Well, here we are on 6 June 2019. Peterborough by-election day, but also the 75th commemoration of the Normandy Landings, aka D-Day. There has been wall-to-wall coverage on BBC News, ITV News and Sky News.
Preamble
This is not the place in which to discuss whether the Second World War could have been avoided (on the Western Front, in Western Europe generally; I think that it could have been). This is not the place in which to discuss whether the British Empire and the German Reich could have concluded an honourable armistice after the Fall of France (I think that they might have done; Germany made about ten separate offers).
It is important to note that these anniversaries are made use of by the Jewish Zionist element. Which is partly why they are pushed so hard on TV. Another chance to remind the masses about “the Nazis”, about how bad they supposedly were, and about how “necessary” it was to declare war on Germany, and eventually to defeat “the Nazis” (and so, Germany).
My own father was too young to be in the armed forces for much of WW2, though he was, near the end of the war, recruited by lot as a “Bevin Boy” (he was born and brought up in County Durham), and worked both in coal mining and later a shipyard (after the war, he became a professional footballer). Ironically, that service, far from the front lines of the war, killed him about 70 years later (via exposure to asbestos in a shipyard).
My maternal grandfather served as a soldier throughout WW2 and was both at Dunkirk and, rather later, in Burma.
Overview of my outlook re. the Second World War
My view of the war, even leaving aside my general sympathy with National Socialism in terms of ideology and aspiration, is that, on the Western Front, it need not have happened and should not have happened. I believe the same about the First World War, incidentally.
More
Born in 1956, I was brought up, as people were then, with “the War” as a constant backdrop. My grandfather talked scarcely at all about his war service with the British Expeditionary Force in 1939-40, or with the Army in Burma for much of the rest of the war, though it affected his health. He did give the odd bit of advice when I, aged maybe 7 or 8, was laying out my little Airfix plastic soldiers (various armies, but including, I think, German, British Eighth Army, Japanese and US Marines). I remember a couple of his comments, such as that patrolling soldiers should always be following one another in a line if in jungle, never abreast.
Had my grandfather not already been in uniform by reason of having been in the Territorial Army in 1939, he might never have served actively in the war at all, being at the time 38 or 39 years old (the usual cut-off age was 41). That’s Fate…
As mentioned above, people of my age who were brought up in the 1950s and 1960s always had “the War” there, around, like the woodsmoke and burning leaf smell of autumn in those days. The Germans were regarded by children of my age as honourable enemies (unlike the Japanese) and not some force of malign and almost cosmic evil, as the Jews try to make out now.
The Jewish “holocaust” propaganda and historical distortion that is now pervasive had not then really started in a big way. Also, the unspoken narrative was that Britain had suffered and struggled and “won the war”. The —in fact, overwhelming— input of the USA and the Soviet Union was popularly regarded (not only by children) as being at best no more (even taken together!) than that of the UK.
Churchill (as myth) hung over the scene like a Mount Rushmore presidential sculpture or —with apology to Jane Russell— like a thundercloud, only equalled by the leader of the “German hordes”, Hitler.
The UK at that time (1960s) was still basically homogenous racially, certainly outside London or some port cities. In places like Reading, where I was born, and on the edge of which I lived until age 10 (my family was then in Sydney for 3 years), there were few blacks and browns (in fact, barring a family of Anglo-Indians whom we knew, there were almost none). The only black I recall seeing in England in the early/mid 1960s was the NHS consultant at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading who treated me for hearing impairment at age 7 or 8. He was from somewhere in the Caribbean. The country was then still a nation. The various war anniversaries were just part of the landscape, along with Trooping of the Colour, the Royal Tournament (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tournament), the University Boat Race, Ascot, the Queen etc.
Today
Today, the UK is split and fissured racially, ethnically, economically, ideologically. It is scarcely a nation at all.
Today, with the “D-Day” ceremonies, the old Establishment or old Britain had its day in the sun: the unthinking royalists, the BBC and other msm, the remnants of the British armed forces (both of WW2 vintage and from today’s depleted armed services).
Though today’s ceremonies were in similar format to those of the past, there was, despite the wall-to-wall BBC/ITV/Sky news coverage, an end of the season feel. I wondered how many millions were really watching the seemingly endless TV.
I very much doubt that any but a tiny percentage of the ethnic minorities watched the shows today. Fewer will have understood the background even in the cartoon form presented by the TV people (Good v. Evil etc).
I would be prepared to bet that less than 1% of the population under 25 years of age watched more than a minute or two of the news coverage about the ceremonies in England and France. Same applies to most persons of non-European origin.
What we see here are two UKs: there is
the official, Establishment UK, together with the msm and the Jewish Zionist element (who latch onto anything “Second World War” as an opportunity to re-demonize National Socialist Germany); and the few now very elderly people who were at least in their teens in 1944; and there is also
the real UK, which is vastly more numerous and mostly has no interest in what happened in 1944.
In fact, it occurs to me that that division (between those who regard today’s ceremonies as hugely important, and those who regard them as of no interest or importance) reflects the change in UK society, and also that in UK politics. There is a chasm between what, say, the BBC or Sky think important, and what the bulk of the public think. A difference of orientation, of what is in the emotional life and which will eventually change political life.
As I write, Trooping of the Colour, held today, is not trending on Twitter (not that Twitter is the world) anything like as much as the Michael Gove cocaine scandal. Point made, I think. These events (Trooping of the Colour, WW2/WW1 anniversaries etc) have some significance for the elderly, perhaps to some extent for those who (like me, aged 62) prefer not to think of themselves as elderly quite yet; for some (a minority) of white (i.e. real) British/English people, but not at all for the “broad masses” and certainly not, speaking in group terms, for the ethnic minorities.
Yet the System is still trying to interest the people in such things. Look at this tweet by Tom Newton Dunn of the Sun “newspaper” [below]: May Bank Holiday changed date next year.
Excl: Next year's May Day bank holiday being moved to Friday so the whole nation gets the day off to mark 75th anniversary of VE Day – May 8, 1945https://t.co/2DSAnSfiPb
The fact is, that moving a one-day holiday to a different date is not going to have much if any impact on the public, whatever amount of “news coverage” (propaganda) is pumped out. It just does not now have much emotional impact on most people in the UK, not even those of (real) British origin (and let’s not pretend that the Africans, West Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese etc in the UK are somehow at one with the descendants of the Huguenots or those of long-ago Viking/Norman origin etc…).
As the Second World War recedes in memory and time, these commemorations become ever less relevant. The Jewish Zionist element has latched onto them in a parasitic way, as a method of pursuing its anti-Third Reich, anti-anti-Semitism message, along with pushing the “holocaust” fable and industry. It has less resonance with every year that passes, though.
It is the measure of the national self delusion still abroad that the question as to whether “D-Day” could be mounted today, in 2019 [see tweet below], could ever be asked!
…”These commemorations allow us reflect. It is a stark reminder of the perils we face if we drop our guard. The haunting question is – could we do it all again?” His article here: https://t.co/iOA1zUmqW9
Tobias Ellwood MP [Con, Bournemouth East] may have reached the exalted rank of Army captain (Royal Greenjackets), but either is ignorant of history, strategy and geopolitics, or (far more likely) is talking in this manner in order to boost the MOD budget. He cannot seriously imagine that Britain could ever mount another Normandy Landings operation! In fairness to Ellwood, he does write:
“But we must not kid ourselves. Pressures on the defence budget since the end of the Cold War have left us with one deployable division of 35,000 personnel who could not fight a sustained campaign without allied support.” [The Sun]
In fact, Britain on its own would have been unable to do “D-Day” even in 1944 without huge American, Canadian (etc) assistance. The very first day, ie “D-Day” itself, airborne soldiers (mainly British, American, and Canadian) numbering 24,000 were dropped into battle. Behind them, the rest of the 150,000-strong assault force.
That of course was not the entirety of Allied forces, which numbered in the millions across the world. The total of engaged participants on all sides has been estimated at 100 millions.
Britain now (as Ellwood writes) has 1 deployable brigade of 35,000. That, leaving aside rear echelon and headquarters contingents of every kind, is pretty much the usable British Army now, though official figures state 81,500 regulars and 27,000 reserves (former TA):
Compare the figures: in 1945, over 3 million (in the Army alone, not including other arms); in 1980, just before the Falklands campaign, 222,000 (mostly regulars, at that); even in 2010, 155,000. Now the Army (regular and reserves) numbers about 108,000 officially and probably greatly fewer in reality. The Army, Navy, Air Force are losing 2,000 men and women a year.
Then there is the lift capacity, by air and sea. Hugely depleted.
The fact is that the UK could not even repeat the Falklands re-invasion today, the British Task Force fleet then consisting of 127 ships, including 43 Royal Navy vessels (the last figure not being the whole of the Royal Navy by any means). Today, the Navy only claims about 74 ships worldwide, and only 31 of those are large combat vessels and submarines (the rest are small vessels such as minesweepers, patrol launches etc).
In 1939, the Navy had over 1,400 ships. That figure did not include supply ships. “By the end of the [Second World] war the Royal Navy comprised over 4,800 ships, and was the second largest fleet in the world” [Wikipedia].
I get the impression that there is a sizeable and entirely ignorant part of the British public (and it seems to include Gavin Williamson MP, until recently Defence Secretary!)…
…which actually believes that the UK could “take on” Russia, or China, or both! I see tweets urging British intervention in Syria, for example. Even in the (madly stupid) British bombing of Libya some years ago, the UK was dependent on French and Italian help.
These delusions have political consequences.
Update, 11 June 2019
Point proven? [see tweet below]. Note how this Bengali woman, Ash Sarkar, persists in saying “we” and “us” and “our” [British], just because she was born in the UK (assuming that she was)… talk about “cultural appropriation”!
At some point, baby boomers are gonna have to stop invoking a war they never fought in. pic.twitter.com/uKFGXB4D8T
Well, the Iranians have seized British-registered ships in the Gulf of Hormuz. Bad boys. Oh, wait…turns out that not one of the officers and crew are British, and anyway this is tit-for-tat because the British seized an Iranian ship at Gibraltar “on suspicion” that it might be breaking the sanctions regime imposed basically by the USA. In fact, this whole incident was caused at root by that idiot Trump having torn up the agreement with the Iranians re. uranium enrichment. Looks like “perfidious Albion” has been superseded by “unreliable Yankee-Doodle”…
The relevant point here is that the UK Foreign Secretary (Jeremy Hunt) is talking about “consequences” for Iran, but in reality all that the UK can do is rattle sabres a little and freeze funds in the City of London. Britain cannot do much in terms of gunboat diplomacy for a very cogent reason— Britain has few gunboats.
Well, that’s Theresa May gone. Or not. She may have given up the nominal leadership of the misnamed Conservative Party, but it seems that she will not be leaving the office of Prime Minister until July. Presumably, the hunt for her successor will start immediately.
What have I liked about her time as Prime Minister? Nothing much. In fact nothing.
Theresa May was (if possible) even more in the pocket of the Jewish-Zionist lobby than was David Cameron-Levita. She was the same when Home Secretary. Under her, malicious Zionist organizations gained even more influence in the UK. In fact, she could not even make her resignation speech without telling some cheesy anecdote about herself and Nicholas “Winton” (Wertheim), who imported about 700 Jewish children into the UK in 1939.
As for the rest of the content of the Theresa May resignation speech, it seemed to be about some other country, not about the UK at all. In that other country, the economy is apparently buoyant, the people happy and united, the “austerity” “necessary” in the recent past has been banished and everything is wonderful.
I am sure that the millions of British people who are homeless and/or literally (in many cases) starving, who cannot pay inflated rents, let alone think of buying a house (even with a mortgage), who are paid peanuts when working, who are subject to a Kafka-esque regime of callousness and cruelty if unemployed or disabled, would love to live in that other country Theresa May lauded to the skies.
In Theresa May’s speech, no mention was made of the country where the racial stock has been deliberately contaminated, where millions of unwanted immigrants continue to flood in, where nothing now seems to work properly (from road and rail to the NHS, the police, the educational system) and so on.
No mention was made of the country where, under her, as both Home Secretary and Prime Minister, freedom of expression has been restricted even more than it was under David Cameron-Levita, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
This hateful woman has now gone or is about to go, presumably hoping that her political spawn, such as Amber Rudd, will follow in her footsteps.
Well, I have some news for her. She has as good as destroyed the Conservative Party and may well prove to be its last elected Prime Minister. Ah… I knew that, in the end, I would find something good to say about her…
[above, Theresa May with the Israeli Ambassador and his wife. Theresa May, like 80% of Con Party MPs, is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, and is herself suspected of being part-Jewish by origin]
No hope of change with a new PM either UN poverty expert hits back over UK ministers' 'denial of facts'https://t.co/Q4TQMUP1kr
Theresa May is likely to resign as Prime Minister tomorrow, 24 July 2019. Her successor is likely to be Boris Johnson, incredibly…
Update, 27 December 2022
Well, three and a half years on, we see that “Boris” Johnson did indeed succeed Theresa May; in turn, Johnson was succeeded briefly by Liz Truss, and now by Rishi Sunak, both the first non-white Prime Minister and the richest (£750M, apparently). Theresa May remains on the backbenches, a critical presence, rather like Edward Heath during the Thatcher era of the 1980s.
I am impelled to write a few words about Peter Hitchens after having just seen an interview with Owen Jones [see below], which interview dates from 2017.
I have already written a blog post about Owen Jones:
To examine the views and influence of Hitchens in detail would necessitate a blog article of inordinate length, but Wikipedia has a considerable amount of information about him:
I should like to focus mainly on a few matters raised in that interview.
As to Hitchens himself, he is an odd fellow, apparently fairly well-educated. His family background had elements of tragedy (his mother bolted with an unfrocked priest, and the couple later died via a suicide pact in an Athens hotel). Not mentioned in the interview is that Hitchens (like Owen Jones) has part-Jewish roots, his maternal grandmother having been half-Jewish, in that her mother was Jewish. It was on that basis that Hitchens’ even more eccentric brother, Christopher, declared himself in latter years to be “Jewish” (taking the traditional Jewish course of deciding via the matrilineal side alone).
The interview mentions his having attended a naval school, but that must have been in early years, he then having attended The Leys School, Cambridge, an institution which has schooled a number of well-known people: at least one Rothschild, a few kings (albeit from Bahrain and Tonga), a number of MPs and journalists (in some cases both, as with Martin Bell).
Hitchens then went on to the City of Oxford College (a college of further education) and finally to Alcuin College, part of the University of York.
It may be that the university education and milieu that Hitchens found in Alcuin College permanently influenced his attitude. Wikipedia says of Alcuin College that,
“From early days of the college an uproar for secession of the college from the remainder of the university has been present.[3] It is a self-styled Separatist Movement and at times presented as a running gag at the University of York about Alcuinites….For many years Alcuin College was very much the outcast on the university campus, the only college physically separate from the others except for a bridge from the library…“
The photograph of Alcuin College in winter shows an almost Soviet bleakness and isolation.
Hitchens, though characterizing himself in the Owen Jones interview as having been a “joiner” in his youth, has also been an outsider, defector and maverick. I wonder whether he applied to the University of York because Oxford and/or Cambridge (in both of which cities he had attended school) refused his application, or perhaps he made no application to Oxbridge because (I speculate) his developing extreme socialist views made him reject such “bourgeois” places of learning. A better interviewer than Owen Jones, such as the late and great Brian Walden, might have explored all that.
Hitchens was from 1968 (aged 17) to 1975, a member of the Trotskyist “tendency” called the International Socialists [IS], the forerunner of the Socialist Workers’ Party [SWP]. He joined two years before he went to York. Later, in his forties, he became a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party, but only for the six years 1997-2003, and —typically— at the very nadir of Conservative fortunes, which is interesting, psychologically. Does he court unpopularity? Does he deliberately express unpopular or contrary views?
Hitchens is known as what might fairly be called a “reactionary”, someone who thinks that Britain was a better place in the 1950s, no ifs no buts. In fact, I believe that I watched him say that or something like that on TV once. My own view is different, that some aspects of life in the UK are better now, though many are certainly worse. This blog post is about Peter Hitchens, not Ian Millard, but in my view, things that are better now than in the 1950s (which I scarcely remember, having been born in 1956) or the early 1960s (which I certainly do remember) would include
central heating as the norm;
wider selection of fruits and vegetables (and in general a healthier or at least more varied diet);
less antiquated snobbism;
more understanding of animal welfare;
far easier access to information (via Internet);
Whereas, on the other side, the aspects of British life now that mean that UK life is worse (than in the early 1960s, anyway) are (and Hitchens has a point, because it is a longer list by far)
the general pressure of life now (of course, I was a child in, say, 1963, so my perception is affected to that extent but I think the judgment is still valid);
pervasive lack of freedom of expression;
pervasive “political correctness” etc;
the cost of living, though that is a complex question; it includes
the cost of real property both for sale and rent, and the impossibility for most people to buy a property without family money;
British people swamped by mass immigration;
real pay and social benefits etc generally reducing;
hugely less choice of employment for most people;
many people in full-time work unable to live on the poor pay offered;
unwanted millions of immigrants and their offspring;
congested roads and railways (and refer to the above line);
a huge new mixed-race population;
a huge amount of crime;
public and private housing shortages (refer to immigration, above);
huge numbers of drug-contaminated persons;
workers exploited in terms of having ever-shorter lunch breaks etc, “on call” after hours etc;
public services near to collapse in some respects;
intensive farming, with consequent harm to wildlife;
standards in all areas (NHS, schools, social security, Westminster MPs, police etc) falling like a stone
We often hear (eg from very young Remain whiners) that, eg, “foreign travel is easier now”, whereas that is mostly illusion. True, there were some silly aspects “back then”, such as being restricted as to foreign currency taken on holiday (you even had to have the amount, bought from somewhere like Thomas Cook, written in your passport!), and that silliness (a kind of postwar sacred cow) lasted until Mrs Thatcher stopped it in 1979 or 1980! Yes, true, but that was about it.
If you listen to Remain whiners (esp. the under-30s), you read or hear that Brexit will mean either no visa-free travel to the EU states, or no travel allowed at all! They really believe that, pre-1972, British people were almost imprisoned, as if Cuban, Chinese or Soviet citizens!
Until blacks and browns abused it in the 1980s to import relatives illegally, you used to be able to get a “British Visitor’s Passport” from post offices for a small amount; the passport was valid for short visits to almost all Western European states (not many people went to Eastern Europe as tourists until the 1990s). I had one in 1978 or 1979, in between possession of two ordinary passports, when I wanted to travel to France at short notice. I think that it cost about £5 and took about 5 minutes to be issued at Lanark Road Post Office, Little Venice.
Transport to the European mainland: true, there were no budget airlines as such in the 1950s, 1960s, but there were routes and ways not now in existence: in the 1950s and 1960s, people could take their cars by air to France! The main route was Lydd (Kent) to Amiens. This was not only for the rich: 5,000 cars (20,000 passengers) as early as 1950, and over 50,000 cars (250,000 passengers) by 1955 (incredible when you recall that rationing lasted until 1955!):
The idea that some Remain whiners have that young people will be unable to travel if the UK leaves “Europe” (meaning the EU) is laughable to those who know. As a child I travelled with parents; and then (from 1971) as a teenager, I travelled alone to Paris, Amsterdam etc. No visa required, UK not in EEC (the then EU).
I might add that it actually takes longer to fly to Paris in 2019 than it did in 1970 or even 1960!
One cannot say that Hitchens approves of that aspect of 1950s lifestyle, though, and (if I understand him aright), he thinks that the British war against Germany could have been avoided, but I may be mistaken here. He certainly thinks that of the First World War, which he says, surely rightly, destroyed British naval supremacy and economy.
Where Hitchens is certainly mistaken is in saying (in the interview) that Churchill’s refusal to countenance the German peace proposals of 1940 was “unquestionably the right and moral thing to do”. Oh really? Right and moral, to continue a war only started because triggered by a treaty obligation that could never have been fulfilled (the Anglo-French worthless “guarantee” to Poland) and when an honourable peace via armistice was on the table?
Such a peace might have been bought at the price of German victory in the East, but would that have been so bad? The destruction of the Stalin/Bolshevik regime? The saving of most of Eastern Europe from both wartime destruction and post-1945 Stalinism? The prevention of the enormous damage, loss of life and hurt across Western and Southern Europe and North Africa? Hitchens says, however, that he is “sceptical” about Churchill overall.
Hitchens is on surer ground when he says that British history has gone, in that no-one knows British history. He cites David Cameron-Levita being unable to translate the two words “Magna Carta” from Latin! After 6 years at Eton! That was when “Scameron” was a guest on the Letterman Show. Shaming for the whole country. Not just the Magna Carta bit. Cameron came over more like a part-Jew public entertainer (and not a good one) than a British statesman. Oh…wait…
[the bit about Magna Carta starts around 8 minutes in]
Scameron was also proven, though I think on another occasion, not to have heard of the Bill of Rights! Hitchens cites an apparently intelligent 6th-former whom he met, and who had passed exams in English History, and yet who did not know which side Oliver Cromwell was on during the English Civil War!
I have had similar encounters. Few people under 40 now know even the most basic facts about British history, and less about European history generally. An indictment of the British educational system. One should, though, be wary of thinking that this kind of ignorance developed overnight. I recall having a brief conversation with a South London couple I met by a swimming pool in Sousse, Tunisia, in 1986, and who, it transpired, had no idea at all that what is now Tunisia had been (part of) a Roman imperial province. Not knowing who was Nelson or Drake, though, is arguably of a different order.
Hitchens says, again correctly, that “we” “have no idea now what it means to be English or British”, but does not go on to examine the racial implications. Come to think of it, that may be one reason why so many people in the UK want to denounce others to Twitter, Facebook, the police, employers etc for holding the “wrong” views, i.e. because the denouncers have no idea of the English historical struggle for free speech (John Hampden etc…) and no respect for it.
Owen Jones talks about how open-minded (he says…) Corbyn is, and implies that he, Jones, is the same. Oh yes? Take a look at my blog post about him…
Hitchens himself is really little different. He once had a short and at first reasonable discussion with me on Twitter about the early Zionists, in 2017 or 2016, but then a Jew tweeted to him about how I was apparently an evil “neo-Nazi”, after which, just like Owen Jones, inter alia, Hitchens blocked me. I was unaware then that Hitchens is part-Jew, though not to the extent that would have rendered him liable to sanctions under the 1936 Nuremberg law(s), his maternal grandmother having been only part-Jew (Mischling) and his maternal grandfather not a Jew. In fact, under those laws he would even have been able to work as a journalist.
Hitchens says that Enoch Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech “was a disgrace”. Why? He dislikes its tone, it seems. What about its truth, though? He also says that “the intermarriage [resulting from immigration] is great”. I begin to wonder what major part of modern British society he does dislike, when push comes to shove! To be fair to Hitchens, he does disapprove of the ghetto communities established by Pakistanis and others in, mainly, the Midlands and North of England. He is certainly not “white nationalist”, let alone social-national. If he were, he would be sacked at once. Long live freedom!…
An area in which I do find myself largely in agreement with Hitchens is in intervention by the “West” (in my terms, “NWO/ZOG”) in the affairs of the Middle East. Iraq, Syria, Libya. He opposes it. That’s something.
As to Russia, Hitchens seems to take an objective view (informed by better historical knowledge than most msm scribblers), eg:
I apprehend that Hitchens likes the social conservatism of most Russians.
So what is my overall view of Peter Hitchens? I should say that he is someone of considerable intellect, though nowhere near as intelligent as he himself imagines. Someone of considerable education, but who imagines that he knows more and better than almost anyone else, and believes that it is his role in life to pronounce on the truth of any given social, political, historical or ethical topic. Someone who harks back to a supposed golden age prior to, perhaps, 1959, or 1989 (at very latest). Someone who sees what is wrong in the present society but appears to have no programme or (Heaven forbid!) ideology to move from here to there (to a better society).
Hitchens takes a reasonable view such as “the family is a good thing” and tests it to destruction. Likewise, in his critique of both socialism and the contemporary Conservative Party, he goes to an extreme, saying that the Conservative Party is “extreme Left-wing”, by which he means “socially liberal”. He defends traditional marriage and his arguments here have force.
Hitchens thinks that the Conservative Party is dying (understandable, looking at its MPs and ministers) but, yet again, goes to an extreme, wishing that it could have lost the 2010 General Election so that it might have died, and so made room for a new and socially-conservative party. I wish that it had lost too, but for other reasons!
Hitchens reminds me of two other scribblers of note, Peter Oborne and (now rather forgotten) Paul Johnson.
All three are often intuitively correct on some issues, risibly mistaken on others. They are alike in other ways, too. As the Russians say, they are all “Maximalisti”.
Hitchens (like Owen Jones) blocked me on Twitter for ideological reasons. Hitchens (like Owen Jones) makes a very comfortable living from the System msm. Hitchens (like Owen Jones) poses no danger to the existing state of affairs, despite making much noise. Hitchens (like Owen Jones) is a mass media pussycat pretending to be a tiger.
I like to read Hitchens’ words occasionally. He is often right, not always. However, his words are commentary, not inspiration. He says in the interview that Britain is finished and that the only serious history of contemporary Britain will one day be written in Chinese! Maybe, but God moves in mysterious though sometimes sanguinary ways. As a Christian and a student of history, Hitchens should know that.
Hitchens’ recent book (which I have not yet read, but which promises to be at least as myth-shattering as those of the unjustly neglected historian Correlli Barnett)
Update, 18 September 2020
Since the above was written, Peter Hitchens has been almost a lone voice struggling against the “Coronavirus” panic and the allied government-proclaimed fear propaganda.
Update, 24 April 2022
Hitchens is now in the small minority of public figures unwilling to go along with the msm noise against Russia, and for Ukraine (meaning the Kiev regime of the Jew-Zionist Zelensky).
On the face of it, a clear case, with no doubt about the immediately-relevant facts. The defendant admitted to the crime and was sentenced to a year in prison. There are some nuances, however.
Obviously, criminal damage cannot be tolerated, and it is certainly not very nice and certainly not very polite to daub words on the door of a neighbouring dwelling; but to my mind the sentence was harsh.
The defendant was sentenced to a year in prison and will therefore be released in 6 months’ time, possibly earlier. The chances are that he will lose his local authority home. I have no idea what possessions or companion animals he may have, but unless he has friends or family somewhere to look after them, they too will be lost. He will come out of prison with nowhere to go, and may not be rehoused if some local penpusher decrees that he made himself homeless by his own actions.
That is part of the background. Then we have the point that the defendant had no previous convictions save for a silly one, 27 years previously, involving a “sick-note”.
In view of the fact that the local authority would probably take the crime to be a breach of lease terms or conditions, and so would take away the defendant’s home anyway, would it not have been more just simply to have given this defendant a suspended sentence?
This looks like kicking a man when he is down. At the same time, we see the courts daily giving thugs, thieves etc non-sentences. Of course, this was a “racial” crime…the courts have obviously been told to treat any offence having a “racial” element more seriously (harshly), in an attempt to keep the doomed multikulti society from falling to pieces.
I noticed, also, that the victims were from the Congo. Again, I do not know the full facts, but it is odds-on that what we have here are either “refugees” or economic migrants who have left Africa in order to settle in the UK. Odds-on, again, that the British people (including the defendant) are paying for the victims to live here and breed.
The case above reminds me of one about 25 years ago in Hammersmith, in which a man was driven half-mad by the incessant noise of blacks and their “music”, parties etc in the flat above his dwelling; so much so that he burned them out, killing several. He got a sentence, I think, of about 10 years for manslaughter and arson. Again, the act can scarcely be “justified”, perhaps, but it can be understood. Legally, provocation does not exist and provides no defence in such a case. In real-life terms, though, I think that many will feel a little sorry for such a defendant.
There is a further point: the defendant in the immediate case in question felt the need to say that he is not “racist” (perhaps after consultation with solicitors or Counsel). So even he himself felt the need to “virtue-signal”! If he or his advisers thought that a display of “contrition” and “I’m not racist” protesting would mitigate the sentence, they seem to have been mistaken.
There is also the point that, as hundreds of thousands of blacks and browns etc flood into the UK every year, and as politicians bleat about the “need” to destroy what is left of the countryside in order to build little boxes for migrants on agricultural land and forested land, very many fully-entitled British people are homeless (after today’s sentence, add another one, 6 months down the line).
I am at present also preparing a blog post about Peter Hitchens, who thinks that the UK is doomed in terms of its present society. I suppose that most of us hope that he is wrong. I also suppose that he is probably right.
A comet has appeared in the UK’s political skies. Its name is Brexit Party. It is running at about 30% in the opinion polls re. the EU elections to be held on 23 May 2019, while in respect of Westminster elections, it is on about 15%. The EU elections may not be of much importance except as a popularity contest, but for a new party without any policies at all (except to get out from under the EU) to be at 15% indicates a groundswell of public disquiet which may have huge consequences one way or another in domestic UK politics.
[note: even as I write, the polling figures above are out of date! One very recent poll now has Brexit Party at 34% for the EU elections and 20% re Westminster voting intention, with Conservatives only on 19% for Westminster and 13% for the EU elections; has the Conservative vote ever been that low? I think not; even in the Blair-Labour landslide of 1997, the Conservatives polled in the actual election at 30.7%].
It now looks as though some of my early blogging was prescient indeed, if I myself may say so. “Give that man a cee-gar”!
Exclusive Telegraph poll: for the first time Brexit Party is in second place in general election polling – BP on 20%, Tories on 19% – on course to win 49MPS – Tories lose over 130 seats including Johnson and Rudd – Labour in minority governmenthttps://t.co/YGVFr3Y6bL
The Brexit Party gets more popular by the day, with 34% now intending to back them in the European elections – more than the Labour and Conservative Parties COMBINED. The 17.4m have been betrayed by our political class for years, and now we're going to MAKE them listen!
There are signs of panic in the main System parties:
“A ComRes poll for the Sunday Telegraph showed that if a Westminster general election were called, Labour would reap the largest share of the vote with 27%; the Brexit party would garner 20% ahead of the Conservatives on 19%. The Liberal Democrats would win 14%, followed by ChangeUK (7%) and the Greens (5%) with Ukip trailing on 2%.” [The Guardian]
I come from a certain direction: I recall the limited but real popularity of the National Front [NF] in the mid-1970s, and saw at first hand how outside forces made use of internal dissensions in order to destroy the NF as an effective party and movement. I believe (though without having any direct or personal knowledge) that similar events may have happened to explode the British National Party [BNP].
The National Front and BNP were both broadly social-nationalist, whereas UKIP is broadly nationalist but lacking the para-socialist element ideologically. Brexit Party has taken on UKIP’s “nationalist” or “patriotic” mantle despite having no published policies at all beyond leaving the EU.
It is easy to speculate about why the course of events happens, harder to pin down the exact or even approximate facts. Many casually blame, or designate as important, the operations of Zionists, Israel, MI5, SIS, MOSSAD, unnamed State agencies, freemasons, occult spiritual groups etc.
Every party or movement has internal tensions. As a John le Carre character remarked, “Jesus Christ only had 12 agents, and one of those was a double” [meaning “double-agent”].
The art of influencing events from the shadows is not to be identified or identifiable as a moving force.
Coming back to Brexit Party, there are known facts. The extraordinary political showman (as some would have it, “snake-oil salesman”), Nigel Farage, was leader of UKIP for decades. He in fact was in UKIP almost at the start, and is often termed one of the founders, though he was not the actual founder, who was an academic called Allan Sked.
“Sked is a member of the British-American Project, which exists to promote Britain’s political ties to the U.S.” [Wikipedia].
“During the administration of President Bill Clinton in the US, the Australian journalist John Pilger attacked the BAP as an example of “Atlanticist freemasonry.” He asserted in November 1998 that “many members are journalists, the essential foot soldiers in any network devoted to power and propaganda.” [Wikipedia].
Here is one msm drone who belongs to that British-American Project:
Yes, that’s right. Yasmin-Alibhai-Brown, the supposedly “radical”, “anti-imperialist” “journalist” (in fact, totally unqualified and inexperienced in true journalism, just a ranting loudmouth).
Another member of the very same organization is BBC journalist James Naughtie, most of whose views are, at least superficially, totally different from those of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown…
The British-American Project contains a large number of UK-based (and other) journalists (and others), of supposedly diverse views. I wonder if their views and motives are as “diverse” as they seem to be at first blush.
Only today, on the Andrew Marr Show [BBC 1 TV], Marr tried to trash Nigel Farage and Brexit Party, but Farage was able to crush Marr easily in the end.
System drones like Marr do not seem to understand that populist movements such as UKIP (a few years ago) or Brexit Party (now) are the last chance for the System to listen to the British people and so avert an explosion of justified political hatred which will, otherwise, roll over them like a tank over a cockroach.
Marr’s own (rarely admitted) views:
A typical pro-NWO, pro-ZOG, pro-EUmsm drone, paid until recently a million pounds a year by the BBC out of your “licence fee” (enforced tax) monies (apparently somewhat less now, after public uproar about the absurd salaries paid by the BBC to key propagandists).
Was the secret aim of UKIP to draw off nationalist sentiment from parties such as the BNP, i.e. to neutralize effective political opposition to NWO [New World Order] and ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] in the UK by containing it, controlling it, monitoring it? Or was UKIP just a typically English amateur effort which mushroomed into something bigger. Or both of those?
Already, in looking at UKIP, we see the difficulty of unravelling the skein of motives: secret forces, public faces, ambitions, ideals, various personalities etc.
As recently as last year, Alan Sked said that “I founded UKIP. It’s a national joke now and should disappear.” [The Guardian]. Is that just sour grapes from a founder left behind? Is there anything else there? Had UKIP “done its job”, and so could be binned?
Until 2010, the BNP did better in all or almost all elections than did UKIP. It is hard to recall that, now that the UKIP star has risen and fallen and now that the BNP is just a tiny handful of back-room zealots. In its heyday, the BNP was more successful by far than UKIP. The BNP even had two MEPs (Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons).
Brexit Party is UKIP, but a UKIP which, like a snake, has shed its “skin” of various unwanted people, unwanted history etc and, unlike the snake, miraculously become far far more powerful, far more slick, far more able to capitalize on its “unique selling point”, the sheer hatred which many many people now feel for UK society as it now is (and also for the EU dictatorship).
Farage is the star of Brexit Party, as he was when in UKIP. Look at the clip below. Farage enters a hall packed with supporters. It echoes in a minor key the entrance of Adolf Hitler into the hall at the end of the 1935 Leni Riefenstahl film Triumph of the Will.
The Brexit party turned up in Newport, south Wales last night. A true Labour heartland. Usually. https://t.co/NoBovPxNCv
Farage can draw large crowds, as in this recent rally at Peterborough, where 2,000 supporters are said to have paid£10 each just to hear Farage speak. Few other politicians in the UK could get 200 (or even 20, in many cases) to turn up to hear them, even for free!
Peterborough rally for the Brexit Party. When was the last time British politics saw something like this?? Astonishing. They’re doing three rallies a week! pic.twitter.com/YVUlQnhTdw
Farage is the key to this. No Farage in UKIP means, effectively, no UKIP. Were there no Farage in Brexit Party, that party would also rapidly cease to exist.
Despite his public profile, Farage is to some degree an enigma. A metals trader, he was in employment as recently as 2003 and possibly even after that. He was elected as an MEP in 1999. He seems to have been a “Eurosceptic” (anti-EU) for a long time, voting Green Party in 1989: the Green Party was, at that time, Eurosceptic and not pro-mass-immigration. One wonders whether, had it not become a kind of middle class virtue-signallers’ party, Green Party might have had greater political success.
Farage created UKIP (not founded perhaps, but created) in his own image: anti-EU, free marketist (softened for tactical purposes), English more than British, not social-national, not “racist” (racialist), despite Farage making a few innocuous comments that only echoed what most white British people believe or feel. Brexit Party may or may not follow those lines, but we cannot say for sure, because Brexit Party, almost uniquely, has published literally no policies at all, save for Brexit itself.
I say “almost uniquely” because the surely-doomed Change UK, which can be taken to be the opposite pole to Brexit Party, also has no published policies (beyond staying in the EU). This is in fact consonant with earlier blogs and, until I was expelled from Twitter, tweets, i.e. that people in the UK, at least in England and Wales, are now voting against rather than for parties; voting tactically to block parties they dislike, rather than supporting the party they like. I have blogged before about this and how it is an outcome of the ludicrous UK electoral system.
I take Farage to be sincerely anti-EU, anti-socialist, possibly anti-immigration, but not to have any sophisticated socio-political or economic ideas. I have said before that Farage does not understand politics well, a surprising statement in view of his stellar public political performance. What I meant is that he has not developed any ideology, as such; neither has he a political programme; also, he has not much developed a party machine (with UKIP; we shall see what happens with Brexit Party).
I take Farage at face value, more or less; the same with his mass following. As to others, I am looking and seeing a strong Jewish element. Brexit Party already has a “Brexit Party Friends of Israel” group. There are other indications; the Brexit Party Treasurer is indirectly connected by marriage to the Rothschilds:
Brexit Party not only has Jewish influence but is open in general to persons of other and various ethnicities. Many candidates are not really British, certainly not of British origin.
Good afternoon Mr. Umunna. I am a candidate for the Brexit party. I am partly of Pakistani origin. There are many candidates of mixed ethnicity in our terrific party. You have the wrong end of the stick. May we pls meet to discuss your prejudices? Anytime that suits you. Pls say https://t.co/W6IdKODVMQ
Despite its paucity of policy and its multi-ethnic candidate list, many of those who support Brexit Party and also many of those who oppose it seem to think that it is somehow “nationalist”. It may be, but only in the very broadest sense.
In respect of candidates, one aspect I find very odd is that, out of about 60 or so Brexit Party EU election candidates, Brexit Party has no less than 3 who are former members of the (1978-1997) Revolutionary Communist Party. Remarkable from a tiny party which had so few members. If I were to suggest State involvement here, it would be without any real evidence, but it does give me pause all the same.
The Great Replacement, otherwise known as “migration-invasion” of Europe, is no mere “conspiracy theory”. United Nations and EU documents have laid out the conspiratorial globalist plan time and again. Only recently, EU and other political heads met in Marrakesh, Morocco, to pledge to assist African and Asian invasion of Europe, to replace European populations with alien black and brown populations.
This anti-white, anti-European campaign was built into the EU right from the start and conflated with the idea of a European “superstate”:
Jean Monnet was one of the principal freemasonic architects of the EU:
“Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (French: [ʒɑ̃ mɔnɛ]; 9 November 1888 – 16 March 1979) was a Frenchpolitical economist and diplomat.[1] An influential supporter of European unity, he is considered as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. Jean Monnet has been called “The Father of Europe” by those who see his innovative and pioneering efforts in the 1950s as the key to establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor of today’s European Union.[2] Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected pragmatic internationalist.” [Wikipedia]
“He was the first to be bestowed Honorary Citizen of Europe by the European Council of the European Union, for extraordinary work to promote European cooperation on 2 April 1976. Following this he became the first person alive to be pictured on a German stamp who was not also a German head of state.” [Wikipedia]
“In his book Praktischer Idealismus (Practical Idealism), written in 1925, he describes the future of Jews in Europe and of European racial composition with the following words:
The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroidrace of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals. […]
Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process.”
“Nazis considered the Pan-European Union to be under the control of Freemasonry.[27] In 1938, a Nazi propaganda book Die Freimaurerei: Weltanschauung, Organisation und Politik was released in German.[28] It revealed Coudenhove-Kalergi’s membership of Freemasonry, the organization suppressed by Nazis.” [Wikipedia]
“Hitler did not share the ideas of his Austrian compatriot. He argued in his 1928 Secret Book that they are unfit for the future defense of Europe against America. As America fills its North American lebensraum, “the natural activist urge that is peculiar to young nations will turn outward.” But then “a pacifist-democratic Pan-European hodgepodge state” would not be able to oppose the United States, as it is “according to the conception of that commonplace bastard, Coudenhove-Kalergi…”” [Wikipedia]
There are secret occult forces behind the founding and expansion of both USA and EU. They are not exclusively Jewish or Zionist, but there is a strong link, as there is to Freemasonry, and also to other groupings not publicly named. Forces of Evil.
Look at the tweet below, from the World Economic Forum at Davos, and retweeted by a pro-EU public relations drone, and which purports to show a wonderful “economic plan” to create a “trade route” (corridor) from Malta and the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. What is the real purpose here? To create a funnel from Africa to Northern Europe, through which migrant-invaders will be funnelled through the heart of Europe to destroy it racially and culturally.
The EU was never meant to be just a mutual-benefit trade bloc. It was always meant to be a monolithic superstate in which the white European populations could be mixed, eventually, with blacks and browns. Of course, that was never conveyed to the peoples of Europe, only to the self-appointed “elite”. In fact, some naive people supported the EU (and still do) because they imagined that it was European in race and culture and not only in geography. Thus we see the deliberate conflation by Remain drones, in the msm or on social media, of “EU” and “Europe“, as in “if Brexit happens, we shall be leaving Europe“, rather than “…leaving the EU.” The UK is part of Europe and always will be; it need not be part of the already-dictatorial EU superstate, which is deliberately importing the culturally inferior by the million.
How is it possible, though, for bothEU and Brexit Party to be heavily influenced by the same forces (ZOG, NWO etc)? Think of a bet whereby you could, in a two-horse race, win whichever horse puts its nose in front. Likewise, in the UK there are or were two or three main parties. The fix was/is into all of those parties. It does not matter (or did not, until Corbyn took over Labour) which party wins, because ZOG/NWO is embedded in all three “main parties” (things are changing now, though).
Brexit Party may have been partly set up with secret aims in mind, but these plans do not always go as planned. Brexit Party has mushroomed, almost exploded, in a way which was perhaps unforeseen even by Farage himself. These things happen in history. The events of the Russian Revolution spiralled out of control, or to use a different metaphor, spread like a wildfire from its modest beginnings in one city in the corner of a huge empire.
Why are voters flocking to Brexit Party? It cannot be because of Brexit Party’s policies, because it has none, or at least only one. I identify these factors:
the wish to have the Referendum of 2016 properly respected and complied with; but beyond that
the wish to hit out at the System parties and especially the mis-named “Conservative” Party, which under the influence of Jewish Zionism and globalism has trashed the UK (especially England and Wales) to the point where nothing works properly, where most people have neither security nor freedom, where the population is only about half really British now, and where standards in all areas are dropping like a stone (NHS, transport, education, real pay, State welfare benefits, animal welfare, environment etc). There is also the repression on thought and socio-political expression. “Free speech” scarcely exists now in the UK.
The wish to lash out is very strong now. The people can see that Brexit Party has the popular support to make it a credible vote at both EU and (so far) Westminster elections. People know (whether intellectually or instinctively) that a vote for Brexit Party is one that hits the Conservatives hard, much harder than voting, say, Labour. In any case, Labour itself is not supported by most people (not so much for policy reasons as because white English people especially do not like what they see around Corbyn: the blacks and browns, the semi-literate Angela Rayner types who would be in Cabinet, the creaking 1970s comic-book “Marxism” etc).
A vote for Brexit Party hits the Conservative Party hard not only in areas where Labour is strong but in areas where the Conservatives have prevailed for decades. As I blogged previously, if (as polls suggest) the Conservatives lose 60% or even 50% of their votes, they will lose 50-200 seats, to Labour, to Brexit Party itself, and, here and there, to the Liberal Democrats. That means (as I also blogged previously and to which the msm is now catching up) that
Brexit Party may actually win some —possibly 50, even 100— seats at Westminster;
The Conservative Party, which has outlived its usefulness, will fade and go the way of the Liberal Party after the First World War; and
Labour will (as I have predicted for 2 years) probably be largest party in the Commons, but will be unable to do whatever it wants, because it will be a minority government (almost certainly). People may well prefer that to a majority Labour government.
It can probably be said that, in Westminster constituencies where Labour is not now the first or second party in elections, even former Labour voters would be better to vote Brexit Party than to vote Labour, because in “Conservative” Westminster constituencies, a vote for Labour is going to be a wasted vote, whereas a vote for Brexit Party will quite possibly help to unseat the Conservative MP in question.
Speaking now from a social-national viewpoint, why do I welcome Brexit Party?
That is a simple question to answer. No matter what forces may be behind Brexit Party, no matter what forces influence it, its importance to me lies in its ability to smash the “three main parties” scam-system in the UK. A weak government, esp. Labour, would open the way to real social nationalism in a way never seen before.
The unreality of the “Remain” crowd can be gauged by the tweet below. Like so many of the twitterati, this fellow over-values Twitter. He actually thinks that he is achieving something by having a few hundred or a few thousand other Remain whiners in his echo-chamber retweet or “like” his pointless tweet. Result? Nothing, but he feels warm and justified. In fact, he is a public relations man whose Twitter output is largely a one-sided and pro-EU song of praise. I predict that 24 May 2019 will not be a pleasant day for him!
Looks as if Boris Idiot and Amber Rudd might both lose their seats at the next General Election. Conservative MPs will not be voting for either of them to be leader if there is every chance that they might lose their seats…Happy day!
Curtice: "The [Conservative] party faces the prospect of nothing less than a mass defection that could leave it with by far its worst ever result in a UK-wide ballot"https://t.co/PW0KpRPHiv#EP2019#brexit
Someone called Casper Hughes, writing in The Independent [see below], says that Brexit Party will have no effect on Westminster elections. That statement, I think, is probably wrong. For the following reasons:
first of all, like most unthinking scribblers and talking heads of the present time, he has not managed to free himself from the idea that there is a spectrum going from “far left” through “hard left”, “soft left”, “centre-left”, “centrist”, then to “centre-right”, “rightwing”, “hard right” and finally the —demonized— “far right”;
Casper Hughes labels, simplistically, a huge group as “rightwing voters”. It’s a meaningless phrase; it shows lack of real understanding;
politics is more nuanced now. People from all parts of the outdated “right”/”left” spectrum can, for example, be allied on animal rights, environment, economic outcomes (and even policies: rail and utility renationalization for example). It was Jack London who said “I am a socialist, but a white man first”;
it is a mistake to imagine that Brexit Party support is all about Brexit. The System betrayal of the EU Referendum result is one example of how the System has, in vulgar terms, shat on the white British people over and over, especially in the past 30 years or so. The Brexit Party is a chance (like the 2016 EU Referendum itself) to kick the System “parties” (which form, to a large extent, one party with 2-3 faces).
people are currently (since at least 2015) voting against, not for. The article does to some extent acknowledge that. That means that people are voting not for Brexit Party and its sole policy, but to stamp on Con and Lab (and LibDem) as well as voting —yes— for Brexit, i.e. to leave the EU properly, without strings;
people generally now realize that a conspiracy is stealing Brexit, against the “democracy” we are supposed to have in the UK; they want to fight against that; the traditional voters for the “main parties” are not as dominant as they were. In 1950, 97% voted LibLabCon. Now? Maybe 50%;
also, many traditional voters feel betrayed: Labour betrayed its core vote by turning into the Blair finance-capitalist, mass immigration, “ignore-Pakistani-child-rapists” “New Labour” or fake-Labour party. The Conservatives betrayed their core vote by continuing with mass immigration, by increasing taxes to an extent not seen under Blair —or even Callaghan in the 1970s—, by destroying much of the mental landscape that made England England, by conspiring to dishonour the 2016 Referendum result, and in other ways;
the article says in terms that the present situation is a re-run of UKIP in 2014-2015. It is not. People saw that UKIP was cheated in 2015 (1 in 8 people voted UKIP in 2015 and were cheated by a rigged electoral system) and are angry at that, but even more angry at the corruption, freeloading and dishonesty of the main 2 parties, as well as at their incompetence and arrogance;
the article supposes that the so-called “right-wing” voters will “coalesce” around the misnamed “Conservatives” as a “stop Corbyn” tactic. Don’t count on it. After 3 years of Jewish propaganda contra Corbyn, Labour is riding higher than ever; and many former Con voters actually like many Corbyn-Labour policies;
the article says that Brexit Party is unlikely to win many if any Westminster seats. Let’s see. The SNP was founded in 1934, and did not get many MPs until 2015, before which it often had 0, 1, 2 or a few MPs most of the time (81 years!); then it reached that FPTP tipping point and had 59. Brexit Party may or may not get to the tipping point, but the idea is no longer ludicrous, if it opposes, say, Labour under Corbyn and Conservative Party under whoever (possibly Boris-Idiot);
the very fact that Boris Johnson is spoken of as possibly Prime Minister is proof enough that the System is sick and the Conservative Party terminally so;
the article seems to imagine that if Brexit Party gets only the same vote as UKIP in 2015, then its effect is meaningless. No, because even if Brexit Party gets the 12% UKIP got in 2015, and if the others stack up as Lab 35%, Con 35%, LibDem 10%, that leaves the Conservatives, though largest party, 32 seats off a majority: https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html (only a couple of points more for Labour and Labour are largest party, though 18 off a majority);
the article’s conclusion is predicated on traditional tribal Conservative loyalty, but that is breaking down fast and very many older voters are dying. A recent poll said that less than half of 2017 Conservative voters intend (at present…) to vote Con next time. That would cull anything up to 200 Conservative MPs if it were to become reality;
the EU elections will be a guide, the Peterborough by-election even more important.
I noticed that the article ends on an uncertain note.
If actual voting reflected that, the Conservatives would lose about 172 seats and be left with about 145; Labour would be the largest party in the Commons, with 297 MPs (up 35), and Brexit Party would have a bloc of 105 MPs. LibDems might have 18. That would mean Corbyn as Prime Minister of a minority (or coalition) government, 29 seats short of a Commons majority.
Brexit Party is now holding two rallies daily! Not pathetic little meetings like those of Change UK (a Change UK meeting yesterday had 9 people on the podium and 5 —yes, 5— people in the audience!) Here is the Thursday May 16 2019 Brexit Party meeting in Willenhall, West Midlands, a town with a population of about 29,000; the meeting had about 1,000 attending, obviously mostly locals:
and here (same day!), another Brexit Party meeting in the same region, in Wolverhampton, this time with 1,200 attending! So at least 2,200 people had turned out to support Brexit Party in the same region and on the same day! This seems unstoppable, whatever some msm twitterati and chatterati are saying!
Nigel Farage about to go on stage in Wolverhampton. Hall managers tell me around 1200 are here. Every seat is taken. Supporters are having to stand around the walls. pic.twitter.com/xZshL2LgNW
— Christopher Hope📝 (@christopherhope) May 16, 2019
Meanwhile, at a Change UK “rally” (8 members of the public and 2 reporters? Or was it 5 members of the public and 5 reporters?…)
Now we’ve seen the enthusiasm of the people for Chuka and Soubry’s great party I assume we’ll be seeing less of them on #marr, #bbcqt and #BBCR4today… but I won’t hold my breath pic.twitter.com/TlZ9uVgCAT
Here we are. Election day. Every indication shows Brexit Party powering ahead, leaving Con, Lab, LibDems, let alone Greens and Chukup, in its wake and floundering. I saw an interesting Twitter thread analysis about it all (see below):
THREAD: On the rise of the Brexit Party and what it means for Brexit and British politics.
That’s it, there are no more Brexit Party rallies planned before polling day. I’ve been to half a dozen of them across the country, from the very first week to the end.
The Peston show on ITV got a psephologist to work out what would happen in the (unlikely but possible) contingency that the next general election saw the same voting as the recent EU elections. The result? Brexit Party 441 seats, Conservatives 1 seat!
Well, much water under the bridge! Brexit Party was polling around 12% when Farage decided to pull 317 Brexit Party candidates only 4 weeks before the election. That was followed by another 38. That, in return for a worthless promise from Boris Johnson, a man of no credibility, no integrity, a useless beneficiary of the UK’s sick political system.
Farage‘s ridiculous decision (taken unilaterally and without consultation with the candidates themselves, who had all paid to be considered as candidates) collapsed Brexit Party overnight. Farage killed his party as surely as if he had shot it in the neck.
Now, at time of writing, Brexit Party is in the polls at around 4% and, with 3 weeks to go, is not a serious contender in the General Election. Brexit Party might have won a number of seats while depriving the Conservatives (mainly) of a number of others, but now will be lucky to win even in those constituencies where it had a chance (e.g. Hartlepool).
Why did Farage destroy his own party? I am not the conspiracy theorist some imagine but I do speculate whether this is some kind of Russian operation.
Russia, we are told, wants the UK out of the EU (and, in Putin’s wildest dreams, NATO). Taking that as correct, it may be that Russian strategists were (are?) hoping for “hard Brexit” or “no deal Brexit” (real Brexit), because it weakens the EU (as part of the New World Order or “NWO”) and because a real Brexit might both cause economic/political discontent in the UK down the line and also stimulate Scottish nationalism, with the possibility that Scotland might break off from the UK, and then possibly (probably) decommission the nuclear missile submarine bases there. A break-up of the UK would be a stunning coup for the Russian state in terms of Atlantic geopolitics.
Still speculating, if an immediate “hard Brexit” seemed likely to be blocked by Parliament’s Remain majority in the event of another hung Parliament, then Russian strategists might have decided to strengthen Conservative Party chances by taking out Brexit Party.
Brexit Party is a dictatorship of one man, Farage. To take Brexit Party out of the General Election, Farage alone had to make that decision. He did. So the question is why did Farage take that decision? To my mind, there is no logical reason based on ordinary politics why Farage should take the word of a proven and continual liar such as Boris Johnson. On the other hand, if Farage is or has become an agent under control, then it makes perfect sense.
How do we know that Farage has not been promised (or even paid already) a large sum (£20M is good, £50M is even better) offshore? It makes sense in baldly venal terms but it also makes sense for Farage politically, if Farage has become convinced that a Boris prime ministership with a large majority would result, in a year or two, in a “hard” or even “no deal” Brexit. That way, Farage gets a secret fortune and the political result he has wanted to see since the early 1990s.
True, Farage is wealthy anyway (is supposed to be), but so what? As to whether the Russians would pay really large sums for such purposes…well, the wife of an “oligarch” paid the Conservative Party £160,000 just to have a tennis game with Boris Johnson and David Cameron-Levita. On that basis, £50M to change the whole course of British policy and strategy seems cheap at the price.
There is no direct evidence that Farage is an agent of the Russian state, but he has been shown to have close links with some leading “oligarchs” etc. The Russia of Putin is not the Soviet Union. It operates partly via the uber-wealthy who are beholden to Putin; the Soviet Union operated in this sense in a different way, bureaucratically, via the KGB and its predecessor agencies (NKVD etc), GRU and, pre-WW2, the Comintern.
As we have seen (google, or see my earlier blogs), Boris Johnson, like Farage, is or has been close to some Russian or Russian-Jew “oligarchs”. Then there is the role of Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s “adviser” (who however has been reported as having actually overruled Johnson on some occasions!). I blogged about Cummings a few months ago: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/08/10/les-eminences-grises-of-dystopia/
There have been those who have implied that Cummings is a kind of Russian agent. My previous assumption was that he might have been an agent of SIS (British agent rather than salaried officer, perhaps, but who knows?) for a while (when he was in Russia for about 3 years after having graduated from university) but again that was just my speculative thought. Still, one would not necessarily preclude the other, especially over time.
I have no evidence that Farage has been paid a huge bribe by Russia; I have no evidence that Cummings has, either. Still, I do wonder. “Thoughts are duty free”, even in the EU…
There is, of course, also the fact that the British Intelligence assessment of some connected matters is not going to be released until after the General Election. It has been held up by Johnson and Cummings. Why?
Fiona Onasanya has drunk her last draught from the taxpayers’ trough and has now been removed as MP, the Peterborough seat having been declared vacant on 1 May 2019. We therefore move to the question of who will replace her.
Peterborough
The constituency covers the majority of the city of Peterborough and some rural areas to the East. I myself have visited the city but once, in 1975, and the city I saw in a few hours and 44 years ago is a very different place now. The population increased about 50% in the years 1971-1991 alone, since when it has increased again hugely. The city of 1971 had about 100,000 inhabitants but now has about 200,000 and still increasing. Even that does not tell the full story.
A few years ago, Peterborough was said to have the second-fastest population growth of any city in the UK. In 2007, the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire noted that, as recently as 2003, 95% of the teenagers in the county had been white (ie English), whereas the figure in 2007 was radically different and the population “diverse”. What is that figure now, I wonder? 50%? Probably far below that.
The true scale of the change is probably covered up. The city’s inhabitants are now 82% white (officially), but many of the white inhabitants are of recent Eastern European origin.
Peterborough constituency and by-election candidates
The constituency has been a Con/Lab marginal for decades, with the two parties usually but not always within a few points of each other. The Liberal Democrats have come third in every election for decades, except in 2015 when the LibDems came fourth after UKIP (there was no UKIP candidate in 2017).
Stewart Jackson was the Conservative MP from 2005 until 2017, his vote share gradually declining from 42.1% in 2005 to 39.7% in 2015 before, ironically, peaking at 46.8% in 2017, in which year he was replaced by Labour’s Fiona Onasanya (she got 48.1%).
I have blogged previously about Fiona Onasanya, who has wisely decided not to bother standing again (Labour has another candidate, but Fiona Onasanya could, in theory, have stood as an Independent, despite her conviction and brief imprisonment).
The Conservative candidate for the by-election, Paul Bristow, is a local businessman who says that “I run my own public affairs and PR business centred around the medical device industry.” I dare say that Bristow, though one of the most likely to succeed candidates, will have an uphill struggle, the way things are with a Conservative Party in meltdown; I also wonder whether voters will want a “multikulti” public relations man (see Bristow’s website in the Notes, below) as their MP. We shall see.
Labour Party
The Labour candidate is Lisa Forbes. A trade union official, she was Labour candidate for Peterborough in 2015, at which election she apparently fought a fairly strong campaign, finishing second with 35.6% of the vote (the Con vote was 39.6%). For the by-election, she beat one other woman in a contest held using a women-only shortlist.
Liberal Democrats, Greens, Change UK
The LibDem candidate is Beki Sellick, about whom a local newspaper reports:
“The Liberal Democrats have selected Beki Sellick as their Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Peterborough. The engineer fought the seat in the 2017 election, finishing third with 1,597 votes. She said: “I’m an ordinary person who’s had a variety of jobs – nationalised and privatised, shop floor and management, full-time and part-time, redundant. And then I started my own business in Peterborough two years ago. I chair our residents association where we run a monthly community café.””
The LibDems (same candidate) got a vote share of only 3.3% in the General Election of 2017, which result was even below the 3.8% they scored in 2015 (cf. 2010—19.6%, and 2005— 14.5%). I cannot see the LibDems winning. They are probably fighting for fourth or fifth place.
One interesting aspect is that Change UK, the new pro-EU and pro-Israel party, is not putting up a candidate. I read somewhere that the very strongly pro-EU and anti-Brexit parties (LibDems, Greens, Change UK) were going to not stand against each other in Peterborough and elsewhere, so as not to split the Remainer vote. Well, it looks like someone forgot to tell the Greens, who are standing, their candidate being one Joseph Wells, about whom nothing much is known.
The Green Party website says about their by-election candidate: “Candidate for Peterborough. Joseph Wells. No Candidate [sic] information at this time. Please check back.”
What a joke the Green Party is! Here we have a by-election held after a scandal. The ideal place for a small party to get some publicity and maybe save its deposit, yet on the day the nominations close, the useless creatures cannot even put out a few basic facts about the poor sap they have chosen as their doomed candidate! Not that it makes much difference: the Greens got 1.8% in Peterborough in 2017. Like the pro-Remain and pro-immigration LibDems, the Greens are unlikely to do well in an area which was over 60% Leave and where many of the English people feel (and have been) swamped by mass migration or “migration-invasion”.
The list closed at 1600 hrs. It is now 1611 as I write. At 1555, 5 minutes before closure of the list, Mark Pack, who does LibDem publicity, was tweeting this!
The LibDems are as useless as the Greens and the new joke party, Change UK!
What is more significant is that Change UK have effectively chickened-out of this contest. Either that or they are just too incompetent even to register a candidate for the only by-election being held! Either way (and as I have previously blogged), they are a total waste of space.
NEW: So much for the remainer joint ticket in Peterborough. I understand that the Lib Dems will be running their own candidate. Looks like the talks broke down.
So there it is: Change UK are too frightened or too incompetent to put up a candidate at Peterborough (voters might like to remember that at the 23 May EU election too…and at the next general election).
This means that, at the by-election, the Remain or pro-EU vote, which at best is probably no more than 40% of the electorate anyway, will be split between Greens and LibDems (and Labour). Bearing in mind that, in 2017, the combined vote for the LibDems and Greens was only 5.1%, it may be that most Remainers in Peterborough will vote Labour; neither of the two smaller parties has any real chance.
Minor candidates
UKIP is standing, thus splitting the hardcore Brexit vote, but is running at only about 3% in nationwide opinion polling. The candidate is John Whitby, a former UKIP councillor, who came last out of 5 candidates in the recent local election for Fletton and Stanground ward, Peterborough (he got 320 votes out of about 2,000):
well, in case people wonder if I know what I'm doing diving in at the deep end……… pic.twitter.com/qbFIACseKJ
Hard to predict UKIP’s vote share at the by-election, except that it will be below 5%. I am guessing that it will be around 2%.
The former journalist and UKIP MEP, Patrick O’Flynn, who now fights for the (post-1990) Social Democratic Party (SDP), is standing, but I would be surprised if he were to get above 1% of the vote. In a way, he was a loss to UKIP, in that he was probably one of UKIP’s more intelligent leaders, particularly on economic issues.
Why O’Flynn has chosen to ally himself with the SDP dead parrot party, God knows. Maybe because he did not want to be an Independent. He, in himself, is not a bad candidate, but the SDP is just silly: in 1992, it put up 10 candidates at the General Election. Total vote was over 35,000 or 0.1%, but individually they did not do badly at average 3,500 votes each. However, since then, their few candidates have registered not thousands, not even hundreds, of votes (at the General Election 2017, 6 SDP candidates stood, and got a total of 469 votes, about 75 votes each; in national terms, statistical zero).
Now we come to the bottom of the barrel: the Christian People’s Alliance (not to be confused with the Christian Party Alliance; yes I know…Judean Popular Front etc…) is standing a Dr. Rogers (not I think a medical doctor, but someone with a Ph.D who is a local teacher). I sometimes puzzle over why people even bother standing for silly no-account organizations like this. Still there it is. He may get 50 or 100 votes, who knows?
There are 2 Independents.
One Goldspink is standing for the faux-“nationalist” English Democrats.
There are candidates for “Common Good” and “UK European Union Party”.
There is a “Renew” candidate. There was one in the recent Newport West by-election: that candidate got nearly 4% of the vote there.
“Howling Lord Hope” of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party needs no introduction: the fat little man wearing a white or yellow suit is a veteran of dozens of elections and in fact was actually elected (unopposed) in a local council election at Ashburton, Devon, many years ago. I imagine that he will beat some of the Peterborough candidates who take themselves more seriously.
Brexit Party
Brexit Party has burst upon the political scene (or should that be “swamp”) and may change everything just by existing. Needless to say (to regular or frequent readers of this blog), I would never “support” a party which is not fully social-national, let alone one that has a “Friends of Israel” section already…Having said that, anything that helps to fragment the “three party” or “two party” FPTP scam, that is conventional politics in the UK, has my blessing.
Brexit Party is mushrooming and now has somewhere around 100,000 “supporters” (by any other name, members) who have, apparently, each donated between £5 and £200,000 (the average is about £30, giving Brexit Party somewhere in the region of £5 million in battle funds).
Below, Nigel Farage, the leader of Brexit Party, arriving in Newport, Wales, to a rapturous and almost ecstatic reception:
The Brexit party turned up in Newport, south Wales last night. A true Labour heartland. Usually. https://t.co/NoBovPxNCv
and here is a comment about both Brexit Party and Change UK rallies (well, Brexit Party’s 2,000-strong Peterborough rally and Change UK’s pathetic almost empty London meeting…)
Change UK London Rally vs Brexit Party Peterborough Rally. One made lead story on BBC News, the other didn’t even feature. That’s right. The tiny one made the front page, the massive one didn’t. Why’s that I wonder? pic.twitter.com/0MVGwgUoly
Peterborough rally for the Brexit Party. When was the last time British politics saw something like this?? Astonishing. They’re doing three rallies a week! pic.twitter.com/YVUlQnhTdw
The bookmakers have Brexit Party favourite to win the by-election: just odds-on, but closely followed at 11/10 by Labour. The Conservatives are on 20/1, the LibDems 50/1, Change UK 66/1 (rather ungenerous since they now seem not to be standing!), 100/1 bar. So Greens and UKIP are both 100/1. William Hill are similar but more generous. They have SDP at 125/1 and Green at 150/1.
A week ago, Labour were the favourites. That though was before Nigel Farage and Brexit Party had 2,000 people attend a rally in Peterborough for which, it seems, tickets were sold at £10 a pop. This is not British politics as we know it…most System candidates would struggle to get 200 (or, in some cases, 20) voters to turn out for a meeting where entrance is free!
Britain Elects has, a minute ago, tweeted the following polling for the EU elections:
Those figures might inform us re. the Peterborough by-election, except that Change UK is not, it seems, a factor.
The Brexit Party candidate is Mike Greene, a multi-millionaire businessman and considerable local philanthropist, who supports 40 local charities and good causes. He comes from modest origins and is a local resident who was brought up in or near the city. He was a Conservative until recently.
Conclusion and forecast
Unless something absolutely stunning happens in the next 4 weeks, this is a straight fight between Brexit Party and Labour. The Conservatives seem to be toast. In fact, now that that is plainly the case, I should expect many more Conservative voters to vote tactically for Brexit Party, in order to keep out Labour.
The Remain vote will probably gravitate to the LibDems, but the Greens will take quite a few Remain votes. Other parties can be more or less disregarded.
There is also the point that, on 23 May, halfway between now and the by-election, the EU elections are expected to be a triumph for Farage and the Brexit Party. The Conservatives are forecast to come 3rd or even 4th.
It looks as though this will be the Westminster victory that might launch the —as yet, policy-free— Brexit Party. Second place will go to Labour. Third? Either LibDems or Conservatives. Quite possibly the LibDems.
Current betting as of today (21 May) is: Brexit Party as odds-on favourites (8/13), though challenged fairly closely by Labour on 5/4. The rest of the field is comprised of also-rans, it appears: Conservatives 20/1, LibDems 50/1, and 125/1 bar those four.
Update, 23 May 2019
There has been movement in the betting market for the by-election: Brexit Party hardening and now at 8/15; Labour less firm and out to 7/4; Conservatives at 9/1 (from 20/1 only two days ago); LibDems sliding to 70/1; 125/1 bar those four.
Just saw the clip below from BBC News. It exemplifies the BBC way of doing bias in political coverage. The whole clip lasts well over 2 minutes (2:16), out of which Mike Greene, the candidate for Brexit Party, was given 5 or 6 seconds! Brexit Party is way ahead in the betting and polling for the by-election, but the BBC chose to present the three System party candidates as the “serious” ones, each of whom got a number of short slots within the clip. Even the lady standing for the LibDems got two or three slots, despite the fact that the LibDems have no chance, are 70/1 to win, and when the same lady stood in Peterborough for the LibDems at the 2017 General Election, she only got 3.3% of votes cast!
I am not a “supporter” of Brexit Party, as such, but the BBC’s bias against it is really showing now.
Update, 26 May 2019
By-election betting now shows Brexit Party hardening to 2/5, and now strong odds-on favourite; Labour slightly out at 15/8; Conservatives, who went from 20/1 to 9/1, are now again sliding and are at 12/1; LibDems in from 70/1 to 50/1; still 125/1 bar those four.
Update, 27 May 2019
After the stellar victory of Brexit Party in the EU elections, the odds on Brexit Party smashing the Peterborough by-election have hardened again, now to 4/11. Labour’s dispiriting results in the EU elections have lengthened its odds to 5/2. The Conservatives’ odds have slid back to 16/1, whereas the LibDems’ odds, also at 16/1, are hugely shorter now (they were 50/1 only yesterday!); 125/1 bar those four.
As my blog, written 9 May, said, this is a contest between Brexit Party and Labour, but now the LibDems are complicating the issue. If all anti-Brexit voters gathered behind one candidate, the Brexit Party could not win. The question arises: which one party and candidate? The Remain-oriented side is split, and there are other issues. It may well be that many Con voters and others will switch to LibDem for the by-election, but many Labour voters will recall the LibDems’ dreadful and dishonest support for the Con Coalition 2010-2015. My prediction is that the Brexit Party is going to win this by a goodly margin in the end.
Update, 29 May 2019
The betting continues to firm for Brexit Party. Now 1/5 odds-on (from 4/11). Labour has weakened to 4/1 (from 5/2). The LibDems are still at 16/1, but the Conservatives are still sliding, now at 20/1 again (from 16/1). As far as the bookmakers are concerned, it’s all over.
As my initial blog post speculated, Conservative voters are now flocking to Brexit Party, either out of conviction or because it is the best way to deny Labour the prize. It may be that, after the Fiona Onasanya fiasco, Labour is badly damaged. The candidate for Labour seems to be not very intelligent, which hardly helps (though I understand that she is at least anti-Zionist. On can rarely have everything.
Latest betting: Brexit Party still strong odds-on favourite at 1/5, Labour still 4/1 (both unchanged from yesterday), but LibDems and Cons have now both slid to 25/1. 125/1 bar those four.
Update, 31 May 2019
Brexit Party still at 1/5, Labour still at 4/1. LibDems have recovered to 12/1 after opinion polling suggesting that, nationwide, the LibDems are now, suddenly, the most popular party in England and Wales! Conservatives are available at 25/1 for the by-election. 125/1 bar those four.
Meanwhile, the newspapers converge on Peterborough to seek opinions…
“A disillusioned Tory, his message is clear that the Lib Dems ‘may sneak in here’. He says Peterborough is ‘an absolute dump’ with poverty rife. People are so poor they think twice about buying even a multi-pack of crisps.” [Daily Mail]
“Back in Lincoln Road, at a cafe bar, I talk to Janet Tobolik, who is 65 and half Polish. A devout Eurosceptic, she says only one party cares about Peterborough’s problems. She is voting UKIP. ‘There is rubbish on the streets. This is my country and you suddenly find a settee in the middle of the road. Peterborough is a slum. They drop everything these immigrants.’” [Daily Mail]
“Down the street, a 73-year-old man who called himself Mr Dhillon, said: ‘I have lived here since 1967. I always supported Labour. But they and the Tories have done no good for Peterborough. I think we should leave the EU and then we can start again.’”
“Yes, as it stands, it is Farage who is on a roll. He is hoping to bury his opponents in Peterborough, just like Catherine of Aragon, and the odds are hugely on his Brexit Party’s side. Next Thursday we’ll discover if the people of this city will change the future of British politics.” [Daily Mail]
Update, 2 June 2019
The betting market has moved as far as Labour and the LibDems are concerned. Brexit Party is still strong odds-on favourite at 1/5, but Labour is now closer at 10/3 and the LibDems , who were 12/1 yesterday and 70/1 only a week ago, now move to 9/1. The Conservatives are still on 25/1; and 125/1 bar those four.
As I commented earlier elsewhere, the battle for second place at Peterborough is intensifying. The Brexit Party seems unchallenged now for 1st place. The only way for Brexit Party to lose would be if those opposed to Farage all clustered round one other party standing. That is obviously not happening. Labour is fighting hard for the seat, but the LibDems are “playing a blinder” bearing in mind that they only got 3.3% in 2017 and 3,8% in 2015. Even at the height of 2010 Cleggmania, they only managed (just under) 20%.
The Conservatives are toast and have no chance. Labour is battling not to be toast. A 2nd place at Peterborough would keep Labour in the game nationally. If Labour drops to 3rd at Peterborough, heads may roll.
Brexit Party tweets cleverly: their tweet (below) is in fact correct, but from the purely electoral point of view helps Brexit Party, because Labour is still the main enemy of Brexit Party in this Peterborough by-election. Tactically, Brexit Party very much knows how to run a campaign.
Only 2 parties are being honest about their positions in Peterborough. Vote for democracy with The Brexit Party or vote to remain the EU with the Lib Dems this Thursday. pic.twitter.com/PD2F56XFk7
“…many Peterborians feel life is getting worse; nothing catastrophic, but a noticeable unravelling. Stagnation of living standards and diminishing prospects, as much as Brexit and migration, are likely to shape how they vote.”
“…people also sense deeper changes to the social fabric, caused in part by the march of buy-to-let property investors, the retreat of the state from providing housing for the working class and ever-shrinking funding for maintaining the fabric of neighbourhoods. With Brexit dominating the byelection, there is little room to debate much of that.”
The BBC has also posted a not very illuminating analysis:
As for the betting market, Brexit Party is now even more firmly odds-on, prohibitively priced at 1/6. Labour has gone out again, returning to 4/1. The LibDems are now also further out at 10/1, while the Conservatives have all but given up the ghost at 33/1 (out from 25/1).
The LibDems were always going to be on the back foot in Leave-friendly Peterborough (in the 2016 Referendum, 61% voted Leave, on a high turnout of over 72%), but their apparent lack of success is a warning light about taking their 2019 EU elections performance and more recent opinion polling too seriously (particularly now that it seems that pollsters have been deliberately suppressing Brexit Party in some polling).
When push comes to shove, can the LibDems hack it? Their performance electorally over many years and in government from 2010-2015 would suggest not.
As to the Conservatives, I suggest that my initial analysis was right: former Conservative voters are backing Brexit Party both for itself and because they have lost confidence in the Conservatives as a potentially-winning party. A Conservative vote in Peterborough is now a wasted vote. The tactical option to keep Labour out is therefore to vote Brexit Party. They are obviously deserting the Conservatives in droves; incredible when you consider that Peterborough has had a Conservative MP for most of the years 1945-2019. A symptom of the general and possible terminal decline of the Conservative Party.
Labour is the only party now likely to come close to Brexit Party in the by-election. The “blacks and browns” (etc), comprising a fifth of the inhabitants, will vote Labour if they vote at all. Remain voters are more likely to vote LibDem now. The non-Brexit-Party vote is thus split. Brexit Party may get 50% of the vote, it may get only 40%, but it does seem likely to win.
Note: in the few hours since I wrote the above update for 3 June, the betting market has moved again. Now Brexit Party is in at 1/7, Labour has gone out to 5/1, the LibDems have slumped to 14/1 and the Conservatives are still in outer darkness at 33/1 (125/1 bar those four).
It is pretty clear that the punters and bookmakers have decided that Brexit Party is unassailable at Peterborough. I think that Brexit Party will be elected, and maybe on as much as 50% of the vote.
The Labour candidate has been (supposedly) damaged by her (again, supposedly) “anti-Semitic” online statements of some time ago (my problem with her is that she has recanted, and cravenly “apologized” to the Jew-Zionist lobby). She will probably get 2nd place, and on a vote of about 25%.
The LibDems have no realistic chance now. They will be looking to get the bulk of the Remain vote in a city where most people (61%) voted Leave in 2016, and where the LibDem core vote has been between 3% and 4% for several years (and even in 2010 was only 19% or so). I shall be surprised if the LibDems can get to 2nd place in this by-election. My guess as to their vote share would be somewhere around 20%.
Conservatives? They are just going through the motions. If their vote exceeds 10%, I shall be surprised.
…and the msm “journalists” are still making assumptions based on their belief that the System parties (LibLabCon) are eternal and immortal. Those parties will all be dead soon. “Protest vote” does not begin to cover what is happening.
So here we are, the day before polling day. The betting has moved in a little. Brexit Party still heavily odds-on but a little out from yesterday (1/7 from 1/9); Labour has come in to 9/2 (from 6/1); the LibDems are at 14/1 (from 16/1), Conservatives still 33/1 (125/1 bar those four).
There was a late attempt in the Guardian to connect Mike Greene, the Brexit Party candidate, with the retention-of-freehold-rights scam/scandal, but it seems to have had little impact for various reasons, not least that 99% of Peterborough voters never read the Guardian.
Brexit Party looks, on the face of it, as if it is going to walk this one.
Update, 6 June 2019
The moment of truth. The polls are open. Brexit Party is still at 1/7 in the betting odds, with Labour again firmer at 4/1; the LibDems and Conservatives have settled together at 20/1.
and at 1330 on polling day…
The betting has altered “in play”, so to speak: Brexit Party still at 1/7 and looking on the face of it like a shoo-in to win; Labour firmed today, to 7/2; as to the others, both the LibDems and the Conservatives have been sliding, the LibDems to 25/1, the Cons to 50/1. (125/1 bar those four).
It is clear that the Conservatives are going to go down very badly. How badly, we wait to see. This may prove to be the most significant by-election since 1945.
(as a light ending, until the result, I reproduce—see below—the most stupid, also the funniest tweet I saw today!)
As I predicted weeks ago, it is between these two now. Labour struggling hard not to be too badly beaten. Many of the Remain votes will go Labour, and almost all of the votes of the blacks, browns etc, and those of any immigrants eligible to vote.
The LibDems are only 40/1 in the by-election betting now. Cons 50/1, others 125/1 or more. As usual, the LibDems talk a good game but rarely follow through. They wasted their chance of getting proportional representation in 2010. That sank their party and many of Britain’s people.
Just saw this, illustrating my point that Labour’s core vote is now “the blacks and browns”:
Brilliant canvassing sessions in Peterborough for our fantastic @UKLabour candidate @LisaForbes_ with colleagues from Peterborough and our extended #LabourFamily
Labour won, unexpectedly (and because of the organized ethnic minority vote, including postal vote), and on 31% of the votes cast (Brexit Party got 29%).
[above, Rory Stewart, many years ago in Afghanistan, consciously reprising Lawrence of Arabia; he was sometimes called both “Florence of Arabia” (in Iraq) and “Florence of Belgravia” (because of his well-connected and wealthy background)]
Introduction
My attention was caught by the BBC Politics tweet below.
Rory Stewart MP [Con, Penrith and Borders], who until yesterday was Minister of State for Prisons, a political dead-end, now can be said, appropriately enough, to have jumped free with one bound, and is now Secretary of State for International Development, a position again not quite in the front rank but a Cabinet post all the same. From his new elevation, Stewart has wasted no time in declaring his candidature for Conservative Party leadership.
I have been interested in Stewart and his political career for several years. I was puzzled as to why someone who appeared to have so many advantages (wealth, family influence, expensive education, pre-political career moves, a degree of public prominence etc) seemed to have run into the sand as an MP. However, it may be that he was playing a long game which will yet bring him to the highest office.
I do blog about MPs individually, but mostly those I term “deadhead MPs”. Stewart is certainly not one of those. However, his CV is almost too obviously brilliant. He seems to have almost too many talents, qualifications and virtues to be true. I do, perhaps unfairly, harbour a suspicion that the sum of his many parts may not quite add up to the same amount.
“After graduating, Stewart joined the Foreign Office.[11] He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia from 1997 to 1999, working on issues related to East Timor independence, and was appointed at the age of 26 as the British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign.” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is believed to have been, like his father, an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service [SIS], a fact alluded to by David Dimbleby on BBC Question Time. Stewart neither agreed nor demurred. Still, a touch of the James Bonds impresses the common herd, I suppose…
[above, Brian Stewart, the father of Rory Stewart, wearing the badge of a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), the 4th-highest order of chivalry in the UK (if excluding two now-dormant orders, the Order of St. Patrick and the Order of The Star of India)]
“After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he became the Coalition Provisional Authority Deputy Governorate Co-Ordinator in Maysan and Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator/Senior Advisor in Dhi Qar in 2003, both of which are provinces in southern Iraq.[9] He was posted initially to the KOSB Battlegroup then to the Light Infantry.[12] His responsibilities included holding elections, resolving tribal disputes, and implementing development projects.[12] He faced growing unrest and an incipient civil war from his base in a Civil-Military Co-operation(CIMIC) compound in Al Amarah, and in May 2004 was in command of his compound in Nasiriyah when it was besieged by Sadrist militia.[9] He was awarded an OBE for his services during this period. While Stewart initially supported the Iraq War, the International Coalition’s inability to achieve a more humane, prosperous state led him in retrospect to believe the invasion had been a mistake.” [Wikipedia]
Full marks for honesty, but not for perspicacity. Let’s look at the above again: Stewart joined the FCO (and/or SIS) in 1995-96 and by 1999, at age 26, he is British Representative in Montenegro, at that time emerging from nearly a decade of ex-Yugoslav conflict.
This is rather remarkable. Why was a 26-y-o appointed to this rather important strategic post? Even more remarkably, perhaps, Stewart was then posted to Iraq in the immediate post-invasion era, and was rather famously deputy-governor of an Iraqi province at the age of 28. As noted above, he even “saw action” to some extent when his compound was besieged by militia fighters.
“From 2000 to 2002 he travelled on foot through rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey totalling around 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses. He had previously walked across West Papua in 1998,[115] and has since made a number of long walks through Cumbria and Britain. He also travelled into Libya a day after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi.” [Wikipedia]
“In late 2005, at the request of the Prince of Wales and Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan,[15] he established, as Executive Chairman, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a human development NGO, in Afghanistan, and relocated to Kabul where he lived for the next three years restoring historic buildings in the old city of Kabul, managing its finances, installing water supply, electricity, and establishing a clinic, a school and an institute for traditional crafts.[4] Stewart was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society‘s Livingstone medal in 2009 “in recognition of his work in Afghanistan and his travel writing, and for his distinguished contribution to geography”.[16] Stewart stepped down as Executive Chairman of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in May 2010.” [Wikipedia]
By any standards, Stewart’s life up to age 33 at least (he is now 46) was packed with achievements and adventures. Not many UK MPs could lay claim to anything even a tenth as interesting and varied (note my blogs about “deadhead MPs”). Indeed, it seems that, in 2008, a Hollywood studio (Studio Canal/Brad Pitt) actually bought the film rights to do a biopic of Stewart, starring, it was envisaged, Orlando Bloom as Stewart! No film has been made (yet).
This is not the British politics we know! This is somewhere in the realm of John Buchan and Sidney Reilly, a post-imperial Great Game pastiche.
Stewart’s second book, The Prince of the Marshes: and other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, also published as Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq, describes his experiences as a Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator in Iraq.[4] The New York Timescritic William Grimes commented that Stewart “seems to be living one of the more extraordinary lives on record”, but for him the “real value of the new book is Mr. Stewart’s sobering picture of the difficulties involved in creating a coherent Iraqi state based on the rule of law”.[126] Stewart’s books have been translated into multiple languages.
Stewart’s reflections on the circumstances under which outside military and political intervention in countries’ internal affairs may or may not hope to achieve positive results were distilled in a 2011 book, Can Intervention Work?, co-authored with Gerald Knaus and part of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series. He has also written about theory and practice of travel writings in prefaces to Wilfred Thesiger‘s Arabian Sands,[127]Charles Doughty‘s Arabia Deserta[128] and Robert Byron‘s The Road to Oxiana.[129]
In 2016, he published The Marches, a travelogue about a 1,000-mile walk in the borderlands separating England and Scotland, known as the Scottish Marches, and an extended essay on his Father, Brian Stewart.[130] The Marches was long listed for the Orwell Prize, won the Hunter Davies Lakeland Book of the Year,[131] was a Waterstones Book of the Month,[132] and became a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.” [Wikipedia]
I suppose that many would be well satisfied to have done even one or two or three of the things noted above. Stewart has dozens of accomplishments and successes to his name. A few more are:
“His 2008 cover article in Time magazine, where he debated presidential candidates Obama and McCain, arguing against a troop surge in Afghanistan, has been shortlisted for an American Journalism Association Award
Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart, a documentary in two parts that tells the story of foreign intervention by Britain, Russia and the United States in Afghanistan from the 19th century to the present day,which aired on BBC2 and which won a Scottish BAFTA (2012).[139]
Border Country: The Story of Britain’s Lost Middleland, which investigates the rift created by Hadrian’s Wall, and the issues of identity and culture in a region divided by the fabricated border, which was singled out for praise by David Attenborough.”
“Stewart speaks some French, Persian (Dari), and Indonesian. He has also studied at school, in the Foreign Office, and on his Asian travels, Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Serbo-Croat, Urdu, and Nepali languages. He acknowledges that the latter three languages are “very rusty“;
He has lectured at Harvard and even advised Hillary Clinton…;
He is a karate expert (level unknown) and belongs to the Special Forces Club in London, some of whose members were in WW2 secret work, some were in the military and naval special forces, some ex-intelligence personnel —and there are also some who are rumoured to be just gold-plated fakes and fantasists;
“His speech about hedgehogs in Parliament in 2015[39] was named by The Times and The Telegraph as the best parliamentary speech of 2015 and described by the Deputy Speaker as “one of the best speeches she had ever heard in Parliament” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is married to an American woman who had previously been married to a fellow NGO worker. One of the children of the Stewarts was delivered by Stewart himself without medical assistance.
Stewart once tweeted to me about something, several years ago, and was very polite, something that I value. I do not attribute that entirely to the influence of the Dragon School or, indeed, Eton. He seems to know how to behave (though not all agree, I have heard).
Thoughts
Stewart’s stellar career stalled after he became an MP in 2010. Having said that, he has chaired Commons committees, been promoted slowly but surely, and Wikipedia notes that he attended the Bilderberg cabal along with George Osborne. Not that being a Bilderberg attendee is a guarantee of lasting political success (cf. Nick Boles MP) but it does indicate that the primary powers behind the Western throne consider that a person is of interest.
This is Rory Stewart’s moment of opportunity. He has seized it. Once Theresa May leaves office, the Conservative Party will elect a new leader. Stewart is the international System candidate nonpareil. I should not be surprised were he to win a first ballot outright, bearing in mind the collection of fools, knaves, deadheads and frauds likely to oppose him in the contest:
Penny Mordaunt, best known for diving in a swimsuit (she looked good, so be it…) and for being a reserve naval sub-lieutenant;
Michael Gove, pro-Jew, pro-Israel fraud and expenses cheat (I tweeted that once and it was one of 5 tweets that had me disbarred at the instigation of the Jew lobby, so it pleases me to repeat it!);
Boris Johnson (aka Boris Idiot), who proved as Foreign Secretary that he cannot hold down high office;
Andrea Leadsom, a nonentity;
Jeremy Hunt, smarmy clever snake and tipped to take May’s purple;
Amber Rudd, yet another dimwit, though she thinks herself terribly clever. Pro-Israel, pro-EU, pro-immigration. Was involved personally with Kwasi Kwarteng, the “African at Eton” (well, one of them), who has now married, or is about to marry, a younger Amber Rudd lookalike. Amber Rudd’s own seat may well be lost next time;
Philip Hammond, careful calculating Remainer;
Dominic Raab, part-Jew, pro-Brexit, hardfaced and careerist.
There may be others. There would have been Gavin Williamson (who has the self-confidence of the stupid) and Stephen Crabb (sex pest, expenses cheat and so pro-Israel that he could be termed “an agent of influence”) but both of those have ruled themselves out by their egregiously poor behaviour. Deadheads.
It scarcely needs to be said that, as social nationalist and thinker into the future, I am not on the same page as Rory Stewart, so obviously NWO/ZOG in orientation is he, and whose MP voting record etc is far from entirely to my liking. He also wanted the UK to remain in the EU and now seems to want to “leave” but not really leave: Brexit in name only (BRINO). However, there is no doubt that he is the standout candidate now to replace Theresa May, which means that he could be Prime Minister by the Autumn.
Still don’t understand the hard-on people have for Rory Stewart. Guess Brits can’t get over their worship for the military or posh men addicted to lying about statistics.
Military? Does 5 months as an instant 2nd lieutenant count? Or is that a reference to Stewart’s “secret war” posts?
A few more thoughts, 4 April 2019:
It seems that Stewart favours immigration:
“One farmer told Stewart, “All illegal immigrants should be rounded up and on the first ship out.” Some voters might expect their Conservative candidate at least to nod, but Stewart said, “Hmm,” and changed the subject. After leaving that house, he said quietly, “Actually, I’m rather in favor of immigration.” [The New Yorker]
So he favours (mass?) immigration. That would chime with those Bilderberg/Davos linkages. Also, it is all very well for a spoiled son of the “British Establishment” (father was a high-ranking SIS officer; Stewart lives in a country house surrounded by a small estate of a hundred acres or so) and who has always had access to effectively any money or anything he wanted without struggle or effort, to be OK about the mass of British people being replaced by blacks, browns, Chinese etc; and having to live with those basically backward peoples, share limited housing, road/rail space etc. Not to mention the effect on rates of pay, and the huge strain on public services, education, NHS, “welfare” etc.
Stewart is quite consciously remote from the concerns of the British people. He has put in huge effort on his adventures and career, but has never had to. Big difference.
I seriously wonder now, looking at or studying Stewart, whether he is right for the office of Prime Minister. Yes, it is very impressive to have run an Iraqi province (effectively or not, though?…) or part of Kabul (ditto) when only 28 or 30-ish, it is impressive to have walked across Afghanistan etc. It is impressive to have all those literary and other medals. However, how far does that get you in terms of being a British Prime Minister?
As a matter of fact, is it really that impressive to have been deputy governor of an Iraqi province when you were (some say) no bloody good, accomplished almost nothing and got a transfer a few months later to a more congenial post elsewhere in Iraq? I do not know the truth of it all, and I may be unfair or simply mistaken here, but I wonder whether Stewart’s other great accomplishments have a rather thin layer of reality under the surface glitter?
Impressive though those career highlights are, I am unsure as to whether Stewart really does have what it takes to be Prime Minister of this country in 2019 or 2020, as distinguished from being in that high office in a John Buchan political landscape circa 1912, and as a kind of Richard Hannay, a Hannay who is playing the role of an earlier and English/Scottish type of “Jack Ryan”, the American adventurer-patriot who eventually becomes President in the bestselling books of Tom Clancy.
I have spent some time (by my standards anyway) in preparing and writing and rethinking this picture of Rory Stewart. He disturbs me more than he reassures me: he seems rather fixated on himself, his own psychology, his motivations, his own (enormous and not denied by the man himself) ambition.
It worries me that, in the interviews and profiles I have read, Stewart says much about himself, his achievements, his accomplishments (or allows them to be known…), but little about the needs of the world, of Europe, of the European peoples, of the British people. I see little or nothing in terms of policy, or wider ideas, just a self-view that he is the right sort of chap to run the UK. That sounds like a more impressive sort of David Cameron-Levita-Schlumberger to me, and that worries the hell out of me.
Parris is not only remote from the concerns of the British people (though in his case the remoteness comes not from ancestral hauteur but is the self-consciously created la-di-da-ness of the fastidious metropolitan gay), but is also a pro-immigration Remainer who thinks that ruling the UK should be left to people like him and his affluent, cosmopolitan, pro-multikulti friends. Trouble is, it has been, and look at the result! (Parris himself, elected in 1979, was reprimanded by Mrs Thatcher for having replied to a constituent that she should count herself lucky to have a council house, whatever its flaws…), though he stayed on as an MP until 1986.
I started off thinking that Rory Stewart was, judging objectively, far and away the best candidate to replace Theresa May. I still think that he is by far the most accomplished candidate, but I the more I read about him, the more doubts and suspicions I have. I am also disturbed that some of the Jewish lobby on Twitter seem to favour him.
In the end, no System party or candidate has the right to rule the UK. Social nationalism must triumph.
A few recent tweets seen about Rory Stewart
I’ve a horrid feeling it means they are going to do a deal soon. She will announce she is going, the contest will start with Rory Stewart being lined up as her successor. Democracy is dead in this country, I just worry they will do us out of voting for MEPs too.
Rory Stewart abnormal. Who ignores pleas fr help when a quadriplegic prisoner lying on back 24/7 with bedsore so badly neglected & tissue deteriorated that pelvic bone is exposed ? Stewart as Prisons Minister downright cruel.
I thought I’d heard it all from Diane Abacus until this bloke Rory Stewart springs up. Where do political parties find these lying conniving self indulgent corrupt fuckwits? https://t.co/6cbEnUKXnY
Here is a surprise. The MI6 house journal, the Guardian, shills for ex MI6 officer Rory Stewart (whose dad was also deputy head of MI6). The Guardian views his role in the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as making him "highly qualified" in International Development. https://t.co/2NrZXzC9tE
The first day of his promotion to Cabinet is an opportune time to recall a classic from Rory Stewart's back catalogue. As Floods Minister he said the flood defences had worked well but the water had come over the top of them. #r4today#BBCNews#Reshufflepic.twitter.com/1N2iHIkvpP
Oh, dear…(see below): I am thinking now that Stewart is rapidly using up his credit with at least some of the public, though in the end the ones who will vote for a new Conservative Party leader will be, initially, the Con MPs in the Commons, not Joe Public. It may be that Stewart will be seen as the ideal “Stop Boris” candidate, someone to rally to. I do not know what level of MP support he now has. I presume some, or why would he risk being humiliated? On the other hand, he does strike me as a very ambitious gambler and chancer.
Am I alone in thinking Rory Stewart comes across as a complete prat. I’ve never seen less leadership qualities from an officer in the armed forces.
The tweeter above is yet another who seems to think that Stewart’s 5 months as a gap-year “officer” on probation is something real, rather than a kind of adventure holiday for the gentry. Unless the tweeter, like others, takes the term SIS “officer” at face value, rather than as a conventional designation (cf. police “officer”, council “officer” etc).
Update, 25 May 2019
Well, here we are after Theresa May’s announcement of departure, and Rory Stewart is on all msm outlets. He has put the knife into Boris-Idiot and may have damaged the latter’s campaign. Opinion on Stewart himself is divided, half seeing his accomplishments and character, half seeing his gaffes. The tweet below is more favourable than not to him
On the other hand, I saw Stewart on TV, saying that “we” must build 2 MILLION (!) houses. My reaction? “Only because the UK has imported millions of unwanted immigrants, who are breeding fast; and Britain CONTINUES to import huge numbers, even in 2019!”
I see no willingness in Bilderberg/Davos Stewart to take on mass immigration. In fact, he seems to support it. The negative effects will scarcely impact him or his family, after all, in his listed Borders country house…
Ah…another tweeter who raises points against Stewart:
and, below, the sort of statement that comes easier to those who have never been poor, hungry, desperate etc…Almost clownish coming from someone who has been an MP and whose votes, with those of other Conservatives and LibDems, enabled the attacks on the unemployed and disabled since 2010…
The country can be a much better and much happier place if we learn again to focus on the small things that make a real difference to people. pic.twitter.com/KfYxEi6E6e
Stewart seems to be an engaging fellow, at least on the surface, but the more I see of him, and the more that I read about his voting record and views, the less I like him ideologically or politically.
Update, 1 June 2019
Ah, I see that I am not alone in thinking that Stewart’s accomplishments and achievements are perhaps not quite all that they seem on paper:
“Though few would speak on the record, there is a broad critique of Stewart that his biography is a little overegged and certainly self-regarding – leading to a nickname, a member of his wider social circle confides, of “Florence of Belgravia”.” [The Guardian]
“Though Stewart has claimed to know “what it feels like to be in the army”, for instance, he spent only a gap year stint in the Black Watch and did not see active service. He can often give the impression his role in Iraq was rather more important than the reality, according to someone who witnessed his work there (“He was regarded as a pretty competent mid-ranking Foreign Office official … He wasn’t a nonentity and I think the view in Iraq was that he was conscientious, but he wasn’t Lawrence of Arabia.”).” [The Guardian]
“Several well-placed observers of Stewart’s time in Afghanistan point out that his much-discussed Afghan walk, the origin of his reputation as an expert on the region, was a month spent crossing a comparatively safe part of the country (“Other people would call it a walking holiday,” notes one).” [The Guardian]
“In general, he has done a lot and it’s all very impressive,” says someone who observed Stewart at close quarters in Kabul. “But it’s not quite as impressive and remarkable as he allows people to think. This is not necessarily all his doing, but the willingness of others to project things on to him … All sorts of journalists wrote up the Turquoise Mountain Foundation [Stewart’s Afghan NGO, which aimed to preserve local crafts] as the most amazing project in Afghanistan, when it was actually a rather low impact thing that affected the lives of a small number of people.” [The Guardian]
“…to his credit he does not dissemble when asked directly about his experience (“It was unbelievably brief,” he told the New Yorker of his time in the Black Watch.)” [The New Yorker; The Guardian]. So not even 5 months? Sounds as though it was somewhere between the 5 months previously claimed and, er, what? A week? A month? A few months?
“Claims this week to have “negotiated in Iraq, negotiated in Afghanistan” provoked “snorts of derision”, the former Afghanistan correspondent Jon Boone tweeted. “Who with, the Kabul guild of potters and calligraphers?” [The Guardian]
Maybe Stewart should not have exposed his gilding to the very harsh light of scrutiny.
A few more thoughts
Since I penned the main blog post, much has happened. Stewart has come under more scrutiny, but also has travelled the country (the UK, not Afghanistan) doing Twitter vox pop chats with random passers-by. At least he is not afraid to do that. He is becoming better-known to the public and apparently now has a few Conservative MPs supporting him; but not many. As to the bookmakers, some have him as 66/1 for “next Conservative leader”, though Betfair betting exchange has him at 12/1, which strikes me as more realistic (making that 66/1 a value bet if you can get it)
“Speaking in her personal capacity – and not in her current role as chief executive of the Jo Cox Foundation – Catherine Anderson told The Courier she was drawn to Rory’s internationalism.” [The Courier]
A few more endorsements like that and it’s Goodnight Vienna to Stewart!
Ah…seems that Catherine Anderson is “an aspiring Conservative MP” who used to be “Chief of Staff” and Campaign Manager for (drum roll…) Rory Stewart! In fact she worked for Rory Stewart for nearly 9 years!
Well, the first ballot has been held and Rory Stewart is still standing. Just. 4th from bottom. All below him (McVey, Leadsom, Harper) eliminated (though only from the contest, sadly…). So far, only 19 MPs voted for Stewart. His immediate prospects look bleak, inasmuch as Boris-Idiot, someone with no real vision, ability, ideas, ideals, nor even basic decency, is the frontrunner still. Boris has 114 craven MPs backing him, so far.
Our analysis of the results of the first ballot of the Conservative leadership contest… three candidates have been eliminated – Leadsom, Harper and McVey. pic.twitter.com/GUlcsa900q
What does it say about the Conservative Party and, to a lesser extent, the UK (England, mainly) that a blot like Boris Johnson may soon be Prime Minister? I am not talking about his character alone, but also his actual ability to be effective. Still, there it is…
Update, 17 June 2019
Well, as I guessed a couple of days ago, Rory Stewart has gained ground, at least in the betting, though the betting exchanges’ and bookmakers’ odds are often not a reliable guide to political results (see the EU Referendum, the Trump election, the recent Peterborough by-election etc).
Stewart is now at 2nd place in the betting to be next Conservative leader, though only at 16/1. Boris Johnson is favourite at around 1/5 odds-on (Hunt 20/1, Gove 46/1, Raab 85/1, Javid 120/1).
By all accounts, Stewart did well in the TV debate (Johnson the sole absentee, obviously afraid of being exposed as an idiot and incompetent, as well as wanting to seem to be the “presidential” figure above the fray).
Having said that, Stewart will have to pull off a considerable coup even to be one of the final two, though that now seems a 50-50 possibility.
Update, 19 June 2019
Well, Rory Stewart is out of the race, which means that, until or unless Boris Johnson leaves frontline politics, his career is stalled again. He pledged not to serve in a Johnson Cabinet, and, as I blogged previously, it is doubtful that Johnson will appoint him to anything significant anyway.
That leaves Johnson, Hunt, Gove, Javid.
Looks as though arguably the worst candidate is about to win…
Talked to a Tory MP last night who was backing Johnson "Do you think he'd be any good as PM" "No" "What on earth will he do about Brexit"? "No one knows" "Why do you want him, then?" "He's the best hope we've got" "By 'we" you don't mean Britain do you?" "No the party, of course"
Having said that, Stewart has staked his claim to be taken more seriously somewhere down the line. System politicians, like revolutionary ones, are all seeking to catch the right wave, like surfers.
Update, 20 June 2019
Just saw this tweet, posted 2 days ago. Worth reading; one has to take its veracity on trust, not ever having heard of the tweeter, and the emailer mentioned remaining unnamed.
So Rory Stewart is standing down as MP for Penrith and Borders at next election. He has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Reasons not given. Maybe, in the end, he just was not hungry enough, which would explain why he did not want further ministerial preferment, or to seek the role of PM, but does not explain why he has also decided not to continue as MP; neither does it explain why he has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Perhaps the situation will be clarified in due course.
Update, 5 October 2019
Ah…mystery solved. Stewart is intending to stand for the post of Mayor of London.
He has obviously seen how Boris-Idiot used the position to keep his profile high until he was ready to re-enter the Westminster fray.
The other main candidates are already known: Sadiq Khan, the present Mayor, for Labour, and Shaun Bailey, the West Indian who will be the Conservative candidate. Sadiq Khan has the support of the msm, the Jewish lobby etc, as a Labour mayor who is rather anti-Corbyn. Shaun Bailey may be seen by the blacks as rather an “Uncle Tom”, and there are still questions around missing or misapplied funds of a “social enterprise” he set up in 2006: the monies missing were never accounted for; other monies, amounting to the bulk of spending by the organization, went on “travel and subsistence”, probably for Bailey himself. No criminal charges or civil claims were ever brought, though.
Despite Khan’s poor record as Mayor, he is probably well-placed vis-a-vis Bailey. Now that Rory Stewart has entered the fray, Bailey is holed below the waterline and his candidature will inevitably sink. Whether Rory Stewart can beat Khan and the other candidates (the LibDem being the main also-ran) is an open question.
London is a mainly non-white city now, and an English candidate (well, Anglo-Scottish) like Stewart may find this an uphill slog. On the other hand, Khan is not a popular figure, Stewart is a fresh and now politically non-aligned contender who, however, has high public recognition and profile. I do not think that he can be written off here, and if that is so, his wider ambition, to be Prime Minister, may survive the presently wintry conditions.
Update and addendum, 10 October 2019
Thank to an alert and well-informed blog reader, I can now add a significant addendum to my study of Rory Stewart:
So it turns out that, notwithstanding the listed country house in the Scottish Borders, notwithstanding the almost caricature “country gentry” persona, Stewart is part-Jew! It now is clear that he is what the Reich called a “Mischling”, in his case one-quarter, his maternal grandfather having been “a Jewish doctor from Wimbledon”, whose own parents were Jews from Romania who arrived in London after having lived in New York City for a while.
Well, now it becomes clearer: the self-publicizing (shades of Boris Johnson…), the liking for “fancy dress”, eg tribal costume and being photographed posing in it, the pro-immigration stance, the Davos and Bilderberg linkages.
More than that: Stewart’s wife, Shoshana Stewart, is half-Jewish. In fact, the “half” in question is the maternal half, which means that, according to the way that Jews themselves calculate ancestry, his wife is “Jewish”, simpliciter; that also means that, according to Jewish custom, Stewart’s children are Jewish (though of course we non-Jews decide such designations according to genetic science, meaning that his children are in fact three-eighths Jewish, if my mathematical calculation is right, which often is not the case; anyway, no matter if the right answer is three-eighths or something else, the exact proportion changes nothing). According to the Jewish Chronicle report, above, Stewart and his wife and children celebrate Jewish religious holidays as well as the main Christian ones.
I smelt a rat about Stewart when I saw that the vocal Jew cabal on Twitter all seemed to favour him during the Conservative leadership contest, but it did not occur to me that he himself was part-Jew. I thought that his odd and dark looks came from Western Scottish origins (as they presumably do, in part). I thought that the Jews were supporting Stewart because of his “liberal” Conservatism…
How do these facts, concealed or at least not publicized until now, affect Stewart’s London Mayor election bid? Damaging, I think. While the Jews of North London will probably support him now, the far greater number of Muslims and others who commonly disfavour Jews will probably not vote for him (despite the fact that the present Mayor of London and Labour Party candidate, Sadiq Khan, a Muslim by origin, has been a complete doormat for the Jewish lobby for years).
Fair comment, surely, if one looks at Rory Stewart’s voting record as an MP (2010-2019).
Without taking away from his interesting and accomplished background, as detailed in my lengthy blog hereinabove, my feeling at the moment is that Rory Stewart is basically an oleaginous, dissembling, part-Jew shit.
Update, 6 April 2020
Stewart is no longer standing as candidate for Mayor of London:
There must be a reason; I do not know that reason.
feels entirely absurd that one year ago this month Rory Stewart became the new DfID secretary in Theresa May's cabinet, and since then he's resigned from that post, run for the Tory leadership, left the Tories, and run for London mayor as an independent
So once again Rory Stewart is the nearly man: nearly something important in SIS or FCO, nearly Conservative Party leader, nearly Mayor of London. Sometimes a candidate has to stick in there and await Fate. Had Stewart not huffed off and resigned as MP after losing out to, ultimately, Boris Johnson, his time might have come, after Johnson messes up even more, which is inevitable.
I always recall being in the USA during the 1992 US Presidential Election campaign. At one point, Clinton was placed third of the three major candidates in the opinion polls. A poor third, at that. He stuck it out (admittedly, what else could he do?) and, after Ross Perot dropped out, beat George Bush snr. for the Presidency, being inaugurated in 1993.
[addendum, 31 October 2021: my point about Clinton sticking to it applies more forcefully to Ross Perot, which I should have explained better. Had Perot shown more resilience, and stuck to it, he might easily have become President and thus, as a non-Republican/Democrat candidate, made history. As it was, he dropped out, later claiming that sinister forces had threatened him and his family. Who were they? NWO/ZOG?].
Years earlier, Clinton, who at 31 had been a very young Governor of Arkansas, was defeated there after one 4-year term. Undeterred, he tried the next time and was re-elected. A stayer.
I should think that this spells the end of Rory Stewart as a potential political leader. What does it mean for the London race? I have not followed it closely, but it must give the Conservatives a better chance, despite their candidate being a West Indian with a very dodgy background in terms of near-fraud (though he has never been charged with anything).
Sadiq Khan was running at 8/1 on (1/8) with the bookmakers. Rory Stewart was at 11/8. Shaun Bailey, for Conservative Party, at 20/1. Now that Stewart is gone, I imagine that Sadiq Khan will go out to about 1/6, and Shaun Bailey go in to about 10/1 or so. Despite his poor record, Sadiq Khan is unlikely to lose to Shaun Bailey.
In a John Buchan story, the Stewart or “Hannay” character would no doubt “retire” from public life only because he would be secretly saving the Empire from imperial Russia, or imperial Germany, or would be thwarting a dastardly plot involving transnational conspirators. In fiction, he would save the Empire, then either be knighted or (and/or) be appointed Chief of the Imperial Secret Service. In real life? I have no idea. Stewart is now, or was until recently, teaching at Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart#Post-political_career.
Update, 22 January 2022
Boris Johnson is a symptom of a much broader problem in British politics – which can only be fixed with new policies, and – almost certainly – new parties and a new electoral system https://t.co/4XUQ8YGAZ8
Had Stewart retained his MP-status, he might now be in again with a real chance of leading his former party. Having decided not to continue as MP, he is necessarily out in the cold.
Update, 9 July 2022
Just read an appreciation of Stewart from the Tatler (2016, expanded and updated 2019). Don’t think I saw it before today. Written by Quentin Letts [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Letts].
Frankly, nowhere as complete, or as good, as my own assessment, if I say so myself. As for it containing “everything you need to know about Rory Stewart“, I think not! For one thing, no mention of the part-Jewish background, and no mention of the fact that his wife is half-Jewish.
Update, 2 April 2023
Well, in the end, the London Mayoral Election was held in 2021. There were 20 candidates, both Independents and those from political parties. In the run-off, Sadiq Khan (40%), beat Shaun Bailey (35.3%) in what turned out to be a close-run thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_mayoral_election.
As for Rory Stewart, now 50, he has pottered around doing podcasts in the past couple of years. He also moved to Jordan in 2021 with his wife and children, apparently to do work connected with his Turquoise Mountain charity.
That article mentions that Stewart is (or was, in September 2021, when the article was written) thinking of possibly standing again as a London mayoral candidate in 2024. I doubt that he will. The 2024 election will be run on FPTP lines, giving an outsider (in his case, as a non-party candidate) fewer chances.
Overall, it seems to me that Rory Stewart’s political career is finished, in all likelihood.
“Anyone with the slightest interest in politics should get a copy of Rory Stewart’s political memoir.
Not because he had a particularly long or even influential career: just nine years in Parliament and only months in the Cabinet. But you will learn more about the nature of Westminster machinations and how government actually works (or doesn’t) from this volume than from those of many more illustrious politicians. In terms of the quality of writing, there has been nothing to approach it since the diaries of Alan Clark (who never made it to the Cabinet at all).
But whereas Clark was a genuinely bad person — part of the attraction, perhaps — Stewart is a fundamentally good man, even if his self-belief, touching on the messianic, occasionally made him appear preposterous.”
[Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail].
Interesting that Stewart was apparently in SIS/MI6 for several years, and that Dominic Lawson was said to have been a long-term SIS/MI6 source: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Lawson. Lawson is 17 years older than Stewart, in fact born the same year as me— 1956.
However, the allegations about Lawson do refer mainly to the 1990s and focus partly on the Balkans, particularly (ex-) Yugoslavia. Stewart joined FCO/SIS in the mid-1990s, and was posted to Montenegro in, I think, 1999. Tenuous link, perhaps nothing…
“This silly little man has delusions of grandeur“, “I cant wait to see the back of Khan, but Rory Stewart god help us“, “Gottle of Gear“, “Nay ,nay ,thrice times nay.“, “The guy’s a joke, and not a funny one“, “Please no, he’s a right weirdo” and “Oh no! Not this opportunist” are among some of the more polite.
Rory Stewart has now written his latest book. His profile is high enough even in 2023 to ensure msm interest and comment (not all favourable, though):
Behind a paywall, but I include it for the sake of completeness.
[Rory Stewart, 2023]
I expect that I shall buy the book secondhand off Amazon, once it reduces to about £5 or £2. The price for the new and unreleased (until 14 September) book has already declined from the original £22 to £16 or so.
I am not now in the new-book-buying classes (and prefer hardbacks) so the Amazon website is a great boon for me.
Not long ago, I bought the memoirs of Gorbachev, a heavy tome; great value at about £5 including postage from a used-book company on Amazon.
I have now bought another book: £2.80 only, and also including the postage. Hard to believe. One wonders how they make a profit, but then (to coin a phrase) I never was much of a businessman!
I met the author a few times in the 1980s. Frankly, a rather pompous man whom I (even more frankly) found rather unpleasant in a minor way, but his book might be interesting. As for the author, he is now deceased.
(about how Stewart is now angling for both a peerage and a ministerial portfolio from Starmer…).
Stewart’s ambition and careerism are both relentless, if inconsistent.
Actually, in terms of individual jobs or posts, I should say that Stewart (despite his many accomplishments) is a “quitter”, but behind that is his already-noted enormous ambition, “looming like a thundercloud over the scene“…
An old friend of mine used to quote her deceased husband (ex-Guards officer, ex-Royal Flying Corps, WW1, d. circa 1970): “if you throw a Jew out of the door, the Jew will sneak back through a window“… Of course, Stewart is only part-Jew.
If Starmer can indeed give Rory Stewart a job and put him out of his often expressed misery of not being a politician with a brief anymore then that really would be great for everyone including those who are tired of hearing him pine pic.twitter.com/83Q6CfN6Lz
Stewart will fight Vance over 'ordo amoris' but stands idly by while mothers kill their own children in their wombs and HMG arrests those who pray silently against it!
Emasculated phoney who actually cares nothing for the most vulnerable and marginalized.
USAID: British politician complaining that his wife was supposed to get $1M in USAID grants before Trump cancelled the contract. Rory Stewart's wife runs Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which exposes modern art to puzzled Afghan women.
USAID: The NGO which Rory Stewart’s wife works for just has its USAID funding cancelled, The Turquiose Mountain Foundation, teaches ‘liberated’ Afghan women about modern art like Duchamp’s urinal. pic.twitter.com/0IJdoF2Rwn
Oh this has absolutely made my day. Rory Wrong About Everything Stewart whingeing about his wife having her $1 million contract from USAID cancelled with immediate effect by DOGE. Priceless, absolutely priceless🤣🤣
I have thought for a week or so before writing this. As one would expect, there has been an outpouring of virtue-signalling (accompanied by State repression or threats thereof) not seen since the Anders Breivik event in Norway eight years ago. I wanted to write not only about the Christchurch shooting itself, and about the perpetrator, but also about surrounding events and the overall context. I also want to examine the moral and ethical aspects.
Firearms
There are many mass shootings in the world. The USA alone seems to have one on a weekly if not daily basis (and those are only the ones which are reported heavily). The anti-gun lobby focusses on ease of access in the USA, New Zealand etc. Obviously, if a disturbed (or other) person cannot acquire firearms, then he cannot shoot people; he can, however, stab them, blow them up, drive at them etc.
Firearms events have more victims, usually. Having said that, one could say “ban cars, because some people misuse them”, to which the answer would no doubt come, “people need cars, they don’t need guns”. Well, true, though still arguable. It all depends on where society decides to draw the line. In the UK, since the late 1990s, it has been almost impossible to own lawfully-held firearms (except shotguns and, in some cases, certain types of hunting rifle). That was not always the case.
“Members of the public may own sporting rifles and shotguns, subject to licensing, but handguns were effectively banned after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996 with the exception of Northern Ireland. Dunblane was the UK’s first and only school shooting. There has been one spree killing since Dunblane, the Cumbria shootings in June 2010, which involved a shotgun and a .22 calibre rifle, both legally-held. Prior to Dunblane though, there had only been one mass shooting carried out by a civilian in the entire history of Great Britain, which took place in Hungerford on 19 August 1987.” [Wikipedia]
Note that. In the entire history of Great Britain there have only been three mass shootings, yet the government took the opportunity to ban most firearms (at which time there had only been two such events in British history), and did so with the apparent agreement of a majority, probably high, of the general public, most of whom know nothing about firearms, have never so much as seen one (other than on TV), and who were stampeded by the publicity around the 1996 Dunblane school murders.
At one time, there was little regulation of firearms in the UK:
“Following the assassination of William of Orange in 1584 with a concealed wheellock pistol, Queen Elizabeth I, fearing assassination by Roman Catholics, banned possession of wheellock pistols in England near a royal palace in 1594.[73] There were growing concerns in the 16th century over the use of guns and crossbows. Four acts were imposed to restrict their use in England and Wales.[74]
The Bill of Rights restated the ancient rights of the people to bear arms by reinstating the right of Protestants to have arms after they had been illegally disarmed by James II. It follows closely the Declaration of Rights made in Parliament in February 1689.[75] The Bill of Rights text declares that “That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law”.” [Wikipedia]
“British common law applied to the UK and Australia, and until 1791 to the colonies in North America that became the United States. The right to keep and bear arms had originated in England during the reign of Henry II with the 1181 Assize of Arms, and developed as part of common law.”
Starting in 1903, there were restrictions placed on purchase of certain firearms (mainly pistols), subsequent Acts of 1920, 1937, 1968 and 1988 tightening the law in other respects too.
It is worth noting that, following the two 1997 Acts, which effectively banned private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) and required surrender of thus-affected weapons, 57,000 people (0.1% of the population) handed in 162,000 weapons and 700 tons of ammunition! In other words, one maniac with a few weapons became the trigger (so to speak) for a law which affected at least 57,000 people all of whom had held and used their weapons peacefully until then!
I personally was not affected by the ban, though I was at one time (mid 1970s/mid 1980s) a member of the Kensington Rifle and Pistol Club in London. In the UK and/or other countries, I have fired a variety of weapons, including the 7.62 R-1 automatic/semi-auto rifle (there was a switch on the side), semi-automatic pistols including the 9mm Browning Hi-Power and numerous others in .32 and .22 calibre, and also revolvers such as the Colt .32, .38 and .357 Magnum, and have handled (overseas and mostly long ago, again in the 1970s and 1980s) others, such as the famous Uzi submachinegun and some Warsaw Pact automatic weapons. Despite that, I am not in fact particularly interested in firearms (or any weapons) and, even in the unlikely event of the 1997 Acts being repealed, would probably not bother to join a gun club. As far as shotguns are concerned, I have used them in Ireland and in England (in England only for clay pigeon, because I disapprove of shooting birds and animals for sport or “fun”). I myself have never privately owned any firearm.
I doubt that many people now even know that there used to be public ranges in England, where for a small fee, people could take their own weapons and fire them. I went once (in 1976) to the one at Dartford (Kent), quite near what was then a (disused?) mental hospital. Now the area is probably either a housing development or perhaps might be the present Dartford Clay Shooting Club, which (I just saw on Google) seems to be at or near the same location (it is not an area that I know, though).
Most British people have never fired nor even seen a firearm and that does tend to colour their reaction.
In the USA, things are of course very different. The old English Common Law right to bear arms is written into the U.S. Constitution, though muddied by the famous words about “a well-regulated militia” etc. Leaving aside the legal and quasi-theological arguments revolving around that Amendment, it always seemed to me when I lived there (in New Jersey) that it was odd for many American states to require people to have a licence to own or at least drive a car, but not a pistol, shotgun or something even more dangerous.
In the UK, people tend to say, “look at the USA: easy ownership of guns and a massacre every week!”, but that has to be set against the fact that tens and probably hundreds of millions of Americans own firearms. Probably the vast majority have never received even the most basic training. True, there are huge numbers of crimes committed with firearms in the USA, but simply banning guns (as in some other countries) is a simplistic solution which might leave American citizens helpless. Societies differ. I met an American lady, a blonde with startlingly blue eyes, in the Caribbean. She said that she had a large silver-plated semi-automatic pistol (I forget the marque), which she kept under her pillow. I never got to see it, by the way!
As far as New Zealand is concerned, its gun ownership laws were lax compared to the UK or even Australia, but huge numbers of New Zealanders (about 5% of the population, 250,000 out of 5 million) own at least one weapon. New Zealand is a country about 10% larger than the UK but with only about 5 million inhabitants. Much of the country is rural. There had never been a massacre there such as the one recently perpetrated in Christchurch by Brenton Tarrant.
First impressions, Muslims in the UK and NZ, the history, the demographics
When the Christchurch attack happened and the news organizations started to report, my first surprise was to hear that New Zealand has 50,000 Muslims living there! That figure may seem small, but is still 1% of the whole population.
In the UK, there were at one time effectively no Muslims, though trade with Muslim lands, evidenced by coins, goes back at least as far as the time of King Offa in the 8th Century. All the same, there were only a few Muslims in England, mostly diplomats, traders etc, for centuries, e.g. in the Tudor and Stuart periods (15th-17thC), until sailors from British India (mostly Bengal) known as lascars started to spend time in ports such as London, Bristol, Liverpool etc in the 19thC. There may have been 10,000 at any one time, but few were permanent residents. The Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle occasionally mention lascars, not infrequently preceded by words such as “rascally”.
The first small mosque in England was built in Woking (Surrey) in 1889 (it’s still there, quite near the railway station), having been built there adjunct to an Islamic burial ground. The first mosque in London only appeared in 1924. By 2007, there had been established 1,500 mosques in the UK! Now, in 2019, the figure is even greater: 1,750 [BBC statistic]. 250 more mosques in little more than a decade…
[please see addendum at foot of this blog post]
As to the population figures, England and Wales had 50,000 Muslims in 1961. That was then around 0.1% of the whole population. A decade later, in 1971, there were 226,000, a quadrupling, then by 1981, 553,000; 1991, 950,000. Doubling every decade at that point. Then 1.6 million in 2001; 2.7 million by 2011 and, a mere three years later in 2014, well over 3 million.
The present number of UK-based Muslims is not officially known but is around 3.5 million.
So in the UK, 50,000 Muslims became (via immigration and births) 3.5 million within little more than half a century. New Zealand has 50,000 now. New Zealand has different immigration and other factors as compared to the UK, but will New Zealand, a land of only 5 million people now, have a population of Muslims alone of 3.5 million by, say, 2075 or 2100? It cannot be dismissed out of hand. At that point, the Muslims would be already dominant even if the general NZ population will by then have grown to, say, 10 million (twice its present level). Yes, that projected third of the population could in fact be the dominant bloc. A laser is powerful because its light is concentrated and disciplined, not diffuse.
The intention of the shooter
It seems that the perpetrator of the massacre had been travelling, perhaps using inherited monies, for 7 years. Information given out by the msm indicates that Tarrant was “radicalized” not while a member of some group or party, but by events witnessed while travelling around Europe and, finally, in New Zealand itself.
The manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, The Great Replacement, will not be reproduced here. It is found with ease on the Internet, via Google or the like. I do not want to give anyone hostile the excuse to say that, by posting it on here, I am somehow “encouraging” terrorism or political violence. It does seem very repressive that major Internet platforms have been pressured to remove his manifesto, and have acquiesced.
Reading that manifesto, the motivation of Brenton Tarrant seems to be almost impersonal on the face of it. It has elements of sacrifice and self-sacrifice. It shows determination (he has that in common with Breivik). As to education or erudition, I do not think that he lays claim to much, but there is intelligence manifest in the document. He has learned (whatever might be said about that) from his travels.
Politically, Brenton Tarrant describes himself as an “ethno-nationalist”. He also says (the manifesto is mostly written in Q & A format):
“Were/are you a nazi?
No, actual nazis do not exist.They haven’t been a political or social force anywhere in the world for more than 60 years.”
That is a good point. As Hitler said, “National Socialism is not for export.” Hitler also remarked to his last secretary, Traudl Junge, and others, in 1945, that German National Socialism was finished, but that something with the same essential core might emerge “in a “hundred years” and then “take hold of the world with the force of a religion”. Well, here we are in 2019, 100 years after the founding of the NSDAP, though of course we are only 74 years from the end of the Reich.
Tarrant also describes himself as an “eco-fascist” as well as writing that he is at one with many of the policies expounded by Oswald Mosley. A word of explanation might be useful here. I knew someone who was at one time quite well acquainted with Mosley. She always said that he was basically an intellectual who saw himself as a “man of action” (“Action” was also the name of Mosley’s newspaper). Mosley of course was also a “man of action”, who had flown in the First World War (where he was a fellow-officer of the aforesaid lady’s husband in the Royal Flying Corps), but he, arguably, made too much of sports, fencing, physical fitness generally, as a politician. That was the Zeitgeist of the 1930s though, not only in Germany and Italy but in the UK, where lidos and indoor public swimming pools etc proliferated.
Mosley was once described as someone who could have been a great prime minister of the UK, for either [System] party. He was unwilling to accept mass unemployment, so resigned from the Labour Party (under which he was a government minister).
Mosley is now remembered, in the public mind, in the “cartoon” version put out by a largely Jewish mass media: the sneering Fascist demagogue in his black uniform. As with all important lies, of course, there was a kernel of truth in that.
As to Tarrant’s “eco-fascism”, there has always been linkage between “green” politics, environmentalism etc, and social nationalism. See:
In fact, the author Henry Williamson, who wrote Tarka the Otter, combined Englishness, support for Mosley and support for German National Socialism with being an early environmentalist and, in essence, “green” activist:
Tarrant declares in his manifesto that he will not kill NZ police. He kept to that and allowed himself to be captured. He also makes the following point:
“Were/are you a supporter of Brexit?
Yes, though not for an official policy made. The truth is that eventually people must face the fact that it wasn’t a damn thing to do with the economy.That it was the British people firing back at mass immigration, cultural displacement and globalism, and that’s a great and wonderful thing.”
Amen to that.
He adds, re. Marine le Pen’s party in France:
“Were/are you a supporter of Front National?
No,they’re a party of milquetoast civic nationalist boomers, completely incapable of creating real change and with no actual viable plan to save their nation.“
Rather oddly, Tarrant says that one Candace Owens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens#Political_views was a major influence. I had to look up her details. I myself see nothing of any real interest there, but this blog post is about the New Zealand attack and its author, not me.
As to the psychology of Brenton Tarrant, hard to say. True, he shares some characteristics with other “rampage killers”, being marginalized by society, not having a solid career or place in society, not having a solid marriage or other relationship either. He seems to be sane and in fact makes some very good if obvious points in his manifesto. No doubt the New Zealand state’s psychiatrists will find suitable labels to attach…
The reaction of the New Zealand state, msm and public
Once the initial shock of the massacre ebbed, there was a wave of sympathy for the victims, especially in New Zealand itself. Looking at the TV news, one can see how warm-hearted the New Zealanders are, though it is all too easy to see a crowd of a few hundred and assume that it represents a whole country. The New Zealanders have proven that they have a heart. It is far more doubtful as to whether they have a head. Like Australia, New Zealand has gone from being an entirely white European society (albeit grafted onto an existing “native” one) to a developing multikulti mess, but the extent of that is probably slight enough in terms of numbers and percentages (so far) that most New Zealanders are unaware of it. I cannot say.
The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, immediately started virtue-signalling on an epic scale, wearing Arab dress and insisting that even women police officers did the same. It was rather chilling to see an armed policewoman carrying her automatic rifle and wearing the Arab hijab. Reminiscent of the ISIS barbarians.
Stray thoughts
Many of those who virtue-signalled like mad about the people shot in New Zealand scarcely noticed, I think, the many killed recently by American or British bombers when the ISIS barbarians were under attack. The ISIS fighters had to take their chances, perhaps their camp-followers too, but what about uninvolved civilians? What about small children also killed by the assaults on towns such as Raqqa?
Then take another example: the Second World War bombings (on both sides, though the Allied bombing was far worse, in Germany, both in terms of numbers killed and in terms of intensity). In Japan, the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have supported the war effort, may also have been related to soldiers or whatever, but were themselves not combatants. Their children even less so.
[above, Dresden 1945]
To attribute blame becomes difficult. That is why human beings cling to the conventional. Many will have seen The Night of the Generals, which is based around questions like that: in the midst of a massive war, where thousands are being killed monthly or weekly, and where the Wehrmacht resistance to Hitler is in the background (with its premise that Hitler must die for the greater good…), an investigation is launched into the murder of a prostitute.
If conventional morality says that it is justified for a state to kill civilians and even civilian children for some larger end result, then perhaps the same argument could be used by an individual who massacres civilians whom he regards as either “the enemy” or “collateral damage” to achieve some larger end? The moral question which looked so clear superficially becomes opaque.
For me, the NZ shooting was unpleasant, unnecessary and possibly counter-productive. Tarrant obviously disagrees with that conclusion. All one can say is that the large-scale movements of population will continue until someone says or enough people say NO.
Nature's sublime experience with its terrifying beauty of incomprehensible power threatens our human finiteness with the infinitude of spaces. Human speech fails to fully describe its vast power likewise it cannot be defined ethically [good or evil]. pic.twitter.com/Ng5NB1nkOB
I interrupt other blog writing to address an immediate issue. The activist known as Tommy Robinson has now been banned from Facebook, he having already been barred from Twitter. That news highlights again something that I have been writing about, blogging about, speaking about (at the London Forum in 2017) and tweeting about —before I myself was banned or rather expelled from Twitter in 2018— for years, the privatization of public space.
In past ages and, indeed, until about 20 years ago, public space was literally that: the agora of ancient Athens, the forum of ancient Rome, the barricades of revolutionary France, the brief outbursts of free speech in the Russia of 1917 or the early 1990s, and Speakers’ Corner by Hyde Park in London, where a youthful Millard (aged about 21) spoke to fickle crowds a few times in the late 1970s.
Today, the traditional fora of free speech, eg in the UK, are very restricted. Jez Turner (Jeremy Bedford-Turner) made a speech in Whitehall in 2015. He mentioned Jews a few times. That alone was enough (triggered by the malicious Jewish Zionists who denounced him, the supine police who are now so often in the Zionist pocket, the wet CPS who are not sufficiently resistant to the Zionists’ endless whining demands, a Zionist-controlled System-political milieu, and a Bar and judiciary which are frightened of their own shadows and even more of those of the Zionists) to have Jez Turner imprisoned for a year. He served 6 months and was only recently released to live for months more under considerable restriction.
The “public space” which is now most significant is online space. Twitter, Facebook, blogging platforms etc.
I myself was expelled from Twitter last year. I had been the target of both the Jew-Zionists and mindless “antifa” (aka “useful idiots” for Zionism) for about 8 years. I have also had my freedom of expression taken away in other ways, as well as having been interrogated by the police (again at the instigation of malicious Jew-Zionists) for having posted entirely lawful comments on Twitter. I was also disbarred, quite wrongly, for similar reasons.
Alison Chabloz was persecuted, prosecuted and convicted for singing satirical songs in the manner of 1920s Berlin. She is appealing her conviction and the result of her first-stage appeal. She has also been expelled from Twitter (as well as being made subject to a court ban from social media, which bars her from posting until mid-2019).
If Twitter or Facebook ban you, you may have some limited right of appeal, if they so choose to extend it to you. You have no legal right to stay on Twitter or Facebook despite the fact that, in real terms, they are near-monopolies. Yes, I am now on GAB, but GAB has only 500,000 users, if that, whereas Twitter has perhaps 500 million! The fact that, as I believe, Twitter is largely a waste of time, is beside the point.
The point is that, beyond your very limited contractual or other rights qua customer, you have no rights in respect of Twitter or Facebook (etc). Qua citizen, you have no rights at all. You have no right to post, and if the owners or executives of those companies decide to bump you off, off you go, whether you have 50 followers, 3,000 (as I did) or a million.
The Blair law of 1998 [nb: 1998 = 666 x 3…], requiring political parties in the UK to be registered, all but killed any semblance of real political-party democracy in the UK. Now, free speech both online and offline is being, on the one hand, criminalized or subjected to other State repression (at the instigation of the Jewish-Zionist lobby), and on the other hand choked off at source, by companies (under Zionist control or influence) barring dissidents or known activists from even posting dissenting or radical views online.
As to Tommy Robinson, I am not personally one of his supporters, and I deplore his attempt to play the sycophant for Israel and Zionism, but he has some views which are valid, in my opinion.
In any case, freedom of expression is indivisible. It is facile to make arbitrary distinction between some free speech, calling it “hate speech” and so unacceptable, and other speech which is labelled “acceptable” (politically approved) speech. That is mainly hypocrisy. Even my own relatively mild postings are and always have been targeted by the enemies of freedom, of which the Zionists are the worst.
So we have, not only in England but elsewhere (eg in France, under Rothschilds cipher Macron) the same repressive tendency. Sajid Javid, Amber Rudd, Theresa May, others, are enemies of the British people and enemies of freedom of expression. They seem to want to ban all political activity and all political or socio-political expression which does not support the existing System. It is immaterial whether you call it that or “ZOG”.
The System in the UK, in France seems to think that it can slowly turn the screw on repression, controlling the political parties (or setting up “controlled” new ones, as with Macron in France and, perhaps, the “Independent Group” in the UK), preventing free speech by putting the fix into Twitter, Facebook etc, only having controlled news on or in the msm (controlled mass media outlets).
The Soviet Union tried a less subtle form of all that, and it still collapsed in the end. What the System politicians, msm faces and voices etc, fail to see is that a head of steam is building up in the UK (and France) and, if bottled up by the State and those behind the curtain, will eventually explode.
Another example, taken almost at random from Twitter:
As well as censoring our content over the past few weeks, Twitter have now deleted all the people we were following, which in turn means we have lost a ton of followers
Please RT and follow if you’re still right behind us – we have no idea why Twitter is doing this pic.twitter.com/opwxMMr6fX
Another example. A typical pseudonymous Jew-Zionist tweeter (troll), below, exults that a very prominent pro-Corbyn Twitter account, “Rachael Swindon”, has been “suspended” (probably, like me, expelled):
In fact, Rachael Swindon has been reinstated, though only after Twitter’s vice-President for Europe intervened. Why should such people control the online public space? Again, why should the police barge in with large boots and interfere with free speech when no threats are involved? It’s all wrong.
The pro-Jewish lobby freeloader and careerist Tom Watson MP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson_(Labour_politician) who has wormed his way to becoming Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (with his eyes on Corbyn’s purple day and night), has attacked Tommy Robinson in the House of Commons and asked YouTube to take down Tommy Robinson’s YouTube channel, which is his last online platform of any importance.
The excuse for Watson’s actions and statement has been the apparent fact that Robinson came to the house of one Mike Stuchbery, a failed (and sacked) supply teacher who poses as both “historian” and “journalist” online, and whose main activity seems to be online advocacy of opposition (including violence, though he usually uses weasel words) to any form of British or other European nationalism. Tommy Robinson has exposed the apparent fact that Stuchbery colluded with others to visit Robinson’s wife or ex-wife at her home. Robinson’s response seems to have been to do something similar to Stuchbery. Tom Watson, in his Commons statement, referred to Stuchbery as “journalist”, based presumably on Stuchbery’s politically-tendentious scribbles for HuffPost and other, smaller, online outlets.
In the end, if someone is prevented from making socio-political expression, that person can either subside into silence, or take other action. That other action might be peaceful, it might not be. When the repressed individual is a public figure with many thousands of supporters, those supporters may also take other action. That might include, potentially, and in the French term, “action directe” somewhere down the line.
Those (of various types: Jew Zionists, the politically correct, “antifa idiots etc) in our society, who crow at shutting down the freedom of others to make socio-political expression should, in the well-worn (Chinese?) phrase “be careful what they wish for”. The Spanish also have a phrase, a proverb in fact: “Do what you will, and pay for it.” Repression of views, not “allowing” people a public platform (and anyway, who is, for example, a blot like Tom Watson to decide who should or should not be allowed to speak?) can only lead to upheaval in the end.
It will be interesting to observe the UK political scene in the coming months and years.
A few tweets seen
A tweet with a few examples of the frequent passive but malicious incitement of violence against white people by “antifa” bastard Mike Stuchbery of Luton:
@MikeStuchbery_ is the coward who Doxxed #TommyRobinson's wife and children accompanied by the Media and a Crackhead. He is a Far Left Antifa Thug who needs exposing to the Whole country.
Below: self-described (fake) “journalist” and “historian” (failed supply teacher and house-husband) Mike Stuchbery inciting serious political violence but trying to deny it…
Below: fake “historian” and “journalist” Mike Stuchbery threatens minor Northern Ireland politico David Vance with a lawsuit. Does he have any idea how much a defamation action (for example) costs? He must have got the idea of constantly threatening to “sue” from the Jewish Zionists and their useful idiots on Twitter, who are always threatening legal action, and who often invoke the “sainted” name of Israel-based “Mark Lewis Lawyer” in this regard. In reality, Lewis is a wheelchair-bound blowhard fake, recently fined by a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for his behaviour. At the Tribunal, he admitted that he often had no idea what he was doing because of his intake of prescription drugs. Oh…and Lewis’s own Counsel said that “he has no assets” and that “his sole possessions are his clothes and a mobility scooter”! See:https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/?s=mark+lewis
This individual has been proven to be an unhinged, hate-filled extremist, who has whipped-up his followers to engage in violent acts. this pathetic weasel should be charged with incitement to commit a hate crime on this evidence – pic.twitter.com/Ec2Yr9AAMM
Something called “Press Gazette” also refers to grifter Stuchbery as a “journalist” (does he have an NUJ card? I suppose that, these days, any wannabee can scribble for peanuts or for free in the HuffPost, silly little online “news” agencies, or for the (now often semi-literate) online msm “newspapers”, and then to call himself “journalist”…and in Stuchbery’s case, “historian”, too!…)
The more serious point here is that “Culture Secretary” Jeremy Wright MP thinks that he is entitled to ask YouTube to take down Tommy Robinson’s videos, Tom Watson MP having already demanded the same. Freedom? Free speech? Free country? Hardy ha ha…
Update, 11 March 2019
and still the tweets keep coming…
You are my favourite tweet thus far. Mike is just an observer? Excuse me for hooting with laughter. Mike is an extremist. It’s documented all over Twitter. He earns a living from incitement not observation. Yet he refuses to take ownership of the effect he has on others.
and Stuchbery has hit back with the piece below, posted on yet another of the plethora of new “news and comment” websites that pose as quasi-newspapers, in this case calling itself the Byline Times
Stuchbery (and many others on Twitter etc) really should refrain from using legal terms wrongly or pointlessly, eg, in that piece averring that Tommy Robinson defamed him. Well, that may or may not be the case, in the lay sense, but any actionable defamation requires publication. I have no idea whether in this case, Robinson published (meaning said or wrote to third parties) any of the allegedly defamatory material via video streaming etc. It seems not. Then there are all the other factors, such as the defences, one of which is that the statements, even if defamatory on their face, are true…
In any case, it costs vast amounts to sue for defamation, though in some open and shut cases it may be possible to find “no win, no fee” lawyers (in the old American parlance, “ambulance-chasers”) willing to take it on, with the help of specialized legal “insurance” (which in my view comes close to champerty, in the old Common Law sense)
…and here we see some supposed “comedian” (comedienne? Never heard of her), by name Janey Godley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janey_Godley , saying that those exposing Stuchbery are “a danger to free speech”:
In fact, I also must have missed seeing any support from Janey Godley for Jez Turner, imprisoned for making, in Whitehall, a humorous speech mentioning Jews and their history in England; neither did I notice the aforesaid Janey Godley (I had never heard of her in any regard until today) tweet anything in support of satirical singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz, persecuted by Jewish Zionists, then privately prosecuted by them before being prosecuted by the CPS (under pressure to take over the matter…) and then convicted, in effect, of singing songs.
An example, below, of the muddled thinking of many on Twitter and elsewhere: this idiot, calling himself/herself “66ALW88” (what?) thinks that the way to preserve free speech online is for the online platform companies to “crack down” on, er, free speech online…
Below, a tweet not at all significant in itself (there are literally thousands of unthinking, purselipped nobodies like this Irish “academic”, one Fergal Lenehan, around, all waiting for the chance to denounce people, to “report” to Twitter, Facebook or police, or wanting to ban the free speech of others not signed-up to the System/ZOG mental straitjacket). It is the trend, the existence of a large bloc of such nasty idiots that is of importance.
and here (below) is a well-funded basically Jew-Zionist organization which admits that it wants, inter alia, to stop the historian David Irving from conducting lecture tours. I think the reverse: that those who oppose freedom of speech on political, social and historical topics should themselves be stopped…
The fact that Irving has done this before does not mean that we should allow him to do it again. We have plenty of advance notice to prevent it this time.
Let’s try & stop this grotesque event from happening ever again.
— Anti-Fascism & Far Right 🥤 (@FFRAFAction) March 17, 2019
Update, 18 March 2019
Now the cowardly and mentally-disturbed grifter, Stuchbery, continues to try to claim the moral high ground, which is laughable (and note the support from a political cretin, “Leftwing Revolt”, in the thread below, who is a member or supporter of “Resisting Hate” and sees nothing wrong with someone he might disagree with being attacked with an axe! Resisting hate? You could not make it up…). I might not “support” Tommy Robinson, but I prefer him a hundred times over to Stuchbery and the “useful idiots” of “antifa”!
and (below), another little shit like Stuchbery, this time a New Zealander, who positively welcomes censorship and repression (and he is, wait for it…a “writer/director” of film and theater”!). One of the weird aspects of the present time is that those most eager to see censorship and ideological repression are “creative industries” drones, writers, film and TV people etc, and journalists.
and he retweets, approvingly, this (below) announcement of New Zealand governmental censorship. I personally have no wish to see footage of the recent New Zealand massacre, but that should be my choice, not the New Zealand (ZOG) government’s.
Chief Censor David Shanks has officially classified the full 17 minute video of the fatal Christchurch shootings as objectionable.
It is illegal for anyone in New Zealand to view, possess or distribute this material in any form, including via social media platforms.
and…again: the same little shit, one Andrew Todd, does not want the accused to be allowed to defend himself in case he says something the New Zealand government (ZOG) does not want people to hear…
Not everyone on Twitter agrees with the idea of censoring views and people being found guilty as soon as they are accused, however:
So you believe in a system where your proven guilty before your convicted by a judge and group of your piers. Let me give examples of places this has happened: Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, and Uganda during the rule Idi Amin.
Here’s another one, below, a New Zealand journalist positively gagging for censorship (I had no idea that NZ was so ZOG-occupied):
FYI, more useful detail on how the big tech companies are failing to weed out hate speech videos and how they missed out on white supremacist videos https://t.co/lYdO10D2Nr
and yet another virtue-signalling “journalist” who is, it seems, an enemy of both freedom of expression and of the future of the European peoples…
I spent a good part of 2 years reporting on ISIS internet and how the group uses social media — in 2019 it's mind-boggling to me how well the coordinated cross-platform effort to remove them from the internet worked and how there hasn't been a similar one for white supremacists.
The grifter actually makes a joke out of his begging and scavenging!
It's been a challenging – and expensive(!) – couple of weeks, so if you enjoy the written pieces, the history threads, or whatever, you can always make a small tip through my Ko-Fi… https://t.co/Xd2iEmxucQpic.twitter.com/OJ7UGuAzPr
Tommy Robinson has now been banned from Twitter (welcome to the club…) despite (because of?) his being a candidate in the European elections (North West England).
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” [John F. Kennedy]
Update, 5 June 20199
Another random example of how the quasi-monopolies of youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc have arrogated to themselves the right to censor and banish: [Update, 22 July 2022: the tweets etc noted have now been completely deleted]
Update, 18 June 2019
More…
A Dr Who writer @OldRoberts953 is expunged from a book by the BBC because he won’t conform to the latest transgender ideology. His views on transgenderism are probably shared by 90%+ of Brits but he’s now a Non-Person for the BBC. The net tightens around free speech. Please share https://t.co/G9fM2BK1e4
Grifter, “antifa” supporter, fake “journalist” and “historian” Mike Stuchbery is desperate to close down free speech for those with whom he disagrees politically. See his recent tweets, below. This is one of the worst enemies of freedom of expression in the UK.
YouTube shut down four major US white supremacist channels in the last 24 hours.
If they're serious about reversing the spread of radicalisation, here's four accounts in the UK they could shutter today… https://t.co/nNG4sk938a
The latest news is that some odd woman tied up with both “antifa” nonsense and Jew-Zionists has created a GoFundMe appeal on behalf of Stuchbery, supposedly so that he can sue the political activist known as Tommy Robinson.
I prefer not to comment on the proposed legal claim until I read more about the foundations for such claim. I presume that Stuchbery is doing this (the woman mentioned above may be raising funds for him but only Stuchbery himself can actually sue) because:
he knows or believes that Tommy Robinson has assets sufficient to satisfy any successful claim;
he has seen that others are already suing Tommy Robinson;
he thinks, perhaps, that a civil legal action will damage Tommy Robinson by starving him of funds;
if successful, Stuchbery will make a great deal more money than he gets at present via online begging or his part-time work in Stuttgart, where he now resides.
Were I the defendant, and leaving aside the potential substantive issues that might be in issue in the proposed case, I suppose that I should focus firstly on the fact that Stuchbery is
resident outside the strict jurisdiction (albeit still in the EU);
is a foreign national (as I understand, an Australian citizen);
has no real or other property in England and Wales;
has no means with which to satisfy any judgment on costs or in respect of any counterclaim or setoff that might be claimed by Tommy Robinson, should the Court decide against Stuchbery on one or more issues or otherwise.
I doubt that this claim will get off the ground. I certainly doubt that it will clear the probable first hurdle, as explained above, but we shall see. It appears, however, that plenty of mugs are donating to the said GoFundMe appeal at present.
Update, 25 November 2019
Stuchbery’s solicitors, Eve Solicitors (the firm is a limited company in fact, possibly in effect a one-man operation), are operating out of a rundown Victorian terrace in Bradford; several other small legal and other firms are operating nearby. The operation has only been in operation since 20 May 2019, at earliest:
The “firm” has only been at its present address since 28 September 2019, before which, i.e. from its incorporation in May until September 2019, it operated out of a tiny Victorian terraced house in a “Coronation Street” lookalike, Hudswell Street, Wakefield (Yorkshire).
The principal (and only named) solicitor is one Waseem Ahmed.
Where the name “Eve” came from, God knows. My only guess is “Adam and Eve”, as in the Cockney rhyming slang, “you wouldn’t Adam and Eve it!”
Only joking.
Having said that, when I was a practising barrister in London in the early-mid 1990s, I knew of Pakistani and other ethnic-minority solicitors (in London, in Luton and elsewhere) who used “English”-sounding names for their small firms. Some of them still owe me money! (Unpaid fees). I am sure that Stuchbery’s solicitor is not like that.
I looked earlier at the GoFundMe appeal set up to collect money for Stuchbery’s proposed legal claim against Tommy Robinson. So far, 262 mugs have donated a total (as of time and date of writing) of £5,209 to start the claim. I wonder whether they or others will donate the rest of the £15,000 asked for? Frankly, I doubt it, though the amount so far raised has been raised in only three days.
I doubt that the proposed lawsuit will either launch or get anywhere.
Further thoughts
The woman who is fundraising for Stuchbery, and who seems to have all day to tweet etc, has tweeted that “As many of you know, Mike Stuchbery is about to sue #TommyRobinson for harassment. He is backed by #ResistingHate and a full legal team.“
A “full legal team”? So that would be someone called Waseem Ahmed and…?
I do not say that “Eve Solicitors” (i.e. Mr. Ahmed) is a one-man-band (though it certainly seems to be), and I cannot say that there are no legal people offering advice etc from the sidelines (what used to be known at the Bar as “cocktail party advice”), but I do know, having been at one time a practising barrister who (in the 1990s) regularly appeared (weekly, at least) in the High Court, as well as in County Courts, and more occasionally other types of court and tribunal (both then and in the 2002-2008 period), that GoFundMe £20,000 will only serve to kick off such a case and claim, if I have understood its likely nature properly. Costs rapidly escalate.
Solicitors vary in their fees, barristers likewise. Simply to issue proceedings in a High Court action (which I suppose the proposed case would probably be) would be several hundred pounds as a minimum, and many thousands of pounds in some cases:
As a rule of thumb, a barrister will get anywhere from (as minimum) £500 a day on a small civil matter in the County Court, up to many thousands of pounds per day for almost any High Court matter, though there is no “limit” as such, and some barristers, eg the top commercial silks (QCs) will be on £10,000 a day or more. The spectrum is very wide.
As those who enjoyed Rumpole of the Bailey will know, a barrister usually gets a “brief fee” (to cover all preparation and the first day, if any, in court), then daily “refreshers”. How much are they? How long is a piece of string?
One of my own last few cases was a County Court commercial matter involving a large amount of cattle feed. Now that it is long ago since I last appeared in court (December 2007; this case was not long before that), I think that I can reveal, by way of illustration, that I was paid, that time, £5,000 as a brief fee and £1,000 a day for refreshers (in fact there were no refreshers, because the matter settled on the first day in court).
I have no real idea how much the case of Stuchbery v. Robinson might cost Stuchbery in legal fees if it is ever pursued to court, but my semi-educated guess (“semi” because I have not been involved with the Bar for over a decade) is that whoever presents it in court (unless doing it for free or on the cheap) will probably want a brief fee of perhaps £5,000 (at least) and (at minimum) £500 per day refreshers. Maybe £10,000 and £1,000 per day. It can be seen that, even at the lower estimate, a 2-week hearing (10 days in court, which this well might be) is going to cost £9,500 for Counsel’s fees alone.
Solicitors’ fees also vary widely. When I myself worked (overseas) for law firms (as an employed lawyer), the firms charged for my work at anything up to USD $500 (or about £400) an hour (I myself didn’t get that, sadly, the firms did); and that was over 20 years ago. I suppose that Stuchbery’s solicitors will not be very expensive, but will probably still charge maybe £50 an hour at absolute minimum. Solicitor case preparation might take hundreds of hours. 100 hours @ £50 p.h. = £5,000.
Then there are what solicitors term “disbursements”, i.e. the expenses of the case such as issue fees, witness expenses, whatever.
You can see how £20,000 can be quickly exhausted…
However, even if Stuchbery’s solicitors (solicitor?) can launch the proposed matter and fund a couple of weeks in court (and don’t forget that the solicitor, if in attendance, will also be charging for his time there), there is the matter of what happens if Stuchbery loses. No, that is not left to chance. The lawyers for the proposed defendant, Robinson, will in that event have to have their costs covered too. Even if they only come to the same level as Stuchbery’s (which I doubt), that puts Stuchbery (and possibly others who have funded the claim) £20,000+ in the hole. It could be a great deal more. Maybe even hundreds of thousands.
Stuchbery is an Australian citizen, maybe also a German one now (I do not know). He has no real property in the UK or, as far as I know, even in Germany, where he now lives. He has no, or no substantial, monies in the UK (or anywhere?). He does not have a substantial income or a full-time job.
On the above facts, and if Robinson applies in court for that, Stuchbery is almost certain to have to provide “security for costs”, i.e. [see above] monies “paid into court” (into a court-controlled account) to cover Robinson’s costs should Stuchbery lose his case. Likewise, on the above facts, that would almost certainly have to be the whole of Robinson’s likely outlay in defending the case. Certainly tens of thousands of pounds. Possibly over £100,000.
If Robinson applies for security for costs, if the court agrees with the application, but then Stuchbery cannot come up with whatever sum is demanded (I cannot think that it would be lower than £20,000; probably far far more), then the claim (the case) will be struck out, possibly with costs awarded to Robinson.
Stuchbery will probably have to raise £40,000+ even to start his case.
I think that my readers will understand better now why I think that Stuchbery has no chance of success regardless of the merits of his case (if any).
Presumably, Stuchbery does understand that, in a case like this, witnesses (he himself, Robinson, others) will have to give evidence, be cross-examined on that, all the while with Stuchbery staying in the UK, perhaps for weeks or even a month or more.
Once again, I am deflected from my slow and peaceful writing of a piece about my several years in Cornwall and Devon, and particularly those spent at Polapit Tamar [below, pictured in the 1940s], and which has an interesting history of its own,
by the need to write about contemporary political events. Still, duty calls…
Social Nationalism is stalled in the UK, but waking from a dormant state…
In other blog posts, I have criticized Corbyn-Labour-supporting Aaron Bastani, Ash Sarkar etc, but Bastani is surely right in tweeting that “The space for a successful far-right party in the UK is massive.” The label “far-right” I disparage, of course, but in essence I agree with him. The difference is that he opposes the birth of such a movement, whereas I support it!
The space for a successful far-right party in the UK is massive. We are fortunate that both the BNP & UKIP failed to fill it.
The fact that much of the establishment still thinks a 'centrist' politics is even remotely possible shows they either don't know this or don't care >
I have recently blogged about the “Independent Group” non-party, about how it will struggle even to get to a 2015-UKIP level of support (see Notes, below), both for “technical” reasons (FPTP voting, a likely even level of support nationwide, so insufficient to create a winning concentration of votes, a Schwerpunkt, in any one constituency etc) and because the voters are moving to the falsely so-called “extreme”. I examined also the Social Democrat Party of the early 1980s.
There is however also the point that Bastani raises in the tweet shown above (does he read my blog?): the fact that people generally are getting frustrated, and many angry, very angry, with smug, “centrist” MPs and MEPs complacently making hay for themselves as people struggle and, in not a few cases, literally starve to death in the UK (thanks to policies such as the “welfare” “reforms” which were imposed by political rats such as Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, Esther McVey, the Jew “lord” Freud and many others).
The roads are potholed, the trains are expensive and don’t even run much of the time, mass immigration has, taking the effect overall, trashed our European society, legal services, local services etc have been cut or destroyed, housing has not only become completely inadequate (mass immigration, millions of births to backward aliens, private profiteering) but threatens to become even less adequate.
The British people want and increasingly will want concrete results. The Westminster game of using the corrupt electoral system to win over the “moderate” voters in the 50-100 most marginal constituencies to a “same-old” pseudo-democratic con-game is seen as the rigged system that it is.
A few years down the line, the choice will be stark: European civilization and social nationalism against “multikulti” neo or pseudo-Marxism and also against Zionist-controlled private profiteering and fake “conservatism”.
When the right time comes, our society will be changed in the right way, keeping what should be preserved, creating what is new and worthwhile, but destroying the inferior with the flame of justice.
Ian Robert Millard 