Sundry thoughts on the Oldham by-election

As I have not commented on the Oldham by-election of last Thursday, just about everything that could be said may well have been said and I can imagine that a number of readers will fade out at this point. I, on the other hand, think that there are one or two points that are worth making.

First off, there was the extraordinary jubilation by Corbynistas and people who think they are cleverer than anybody else among the wider commentariat (not the same group, as it happens) because the result, according to them, proved that Corbyn is enormously popular with the electorate and his stance on Syria is supported by the country at large. In fact, next stop Number 10, if you listen to some of these people.

It is highly unlikely that anybody voted on Thursday on the basis of what they thought about a debate on Wednesday but it is possible that some voted because of Corbyn's reasonably well known attitude to extending the war on ISIS to Syria (nobody knows his attitude to the ongoing war against ISIS in Iraq, after all). It is, however, hard to argue that the retention by Labour of a very safe Labour seat with a smaller vote and smaller turn-out than the General Election proves anything very much except that .... ahem .... Oldham is a safe Labour seat.

Jim McMahon got 17,209 votes against Michael Meacher's 23, 630 in May but because the turn-out was 40.3 per cent against 59.6 per cent, his share of the actual vote cast went up from 54.8 per cent to 62.1 per cent. None of it, the retention of the seat or the lower vote and turn-out is anything but politics as usual and tells us nothing about Corbyn's appeal to the electorate of this country. The Conservatives did fairly badly, the Lib-Dims and the Greens appallingly. Let us turn to the only party for whom this result was an unexpected disaster: UKIP.

Given the results of the Danish referendum, the shift in German opinion about the euro and the French regional results where the Front National, a vaguely eurosceptic but definitely anti-establishment party is projected to win 40 per cent of the vote, it is pertinent to ask why on earth UKIP cannot manage to do better.

This question is of great importance in view of that party's desire to take a leading role in the forthcoming referendum campaign. They will not get the lead position and the attendant funding from the Electoral Commission as they are a political party but the intention often voiced by the Dear Leader and his attendant acolytes is to play a major part, particularly in North where, we were told not so long ago, Labour had betrayed the working class and a new party is needed. Some of the comments made in that article were unwise, especially two days before a by-election but then UKIP and its leader are given to unwise comments and to premature boasting. The truth is that the chances of UKIP taking Oldham from Labour were close to zero. What is so appalling is that they did not even manage to come a good second. The 2.8 per cent increase in the vote share is down to the lower turn-out. In fact, John 6,487 votes, fewer than Francis Arbour in May (8,892) and 10,722 fewer than the winner. Not a good sign of UKIP establishing itself as the leading party in the north or among the supposedly betrayed working classes anywhere.

I have been told that UKIP for some reason paid no attention to the postal voters and did not organize a significant campaign among them. If so, that was a grievous fault. The Dear Leader's comments about possible fraud because of the high level of postal voting may be written off as sour grapes but, in fact, it raises an important issue: extensive and unnecessary postal voting is open to fraud and there have been several cases when that was proven. If UKIP have evidence they should definitely take it to court. The suggestion that the voter fraud is particularly virulent in Oldham because of the ethnic make-up of the constituency is a slightly more difficult issue and one that needs a great deal more proof than Our Nige has managed to provide.

As so many times before we need to ask that question: what next for UKIP? The Labour party that proved absolutely nothing in Oldham can look after itself. But what of UKIP? Will they stop boasting and making self-satisfied statements about their position and campaign (not at the moment but likely to start again next week)? Will they rethink their main message, which has been concentrating more on immigration of all kinds (and that alone muddles issues) instead of the EU? Will they consider getting rid of their Leader for more than three days as he is not leading them anywhere near victory?

About UKIP

No, this is not about Kippers rejoicing about Greece's discomfort because this version of it sounds like a defiance of the EU but about their representation in the House of Lords, something I have written about before.

It seems that the Prime Minister has replied to Lord Pearson's letter on the subject of whether more UKIP peers will be appointed with the following words:

The Government’s policy is to ensure that the House of Lords continues to work well.

I have committed previously to keeping the party peers under review and will, of course, give further consideration to the points you raise when we come to consider recommendations over the course of this parliament.

As this is somewhat meaningless I suspect there must have been something else in the letter and as soon as I find out I shall report on it.

Meanwhile, we are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, the House of Lords has been packed by political hacks of various kind by the previous Cameron and the Blair/Brown governments and we really need no more members. In fact a purge is in order. On the other hand, UKIP should have some representation in Parliament and they are unlikely to get that in the Commons despite the number of votes they received.

If we take the view that peers should be appointed on merit and regardless of party affiliation or electoral votes then all is well. But if we take the view that the Lords should somehow, indirectly represent opinion then UKIP should have more peers.

If the Prime Minister calls a moratorium on more peerages then all is relatively well though why there should be so many Lib-Dem ones remains a mystery. But if he appoints numerous Lib-Dems who lost their seats then UKIP will have something to complain about and so shall the rest of us as the House of Lords is an important part of our constitution, such as it is while we are in the EU.

UKIP members of Parliament

By members of Parliament I do not mean just MPs but peers as well who are members though not of the elected House. I am not going to argue in this posting about the need for a non-elected House as well as an elected one in order to keep some kind of a constitutional order even now when we are members of the European Union and, especially, once we are out of it.

As we saw in the General Election in May UKIP came third with 3,881,099 votes that constituted 12.6 per cent of the vote in a turn-out that may have been the highest since that fateful 1997 election but was still only 66.1 per cent. For that UKIP got one seat and there is a great deal of understandable dissatisfaction around.

It is impossible to discuss matters rationally with most members of that party as too many of them belong to the Farage Cult but the truth is that UKIP conducts elections and political campaigns as a Continental party - it is all about the party and the leader not the local candidate. These may crop up from time to time but they are given less pictorial space on UKIP leaflets than the Dear Leader. All too often one does not even know who they are. I consider myself to be something of a political geek but I did not know who the UKIP candidate was in my constituency until two days before the election.

We are getting some (ever less) traction in the demands for an electoral reform to some form of PR system but that is not very likely to happen any time soon. It is, as it happens highly entertaining to hear the left-wing anti-austerity demonstrators shouting for it. Had we had PR this time round we would have now had a Conservative/UKIP government with possible support from the DUP though, obviously, there is no reason to suppose that people would vote exactly the same way under a different system. Now, I could actually live with that government but what would the lefties say? They are convinced that UKIP is the epitome of all that is right-wing and, therefore, evil. (Actually they are not either but a rather muddled statist, socialist and protectionist party who seem to have morphed themselves into the Labour Party of the 1950s.)

The point is that four years ago we had a referendum on the question of the electoral system and the people of this country voted quite decisively in favour of keeping the first past the post system. Is UKIP recommending that we should keep asking people over and over again at not very long intervals until we get the answer they want? There is another organization out there that takes the same attitude and the fact that UKIP and it (let it remain nameless) have a similar attitude to the People's Voice, despite being the "People's Army" proves what I said above: UKIP is essentially a Continental party in its political behaviour.

Which brings me to the question of House of Lords membership. There are now three UKIP peers and not one of them was appointed as such - they left the Conservative Party and lined up under UKIP colours. The question is should this be rectified or should we go on acquiring endless Lib-Dem peers even though their support in the country has collapsed. This is of particular interest since the Lib-Dems have long been in favour of an elected Upper House or, at the very least, one that somehow reflected electoral preferences. Will they now resign most of their seats and let UKIP have them? Is that a squadron of piglets I see taking off?

Lord Pearson of Rannoch has been asking questions on the subject as can be read on page 7 of this document.

Question no 1 was:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to address the disparity in representation in the House of Lords between the Liberal Democrats and Ukip, in the light of their respective shares of votes in the recent General Election.

Question no 2 was:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to recommend more Liberal Democratic peerages to Her Majesty the Queen; if so, why; if not, why not.

Question no 3 was:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to recommend any Ukip peerages to Her Majesty the Queen; if so, why; and if not, why not.

As it happens the Labour peer, Lord Campbell-Savours also showed himself interested in whether there are going to be any more Lib-Dem peers:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the proportionality objective on appointments to the House of Lords as set out in the agreement made by the governing parties in the 2010–15 Coalition agreement remains an objective for Her Majesty's Government over the next five years.

A good question. The situation has changed somewhat.

HMG is not committing itself to anything as Baroness Stowell of Beeston made clear:

Appointments are a matter for the Prime Minister. Any appointments will be vetted for propriety by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

Something of a conundrum for the PM, I would say, given those electoral results. Of course, he could appoint lots of Cross-Bench peers or, even better, declare a moratorium on any more appointments for the rest of this government's existence but, somehow, I do not think he will do either of those.

So, any suggestions as to who should be the first appointed UKIP peers?

Meanwhile back in UKIP

While I am struggling with that long post-election blog and David Cameron is forming his new government (with strange stories about some of his Ministers being in favour of capital punishment or against gay marriage, neither issue being on the agenda) we have news of the UKIP deciding not to take this chance of becoming a serious party after all. Instead, they are now a joke or a cult, depending on one's point of view. I imagine all my readers know what I am referring to: the strange unresignation by Nigel Farage.

As it happens, I never thought that our Nige would really go. It seemed to me that he would tender his resignation and then his loving people would bring him back amid much cheering and popping of corks. But even I thought the process would take more than three days. The cheering of the loving people who seem unable to realize that this is making party a laughing stock is deafening as any site that has comments by UKIPers will demonstrate.

This article on Breitbart, usually a fairly reliable UKIP supporting site, shows the whole process of the Farage political resurrection in a somewhat doubtful light. It is worth reading some of the hysterically adoring comments from what one must assume are average UKIPers. In case anyone is worried, the story has been denied by the UKIP NEC. They were not disunited, did not disagree and were as one in their support of the Dear Leader. Long Live Chairman Farage. (Standing ovation, prolonged applause lasts half an hour.)

I fear for Andre Walker's future.

And, as it happens, for Douglas Carswell's: if the Spectator is right he has some serious thinking to do about it and that may not be to UKIP's benefit.

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.

Apparently you don't have to become a People's Army recruit

Owen Paterson, who can now take the position Douglas Carswell occupied until recently, of being the most important back bencher on the government side, has called for the Prime Minister to announce before he starts negotiating with other EU member states that he intends to activate Article 50 and to start the process of British withdrawal.

I hear tell that the Boss is lurking somewhere in the shadows, advising Mr Paterson but it is not clear whether the latter will go along with the EURef idea of Flexcit (look it up on EURef).

Mr Paterson made clear his own preferred option would be for the UK to withdraw from the political structures of the EU and instead, like Norway, forge a trade deal, which would include access to the single market.

After his speech, he told the BBC that Britain had come to a "fork in the road" in its relationship with the EU.

He said: "To sort out the nightmare of the euro, they have got to form a cohesive, effective new state

"And meanwhile, we withdraw from the political arrangements and we concentrate on trade, which gives us an opportunity to get our seat back on the supra-national bodies which actually decide regulation affecting virtually every business in this country."

Downing Street did not comment ahead of the speech but the BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said it would have been met with a "collective groan" given No 10's negotiating objectives were likely to be much more limited.

I may be prejudiced (well, OK, I am prejudiced) but if I were Mr Cameron I would be much more worried about well argued statements of this kind from a man who is respected in the party and is very unlikely to join the People's Army who has long ago abandoned any idea of fighting for Brexit, in any case.

So what now from the great recruits of the People's Army? Will they start competing in statements or will they stick to the UKIP policy of just calling for a referendum and warning about foreigners getting jobs here?

Mark Reckless keeps his seat

What with builders working on the back wall and having to read the huge first volume of the latest mammoth biography of  Stalin by Stephen Kotkin in a fortnight when London Library will demand it back, I have found it hard to work up any kind of enthusiasm for the tale of the People's Army's latest recruit who seems to be under the impression that there has been a "real revolution" going on in this country since that day in September when he left the Conservatives to join the aforementioned People's Army. Nor have I been particularly interested in the sad tale of the stupid Labour MP (ex-Cabinet member) who tweeted some kind of an insulting picture and comment about the driver of a white van. (I think I have that right.) If you are that stupid you should not be in politics at all, unless you happen to be defending your seat in a by-election under a different flag against a couple of underwhelming candidates though the Conservative one seemed to be more underwhelming than anyone else. Given that she was an idiot who called for a boycott of Israel (does she actually know what that would entail?) and was generally hopeless at every occasion, she did not do all that badly. The expected 15 per cent margin for UKIP did not materialize.

Reckless kept his seat by 2,920 votes, that is 42.1 per cent of the total vote cast in a turn-out of 50.67 per cent against the Conservatives' 34.8 per cent. Tchah! Stalin used to get 99.8 per cent. Now that's what I call popular support.

The Boss has a highly entertaining rant analysis on the whole subject, which is well worth reading, as always. He points out quite fairly that the new UKIP (ex-Conservative) MP is not the brightest person in the House of Commons and has already been caught out in a number of stupid and ignorant comments, particularly, needless to say, to do with immigrants and their status.

Now that UKIP has two MPs the question of whether they understand whereof they speak will become important. It will no longer be sufficient to produce another picture of our Nige drinking beer or wine and grinning happily into the camera. The media might finally start asking about policies and wondering about certain contradictions in them. There will also be, I can confidently predict, a certain tension between the Dear Leader and the two MPs who will now be the obvious sources of information about UKIP and its policies (or some version thereof).

Meanwhile, the BBC, the Telegraph and, indeed, everyone else has quoted Nigel Farage as saying that this will mean dozens of UKIP seats in the next Parliament. The Telegraph, curiously, predicts a nice round number instead of the dozens but then they also predict a sizeable Labour majority, which is not indicated by the opinion polls, all of which show Labour merely 3 or 4 points ahead, a statistically negligible figure while the Thornberry saga and their poor performance in the by-election must give their strategists somewhat gloomy thoughts. In fact, if the Conservatives abandon their candidate in Rochester and Strood and find someone more intelligent (though it is not clear that intelligence is of any interest to the voters of that constituency) they stand a good chance of taking it in May.

The Dear Leader is also quoted as saying (something we have all head recently) that "if you vote UKIP you get UKIP" in response to baseless (in this case) accusations of voting UKIP will get you Labour. In Rochester and Strood voting UKIP got you Mark Reckless, exactly as voting Conservative in 2010 did.

Somewhere in the long continuous Telegraph update there is a mention of some hack asking Douglas Carswell (the previous recruit to the People's Army) about the possibility of more Conservative MPs defecting to UKIP. He snaps crossly that he is completely uninterested in what the Conservatives (his friends and colleagues until August) intend to do. That would indicate that he does not think there will be any more defections as Reckless's victory is not big enough to encourage any more of them.

The Lib-Dims did particularly badly, getting 0.87 per cent, that is 349 votes; they were easily overtaken by the Greens with 1,692 votes, that is 4.22 per cent and another lost deposit.

It is worth noting that in 2010 when Mark Reckless won as a Conservative, the turn-out was 64.9 per cent and Reckless's majority was 9,953, that is he won by 20.7 per cent.

Fun and games with UKIP

[Health warning: yes, this is another posting about UKIP but it is not entirely critical of that benighted organization or, at least, it is hightly critical of those who have attacked it recently. UKIP-bots take note.]

UKIP have managed to get themselves into the news again on two accounts, neither of which has anything to do with their policies (and that might be just as well). Both stories have caused a great deal of indignation and a certain amount of amusements. I plead guilty to the second attitude.

The first story, as British readers of this blog probably know, is about that ridiculous calypso that was written by former BBC DJ Mike Read (no, I've never heard of him before this either) and performed with a mock-Caribbean accents at some fringe event, went on YouTube and was attacked as being racist. At first, Read said that he considered the accusations preposterous and the Dear Leader called on the faithful to get the calypso to No 1 in the pop charts.

After that things became a little difficult. For one thing the words of the song were published and turned out to be astonishingly stupid. For another, people who are not completely obsessed with UKIP either pro or con (I expect I shall be accused of being one of those by some UKIP-bots but I do not think the amount of time I have spent on them over the years of writing this blog or being co-editor of EURef warrants that accusation), wondered why they should have picked on the calypso as a particularly cool, up-to-date and funky kind of music.

As it happens, I have a much loved LP (or vinyl as they are called now, having become rather fashionable again) of Harry Belafonte singing calypsos in a mock Caribbean accent, Belafonte's own accent being pure American. So far as I know there were no problems with that but I don't know for sure. The LP (vinyl) was inherited by me from my father who acquired it in the 1950s, possibly on one of his two trips to London from Budapest where we lived at the time. Does that throw any light on the strange UKIP decision? Well, yes, I think it does. This is all part and parcel of their nostalgia for that rather unpleasant decade.

The faux-outrage over the racism of the song has achieved its aim and former DJ Mike Read "has apologised for his Ukip-supporting calypso song and asked for it to be withdrawn from sale following criticism that it was racist". Stupid the idea may have been but the idea that somebody must always apologize and something must always be suppressed if anybody is offended and, particularly, if the word racist can be bandied round, is turning British politics into a specie of blancmange.

The story is not over.

Read’s song just failed to make the top 20 in the midweek rundown of the official singles chart, debuting at number 21 according to the list published on Wednesday. A spokesman said sales of the song to date would continue to contribute to the official top 40, despite Read’s decision to withdraw it.

It could mean another dilemma for the BBC over whether to include the song in its official top 40 programme on Radio 1 on Sunday, in a potential echo of the row over the anti-Thatcher protest song, Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead.

That, of course, was not withdrawn from sale as it was not racist and offended only in the matter of good taste. But it did not get to No 1 either.

Here, by the way, is UKIP's Culture Spokesman, Peter Whittle, attacking the attackers. It is not clear whether he actually liked the song but his political point is a very reasonable one. [Full disclosure: Peter is a good friend.] I would say that the faux outrage has not exactly harmed UKIP while an understanding of the silliness would have done. As it is, they can proclaim that they are victims of the modern mania for censorship of anything that can be described as racist.

Let us now turn to the other story, that of their new ally in the European Parliament. The Toy Parliament does not run on the basis of parties but groups and there are rules about how many parties and countries have to be represented in each group in order to be able to claim the handsome hand-outs for the MEPs' entertainment hard work. For a while it looked like Nigel Farage had managed to put his Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD)group together (no, I don't know what that title means either but they had to think of something and the others are not much better). Then potential disaster struck: the Latvian MEP Iveta Grigule (more here) decided to leave the group, thus making it untenable in Toy Parliament terms.

As ever, we heard accusations and counter-accusations. Nigel Farage "has accused the president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, of "effectively blackmailing" Grigule by offering her the leadership of an overseas delegation in a deliberate attempt to silence Ukip and the eurosceptic EFDD".

Ms Grigule retaliated by saying that if she had been susceptible to "blackmail" she would have taken Mr Farage up on his offer of the group's Vice-Presidency and, anyway, she had already managed to fall out with the Dear Leader over his working methods that she characterized as being rude. Nor was she impressed by the rest of the UKIP MEPs.

"In July this year I already suggested to Nigel Farage that he should change his working style. The fact that he did not take my suggestion into account this whole time is not right," she said.

"I do not find it acceptable that MEP’s turn their backs on the European anthem or the flags of member states. I do not find shouting or rude remarks acceptable during plenary sessions, or that the majority of colleagues from Great Britain do not take part in the work of committees. I warned Farage, that if nothing changes in this attitude, I will leave the group.

"Of course, this style of working may be beneficial to Farage as his popularity in Britain grows, but to other group delegations this isolationism from the other Parliamentary groups disrupts the ability to work. This was a road leading to nowhere."

The only thing I can add to that story is that it would seem that neither Mr Farage nor Ms Grigule know the difference in meaning between blackmail and bribery.

As it happens, there are always odd MEPs hanging around the Toy Parliament who can be bribed or blackmailed, depending on your use of the English language, to join a group and the Dear Leader found one: he is the Polish MEP Robert Iwaszkiewicz (more here) of the Congress of the New Right and a man who has distinguished himself by being a Holocaust denier and a supporter of domestic violence. Not a particularly prepossessing chap and neither is his party.

Korwin-Mikke [the party's leader], whose party has two remaining MEPs and received 7.5% support in Poland during May’s European parliamentary elections, is one of the most outspoken figures within the far-right groupings of parliament.

In July, he declared in English that the minimum wage should be “destroyed” and said that “four million niggers” lost their jobs in the US as a result of President John F Kennedy signing a bill on the minimum wage in 1961. He went on to claim that 20 million young Europeans were being treated as “negroes” as a result of the minimum wage. He refused to apologise and was fined 10 days of allowances for his comments.

Korwin-Mikke has also called for the vote to be taken away from women, has claimed that the difference between rape and consensual sex is “very subtle” and said that Adolf Hitler was “probably not aware that Jews were being exterminated”.

Of course, saying that Hitler was not aware that Jews were being exterminated, stupid though that is, does not constitute Holocaust denials but we can say with some certainty that the Polish party, its members and its leader are not people one wants to have much to do with partly because of their opinions and, even more, because of their level of intelligence.

The problem is that as long as we are in the EU and send members to the Toy Parliament (on a very low vote, it is true) we have to deal with people like Mr Iwaszkiewicz and Mr Korwin-Mikke, as well as people who either deny the extent of Communist crimes or consider the gulags to have been quite a good idea. We do not elect these people but others do.

The outrage over a perfectly ordinary if slightly shoddy political transaction has been deafening. I have even seen demands that UKIP should be banned in Britain. A party that has received a fair number of votes should be banned, I asked. That is your democratic suggestion? I got a lot of huffing and puffing in return and reminders that the British Union of Fascists was banned and Sinn Fein was kept off the airwaves for some years. The BUF was banned durign the war, I replied, as they were seen with some (though not total) justification as aiding and abetting the enemy. Incidentally, I added, the CPGB that was doing the same between the autumn of 1939 and June 22, 1941, actively inciting members of the armed forces to desert, was not banned. And Sinn Fein was not actually banned, merely not allowed to speak on air because they were and are closely linked to a terrorist organization, the IRA. UKIP has merely done something many of us find distasteful. It is not illegal and it cannot be described as aiding and abetting the enemy. Should all those British parties who sit in groups with well known members of Communist parties be banned? There was more huffing and puffing and, in one case, a highly ironic denial that anybody denies the gulags. There was no reference to the victims of collectivization.

But I digress.

Will the second story help UKIP? Not as much as the first one, as Mr Iwaszkiewicz, the latest addition to the EFDD group is rather unsavoury and a good many UKIPers, not to mention their supporters and quasi-supporters are embarrassed by the story. Does it matter electorally? Probably not. I have no doubt the story will be rehashed during the electoral campaign next year but there are plenty of embarrassments to be brought up against all parties in the Toy Parliament. The truth is that the overwhelming majority in this country does not care about that institution.

A far more serious story is the one produced by the Evening Standard yesterday:

Britons have turned against the idea of quitting the European Union despite the rise of Ukip, exclusive new polling reveals today.

It found that a clear majority would vote to stay in the EU in a referendum — marking a dramatic turnaround from two years ago. The findings suggest Ukip’s surge this year has less to do with anti-EU sentiment and more to do with anxieties about immigration or disenchantment with the bigger parties.

Fifty-six per cent of people said they would vote to stay in if there were a re-ferendum now, while just 36 per cent would vote to leave, according to the Ipsos MORI poll. Excluding “don’t knows”, that amounts to a clear divide of 61 to 39 per cent.

In November 2012, the same question found that 44 per cent wanted to stay and 48 wanted to get out. At the time, support for Nigel Farage’s party stood at a mere three per cent, compared with the current level of 16 per cent — a record figure for an Ipsos MORI poll. But while support for Ukip has risen by 13 percentage points over the two-year period, support for quitting the EU has dropped by 12 points.

Backing for EU membership is at its highest since 1991 — before the Maastricht Treaty which increased integration and created the European Union out of the European Community.

The turn-around is not as dramatic as all that and is probably temporary. Opinion on the subject tends to be volatile but it has never reached the sort of support for Brexit that would indicate a victory in the referendum. Whether that is despite or because of the rise of UKIP is arguable. This blog has argued for some time that the present-day UKIP is a hindrance to the cause of British exit. It has certainly not been a help.

Another conclusion that ought to be drawn but probably will not be by people obsessed with the idea of a referendum is that we are certain to lose it and should turn our attention more widely (yes, I know the Boss has been working on it) to the question of how we can win it, should it ever come about.

Odd concepts are emerging in British politics

Back in the days of the numerous People's Democracies and People's Republics (one or two of which are still with us) it would have seemed bizarre to envisage a time when similar concepts would be used by a political party that claims to be serious (i.e. not one of the numerous Communist, Stalinist, Trotskyite entities) but that is exactly what has been happening. Yes, indeed, I am once again referring to our friends in UKIP or as they sometimes decribe themselves, the People's Army. Presumably, even their political strategists (a.k.a. friends and drinking cronies of the Dear Leader, Nigel Farage) shied away from the People's Liberation Army. Even without that, the naming is not, in my opinion, a happy one.

The people's this and the people's that figure largely in UKIP's pronouncements. One can only assume that knowledge of recent history is not required by its Central Committee NEC.

Not so long ago (about a week or so) I saw comments about UKIP being unique in British politics in that its policies are for the people and are created with the people in mind. I could not help recalling the great Louis Armstrong's comment in response to some dumb-fool question as to what he thought about folk songs and folk music (a big concept in popular political music in the 1960s: "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song." For whom do other parties create policies? Horses? Dogs? Pandas? Nightingales, perhaps, though that appears to be a UKIP policy, as Mr Mark Reckless has realized.

However, the most frightening term that has emerged recently and is being used by supporters and quasi-supporters of UKIP is the People's Will. UKIP, apparently, represents the People's Will, unlike the other parties. The argument that the other parties still get more votes than UKIP is irrelevant here because the People's Will is not to be measured in votes or support by individuals.

The history of the term is sinister. Its origin is the concept of the General Will, made popular by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and used to devastating effect by the Jacobins in the French Revolution until the General Will was turned against them. The most important and to tyrannical rulers most useful aspect of the General Will or the People's Will is that there is no appeal from it: there is nothing higher either in the state or in political morality. What the General Will or the People's Will (or, let us be clear, the Working Class) wants and requires is absolute and is to be imposed on all. It is the complete denial of democracy, which is based (however we define the details) on the concepts of individual rights, duties and liberties. Or, as far greater people than I said: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happines, all of which is denied by the concept of the General or the People's Will.

The most famous or, rather, infamous group that called itself the People's Will was a Russian terrorist organization whose greatest or, rather, worst achievement was the assassination of Alexander II on March 1, 1881 as he was about to sign a limited constitutional document, thus setting Russia's political development back by a number of decades. In fact, one could argue that the country never recovered fully from this set-back.

The expression works better in Russian as Народная воля (Narodnaya Volya) means both People's Will and People's Liberty. As it happens the group had no interest in anybody's liberty as their political, economic and social ideas were almost as oppressive as the ones imposed on that unhappy country by the Bolsheviks. Lenin was contemptuous of the idea of individual terrorism but that does not mean he disliked other aspects of the People's Will. Not least, he agreed with them and with such theoreticians as Pyotr Thachev about the need of a closely knit organization at the head of the revolutionary movement and, subsequently, the state that would interpret the People's Will (or the Will of the Working Class) with complete disregard for individual members of the People or the Working Class.

Could it be that UKIP political strategists do not know anything about this? Not anything?

Lord Pearson speaks

In this week's Spectator there is an article by and an attached podcast by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a man who appears frequently on this blog. He explains why it will not be UKIP's fault if David Cameron and the Conservatives lose in the next election (at present that is still unlikely but one cannot tell what might happen in the next seven months) and why they should have listened to him and Lord Willoughby de Broke in 2009 and formed some kind of an alliance.

Curiously, he explains that the offer was to stand aside in 2010, something that most of UKIP would not have agreed to in any case, if the Conservatives were to make a binding promise to hold an IN/OUT referendum.

Neither UKIP nor the Conservative grass-roots would have agreed to a deal. When Lord Pearson, as temporary Leader of UKIP, called for candidates to stand down in constituencies where, according to him, the Conservative candidates were Eurosceptic, there was an uproar in his own party. I wonder if Lord Pearson recalls that uproar and his attempts to soothe his own party's sensibilities.

Secondly, there is no such thing as a binding promise or a promise that UKIP members will believe to be binding. David Cameron has promised to hold a referendum in 2017 and UKIP do not believe him. Neither, apparently do Douglas Carswell MP, who believed it until this April or Mark Reckless former MP, who believed it till August.

I admire Lord Pearson for the good work he has done and continues to do but even he cannot make much sense of what UKIP's intentions are as is clear from this:

But now the moment has passed; Ukip is no longer largely a Conservative protest group. We are supported by many former Labour voters and a chunk of the 40 per cent who have never voted before. Once again Cameron has said ‘absolutely not’ to any hint of co-operation and I’m afraid most people in Ukip now feel: ‘What the hell — what’s the difference between the others anyway?’ The party’s message has become ‘Vote Ukip and get Ukip, with enough seats to hold the balance of power.’

Nothing on the political scene indicates the UKIP will get enough seats to hold the balance of power (one Conservative MP keeping his seat under a different flag is no proof). Nor do we know what exactly do they intend to do should such a miracle occur.

Still, readers might be interested in reading the article as a whole and listening to the podcast.

Another earthquake

Oh, I beg your pardon: this time it is an "electoral storm cloud" gathering over Westminster, according to Paul Nuttall, UKIP Deputy Leader. [scroll down]

Well, as predicted Douglas Carswell for UKIP overturned the Consevative majority held by Douglas Carswell and when he is introduced to the House on Monday (by whom, one wonders) he will now sit on the Opposition benches. I am rather looking forward to Mr Carswell calling for British jobs to be saved for British people, an end to "austerity" and an immediate referendum, not to mention appeasement of Russia.

Here are the results in full, for anyone who has not seen them yet:

Douglas Carswell (UKIP) 21,113 (59.75%) Giles Watling (C) 8,709 (24.64%, -28.38%) Tim Young (Lab) 3,957 (11.20%, -13.84%) Chris Southall (Green) 688 (1.95%, +0.71%) Andy Graham (LD) 483 (1.37%, -11.57%) Bruce Sizer (Ind) 205 (0.58%) Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 127 (0.36%) Charlotte Rose (Ind) 56 (0.16%)

UKIP maj 12,404 (35.10%)

Electorate 69,118; Turnout 35,338 (51.13%, -13.05%)

A very clear victory for Mr Carswell, who replaced the UKIP nominee for this very purpose.

And here are the results for Heywood and Middleton, also very good for UKIP:

Liz McInnes (Lab) 11,633 (40.86%, +0.75%) John Bickley (UKIP) 11,016 (38.69%, +36.06%) Iain Gartside (C) 3,496 (12.28%, -14.88%) Anthony Smith (LD) 1,457 (5.12%, -17.59%) Abi Jackson (Green) 870 (3.06%)

Lab maj 617 (2.17%)

17.65% swing Lab to UKIP

Electorate 79,170; Turnout 28,472 (35.96%, -21.57%)

David Cameron has already warned the country that a big UKIP vote will bring in a Labour government, which is probably true but unlikely to be a problem for UKIP and its supporters, given their recent policies. If anything, they might consider Ed Miliband to be a little too liberal in his views and not nearly socialist enough. After all, he has not called for the renationalization of the Royal Mail.

The Boss is his usual gentle self.

A crucial day in British politics?

To some extent, we can argue that if Douglas Carswell manages to hold Clacton this will be of some importance as he will be the first elected UKIP MP in the House of Commons. There is a little too much hyperbole around with Carswell himself quoting Henry V and urging "team Clacton" to defeat the "Westminster machine". That, I presume, would be the Westminster machine that he was a fairly successful part of until about two months ago and the one that helped him to win Clacton in the first place and to hold it in 2010 with a very good majority. The Westminster machine that, in short, helped to place him into the position he is in now: a man who may well become the first elected UKIP MP.

Nothing wrong with that, one might say. All is fair in love, war and politics, which is war by any other name. He used the machine then when he decided for whatever reason that he wanted to go beyond it he did so and continued to use the benefits he had been given by that machine. Hardly the first politician to do so in the long history of British politics. Most of them, one has to admit, ended badly though not as badly as losers have done in other political structures.

One elected MP, at least until May, is not going to make that much difference: Westminster has managed to survive individual rebels before and even new parties (the highly successful Labour Party, which by the stage of its history that UKIP has reached was forming its first government, springs to mind). Nor has it been unknown for MPs to change parties and fight seats under different banners. If Churchill could go from Conservative to Liberal and back again, I see no reason why Douglas Carswell should not be able to.

What I find slightly disconcerting is the hysteria around this particular by-election. Admittedly, UKIP has not been particularly successful in Westminster politics, having had one MP in the past who had not bothered to call a by-election and lost his seat in the General when he stood under his new banner and having three Peers. Nevertheless, the idea that today will be as important in British politics as Agincourt was in the Hundred Years' War between England and France is more than a little fatuous.

My own prediction for what it's worth is that Carswell will keep Clacton until the General Election and will lose it then; UKIP will do fairly well in the other by-election today though the seat will remain Labour; and Reckless, when his turn comes, will lose his seat. That will be of greater import, as the likelihood is that he will split the vote and let in a Labour MP, which event will concentrate Conservative minds and even the minds of those who think having an IN/OUT referendum is the aim of our fight.

Gloomy election discussions

As we are coming to the end of the last serious conference season before the next General Election (those extras, like the winter conference or the spring conference are unnecessary extras and of little importance) everyone outside UKIP seems to be rather gloomy.

The choice, one must admit, is not particularly scintillating but it is my opinion that as things stand Labour has no chances of winning the election. Their own particular conference and the farce of the Leader's Speech, billed for 80 minutes but lasting for only just over 60 because two of the most important subjects were simply not mentioned though they were clearly there in the text handed out to the media, did not exactly inspire any one except those so committed to the party that casting their vote for anyone else would be like walking barefoot on broken glass.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are deemed by the media to have had a bad week-end because of losing Mark Reckless and because of the Brooks Newmark scandal. Until this story broke I had not heard of Brooks Newmark but the biggest scandal of all, in my opinion, is that we have such a thing as a Minister for Civil Society. What on earth is that?

On the other hand, I was pleasantly suprised to hear that the Mirror's sting operation (whose author, a free-lance hack has, as of this moment, not revealed his name) had been directed at several young Conservative MPs and only one was foolish enough to fall for it, the aforementioned former Minister for Civil Society. It is good to know that the others had enough brains or just an instinct for self-preservation to steer clear of the whole fracas. That, of course, leaves us with the unfortunate young women, whose body parts were used to create the fictional twitter character without their permission and the fact that other newspapers, such as the Sun are virtuously explaining that the idea had been offered to them but they turned their noses up. Also, we have the first case to come before the new Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and it does not involve a Murdoch newspaper. How they must be laughing.

Will any of this really help the Labour Party whose opinion poll results are nowhere near good enough to predict a victory next May? Somehow, I doubt it. There is far too much talk about "New Old Labour", which anyone with any kind of political memory will know to have been unelectable. Ed Miliband is seen as far too left-wing but also incompetent in the simplest political acts like delivering a speech at a party conference. It is particularly unfortunate that his flub should have come so soon after Gordon Brown's highly praised performance in Scotland towards the end of the referendum campaign.

We do, of course, have another "New Old Labour Party" now and that is UKIP who clearly intends to compete for that limited and ever decreasing vote.

Incidentally, the Boss and I discussed Patrick O'Flynn's speech that outlined those preposterous economic policies including the one about raising VAT on "luxury goods". Setting aside the obvious question as to what is defined as "luxury goods" and the obvious comment that a good many people from working class background like to be able to buy them, one cannot help asking why UKIP should be so supportive of VAT, an EU tax that is open to a great deal of fraud and is not particularly useful for the economy. Why not call for its abolition (and if you cannot do that within the EU well you know what we ought to do) and for competitive local sales tax? I seem to recall that the present UKIP parliamentary candidate for Clacton co-authored a book some years ago with one, Daniel Hannan, in which that was one of the policies outlined. One wonders how he felt having to applaud the economic spokesman of his new party who was making it quite clear that neither he nor the party were interested in any serious radical ideas.

As UKIP moves left it acquires another right-wing Tory MP

Honestly, I was not going to blog about the UKIP (or any other party) conference but I did note that some of their policies meant that they have now morphed from the Conservative Party circa 1955 to the Labour Party circa 1955: big government, high taxation, do not touch the NHS, slap higher VAT on so-called luxury goods, tighten planning laws, introduce protectionism and appease Russia (that's Labour post Ernie Bevin). Apparently, this is done from the entirely non-politician-like idealistic principles of trying to grab some Labour voters who might be dissatisfied with no longer having the Labour Party their grandparents voted for. Of course, a good many people whose parents and grandparents voted for that old version of the Labour Party then proceeded to vote for Mrs Thatcher's Conservative Party because they no longer knew their place in life but UKIP seems to have forgotten that.

Yet it is not left-wing socialists who are joining UKIP (well, not any high-profile ones) but supposedly right-wing Tories. Mark Reckless, another well-known liberal (in the real sense of the word), free-mareketeer, small government, low taxation etc etc politician has just announced that he is joining UKIP and is stepping down as an MP for Rochester and Stroud (a seat that, I am told, had been stitched up for him previously, though I am not sure what that means exactly).

In May Mr Reckless proclaimed joyfully that the party now felt reasonably happy about things and was calling for an IN/OUT referendum (which, supposedly, is Conservative Party policy) and calling on Mr Farage to "to declare his hand: is he ready to thwart Tory candidates who will deliver a referendum, and instead allow a Brussels-loving Labour Party to rule?". To rephrase slightly the Weill/Anderson September Song:

But it's a long, long while from May to September.

I assume that all notions of local democracy and open primaries will once again be jettisoned and the local UKIP association will be forced to fall into line and select Mark Reckless as their candidate. Then we shall see.

What exactly will he and what exactly does Douglas Carswell campaign on: higher taxes, tighter planning laws, appeasement of Russia, fear of foreigners taking jobs? None of that sits well with their previous political pronouncements. Perhaps, they have simply changed their minds on every political issue (apart from wanting to be MPs) and this seemed the simplest way or making it clear to the electorate.

As of this moment the Boss has not commented on Mr Reckless and his behaviour (everyone has cracked that joke so I am not going to). As soon as he does I shall add a link.

UPDATE: The Boss has spoken and he is unimpressed.

No more earthquakes, just a game changer - maybe

Just as I thought I would not have to write about UKIP again until the General Election campaign, along comes Douglas Carswell, the man, who, as the Boss says, was still certain just a couple of months ago that the only way to get a referendum (and none of these people seem to think beyond that) was to vote in a Conservative government next year. Apparently, that is no longer the case, that is if we assume, something that is hard to do, that Mr Carswell's sudden volte face, resignation and reappearance on the streets of Clacton to take part in a UKIP "action day" was motivated by something more than just pique at not being treated with the respect he thinks he deserves.

My own feeling is that Mr Carswell himself shows a certain amount of disrespect to the people who worked with him and for him for some years by this rather nauseating appearance so soon after he dropped them into something of a mess. But then, who expects honourable behaviour from a politician.

There are a few problems facing Mr Carswell and UKIP. The first is that absolutely none of his much-proclaimed ideas are at one with those of UKIP, who have long ago turned themselves into a statist, protectionist and welfarist party, the very opposite of what Mr Carswell has been preaching. There is the question of Brexit but that, as the Boss and I have been pointing out ad nauseam, is no longer high on UKIP's agenda and is often omitted completely in favour of another rant about immigrants. Incidentally, how is Mr Carswell going to like being questioned on that subject as he will be by the media who will not think it necessary to treat him with respect either?

Another problem is that of democracy and being different from other parties, two subjects that UKIP tends to treat as interchangeable. Mr Carswell is known as a great believer in open primaries and UKIP periodically proclaims that it is in favour of direct democracy whatever might be meant by that. So, what is happening? It would appear that the NEC has decided to over-rule the local association and put pressure on the already chosen candidate to stand down in favour of the high-profile defector from another party. Open primaries and direct democracy can both go hang when publicity is needed.

The Boss has referred to the hysteria displayed by the media though nobody is talking about earthquakes any longer - a more modest suggestion of a possible game changer is all anyone can come up with. There is speculation that anything from six to ten (depending which newspaper you are reading) other Conservative MPs are about to jump ship. Remains to be seen. I am guessing that they all know that Mr Carswell's defection was not caused by any great burst of political idealism and can see the various difficulties he might encounter. At the very least, I would imagine they will be waiting for the by-election and its results. That might not be quite what Mr Carswell and UKIP are hoping for.

It is not precisely a secret that Nigel Farage has been agitating for the party to put its collective shoulder to the wheel to make him the first UKIP MP in next year's General Election though that was an unlikely scenario as Our Nige is not precisely a vote winner. Now he has to put on his big grin and a happy face on the strong possibility that Mr Carswell will get there ahead of him. The truth is that this is the only way UKIP could win a by-election and even that is not certain. Much depends on how matters will sort themselves out with the local UKIP association and how angry the Conservative voters of Clacton might be. No amount of mutual back-slapping and grinning for the cameras at some "action day" can hide the difficulties. Or not for long, anyway. Dan Hannan thinks otherwise: he thinks Douglas Carswell's decision to jump was entirely noble and that he is entirely popular in Clacton. The first seems odd, when one takes everything into consideration, the second is a possibility but events are about to hit everyone involved in this saga. Besides, I have a rooted objection to any politician who says "take it from me". Somehow I do not find that a convincing argument.

Meanwhile, what of Roger Lord, the original and, as far as anyone knows, present UKIP candidate in Clacton? As we have seen he is not happy. The New Statesman suggests that he might defect to the Tories, which would be quite entertaining. The Daily Telegraph has not gone that far but has published an article in which he has called Douglas Carswell weak and cowardly. Apparently, he has rejected Nigel Farage's slightly off-hand offer of another "plum" seat (there are no plum seats as far as UKIP is concerned and well they know it).

So what does this do for euroscepticism in general? Much depends on how the by-election pans out and the fact that the anti-politician political party has been behaving in the usual kind of politician-like fashion is not something that they can boast about too much. The Boss and I discussed this at length, as readers can imagine. He said quite rightly that if Carswell loses that will be a huge blow to UKIP and also to the Eurosceptic movement. In my opinion, Mr Carswell's ill-thought through action is already a blow: even he wins the by-election he is unlikely to hold on to the seat in the General and will be, in the meantime, a solitary UKIP voice in the Commons who will have to argue that party's policies whether he likes them or not, while being subjected to jeers from his erstwhile colleagues many of whom would have gone on supporting him, had he stayed in the Conservative Party. No, I do not think we can trust the PM or most Conservatives but neither do I like UKIP or most of their policies (the one I agree with having become ever less important to them). Besides, nothing in this world will give us a UKIP government.

What will prove to be quite entertaining will be the Leader's manoeuvring to ensure that he remains the best known UKIP person in the country even though that actually loses the party votes. As things stand, Douglas Carswell is a far better known one and if he actually is re-elected as a UKIP MP, he will be the one the media will go to instead of Nigel Farage, who is not going to like that at all. I wonder if David Cameron has realized that and is banking on the trouble and tension that will appear between two such primadonnas strong personalities.

Two steps forward, one step back

Readers will have noticed from the title that I am a little more optimistic than that "great thinker" and vicious political squabbler, V. I. Lenin was in 1904 when he dipped his pen into vitriol and wrote his famous attack on his colleagues in the Russian Social-Democratic Party, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

Needless to say, Lenin was never so vehement in his attacks on the Tsarist government or the right-wing parties, once these developed in Russia, as he was when fighting for power and supremacy in his own party.

This is not, however, a posting about Lenin or the Bolsheviks, so everyone can relax, assuming they have got this far.

My sorrowful and, to some extent, angry complaint is about our own so-called Eurosceptic movement, which is, despite many things, both in British and in European politics, being in our favour, in a parlous state.

For once, I am going to keep off the subject of UKIP (mostly) and its spectacular ability to set the debate back by a couple of decades just as we were beginning to make headway with more people than ever before saying that they did not think leaving the EU would be a catastrophe for any part of the country or its economy. At which point, along came UKIP and produced its latest version of "Euroscepticism" as a protectionist, statist and, yes, I am sorry to say xenophobic idea. (I hope nobody bothers to tell me that UKIP's policy is controlled immigration as they have neither explained what they mean by that nor bothered to voice it in their election pamphlets in May.)

After that extensive throat clearing let me get on to the main theme of this posting, which was brought to my mind by a conversation I had with an intelligent, politically astute and well-meaning friend who entered the Eurosceptic political scene considerably later than I did for reasons of age. Said friend explained to me that she (doesn't narrow it very much) had not yet reached the position of being a withdrawalist from the EU despite having worked with people who are for the last few years. First, she wanted to explore all the possibilities of reform and other long-term plans.

I did not groan but pointed out soberly that I have learnt very clearly in the years I have been involved that the idea of an adequate reform of the EU in the direction we (and, supposedly, the Conservative Party) would like to see it is moonshine while long-term planning is pointless as long as we remain part of the European project.

Ah yes, came the reply but we have to arrive at that conclusion in our own way not simply rely on what people tell us. My response continued to be sober and firm: the country cannot afford to wait while each new generation goes through the process of learning from its mistakes of expecting some kind of a reform and being disappointed over and over again.

The conversation moved on to other subjects but it stayed with me. That is really the problem: for some reason the notion that people should learn from previous mistakes and build on previous achievements is not popular with Eurosceptics who, like particularly inept teachers in primary schools (and I have seen a few), assume that everyone must re-invent the wheel over and over again. Then they (and the parents of the children unlucky enough to be in those schools) wonder why there is no progress.

Actually, I am wrong. The teachers do not care about lack of progress but, more importantly from our point of view, the constantly new generation of Eurosceptics who keep re-inventing the wheel and insist that it is right and proper that they should do so, believe that each time there is progress being made. Unfortunately that progress is only to the same point we had reached before or just a little bit beyond it instead of the sort of large steps forward that we ought to be making by this time and in this particular atmosphere.

Given that the new generation of wheel re-inventers are those who populate the various Eurosceptic organizations and, above all, the well funded campaigns for a referendum, which, let me repeat for the umpteenth time, we shall lose unless we move forward in our arguments a little faster, my unhappy summary stands: two steps forward, one step back. That's true for the time being but it may all get worse.

Well, that's that then

The Conservatives won Newark with a halved but comfortable majority on a turn-out of 53.79 per cent. UKIP well enough but did not produce that political earthquake they have been promising and Roger Helmer will have to stay in the Toy Parliament, not a prospect that worries him all that much, I imagine. The Lib-Dims have continued their tale of woe.

The Boss in his inimitable fashion points out something interesting that UKIP ought to ponder over:

The comparison is between Newark and Eastleigh. On a near identical turnout (52.79 – 52.8 percent), Helmer got 10,028 votes, taking a 25.9 percent share of the total. At Eastleigh in February 2013 – only just over a year ago, Diane James got 11,571 votes, taking 27.8 percent of the total.

Looking forward into the muddy mirror of future predictions, one can say that this is a hopeful sign for the Conservatives (as were the local and Euro elections). Their vote has held, they have won a by-election a year before the General when the turn-out will be even larger and the fact that UKIP has done reasonably well though it is a long way from nipping at their heels may well concentrate their minds in the months to come.

Can we now all get back to real work? Thank you.

Useful links

No, I have not done my analysis of the European elections and what they might mean for the future of this country's or the EU's politics (precious little in most cases). The reasons are: laziness, stultifying boredom with the subject and too much time wasted in arguing with people that not all anti-EU parties, even if they are right-wing, are fascist even if you assume that fascist means right-wing.

We live in an age of endless and freely available information or so we are told by people who either like the idea or hate it. There is much talk about information overload. Yeah, right. My own experience is that the number of people who ignore information, stick to about two sources and repeat well known mantras may well have grown in this age of information. Perhaps, they are scared of having to think for themselves.

In the meantime, here are two links to very useful articles dealing with necessary issues and making it unnecessary for me to do so.

First up is the Boss of EURef who gives a very cogent analysis of Peter Kellner's article in the Grauniad about UKIP and its polling.

Secondly, The Boiling Frog has done us all a favour by analyzing and debunking the latest canard that is making its round in eurosceptic or quasi-eurosceptic circles: that the new rules on QMV about to come into force will allow the EU to disallow either an IN/OUT referendum or Brexit. Take your pick. It really depends on which eurosceptic or quasi-eurosceptic you are listening to.

It’s true that from the 1st November many areas are changing to “Lisbon Treaty QMV rules”. The main effect of this is to change to QMV those clauses which required unanimity according to the Nice Treaty. Yet, and what is often overlooked, is this doesn't apply to withdrawal because crucially Article 50 wasn't in the Nice Treaty. Instead it is an innovation of Lisbon and is listed as a "new item". As such it began life already under QMV rules, alongside other "new items" such as the election of the President of the European Council. This is made clear by Article 50 (2) (my emphasis):

In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

Article 50 therefore has never been under a unanimity decision, it has always been subjected to QMV rules. All that happens is that Article 50 will change from “Nice QMV rules” to “Lisbon QMV Rules” "in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union."

And so on. Read the whole piece. Undoubtedly, however, I shall have to produce my own opinions on that very small, barely noticeable earthquake that took place last month.

Are we there yet?

The day of the most hysterically hyped unimportant election in living memory has dawned. It is all nearly over. We shall have the local election results tonight or tomorrow morning and the Euro results on Sunday evening when this blog will be open for business (as will EURef be, I expect).

The Boss and I have spoken this morning and agreed on many things (which is not, by any means, a given in the history of our working relationship). Above all, we are both pleased that this frenetic farce is coming to an end and serious work can be resumed. We also agree, unsurprisingly for those who read both blogs even casually, that UKIP and the media have managed to set back the eurosceptic cause by several years.

After years of hard work we managed to bring the discussion to a serious political level to lose it all in the space of a couple of month - thanks to UKIP and its allies in the media we are back to euroscepticism being equated with anti-immigration, xenophobia and racism. All else has disappeared. How the europhiliacs and the higher echelon of the political establishment must be laughing.

As I was saying

Ever nearer draws that election day and as people around me, wherever I go in what is laughingly known as real life remain underwhelmed by its importance, the debate on various other fora hots up. If you read some blogs (guilty as charged) and follow discussions on such sites as Twitter or Facebook, you might be forgiven for thinking that what will happen this Thursday will be of the slightest importance. Not so but far otherwise, at least as far as the European elections are concerned.

This is what I said on yet another discussion on Facebook that was about UKIP leading in the ComRes Poll (though there appears to be some debate about the accuracy of that prediction):

Well, really, if UKIP, having come second last time, cannot come first in the euros this time, they can just pack up. Of course, it will make no difference to anything as very few people care one way or another about the Euro elections. Facebook discussions give a false impression of their importance. The great thing about the Euros is that nobody actually wins since that is not how the European Parliament is structured and its role in the EU is very different from what a parliament is supposed to be but, at the same time, everybody wins because of the list system. Well, almost everybody.

Given the probable turn-out and the lack of any achievement by UKIP or any other MEPs that is inevitable under the structure and position of the Toy Parliament and given the list system one can only compare the European elections to the prize giving after the Caucus Race in Alice in Wonderland.