Labour: The End is Nigh

The past few weeks have been perhaps the most turbulent period I can recall in over fifty years of following politics on this island. This goes some way to explaining why the most recent posts have avoided contemporary politics – things have been changing daily. But now that things have settled down a bit, with Mrs May in No 10, BoJo set to charm Johnnie Foreigner, and the battle-lines drawn in the Labour Party leadership election, it should be safe to resume commenting.

I wish to focus on the Labour Party, partly because many commentators are suggesting Labour might not be with us for much longer, or certainly not in the form we have come to know and love. (There! I’ve said it.) Another reason is that Labour remains the largest party in Wales plus the fact that one of the contenders for the leadership of the Labour Party represents a Welsh constituency.

For as I’ve mentioned, there is currently a struggle going on inside Labour for control of the party that will determine its future direction. A struggle between present leader Jeremy Corbyn and his allies on the one hand, and most of the MPs (and indeed AMs) on the other, represented by the two challengers, Angela Eagle and our very own Owen Smith.

The divide seems to be between what might be described as the Blairite rump of the party pitted against assorted varieties of the Hard Left that joined to elect Corbyn and will, if they are allowed, deselect most of the Labour MPs opposing the leader, plus remnants of Old Labour. Or to put it another way, unprincipled careerists versus unrealistic ideologues and those who’ve been left behind.

OWEN SMITH

Now Owen Smith is a man with quite an interesting background and past. He is the son of Dr Dai Smith, self-appointed chronicler of the Welsh working class. One of those Labour historians who believes Welsh history begins with the Industrial Revolution. Prior to this, Wales was a rural wasteland of Welsh-speaking peasants preyed upon by equally Welsh-speaking warlords and bandit chiefs. In fact, it was a Welsh-speaking hell from which we were saved by industrialisation and then the creation of the Labour Party.

Dr Dai was an academic but also served a stint as “Editor BBC Radio Wales and Head of Programmes (English language) at BBC Wales from 1992 to 2001”, and while at the Beeb he recruited young Owen. Though Owen left in 2002 to become a spad for Paul Murphy, then Secretary of State for Wales.

smith carp1

After failing to win the Blaenau Gwent by-election in 2006, against Independent Dai Davies, he continued with his job as a well-paid lobbyist for Pfizer, before moving on to Amgen, another pharmaceutical company, in 2008.

(By one of those quirks that are almost inescapable when looking into the backgrounds of Labour politicians, Owen Smith, while still at the BBC, recruited a young Lee Waters, who is now the Assembly Member for Llanelli. But Waters has assured me that they were unknown to each other when Smith recruited him. And I believe him. Oh yes.)

Around the time of the by-election Owen Smith gave an interview to WalesOnline in which he appeared to support the Iraq war and favour privatisation in the NHS. Read the interview here. He has since distanced himself from these remarks.

From what I’ve read in the past couple of days it would seem that many people who know him consider Owen Smith to be a bit . . . well, slippery, and perhaps he’s not what he wants us to believe he is. This piece by former ambassador Craig Murray says it all in the title – The Entirely Fake Owen Smith.

Owen Smith is one of New Labour’s chameleon-like smoothies who can change his position on anything at the blink of an eye. What you see is unlikely to be what you get because there are no principles to maintain, no constants . . . other than looking out for Number One. Exemplified by something I found on Twitter.

Owen Smith expenses

THE KINNOCK FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Friday saw the funeral of Jo Cox, the MP murdered a week before the EU referendum. As she was apparently killed by a right wing extremist expressing anti-immigration views many thought her death might swing the referendum in favour of Remain. That it did not tells us that the margin of victory for the Leave vote could have been even greater without this tragedy.

After the killing we heard both Neil Kinnock, former Labour leader, and his son Stephen, now MP for Aberavon (Port Talbot), tell us how well they knew Jo Cox and what a wonderful woman she was. Kinnock senior even likened the sad episode to “a death in the family”. But how did the Kinnocks know her so well?

(Another who spoke warmly of his friendship with Jo Cox, and having worked with her at Oxfam, was Stephen Doughty, the Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth. Many believe that Doughty owes his safe seat to family links with his powerful predecessor Alun Michael, now Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales Police.

Michael recruited as his deputy PCC Labour councillor [and daughter of Labour councillor] Sophie Howe, who’d served as a spad to first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones. When Ms Howe failed to secure a safe seat for the 2015 UK general election the spurious post of Future Generations Commissioner was created for her as a consolation prize.)

It seems that the connection between the Kinnocks and Jo Cox began in the late 1990s when Glenys Kinnock was an MEP (1994 – 2009) and Cox served as her adviser for two years before moving on to Oxfam and Oxfam International. Later she was also involved with the Save the Children Fund, and immediately before becoming an MP was with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After becoming an MP she shared an office with Stephen Kinnock.

Her husband Brendan also worked for the Save the Children Fund, but had to leave in rather unpleasant circumstances. His boss at the Fund, who also left under something of a cloud, was Justin Forsyth. Both Cox and Forsyth had been advisers to prime minister Gordon Brown, and both arrived at the charity in 2010, soon after Brown lost the general election. Forsyth had also been an adviser to Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair.

Many argue that Forsyth and Cox subverted the charity into ‘Save the Labour Party’ through regular attacks on the coalition and then the Conservative governments. In 2014 the charity – or rather, Forsyth – engineered a Global Legacy Award for Tony Blair, a decision opposed by many, even within the Save the Children Fund.

When Forsyth became a father, it was no surprise to see him congratulated by Baroness Kinnock.

Glenys Kinnock tweet

Her title is quite interesting. Perhaps in a show of socialist or feminist sentimentality Glenys Kinnock refused to call herself Lady Kinnock when hubby Neil was ennobled in January 2005 . . . holding out for her own peerage, which duly arrived in 2009. The Kinnocks are one of the few couples to both be peers.

Forsyth is now Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF.

To conclude this section it only remains to tell you who is now running the Save the Children Fund on an annual salary of $344,887. It’s Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Prime Minister of Denmark and taker of the infamous selfie with David Cameron and Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. She is also known as Mrs Stephen Kinnock, but apparently there’s no room to mention that fact on her Save the Children bio.

Mrs Kinnock StCF bio

LABOUR AND THE ‘WELSH’ MEDIA

As I’ve mentioned, and as most of you reading this already knew anyway, Stephen Kinnock is now the MP for Aberavon, the Port Talbot constituency. He was selected as the Labour candidate in early March 2014 by, I believe, a single vote, perhaps 106 – 105. Around the time of his selection questions were asked about his children’s education – were they receiving private education?

In this Llais y Sais article by Martin Shipton, from February 2014, Kinnock explains the situation by telling us that his elder daughter, Johanna, 16, had attended a local school in Copenhagen which is mainly state funded but where parents are expected to contribute, in the Kinnocks’ case, it’s around £80 a month. (In a subsequent article, on St David’s Day, and just days before the Aberavon selection committee met, Kinnock confessed he had “unintentionally misled the Western Mail”, in fact, the fees were closer to £160 a month.)

From that local school with its modest fees, Shippo tells us, “Johanna went on to the equivalent of a sixth-form college in Denmark which is wholly state-funded”. We are being told this, remember, in February 2014 . . . yet Johanna Kinnock became a student at Atlantic College in September 2013!

Johanna Kinnock Atlantic College

How do we explain this? Here we have the son of Wales’ most famous political dynasty coming home to rescue us from the wicked Tories, to save Port Talbot steelworks, so surely we’d have loved to hear that the grand-daughter of Lord Kinnock and Baroness Kinnock was also here among us, at the famous Atlantic College.

Why then are we lied to and told she’s at a sixth-forth college in Copenhagen? Could the reluctance to tell us the truth have anything to do with the fact that fees at Atlantic College are £28,600 a year?

Obviously, in February and March 2014 Stephen Kinnock knew that his daughter was in her second term at Atlantic College, and he lied, knowing that to admit she was at an expensive school might cost him the nomination for Aberavon, as it almost certainly would have, given the closeness of the vote.

But what of the Fat Man, and other ‘journalists’ in Wales? Were they genuinely unaware that Johanna Kinnock was at Atlantic College, or did they choose to keep it from us – and perhaps worse, give her father a platform to mislead us – in order to help Stephen Kinnock gain the Aberavon nomination?

People in Denmark certainly knew, as this article from December 2013 confirms. Google Translate charmingly renders it: “Thus, father and daughter be united in the British country where also Michael Laudrup competes as coach in Swansea. Helle Thorning-Schmidt in an interview with Billed-Bladet reported on his farewell with his daughter at the airport: – ‘It was terrible to say goodbye to her. We stood and tudbrølede’, the Prime Minister explained in a double interview with her and her husband”.

Johanna Kinnock Graduation

Johanna Kinnock graduated from prestigious, and expensive, Atlantic College in May 2015 . . . with few of us in Wales ever knowing she was there! No doubt the ‘Welsh’ media will insist it kept quiet to guarantee her privacy . . . but we know the truth.

UPDATE 23.07.2016: Stephen Kinnock has ‘responded’ on his blog to what I’ve written. Read it here. I think ‘evasive’ is the word I’m looking for.

My questions centred on Atlantic College, yet Stephen Kinnock claims that he was only asked about his daughter’s past education in Copenhagen, and this is why he made no mention of Atlantic College. Very convenient. And we must accept that no questioner wondered where the girl was at the time?

The questions were being asked to establish whether Kinnock’s children were at fee-paying schools, an issue that would have embarrassed him, and possibly cost him the Aberavon nomination. The response he gives on his blog is clever, but it’s no answer.

After telling us about the bursaries and scholarships on offer at Atlantic College he has this to say of his daughter, “Johanna’s time at AC was partly funded by a standard Danish state scholarship for students studying abroad.” “Partly funded”, so where did the rest of her £28,600 a year fees (plus other expenses) come from?

There is no doubt in my mind that Johanna Kinnock’s presence at Atlantic College was kept from us – by both her father and the ‘Welsh’ media – in order to help him secure the Labour nomination for Aberavon.

UPDATE 26.07.2016: Here’s a report that just appeared on the BBC Wales website. Maybe this story has legs.

THE DOWN HOME ANALOGY

The great advantage Tory grandees have over Labour politicians is that they don’t have to act, they have no problem saying, ‘Grandfather was a banker and I’m a banker’. But so many in the Labour Party feel the need to play a part in the hope of connecting with those they want to vote for them. Whenever I consider this it brings to mind a somewhat bizarre analogy.

I’m a great fan of Country music, the more authentic the better; I can listen to Hank Williams all night (and often do). The songs he wrote and sang were influenced by his marital difficulties, his drinking, the pain he suffered with his back and the drugs that helped, and all delivered in that haunting, penetrating voice. He’s not singing about anybody else, this is a young man baring his soul, and poor Southern whites in the late 1940s and early 1950s knew it.

We are now up to Hank Williams III, and talented though the grandson may be, he’s too far from his grand-pappy’s upbringing in Alabama. The authenticity of the rural South that gave birth to Country music is, inevitably, missing. It’s gone forever, and to pretend that it can be recreated in a studio or by a PR agency is just self-delusion.

Hank Williams

“My grandfather was a miner” insists Stephen Kinnock. Fine, so was mine, for a while, after coming back from the War (the one to end all wars). But you aren’t asking people to vote for your grandfather, you’re asking them to vote for you, so tell us, Kinnock, who and what are you? And while you’re at it, tell us where your daughter went to school.

This generational disconnect is inevitable, in politics as in other spheres, but it affects the Labour Party worse than other parties because Labour was founded to represent a single class, and now it’s arrived at a situation where the likes of Stephen Kinnock and Owen Smith, the children of peers and academics, have to dig up grandparents in the hope of connecting with that class they don’t really understand. Trying to be what you’re not rarely works.

And worse, the ‘Welsh’ media, knowing who’s in charge, and who pays, with adverts and official notices, to keep Shippo’s ‘paper afloat, play along, doing Labour’s bidding, and failing us.

BANANA REPUBLIC SANS BANANAS

A century of Labour enjoying almost unchallenged power has given us a system of favouritism, nepotism and blatant corruption that is unknown elsewhere in Europe. To all intents and purposes, Wales is a one-party state. Combine the corruption with our relative poverty and Wales deserves to be considered a third world country.

Yet there are those in Wales who do very well for themselves, that’s the whole point of ‘Welsh’ Labour’. Keep Wales poor, blame somebody else, reap the electoral benefits, then divvy up the seats, the sinecures and the funding.

This corruption is known to those at UK level who should intervene but is tolerated because a) there’s little chance of the Tories overtaking Labour and b) those that might overtake Labour are unacceptable. So London turns a blind eye to institutionalised corruption, and allows Labour politicians and thousands of hangers-on to fill their boots.

Those I’m discussing here make up what is often called ‘the liberal elite’, flitting between Public Relations, charity / third sector work, and political office, while preaching at the rest of us and condemning right of centre politicians for securing good jobs in the worlds of finance and business.

But many of those they condemn create jobs and wealth, but the liberal elite is almost entirely decorative, and superfluous, almost a price we’re prepared to pay to make us feel better about ourselves. All sustained by the public purse, either in direct, governmental funding or else donations to charities and foundations. They’re parasitical hypocrites.

It is these, and their control – until recently – of the Labour Party that has led to voters deserting the party, and explains why the post-industrial areas of Englandandwales voted as they did in the EU referendum. Brexit was the disenfranchised of the post-industrial wastelands saying to the liberal elite, ‘Fuck off, you selfish, lying bastards!’

Labour’s control of its traditional followers is now, as I said at the start, greatly weakened. With Labour in real danger of falling apart. Either Corbyn stays at the helm, which probably makes Labour unelectable (because the media and ‘others’ will destroy him), or else Labour will have as leader the uninspiring Eagle or ‘Slippery’ Smith. Corbyn, Eagle, Smith, none will connect with the areas that voted Brexit.

text box

Here in Wales Labour seems marginally more united, but if Labour in England splits, or maybe disintegrates, then there is no way that ‘Welsh’ Labour can escape the consequences. (How many Welsh will vote Labour if there’s no party in England to form the UK government, or even vote Labour in Assembly elections?) As some Russian tsar said of the Ottoman empire in the nineteenth century, ‘We have a sick man on our hands’. Keeping him alive artificially would be unkind.

We are a nation badly served in almost every conceivable way, and it’s our fault – nobody else’s – because we’ve accepted it for so long, and elected vermin more concerned with self-advancement than with serving Wales. Nothing will change until we make it clear that we aren’t taking it any more. It’s time to start getting ‘awkward’, and any attempt to limit this awkwardness to the narrow sphere of electoral politics would be the height of folly.

Because from now on all ideologies should be made irrelevant, all that matters is the national interest, because this is the only way to serve the Welsh people. For example, control over our natural resources is obviously in the national interest, so let’s demand that we have that control. And if politicians say, ‘Oh, it can’t be done’ or, ‘But what about England?’ the answer must be –

‘You and your parties do not represent the Welsh national interest, you have never represented the Welsh national interest; so step aside, for we are throwing off you parasites to decide our future for ourselves’.

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EU Referendum: Why I Want OUT!

As the title suggests, I am voting for the UK, but more especially for Wales, to leave the European Union. There are many reasons for this decision, some of which are set out below. And while my primary interest is Wales my concerns over the EU encompass wider, even global, issues.

THE BIG PICTURE

There have always been dreamers or idealists who’ve believed that the human race would be far happier if we had one, world government, and that wars could be avoided if we all spoke the same language. Nowhere has this belief been more explicitly stated than in those movies that see Earth threatened with alien invasion / destruction making us all pull together to defeat a common enemy. Heart-warming stuff that makes us proud to be Earthlings.

Away from the idealism I believe there really are powerful and influential people working towards a similar kind of global unity. Let me allay your fears for my sanity by making it clear that I am not talking now about anything as exotic as Illuminati or Knights Templar, Zionists or Nazis, let alone aliens or disguised reptilians moving among us. These are human beings not a lot different to you and me, just more ruthless, and greedy.

Among the more irritating ‘barriers’ to this one-world objective are nation-states, national identities, local governments, languages other than English, regional tastes and peculiarities. In fact, many of the things you and I cherish. So another objective for our Elite is to break down these ‘barriers’, and this is done by promoting the growth of supra-national bodies and encouraging the ‘homogenisation’ of the human race.

Perhaps it’s the absence of reptilian characteristics, but those I’m referring to are not easily identifiable, though many of them will be found at the regular meetings of the Bilderberg Group. (That said, the Bilderberg Group may itself be little more than a useful distraction for conspiracy theorists.)

Bilderberg1

Those I’m discussing are an ever-changing but self-perpetuating Elite that operates in the way secretive or semi-secretive groups have operated throughout history; that is, by infiltrating other organisations and also – more importantly – by recruiting those they see rising within the corporate world, the media, politics, the military and other fields. You cannot apply to join.

THE POLITICAL ROUTE

The best way to progress their strategy is by covering both bases in democracies where we find two major parties split along vaguely Left / Right lines, and then work through both of them. Achieved by largely removing ideology from politics and reducing political ‘debate’ to sound bites, photo opportunities, and taking up ‘positions’ that mean absolutely nothing.

In recent decades this blurring has been achieved in the USA, the UK, and other Western countries sharing such a political system. And yet, the rise of Trump, the support for Sanders, the election of Corbyn (even if it was achieved by the hard Left), and increasing support for populists and nationalist parties on the European mainland, presents our putative world leaders with the biggest threat their plans have yet faced. That’s because these hiccups warn them that across the Western world an increasing number of people believe they are ruled by elites out of touch with their concerns. And they’re right.

The Washington Post and the New York Times rail against Trump, ridicule his supporters, but those putting their faith in the Republican presidential candidate are not all gun-toting rednecks; they are people who have seen their jobs exported to low wage countries and their living standards fall, who have seen their patriotism exploited by one pointless and expensive war after another, who have lived through a recession caused by the reckless and criminal behaviour of people who all escaped punishment, who have seen the America they grew up in change around them.

To summarise: the aspiring world Elite has been clever in taking over the political centre ground and using that control to cast the cloak of moderation over its own ambitions. To the extent that anyone outside of the imposed boundaries of ‘responsible’ debate automatically becomes ‘dangerous’, or an ‘extremist’.

You know how clever this Elite has been when you hear socialists defend the EU for what it’s done for workers rights, and women’s rights, and God knows what other acts the bruvvers hold to be virtuous. I say that because the EU is merely a halfway house to the world our Elite craves.

The EU serves to lull us into a resigned acceptance of vague and distant government over which we have no control, but disguises its intentions by doling out goodies to appease the gullible. The question I would ask those currently defending the EU is this, if the Elite I’m describing achieves its objective of an unelected global government that cannot be removed, do you really think they’ll still be handing out goodies?

THE WORLD OF HARRY LIME

If we would seek a birthplace for this Elite, then it has to be the USA. There’s a temptation to assume that it grew out of that bogeyman of ’60s activists and folk singers, the military-industrial complex, but I believe we need to go back further.

In the first decade or so following the end of World War Two Europe was a very uncertain place. Not only were the Soviets camped in the east but in the west communist parties almost came to power through the ballot box in Italy and France. This frightened both the USA and the European elites trying to re-establish themselves after the disruption of World War Two.

There were a number of initiatives used to counter the communist threat to western Europe. First there was NATO, with the Treaty signed on April 4th 1949. Next came the forerunner to the Common Market and the EU, the European Steel and Coal Community, announced by Robert Schuman in May 1950.

Gladio

Taking the fight to the communists was Gladio. Formed as a ‘stay behind’ force in the event of a Soviet invasion Gladio developed into a terrorist organisation, using false flag attacks – as part of the Strategy of Tension – to lose the Left political support and justify repressive legislation. This culminated in the 1980 Bologna train station massacre, which was initially blamed on Left-wing terrorists but was actually carried out by fascists directed by the Italian secret service.

Operation Gladio can be traced through NATO back to the Pentagon and the CIA. Unsurprisingly, no one likes to talk about Gladio nowadays.

Finally, we had the first meeting of the Bilderberg Group at Oosterbeek in the Netherlands in May 1954.

I don’t want to dwell too much on this aspect of recent European history partly because it’s all rather distasteful, but without appreciating what was happening in the decades following WWII, it’s not easy to understand where we are today. The Strategy of Tension that invents enemies or exaggerates threats in order to justify repression is something that all governments employ to some extent. How far they’re prepared to go along this road depends on how serious they regard the challenges facing them. Though when the strategy is externally controlled then national governments may not even be consulted.

By the late 1980s we were into the brief era of Glasnost and Perestroika. There were many now in the USA who believed that their country had rescued Europe from the Nazis, had then pumped in huge amounts of cash to re-build Europe, before saving us from the Communists, and that all this entitled the USA to some control over Europe. And some tangible benefits from that control.

NATO, RUSSIA AND TURKEY

The Soviet Union and its former Warsaw Pact allies falling apart after 1990 should have meant the end of NATO, a military alliance set up to counter the spread of Soviet communism. But no, NATO has continued to grow, and all in one direction – eastward, seeking to encircle Russia.

Thankfully, people are waking up to the threat to peace posed by NATO. This very recent statement by German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, sums up many people’s fears, my own included.

NATO and the EU work hand in hand. It begins by, typically, exaggerating the threat of Russian aggression to frighten eastern European states into joining NATO, with membership of the EU offered as a sweetener. For a post I wrote in February I drew up a little table showing how joining NATO is invariably rewarded with EU membership. I reproduce a slightly amended version here.

NATO EU Rev

Turkey is the obvious anomaly, but rest assured, the Turks have been promised EU membership . . . by the USA. Though it’s proving to be a hard sell. For a clear majority of the EU’s people do not want Turkey as a member, but the promise has been made and now a way must be found to give Turkey EU membership, or, at least, the benefits of EU membership, and this can only be done by denying the people of Europe a say in the matter.

Turkey, that refuses to acknowledge its genocide against the Armenians. Turkey, a country waging constant war against its Kurdish minority. Turkey, friend of ISIS. Turkey, the Islamist dictatorship on the borders of Europe. We are supposed to welcome this country into the EU simply because it’s a loyal ally of the USA in its power struggle with Russia! I’d rather have Russia in the EU.

THE CAMPAIGN

What I’ve written should explain why President Barack Obama has made a number of interventions in support of the UK staying in the EU. In one speech he went as far as saying that we would be punished if we left the EU. (The BBC report I’ve linked to suggests that Obama was ‘doing Downing Street’s bidding’. Do these people understand nothing!)

The USA wants the UK to remain in the EU for the very reasons President de Gaulle wanted to keep the UK out – because the UK (more especially, England) will always act as Uncle Sam’s Trojan Horse. The UK in the EU will make life easier for major US corporations, and continue to isolate and taunt Russia. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership should be a warning to everybody.

The campaign itself has been distinguished by its lack of honesty, the absence of rational let alone intellectual discourse, and now, as I write this, by the hysteria surrounding the murder of MP Jo Cox.

Apparently her killer, rather than being an unhinged saddo, living alone and friendless since his granny died, is a ruthless assassin with links to US white supremacists, the apartheid regime in South Africa (toppled 22 years ago!), and motivated by his hatred for the EU. To believe much of what I’ve heard and read in the past 72 hours, the murder might as well have been committed by Farage, Gove and Johnson.

Something else worth mentioning about this killing is that once again we see the Elite and the Left in harmony. In times past of course, in the good old Gladio days, the Elite would have been targeting the Left, but currently the threat to the Elite’s agenda comes from the Right, both in the USA and in Europe, and so public opinion must be mobilised against that threat.

Western Mail Jo Cox

The ‘National Newspaper of Wales’ on Saturday told us, ‘Wales united in grief’ – for a woman we’d never heard of until she was murdered! ‘National grief’, if such a thing exists, is surely reserved for tragedies like Aberfan or, if we are dealing with individuals, then someone the nation knows and loves.

Also on the front page the Mule told us that the “Nation stands together to remember MP Jo Cox”. No, not really; it was just a few politicians campaigning. This killing was a truly horrible deed, but God Almighty! it has been shamelessly and distastefully milked by the Remain camp.

Elsewhere we have had various groups coming out in support of remaining in the EU, including of course (drum roll) ‘The World of Showbiz’. But what sort of moron is influenced in making a very important choice by a soap opera ‘star’? Come to that, why do luvvies believe that anyone with an ounce of sense gives a toss about their opinions? Is life for them one big Graham Norton Show?

The BBC and the rest have played ball to the extent that just about anyone arguing against EU membership belongs to the ‘Right Wing’ or the ‘Extreme Right’; and is ipso facto a ‘racist’ or a ‘fascist’. It seems that in the modern political spectrum there is naught but a wasteland between the advance guard of the Fourth Reich and the cuddly and ‘responsible’ Centre-Right represented by Cameron, that merges seamlessly into the Centre-Left.

Which is strange, really, because somewhere in this ‘wasteland’ is where I locate myself, and I know that the neighbourhood is becoming daily more popular.

And yet, the irony, not lost on anyone who follows and analyses what goes on in the world, is that the Elite-NATO nexus has not hesitated to fund and to arm overtly fascist groups in Croatia, Ukraine and elsewhere. So the message is clear – there’s nothing wrong with fascism per se but the jackbooted ones must be on the ‘right’ side.

Of course, there’s no escaping the fact that this debate is essentially a Left / Right split. Perhaps this was inevitable, and I have no problem with it. What I do take issue with – and not just in this referendum campaign – is that many on the Left seem to believe they are both intellectually and morally superior to their opponents. In their eyes I am both stupid and evil for writing this.

THE EU

There’s no avoiding it, I suppose; we must discuss the beast itself. Though I don’t really want to spend too much time on it. Let’s start by going back in time a bit.

Given my admiration for General de Gaulle, his l’Europe des patries held some attraction. Then there was the alternative of a fully federalist model that promised to do away with the existing nation-state and perhaps revive Europe’s ancient regions and submerged nations.

But whichever model was chosen I believed – influenced by books such as The American Challenge – that the ambition should be a continent standing up to both the USA and the Soviet Union. A beacon to the rest of the world, offering a real alternative that balanced individual freedoms with collective responsibility for the less fortunate.

The bureaucratic aberration we see today results from neither of those options I considered all those years ago. The EU today is little more than the political wing of NATO. The EU was long ago adopted by the Elite as a vehicle to carry forward its agenda. The EU today, given these links, and how NATO and the Elite provoke Russia, may even be a threat to peace.

Fallon NATO
From The Telegraph online, article by Laura Hughes

I suppose I also have to address immigration seeing as this is said to be the most important single reason for people in the UK wanting to leave the EU. My position is quite simple; genuine refugees should be taken in, but economic migrants should not be allowed to enter the EU unless needed. As for migration within the EU of EU citizens, well, that’s part of the package, the only way to stop it is to leave.

The reason the issue is so fraught, and divisive, is that with immigration we once again see the unholy alliance between the Elite and the Left. The latter seems to believe that Europe should take in just about anybody, with few if any checks. (The attitude that led to the wake-up call of New Year’s Eve in Cologne, where the attackers were not refugees from Syria or Iraq but young, and mainly illegal, male migrants from North Africa.)

The Hard Left cries crocodile tears over refugees but in reality it views immigration as just another weapon in its ongoing war against the corrupt and capitalist West. (Yawn.)

The Elite of course supports uncontrolled immigration because this is a force for homogenisation, and also because it drives down wages. But using the mainstream media to vilify as ‘racists’ all those who have reservations about immigration is insulting to tens of millions of decent people across Europe, and it will backfire.

It is already backfiring, on both sides of the Atlantic. The Austrian establishment suffered a bit of a shock recently when Austrians nearly voted in a Freedom Party president. (Note that for the Grauniad the FPÖ is a “far-right party”.) Now new President Christian Kern is considering introducing legislation to ban the peaceful – but embarrassing – protesters of the Identitarian movement. “We have to think about whether we are too tolerant”, says Kern. Chilling words.

The conundrum for the Elite, and indeed for those who like to project themselves as ‘moderate’ and mainstream politicians, can be spelt out thus: For reasons commendable or not you want immigration, but you don’t want the political drift to the Right that challenges your authority and your plans. Yet uncontrolled immigration – even the perception of uncontrolled immigration – will always drive many voters to the Right.

I shall end with one final example of how out of touch those running this circus are with the ordinary people of Europe. One issue that I guarantee unites people across Europe is their contempt for tax havens, so beloved of the Elite. Yet Europe has a tax haven at its very core, it’s called Luxembourg.

WEXIT

When I joined Plaid Cymru back in the mid-’60s there was no question that the party believed in independence. There was no debate over the issue; it was independence, a seat at the United Nations and all the other trappings of statehood. The problem was that this inevitably raised the response that accused us of wanting to ‘cut Wales off’. (‘Cut’ being an emotive and loaded word in almost any context.)

Then along came the Common Market, and Plaid Cymru seized the opportunity to promote ‘Independence within Europe’ which, it was hoped, would avoid the damaging ‘cut’ riposte. It hasn’t really worked. In fact, UK membership of the EU has not made Plaid Cymru any more popular; it has simply allowed the party to pretend that Wales somehow has a real presence in Europe, while simultaneously arguing that independence is soooo twentieth century.

But the argument being pushed more than any other, by Plaid Cymru and the other parties, is that Wales ‘does well’ out of the EU. What this really means is that because Wales is relatively poor we get lots of hand-outs. It’s quite incredible to hear ‘Welsh’ Labour, largely responsible for Wales’ poverty, extol the benefits of EU membership for this reason.

Sleeping Dragon 1

There’s no doubting that Wales has received billions in EU hand-outs – but look around you, where are the benefits? The truth is, as I keep saying, far too much of this funding has been wasted building up a whole stratum of Welsh life beholden to the statist ‘Welsh’ Labour Party. It’s almost as if our politicians are afraid to do what’s best for Wales in case it gives us ideas.

Wales today is asleep, lulled into accepting a steady, subsidised decline. We are told by all political parties that we must be grateful for these dollops of cash because we can’t do anything for ourselves. Therefore we must stay in the EU to ensure the cash keeps coming. There needs to be a better reason than that.

Finally, I ask you to consider the reasons given, by different voices, for Wales to vote Remain, and then decide whether – like me – you don’t in fact view these as the ‘cold shower’ Wales needs to finally wake us up and get us moving in the right direction:

  • We shall lose the EU hand-outs and these will not be replaced by Westminster.
  • Leaving the EU will result in economic meltdown.
  • The City of London will be replaced as Europe’s No 1 financial centre.
  • Brexit is fundamentally English nationalism.
  • Post Brexit the UK will experience the most repressive and anglocentric government ever known.
  • Scotland will probably become independent.

I know I’m lining up with some unpleasant people (I see through them better than most), but the issue is too big to let personalities intrude. The European Union is a bureaucratic nightmare run by weaklings and a failure on every level. Worse, it no longer serves the interests of Europe’s peoples but those of a shadowy Elite that regards all nationalities, and all languages other than English, as obstacles to a world unified without the knowledge or consent of its peoples.

On Thursday you won’t just be voting on the European Union; a Remain vote will also be an endorsement of NATO’s dangerous Bear-baiting; of the Elite’s global control programme, and, possibly – more likely if democracy threatens to break out – a return to Operation Gladio.

You don’t want to live in this dystopian future, few do, but the wheels are already in motion. If you care about Wales, and if you want to see Wales survive and prosper as a nation in her own right, then you must vote to leave the European Union as the precondition for leaving the United Kingdom.

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