Brexit: knowing our place

I've read just about every smug, self-serving article there is on Brexit - or at least every permutation. It has taken this long to see anyone in the legacy media show a glimmer of insight. This from Robert Shrimsley in the Irish Times almost gets it.

In one sense, Boris Johnson is right. The Brexit process has indeed felt like a national humiliation. How many Brits have felt our innards shrivel at key moments of the negotiations? And I am not talking about the incidents of diplomatic bumbling, of unwarranted second World War references and Dad’s Army condescension. I am talking about the parts of this process that have gone as predicted.

Perhaps we should step back from the bloviated rhetoric. Humiliation is too strong; a national humbling is more accurate. The philosophy of Brexit was that, freed of EU constraints, the UK would take its rightful place in the world. This is indeed what is happening, but alas that place is not as the great power of their imagination. The UK’s place in the world is hardly terrible but, as Mr Johnson learnt during his brief but undistinguished term as foreign secretary, our emissaries no longer bestride summits like Castlereagh. 

For far too long British politicians, journalists and voters have enjoyed a patently distorted vision of the nation as indispensable world player. Now the nation is facing the painful truth that the UK is not as pre-eminent as it has liked to believe.

Here we can fairly stick it to the Brexiteers, many of whom believe that once we leave a CANZUK alliance is in the offing along with a revival of the Commonwealth. The stereotype of the Colonel Blimp Brexiter who pines for lost empire no longer really exists. They all died off in the 90s - some even falling off their perch at Bruges Group meetings, falling asleep during a Ruth Lea lecture, never to wake up. 

Mostly, they are now just a piece of Brexit folklore. It is fair to say, though, that many of Leave's leaders do have an overstated sense of national importance. If anything it's the Tory Brexiters displaying the worst of it as many of them only stole the clothes of Euroscepticism in recent years. Boris Johnson himself is a pretender. Brexit, for them, is turning out to be a humbling exercise. 

For proof, look at the negotiations over the Irish border. One need not get into the rights and wrongs to see that the UK has essentially been pushed around by Ireland, because the EU has thrown its weight behind the demands of its continuing member. The hard fact is that the power imbalance has meant the UK is being forced to choose between the chaos of a no-deal Brexit or undermining the constitutional integrity of one of its four sovereign parts and signing up to a significant amount of rule-taking. This is what happens when a single country that is not America or China negotiates with a global trading bloc.

From the sequencing of the negotiations to the empty scorecard of British wins, the entire process has been a lesson in power politics. Few who saw the TV programme on America’s London embassy will forget the smirks as a US official described the British Brexit delusions: “They sort of see it as a negotiation between two equal parties.”

That insight, though, does not stretch as far as self-awareness for Shrimsley and the rest of the FT crocodile fodder. Where Brexit is concerned, Britain is a toothless old hasbeen (still with a few tricks up her sleeve) but essentially a second rater finally coming to terms with her irrelevance. But who suffers most from grandiose delusions? It ain't the Brexiters.

The UKs delusion of being a major power is facilitated and amplified by EU membership and it is that narcissistic self-image that shapes our establishment and how it operates domestically and internationally. Too often do we see British prime ministers joining the G20 parade puffed up with their own self importance. Of the illustration above you could pick any one from a thousand similar images which is ultimately power projection to send to the folks back home.

When it comes to the daily grind of international affairs, British representation is just another chair behind a little desk flag from which our diplomats "urge" tinpot dictators not to slaughter their own people and maybe not treat them like cattle. Without the soft power tools such as trade at our disposal Britain is toothless inside what is already a mostly pointless talking shop.

All the same, though, this allows us to nurture our own institutional self-righteousness that feeds a bloated NGO empire under the mantle of DfID that leads to UK aid spending in countries that at best regard us as irrelevant and at worst are waging a silent trade war on us. India for one. It is that same bloated self-importance that sees the UK at the font of the queue for vanity bombing campaigns in Libya and Syria, and leads to a bidding war in climate talks as to who can make the largest job killing sacrifice.

The British establishment, particularly through the Blair years, has nurtured a sense of moral superiority which starts in Number Ten and travels all the way down into the respective departments, making them tools of the UN Sustainable Development agenda providing all manner of junkets and non-jobs for MPs and their bag carriers. Britain has pioneered virtue signalling on an industrial scale.

The consequence of this is an perverse international aid target where we are throwing money away on narcissistic agendas completely independent of any national objectives and without any consideration of the direct national interest, not least because our own are trained to work for the greater glory of Brussels - which to them is the sum total of our national interest and participation in international affairs. The British government has turned itself into super NGO.

The liberal establishment loves this. It suits their vanity. The actual outcomes to them are wholly irrelevant just so long as we are loudly broadcasting our righteous intentions. We may congratulate ourselves for that but soundings from UNCTAD tend to suggest that the UK is suffering from White Saviour Syndrome. Our media is capable of acknowledging our impotence and arrogance in respect of Brexit, but these critical faculties are strangely absent at all other times. 

As much as there are domestic economic factors driving Brexit, the vote to leave was as much a spasm of revulsion at an aloof and out of touch establishment which is very much a consequence of having engineered a bubble of self-righteousness and international piety funded by the British tax payer.

Though there is still a case to be made for directed international development aid, the more egregious excesses have contributed to a perception that Britain is funding anything from the Ghanaian Spice Girls to subsidising the Indian space programme. It's not strictly true and the media gets the wrong end of the stick more often than not, but the liberal establishment then defends such spending without strategic objectives as an instrument of our moral imperialism. 

Here there is certainly a case for a sea change in how Britain conducts its international affairs. I have long argued that the NGOcracy should be purged from DfID with DfID being brought back under the umbrella of the Department for International Trade with aid spending being a tool of economic partnership agreements. Acting in the direct national interest is no sin. It is a peculiarly British thing that we do not. Here we could restore some of the UK's trade agility simply by way of being an active participant. Something Shrimsley doesn't seem to grasp.  

Much of the UK’s global clout derived from its being one of the big nations of the EU. Margaret Thatcher used that very platform to help create the single market, drive forward global trade and entrench democracy in eastern Europe. The 1970s champions of Britain’s membership were right in arguing that the alternative to pooled sovereignty was not more influence but less.

Now Britain is about to taste life as one of the loudest of the next level of voices. In this tier, maintaining influence beyond military matters requires the painstaking unbombastic alliance-building that saw our existing political and diplomatic practitioners so derided as sell-outs by our chauvinistic MPs and media. It might, for example, mean expediting entry permits for Moldovan trade representatives so they do not delay the UK’s ambitions at the World Trade Organization. 

And how will the UK’s status be reflected in its new trade deals? One has only to look at Donald Trump’s treatment of Canada to see that his negotiators will offer no special favours to the UK. Mr Trump is pro-Brexit because he wants to see a weakened EU, not to play benefactor to the UK. EU nations will be similarly cut-throat. Nor will sentimental attachments affect Commonwealth nations. Too many Brits fail to grasp that former colonies do not look back to the empire with unalloyed affection.

It is actually a popular fiction that the single market is a child of Thatcher. It was always part of the EEC blueprint and was sold to Thatcher as a liberalising initiative in keeping with her own economic reform agenda. This has seen the UK give up much of its regulatory autonomy. Pooling sovereignty (an entirely mendacious phrase) in many respects means handing over powers to Brussels and if the ECJ rubber stamps it then that;s the last time we have direct control over our own affairs. 

Shrimsley would have it that we are now reduced to "unbombastic alliance-building". Such is in the eye of the beholder. To me it marks the return of of the UK as an independent actor with its own dedicated corps of trade diplomats able to facilitate trade in a matter of months that would normally require a seven year negotiation and agreement of the EU 28 over a long ratification process.

As to that unbombastic alliance-building, with the UK once again having a free vote, freedom of association, and the right of initiative, we are very much able to from and lead alliances in the many global regulatory forums bringing pressure to bear on the EU that could see us leveraging trade reforms in the EU that we never could as members. There is more to trade than the WTO goldfish bowl. With the UK able once again to negotiate its own transatlantic and north-south air routes (for example) there is a lot we can do to expedite deals in ways the EU cannot. Disagreement among the EU 28 is partly why the EU is a graveyard for good ideas. 

For sure, the UK won't be rebuilding the Commonwealth but that it not to say that it isn't a worthwhile informal trade alliance (just one of a hundred forums) and though some members may not view the UK with "unalloyed affection" they are still pragmatists and enhanced trade relations with the UK are very much in their own interests. Part of the reason they seek trade with the EU is because the UK is presently a member of it. Shrimsley though, typical of his ilk, concludes with the usual array of tired Brexit cliches.

While this has all been understood by serious figures in government, too much of Britain’s politics, culture and self-image has been driven by its colonial past and the national myths built up around the last war. It is why the Brexiteers cling so desperately to the theory that Theresa May has betrayed Brexit. The alternative is to accept that it is their own reckless chauvinism that has reduced the UK to the role of supplicant with its former partners.

Adjusting to a reduced status will require a reality check in our media and our politics and a touch of humility. If Brexit helps the UK come to a more accurate realisation of its global significance, some good may yet come out of this wretched business. Still, it seems an expensive way to learn a lesson.

The Tory Brexiters may have a misty-eyed self-image of being a residual colonial superpower, but I'm not sure that's worse than the liberal establishment's narcissistic belief that we are a moral authority in the world using the EU as a proxy empire to dictate the internal policies of emerging economies. It is this delusion driving destructive regional and trade policies that drive migration into Europe, filling the seas with tens of thousands of corpses. 

I have long viewed Brexit as a yank on the leash of our politicians. It is long past the time our establishment had its toys taken away and be forced to confront our true place in the world. More than that it is a reminder to them that they are our servants whose loyalties do not belong to Brussels. What is required throughout the British establishment is a fundamental change of mindset. 

For a time this may mean we are in part an EU supplicant (in some competences), but only for as long as the EU remains a regulatory superpower which is far from assured. With every FTA the EU signs the centre of regulatory gravity shifts from Brussels to Geneva and as global standards overtake the EU, the UK's interests are best served by having its own voice and that "unbombastic" alliance-building capacity.

Here Shrimsley gives us an insight into the establishment mentality that nothing over an above the EU exists and Brussels is the fullest extent of their horizons. This is very much part of the problem and why, as the UK has dismantled its own regulatory diplomacy and diplomatic presence, it increasingly finds itself powerless in its bilateral discussions with those we seek to influence. It will take time to adapt to being a mid-ranking power and will come at a cost, but we are trading clout for agility and sovereignty - which is not to be underestimated. 

Arguably it is this political correction that is key to our economic revival. The disjointed economic, foreign and trade policies we've been running over three decades has meant riding two horses and attempting to serve two masters. It is this schizophrenia causing our economic and political dysfunction. It may very well be an expensive lesson - but most things worth having do tend to be expensive. 

Do they know how much they are despised?

"How should the left respond to populism and Russia’s hybrid war against the West?" asks Wakefield MP Mary Creagh. My immediate suggestion would be to acquire a sense of self-awareness. Creagh writes: 

‘There was a time when politicians were amazing and anything seemed possible.’ Southwark council leader Peter John‘s words at Tessa Jowell’s memorial service got a hollow laugh from those present, evoking, as they did, the heady days of a three-term Labour government.

We were busy: tackling child poverty, passing the world’s first Climate Change Act, and preparing for an Olympic games that would show the very best of British talent and present a welcoming, open, inclusive face to the world. Fast forward to 2018 and events that were scarcely imaginable 10 years ago have come to pass: Donald Trump in the White House, Vladimir Putin stronger than ever in the Kremlin, Britain set to leave the European Union, racism and nationalism on the rise across Europe. The demagogues, populists and extremists on the far left and far right seem intent on dismantling the rules-based international order.

This is the establishment speaking. First we get the self-congratulation. "We were busy with things that we think are terribly important... bloating the state and entrenching welfarism, driving up energy bills for homes and industry and hosting a narcissistic jamboree".

It was "scarcely imaginable" that we would see a populist surge says Creagh, despite the BNP having hoovered up a million votes and Ukip growing exponentially. This at a time when political correctness had an even greater grip than it does now. Nobody would admit that there were problems with a surge of migrants and no mainstream politician dare speak frankly about it. What did she think was going to happen? But of course Creagh, like the rest of the establishment was too wrapped up in Westminster's vain obsessions, caught in the media feedback loop; convinced that their "progressive" values were representative of Britain.

For those who cared to look, most of the drivers were already there, and though massive CSE scandals have come to light in recent years it was major issue even in 2007 - but only the BNP was talking about it. Mainstream politics wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. Even Ukip was hesitant to wade into that debate as it was trying to maintain its image a s civic nationalist libertarian party. Only in the latter third of its life did Ukip become primarily an immigration obsessed party. To say that the establishment was out of touch was something of an understatement.

Leftists will naturally blame neoliberalism, austerity and the financial crash, but these factors were only really cracks in the dam and for all that messages were sent and the signals were there to be read, Westminster wasn't listening. Much of its spending carried on as normal, we sill saw council bosses on obscene salaries with offensive golden parachutes while we saw multiple systemic failures like the NHS Mid-Staffordshire scandal which was nothing at all to do with austerity.

The Blair government was always a loathsome one known for its supreme arrogance. Blair acquired the name Teflon Tony largely as a result of stonewalling the media. A scandal would break that would ordinarily require a minister to step down. A ministerial resignation usually weakens a prime minister. This did not happen. With slick media management and spin, each time Labour managed to hold the line. It did not go unnoticed by voters.

In its twilight years though, New Labour was more obnoxious and more corrupt than ever. Gordon Brown labelling an old lady in the street a bigot has become a totem of the Labour attitude to the working class. By this time, with what was regarded as the weakest government in decades, the fresh faced Cameron should have wiped Labour off the map. But he didn't. 

When Cameron took the leadership he adopted more or less the same media management techniques, going out of his way to alienate the party base and driving them into the arms of Ukip. He wanted to sanitise the party and prove to the media that the Conservative Party was no longer a conservative party. And therein lies the problem. Politicians more concerned with courting the media and seeking their approval rather than appealing to voters. It cost him an outright win in 2010 and only the offer of a referendum got him over the line in 2015.

For a long time you could justifiably say that there was no point in voting because all the parties are the same - broadly centrist social democrats committed to welfarism and the big state, constant warfare, while preaching to us about recycling and bespoiling our landscapes with wind turbines. They weren't going to let us have a say on Lisbon, they were going to keep denying the problems with immigration and they were going to keep using us as cash cows for their vanity projects. By 2015 that feeling of voicelessness and disaffection had reached the point of no return. 

You only have to look at the televised leaders debate to see Carlone Lucas, Labour and the Lib Dems calling Ukip "far right" - essentially sneering at the working class and even though I was at the time militantly anti-Ukip I still couldn't help but despise the establishment more. I couldn't wait to vote to leave the EU. Not least because these trends are deeply intertwined with the EU issue. So who, according to Creagh, is to blame for all this? You guessed it. Russia.

Russia’s domination of the social media space through Twitter and Facebook has been revealed to have been one of the major forces at work in the Brexit vote. Thanks to the investigative journalism of the Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr, and whistleblowers from the ‘Leave’ campaign, we can see that Russian money and bot farms were behind some of the fake accounts used to push a pro-Brexit narrative in the referendum campaign and on the day itself.

Firstly one notes that Cadwalladr's "journalism" is really just a smokescreen of innuendo which has uncovered some irregularities, but nothing decisive. The legacy remain movement, though, has done everything it can to weave a conspiracy narrative to delegitimise the referendum. Only a fraction of Twitter traffic can be attributed to bots and they cannot tell us what this actually achieved. 

More than likely these bot farms were operations used by individuals to buy followers and the Brexit related activity was designed to make these accounts look active so as to evade Twitter system cleansing. Twitter has an odd dynamic where you the more followers you have the faster your growth so many new to Twitter who couldn't wait the two years or so it takes to build a foundation of followers will have used this shortcut. No reasonable person could say it turned the tide of the referendum not least because Twitter itself is a bubble and largely irrelevant to the lives of anyone who isn't a political obsessive. Creagh continues...

Russia’s propaganda now dominates the cybersphere, targeting individuals with disinformation and propaganda campaigns. The aim of the operations are clear – to use sophisticated, military grade psychological weapons to play on and inflame pre-existing tensions in a country, for example Catalonian separatism in Spain, the arrival of refugees in Germany or the role of the EU in the United Kingdom.

I have no doubts that Russia is dabbling in this stuff, but still in terms of who has the lions share of ordinary voters attention, it's still the BBC by a country mile. As obnoxious and preening as the BBC is, it is through that lens that we see politicians at their most nauseating. What won it for leave was a general revulsion at our political class and its celebrity flunkies. Izzard, Geldof, Branson et al. 

Any way you cut it, it wasn't Russia who alienated and ignored the working class for more than a decade. Germany did let nearly a million refugees in and yes it did have a corresponding rise in violent crime. Meanwhile, if anyone has been promoting separatism it is the EU whose promotion of defunct regional identities to weaken national bonds is a major component. Russia and domestic populists may stoke pre-existing tensions but that is also in the face of a supine establishment which cannot even bring themselves to admit exist. 

There are other themes in the piece that show a similar lack of self-awareness and more than a hint of snobbery but the conclusion is most interesting.

The rules-based international order was hard fought for. It was hard won and now it must be hard defended. Labour’s values of internationalism, tolerance, love of the environment and solidarity are necessary now more than ever. We have much more in common than those who seek to divide us, as self-proclaimed ‘boat-dweller’ and cyclist Jo Cox memorably said. Now, more than ever, both inside the Labour party and outside, is a time to live by those words.

It suits Creagh galactic ego to think that the plebs turned against the establishment order because of sophisticated internet hypnosis. Not for a nanosecond does it occur to her that she and those like her might be the problem. No! The order is to be defended at all costs! It is not they who must change. It is simply a matter of doubling down on the same old politically correct and socially convenient fluff. 

It is interesting that she invoked Jo Cox, who was very much the personification of the establishment. This extract of an article written about her at the time of her death summed it up for me.

Hers was the typical smooth career path of the modern political cog. From her grammar school, where she was the Head Girl, she seamlessly moved onto an extended period at two universities before emerging as professional aid worker for Oxfam and Save the Children. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was another fashionable international development outfit in which she managed to wangle a position as “advisor.”

She certainly travelled extensively, but to what extent did she get her hands dirty? Rather than mopping sweat-covered brows, her role as a policy consultant seemed to revolve swanning around seminars, conferences and committee rooms in Brussels and London. Networking, rather than counselling, seems the main skill in this field.

The safe Labour seat seems to have been a reward for acting as a bag-carrier for prominent political wives such as that of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a former Labour leader and Euro aristocrat Neil Kinnock. Her constituency seat had been represented by local white men for decades so an all-female shortlist had to be imposed on the local party to ensure an acceptable candidate could be given this plum. 

It was a gilded lifestyle with a houseboat on the Thames beside Tower Bridge at which she hosted networking events for important left-wing women. There was a second house in her constituency which was a venue for a huge Solstice party each year. 

The role of international aid worker is highly valued among a section of shrewd university-educated females. It offers a particularly attractive combination of a good salary in an expanding sector, frequent foreign travel and high status among the do-gooding circles.

This is ever so typical of modern politics which has centralised and demolished any semblance of local democracy - where we are forced to endure these bland, compliant functionaries, marinated in political correctness and happy to regurgitate the platitudes and attitudes of their political masters. (And are well-rewarded for doing so). Creagh recites her immortal words that "We have much more in common than those who seek to divide us". Sorry but who is this we?

I actually don't have anything in common with the liberal establishment - especially as it travels deeper down the rabbithole of transgender rights where we are now putting child-grooming men in women's prisons on the basis of their self-identity. 

I don't have anything in common with a Labour party that tells victims of grooming to "shut their mouths" for the sake of diversity. I have nothing in common with a party that seeks to reward a race to the bottom in victimhood Olympics. I do not want a surpranational rules based order that destroys democracy. I want nothing to do with the creeping censoriousness of the left. Mary Creagh and her ilk make my skin crawl. For as long as these people control the narrative (which they do even when they are not in power) we will continue to see a rise of "populism" - and when we have politicians as vile as Creagh, I have no idea why that's a bad thing. The best thing the left can do to respond to populism is to crawl into a hole and die. 

Going nowhere as usual

Painting By Dennis Meiners

On Twitter I've had to mute the terms "people's vote", "second referendum" and any other permutation of a re-run of the 2016 vote. I am not interested in having that debate. We've had that debate time and again and even if minds have changed (which they more than likely haven't) there isn't going to be a second referendum.

As much as that debate is not interesting it is also futile in that if anyone does have a hardened position on it, nothing anyone says is likely to change their mind. Getting involved n that sort of debate is a waste of time and I rather suspect the only reason anyone is engaging at all is out of utter boredom with the entire proceedings. I don't blame them.

It has been a while since I devoted any space to the ongoing negotiations not least because there have been no developments to speak of. Every time the media claims we are close, the Twitter "Brexperts" get excited over something new to churn but these breakthrough stories don't even last a day before we are back to square one.

Then, as EUreferendum notes, the conversation is awash with vague terminology and without seeing the hard context of it, for which there is none, all of it is meaningless. We simply do not know what is going on and we cannot trust the guesswork of the media. We're going to have to see a formal draft before we know what we are looking at.

What makes it doubly difficult for me to follow is the knowledge that there is the basis of a solution (the EEA) which remains the elephant in the room. Being that this government will not contemplate it, there is only one of two ways this can go. Either it's an inelegant fudge (but essentially a cave in to most of the EU's demands) or crashing out without a deal.

Should a deal be reached it will be a deal that pleases no-one and will only limp through parliament if there is a general realisation that voting it down makes an accidental Brexit even more likely. One certainty is that Brexiters will vote it down largely because it will be worse than Chequers. To avoid activating the backstop, any future deal will be more of a "rule taker" set up than the EEA and without the Efta firewall. If Corbynite MPs then play silly buggers too then it has no chance of passing. What then?

There are those who believe Theresa May will move to extend but there are no signals from this government to that end, it certainly isn't planning on a wider vote and they have quietly convinced themselves that no deal is a recoverable position. Unless something radical changes, we're still leaving the EU as planned.

We are, therefore, playing the waiting game. We still have a way to go before things get interesting again. The last window for any kind of agreement is probably going to be early January and if by then we are still nowhere then it really is time to stock up on the tinned food and instant noodles - after which things get very interesting.

Whatever does happen, Brexit day is only the beginning and the shape of the deal (or the non-deal) will dictate the scale, scope and duration of the problems, many of which will not be satisfactorily resolved by 2030, if ever. The uncertainty in between will be the job killer. We are already seeing businesses voting with their feet.

Whether Brexiters care to admit it or not the only workable whole UK deal was the EEA. We were always going to have to leave in stages and we weren't going to get everything we wanted on the back of the Brexit process. We needed a long term navigation out of the EU but everyone is in so much of a rush that it can only end in Brexiters being bitterly disappointed or with Britain facing an omni-crisis the likes we have not seen before.

In respect of this, with the EEA knocked out of the running by the idiotic Nick Boles, I feel I have no dog in the fight. I have no particular desire to see us crash out but May's deal is so utterly obnoxious that even I'm wondering if it isn't better to simply bite the bullet and let the fever run its course. Only when the ultra Brexiters stand completely discredited and swept off the board can we have a rational discourse about what happens next.

For the moment they are still poisoning the well with propaganda and until their supporters can see with their own eyes that "project fear" is project reality. They will make their excuses and try to blame Brussels, but Brussels certainly will fight back. They will not stand to be slandered. For a time we will all be too busy playing the blame game to address the issues.

In the end the blame lies squarely with the MPs and Prime Ministers of the last thirty years who have willingly allowed all of our regulatory functions and external relations to be absorbed into the EU apparatus. Most of all their hubris is to blame - believing that they could keep us from having a say and that what was done would be irreversible. Cleaning up their mess was always going to be a very mess, very bloody business.

Freedom of movement: "a timebomb of social tension"

A highly relevant piece appears in the Guardian today highlighting the tensions between immigrant communities in our inner cities. It stops short of being John Harris poverty safari. Helen Pidd has produced a valuable and timely article. (When do I ever say that?). I will want to do a longer essay around this subject but I just wanted to take a few notes as I'm somewhat occupied today. First off we have this:

The last, most scientific, attempt at estimating the UK’s Roma population, by Salford University in 2013, put it at just under 200,000. That has almost certainly ballooned. As EU citizens, mostly from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Romania, Roma do not have to register on arrival. So local authorities tried to make their own estimates based on school admissions and GP registrations – neither terribly reliable considering the Roma mistrust of authority, stemming from deep-rooted discrimination in their home countries.

This is crucial because it busts open a lot of remainer narratives and statistical extrapolations in that authorities are relying on pure guesswork as to how many have come to the UK. They tend to do casual labour, not all will register with GPs and so the chances of obtaining accurate metrics are nil. 

The whole reason we have a census every ten years is so that local authorities can plan and allocate resources. The decisions to open our borders put all that planning and forecasting in the bin. It is therefore inevitable that public services will be stretched. 

Like many new arrivals, the Roma have tended to stick together. They rent poor-quality private accommodation in the cheapest areas and toil in the sort of unskilled, low-paid jobs many Britons snub. Big families cram into two-bed terraced houses.

This is by no means restricted to the big cities. It turns smaller towns into crime ridden ghettos. Housing overcrowding is a major issue. It is the means by which migrants can cut overheads so they can afford to take the jobs that Brits (who have to all the financial obligations that come with a settled life) cannot.  

In many rapidly changing neighbourhoods, tensions over noise, antisocial behaviour and litter quickly surfaced with the more established residents. Usually of immigrant background themselves, many of them had worked in the same minimum-wage jobs on arrival as the Roma but had managed to buy their properties.

As much as we are importing the barely socialised the antisocial behaviour is entirely deliberate specifically to drive down property prices so that they can buy up a street for a song. That's great for them but not so great if you bought a house their with a view to trading up one day. I have seen this dynamic as Muslim have gradually colonised neighbourhoods, being of such a nuisance that white working class want to get out as fast as possible. The moment the for sale sign goes up there's a Pakistani knocking on the door offering to buy with cash. 

Six miles north-east of Page Hall is Eastwood, a suburb of Rotherham. Ever since she was elected to represent the town in 2012, Sarah Champion MP has been receiving complaints about litter, fly-tipping and antisocial behaviour, blamed on Roma arrivals. For a long time, the complaints came from white British and British Pakistani people who had bought their homes before EU enlargement, said the Labour MP. “There are people who put all their savings into their homes and find how they are worth less than they paid for them. They are stuck. They can’t leave the area. It’s a nightmare,” she said. A two-bed terrace on Milton Road, one of the most fly-tipped streets, sold in 2015 for £38,000. Four years previously it had been bought for £59,950.

Most recently, postal workers said they were so frightened delivering in Eastwood after being mugged for their parcels that they no longer went out alone. “They are terrified because of the level of intimidation,’ said Champion. She went out on a round with two postal workers: “If I wasn’t with two post people, I would have been running away. I was really shocked how bad it was.”

This is a familiar tale to me having helped two friends move house, making a loss in an era where the rest of the country is seeing massive gains in value. This was circa 2004 just before prices skyrocketed and mortgages closed off meaning that they were then frozen out of the housing market.

The rest of the article reads much the same, with settled and stable communities being turned into transient slums. It's a big improvement on the sickening dishonesty we usually see in the comment pages of the Guardian. Long time readers will know I've made similar points on this and other blogs. 

So the situation as is, is that the working class are having their communities ripped apart and their assets devalued and putting pressure on rents as more houses are carved up into flats - and pressure on wages. Before you know it you have a wellspring of resentment which the London metropolitan will simply write off as bigotry and ignorance and to even suggest these things are happening is simply far right populism. It is because the BNP were talking about these things when nobody else dare that they hoovered up a million votes before their migration to Ukip.

Of course the reply from remainers and other spreadsheet sociopaths is to simply firehose the plebs with more welfare and "build more houses". This is essentially the modern version of "let them eat cake". There are serious structural defects in the property market which aren't resolved by added capacity and investment tends to go into student apartments and yuppie shoeboxes. Inevitably when we do leave the EU and all of these zombie developments start to crash in price Brexiters will get the blame. You won't find anybody in the slums of Bradford or Sheffield shedding a tear. 

For a long time now I have argued that much of this resentment could have been contained with just basic good governance - having street inspectors to deter fly-tipping and clear up the mess - and police and environmental health taking robust action on noise complaints, but they stopped doing this long because anybody uttered the word "austerity" not least because of how the culture of local government has been bureaucratised and governed by KPI culture - which is in fact the more insidious influence of the EU. 

That though is not so easy when you have migrant communities who actively challenge the authority of local government which is something I have seen in Muslim areas in Bradford. Tribalism is a factor and they are keen to put on a show of force to remind the police who is really in control. We are drifting toward American style ghettoisation. Being that just as things start to settle the government needs another boost in growth it opens up the doors to another disruptive wave of unskilled migrants who are nether welcome nor needed. Meanwhile we appear to have an open door to Pakistan even though it is a weapons grade shithole.

Unsurprisingly this Guardian article has remainers in full spin saying that Brexit doesn't actually solve any of these issues. They might be right in that the damage is already done and is largely irreversible. All Brexit can really do is stop it getting any worse and remove the incentive to come. What I do know though, is that f the referendum is reverse and those in the Northern inner cities are told that their vote didn't matter in 2016, the tolerance that exists now will be gone. If you thought the Brexit vote caused a surge in hate crime just wait til you tell the working classes that they don't matter.

In a lot of respects Brexit is a culture war because for a long time we had Gordon Brown denying any of these things were happening, and now we find Sarah Champion removed from the Labour front bench for speaking the obvious in respect of child sexual exploitation. We can see that these are issue the left does not want to confront and would rather indulge in politically correct navel gazing and pushing SJW fads. 

Meanwhile we have prestigious academics fabricating narratives and lying through their teeth about the economic and social impacts of freedom of movement. Particularly the thoroughly dishonest Jonathan Portes. They shore up their weakling arguments with happy clappy fluff about our freedom to live and work in Europe - a meaningless entitlement, useless to those with family obligations or those who simply can't afford travel. Which is most of us.  

At the heart of this is a middle class who does not want the disruption of Brexit. The denial in respect of these issues tells us that they don't know what is happening and they don't care just so long as they are not inconvenienced, they still have their holiday perks and the current economic climate keeps propping up the value of their own homes and investments even if the price of that is a collapse of social mobility and boiling pot of racial tension -  and those not born to wealthy parents are permanently frozen out of the housing market.

Economics aside, people want stable, settled communities because that much is a natural human instinct which is never accounted for in the calculations of open borders economists. It is not a sin to want to control immigration. The EU, though, being primarily concerned with the free movement of capital and to save corporates the bother of having to train anybody will insist on freedom of movement. You can have democracy or trade but not both. If that is the ultimatum then I am not surprised Brexiters are pushing for a hard Brexit. 

As it happens the symptoms I outline would make for the basis of a workable Article 112 case in the EEA process, but our politicians are not capable of that level of sophistication, not least since it would mean admitting Brexit voting northerners have a point. 

What Britain needs is a fundamental economic reordering. The current settlement is underpinned by an unfair immigration policy that has major negative externalities and it mainly serves the already privileged. Brexit knocks out that exploitative tier of the economy forcing a correction along the lines of what it should be were it not for the distortion. 

The adjustment will not be pretty but culturally, politically and economically it is very necessary because the baseline is a truer reflection of current economic performance. Current growth is largely underpinned by immigration which masks failing economic policies while adding to the overall decay in governance as it struggles to meet the ever more diverse challenges. It cannot be patched with EU regional funding and with massive care and pensions liabilities mounting up we need to force the issue and find another way of doing things. The cradle to grave welfare state must end. 

I am of the view that this will hit the former mill towns and coal towns the hardest but these are places long since robbed of their pride and purpose and no regional funding is ever going to bring it back. Brexit will cause agglomeration to the nearest centre of economic gravity causing an exchange of people allowing lower middle classes invest their capital in the places vacated by those warehoused on welfare. This is the best way to regenerate our towns while utilising our redundant human potential. 

Ultimately there isn't going to be an economic revival until we have resolved the acute political dysfunction and healed the rifts - which is not going to happen if we stay in the EU. Not now, not ever. The existing sclerotic settlement ultimately stands in the way of an economic re-ordering. Brexit kicks the props away. The subsequent movement in the economy is what will crate the new opportunities. For that though, freedom of movement as we now know it must end. This matters more than being able to obtain strawberrys all year round.

Ultimately the economics must come second to reuniting the country. This cannot be done with an aloof political class with entirely alien values. The message of 2016 must be heard and acted upon. Should we fail to address the acute divides exposed by the 2016 vote then the illusory prosperity we enjoy now is doomed to failure as we slide toward civil unrest and hardening factionalism. Trade deals can be rebuilt. The fabric of our society, though, is not so easily repaired. 

And still they know nothing

'I don't think that should be the focus at the moment, I think the focus should be on a deal' - @YvetteCooperMP doesn't rule out a second EU referendum but says the country should be focused on Brexit negotiations. #Ridge

For more, head here: https://t.co/7Vnqj0O5n1 pic.twitter.com/VAZS8pr2tv

— Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) November 4, 2018

Yvette Cooper on Ridge on Sunday sees fit to share her wisdom with us. Says Cooper "I think being in a customs union is really important. Personally I think it should be a front stop not just a backstop because I think this is good for Yorkshire manufacturing. It's about manufacturing jobs and trade".

Really? Assuming there is an FTA following Article 50 talks, tariffs are eliminated and we can expect at least a 50% Rules of Origin threshold. Applying this may lead to manufacturers sourcing more internally. More sophisticated manufacturers will find ways to mitigate others will either pay a negligible tariff.

Most of this will be handled electronically and there is already commercial software available to assist with the calculation. Provided we can come to a sensible agreement on customs cooperation there is no reason why business is entitled to a customs union nor does it solve anything that makes it worth giving up a major component of our trade policy. In most respects the major headache is the red tape, but international exporters will be familiar with this process anyway.

To date there has been no serious analysis of who would be affected but we can safely assume it's a minority of companies and the tariffs are largely absorbed by currency fluctuations anyway. The real headache, as regular readers know is certifying goods for sale which is of varying complexity depending on the sector. This, though, is absolutely nothing to do with the customs union and outside of the single market it is those checks that will ultimately have the more significant cost implications for manufactures.

Put simply Cooper has no idea what a customs union would actually solve. She is bluffing. She is not alone in not knowing what she is talking about. This is a common misconception in the Westminster bubble which is impervious to external inputs and even the executive has not grasped the issues which is presumably why we are drifting toward a customs union. Should we agree to a customs union we will have seriously hobbled our independent trade policy while doing next to nothing to eliminate customs formalities at the border.

Cooper then goes on to complain that this still seems to be about the withdrawal agreement and the temporary arrangements but not about the long term plan. She has evidently failed to grasp the function and sequencing of Article 50 talks. Certainly it would help to have a better idea of what we are roughly aiming at but if it isn't the EEA then it is only going to be an FTA with rudimentary alignment on standards and regulations.

Being that Sophie Ridge is a vacuous know-nothing blonde, hired largely because she is telegenic, she is not remotely equipped to challenge Cooper on her profound issue illiteracy meaning that viewers are none the wiser and, as is usual, any TV Brexit debate is time-wasting chatter from deep within the bubble. It's not just the women letting the side down though. Were we to flip channels we would see bickering between the equally moronic Brendan O'Neill and Owen Jones who, for all the difference it makes, are essentially the same person.

The only function TV Brexit debate serves is to remind us how utterly clueless our media is, still massively behind the curve, and incapable of interrogating similarly vacuous politicians who at this point should know substantially more than they do. Not only have they failed to acquire any knowledge collectively they have no idea where to even look for it.

There was a time when I opposed Theresa May's notion that no deal is better than a bad deal, assuming there wasn't a worse deal than no deal, but May seems to be going out of her way to prove me wrong. Were we to end up in a customs union we would still be subject to most of the third country controls (a point made repeatedly by Barnier), but not actually in control of a major part of trade policy when the vote in 2016 was very much about deciding who and what comes into the country and on what terms.

A competent opposition should by now be running rings around the Tories at this point, but in the end they will share with the media much of the blame for our predicament. They have failed in their basic obligation to get to grips with the issues and by their own indolence have allowed the Tories to make a massive pigs ear of it. Had we a functioning opposition and even a halfway informed media, there would be an obvious alternative on the table. Instead it falls to the wreckers like Nick Boles who has now demolished the EEA option for the foreseeable future.

At the beginning of this process, my working assumption was that May would eventually be boxed in by reality, with a majority remain House of Commons able to push her into the Efta option. I did not anticipate the fragmentation and deep state of decay. What we've seen instead is guesswork and infighting based on half understood notions completely ignoring expert testimony on committee and elsewhere. With the media in a similar state of dysfunction it has been allowed to drift into the danger zone. If we do go over the cliff then it will be their collective responsibility.

Why remainers don't want democracy

Picking up on the general disarray in the Brexit debate eureferendum.com wonders whether it is even possible to conduct a well-founded referendum on the EU in this country. The level of knowledge on both sides is so abysmal that an informed debate is almost impossible.

This is a hugely pertinent question. It has taken several long months for politicians do gradually work out the functional difference between a customs union and a single market. Even now there are few who could confidently define either and even fewer who could construct arguments to any level of sophistication for or against either.

As to the matter of EU law it is a near certainty that few MPs could tell us where it comes from and how it is made. Even basic knowledge of the EU law making process is thin on the ground. That though is forgivable. For instance, a regulation is different to a council regulation which is different to a directive which is different from an ECJ decision. Similarly barely anyone can say the difference between the council and the commission and what the respective roles are and where the overlaps and conflicts are. And this is without going into the vagaries of the Parliament.

The more informed remainers can give us a Janet and John recital of how it works in theory but have no more idea how how it functions in practice than any man on the street. even less is known of the massive lobbying apparatus in Brussels and the day to day operations. 

But then, says EUreferendum, does that not make the case? If the majority – for good or bad – is not able properly to describe their system of government (with some even denying that the EU is part of our government, supreme in the areas of its exclusive competence), how can it possibly be called a democracy if informed debate is central to it?

We know roughly how the Westminster system works. We elect governments who propose laws, they fanny around a bit then have a vote then fanny around a bit more, then it gets kicked up to the Lords for a bit more fannying around and finally vote it into law. The processes can sometimes be a little mysterious but we basically know who is responsible for what and at the end of the day if they screw it up too much we can get rid of them. 

In terms of lobbying we know roughly where to look and our media does actually keep tabs on it, unlike Brussels which has only attracted the media's interest since we voted to leave. There is a level of basic transparency and we get to hear of the more egregious abuses. Not so in Brussels where Monsanto is practically writing the rules and big tobacco has enormous power. And that's without going into detail and that's before you climb into trade lobbying. 

If there is one exceptional merit to national democracy it is that the simplicity works. If you cannot reasonably explain how a system works then it cannot hope to have legitimacy. It is this fundamental legitimacy that the EU has lacked from inception and cannot hope to resolve without radical structural changes which would make it a fundamentally different animal.

The EU is an ideal form of government if you want no part in the process and you're content to trust governance to someone else entirely, but the consequence of this is waking up one morning to find it has outlawed your business or banned a product you depend on and you have no means of redress. There is little in the way of an early warning system and by the time we are aware of what's happening, it's already too late. 

This mode of government reduces the public to the status of livestock where all decisions are essentially economic decisions where welfare is merely factored in the same way a farmer calculates the light levels in a battery shed for maximum productivity. This is where you find a marked difference between leavers and remainers. 

Remainers tend not to be bothered by things like democracy and self-determination just so long as you don't have to queue in the airport and your holiday phone bill is cheaper. It suits the politically disinterested and the disengaged. It is interesting that much of the rampant europhilia that exists now did not exist until someone threatened to take their toys away. Meanwhile the people who think that laws and lawmaking should be directly accountable and reformable are Brexiters. 

EU governance has suited the Blair era down to a tee where the EU takes care of technical and trade governance while the national government manages the redistribution and keeps the plebs adequately serviced by a vast machine employing millions of Labour voting middle class non jobbers. The ultimate in technocratic serfdom, keeping the people dumb but fed well enough so they don't rebel. 

This is essentially why explaining democracy and self-determination to a neo-Blairite remainer is like trying to explain a waterproof coat to a fish. It has no use for it, no need of it, and the notion that people should have a say in their own affairs is conceptually alien to them. They are only interested in politics so far as it keeps the NHS industrial complex running. This is why the two positions are essentially irreconcilable. Remainers want to be spoonfed zombies without any of the responsibility of democratic participation. 

That is perhaps a little unkind to some. There are indeed some genuine remainers suckered in by the EU's pastiche of democracy but even then, their concern is not Brexit per se, rather the enormous mess we will make of leaving. My question to them though is what on earth did you expect?

We have over forty years dismantled most of our independent regulatory apparatus, wound down our consular presence, shut down all our trade negotiation capacity, consolidated all of our external relations into one treaty construct and made our systems hopelessly dependent on the EU. It is not remotely surprised that ministers have no idea how anything works because they are not responsible for running any of it.

If there were to be an honest referendum to settle the issue for good it would ask of the public whether they wish to remain and dismantle Westminster as a national apparatus of government - because the levers of power in London increasingly are not attached to anything. It is but a redundant signal box.

This would suit the remainers down to the ground. They don't like or trust the voters much and they actually prefer the idea on a constrained parliament and meaningless votes. If we were going to simply exist under EU dominion then we might as well be done with it and stop wasting money on useless MPs. 

It is actually ironic to me that though I notionally have the right to go and live and work in twenty seven other countries, I cannot think of anything more likely to make me move away from the UK than if we were simply resign ourselves to bland managerial rule. 

I am well aware that we are no longer an empire. I don't need a gloaty pissant remainer to tell me the Commonwealth is a defunct entity. I thought CANZUK was a ridiculous idea before remainers were even introduced to it. Never once have I subscribed to to any of the theories of the crackpot Eurosceptics. I'm just not of the view that Britain is a deadbeat country that needs to atone for its sins by shutting down its essential democratic functions. There is no reason why we cannot secure a role as a mid ranking power in an intergovernmental setting able to decide who and what comes into our country and on what terms. 

Here I cannot be persuaded that Brexit makes us any less relevant than we already are in international affairs. The notion that the EU amplifies our influence is a narcissistic delusion. The EU running its own independent agenda as a rogue actor is something we can hide behind but it is not influence in its own right. I rather think it necessary to step out from under those delusions not least so we don't fool ourselves into more vanity bombing campaigns. If anyone has imperial delusions it is the remainers who see the EU as a surrogate empire through which we get to tell the rest of the world what to do.

The notion that we live in a post-sovereignty age is only partially true. It is overstated with the intent of demoralising Brexiters. There is give and take on standards and trade-offs in terms of technical governance where there is every advantage in cooperation. Nowhere though, except in the EU, does it say we have to subordinate our values and surrender political authority. 

And that is the crux of it. All political authority must stem from the people in order for there to be a democracy. As much as we were taken this far in without consent or consultation the people can instruct our politicians but they are bound by the obligations they made to Brussels thus are loyal to Brussels rather than the people they nominally serve. 

For decades now the British liberal elites (for want of a better phrase) have been in thrall to a self-loathing and a belief that our democracy should be constrained because our values are too primitive and too savage - and that nationalism is the root of all evil. It is that singular dysfunction that has driven them to cleave massive chunks of political power from the people and give it to the unelected and the unaccountable. In so doing they declared war on democracy. The legacy remain campaign is just their Operation Clausewitz. Soon though, Soubry, Adonis and Professor Grayling will be reaching for the cyanide capsules. The game is most definitely up!

The Banks saga changes nothing

The remain sphere has long decided that Arron Banks is guilty of something. We have seen months of innuendo and speculation but nothing definitive. They want us to believe that there is no smoke without fire and the smoke alone is reason enough to halt the Brexit proceedings. They haven't thought this through.

Factors influencing the decision to vote leave are diverse. From a human rights perspective seeing how EU policy fills up the seas with corpses that alone is reason enough to vote leave. If your primary concern is national sovereignty then leave is a no-brainer and if you want an end to freedom of movement then that is as much a culmination of lived experiences as any other factor.

But then humans don't make political decisions in isolation. they discuss it with friends and family and look to opinion formers within their social circle. A fair few people voted to leave on the basis of something I said. A few people even voted remain on the basis of something I said. You can't please everybody. The point, though, is that people do go and vote the way they did of their own volition. There is no suggestion of vote tampering or postal vote fraud. As far as the physical voting goes this was as clean a vote as they come.

So then imagine how it would look when, on the basis of some manufactured speculation, when Remain actually spend considerably more than Leave, an establishment that never wanted to leave does an about face and snatches our votes away from us. There will be hell to pay and there would be lasting repercussions.

More to the point, it wouldn't settle anything. There would have to be a re-run. Is Remain sure that they would win it? I don't think so. By this time there would be a growing voter backlash, believing that the nullification of the first referendum was an establishment stitch up. There are plenty of ways to spin it.

And what would a re-run look like? Who would be in government, what would their approval ratings be and what position would they take? These variables are impossible to call. We know roughly what the constants are in the the Leave brigade would be roughly the same faces and likewise for remain and again it comes down to which side is the least loathsome. On the leave side we have boorish and clueless and on the remain side we have condescension and bile. It could go other way.

The question, though, is whether it would actually settle anything. Assuming the EU would allow us to stay, wed' be in a position of having wanted to leave to having to negotiate our position going forward which would likely come with EU demands to end the rebate and a number of opt outs. I cannot imagine anything more poisonous on the domestic front.

Pretty soon after that, Ukip is back in business and those like me who had previously preferred to keep them at arms length, will be voting for them without hesitation. Enough to keep British politics off balance for years. If the aim of remain is to stop Brexit so that we can all go back to the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony and sing Kumbaya then it simply isn't going to happen any way you cut it.

Westminster would try to get back to business as usual, attempting to sweep it all under the rug, launching special initiatives and spending programmes, but none of it will make a dent. There's too much bad blood. Meanwhile EU membership has next to zero legitimacy in that we'd be a rule taker from an entity we actually, as a matter of fact, voted to leave. Any future in the EU is one where roughly half of the electorate must be permanently subordinated and the issue comes back to haunt us again and again and again.

We should also note that without a political resolution, the uncertainty may ease somewhat but then the issue remains an open question which will deter long term investment. Then eventually we bump into another major EU level crisis - because there always will be one - and the cycle starts all over again. There is then the matter of any future EU treaty which the UK would have to put to a referendum - which it would lose and then the EU is stalled permanently. We'd remain in a Lisbon limbo with the EU becoming ever more dysfunctional. 

The fact remainers cannot and will not admit is that Britain simply does not belong in the EU. We therefore have to find another way so that we can return to a sense of political equilibrium. EU membership has never been able to secure a stable mandate and we have only been in it this long because hitherto now we have been denied a say. Leaving was always an inevitability and gruesome remainer hopes that leavers would simply die off will not come to pass.

Moreover, remain sentiment is now less to do with the EU than it is a fetishisation of the EU as a totem of their progressive virtue. For the rest of us the EU may have certain practical advantages but everybody normal has no love of it. If there is a pragmatic, sensible way out (which indeed there is) then most remainers would go along with it. Many confess to me that Efta would be entirely acceptable.

Being that a combined effort of the extremes have managed to kill Efta for the time being, a sane Brexit seems less likely than ever but it still looks to me like the fastest way back to normality is to bite the bullet and let Brexit fever run its course. There will be much rebuilding to do afterwards but I still believe this will be a positive for our politics and as we do adapt to our new settings the legacy remain movement will melt away to become a shrill irrelevance.

The EU for as long as it has existed has been a thorn in the paw of British democracy and it has defined much of the factional infighting for all of my adult life. Britain is unable to move forward without resolving this question and if the remain establishment conspires to keep us in then we will spend the next forty years bickering about it and it then falls to the next generation to sort out. We cannot go on like this. It's time to end it.

Europe's liberal establishments will perish unless they face ugly home truths

This morning I stumbled upon this speech on Brexit by AfD leader Alice Weidel in the German parliament. It's entirely reasoned with an intellectual foundation and most eurosceptics would not find much to disagree with. Remainers of the remain and reform ilk would also see value in it.

But then come the shrieks that AfD is "far right". And now it would seem various censorious groups have managed to derail an Oxford Union debate Weidel was due to speak at. My general feeling is that they're afraid of her because she has coherent arguments with an intellectual foundation and they are seriously worried that her arguments will carve through their piss-weak metropolitan liberalism like a hot knife through butter. That's why they don't want her to speak.

As it happens I am not especially familiar with AfD's wider manifesto, or whether it especially qualifies as far right. It certainly appears that it stand in support of some pretty unpleasant views. That's the impression I get from reading this BBC piece, but if it's anything like BBC Reality Check pieces, it has been quite deliberately robbed of context and nuance.

In some respects we in the UK are not able to fairly judge. Ugly circumstances produce ugly politics and we have the luxury of avoiding border debates to the same extent in that we have no land borders with the mainland. 

In answer to the question "Is AfD far right" the BBC is unequivocal. "Yes. Leading AfD figures made extremist statements before and during the 2017 election campaign. Since the vote, Alexander Gauland has talked of fighting an "invasion of foreigners" and their campaign openly focused on Islam and migration. AfD sees Islam as alien to German society. Some of their rhetoric has been tinged with Nazi overtones".

Nazi overtones there may be but then Germany must ask why AfD is attracting the support it does and no doubt letting in nearly a million Syrians probably has something to do with it - which "may" have contributed to an upsurge in violent crime. I doubt there is any "may" about it. There is certainly a debate to be had there. 

There is then the question as to whether Islam is alien to German society. It stands to reason that it is since German society is alien to pretty much everyone. Joking aside though, pictured above is a funeral in Bradford. More than 10,000 "mourners" turned out to pay their respects at the joint funeral of four friends killed when their BMW skidded out of control after overtaking two police cars. Their car crashed into a tree as they were being followed by a unmarked police car at 5.30am. Reports do not say why the police were in pursuit.

Whether they were joyriding miscreants or drug dealers is not apparent but it seems genuinely strange to me that it would bring out ten thousands people. This is clearly something to do with tribalism and that I know of it does not happen in British culture. This is Pakistani culture, it is alien, it isn't normal, it's not integration and I see nothing praiseworthy about the dead.

Here we have to say a little something about Pakistani culture given that following the news that Christian, Aisa Bibi has been released from prison for blasphemy offences, amidst mass protests, there are now moves to prevent her from leaving the country which some have described as a death sentence. Primitive. Disgusting.

Then earlier this year came the news that hundreds of dead newborn girls were found dumped in garbage piles in Pakistan amid a cultural preference for boys. A total of 345 babies have been found dead in refuse heaps in Karachi, Pakistan's most populous city, since the beginning of 2017 with 99 per cent of them found to be girls, according to local reports. In one horrifying case, a four-day-old was found dead with her throat slit. Another newborn was left on the steps of a mosque only to be stoned to death when a cleric assumed it was an 'illegitimate baby', a charity reported.

That is alien to British culture. I will not accept any equivocation on this. So here we have a barbaric savage alien culture living in Britain, not integrating, and perversely we are expected to believe by forelock-tugging liberals that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the ethnicity of the child sex abusers in Rotherham, Telford and Oxford and elsewhere. The epidemic is entirely coincidental.

With German politics there are plenty of traps for the unwary so I do not presume to judge but here in the UK, multi-ethnic London sneers at us "racists" in from the regions who think that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be admitting men from Pakistan because it's a disgusting country with a perverse and backward culture - and worse still, it's regressing. Being also that they tend to be foaming antisemites, areas controlled politically by Pakistanis are increasingly less safe for Jew - and what they bring to local politics is spillover tribalism and corruption.  

Here there is a debate to be had as to whether that is Pakistani culture or Islam itself. That is one for the scholars but working class people whose daughters are being brutally raped and passed around scores of men are naturally less discerning. 

Germany, however, is spooked by its own shadow and its own denial of sensitive problems are haunted by its own past. Anything racially sensitive naturally invokes the Holocaust. the immediate point I would make is that Jews were scapegoated when in fact they were integral to German and wider European culture, whereas here we do have a problem with an alien culture in our midst, and one intimately related to terrorist atrocities, sex attacks and violent crime. 

In liberal fantasy land these issues are all downplayed and there is that ever crass trope that diversity enriches us - and that these poor souls are escaping persecution and we should invite more of them because they are our future doctors, nurses and lawyers etc. They've been able to hold the line with this shtick for a while now but it's wearing thin. Denial is a poor substitute for debate.

So this then all begs the question as to whether the AfD has a point? I guess we are not going to find out from the cowardly Oxford Union. They don't want contentious debate of any kind especially when there's a good chance their intellectually bankrupt PC addled children might actually lose. But then of course these ideas do manage to find an audience eventually among a public who have grown weary of politicians and academia refusing to engage in the issues, very often willing accomplices to the conspiracy of silence.

Politicians then wonder why they are facing populist backlashes unable to counter what they now term as "fake news". They are not wrong that there's a lot of nasty propaganda out there but it's actually nothing new. The reason it has legs is because repeatedly the state broadcaster and tightly regulated local and national media has shown it cannot be trusted. As much as what they produce omits key details, the metropolitan skewed values of their reporters often clouds the story. Channel 4 seeks to remedy this by moving its HQ to Leeds but I have a feeling a media bubble is immune to external inputs wherever it is located.

We are told that liberalism is collapsing in Europe. I am not sure that it is. The old parties certainly are because they failed to observe the basic rule of politics that if they fail to uphold and defend the values of the majority then they will look to fascists in the hope that they will. Here the old establishment has to confront some of its own internal contradictions. If you want a society where women, Jews and gays are free to walk unharassed in the streets and without fear after dark then you can't be importing savages from the back hills of Kashmir. If police won't act swiftly on CSE then you will see vigilantes who will.

By now there are enough signals for the politicians to have learned something but they haven't because they never do. I expect that Germany's politics is even more hamstrung than our own, but as the shadow of the holocaust fades new generations of Germans feel less inclined to be held hostage to it. Like the UK its era of political competence and relative stability will come to an end. If not immediately after Merkel then after Germany has its own Gordon Brown. That's when things get interesting. 

One of the more ridiculous facets of the Brexit debate is liberals telling me that they feel more European and have a European identity. What we see there is pure virtue signalling narcissism from staggeringly inward looking people.They appear not to have noticed Bulgaria's mafiocracy, Poland's socially conservative retrenchment and the authoritarian drift in Hungary. And let's be honest here, this is about immigration. Those who have opened their borders are regretting it and those who haven't are wondering why they should allow the EU to bully them into it. 

Brexit is only partially about immigration but there is no way freedom of movement can be ignored. Brtions are not nearly as hostile to freedom of movement as we have been told (mostly by remainers) but the EU restated the the single market comes with the four freedoms. Though there are ways around this, the essential ultimatum on the table is trade and freedom of movement or face massive restrictions on trade. You have have trade or democracy but not both. Their tone deafness is absolute.

This is a point made by Alice Weidel of the AfD, and she warns that the authoritarian strand of the EU seeking to impose its tin-eared ideology on Europe, and in so doing destroying commercial and social links with Britain, the EU is very much signing its own death warrant. Instead of meeting the arguments head on, the spin machine goes into overdrive to delegitimise her and in so doing close down the best early warning signal they could ever have.

Britain doesn't have an AfD but it still has Tommy Robinson and the rotting corpse of Ukip. Brexit, to a point, appears to have lanced the boil for a while. I do not, though, think we have seen the last of the immigration issue not have we seen the back of anti-Muslim sentiment. There are plenty of ways that it could get ugly and I fully expect that it will. Locking up Tommy Robinson isn't going to help if there is another CSE scandal of recent magnitude.

There is only really one way to avert a larger populist backlash and that is for the Establishments of Europe to unequivocally admit to those uncomfortable truths they would rather bury and take robust and convincing countermeasures. Every loophole must be closed and we can no longer allow human rights law to serve as a cynical back door around our immigration policy or we will see the end of the ECHR. More crucially, the UK especially must stand up to the shrill politically correct activist minority - and not just on immigration, lest there be a full blown culture war. 

When it comes to idiotic PC fads, whatever lunacy infects the USA inevitably arrives at our shores and then travels through to Brussels. Trans-activism appears to be the latest in which Julian Vigo remarks that "There is perhaps no other area of human behaviour where ideologically motivated actors have been so successful in creating what are in effect no-go zones for academics, and even for facts themselves". He could just as easily be speaking about Islam and immigration.

The issue is not that there are demented trans-activists. They are entitled to live in whatever reality they create for themselves. What should concern us is the weakness and cowardice of our institutions who readily cave into activists of any passing fad - and the unwillingness of our most prestigious academic centres of excellence refusing to defend enlightenment values. Central to the collapse of Western liberalism is an outbreak of moral midgetry.

Modern progressive views proliferate not because they are right but because they are socially convenient. They are well suited to the politically lazy and those who never want to debate anything contentious. Glib, empty, hollow sentiment is generally accepted in media circles as being wholesome and socially aware. It is the politics of the apolitical. 

It is perhaps inevitable that they would prevail in situations where politics creates unwelcome disagreement, but when politics adopts the politics of the apolitical, erasing any disagreement, there is only dangerous groupthink that ignores the problems it exists to resolve. From there on voting makes no difference, nothing gets resolved and politics gradually becomes alien to those it notionally represents. We cannot be surprised, therefore, if those who disagree seek out the disagreeable. 

Remain cheated for decades

Whether you agree with this post depends on whether you accept the premise that the EU is a profoundly anti-democratic organisation. I have made that case on this blog so I will not repeat it here.

Arron Banks has been referred to the National Crime Agency in respect of his alleged dodgy financial dealings. I don't care. I have never met the man, and exchanged few words, most of them derogatory. My decision to vote to leave the EU is based on a long standing democratic principle and I was never going to vote any other way.

This evening I tweeted "I think I speak for virtually all leavers when I say Tony Blair and John Major did a million times more to influence my #Brexit vote than Arron Banks or Vote Leave". It has some 2600 likes so I think I am in the right ballpark here. Most had never heard of Arron Banks until the referendum. I certainly hadn't and my perceptions of the EU have been forged over two decades.

As a sentient adult I voted to leave of my own volition, I was not brainwashed by any Facebook adverts of clever marketing techniques and I use ad blockers or browse from my phone where most adverts I scroll past or don't see at all. I am of the view that most of the money spend on digital adverts was wasted. They spent the money on that simply because they didn't know what else to do with it.

But even supposing I am the odd man out and my fellow leavers are putty in the hands of digital hypnotists, I still don't care a jot. I don't even care where Banks got his money to finance his operation not least because it would have been better had he not bothered at all. I did not view his input as constructive or useful.

In the end, though I favour a moderate mode of exit I am still a Brexit fundamentalist and I am none too concerned about the tactics deployed to leave the EU because I view the EU as an illegitimate authority given power by betrayers who gave away powers that were not theirs to give. If underhanded tactics have to be deployed then so be it because the enemy can will and has done likewise. 

From the outset the leave movement was up against the entirety of the establishment be it academic, industry bosses, the legal profession, the state broadcaster and the Westminster machine - all of whom have been plied with junkets, goodies and treasure over a number of decades to buy their loyalty to the EU. It has made many sectors of civil society hopelessly dependent on it and if we are talking about foreign interference in UK democracy then the EU of itself is a culprit and we don't hear similar wailing about one George Soros who has almost single handedly bankrolled the legacy remain campaign.  

Put simply, we are here to save democracy, not practice it. We Brexiteers believe that the nation state is the only construct capable of delivering meaningful democracy and societal harmony and that the EU by design is an attack on that. I do not, therefore, accept that we should be restrained in fighting this beast which neither plays by the rules nor does it play fair. 

We are also in the grip of an establishment which repeatedly lies to us about our relationship with the EU. We were told there would be a referendum on Lisbon. There was not. We were told Cameron had used the veto. He did not. We were told that we could stay in a "reformed EU". There was no reform. We are told we should stay in and reform it - when they have no intention of even proposing reform and we wouldn't get it if we did. They lie through their teeth and they have done so for generations. 

The history of Britain's relationship with the EU is one lie after another. Party leaders are eurosceptic in opposition but committed federalists when in power. the only way we were ever able to get a say on the matter was to organise and threaten the establishment balance in Westminster and even then, every trick in the book was deployed to avoid a referendum. Now that we've had it, they have deployed every means at their disposal to frustrate and delay it.

We who believe in democracy and the nation state are up against liars and cheats. Should Arron Banks be found guilt of anything it still does not change the fact that 17m of my fellow countrymen went into the voting booth and of their own volition voted to leave. Of itself that is legitimate but if we are talking about which camp spent the most, then we have to take the entirety of spending into account and that includes EU social fund spending in the regions on ploys designed to buy the loyalties of the public with our own money. 

I could also make mention of the £9m government leaflet or the way in which the UK government used the international sphere to lecture us, inviting bosses of the WTO past and present to wag the finger at us. The Obama intervention. And you want to talk to me about foreign meddling? Not forgetting that the Remain campaign outspent Leave by a margin of £19,070,566 to £13,436,241.

This was a campaign to belittle, demoralise, and chastise the public, one in which they enlisted celebrities to patronise us and pop stars to emote at us. At one point we were held collectively responsible for the murder of an MP by a neo-nazi lunatic. They do not think we should have demcroacy because we cannot be trusted. They do not like us and they hate the idea of us having a say.

I went into this campaigning for an EEA Brexit which would have given leavers much of what they wanted while preserving much of what remain claim to value about the EU. They dishonestly conflated the EU with the single market and instead of accepting the result and working toward a viable compromise they used millions in foreign funding to mount a legacy remain campaign to keep us in, not out of genuine love for the EU but out of pure spite because they lost.

In doing so they made this a culture war where one side has to lose. If they have found Brexiters uncompromising it is because after decades of betrayal and deceit there is no trust left and we wouldn't put it past our rulers to stitch up a Brexit deal that sees us still under EU direct control with a view to taking us back in later. It is europhiles who have sown that mistrust over decades. Now you reap. 

As much as Brexit is about ending the rule of Brussels it is as much a yank ion the leash of our politicians to remind them who is boss. We have corrected their mistake. They now warn us that if there is no deal then we see a cascade of failure and the termination of all of our foreign relations. This is because they and they alone put all of our external relations and regulatory constructs into a single treaty framework and handed over the keys to Brussels. They are the ones who created that vulnerability in the belief that it would be irreversible just so long as they continued to deny us a say.

Brexit is the culmination of their hubris, deceit and and supercilious paternalism. If there is a high price to pay that is as much to do with their own ignorance of how the EU works and precisely how much control we have given away. They rubber stamped the treaties of the EU without even reading them. It is this class of indolent wastrels we are at war with and we will take back what is ours by any means necessary.


Additional: Unlike Remain's "independent" campaigners, this blogger does not have any foreign billionaires propping him up. Please give if you can.

Brexit will expose Britain's zombie economy

One could very easily say that the Thatcher reforms led to a lost generation in some parts of England. Particularly South Yorkshire. If there is one serous reason to hate Margret Thatcher it is that she is responsible for a tranche of Alan Bennettesque literature and stage plays by left wing authors. This nonsense carried on well into the nineties as the post-industrial slums of the North became a backdrop to tales of desperation and woe as though it were somehow an aberration.

But that's not strictly fair. For a certain demographic, namely working class men, they were robbed of the purpose, position and privilege and some never recovered. Arguably this was responsible the chav era of welfare dependent feral men stealing cars and selling drugs. Joyriding was an actual thing of epidemic proportions. No out of town industrial estate was complete without a burnt out Vauxhall Astra. That was real "austerity".

It wasn't until the late nineties that the regions were back on their feet as the reinvented themselves as service economies, particularly call centres for insurance, banking, internet and generic customer services. The prevailing myth at the time was that customers responded better to operators with a regional accent. This helped to seed a number of service centres such as Leeds and Sheffield.

One facet of the era was a horrendously porous welfare system wonderfully satirised by the Carla Lane series "Bread". I have hipster friends who are obsessed with 80's style and music but I don't share their fond nostalgia because everything else about that era sucked donkey balls. I don't even think Romulan shoulderpads were especially stylish either and the less said about 80's hair the better.

Now I hate to go all "four Yorkshiremen" on you but I remember growing up in that era. The supposed working class masterpiece film (if you're Brendan O'Neill), Rita, Sue and Bob Too, was shot probably less than a mile from my home. Buttershaw Estate was widely regarded as a slum and yet still not the worst in Bradford. If memory serves, Ravenscliffe was the weapons grade shithole where bus drivers would think twice about going through after 8pm.

My point is that I have functioning idea of what real austerity looks like. I know that poverty still exists in pockets and I have a good idea of where to look for it but era defining mass austerity that we saw in that turbulent era has not existed for some time. I cannot relate to left wing wailing about austerity at all. Generally speaking, in a material sense, things are ok compared with how they were. Perhaps not as good as before the 2008 crash but all the same, policy adjustments have got the welfare underclass into some form of work and it is not doing them any harm.

And that's what worries me. Things are ok when really they shouldn't be. We should have seen a major economic contraction, we should have seen a retrenchment of investment, we should have seen massive layoffs and we should have seen a collapse of the property bubble. We haven't. We have defied capitalist gravity by borrowing to prop it all up and have made only marginal reforms to policy. Certainly there has been no radial shift in paradigm since Mrs T.

What we are presently calling brutal austerity is better described as accountancy and housekeeping. Cuts have been made in order to modernise and perhaps we have gone a little too far in some areas but the idea that the Tories have radically reduced the state is not one that withstands scrutiny.

I therefore get a sense that the whole shebang is a house of cards and if Brexit really is going to have a devastating effect on trade and commerce generally then it is because the fundamentals are standing on a foundation of sand. Previously I have argues that Brexit has shone a torch on the structural dysfunction in our politics. I am certain it will do the same with much else.

One of the first major casualties of Brexit will no doubt be the London property market which has long been a nest of money laundering, recycled debt and dodgy investment. Meanwhile, for all that we are told Jaguar Landrover is threatened by Brexit, it should be noted that this is a company running at a loss with sliding sales that cannot be pegged to Brexit. We also see that more than 200 shopping centres are in crisis - many of which should never have been built in the first place, failing to detect longer term shifts in retail habits.

For a long time the UK has had a zombie economy with increasing numbers of businesses generating just about enough cash to service its debt so the bank is not obliged to pull the plug on the loan but not enough to thrive. If interest rates go up even slightly we could see thousands of companies biting the dust.

Much of the talk in relation to Brexit has been the fragility of supply chains, many of which will be terminated without a comprehensive Brexit deal. Less is said of the overall fragility of UK business whose resilience is to be tested in the near future. I argue that this the result of a accumulation of interventionist measures preventing market corrections. If markets do not on occasion fail then they cannot self-correct, weeding out the inefficiency. 

Much is said of the crown jewels of our industrial renaissance, particularly Nissan in Sunderland which has had £450m in loans from the European Investment Bank, and £347m in grants and other public funding, from the UK and EU.

We then see sweetheart deals and further hidden subsidies then stimulus in the form of scrappage schemes, handouts to the well off for eco-vehicles and if you look hard enough there will be formal links in respect of the Motability scheme (which has more than 650,000 customers.which effectively channels welfare into car companies). Free market capitalism it is not. 

We pretty much bribe Nissan to stay in the UK even though they produce hideous rotboxes and as for the new expansion of Airbus at Filton, it was funded with a £340m "loan" from the UK government. Combined with the NHS industrial complex and our love affair with Boeing and BAE Systems, we are recycling a lot of money as a lifeline to the regions (supplemented with EU grants).

This wouldn't be so bad if it were at least keeping pace with the ticking timebomb of pensions and savings but it isn't. Sooner or later we have to pay the piper and with nothing on the horizon to tackle the emergent collapse of social mobility, we are looking at a full on implosion of regional economies and irrespective of Brexit we are still on course for a Bafta award winning film directed by Stephen Daldry about four unemployed ex Sunderland car workers who set up an interpretive dance company starring Robert Carlyle and the desiccated corpse of Judi Dench.

Britain never full recovered from the 2008 crash largely because the multiple corrections we should have seen were prevented from transpiring. We have a frightening debt to GDP ratio and again, irrespective of Brexit, I don't see that improving any time soon without structural reforms to spending that no government in the current paradigm would even consider. They know what they have to do but that haven't figured a way to do it without being voted out of office. Theresa May's cackhanded dementia tax cost her a majority.

For years we have seen wind turbine factories heavily subsidised at both ends, boondoggles like HS2 and big ticket EU funded "investment" largely serving a Keynsean stimulus agenda but primarily as propaganda devices for ideas free politicians who have no idea how to reboot British industry. It has also proved a handy weapon in Project Fear, which the EU was always counting on.

Troublingly, this time around there is no plan B in terms of warehousing the proles in call centres. With banks having largely automated their customer services, and with their own banking apps and websites putting these task in the hands of account holders. It may well be that the days of mass employment are over and that none of our current models are sustainable. Universal Basic Income seems superficially attractive to some but that leaves the question of what we finance it with and whether or not it would be gobbled up by the inevitable inflation it causes - particularly in housing.

Ultimately the remainers cannot promise us economic prosperity if we stay in the EU. All they can really promise is more of the same which is a slow inexorable decline, politically, economically and socially. They can offer more bribes and more subsidy but they cannot offer revitalisation nor can they give the regions purpose. They can only really hold the line until the house of cards collapses. 

It is perhaps the culmination of these economic indicators, for which politicians are ill equipped to address, that we see a retrenchment into protectionism and economic nationalism and perhaps this is all part of the global natural cycle of decadence, decline, authoritarianism, and wars (if only to prune the surplus population). Perhaps it is a Darwinian animal instinct that politics follows these patterns? Such questions are beyond this particular blogging primate.  

What I do know is that unless we can collectively admit to ourselves that this isn't working and that we are kidding ourselves if we think we can keep on in more or less the same way we have since the last war, then we almost certainly do have an appointment with economic calamity. Brexit may kill or cure, but it at least gives us a fighting chance.