First Reading of the Bill

Well, HM was not kidding when she made it clear that "early legislation will be introduced to provide for an in-out referendum on membership of the European Union before the end of 2017". The Bill had its First Reading in the Commons today and will have its Second Reading on June 9.

The text of it is available on line and will be available together with whatever notes HMG thinks desirable in print tomorrow.

The Referendum will be called some time before December 31, 2017 (but we knew that). As far as I can see, the later it is, the better for us as the chances of us winning are slender in any case and are next to zero in the next year or so.

The question on the ballot paper will be: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” and I understand the UKIP Leader-for-Life-and-in-Perpetuity has already been making negative noises about that.

Farage, who is likely to play a leading role in the 'out' campaign, said the wording showed a pro-EU bias. "It is a simple straightforward, unambiguous question. That much is clear. However that Cameron is opting to give the pro-EU side the positive 'Yes' suggests strongly that his negotiations are so much fudge. He has already decided which way he wants the answer to be given, without a single power repatriated," he said.

Many of us sincerely hope that Mr Farage will not be playing a particularly leading role in the campaign and might even consider taking a back seat together with a few other politicians. On the whole, Mr Farage's credibility outside his cult is not particularly high and that is bound to reflect on the campaign.

As to the wording of the question, has Mr Farage forgotten the Scottish referendum, in which the NO side won decisively? However you phrase the question the pro-EU side will be defending the status quo and that is always a better position to have.

The other person who has been making stupid statements is the incoming First Minister of Scotland, one Nicola Sturgeon.

Describing the prospect of being taken out of the European Union against Scotland’s will as “democratically indefensible”, Sturgeon, who will succeed Alex Salmond as leader of the SNP next month, says that her party will table an amendment to any bill on an in/out referendum requiring that all four nations of the UK have to agree to withdrawal.

There has to be a limit to the SNP's refusal to acknowledge basic facts. The people of Scotland voted in a referendum to stay in the United Kingdom and they did so in the full knowledge that a forthcoming IN/OUT referendum on the EU will be taken on a national British level. There is no point in pretending that it was otherwise unless Ms Sturgeon wants to argue that the people of Scotland are, as a nation, uniquely stupid, something history does not bear her out on.

What will she do if in the UK referendum Scotland as a whole votes to leave the EU?

Moving along to other important issues, this is the definition of who will be entitled to vote:

Those entitled to vote in the referendum are —

(a) the persons who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote as electors at a parliamentary election in any constituency,

(b) the persons who, on that date, are disqualified by reason of being peers from voting as electors at parliamentary elections but —

(i) would be entitled to vote as electors at a local government election in any electoral area in Great Britain,

(ii) would be entitled to vote as electors at a local election in any district electoral area in Northern Ireland, or

(iii) would be entitled to vote as electors at a European Parliamentary election in any electoral region by virtue of section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1985 (peers resident outside the United Kingdom), and

(c) Commonwealth citizens who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote in Gibraltar as electors at a European Parliamentary election in the combined electoral region in which Gibraltar is comprised.

For the time being that should reassure those people who were desperately worried that EU citizens would be able to vote as they are entitled to vote in local elections, thanks to the Maastricht Treaty, though there is no particular evidence that many or even any of them do exercise that right.

The only people who will be allowed to vote in the referendum though they are disqualified from voting in the General Election are peers of the realm and, surely, nobody is against that. However, I have no doubt that there will be an attempt to bring in amendments to include other categories who are disqualified from voting in the GE but are allowed to vote in local and European elections.

There is a good deal of discussion about funding and expenses but, so far as I can see, no definite figures are mentioned, presumably because a sum designated now might not seem to be adequate in two years' time. There will, however, be some government money (well, all right, taxpayers' money) allocated to both sides of the campaign with the Electoral Commission deciding who is in the lead and who should be awarded that sum.

Other expenses will have to be raised and punctiliously accounted for. Well, fairly punctiliously. Past experience tells us that neither individuals nor organizations that are funded by the EU in some form or another, such as our many large NGOs, will see any need to inform the public of that fact or to add their expenses to that of the YES campaign. That will be our task and it will not be an easy one.

All right, I shall have my say as well

I did my commenting about the latest Nigel Farage saga on the BBC Russia Service where I managed to add that I did not consider UKIP to be a right-wing party. Look at what they are proposing, I argued, it's pure socialism (an evil word in the Russian Service as one can imagine).

Still, probably, I ought to write a few words on the subject on this blog as well. For someone who has been involved in eurosceptic politics for over twenty (coming up to twenty-five) years and was co-founder of UKIP this is all very depressing and annoying. UKIP may be past salvation (though I would prefer to think that no political organization is ever) but what idiocy of this kind does to the whole eurosceptic movement and our chances in the referendum (when and if) does not bear contemplating.

Farage, the Dear Leader, insists that he made no racist comments and did not suggest that people should be encouraged to hire white people as against black or brown. To be fair, Channel 4 does not say he did. What they say is that he pronounced on the subject of the Race Relations legislation, throwing out the idea that it is now out of date and due for the scrap heap. It is hard to say how this came about. Was he asked a question? Did he volunteer the information? Was he talking, as it would appear from the story, about the original legislation of the mid-sixties or the more recent Equality legislation of 2010, which was an EU requirement and has caused a number of problems though not about race? I suppose, we shall have to wait for the airing of the programme to find out.

On the assumption the the report is more or less accurate and he was talking about the legislation of the sixties then one can say only that his statement that it is out of date is debatable. It may be, it may not be and, perhaps, it should be debated. But to imagine that it is somehow an issue of great importance to voters is fatuous. Those for whom this matters more than anything else have already decided to vote for UKIP or BNP or not to vote and they do not matter. People who are hesitating as to which way to vote are not going to be swayed by arguments about the Race Relations legislation of fifty years ago.

UKIP seems to be convinced that what they choose to call political correctness (a flexible concept in political discourse) is seen as a terribly oppressive burden by many people in this country who are just waiting for the chance to vote for a party that proudly opposes it. So far, they have been wrong on the subject and I suspect they will go on being wrong as they overestimate its importance or burden for most people.

Despite the grumbling, often from the usual suspects, about "political correctness gone wrong" I do not think open racism is a popular concept with the overwhelming majority of this country's population.

One of the points the interviewer made was that the fuss Farage's comments provoked show that politicians on both sides of the spectrum are afraid of him and his party. True, I said, but look at it another way. This will be a make or break election for UKIP and, especially, for Nigel Farage. The party has done well in the last couple of years and has had an enormous amount of publicity. True, the only two seats they have are those that were held by their previous representatives as Conservatives but, nevertheless, they are two seats in Westminster and there are all those seats in the Toy Parliament (though I must admit I cannot remember how many, what with all the comings and goings). For all of that, their support in the opinion polls has been steadily at 15 per cent and sometimes down to 13 per cent. That may not bring in any Westminster seats. Farage is clearly trying to up the game by making what he considers to be provocative statements. Will it work? We shall not know the answer till May 7.

Going on to the substantial part of the comments, it seems yet another anti-immigration sally, all I can say that there is a certain lack of logic there. On the one hand, our Nige has proclaimed that he wants legislation that will make it possible for firms to hire whom they want. Well and good. We all want that though the notion that left to themselves firms will always hire the best, regardless of race, gender or nationality is not entirely accurate. But I digress.

On the other hand, the Dear Leader and his party want the government to pass some legislation (ahem, even when we are out of the EU it will not be the government that will be passing legislation but Parliament) that will make firms discriminate in favour of British-born workers (an odd definition by itself) and, perhaps, make it illegal for them to advertise and hire foreign workers as long as there are unemployed British-born ones whether, one assumes, they are qualified to do the job in question or not.

Logical, this ain't. I return to my starting point. The damage this does to the eurosceptic arguments is unbelievably high.

That debate

I have a confession to make: I did not watch either of the Nick v. Nigel debates. Well, really, I couldn't, not having a TV set and having better things to do with my time. Yes, indeed, that patch of paint just was not going to dry without me watching it. Nor have I, as yet, read what the Boss had to say about the second debate on EUReferendum but I gather indirectly that he was rude about both participants. That, I am sure, will surprise those readers of this blog who have not read his analysis. I also gather that it is only the Farage supporters who have attacked him in return. The Cleggies don't care or don't read EURef.

It has not escaped my attention, though, that Mr Farage is deemed to  have won the debate with popular opinion going 2 to 1 in his favour. I have not seen the figures as to how many people actually watched either of the outings, especially the second one. Nor has it escaped my attention that there are calls for Mr Farage to be included in whatever TV extravaganza there will be in 2015 during the election campaign and for the Conservatives to do a deal with him rather than Mr Clegg.

To both of which Mr Cameron can reply with one argument: as long as UKIP has no MPs doing a deal with them is a meaningless concept and why should their leader be part of that TV debate, rather than the Greens (one MP) or George Galloway (himself an MP).

All that is, however, in the future. For the moment I remain underwhelmed for two reasons. One is that I have yet to see any evidence that anybody outside the Westminster bubble, which includes the media and political bloggers (guilty, as charged!), apart from a few political geeks and the entire membership of UKIP, cared enough to watch and express opinions.

Secondly, I happen to remember all those TV debates in 2010 that Nick Clegg was deemed to win hands down. (How David Cameron and whoever was the leader of the Labour Party must be laughing now!) There was, if you recall, much talk of a Lib-Dim surge on the back of that stellar performance, the only question being whether they would come second or actually first.

We all know what happened. As I said at the time:

For, sadly, the Lib-Dims increased their share of the vote by a measly 1 per cent, lost five seats, did not take several seats they were confidently expected to do and did very badly in the local elections (not that it makes any difference). Their reward: places in the Cabinet and the Deputy Premiership for their incompetent leader.

I have said it before and, no doubt, shall say it again: until UKIP starts winning seats in the House of Commons or, at least, come close, they will remain marginal and all the brouhaha about their performance will remain irrelevant, no matter how many pictures, articles or blog postings there are about Nigel Farage, who, I gather, is about to celebrate his 50th birthday at the Ritz. No, astonishingly enough, I was not invited.

"Small earthquake"

Curiously enough, Nigel Farage, the Great Helmsman of UKIP, seems to be more rational about his party's achievement yesterday than many of the members and even the media whose endless repetition of the words UKIP and surge hide the fact that actually it did not go very far.

Mr Farage, on the other hand, is uncharacteristically modest in today's Evening Standard. Having in the past predicted repeatedly an earthquake in British politics caused by his party and throngs of Conservative MPs joining his party, on the day after UKIP had achieved its best result in a by-election, their Leader merely predicted an earthquake in next year's European elections.

By this, I assume he means that UKIP will come first among the parties. That is not unlikely as they came second last time.

All the same, a sitting MEP of some experience ought to know that even if UKIP wins every single British seat in the European Parliament (an inherently unlikely scenario) it will not make a scrap of difference to anything that happens in that body or in the European Union as a whole. He has said this frequently himself in that speech he has given up and down the country.

What was that headline Claud Cockburn invented: "Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead."

Politicians and the electorate

The  last couple of days seem to have been taken  up with ever more ridiculous arguments, mostly with members and supporters of UKIP, the party that after twenty years and in a particularly  helpful political climate do not seem to be able to bring out voters on their side. I am beginning to suspect that many of them do not want votes or seats in Westminster as that might catapult them  into biggish time politics where a frequent appearance by the Leader on the media is not a sign  of real achievement.

Those debates did, however, set me off musing on the whole problem of politicians and the electorate, something that many people have opinions. It seems to me that most of those opinions are wrong in that there is no evidential support for them.

One thing we can all agree on and that is the lacklustre performance of all parties in Britain, something that has been going on for a few years. Turn-outs in general elections tend to be not much higher than sixty-five per cent when it used to be in the high seventies and low eighties while in by-elections this has sunk to ridiculously low levels. This is largely a matter of choice on the part of the electorate but what is not clear, given the plethora of smaller parties, why that choice is being made in preference to voting for one of them.

One of the most easily disproved assertions is that people are tired of negative campaigning. Really? When did positive campaigning win anything? I am talking about both sides of the Pond; President Obama has recently won a second term after a campaign that seemed to consist of nothing but personal attacks on his opponent.

More seriously, there is a rather fuzzy opinion around that politicians would be more popular if they were more in touch with the people, were more like the man on the street, were more trustworthy and had had experience of being successful at something else than politics such as business or warfare. These are mutually incompatible, of course. A successful businessman or military commander is nothing  like the man in the street and being "in touch with the people", even if it were possible, would mean adopting some of the most obscurantist, illiberal and economically illiterate opinions. Too many of our politicians do that anyway. We do not want any more of that.

I strongly suspect that if the Leveson proposals were put to a referendum, there would be an overwhelming majority for state control of the media as people who buy those newspapers with the illegally acquired gossip rush to show their shock and horror at the practice. Thankfully, some politicians are not in touch with the popular mood on that.

In the past I covered some aspects of this subject, writing about the lack of evidence that people who have been successful in other fields will necessarily make good politicians or be able to have rational policies on those very fields; also about parties that set themselves up to field "real people" as candidates such as the Jury Team in 2009 and the Trust Party in 2010.

About the Jury Team I wrote:

We hear a great deal about the arrogance of politicians and all those who live in the Westminster/Brussels bubble. Indeed, I have written and spoken about it myself. But what of the arrogance of people who think that they should be in that bubble, make decisions that affect us all and generally throw their weight around without wanting either to slog through the party structure (fair enough if you do not believe in it) or to make the slightest effort to find out what is actually going on around them?

What on earth makes these people think that the world (or Britain or their region) is waiting breathlessly to hear their ignorant ideas on what needs to be done? At the very least, they could find out that the European Parliament does not function in the same way as the Westminster one does. Or about the treaties. Or about the European Communities Act. Or, or, or ….

That sort of arrogance of ignorance continues to appal me and, I hasten to add, the electorate as none of these parties get votes worth bothering about.

As for the Trust Party, the brainchild of Mr Stuart Wheeler, now Treasurer of UKIP:

Mr Wheeler and many others keep telling us that they want to restore faith in politics and politicians. Those are two different issues and one often precludes the other.

Certainly, it is time the people of this country grasped that politics is not a spectator sport. If you don't get involved it will come and grab you. This notion that somehow politics has nothing to do with us is a relatively recent one in Britain and has grown in tandem with faith in politicians. Leave it all to them and they will sort it out. Unfortunately, instead of sorting it out the politicians have brought this country to a point of destruction and the expenses scandal was, in a way, a wake-up call for many people not to trust those b******s any longer. In my opinion, that is an entirely healthy attitude. The last thing we want is a return to the somnolent attitude of the people trusting politicians.

The question of whether the electorate wants trustworthy politicians who are just like themselves brings us rather neatly back to UKIP. Certainly, many of their candidates would be described as "ordinary people" though whether they are in touch with the man or the woman in the street is a moot point. Yet their electoral achievements remain meagre. Even on the local level, the only way they get new councillors is by existing ones abandoning their own parties and going over to UKIP. When it comes to general and by-elections the results after twenty years are lamentable but we need not rehearse all that again.

Let me turn my blogging attention to the Leader of UKIP, one Nigel Farage. Again, we need not rehearse all the many problems there are with his leadership - many people have done so, not least the Boss of EU Referendum. On top of the cult or personality, the lack of strategic thinking, the propensity to make stupid off the cuff remarks in public and the refusal to do any homework there is the undoubted but rarely discussed fact that Nigel Farage is not a vote winner. He did stupendously badly in Buckingham, coming third in a two-horse race, as a disenchanted supporter put it, and even that plane crash did not bring in the sympathy vote. There is no evidence that his presence adds to UKIP's vote total and some that it actually detracts from it.

My American friends find this rather hard to understand as they see Mr Farage on TV and he seems personable, articulate and a good bloke who will tell it like it is. Surely that is just what the voters want. Apparently not.

The curious thing is that those American friends are right in a way. Farage is excellent on the media and his jack-the-lad persona is absolutely genuine, reflecting similar personae up and down the country. He really was a trader on the Metal Exchange, he really does like to drink and smoke cigarettes, he really does prefer to have his meetings in pubs, he really is a sort of a regular bloke with that regular bloke's propensity to bend the truth and forget about loyalties. He has many interests beyond the obvious ones, being, among other things, a knowledgeable amateur historian of the Western front in the First World War. (I know this from conversations with him.) In other words, he is not a bland, manufactured political puppet; what you see is what you get. And yet the electorate does not seem to want this.

Let us now look at their temporary Leader during the last general election: Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He, too, is not a bland, manufactured politician. In fact, he is not a politician at all but a man who believes certain things very strongly and insists on saying them. You would think that would go down well with an electorate that is allegedly tired of politicians sitting on the fence or trimming their sails to the prevailing political wind. Not a bit of it.

Lord Pearson is a toff but one who is not ashamed of it and that seems to work for Boris Johnson who hasn't an honest bone in his body. Pearson is a businessman who built up his own reinsurance business. He has worked hard for various charities and in the House of Lords for causes he believes in. He likes country sports, particularly fishing and shooting and owns a large estate in Scotland that is run as a business. I wrote about him in greater detail when he became Leader of UKIP.

The Conservative media's attack on him at the time had

nothing to do with him being upper-crust, which he is not or being involved in some country sports, which is not an upper-crust pastime in the country, especially not in Scotland. It has nothing to do with him being an old Etonian or with being on friendly terms with many political, business and social animals.

What it has to do with is the understanding that with all his various faults Lord Pearson is a man of principle. He is also a man of experience, having built up his own very successful business, running his estate as another business, setting up various charities and organizations that help charities and think-tanks financially.

He has helped Soviet and East European dissidents and victims of Islamist persecution; he was involved in the fight to save country sports and country businesses, particularly those that produce food; he has taken part in campaigns and set up organizations that help disabled children, their families and carers; he has defied all to bring Geert Wilders over to this country and to proclaim the importance of free speech; above all, he has fought the Euro-Monster for many years in the House of Lords, through his contacts in the business world and via determined correspondence with the BBC that is beginning to pay off.

Things did not work out too well, as we know, not least because the media that is always allegedly looking for "different" and "honourable" politicians gave him a peculiarly hard time. (To be fair, some of his own statements did not help.) Just as with Mr Farage so with Lord Pearson of Rannoch: what you see is what you get. Neither is a bland, manufactured politician but the kind of person the electorate is allegedly hungering for. Well, not so that you'd notice it is not. We surely get the politicians we deserve.

At this point I can hear readers muttering and shuffling their feet. All right, all right, they all say (I am not playing the numbers game) but what is it the electorate wants? What do you (I) suggest? That is just the point. I do not know either. What I do know is that there is no point in repeating the old shibboleths about what is wrong with modern politics because they are all wrong and have been proved to be wrong. Most definitely it is time to think anew and, as ever, it ought to be UKIP who does it as they have most to gain and to lose.