To call the Benn Act the “Surrender Act” is to incite violence against those who enacted it, according to Labour. The Act was designed (as its sponsors would tell you) to ensure the UK does not leave the EU without some variant of the “withdrawal agreement” previously “negotiated” by Mrs May and thrice rejected by this Zombie Parliament. That agreement was famously described by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as;

”...a deal that a nation signs only after having been defeated at war”

So, if accurately describing an Act of Parliament is all it takes to provoke anger against you, perhaps that anger is righteous? If you are prepared to enact all sorts of radical policies on the basis of mere pluralities, but thwart the decision of an actual majority of the British People, then perhaps you have invited their wrath?

Neither the Conservative Party nor Labour has, since the War, ever secured a majority of the national vote. The Conservatives secured 55% in 1931.

Labour’s highest percentage post-war was 48% in 1951. The Conservatives’ highest share of the vote was 49.7% in 1955. Neither has achieved 52% post-war and no likely victory in the imminent General Election will give a popular mandate approaching that.

If the Liberal “Democrats” win a majority in Parliament and revoke the Article 50 notice, 40-something percent of the electorate will have thwarted 50-something percent. The anger then would be hard to contain and would be stoked to dangerous levels by the smug triumphalism of the Remain Ultras and the EU imperialists. You saw their sneering grins outside the Supreme Court this week. You saw Verhofstadt’s tweets. Imagine them if they win.

The Referendum was necessary precisely because the constitutional issue of EU membership cut across party lines. A big majority was secured for Remain in 1975 (including my very first vote) because the “Common Market” was seen as a benign liberalisation of international trade. Discontent was seething at the steady mutation of that Common Market into a proto-state. No government had ever asked the British People to approve that change. Most indications were that they wouldn’t have approved.  

Leavers ranged from libertarians like me, through patriotic statists of right, left and centre to the hard left of the Labour Party and indeed the Communist Party. Reasons for leaving ranged from principled objections to an over mighty state to a desire to escape EU restrictions on “state aid” that prevented an even mightier state. That’s why, when Remainers ask “...but what do Brexiteers want?” we can’t answer with a political programme. Our only honest answer is “...whatever the future political direction of the UK might be — it should be decided by people we can sack if they annoy us.”

Boy oh boy, are the people in charge in both Westminster and Brussels annoying us now! We want an election to sack as many of them as we can. For so long as they deny us that, they are relying on our decency and good manners to sleep easily in the beds we have feathered so lavishly for them. They’d better hope we are more decent than them and have far better manners than they have exhibited in their sneering, supercilious and dismissive campaigns against us. And far better manners than Labour’s Shadow Chancellor.

The violence of his discourse makes “humbug” seem rather gentle, no? But then it is always “one rule for us...” with them. 

So says Anna Soubry, an MP for a party with literally zero support. Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition leader with the lowest approval rating since records began, agrees. On the back of the Supreme Court’s apolitical decision, would-be plutocrat Gina Miller smugly continues her well-funded political assault on the biggest democratic vote in the history of our nation. She does so flanked by the leaders of minority parties too “frit” to face an election. This is democracy Jim, but not as we know it.

The law is now clear. The PM erred. I am sure he will respect the decision. That legal judgement is one thing but the jubilant fake-democrats’ equally clear determination to use it to thwart our decision to leave the EU is another. Please don’t quote me that “no mandate for no deal” nonsense, by the way. No deal acceptable to Parliament is on offer and they are doing all they can — in active concert with the other side’s negotiators — to prevent the government achieving a better one.

They will accept nothing short of stopping Brexit. All else is lies, mystification and agitprop.

Several of them referred reverentially to the Supreme Court as the “highest court in the land” but that is a blatant lie. They are straining their every sinew to ensure that our highest court continues to be the European Court of Justice, that our highest political authority remains the EU Council of Ministers and that our government is the EU Commission. These self-proclaimed “democrats” are today celebrating the chance this decision gives them to fight for our judiciary, legislature and executive to remain on foreign soil unaccountable to the British people.

That’s not a fantastic day for democracy but it is a great day for fantasy democracy, fake democracy — for Britain remaining a colony of a foreign power. Because if your Supreme Court is in another country, that’s what you are — a colony. As Tony Benn warned decades ago and as Guy Verhofstadt recently confirmed to rather surprising wild applause at the LibDem Conference, the EU sees itself as an empire. The days of European imperialism are not over, it seems, until the failed imperial powers of the past have another go. 

Unlike the Remain ultras, I can accept a decision I don’t like. The court’s ruling surprises me in light of the Bill of Rights but I am no constitutional law expert and I now accept our constitution is as they say. I have nothing to say against the judges concerned. I won’t reargue a case determined by the court I (unlike Anna Soubry et al.) believe should be the highest in the land.

It changes nothing as to the political and moral rights and wrongs of Brexit however. 

Those calling for the PM’s resignation are hypocrites. He has offered to resign by calling an election. Knowing they would lose, these triumphant “democrats” refuse to let him do that. They don’t want to back him, but they refuse to sack him. Knowing a new Parliament would (if the Conservatives see sense and act in concert with the Brexit Party) be solidly for an immediate Brexit, they prefer to hold him in place and try to use him as their puppet.

The court’s decision is disappointing but the Millerite thugs’ hypocrisy, elitist disdain for the British people and cynical hostility to true democracy is drearily predictable and utterly infuriating to decent patriotic Brits. They are playing with fire and I hope only they get (metaphorically) burned. 

Pete North asks if the Union can survive Brexit and “do we really care?” Personally I think this damp archipelago, including Ireland, belongs together. We Scots, Welsh, English and Irish are interbred beyond all separation. I never encountered an unmixed family. More importantly we are unarguably one people culturally. We teach our children the same nursery rhymes, laugh at the same jokes and share the same magnificent literature, art and music.

Most of us can’t tell without asking which of the nations our fellows “belong” to. I stopped calling myself Welsh after a vile nationalist was rude to my English mum and no-one but her noticed. It seems, if not crazy, then at least very petty-minded to separate politically — even leaving aside the economics of it.

What’s driving the Irish government nuts about Brexit is how obvious it will make it that the Republic is economically not independent at all. No more would Scotland be. As Pete unkindly says, it would be “Zimbabwe with fried Mars Bars.” That’s perhaps a little harsh and unhelpful in such delicate discussions as we may be about to have, but not entirely unfair  

It is odd that people who think multiculturalism will unite peoples with the most profound ethical and ideological differences can also believe trivial differences between the Home Nations necessitate actual apartheid. Holding contradictory ideas in the same brain is a key postmodernist skill, I guess. Yet the Union is voluntary or it’s nothing. If the Scots want out, as the Irish did in their day, then that’s up to them and off they must trot. Sad though that will be for me and my Scottish pals (all of whom are economically-active Unionists). 

I don’t see why only the Scots (and others who happen to live there) should be asked to decide though. The United Kingdom, not its component parts, is the member state of the EU. However Brexit goes, if Scotland leaves the UK it will then have to apply to join (not rejoin) the EU. Previous applicants had to demonstrate economic stability before admission. That would prove difficult for a Scotland deprived of English gold. Spain, afraid of its Catalans (and far less relaxed about separatism than England) would veto their application. Their path would be rocky and that would never do because we love them and wish them well. So wouldn't it be better instead to ask the other Home Nations if they want to leave the Union?

England would certainly do so. It contains 85% of the UK population but 95% of the economy. Even if it took a Barnett formula adjusted share of the national debt with it, it would be a far richer country and the threat of Celtic-fringe imposed Socialism would be removed forever. Goodbye Mr Corbyn.

I’d be relaxed either way but I imagine Wales would vote to leave the UK too. We Welsh like to rattle our sabres in imitation of the Scots in pursuit of subsidies etc., but we know which side our bara brith is buttered. If Northern Ireland voted to remain in the rump UK, then the reduced member state could withdraw its Article 50 notice and the Brexit divide would be neatly resolved. Leave-voting England (& Wales) would be free from whatever EU or post-Brexit treaty entanglements remained at a single bound. The Irish could stop bleating about backstops and deal instead with the other side of the sectarian terrorist violence they encouraged (and clandestinely supported) for so long.

It’s an actual opportunity for karma, no less!

My contempt for the farce that is the UN is so profound that the idea of Scotland on its security council actually quite appeals. If Saudi Arabia can be a member of the UN “human rights” council, why the hell should a nuclear-free Scotland not sit at the top table with Russia, China and the US? Particularly as the US has always meddled in the UK’s internal affairs on the side even of violent nationalists. It would be hilarious to see the US government’s reaction to the Scottish Peoples Republic wielding its veto. Yet more karma in fact! In an ideal world our old comrade Councillor Terry Kelly would be Scotland’s U.N. ambassador!

I offer this solution, as you will have discerned by now, mostly in jest. It’s far too sensible for the buffoons in power to accept it and of course far too much of a threat to their globalist agenda. But what actual objections — gentles all — do you see to it? 

I am all for the Acts of Union as long as they are practised consensually. If Ms Sturgeon really wants Scotland out of the UK but in the EU, we can help. At the time of the Scottish referendum, the EU Commission legal advisers confirmed that, had Scotland left the UK, it would have also left the EU as the UK is the Member State. Just as when the DDR (East Germany) merged with West Germany, it became part of a Member State and therefore the EU. So why don't England, Wales and (if it wishes) Northern Ireland now leave the UK? The Remaining UK (aka Scotland) can then ignore the referendum and continue as a Member State. Job done? You can thank me in whisky ma'am. A lifetime supply of Talisker please.

Link: Looking for a voice: The Brown Premiership ?

Guthrum comments on the fact that Gordon Brown is talking of a new written constitution for the United Kingdom. That is something we certainly need. Under New Labour's iron party discipline, Parliament has become the obedient instrument of the Executive and the "separation of powers" has collapsed.

If we could simply adopt the US Constitution, doing a "search and replace" to change "United States of America" to "United Kingdom" I would be happy. I could even accept (reluctantly) the deletion of the right to bear arms. However, I guarantee that a Brownian constitution will neither restrain the powers of the State nor protect individual rights. Brown is the last man on Earth to promote our right to pursue happiness in our own way. His draft will be laden with false "rights" which merely amount to imposing obligations on others.

We desperately need a new Constitution to protect us from the State, but this hugely authoritarian Government is the last one that should be trusted with the job. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Link: newsBlog | Campaign for an English Parliament.

The growing English desire for a Parliament is entirely a reaction to the West Lothian Question. Englishmen have never before shown any desire for more layers of government. Were it not for devolution, we would be quite content to be governed from our historic parliament at Westminster.

Personally I love Scotland. It's a beautiful place and I have friends there. I really wish the Scots could get along with us in the UK, but then I love Ireland too. I see no reason why all of us in these islands can't live together as one nation.

Now there's a long-lost cause!

People who share the same language, teach their children the same nursery rhymes, love the same drama, music and literature and cherish common values should be in the same nation. That the tribal hatreds of prehistoric times have outlasted the long-miscegenated tribes is sad. That modern nations should define themselves by long-dead tribes of a lost race is pathetic. Sad, pathetic or not, the right to self-determination is inalienable and it's not for me to question the reasoning behind any given exercise of that right.

The Scots seem cautiously to be gearing up to go the way of the Irish, no doubt encouraged by their recent example. The SNP is cleverly making it "safe" for voters to elect them, by promising a referendum on full independence in 2010. It will have three years, and the resources of the well-funded Scottish government, to make its case. I think it will succeed. The sight of a nationalist government running the country (and under the leadership of the most impressive politician in these islands it can scarcely do less well than the current lot) will stoke the fires lit by Labour with the establishment of what Billy Connolly calls "the wee pretendy Parliament".

Though we will shed a tear, it is not all bad news. They have never, shall we say, fully embraced the United Kingdom. Only 163,000 of them currently make a net contribution to the UK Treasury. Most Scots are unreconstructed Socialists. An election-deciding proportion of them work for (or are kept in idleness by) the State. I do not say they are no loss, but I am a polite Englishman. Economically, it would not be far wrong. Of course, they will take their share of North Sea oil, but it's not as great as the SNP thinks and becomes less important with every day of delay.

We need to get our act together for the negotiations which may begin in 2010. Few people seem to have thought the consequences through - on either side of the border.

Since Scotland will be leaving the UK, which is the Member State of the EU, an independent Scotland will need to apply to join. It would be irrational for a new nation, with no recent track record of political and economic stability, to walk immediately into membership. The nations of New Europe, very sensibly, had to prove that they were stable democracies with viable economies before they could  join. They were made to jump many hoops of the kind now being held up before Turkey. Scotland should jump them too.

These days we accept democracy, unthinkingly, as a good thing. I have not heard a serious word against it since University, when some young men of my acquaintance affected to think it “a brave experiment that failed.” I begin to wonder if they were right, at least as to its British incarnation.

Something is clearly very wrong with British democracy. Our low election turnouts prove that. Our voters do not face bombs and bullets on their way to the polling station, but they show less enthusiasm to vote than the Iraqis who do. Perhaps we should arrange to stain British voters’ fingers with purple ink and have men armed by Iran take pot-shots at them? I am sure President Ahmadinejad would oblige.

One might expect the constant meddling, the authoritarianism, the sheer bloody priggishness of New Labour to drive people back to the polls. They were elected by a minority and they are imposing the views of part of that minority on the rest of us. Yet British non-voters I speak to are way beyond mere disinterest. They are militantly apathetic. They have enthusiastic contempt for the process.
                                                                                                              
Once every little boy and girl born into the world alive, was “either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative.” Yet now, we hear the fatal words, “they’re all the same.” So, indeed, they are. Perhaps it is not that our democracy is failing, but that it is working too well? Politicians have views as diverse as ever. There is no view too absurd to be represented in the House of Commons, as George Galloway sufficiently proves. To get and keep power, however, now involves concealing ones opinions. Men and women go into politics to pursue their agenda, but soon the peoples’ agenda is pursuing them.

The only effective “check and balance” in our Parliamentary democracy was the way in which, for centuries, the British divided neatly, sportingly, into two roughly equal political "sides". Whigs vs. Tories, Conservatives vs. Liberals, Labour vs. Conservatives, etc. Our dangerous three word constitution (“Parliament is sovereign”) was not a problem. We could always rely on the swing of the political pendulum to keep government honest.

We still have two major parties, but few feel any allegiance to them. Their memberships are derisory, smaller than a hotel loyalty scheme, larger than a decent-sized fishing club. Both are led by slimy, unprincipled populists. “I’ll tell you what I think” they seem to say, “as soon as I have worked out what I think you want me to think.” All of which means that we ourselves, dear readers, have become the problem. Constitutions protect people from each other, as much as they protect people from the State. In the shambles of our modern democracy, we are each other’s prey.

Alexander Tytler (1747–1813) famously observed that:                                                                        

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits ... with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

He had it almost right. In truth, the masses can accept occasional fiscal discipline, but only if first brought to beggary by their own idleness and greed.

When Labour last wrecked the economy, the Tories under Thatcher won their reputation as “the Nasty Party". They made a sick nation take its bitter medicine. It had to be done, but no-one enjoyed it. Many who lived through it are bitter that our lives were thus blighted by the greed of previous generations who voted themselves unfunded benefits; so inflated the currency as to repay their debts in base coin and then left it to us to straighten things out. We are even more bitter now that New Labour has made all our efforts vain.

Our generation has paid for everything - twice - only to be told there is nothing for us. Our taxes, our pensions, have been diverted to bribe an army of Government “workers” and the mass of idlers on permanent benefits which now passes for “the working class”. Anyone who does work in Britain, if not for the State, is for much of the year in forced labour to feed the Government's hordes.

As has been sagely observed, “Labour always spends its way out of power eventually.” Cameron may pout, preen and posture now, but the Tories will be called into service as the Nasty Party again.

But enough of economics. What of politics? What, in particular, of liberty? Labour has opened our eyes to our constitutional danger. Though we were joyously ignorant of it, it seems that we were always at the mercy of an over-mighty State. All it took for habeas corpus to be repealed in Britain, was for the political balance to shift, so that one Party could do it without the other crying foul.

Focus groups and opinion polls have had the same effect on political thinking, as wind tunnels and CAD had on car design. They are a more scientific, but also a more soulless, way to do the job. They have led to less choice as politicians adapt their offer to comply with the "scientific" data. Had Jefferson and Washington had focus groups, there would have been no American Revolution. Most colonists favoured the Crown. A majority moved to Canada to remain subjects of King George. But the founding fathers were not followers, but leaders. They built a democracy from undemocratic beginnings.

How safe is a parliamentary democracy to live in when most voters fail to understand that powers given to our rulers for one reason may be used for others? All civil liberties objections crumble today in the face of the word "suspect;" which means no more than someone thought, by a fallible someone else, to have done something bad.

A democracy that works properly, will broadly give the people what they want. We have been remarkably tolerant of that in the past. More than 50 years on from the start of Communism in Central Europe, families whose businesses were stolen still lobby for restitution. Yet my grandfather’s business was stolen in 1946, and - while he did not like it (to say the least) - he accepted it calmly as the “will of the people.”

That my grandfather’s life work should be stolen was bad enough. But worse things than that can happen (and have happened) in a democracy.

What if what the people want is Hitler, as the German people did in the 1930’s? Given the clarity with which he stated his views in “Mein Kampf”, it could be argued that he had a democratic mandate for genocide. Perhaps that’s why our German friends are so keen to suppress his book? It is no worse (and after the Holocaust, is far less dangerous) than many classics of Communism, but it embarrassingly reveals they voted for Hitler in full knowledge of his intentions. Hitler, then, had a democratic mandate for violent use of State power. When he used that power, effectively, to demolish German democracy was that valid? Can one generation democratically deny democracy to the next?

Had Hitler been less mad, his regime might prosper yet. Listen to those who think President Ahmadinejad must be left in peace within his borders. People in the 1930’s said the same of Mr Hitler.

Had Hitler killed only those Jews within his reach; had he sought lebensraum only in the East, the Manchester Guardian readers  of the day would have spoken movingly of “international law” and referred the matter to the impotent League of Nations. Hitler could have begun the Shoah under the same indulgent gaze they now bestow on his successor in Tehran, as he prepares to finish it. And all of this as democratic as you please.

What of Palestinian democracy? The world's most successful professional victims freely chose terrorist killers to lead them. While only a complete idiot believes the Cubans love Castro, it seems no-one seriously questions Palestinian support for Hamas and Hezbollah. No-one who saw their street celebrations after 9/11 would doubt it. Once again, if they confine themselves to killing only those Jews conveniently at hand, they may count on the affectionate indulgence of the Guardianistas.

Are there then then no limits to democracy? In Britain there are not. Our democracy is defective, because we have never clearly defined what power individuals have delegated to the State. Potentially, our lives, our freedoms and our worldly goods can be taken at any moment at the State's whim. That the State is under loose democratic control is of little comfort. Am I any less a serf if enslaved by a majority of my neighbours? Am I any less dead for being slain with their approval?

The State should enjoy only those powers delegated by individuals. Would any of us freely give the right of life and death? Would any of us freely give the right to tax us until we work most of the year for others, like indentured slaves? Democracy is a valuable, but not a sufficient component of a free society. We also need individual rights, which outrank those of the State, because it serves us, not vice versa.  It is those rights that make us free, not the way in which members of the government are chosen.

Churchill said (and he was right) that:

democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried. 

It is a mere human construct. If we do not question it and worry about its political and economic outputs, we condemn it ultimately to fail.

Guthrum blogged here recently about the need for constitutional reform. It has never been more necessary. If the Tories would like to stand out from the crowd and propose something to energise the masses, here is their opportunity.  Sadly, that would require skilful, principled leadership and persuasive, powerful oratory, rather than cheap shots, sound bites and new hairdos.

Don't hold your breath, and keep your passport up to date.

Here is a piece from our guest blogger today, Guthrum. He wrote this while I was in Cannes earlier in the week, but it provides convenient "cover" for me today, while I get steadily sozzled on my birthday. Over to you, G.

As Tom is enjoying the south of France, he has been kind enough to allow me to share some of my thoughts on the constitutional challenges we all face.

 

It has been nearly one hundred and seventy years since the great Reform Act of 1832. This Act was passed as a rational attempt to reorganise political life and to head off the revolutionary undercurrents of the 1820's and 1830'€™s, in the post Napoleonic period.

 

Rotten boroughs like Old Sarum that had eleven houses and could return two MP's in the gift of the local land owning aristocracy, were swept away. Once passed the defects in the Act were apparent - the vote was based on a property qualification, for example. However, the fact that the reasons and conditions that caused it to be passed are barely remembered is evidence of the Act's success. The stability that it engendered spared Britain the convulsions of the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848.

 

In modern business parlance the Management of Change had been effective. Looking at the modern political landscape, I can see no sign of even of a willingness to even acknowledge that change is happening, let alone needs to be managed.

 

The Whitehall village is happy and secure in its two/three party system. Yet  voters are voting with their feet away from the current system, therefore depriving the political system of its legitimacy. The House of Lords has been tainted as a house of "experts"€™ and turned into a place full of appointees who owe their place to the patronage of the Prime Minister of the day. The PM enjoys the rights of the Royal Prerogative, and can safely ignore the wishes of both Parliament and Country.

 

The Monarchy is to be passed to a man, who appears to think that his constitutional position is a soap box to influence public policy. Charles Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Battenburg is not an elected politician and his views may be of interest to the readers of Hello magazine, but should have no more bearing on an elected government than those of any other citizen.

This Government has fought a war on the whim of one man, and is betraying the freedoms that have been fought for.

 

The political landscape needs to be managed. There needs to be an acknowledgement of our fundamental freedoms in the form of a written constitution with arrangements to strike down attempts to collect our personal data, correspondence and break into our homes.

 

Political power should be returned to the towns and cities of this country, with any position of real power being an elected one; police chiefs, Mayors etc. Unelected quangos should be declared unconstitutional if they handle public funds. Tax raising should be on a local level, with funds for national defence passed upwards, not taxation collected centrally then distributed downwards. Education should be on the basis of excellence and need. We need as many superb engineers as we need lawyers. This can only be done at local level. Education must stop being a political football.

 

The House of Commons should be reduced by about half, and instead of involving themselves like over paid social workers in the minutiae of our lives, MP's should restrict themselves to matters of state, foreign affairs and defence.

 

Personally I see no constitutional role for a hereditary Monarchy.

 

Unless the management of this constitutional crisis is addressed, the State will assume more and more power over our lives, simply to protect itself. It will be the end of any pretence of this country being a representative democracy, let alone a participatory democracy.