They can’t wait to get electioneering!
On a soggy morning after a soggy night the ‘news’ in our glorious MSM this morning are equally soggy. Firstly, here’s the customary look at the printed front pages: “Newspaper headlines: Petrol car ban delay and Starmer ‘to reject EU plan’.“ (link). It’s only ‘iNews’ which went with the EU theme. BBC staff provides us with a handysummary:
“The i says Sir Keir is set to rule out any bid for the UK to join a revamped EU. A plan has emerged from France and Germany for four tiers of integration, including associate membership for some nations, which could include the UK. But the paper says Sir Keir will reject that, partly because of the electoral danger of appearing to revert to type as anti-Brexit.” (link)
Keep note of the dropped clanger, that this Starmer ‘plan’ was meant as a blatant piece of electioneering – something arch-remainers will hope we will have forgotten next year.
However, I wonder why all those former Brussels ‘correspondents’ who warbled about Starmer’s plans for ‘making Brexit work’ and his visit to Macron didn’t mention this EU ‘plan’. It surely cannot have been a deep state secret until this Macron visit where that particular cat was apparently let out of the bag! It was sweetened with a ringing, or rather: clanging endorsement by Macron, as the DT reports:
“Emmanuel Macron believes Sir Keir Starmer has the “moral authority” to be prime minister, a senior French source familiar with the pair’s private meeting in Paris on Tuesday has told The Telegraph. The French president was impressed that the Labour leader did not make demands on issues such as Brexit or migration during the rare meeting of a national leader with the head of a foreign nation’s political opposition.” (paywalled link)
That ‘endorsement’ will surely make former Red Wall voters stream back to Labour! But there’s more – keep this for the record (my emphasis):
“Mr Macron’s comments came as French and German ministers unveiled a proposal for the UK to take up “associate membership” of the European Union. Under the plans for a four-tier EU, the UK would return to the single market, contribute to the bloc’s budget and be governed by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.” (paywalled link)
And when were Starmer’s ‘election gurus’ going to tell us that we’d have to pay for his attempt to become PM by ‘contributing to the EU budget’? Meanwhile, there’s another nice little scandal brewing in the Labour Party:
“Diane Abbott accuses Keir Starmer of trying to end her parliamentary career – Left-wing MP posts social media statement in which she says she ‘will not get a fair hearing’ over anti-Semitism allegations.” (paywalled link)
My heart bleeds … not! Surely, after 36 years in the HoC it’s time for her to retire and make place for ‘Youth’? She is, after all, one of the despised ‘boomer generation’, a generation which, according to the combined wisdom of MSM and political pundits, ought to hang their head in shame and creep out of politics a.s.a.p.
The other piece of electioneering news comes from the PM. After all, it’s not as if some of the gentlefolk on the opposite side of the green benches have forgotten about the pending GE. Sunak is proposing to ‘slash Net Zero’ policies – here’s the DM’s headline summarising it:
“Rishi’s bonfire of costly green pledges: ‘Pragmatic’ PM Sunak to DITCH the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars and slow the phasing out of gas boilers – but still plans to hit Net Zero by 2050 – In a dramatic policy shift, Sunak could also slow the plashing out of gas boilers “ (link)
Well, that sounds nice but I’ll believe it when I see it! However, The Times, in a bid to look non-partisan, has apparently spoken to some Green Tory MPs:
“The plans were criticised by some Conservative MPs last night. They said that “resiling” from green pledges could cost the party at the next election.” (link, paywalled)
How tone-deaf are these particular Tory MPs! As tone-deaf as Starmer ‘advisers’ still trying to shoehorn a Remain policy into their election programme …
I leave you with one piece about yon Brand affair. The collective of ‘comedians-turned-politicians’ have had their outcry, warning us about not prejudging, that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and wailing how horrible youtube is to ‘demonetarise’ poor Russell – something they never take notice of when it happens to others. There’s a piece in Unherd however which took the proverbial biscuit for outrageous exculpation. If you must, you can read it under the headline “The Noughties enabled Russell Brand – In a culture of viciousness, he was adored” (link).
I’ll only point out that the Noughties were the decade of an untrammelled Labour government where the foundations were laid for all the ills we’re now plagued with. Do we want a repeat performance of that vicious decade or will a ‘moral’ Starmer disallow it? Hm ….
That’s all I have for today. Perhaps someone should ask Ms Diane A. about her comment to yon Brand affaire … Have a good day.
mary on 20/09/2023 at 1:19 pm:
Blair – surely one of the most evil beings ever to inhabit our planet. How so many supported him is simply beyond belief.
More relevant to yesterday’s ID re Squirrels: but in answer to the question “what are they hiding?” there are many answers to this of course but the latest, along with the little publicised Energy Bill, is that the Online Safety Bill has now been quietly passed.
We seem to have forgotten all the possibilities we promised the people during the referendum. Which we have forgotten because of the media and its ignorance. Even the best of journalists have been a sad if not poor bunch. I recently found a ukip leaflet from 2014 which said:–
NO to Mrs May
No to ECJ
NO to Immigration,
No to Theft of Fish.
No to ECHR
No more payments to EU.
No to VAT,
No EU Customs Union. Join WTO rules.
No to EU regulations
No to Abandoning the Commonwealth
Gib and other protectorates
EU cannot be trusted They are greedy grabbers,
I have no reason to deny any of this. In fact it has got worse
. with the EU grab for N. Ireland
NOT ONE THING HAS CHANGED.
TG Spokes………but that is not the fault of the UK Independence Party or any of its politicians is it. The sad fact of the matter is that UKIP has never been the party of government. No, the fault lies fairly and Squarely on the likes of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and all their ministers. I might also have said the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats as well, but that wouldn’t be right because they have not been in power either. The Conservative Party and its government under Boris Johnson had an 80 seat majority in the House of Commons in December 2019, and they could have pushed through any agenda they liked through the House of Commons including full independence, and I mean 100% independence from the European Union, but they didn’t. They brought us out yes, and gave us half a deal and shafted Northern Ireland, shafted our Fishermen and shafted the rest of us by not tearing up all European Union Law and Regulations. They have sat on their laurels and totally squandered that majority they won and have done basically bugger all, and nothing much has changed since the unelected Sunak took the keys to Number 10 who just passes his time fannying around doing nothing in particular. This shambolic crew are the people you should be blaming……….
SY “There is a whole generation now with no memory of Iraq and his fall from grace…”Well let’s remind them and give them a snapshot of the Bush-Blair abominations in Iraq war: our own underequipped soldiers with legs blown off etc. In Baghdad an Iraqi baby with his head blown off, and a girl with a hole where her face should have been; a young boy suddenly burned alive by a misdirected missile; multiply all this by hundreds of thousands to get an idea of Blair’s “achievements”. MSM were coy about reporting this sort of thing. The first night of the war, Shock and Awe with Baghdad looking like a raging inferno. Meanwhile Blair swanning constantly to and from Washington in a luxury private jet . The lies re fictitious weapons of mass destruction that could reach us within hours. The convenient death of whistleblower David Kelly…..
Then here at home, Blair’s 2004 ID card Act with draconian fines for non compliance. The Blair years were some of the most miserable in our lives, when fascism really taking off big time. When we thought we had got rid of him, I knew he and his string pullers would only be hiding behind the hills ready for a comeback after the dust had settled.
could say more but would be here all day…
The education of young voters is so skewed these days.The Conservatives, the only party with a large enough advertising budget, needs to start reminding voters of our history. And cabinet ministers need to go on TV and radio with more robust messaging and rebuttals. No sign of that. They are inhibited by their own lamentable record and seem to avoid scrutiny as much as possible. The left have the stage.
Starmer is an out and out traitor to be even talking to the European Union, and the Conservatives have done bugger all under Johnson and Sunak to make this country fully independent of it, and so making it easier to re-integrate with the EU should a future prime minister deem that to be the case. The people of this country need to start waking up and get a grip of the fact that the majority of those who serve in the House of Commons do not act in the best interest of the citizens of this country, and start voting for alternative parties. At the moment we do not have a viable alternative party to vote for who are able to contest all 650 seats with a local party infrastructure around them to make it happen. If the prospect of Starmer getting his grubby little hands on the keys to 10 Downing Street and reversing the independence vote in 2016 and taking us back into the European Union doesn’t spur either Nigel Farage or Dominic Cummings into action, I don’t know what will. It is simply not, not, not, good enough to shout from the sidelines from the warmth and safety of a radio/tv studio and talking to total non-entities about nothing in particular.
Colin a walk around any town or city centre is enough to disparage any idea of people waking up, it’s like watching a dream sequence as most and all ages walk around dead eyed and as if they are struggling through treacle.
This crowd seem to be following the Hitlery Clinton Bible of politics.
She said something along the lines – vote for me, you know what you will be getting.
(Bent as a nine dollar note and lies from start to finish).
Blair in a manifesto said I wont introduce / allow charging fees for university.
Six weeks after getting into office – introduced. Like, Spooksy and Stout, Some of us have long memories.
Now we have two identical punters saying, we will carry out Brexit, but you wont be able see any changes whilst inching towards rejoining. (Brexiteers are too stupid to vote anyway).
Boy, oh boy (she, they, we, one, in, out shake it all about) do we need a breath of fresh air or what? The quislings that are in office after the next election, will be of the same calibre as the quislings we have now. Ditto the civil service.
Farage is a ded duck. As co-founder and wedded to – I forget his name, and in any case NigeF sold us out to the conservative party, no dice. Plus he only has eyes for Pres Trump.
It only leaves one potential on the horizon – Cummings. But after the press going after him, ignoring the labourite woman who did the same thing at the same time as DomC during lockdown, . . . it will be non-stop rubbishing of the man. The msm will roll out the standard mantra – racist, anti-muslim, anti invasion, fascist, extreme right (of Marx and Engles), and on, and on.
The devil or the deep blue sea? Me, I want to be helicoptered out.
Lord Biscotte of Eaton Square……..do you mean Richard Tice as co founder? Only he wasn’t and for that neither was Farage the founder of The Brexit Party either. That accolade falls to Catherine Blaiklock, who I think was involved with UKIP beforehand Farage is a dead duck only because he doesn’t seem to have the staying power. He is good as the front man delivering the speeches and tv/radio PR, but when it came to wearing out shoe leather on the streets delivering leaflets, standing on street stalls speaking to Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs and knocking on doors he was somewhat absent. But I would never rule anything out with Farage as anyone doing that would be a fool, and I really wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t involved in what Dominic Cummings has up his sleeve concerning a new party to take over from the Conservative Party. I think Farage has said many times that he wouldn’t get involved in front line politics again unless there were other big hitters involved and there was the finance to support it, and he was supposedly involved in the Conservative Democratic Organisation with other well known right wing Conservative MP’s. And of course if this new party were to come on the political scene and several Conservative MP defected to it, then I think they would serve as those ‘big hitters’. On the other hand I could be wrong…
It was a meeting between Blaiklock, Russell Hicks and me that founded the Brexit Party. We discussed it one day in a Costa Coffee (or similar). Catherine called Nigel to see if he liked the idea and he did. Catherine incorporated the limited company but based on her B&B business as a template which led to administrative hassle to sort out. Beyond that she had no part in the party.
The Brexit Party faced an interview before the Electoral Commission in order to be accepted and registered and Nigel asked me to take the meeting on the basis that I could probably think on my feet as necessary. The interview lasted about 90 minutes. That was on 12 Feb 2019.
SY………Russell Hicks no less, the man that should have been by rights on the top table of UKIP deciding policy and strategy. Single handedly he organised and paid for out of his own pocket that Ad Van that drove around central London including Wesminster with a hard hitting UKIP message, something which the party itself should have arranged and financed It is a long time since I have seen his name on this site, but I have emailed him in the past year so he is still around. Surely, he must have seen through Reform UK by now, but I didn’t know he was involved with the creation of The Brexit Party. You learn something new every day I wonder if he would consider returning to the UKIP fold? The party needs someone like him to get things done……….
I dearly hope I live to see the day when the Conservative Party of Great Britain and N Ireland has only sufficient MPs to fill a minibus.
Jake…….consider it done. I think it will follow the old Liberal Party of the early 20th century into obscurity. However, Farage this evening was saying that Sunak’s decision to push the sales of petrol and diesel cars back to 2035 from 2030 might be an election winner. I don’t think so. Too much has happened and too little has been done about our porous borders, not leaving ECHR and not delivering 100% independence from the European Union. The Conservatives could have done so much with an eighty seat majority, but have delivered so little. Farage might be somewhat convinced or did he say that because Jacob Rees-Mogg was in the studio ready to take over, but I’m certainly not.
The one thing the establishment can rely on is the stupidity of much of the British people to engage in playing musical chair establishment party voting. If only people could see the folly of voting Lib/Lab/Con 20 or thirty years ago we may now be in different place.
It’s as though our politicians want someone else to take decisions, to be rule takers from every and any source. In addition to COP, WHO, UN, G7 etc Starmer wants to extend the ECJ’s jurisdiction from Northern Island to the whole of the UK again through ‘associate’ membership. Just as boards diffuse responsibility, so our leaders appear to miss being part of the EU Council, a super board that shields them from individual responsibility.
Those of us who campaigned for Brexit did so in memory of Britain’s once proud and independent history and failed to see that the UK was no longer capable of self-government. The people were but our establishment was not and has done everything it can to avoid that. The civil service was geared to mainly implementing EU directives, and Parliament was a jumped up county council. All suffered from phantom limb syndrome on leaving the EU and believe in re-attachment as the only solution for their existential fear of growing up and becoming independent. Apparently, Tony Blair, mentor to Starmer, believes reversing Brexit can be a vote winner (https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1814625/tony-blair-keir-starmer-emmanuel-macron-brexit).
Blair may be right. There is a whole generation now with no memory of Iraq and his fall from grace. Seven years of engineered Brexit travails condition the awareness of new voters for each of those years. And seven years of imported benefit claimants are , taught to associate the nation’s largesse with Labour. It’s not looking good.
At the root of all this is “proud to be woke” Theresa May and the MPs in the parliament of 2017 to 2019. They did so much damage to this country. Only no deal could have avoided it, so flawed were the deals from Chequers to Johnson’s oven ready one, but the Benn Act stopped that possibility.
LibLabCon general elections have always been sickening spectacles but next year’s will be particularly nauseating. Brexit needs to be saved but there aren’t many spartans left on the ERG and Farage appears content with carping from the sidelines. There is a diminishing cultural space for conservatism (or the patriotism of old Labour) and so independence.
SY……….with regard to your comment yesterday about those former Kippers that you see on the political trail who will not return to the fold…. what single factor determines why they won’t come back to UKIP, and what would it take for them to indeed come back to the party? Are these people campaigning for another party or have they just retired from politics altogether. With regard to the latter, I agree there are only a certain amount of times one can go on banging your head against a brick wall, and when UKIP started to fall by the wayside in the Batten era I did think life would be easier doing something else as I never really considered that The Brexit Party and Reform UK were long term parties and I still don’t. I was a founder member of the Heritage Party but have left that, and returned to the UKIP fold as it represented the best chance of getting our message across, not realising at the time what a parlous state the party is actually in now. I have been told however that there has been an increase in membership numbers especially in Wales, and that former UKIP members have renewed their memberships, as indeed I did. Ann Marie Waters seems to be upbeat about her chances in Hartlepool, and it will be interesting to see if she can develop the party enough in the North East to make a difference. Perhaps the future of the party rests with her, and perhaps we need to give her a second chance on the leadership front when the time comes to elect a new leader.
Colin, if you were a well educated but thick, a tory parachuted into the job , and owing your income from obeying the Tory old men, clever like rats. You want help from on high , or from low Mandarins with their silly education and experience. who know little that is real to everyone else. Do you really trust UKIP, or an embattled Farage. Will ANY sitting MP, stand up, for Brexit.
Economy.
The surgeons etc striking for 36 %. These are clever responsible people who understand Inflation. 36 % is the proper increase for the entire country. They should be repaid and a proper apology from the Treasury would be appropriate followed by Liz Truss for PM. to repair the country. and an apology from idiot Sunak., Hunt and the treasury can be paid appropriately by International monopolies.
Just because presenters and experts are everywhere and paid, does not make them correct, just noisy
Instead of faffing about with net zero why hasn’t Rolls Royce been given help with their SMR investment by buying a few instead of wasting time on vacillation, multiple committees, multiple idiot lefties and other fools.. It’s not as though we haven’t bought several submarines similarly powered. Why so quiet.
I agree that AMW should be given a second chance. She spoke at last year’s conference but in the bar afterwards (surprisingly, she remembered me from 2017 when I invited her to my branch) she said she would not rejoin. Thus I was surprised when she did rejoin. Further reflection seems to have suggested to her that there is indeed no alternative to UKIP (or no alternative for her perhaps) .
The ex-kippers I meet are 1) Heritage Party (and particularly prone to see the current UKIP NEC as a corrupt cabal and cannot be persuaded otherwise), 2) Reform UK via the Brexit Party (and so have a new home now thank you very much), and 3) the completely disillusioned who are disengaged except for social solidarity needs at fringe events. They have one thing in common; all are bitter ex-kippers, bitter and disillusioned at the betrayals and chaos of the B years (Bolton, Batten and Braine). That will not be easily overcome.
Wales always was fertile ground for UKIP and whether there has been a statistically significant uptick in membership will not be known until the next accounts are published. I hope Dec 2022 was a nadir.
I like David Kurten personally; Heritage is simply a party of people who like David. Even so, it is not a party with a democratic constitution and neither is Reform UK. This is a serious weakness in a political party. Both are built around appointed regional organisers not branches. If UKIP’s fortunes ever turn around to the extent they could offer David a salary then Heritage and UKIP could merge. For now, our side, for want of a better term, remains fragmented and ineffectual.
SY…when Ann Marie Waters came second to the useless Henry Bolton in the 2017 leadership election she stormed out of the Torquay conference hall and very shortly afterwards set up her own party and as you know vowed never to return. However, when the UK Independence Party set about making overtures towards other right of centre political parties late last year with a view to forming a loose coalition to fight elections under one banner, I think Waters although I could be wrong, was the only party leader who was responsive to the idea, and realising probably it takes years for a party to establish itself with the electorate came to the conclusion that UKIP was a recognisable brand which most people have heard of, and decided to rejoin. And more or less as soon as she did rejoin, she was offered the role of party Justice and Home Affairs spokesman which she has held ever since. I didn’t vote for Ann Marie Waters in 2017 largely because of her past association with Tommy Robinson and voted instead for Henry Bolton which I now regret. However, I have said pretty recently that in hindsight I wished I had never voted to dismiss Bolton as leader at that EGM in Birmingham because the party has been on the slide ever since, and that fiasco involving his then girlfriend would have in time blown over. However we are where we are now, and probably Ann Marie Waters has learnt from her past mistakes and deserves a second chance to be the leader of the party when the time comes to elect another. First and foremost she is a good orator and secondly is reasonably young. I too like David Kurten and initially decided to vote for him at the 2017 UKIP leadership election, but was persuaded to vote otherwise for Henry Bolton largely because I was the election agent for another leadership contender (David Allen) who withdrew from the 2017 leadership contest and threw his weight behind Bolton. However, the pro life policies that Kurten supports is not a popular one and a vote loser at the doorstep. As I said to Jake yesterday, there is no point in UKIP contesting every seat in the UK at the next general election because 1. it does not have the candidates, 2. does not have the finances to pay the required £650 deposits especially since most local branch associations have been dissolved and 3. does not have the all important activist base to assist in that number of campaigns. Although I live in Kent, I would much prefer to assist someone like Ann Marie Waters with her campaign in Hartlepool and stay up there, because she will need all the help that she can get to stand any chance of doing well. No activists plus no leaflets through doors and no doorstep canvassing equals no votes, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip is an ideal example of that….
“No activists plus no leaflets through doors and no doorstep canvassing equals no votes” – yep.
UKIP should focus on AMW. She can handle herself well in media interviews. The party just needs one ….
SY Here we go again: Batten and Braine getting all the blame for UKIP’s failure. I think members and voters should have stuck with them whether they liked them or not then we’d still at least have a party. One thing’s certain: they couldn’t have been worse than the Uniparty trash. I have to give G Batten credit for being one of the few who warned about Globocap: but I noticed that UKIP very sloppily (on purpose?) plonked his 2 page presentation on the website with one of the pages upside down.
Farage was the biggest letter-down , although we’ll never know what if any threats were applied to him. Another thing I can’t forgive him for is that he urged us all to get the Covid jab.
As for Bolton, members did vote for him: he seemed rather fishy to me right from the start: why didn’t members pick up on this?
And corruption presumed to be among the NEC: I heard some hearsay about some corruption to do with a legacy, which did not involve the NEC. I also understand Katie Hopkins was about to join but suddenly backed off (why?) I also know some perfectly good members who were suspended for no good reason. I guess they could tell a story or two.
Not all the blame for Batten/Braine but their fair share. If democracy requires losers’ consent then it is certainly true at party level except that ceased to be true after Batten became leader.
Mary…..it was under Batten’s leadership that Farage and all the other elected UKIP MEP’s went over en masse to The Brexit Party after he appointed TR as an advisor and encouraged various other lunatics to get on board like Sargon of Whatever. Had this not occurred UKIP may well be in a far better state than it is right now. Batten started off well but he allowed the lunatic fringe to take hold, and I am afraid its a fact of life that in this country parties with an extremist element do not get elected, and the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn was an example of that. The whole point to a political party is get representation on local and county councils and of course in the House of Commons, and if that is not being done everyone involved is wasting their time. By rights the UK Independence Party should have been the victors in the last elections to the European Parliament, not The Brexit Party, and that would have occurred had Farage not decided to step down as leader when he did and all the other things that have occurred since.
Reply to CH re Lunatics and Lunatic Fringe:
Whatever.
Well we’ve certainly got the Lunatic Fringe totally in power now, except it isn’t a fringe: it’s swamped everything
I’d rather have Tommy R -type lunatics than the Uniparty lunatics .
Although I don’t think TR *is* a lunatic and his detractors, have not come up with anything any better have they? It was him or total collapse if you see what I mean and people chose the latter.
Enough now.
“Under the plans for a four-tier EU, the UK would return to the single market, contribute to the bloc’s budget and be governed by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.”
All of which is unacceptable. Sadly I’m sure that many traitors in Westminster will welcome it. We need an updated treason and sedition law to deal with them but who, in the present parliament, would support that?
Jack.
I’m sorry but I’m afraid that the extra money that will be needed to fund their re-entrance is available in huge quantities to reward stout rejoiners in quiet committees . Forthcoming from International monopolies, and the available many lining up to gain another.(s). ( We are being bought )
Everything is just naked money.
TG Spokes…….no, no, no not again. That word you have a fixation about, namely committees. At least in committees it involves a group of people getting together in democratic discourse to discuss an issue/subject, and what’s wrong with that? Yes, UKIP like most other parties have committees and an NEC and that is what makes it democratic. The opposite is a party run by one or two people with no say who the leader should be, not able to get rid of that person and hold them accountable for their actions, and not have a say in policy creation. If that is your thing, then Reform UK should satisfy your needs. If not, try the Chinese Communist Party. Just saying……….