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Something stirring down in the Dingley Dell? Speaking as someone who is really far too cynical for his own good, I shall believe this when I see it:
Voters in next month’s European elections could shock the political establishment by giving the United Kingdom Independence Party more seats than the Liberal Democrats, a poll suggests today.
A YouGov survey for The Telegraph indicates that UKIP, which is committed to British withdrawal from the European Union, is ahead of the Lib Dems among those who are “very likely” to vote.
But I really and truly hope that I do see it.
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Well, I’m one of those who filled-in that Yougov poll and gave just such an answer.
It is hard to tell, like tending to congregate with like, but I do get a sense that there is a greater number of people now willing to stand up against the Europhiliacs. Not least because of the constant pressure on us to do otherwise – notably from the Blatantly Biased Corporation, which conspires to convince us that the Lib-Dems and Greens are the horses to back.
I also get a sense that many of us no longer feel quite as guilty about withdrawing support from the Conservatives, particularly in the light of Howard’s equivocation over Europe and his lamentable recent posturing over Iraq.
All good stuff. Some thoughts come to mind:
1. No-one gives a damn about the Euro elections and very few about local UK ones either. They are a great opportunity to steam off, however. The UKIP will do well. It will serve as no more than a strong reminder to the main parties that they need to curtail EU friendly nonsense if they wish to get elected.
2. There is a real political opportunity for the mainstream party (ie Conservatives are the only realistic hope) that formally accepts a two-speed EU as policy with us in the ‘slow’ lane (but then watch our economy outpace the ‘fast’ lane forever more). Hurd, Heseltine and that mob of EU loving, patrician Tories must be flayed alive and dipped in lemon juice by the common sense members of the party.
3. There will be much hysterical wailing and gnashing of teeth as the hardcore EU-philes see their dream of a Brussels imposed socialism dying away. Look at Roy Hattersley’s editorial in today’s Guardian to see the sort of excrement we will get blasted with in ever increasing intensity by the lefty media.
4. Help it come true by getting out and voting UKIP.
5. Sit back and enjoy. As much as I fervently wish it with my heart, my head also tells me that the British people are not going to be persuded to buy into the EU Consitution in pretty much any form – as it is a suicide pact with the future. That will cause a crack in the fabric of EU politics sometime in the near future. Deep joy!
I’ve seen it forecast that only 18% will vote in the Europoll, despite postal balloting in the North (massive fraud opportunities there, BTW) and the deliberate synchronisation with local elections which rustle up a bit more interest.
On an 18% poll anything could happen. UKIP, BNP, Respect, Greens could all slip in.
But what the hell difference does it make? The European Parliament must be the most futile assemblage since Hitler’s Reichstag.
It costs £1.2m a year to keep an MEP in the style to which he soon becomes accustomed. Richard North claims that we could have ten infantry battalions for the price of 87 MEPs.
The only rational choice for a British citizen in the European elections is to vote for the UK Independence Party
1) If you are a fervent Euro Federalist a large vote for the UK Independence Party will strengthen the hand of those who seek to make necessary reforms e.g. increasing its efficiency
2) If you are a moderate supporter of the European Union who want it to be more flexible e.g. strengthening the right of countries to opt out of particular EU arrangements such as the single currency
3) If you want the UK to determine its own policies e.g. have control over our fishing waters.
A vote for any other party than the UK Independence Party is almost by definition a wasted vote because it will not make any difference.
On a more emotional level, watching Michael Heseltine explode with fury that Tony Blair should have had the effrontery to suggest that the British people should have a referendum on whether or not they ought to accept a European constitution is enough in itself to make it important that we give such men a message.
The fact that they have lied to us once (I am too young to have voted in the referendum in 1975 on whether or not we should be a member [Health if you recall in a characteristic Euro-Authoritarian way felt no need to have a referendum] but I was old enough to follow what was being said I recall it being clearly asserted that the European Economic Community was a free trade area and anybody who said it was an attempt to give up British sovereignty in favour of a single European State with a single government and president should not be believed) gives us plenty of reason to withdraw our confidence in any advice they give to us.
In my experience if you wish to have a positive view about the European Union it is best not to know anything about it, because the more you learn about the way it operates, the more contempt you have for it, and the more mysterious it is that there are British people who are so keen to accept rule by an institutionally corrupt organisations that are full of politicians who have a profound hatred of Britain and the Anglosphere, and certainly have little conception of what it is to be a free society.
This is hardly surprising if you look at it in historical terms. The vast majority of continental Europe has little or no tradition of political freedom, and most of them were until quite recently authoritarian, and in some case murderously oppressive States, and since at least Rousseau and Hegel, most of their political philosophers have viewed the British way of life as something to be opposed. Britain has been an obstacle to a whole stack of authoritarian bastards who have sought to rule Europe, be they Hapsburg, Bourbon, Napoleonic, Spanish, Hohenzollern, Fascist or Bolshevik. If you think that the British are held in great affection by the French because we defeated Napoleon, or you expect the streets of Spain to be full of cheering crowds for the many billions the UK have given to Continental Europe in the last 30 years in order to help their development then you are just revealing your ignorance, a quality, which as I say, is an important part of any commitment to the European Union.
When you read how Douglas Hurd told John Major to carry on wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on the Exchange Rate Mechanism even though he knew it would fail, because it showed our European Partners our commitment to the European Union, you realise that these people should be kept well away from any sort of political power. While restraining myself from asserting that Health and Heseltine and Hurt should be publicly horse whipped for their betrayal of one thousand years of slowly increasing liberty, via such institutions as the common law, I do suggest that their names be placed on a wall of shame, just below the even more obnoxious collection of individuals whose hatred of our country expressed itself in their devotion to that ideological heap of oppression called Bolshevism, who are in turn just below those who actually sought to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
What Chris Goodman just said!
” if you wish to have a positive view about the European Union it is best not to know anything about it, because the more you learn about the way it operates, the more contempt you have for it”
Must be a QOTD!
Fine words from Chris Goodman.
I am not too young to have voted in the last referendum, nor in any of the elections in which EEC/EU membership has been an issue and to his, entirely accurate, memory of the lies we were told and the derision heaped on the heads of those who told the truth in the last referendum, I can add that exactly the same tactic was used in every earlier case.
Meanwhile, to the list of the traitors Heath, Hurd and Heseltine, I insist – no demand – that Chris Patten’s be added.
Not content with having presided over the UK’s treacherous selling-out of the Hong Kong Chinese, he is now proving he hasn’t a decent bone in his vile body, by attempting to deliver his own country into the hands of the Franco-German anti-Anglosphere alliance.
Phooey to the EU AND that time-expired money devourer NATO AND the “Anglosphere”, which long since went pear-shaped. No foreign entanglements, no special relationship, no unbreakable alliances… neutrality, the Commonwealth for a culture club and haughty disdain for the militaristic follies of all lesser breeds.
*Gives WJ Phillips a kick up the arse and raises a glass to all those who promote freedom and prosperity for all nations, creeds, and colours.*
“or the militaristic follies of all lesser breeds.”
Oh pluhleeease. Lesser breeds? What planet are you on?
A race realist is just a Nazi without the balls to be honest about it.
And if the “breeds” in America are “lesser” why are we the worlds strongest economic and military power? Why are our universties amongst the best in the world? Why do scientists flock to America from around the world?
And with all due respect to my British friends, how does a society in which football hooliganism, an epidemic of street fighting and yobbo violence, a deplorable reputation as tourists, and binge drinking till you vomit make you a higher breed? I worked for two years in New Zealand in an electronics factory. By far and away the very best high tech workers and the ones with the best work ethic, the most intelligence, and the easiest to teach were Asians, Canadians and Americans of all ethnicities. And by far the worst were English immigrants. They had the most terrible work ethic, would turn up from drinking all night still half pissed, and were the most enthusiastic leftist union whiners and agitators
I have seen my share of self-delusion but my friend but you are living in a dream world.
I’m tempted to vote UKIP, but I don’t agree with their stance on immigration. Their leaflet said they want to keep economic immigrants out, but I’d rather welcome economic immigrants, and anyone who comes here to be productive.
I’m thinking that voting NOTA might be just as effective: voter apathy seems to really annoy politicians. Can anyone tell me if there is a difference between the way non-votes and spoiled ballot papers are counted?
“[H]ooliganism, an epidemic of street fighting and yobbo violence, a deplorable reputation as tourists, and binge drinking…terrible work ethic, would turn up from drinking all night still half pissed” and that is just a Samizdata social.
I’m tempted to vote UKIP, but I don’t agree with their stance on immigration..
Neither do I but I do not believe we can afford the luxury of waiting around for a libertarian party to come along. Time is against us.
Shawn: Kipling’s “lesser breeds without the law” in “Recessional” refers to the Prussian junkers, who were already seen as a menace to the peace of Europe at the time of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.
My belief that the British are becoming more wary about being hand in glove with the USA and more reluctant to join the EU’s inner circle is mainstream, however much it makes you CRIs boggle. Neutrality is Britons’ default preference– as it would be for Americans, absent endless scaremongering about “Terror”.
I mentioned no specific lesser breed; but for some reason best known to yourself, you automatically assumed I meant the USA and began tedious Godwinish fuming about race and Nazis.
Calm down. Don’t be such a prey to the inferiority complex. You don’t have to work so hard to demonstrate what a warm, wonderful, caring, sharing human being you are.
OK, it is all over for the Lib Dems. They’re history! Joan Collins has joined UKIP! And she has been saying some pretty sound things about the EU, as well.
The party has needed a touch of glamour and celebrity and now they’ve got it and I believe we will see more celebrities follow where Kilroy-Silk and Collins dared to tread first.
I look forward to her next Diary assignment in The Speccie.
I recently attended a UKIP meeting addressed by Graham Booth, their MEP for the South West.
What most pleased me most of all was what I didn’t hear. No chauvinism, no Little Englandism, no talk of those damned foreighners and their funny food or anything like that. Most of the comments and questions from both the platform and floor were well informed and sensible. No head bangers.
Inevitably there was an elderly chap in a blazer with a regimental badge who wittered on about the Commonwealth (by which I have no doubt he meant the old White Empire) but he got little support.
Most people there were, I suspect, like me, lapsed Conservatives. I got the impression that they were broadly a-political but formerly Conservative voters who don’t want to be too bothered with politics but are, like me, appalled at what is being done to our country in the name of Europe.
I am a former Conservative parliamentary candidate and was a London Borough councillor for many years but I cannot stomach anymore the fiction that somehow we can be, in William Hague’s phrase, “In Europe but not governed by Europe”. Anybody who believes this is living in fantasy land.
When the Conservative Party starts saying what the vast majority of its members believe, which is surely identical to the policy of the UKIP – that is, withdrawl from the political and bureaucratic absurdities in favour of a trading agreement that the British electorate thought they’d signed up to in 1975 – then I will rejoin the Conservative Party
Neither Joan Collins nor Kilroy-Silk is young, but they appeal to older voters who form a powerful group of people. Their celebrity will encourage other stars. There are also younger voters who like hassle-free travel without passports, but are pleased that they are uniquely British. I suspect there are millions of other youngish people in Europe who are equally prouder of their own national heritage than that of their neighbours.
UKIP is taking off, which just proves what you can do against the Douglas Hurds and Chris Pattens and the Kinnocks. They were never even yesterday’s people. They never registered. Even Chris Patten, with glorious, dangerous, exciting Hong Kong as a background, never swung any influence.
I give the euro five more years and the EU 10 max.