Parliaments and Assemblies". 

Now that may sound archaic and lofty, but without such recognition of this fact there is no democracy, and the other demands cannot be enacted without it. But that singular first demand is totally at odds with the European Union because the EU, while it has democratic furniture like elections and voting rituals, is not a democracy. There is no demos, and there is no actual power for the people. And so our transition to democracy makes us incompatible with the EU and its structures. If we are to progress into a new age of empowered peoples, anachronistic relics like the EU must be abandoned so that we can embrace the future.

The EU is an obsolete protectionist idea and it's every bit as small of an idea as Ukips desire for a fortress island. Why are we so unambitious and stunted in our collective vision that nobody is making the case for a great and global Britain? 

The post-Ukip scenario


We've crunched the numbers, we've looked at the demographics, we have examined the issues and we don't see much of future for Ukip. Surge politics have two inevitable outcomes. Either they become successful enough to be absorbed into the existing political landscape or they fold and gradually disappear.

You can see from the graphic above that Ukip is still predominantly a conservative outfit but is now drawing half of its support from a number of disparate factions. Such alliances are fragile and when you have sacrificed sustainable growth for ready publicity without a solid definition it wont take much for the vote to fragment and collapse (as happened with the Lib Dems).

In a five party split for the next general election the polls are not a great indicator for which way the election will go. All it can do is measure overall sentiment which does not account for the vagaries of local boundaries, local politics and the minnow effect (vote splitting). All we can say for certain is that nobody will be a clear winner.

If it's a Labour government, there's no EU referendum and the fight goes on. We will then likely see more defections to Ukip and a Conservative civil war. It is impossible to predict the outcome of that so it's senseless to even try. It may be that it comes back as a more robust Conservative party with a eurosceptic leader or an even more centrist party. We do not know.

We will see Ukip established as a small Ukip parliamentary party who could possibly force a referendum, but that is by no means guaranteed. Ukip has made plenty of unforced errors thus far and more exposure with their MPs in the public eye could actually hurt them.

It could be that the Conservatives win in which case there will be a referendum. Given how a newly motivated Ukip is more confident in displaying its ugly side, their overall popularity will decline even if their vote share goes up (they are independent variables). Consequently a referendum win is by no means a dead cert. So the actual likelihood of the UK leaving the EU before 2018 are small.

The only other certainty is that despite their enthusiasm and capacity for self delusion, Ukip is not going to break its own glass ceiling, it is not going to be a party of government and it is highly unlikely it will take enough parliamentary seats at this or the next general election to form a coalition with any minority government. So if you were hoping for a revolution in governance or a new dawn in a brave post-EU world you might as well put your feet up. It's not going to happen any time soon.

Already the cracks are showing. Ukip's lack of written policy is leading to gaffe after gaffe and the Teflon coating is wearing thin. Worse still, the only thing worse than a Ukip with no policies is a Ukip with defined policies. It's a dead-cert they will be so insufferably weak and inconsistent that the media will have a field day with them. The Guardian noticed last week with Ukips's health "policy" and today the Telegraph has noticed. There is nothing to be done For Ukip.

We are of the view that there is no shortcut to reform. Any movement for change is going to have to be based on a new vision and a big idea. The task will be to convince the people to demand that vision and force the establishment to concede to our demands. It will not be achieved with party politics and it can't succeed on a negative premise. Ukip has been a twenty year lesson on how not to do it.

Even in the remote scenario that we leave the EU soon, the day after that referendum will be day one on a long march to democracy. It would be nice to have one obstacle out of the way, but really we should expect that we will have that referendum soon, Ukip will ensure we lose it, and the eurosceptic movement will be buried. Now is the time to decide what shape the movement to replace it will take. We think the Harrogate Agenda is the best vehicle for true democracy. It's as good a place as any to start.

Why direct democracy will work

One of the most common arguments against direct democracy as proposed in The Harrogate Agenda is that it will result in the usual 20% of committed activists taking over the machinery and eagerly voting on every proposed law while the rest of us let them do it. It's true. That's exactly what will happen. For a while at least anyway.

Most people who dismiss The Harrogate Agenda do so because they have not fully understood it. While we have six points on the agenda, they are not by any means unconnected and one demand in isolation of the other does not lead to the transformation we are seeking. Direct democracy is only a part of it and it is our view that it cannot work without real localism. Where local referendums are concerned, we redefine the term "local".

When we generally talk about local authorities we are not really speaking about a local entity. For instance our hometown of Bradford, it is an authority that governs at least four satellite towns and several suburbs larger than those towns. We hold the view that any "local" authority which takes two hours to drive from one border to the other is not one you could in any reasonable sense call local.

We hold the view that the closer a decision is made to where the effects are felt, the better that decision will be. Consequently properly local referendums will most likely produce results that most favour the local residents. For a time, we expect that a self-selecting few will dominate the outcomes of these referendums, but the point is, if the power is in the hands of the people, they own that decision and by way of not voting take responsibility for that. There is no more democratic deficit and voters can't say they had no voice in the matter. Bad decisions over time will encourage greater participation.

Over time, as we see bad decisions made, the public will no longer be able to blame "the establishment" or corrupt politicians. There power is theirs to wield as they choose. We propose a mechanism whereby the public can force a referendum by means of a residents only petition meaning decisions can be overturned with second referendum if the public so demands, and turnout minimum thresholds for a motion to pass.

Moreover, since we include in our six demands the ultimate veto on spending and tax rises, we do not anticipate low turnouts. It is already the case that councils must put council tax rises to the public if they exceed 1.9%. There's a very good reason why we have not yet such such a referendum. They know full well they would lose. Therefore, the very existence of a referendum lock system means that only propositions with a realistic chance of passing will be put before the public. The more unpopular or popular the proposal, the higher the turnout will be.

By way of having real localism, the effects of bad decisions are also limited only to those in the immediate locality. It doesn't actually matter if the mundane issues are controlled by a self-selecting minority since such matters are not likely to have any great personal impact on the majority. Even if it becomes the case that regions are dominated by a self-selecting few, they will still be bound by constitutional constraints.

One of the other criticisms of what we are now calling Referism, is the cost of holding referendums. We see no reason why they cannot be held as batch referendums using tick sheets in the same way people use National Lottery terminals. Given what local authorities waste by way of spending without consent, and the cost to taxpayers of tax increases without consent, the cost of such a system ought to pay for itself.

One of the main reasons for voter apathy is that voters feel their vote does not matter. With properly localised referendums giving them direct ownership of their own affairs, it will very quickly demonstrate that not only do they have a voice, there is a consequence for not using it.

DDOS Attack

We're having some problems with eureferendum.com with a DDOS attack. Somebody in Vietnam thinks our readership is the right target demographic for discount Ugg boots.

Until we have resolved the issue, our backup site is here...

eureferendum.com.servepreview.net

Wednesday 19 November 2014

Politics is not just about big ideas.

One of the recurrent themes on this blog has been the dearth of big ideas and visions among our political parties. The supposedly revolutionary upstart party (Ukip) has such a depressingly pedestrian set of policies, it's not difficult to see why they haven't inspired a renewed vitality in what we laughingly call a democracy.

Were there any big ideas on the table, I expect we would see a more vibrant public debate and more engagement, but part of the reason no big ideas are on the table is because, actually, quite a lot of government (the mundane stuff that you don't see) actually works. Tinkering with that stuff is very much a procedural and dull process. By and large, the public don't really give too much of a toss whether wing mirrors on lorries should be an inch wider or whether manhole surrounds on road tankers should have 15 bolts or 20. But that stuff still needs regulating. We don't get involved because we don't need to be. Some of this stuff has to be delegated. In many respects democratic interjection is neither desirable nor necessary.

As to the big questions, many of them are settled. The things that are still in any serious dispute are actually witheringly small in number. All but the crackpot fringes are agreed that we need some kind of healthcare costs mitigation system even if it is not in the form of an NHS. Similarly just about everyone thinks that there should be a welfare system of a sorts. What shape that takes and how we eradicate fraud and dependency are pretty mundane technicalities, which again, most people have a vague preference on but not enough to actually want to get involved.

So because the big matters are settled, the mundane acquires a greater significance. Most people would rather get on with whatever it is that gets their rocks off rather than blogging on a Wednesday night about the need for more cycle paths on the A38 (southbound) or whether a park and ride system is the right way to go for Chipping Norton.

A more educated population, thanks mainly to the internet, is starting to demand more choice, more say, more freedom and more of everything. Whether you care to admit it or not, capitalism is giving us that. If you doubt me, pull that smartphone out of your pocket and marvel at what it can do for the pittance you paid for it, and how little it will cost in just a couple of years time. Whatever big idea you have cannot possibly compete with that.

The problems arise when the systems and the people we entrust with the dull managerialism get it wrong. From NHS Staffordshire to the Rochdale scandal, the people we entrust who have failed us find ways and means to avoid accountability and proper scrutiny. And somehow they get us into deeper debt, spend too much, waste too much and tax too much without consent.

Collectively, the people have little or no power with which to put road blocks in the way of politicians and their vanity excesses. All we get from them, is that you must pay and you will pay. The lack of that essential power is essentially a lack of democracy. We can vote out the councillors and the MPs but the system remains the same and so does the real executive - the obscenely overpaid anonymous manager clones. They do not listen, they merely transmit, and the message is "obey".

We have defeated socialism, communism and all the other isms that simply don't work, and there is no longer much room for big ideas, but for one. Democracy. It's the one thing we have never had and never so much as tried. We have electorally mandated reshuffles but we have no power over them or the decision making system in which they work. That is not democracy. Now if any party were to present a real blueprint for real democracy, one that gives us the control when it mattered, I expect that would see a surge in voter participation. A system in which our voices actually mattered would be quite the novelty.

But here's the rub. Democracy means people power... Meaning the establishment must relinquish it and trust the people. That is something they are fundamentally incapable of doing and will never allow us to vote for it. So we shall have to take it by other means. We cannot vote our way to democracy. Nothing worth having was ever that easy.

Did someone say "Harrogate Agenda"?

The activists are the least of Ukip's problems


According to Buzzfeed (yes, I know)...

ROCHESTER – UKIP campaigners at the Rochester & Strood by-election have been banned from speaking to journalists to prevent them embarrassing themselves, a party spokesman has admitted. Activists are prohibited from speaking to the media until after tomorrow’s by-election because the central UKIP operation fears they are too radical and “too UKIP-y”.

This is essentially an admission from Ukip that Ukipists are stupid and ranty and a bit racist and a complete liability. Now as you know, I've been talking about this little thing called message discipline for a while, and getting Ukipists to STFU is probably not a bad idea.

But as we have seen from Paul Nuttall, Mark Reckless and Patrick O'Flynn, allowing any of them to speak with the media is not turning out to be strategically wise. This is where it might have helped to have written a few of those "policy" things and have a little bit of professionalism. But this is Ukip we're talking about.

Meanwhile, deep in the Tory bubble...


In a break from what is turning out to be the norm on this blog, I'm turning my guns on Johnny C. Lately (Mark Wallace) of Conservative Home on the subject of rebuilding party grassroots. Lately's navel-gazing article is a fascinating insight into how a bubble dweller thinks. It's bone-marrow dissovlingly wide of the mark.

If there's one thing Ukip can say, it is that it is a grass roots organisation. Or was for a long time. It has in recent years proven that it is happy to budge aside local candidates in favour of their own drinking buddies, but much is left in the hands of local party branches. But in the main it's activists are enthused by a sense it is going somewhere and achieving something. It isn't and it's not, but so long as your activists believe, that's half the battle won. But even Ukip has a pretty poor showing. Democratic participation on the whole is in trouble. It's less to do with the state of political parities as it is to do with the state of democracy.

The view that all parties are the same is not an uncommon one. Nor is the view that one's vote makes no difference. There are subtle differences to the parties, but the outcomes are nearly always the same. Taxes going up, spending going up and borrowing going up while services progressively get worse and more expensive. You can vote out your MP or councillor but it won't make any substantive difference. Voters don't engage because they're not stupid.

The main participants in democracy are mainly in it for themselves. The main reason to join a party is to have an organisation behind you in promoting your own agenda. It's easy done too. I'm quite sure I would be doing quite well if I joined Ukip, changed my name and started writing the sort of toss that Ukipists want to hear. When you're without an organisation and saying things people don't want to hear, you might as well not exist - so you have to play the game.

Parties are a ladder to climb for self-serving social climbers. They are no longer value based or objective driven and unless there is a personal incentive for joining a party, you just wouldn't bother. Councillors don't have any real power so what the hell is the point in trying to get one elected?

Mark Wallace has it arse end up. You can't revitalise political parties without first revitalising democracy. Ask yourself when you last saw a truly radical proposal from a political party. Just looking at Ukip's "policies" they are fairly pedestrian, procedural tinkering with no big vision and no big ideas. Similarly, the Tories notion of devolution for Manchester is essentially a bland rearrangement of the political furniture. And what makes Manchester worthy of more self-governance than anybody else?

Not that they are actually proposing devolution. This is power to a regional authority and for once I am actually in full agreement with the Ukipists. Regionalisation is the exact opposite of devolution in that it sucks decision making powers away from councils, further away from where the effects of bad decisions are felt, and the power is on license from central government - rather than a recognition that the people themselves are the source of all power.

We get stunted, timid, unimaginative ideas dressed up as radicalism from the Tories, but to call them radical is an abuse of language. Until we get to such a place where people's votes matter, rather than the present model where councils like Birmingham stay Labour run rotten boroughs whichever way you vote, we will continue to see a decline in participation and an increase in voter apathy.

That the Tory party is having to bus activists around the country is a symptom, not a cure. But Wallace thinks they are part of the answer. Put simply, if you cannot enthuse activists locally then something more fundamental is broken. Moreover, it's a bit of a nerve having a Tory blitzkreig squad from London coming to town to tell you who you should have representing you in your local affairs.

The rise of Ukip tells you most of what you need to know. It is a protest vote against unresponsive government. Voters are tired of being taken for granted, overtaxed and not consulted. Fix that. Let's have proper local democracy rather than these mega councils and mega police authorities. Let's have direct democracy over tax rises and borrowing. Why not have a referendum on HS2 since we're being asked to cough up eighty billion quid? Let's have a constitution, let's have separation of powers and let's have meaningful local politics.

Give us local democracy that matters and soon you will have local media that matters and then you'll be able to take your pick from grassroots activists. While power is centered in London, so is the media, and so is the culture. Consequently the concerns of government are divorced from ours and the "democratic" voting rituals become meaningless. Why exactly should we go leafleting in the rain for that? What's in it for us?

The voters aren't stupid, but Ukip is.

Never let it be said that I have lost my objectivity. If I am wrong I will say so. And sensible comments from Ukipists are welcome. It's just that all I tend to get from Ukipists is the usual litany of excuses their leaders make mixed in with some toxic personal abuse. I'm live in hope that perhaps one person from that party will demonstrate some self-awareness and actually engage in the issues I raise.

Each day a new Ukip story comes out that adds weight to the arguments I have made that Ukip is going to hit the wall without a solid policy base and it's amateurism will have a damaging effect on the case for leaving the EU.

The reason for this piece is to address a post on Conservative Home where political smart-arse, Peter Franklin, chastises other political smart-arses for scoffing at the notion that 33% of Ukipists are worried about leaving the EU.

Admittedly I was a bit hasty, but I have to take Franklin with a pinch of salt. He remarks that:
"Wanting to stay in the EU but voting for UKIP is perfectly consistent if other issues like immigration are your priority or you just want to register a protest vote. Indeed, some of this group of voters may have been expressing a general distrust of the Government instead of the specific concern mentioned in the question."
He's about right, but the point is that this could only have happened by positioning Ukip as a populist dustbin for protest votes which is was a serious political blunder.

What we saw from the Euro polls was not so much a bite out of the traditional party share but a galvanisation of the minnow parties, and the actual growth of the protest vote was minuscule. We measure the success of Ukip by what remains afterward. We can see from polling demographics that Ukip basically represents Mr Working-class Angry Man. I don't deny that's a big constituency, but it is also one with a glass ceiling of appeal. However popular it might be, it is not popular enough and there's not much you can do to expand that base.

Essentially, moving away from objective based politics to become a generic protest puts a choke on growth which is why we'll soon see a stagnation in Ukip growth. We can't say exactly when but peak-Ukip isn't far away. That's just how surge politics works.

The mistake was to assume that you can take shortcuts without winning the arguments. What now remains is a party without a solid base, and one which deliberately has to keep policy quite vague to avoid a fracture, but then is left in the weak position of having to navigate it's own wake of flim-flam, as we see from Mark Reckless this morning.

And here's the problem: As Peter Franklin affirms, voters are not stupid. They may cast a protest vote when a protest vote is safe but without loyalty to an idea, Ukip does has nothing to hold onto when things get serious. The Lib Dems should be a clear warning. It only takes one policy u-turn to send a long standing third party into electoral oblivion. A house built on sand cannot stand.

Tuesday 18 November 2014

Is the penny dropping yet?


Here is a classic example of what I have been saying about Ukip for some time now.
Ukip parliamentary candidate Mark Reckless has caused outrage by suggesting migrants who have lived here for several years could be repatriated. The former Tory, on course to win the Eurosceptic party’s second seat tomorrow, said if Britain left the European Union they should only be able to stay for a ‘fixed period’. Asked if his party would want to deport a plumber from Poland who owned a home and had children at local schools he did not rule it out, but said this would be a case ‘we would look sympathetically at’.
When you don't have a thorough policy, and you haven't got anything to brief your people on, with no message discipline, when it comes to questions and answers, they're left with their arses hanging in the breeze, making things up, getting it wrong and saying stupid and embarrassing things that can easily be distorted. It is exactly what happened to Paul Nuttall on Any Questions on the matter of Brexit and on foreign aid.

When you're in the spotlight of mainstream media, you can't afford to sound like you don't know what you're talking about. This kind of arrogance and incompetence from Ukip is what loses us an EU referendum.

Ukip: A Major concern


John Major thinks Ukip is "un-British". "They are anti-everything. They are anti-politics, they are anti-foreigner, they are anti-immigrant, they are anti-aid. 'I don't know what they are for, we know what they are against. That's the negativity of the four-ale bar, that's not the way to get into Parliament and not the way to run a country." I might have said exactly that myself over recent weeks. But I don't think being a perpetual moaner is un-British. Moaning is one of the things we excel at.

We all know the multifarious reasons why people vote Ukip. It boils down to the fact that government is unresponsive to our wishes. The simple answer is to change the people in government. But we've done that a few times now and it hasn't really changed anything. That's because the simple answer is the wrong one.

Any fans of The Wire will recall a young, energetic, idealistic councilman, Tommy Carcetti (pictured) and his battle to become Baltimore's mayor. He makes all the promises in the world to the city police department only to discover that there's a hidden $54m deficit in the school system and has to to strip the police bare to stop teacher layoffs. To add insult to injury, because he's a white mayor in a black city he has to govern by consensus, which prevents him from sacking the dead wood, and in fact has to bump the police commissioners salary as a maneuver to get him to stand down. In the end, having promised to end the manipulation of crime statistics finds himself doing exactly that to save his skin at the ballot box. He becomes what he set out to replace.

We see this same dynamic in Yes Minister, with Sir Humphrey sticking flies in every pot of ointment. No matter how good your intentions, events happen. I'm sure the Environment Agency had wholly different spending plans before the Somerset floods, but now there's a twenty year plan to stop it happening again, and that's going to cost money. Which means cutting somewhere else and breaking promises.

Voters have a naive of what politics is like and how civics work. Ukipists will taunt the Prime Minister over his "cast iron guarantee" of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, which was a stupid thing to say because it was always going to be ratified by the time Cameron was PM. And in a democracy, holding high office does not mean you have supreme executive authority.

Democracy is very often about compromise and you while you could go in and clean out the dead wood, sack all the civil servants, you're still at the helm of a vast bureaucracy that will resist change every step of the way. I've seen this in my own career.

I work in a large aerospace organisation and just a week into my contract all those years ago, a retiring manager told me that it, like any other bureaucracy is like a jelly mountain. You can apply pressure to change the shape of it , and it will keep that shape so long as you keep applying the pressure. But if you take the pressure off, it will wobble back to it's original shape, and at best you will leave an imprint.

He couldn't have been closer to the mark. Whatever solution you might put in place to save money eventually becomes part of the problem. Every innovation has a lifecycle and when it's embedded into the system it's near impossible to carve out. We see empires within empires and those know don't care and those who care don't know. Eventually everyone sees the futility and settles down into a routine just to keep the paycheques flowing, keeping a low profile so nobody notices their job is completely pointless. It gets to the point where all you can do is take an axe to it.

It's almost like governance is like managing a large forest. Great ossified oaks must be cut down to make way for the new saplings. But it must be carefully tended. The problem with democracy is it's one of those processes where everyone demands a say and everyone claims expertise. Such a system is only ever going to produce mediocre outcomes and if you are achieving mediocrity then you're doing quite well. You cannot possibly satisfy everyone and you will fail if you try.

So the job then falls on politicians to manage the expectations of a public with unrealistic demands. Everyone wants a free NHS, but few think they should be the ones who pay for it in taxes. Very often the demands of voters are not just unreasonable. They're wholly irrational.

We've had suggestions from Ukip that for a while immigration be managed on a one in, one out basis. But do they have the first idea of what that would entail? And how much it would cost? So much is easier said than done. But an upstart populist party appealing to the unreasonable and the irrational does not have to acknowledge such nuances. It can simply stoke the fears and prejudices of the left behind and whisper in their ear how much better things would be if only they we running the show. This is the politics of cynical manipulation.

Course, it's not unreasonable or irrational to expect that sex traffickers and child abusers are arrested and locked up. It's not unreasonable to expect a welfare system that doesn't fire-hose money at immigrants. And it's not at all unreasonable or irrational to want a say in whether we effectively abolish our own nation to become part of a federal Europe. Immigration might well be a boost to the economy, but nobody was asked if we wanted open door immigration changing the face of our communities.

But again, there are nuances, complexities and obstacles that mean whatever is on your policy shopping list, it's not going to happen quickly and without consequence. Supertanker captains don't envy politicians. Whatever we do is going to take time and cost money. Something like the NHS probably does have too many ossified oaks and pointless chair warmers. It's easy to say you'll slash them all, but large organisations do need effective management, so you'll need to say who and how.

We like to complain about "career politicians" who have come from law backgrounds or big business, but watching half an hour of Ukip health spokesman Louise Bours's witless ranting about the health service and all of a sudden, a lawyer or an army officer, or captain of industry seems infinitely preferable to a thick-as-pigshit nursery school matron.

The MP's we get are in the main decent people coming to politics to work within the established system. Consequently we will get similar results each time, not all of them unacceptable. If we do want different outcomes then we shall have to change that system. But the fact is that modern governance is blisteringly complex and it takes skill and patience to produce even mediocre outcomes. For a party to come into politics with radical demands but with no policies, no expertise, and no blueprint for a systemic overhaul of government is rightly a laughing stock.

To say we can simply repeal the European Communities Act and take a guess how things pan out afterward is insufficient. To say that we will simply pay for a ring-fenced NHS by slashing foreign aid (a foreign policy tool) is irresponsible. And to say you will give the state the power to decide what people industry needs, and to put the burden of immigration administration on them is dangerously naive. To say you will increase defence spending without an outline of what you spend it on and why is equally irresponsible (and stupid), and introduce referendums on local matters without setting out the context in which they are used is just a fantasy fiction.

What we see in Ukip is a nihilistic petulance. It is a party that would rather taking a wrecking ball to government than to acknowledge the complexity and engage in policy. It is born of a pessimism which is uniquely British, and the very reason we have such an impenetrable first past the post system is to ensure it never takes a foothold unless the establishment has got it too far wrong. That Ukip is polling well makes it the canary down the mine that the establishment would do will to heed, as a signal to do better, but certainly should not be stealing the clothes of Ukip. Ukip is popular to Ukipists, but it is not a popular party in the broader sense and it's miserly and stunted vision for Britain is not one shared by the majority.

I confess I am heartily sick of the establishment as we know it, and when something comes along that sets out a better vision, I will vote for it. But to vote for a band of professional miserablists who are motivated out of fear, rejection and loathing is something I can agree on with John Major. It is wholly un-British.

The Ukip delusion


Some interesting findings here from the Ashcroft Poll. The only thing more unpopular than Farage is Clegg and Clegg's numbers are improving. It may be that in the age of four or five party politics this index is a more reliable indicator of overall sentiment.

L.Ron Farage is riding high within the cult but their own personal estimation of him does not, as they imply, transpose to the rest of the public. There is a gulf between reality and the view from the Ukip bunker. I think this demonstrates quite clearly why Ukip shouldn't be let anywhere near a referendum campaign.

Not that this will send any signals to Ukip who can only see in terms of the immediate polling objective, unaware that their success is an independent variable to EU sentiment. So what you can expect is for them to win Rochester hands down and be even more insufferably awful in the public sphere and further beyond the reach of reason than every they were. The message they will take is "steady as she goes". Having learned no lessons and shut themselves off from criticism, they're in for a shock when they finally collide with reality.

While nothing seems to dent Ukip in any big way, a number of factors they lack the self-awareness to acknowledge will be eating away at the base of the cliff. And like coastal erosion, eventually the forces of nature will have their way. With Lunchtime O'Flynn and Raheem Kassam steering the Ukip ship, there's a certain inevitability to it. It won't be any big blunder that will hurt them. But over time, they're painting a picture of a rootless party that doesn't know what it wants. It is this that will feed back into public sentiment more than anything and the steady drip of unforced errors will be their undoing.

Monday 17 November 2014

Charge of the lightweight brigade

As soon as those ridiculous immigration posters came out it was easy to see what the Ukipist game plan was. Farage himself admitted he was chasing the BNP vote, looking to consolidate Ukip as the official vehicle for disaffected losers. He succeeded. We now learn from this YouGov demographic analysis that Ukip has cornered the market on grumpy old white men who failed at life, largely by pandering to their prejudices. More high brow types call it "the politics of the left behind". But that's just a polite way of saying "loser".

We now have grumpy, ranty right-wingers joining forces with old Labour types from oop North. The plan worked a treat. But the problem here is that while shouty, ranty misanthropic politics is attractive to white lower middle-class men who failed at life, it isn't very attractive to anybody else.

This blog maintains that in order to win an EU referendum we will need to broaden the appeal of euroscepticism but Ukip seems dead set on making it the sole province of people who think the Dambusters is the greatest movie ever made. Ukip's pandering to the basest prejudices of one demographic might well have galvanised a voting bloc enough to make a surge look credible, but the big question is how to break through that glass ceiling. This demographic alone cannot win a general election and it certainly wont win an EU referendum.

Ukip hasn't thought this far ahead. How can it now present a less toxic manifesto without looking even more inconsistent and ridiculous than they already do? And how can it now make a rational policy for leaving the EU without telling their ranters what they don't want to hear? A leader capable of listening would be able to answer those questions. But Ukip has Farage. Ho-hum.

What exactly did they think was going to happen?


Oh this is fun! Following this morning's quasi-engineered controversy, we have Peter Oborne defending his old lunchtime drinking buddy in his hour of need. "I should declare an interest." says Oborne. "Mr O’Flynn was my colleague for many years on the Daily Express. He is a man who’s integrity and intellect I greatly admire."

Schlurpp! I was never a fan of Oborne since he's written some of the most sycophantic pro-Cameron pieces ever published in the Telegraph. That he admires the non-existent intellect of Lunchtime O'Flynn tells you just about all you need to know, and the notion that O'Flynn is the cornerstone of Ukip's electoral prominence is one so abjectly absurd that if you need it explaining, you need to up your medication.  

But then Dellers is getting in on the act too saying that Ukip needs a coherent economic policy. It was at this point I spat coffee all over the screen. Asking Ukip to come up with anything coherent, let alone a policy is akin with Dr Johnson's dog. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all. Though Delingpole to his credit has been fairly consistent in saying Ukip has nowhere to go if it doesn't pick a direction and stick with it. He is a licensed dissenter. He is allowed to say these things without being unpersoned by Ukipists because most of the time, he feeds them with the tat they want to hear. But now Mr Johnny C. Lately of Conservative Home chimes in...
Whatever the outcome of this latest battle, one thing is clear: the internal tensions within UKIP are building. Some of it is interpersonal, some of it is policy-based, most of it is a mixture of both. As Red UKIP continues to gain sway within the party, new figures develop their standing and – not least - Carswell and likely Reckless sit under the purple banner in the Commons, that’s only going to get worse. 
Well, no shit Sherlock. Readers will recall this blog saying about as much back in May and for a long time before that. Some readers have noticed that I'm a stuck record on this particular subject, but it is remarkable how so many chickens are gradually returning to the roost - and plotting the trials and tribulations of Ukip on this blog is now just irresistible light entertainment. Any kind of serious analysis is beyond the comprehension of Ukipists so I tend not to bother.

I must confess, I never predicted the Tory defections and that has shifted Ukip's fortunes somewhat, but it doesn't really change the course of this blog's narrative. Thanks to the rapid expansion caused by a reversion to cheap populism, Ukip has nothing to unite behind and is too disparate to agree on anything. And now that there are a few large egos in the public eye, a civil war is only a matter of time.

It will be very interesting to see who Farage throws under the bus. Lunchtime O'Flynn is expendable, but Carswell is not, and this cringeworthy policy improv must be starting to embarrass Farage as much as it does Carswell. O'Flynn is on borrowed time. If not he then one of the other Farage devotees is due for the chop. It's just a matter of time and odds before one of his intellectually challenged minions out-clowns Farage. Lunchtime is presently front runner on this blog with Louise Bores coming in a close second.

Predictably, as with the Bloom fiasco, Farage will escape criticism, but a high profile sacking of an idiot like O'Flynn actually says more about Farage's competence than anything else, and even the Ukipists will twig it eventually. They do catch up eventually. The pros are at least six months behind this blog so it will be a while before the cultists take note.

For the moment, Ukipist cognitive dissonance must be going into hyper-drive. The stuff I've been saying for the last year has been written off as embittered and jealous sniping, but the number of high profile analysts and commentators now catching up is snowballing and becoming difficult to ignore. I've seen Suzanne Evans today trying to present a united front on Twitter, which is comedy gold, but reality will intrude sooner or later. Farage is nothing if not predicable.

Not that I will get the credit for saying any of this. I was unpersoned long ago by the cult. Nothing exists inside the claque until they've discovered it, and they couldn't possibly acknowledge I exist either. And then Ukipists wonder why all I do these days is take piss?

Holding the line

The main reason I blog on Ukip incompetence is so that EUreferendum.com doesn't have to. But here's why it's an important function. Ukip have drifted away from euroscepticism, having gone in for immigration as their big issue, so much so that a third of their number don't actually want to leave the EU. That has left euroscepticism without a frontrunner organisation and it falls to us to do the heavy lifting.

We have been saying for a long time that we will need good answers to tough questions and to be able to thoroughly bury the myths surrounding Brexit. There needs to be an effective force educating the public about how corporates are framing the debate and how they will employ scaremongering and deception to keep us in the EU. Ukip isn't it.

In order to counter the myths you'd have to have a thorough command of the issues and a detailed policy on how we would leave the EU. Ukip doesn't have one. We have to keep reminding people, including Ukipists, that the EU is not the single market, and the only way we are going to win a referendum is to reassure the public that one way or another we will still have access to it. That blows the scaremongering out of the water.

But Ukip hasn't gamed this referendum at all. It has no particular policy on it. Their policy page states only what they won't do - which specifically rules out any single market mechanism. That would be excusable if it had presented a realistic alternative, but there is no expertise within that party thus are unlikely to do so. You might think that a party hell bent on getting us out of the EU would hold such expertise, but that actually tells you everything you need to know about them and their inept leader.

Ukip has given up on their main objective and has drifted to immigration as an issue where again it has demonstrated no serious policy competence, no serious alternative and no aptitude for policy making. A while ago I might have thought this a bad thing. But it isn't.

If Ukip are drifting away from euroscepticism, it would actually be better for everyone if they went the whole hog and ditched Brexit as a campaign point so that euroscepticism is not in any way associated with that sad little clan. That way the referendum debate can be lead by competent adults rather than cavalier show-boating cretins like L.Ron Farage.

We had hoped that Ukip would be receptive to our message. But they're not. We tried being diplomatic, we tried being polite, and it didn't work. Ukip are wilfully deaf. So now all that's left is relentless ridicule - because that's what it deserves. We very much wanted to see Ukip up their game, but it's clear to us that can't happen now they are so far down the populist vote grubbing path. The party would have to shed its red wing, do a massive u-turn on it's ultra anti-immigration message and start engaging in the debate. It's too much to ask of them.

With Farage still at the helm and still appointing incompetent yes-men, still not learning the lessons, and paving the way for the next big blunder (while backtracking on the last), it simply isn't going to happen. Ukip will never focus, never professionalise and never up it's game. It just doesn't know how. So the more distance Ukip puts between it and the Brexit campaign, the better our chances of winning a referendum. We just don't need allies like that. It's better it continues to be a laughable curiosity on the edge of politics than to allow it to make the case for us - and get it spectacularly wrong.

What will it take for Ukip to wake up?


Funny, I was just talking about the incompetence of Patrick O'Flynn. He was the clown who greenlit Ukip Calypso and he was the one who monumentally borked the "car crash" LBC interview. Now we get this!
"Senior members of UKIP are campaigning behind the scenes to have Patrick O'Flynn MEP removed as economic spokesman after his appearance on the BBC's Newsnight programme last Monday night. In the interview O'Flynn called for higher taxes on business, having previously called for a tax on the turnover of companies so they would pay even if they did not make a profit."
It's not exactly news to me that O'Flynn is an idiot, but he was held up as an example of how the party was professionalising! Of course, I've been the subject of much abuse for saying so - but get this...
Another said: “O'Flynn's views are very dangerous for UKIP, he is determined to pander to the left in seats like Rotherham but this puts our core vote at risk. What's the point in UKIP if all we do is swing with wind like the mainstream political parties. We've always prided ourselves on being above chasing whatever the latest opinion poll says.”
Finally some Ukip self-awareness - but it's nothing you didn't read here months ago. The man has never been in a political party, has no ability or aptitude and seemingly his only qualification is a stint as a Daily Express hack. But there's a more salient point here. As much as Lunchtime O'Flynn is an utter berk, who was it who hired him and opened all the doors for him to become an MEP?

Course this isn't the first time a pal of L.Ron Farage has turned out to be an utter liability. Godfrey Bloom's Ukip legacy is a laughing stock. And not forgetting there's a Raheem Kassam car crash waiting to happen. And who hired those bozos? Are we spotting a trend yet?

Professional amateurs


Stop me if you've heard it, but the Telegraph seems to think the days of Ukip amateurism are over.
"Of course, Ukip is still learning and has weaknesses. The party remains dependent on a handful of big donors, is in desperate need of a heavyweight director of communications and is inclined to disastrous Calypso-style public relations. But while it is tempting to dismiss Ukip as a band of amateur populists, the reality is that it is no longer an amateur operation."
Y'see this is hilarious because senior party sources tell me the party has professionalised already. First we were told the genius boy Patrick O'Flynn was a sharp-minded, media-savvy PR guru (he who greenlit the Ukip Calypso) who would bring a new discipline to the party - and now we're told Breitbart's principle mouth-foamer has taken up the job of chief yes-man to L.Ron Farage, despite making a pigs ear of everything he touches. If you were hoping for a new found competence, you're going to be disappointed.

In order to professionalise, Ukip would have to stop their MEPs blethering on subjects they know nothing about, and have them properly briefed on how to respond to specific arguments with a degree of uniformity and competence. For that to happen, they would have to have first identified some objectives, diagnosed a few issues and written something approaching a policy based on something more substantial than guesswork. That simply isn't going to happen.

The only skill of Ukip is to keep policy deliberately vague. As Jackart notes "This enables their supporters to think the UKIP policy is the same as whatever they think, which on immigration might range from "send them all back" to "open door to the commonwealth". The reality is that Ukip couldn't professionalise if it wanted to. It doesn't know what the word means. It is simply not within their capability, and Farage has to make sure it stays that way. Anybody competent would stick like a sore thumb among their bozos.

Ukipists are happy to excuse it though. They argue that to professionalise is to become more like the other parties. This misses the point. You don't have to go soft-left consensus driven mainstream to make effective use of  tried and tested methodology, and you don't have to rule with an iron fist on matters of message discipline if you've done the homework - and your best people are at least on the same page. But the problem being that you can't do that if you don't have any policies or ideas. How can you have message discipline if you don't have a message?

So what you can expect is more of the same. More photographs of L.Ron Farage on the website, more ludicrous slapdash policies, no consistency, more u-turns, and MEPs and spokesmen continuing to contradict eachother, getting their facts embarrassingly wrong. Oh, and more obstinacy. The more you point it out, the more they circle the wagons.

Frankly, it would take a miracle to get through to them. They are in transmit mode only. In that respect, they are more like the "LibLabCon" than they care to admit. I doubt if Ukip is even salvageable anymore.