Once again, the Bruges Group put on a fabulous conference this weekend, impeccably organised by the highly energetic, Robert Oulds. It was a great event concluding a thoroughly depressing weekend.
It came on the back of a cross party meeting the night before in mid Norfolk with the local Conservative Member of Parliament. George Freeman is one of Cameron’s 2010 ‘A’ list who according to many Brexiteers, are a massive problem within the Conservative party.
Mr Freeman is a really pleasant man personally and I also appreciate him for sticking his neck out and for meeting people from other parties but that is not really the point. Politically, Mr Freeman should not be called a Conservative but a Blairite, who thinks tax rises are fine and who does not really want to talk about immigration. He is a ‘wet’, half hearted remainer, turned supposedly half hearted Brexiteer (I suggest because the wind blew heavily that way in his constituency) who thinks a Norway ‘minus minus’ deal would be just fine. I was left in no doubt that he would, for all his rhetoric, rather be in the EU than out and will vote for whatever half-baked, sell out deal, Mrs May puts forward: the more ‘remain-like’ the better.
In the nearby constituency of Broadland, we have the dear bespectacled remainer, Keith Simpson MP, who has never voted against the government in his entire twenty years in parliament an MP so don’t expect anything helpful there either.
What is also interesting in Norfolk, is that you could not distinguish between the UKIP members in the room and the Conservative ones – indeed it is well known that in Norfolk which voted in most places, well over 60% out (and up to 73% out in Brandon Lewis’s constituency of Great Yarmouth), that there is a revolving door between UKIP and Conservative members. Both Brandon Lewis and George Freeman seem totally out of touch with their grass roots – again. That, unfortunately, is always the overall impression, from such meetings.
I had also happened to have staying with me all week, the Chair of the Conservative party in Peter Bone’s constituency – and what a breath of fresh air that was. Peter Bone MP seems totally at one with his branch, members and his constituents on Brexit. They love him. And the same could be said for Andrew Bridgen MP who spoke at The Bruges Group event. Not only is Andrew highly energetic and one of the best campaigners ever, he is also funny. Andrew overturned a 4000 labour majority by walking around his entire constituency not once but twice and in some areas, three times. He continues to increase his majority.
And as I said to Andrew, the Conservatives could win easily against Corbyn, if only they had sensible policies and got a clean Brexit. But instead they keep on appointing the wrong MP’s. Not a single remain MP has been deselected and when local groups have tried to deselect remainers like Anna Soubry, it is the chair who has resigned rather than Soubry. So much for May supporting Brexit. Talk about being out of touch with the country.
Andrew Bridgen was clearly both in touch with the Bruges group room, his local members and most of his constituents who voted for him – and how great the Conservative party could once again be, if they appointed as leader, someone like him with a strong military and campaigning background. They would totally smash Corbyn and get us the best possible deal for Britain. Instead George Freeman thinks he is leadership material – that unfortunately would just be more of the same and would not be a winning formula.
Andrew started by joking that Brexit was like Baldrick from Blackadder: ‘It started badly, faded in the middle and ended not very well.’ But it was what else Andrew said that was so depressing. That May’s Brexit negotiators could not be distinguished from the EU ones if you did not know who they were in a room. That with all their leaflets, taxpayer funded government help, the BBC and free civil servants, remain outspend leave by 2:1 and still lost. When someone said, ‘You have all the top 200 civil servants supporting remain’, the retorted, ‘No we have ALL civil servants supporting remain.’ And that presumably is 419,399 people – all working to overturn the democratic decision of this country, to sell our national sovereignty out to a foreign power.
But the worse of all was that apparently, even as David Davis and Stephen Baker tried to put a Brexit team together, there were other civil servants, working in their own office, trying to undermine the result and working to not exit. The treachery of these people paid by the taxpayer and employed, supposedly for the good of our country, knows no bounds. For all the charts and economics and law, it is, at the end of the day, just about people doing the right thing. Unfortunately most of our civil servants and MP’s do not seem to want to respect democracy and do the right thing because, like George Freeman, they think they know better than ordinary voters. All we can hope for is that eventually decent, honourable good people like Andrew Bridgen will win through but it seems at this point, just hope.
The moment May surrounded herself with advisers like the odious Olly Robbins, it was clear that Brexit in any meaningful way, was never going to happen.
Robbins does represent the the powerful, machevellian civil service of this Country, but the influence of these Common Purpose, Marxist leaning people like Robbins, is now spread throughout the establishment of the U.K.
They are anti British and globalist at their core and they are now embedded in significant positions within our Country.
I Personnally include Theresa May in my assessment.
Yes.
There ia certainly the possibility that by the time the nevt election comes round e new centre right party may be required because the Conservative party no longer exists in sufficien numbers to count. Whether UKIP can convert to a replacement party bis doubtfulv but not entirely impossible. It would need to attract Brexiteer ministerial talent frfom the fading Conservatives sand in the process lose support from Labour Brex8teer members up North. But if the centre could move a bit Left that might be minimised. But my own guess is we wiill now be out on WTO terms, in which case a total rethink will be required. I was in the Roreign Office in 1950 when we got via MI6 sll the minutes of the negotiatiomn of bthe Franso German European Coal and Steel Community Treaty now the EU which probed the French and Ferman governments were at that tim,e secretly Nazi and the Coel and seel community was a Nazi plot to reverse the outcome of WW2 and reinstate Hitler’s post war depadtment’s Thousand Year [European] Reich under German control. If you don’t be;ieve mev you can always compare the EU constitution with Hitler’s constitution for his post war European Reich in the archive in Berlin. The EU’s is a word for word copy of Hitler’s!
Catherine,
To me one of the roads to power for UKIP is slightly to the left.The gap between workers and bosses is now far too big in all companies, particularly in big companies.This fuels union activity, hatred, low productivity etc etc. . Solving this problem does several things:-
1.. It resolves strikes This will soon become a huge problem again.
2.. It makes it easier to run a company
3…It pulls one of labours main props and power bases
4.. Itcould help educate
but crucialy
5..It could move dissatisfied Labout voters towards UKIP.
Now how is that done ?
1..give employees responsibility and involvement with union supervision or education or anything else
2 protection of pensions
3. Suggestions. I know it sounds old and daft, and often produces hilarity. But that just shows stupidity. They know more about their jobs than you do.
4.. An Employees Directorship to keep an eye on the board. ( Again unions have a unique role to play in training of recognation of alarm bells etc )
This is not new, But I’ve used these and other tactics for over 60 years and they work to everyones advantage.
It would need putting together as a Package. But it ‘s valuable to the employee whatever, their position, and improves understanding
The “centre” of politics has been redefined by a carousel of academics and media types circling around a position of increased state control and increasing regulation.
Then there is the problem with the word “liberal” – which once meant the opposite of authoritarian – with conservatives being famed for “law and order”.
Yet now we find the self-styled “liberals” are the most ill-liberal – with their censorious attitudes to free speech, their insistence that we all retreat to our “identity community” – and their desire to regulate everything.
So “Left” and “right” are meaningless nowadays.
But to your substance….
The problems you idenify are real – but the solutions need not be “leftish” in any interfering sense.
By contrast the solutions could be “free-market” ones – as long as the “markets” are genuinely free.
I don’t believe that bosses of a FTSE100 mega-corp have a tougher job than the boss of the 200 employee workshop. Those big bosses have an army of staff.
And the day-to-day decsions that accumulate the profit are made by the same staff.
So no boss is worth £ millions in annual salary (unless of his/her own small private, successful company) – and bonuses should be spread aroun the staff.
And no boss who sheds thousands of staff should get a bonus within 3 years of the job losses.
But markets – and shareholders need information – as well as a fair framework to work in.
Catherine Yes, I agree that the civil service are Europhile in nature but as I argued with Roger Turner they are employees of the state doing the bidding of the government of the day. We cannot blame the civil service for the sheer treachery, connivance and incompetence of the Tory party in handling Brexit. The Tories are instituitionally committed to the EU and thus so is the civil service. It cannot have been lost on the civil service that every government since we signed the Treaty of Rome has been informing the civil service to keep steering toward ‘ever closer union’ whilst denying to the public what they were doing.
Brexit will not be furthered by blaming the civil service. Mrs May and her band of Remainers and advisers will relish that one.
What is certain is that positive Brexit action will be taken when Remainer Tory MPs are deselected and when Tory party members come to their senses and throw in their membership cards in disgust at their leaders treachery in her handling of Brexit. Do they not realise it is their loyalty to the party that gives Mrs May strength she needs to fudge Brexit.
We cannot rely on the Tory party (and certainly not the Labour party either) to ‘reform’ and start looking out for the interests of their constituents or the British people as a whole. And certainly the Civil Service needs a major overhaul, clearing out the Common Purpose infested traitors.
From the Tory party, we need more action, not more words. If there are, as you say, some decent Tory MPs among them, the best thing they could do is to cross the floor to UKIP, rather than sit on their hands and hope that someone will come forward and ‘save’ the Conservative party. Because that just isn’t going to happen. The Tory party as it is is finished.
“The Tory party as it is is finished.”
Agreed Stuart, and it can’t come quickly enough. Especially after tonight, May is worse than Ted Heath.
The EU is Hotel California, you can check out any time but can you can never leave….
At least the UK public can see we are no longer a democracy and these so called CONservatives are are never to be trusted.
Lets see who resigns (if they have the guts).
UKIP now need to step up….the door is now wide open….
I had seen this coming because this Conservative Government had not instructed our Civil Service with the multi-faceted CPAs(Critical Paths Analyses) with allied Gantt/Bar Charts and contingency plans “before” going into battle with the EU technocrats; and, said as much with what to do and how on BBC TV Question Time Thursday 24t November 2016. Most of my fellow Audience-Attendees clapped whilst the panellists sat nonplussed! I can now say “I told you so”. Seton During – Ex Membership Secretary; and Ex-Treasurer of North London UKIP. Ex-Member of UKIP.
Agreed,
Its clear we have to ‘drain our own swamp’, and that means all those civil service members ‘leading beyond authority’, the quango-crats, and public sector non-job types from County Councils right up to Parliament itself.
We need a new Mrs T. and the more I read, the more I think UKIP may have found her….
Lets hope the UKIP powers-that-be can actually see this….
#ReinstateBlaiklock
#CatherineDidNothingWrong
@Chris Agree.