A Patriotic Rant

Nicola Sturgeon has said that should the UK do the ‘unthinkable’ and vote to leave the European Union, Scotland would be better off leaving our 300-year union and becoming an ‘independent’ EU member. Quite apart from the oxymoronic nature of that statement – swapping one level of dependency for another, this would make Scotland a foreign power against which a border would need to be erected and enforced. Hadrian was right.

But, on the good side, a significant proportion of those of us in England who would be rid of the EU’s unhelpful restraint on freedom and development, would be equally delighted to see the back of a country whose denizens have long hated us while taking every penny they could wring out of us. It has been suggested that both the Welsh and the Scots, if the UK was divided thus for the referendum, would overwhelmingly vote to stay in. One has to ask why, given that both populations have been allowed for years to be fiercely nationalistic even in their socialism, while the English don’t even have their own anthem, let alone their own parliament.

Bring it on, I say. No, bring it – the fuck – on. I grew up English. By the time I hit my late teens I had to learn to say British and indeed, when I finally got a real passport (a blue one, of course) it told the world I was a Brit. Well, I want independence from Britain, too. I want to be English again and no longer have to care for the poor and under-nourished of other nations. I say ‘care’, like I ever did and I say ‘under-nourished’ because for all of my life as a 'British' man I’ve had to listen to the constant demands from more stridently nationalistically proud folk holding out begging bowls and demanding that English taxpayers give ever more.

So, here’s a plan. Release Wales from its status as a mere principality and let it self-rule entirely. Let the Scots, likewise, be free to roam ‘aboot’ their glens and bonnie braes and let them both be entirely sovereign nations, free to sell their sovereignty for the Euro-shilling. Allow all Scots and Welsh and Northern Irish who wish to leave the EU reside in England and naturalise as English, then get those borders rebuilt; Hadrian’s Wall to be relocated to the current border, Offa’s Dyke to be extended and fortified the full distance. (There’s already a handy proper border between Wales and Scotland and Ireland anyway). THEN hold the referendum.

If we can’t get British independence from the EU, let’s put all our efforts into establishing English independence. In effect, we can start all over again. Why not? As individuals most of us will suffer changes of circumstance, both good and bad, in our lives, which we take advantage of or rise above. Is there any reason why we can’t do that as a country? Forget the European Union, forget any union. Vote for independence, vote to leave. “Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!' 

The Road Less Travelled

David Cameron has come home from Brussels with a pathway. Not a deal, not just a ‘road map’ either, but an actual pathway. We don’t know the details; is it a gravel path with nice, tidy picket fencing up the side, or is it a meandering trail  leading through dense forest? It might even be a nice paved ‘sidewalk’ leading... who knows where? And that’s a problem, isn’t it, because nobody on the outside knows where this pathway leads. Angela knows, as does Jean-Claude and so, of course, does Shiny Dave, but none of them are going to tell us that it leads, inevitably, to ever-closer union. They can’t tell you that, can they, because that would be yet another thing that Nigel Farage has been right about all along.

Nobody really knows, either, if Douglas Carswell is a fifth columnist for the Conservatives, a solitary cuckoo in the Ukip nest, although I’ve long suspected Carswell is out mainly for personal glory. But Cameron, Farage, Carswell, Merkel and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all are just part of the scenery along this pathway. Distractions to obfuscate and blur the lines; means to allow the campaign of fear to set the agenda for the referendum whose apparently simple question is: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” and that is the problem. What does this actually mean? What WILL we be voting for? And here’s the crux – nobody really knows.

A 40-year long grievance is “They said we were voting to stay in a Common Market, not a United States of Europe!” and this overly simplistic version of the big event of 1975 suits both pros and cons just fine, even though that is not what it is about at all. Common markets are no longer the way the world works. If you have something somebody else wants a way will be found to do the trade, and barriers such as punitive tariffs and customs unions are just bureaucratic confections of a bygone age. In the connected world of today, anything is possible. No, it’s not about trade alone.

Immigration then? A common complaint levelled at Ukip is that they only ever go on about immigration, which makes them evil and once again, suits both camps just fine. The Outers get to complain about Cultural Marxism and the Inners get to shout racist as loudly and as often as they can. But it’s not about that, either, not that alone. What then? Is it about who makes the laws, who controls the borders, our ‘place in the world’? Who our friend and enemies are? We are in a perpetual state of paranoia about that one and that, it appears, is exactly where they want us. It’s nuanced they say; trying to make it about binary choices is naïve.

And they have a point. The world is complex and that very complexity is the enemy of democracy. Every position on any aspect of the EU can be countered by an opposite narrative that has credibility. Look after our own borders, put out own first - or be stronger standing together? Specialise and dominate the market - or collaborate and reap the economies of scale? Is it a single currency that everybody understands - or a stifling constraint on money supply? And the EU commission is right, there can be no tailored pick’n’mix deal; it is all or nothing... except that ‘all’ is still nothing without the ability to take a different path when fortunes dictate.

How can a demos of ordinary working people, worried about job security, housing, education, healthcare, transport, defence and the like make informed decisions when for every piece of information there are a dozen nuanced interpretations of the consequences of choosing this way or that? I don’t want to live in a world that is too complicated for average people to understand because that leaves all the control in the hands of those who pull the levers and tweak the dials. It puts the power out of reach of those who supposedly decide, by voting, who has that power. And when they realise how impotent they are the only option left is to revolt, take up pitchforks and tear down the machines.

The inevitable fork in the rod metaphor!

But we do have a much simpler binary choice because unlike the rest of Europe we have an unshifting boundary which has served us as a moat for millennia. Yes, yes, yes, this is simplistic, but so too are any of the other criteria. This one, however, is the real question that should be put forward: “Do you wish the United Kingdom to be an independent sovereign nation, or do you wish to be a region of a country called Europe?” Of course it is a loaded and emotive question but look at a map. Europe will never go away, but neither will the opportunities it affords, in or out. Do you want to take the settled, once and for all path to independence, or do you choose the perpetual national neurosis of David Cameron’s chosen route? Do you want the cycle-path or the psycho-path?

It's a gas

Free market or planned economy? No constraints at all on trade or the microscopic examination of every detail by government agencies to determine what is and isn’t ‘for the greater good’? These are the two extreme economic models that have been fought over for generations and the answer is always neither. Go for the free market, grab-what-you-can format and a few people get national-budget-rich at the expense of all those who have nothing to offer the market. In the wild, so to speak, the over-populated low producers would eventually die out and stabilise their numbers at some wage equilibrium. On the other hand, control everything we say and do and we may as well be in prison.

So, somewhere in the middle it is generally accepted, is where we end up and for all the political warfare engaged in by left and right alike the outcome is generally a pendulum shift to either side of some supposed centre ground. VW/Audi is showing what happens when the highly visible hand of government intervenes. Some favoured climate-ideology, emissions control and fuel prices combined to create the diesel monster, based on only one minor consideration. Diesel cars produce a bit less CO₂ than petrol, so all the manufacturer had to do was fiddle the monitoring of other pollutants to produce a marketing advantage. Lower road tax, better ‘gas mileage’ and hey-presto, a scandal created by government's good intentions.

Whatever talents those attracted to seek political office possess, being capable of discerning truth from fiction is rarely one of them. If genuine experts in a field can’t agree they split into camps and then it becomes a simple matter of funding. For many years the tobacco giants, in the full knowledge of the harm done by smoking their product, pursued highly effective lobbying tactics and staved off (bought off) control of their hugely profitable industry. Today it is the spuriously titled ‘climate scientists’ who have the funding to manipulate decision-making in favour of their own, often also highly profitable, visions.

Forget the high ideals of the save-the-planet brigade, it is money that makes the world go round, or at the very least determines which way it turns. And those who control the purse strings know this very well. Forget also the notion of moral balance-sheet decision making, very few policies are decided by what is genuinely, altruistically best, rather what will deliver the best voting outcome. Political parties are in the business of gaining and holding onto power and while individuals may hold strong principled views, if they don’t fit the party narrative they will be whipped into submission or side-lined out of influence

And thus to Europe. For those on the front line, watching hordes of often aggressive aliens invade their lives, syphoning off their resources, taking precedence over their own disadvantaged, the dangers of open borders are clear. But the little people have no influence outside of election time and even then they can be manipulated by cries of racism and appeals to common decency. The palpably erroneous ‘migrants good, indigenous lazy’ storyline is still being peddled by those who gain from it. But don’t think that the opinions of ordinary people play no part; Philip Hammond has said the migrant crisis is playing into the UK’s imagined renegotiation of EU rules.

Preparing to welcome Europe's saviours...

Indeed it does. It generates sufficient anger on the ground for the majority to support those who will make great play of taking a stand. Watch as the argument develops before the referendum and this government does what all ‘democratic’ governments have to do and tell us the story of why they are the ‘least worst’ option. Because that’s all we will ever get. Cheap travel comes with higher pollution, saving the Earth is an easy sell, no matter how spurious the ‘science’ that supports it. The next government will perpetuate the myth that no matter how different or how dangerous our new citizens are, only ever more immigrants will save our economy. Vote for humanity, vote for decency, vote Volkswagen.

Dad’s Army

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Cameron, if you think Old England’s won? Forget about the 1% - they will always survive - it’s the miserly 2% you’re grudgingly putting into defence of the realm that’s bothering me. There were only two whole calendar years during the entire twentieth century in which British forces were not engaged in military action somewhere in the world. Without us Europe would have fallen under Teutonic rule, but we were there to dig out for our allies. Twice. Fat lot of thanks we appear to have received in return.

Today, with multiple threats from many sources, we are running our armed forces into the ground and the government is refusing to commit to spending NATO’s agreed 2% of GDP after this year, claiming instead that they will 'adequately' fund our defences after the upcoming strategic review. When it comes to spending ‘review’ never means an increase, it only ever means cuts. And cuts can only be accommodated by the stretch of existing resources for so long; our armed forces have been stretched decade after decade, to the point where loyal senior military commanders are publicly briefing their fears.

The USA are concerned that we are withdrawing from our traditional seat at the top table of world powers and by running down our forces we will soon reach a position where, unable to project power into remote theatres it will be even easier to justify scaling back to just a coastguard and a few Dad’s Army platoons. The EU is determined to progressively dismantle national forces with sovereign allegiances in favour of a centrally ordered European army and our own pro-EU gobsticks are using this circular argument as a reason to stay in the EU in order to still wield global influence. Does anybody else think this is horse shit?

Britain has traditionally punched well above her weight and has been renowned as having some of the best fighting forces the world has ever seen. Run it down and you lose that knowledge, that tradition and the pride that makes it all possible. Reduce manpower and you inevitably let things slide; those skills take a generation or more to rebuild, so if we are not handing them down, intake to intake, it is inevitable that very quickly we lose the ability to recruit and train our own successfully. They already did it in the NHS and Education; how soon before we look like the sort of slovenly, ill-disciplined buffoons toting ancient weaponry that we used to snigger at on arriving in foreign airports?

Don't tell him, Pike!

Ever seen two blokes arguing in a pub? The posturing, the chest bumping, the shoving? It’s our equivalent of long, colourful tail feathers or a bright red inflatable neck goitre and it’s about measuring up, bluffing it out and avoiding getting hurt. Both sides huff and puff but nobody throws a punch; both sides get to retreat unmarked and pretend to their own supporters that they won, really. That is the truth behind Cameron’s faux ‘renegotiation’, making insignificant concessions look like big wins. The alternative is out in the car park, sleeves rolled up and ready to slug it out, prepared to take a few bruises. But you need real balls to do that. And the knowledge that you can look after yourself. Soon that will no longer be a possibility.