WHY IS LABOUR SO EURODAFT?

The conversion of the Labour Party from Euroscepticism to a euroenthusiasm far greater than any feeling for socialism is almost miraculous. In the early eighties we were committed to coming out. Now we love it so much that we're prepared to dump the leader and smash up the party for it. That's a greater and faster conversion than St Augustine managed with the Anglo Saxons.How did it happen?

It all began with Kinnock. A staunch  CND supporters and an opponent of the Common Market he chucked over both and became a Euro enthusiast when his wife became a Euro MP and his kids researchers in Brussels He made dropping unilateralism and EEC withdrawal his objective.

Affection grew to love under John Smith, a Euro-enthusiast, and Blair who saw it as the promised land, the main promise being becoming President of the EU. Blair and Brown pushed us into the exchange rate mechanism the forerunner of the Euro but when that collapsed Brown rethought his enthusiasm for fixed exchange rates but Blair saw it as a case for stronger medicine aka the Euro which he enthusiastically urged.

Labour MPs are natural sycophants They rushed to follow the lead from the top. Ourlist of over a hundred MPs supporting the Labour Euro Safeguards group (Chaired by Peter Shore then me)shrank to a handful as MPs wrote in to say that things had changed. Opposition to the EU was no longer relevant. At the same time the party's Euro MPs were weeded out, the sceptical majority mostly dropped to be replaced by enthusiastic Europeans who acted as missionaries for the cause.

The trade unions had been cleverly suborned. De Lors sold them the the programme for social Europe to achieve the improvement of workers' and trade union rights then being attacked by Margaret Thatcher. Despairing about Labour's prospects they began to look on Europe as the worker's friend and more useful to them than a Labour government.

This conversion was helped when the EU provided a flood of jobs for suitable union leaders beginning with Jack Peel and going on to John Monks, secretary to the TUC and others. This same recruitment policy was also applied to the Labour Party which came to think of Brussels as an comfortable retirement home for the likes of Mandelson, Kinnock and others, all rewarded for services rendered and support to come. 

EU public relations have been very clever. Coach-loads of party members were given subsidised visits to marvel at the wonders of Brussels. Councils were encouraged to send deputations who were then told that the EU was willing to help them but the British government was dragging its feet. Depressed areas were plastered with signs thanking the EU for financing projects even though the money was always our own money back with their costs taken out.

Brussels was everybody's friend. Labour is an idealistic party and inevitably naive  It did not see that the EU was designed to further the terrors of Germany in unfair trading and France in agricultural protection.It didn't even see the savagery of the austerity imposed on the weaker economies like Greece Spain Italy and Portugal by a Euro regime which could never work but which the EU couldn't change.Labour fought against austerity by defending the regime imposing it.

Only naïveté can explain how Labour supporters were sold the line that the world's low growth high unemployment black spot was a great trading market,that high contributions to belong to the club were worth paying,that the Common Fisheries policy was conserving fish stocks and that the high food prices produced by Common Agricultural Policy were a benefit Industry, fell from a quarter of British GDP to a tenth but idealists don't bother about such tawdry matters.

In the referendum we passed the point at which euro enthusiasm becomes Euro daft Despite the doubts of its leader and the hostility of two fifths of its people the party committed itself to campaign for the EU, refused to allow dissent as Harold Wilson had,and threw away its chance of defeating an austerity minded government to shore it up and allow it to go on with even more austerity. Greater love hath no party than that it throw away its prospects for love of something so unworthy. Give em a euro grant.  They're worth it.

VISIT BRUSSELS BEFORE IT IS OFF LIMIT TO BRITS. SPECIAL PRE-BREXIT TOURS

Tour includes:

Special CAP Brexitfast on arrival : German sausages, French butter, Danish Bacon and Belgian sauce all at CAP prices.

Tour of marble palaces you've paid for.

Lunch in a famous fish restaurant serving British fish stolen by CFP

Drinks reception with Jean Claude Junker. You will be able to show your gratitude by buying Jean Claude several drinks.

Speech from Nigel Farage (if available)

Lecture on the Joys of Membership (allow two hours)

Evening you can choose between the EU Parliament or a visit to a Brussels strip club

Every visitor will be given a letter of comfort allowing them to pay taxes in Luxembourg at the Duchy's special one per cent rate.

Night: return to Britain on Eurostar (Britons pay own fare) or on foot with two nights camping in Calais.

The Guardian of Britain in Europe

The EU, because of its French origins, has developed a very different view of democracy from the one that has always prevailed in Britain. We're sloppy and single minded believing that a majority is right and that democracy is decisions taken by majority vote.

Over in EU land they see it differently. Right is what the EU wants.They are the elite,the folk who'll do our thinking for us.Ordinary people should only be listened to if they say and do what the EU wants. If by some amazing mischance they vote against it then they must vote again and go on voting until they get the right decision, the one the EU wants. This worked in France, Denmark and Ireland, all of whom realised on the second ballot that they'd made a terrible mistake. So they reversed the first.

It's now being developed in Britain. Supporters of Remain are automatically right even though some might think they are wrong. Brexit won because the people were ill informed, their leaders gave them a wrong and untrue story, their prejudices were exacerbated, because they are older and shouldn't stand in  the way of young people, even if the young people didn't bother to vote. Remain should have won because it is right .That justifies parliament in ignoring the result and requires a second referendum to give the people the opportunity to get it right by aligning  their thinking properly with Europe, the government,and all the bon pensant liberals .

I can understand a few disgruntled twerps feeling this. Twerps are twerps after all. But I worry when  the high wardens of the sacred flame of democracy (aka The Guardian) announce it as their view too. The Guardian assiduously preached the case for Remain. Polly Toynbee grew hysterical about it. All their columnists (with the muffled Larry Elliot the only exception), preached it. Very few opposing views were allowed to appear.

Raise the issue of immigration and you're a racist. Talk about numbers and you're a xenophobe. Worry about the economic impact of membership and you're a defeatist, Count the costs of membership and you're sinking a magnificent ship for a halfpence worth of tar. Be opposed to the EU and you're an imbecile or a nasty reader of the Daily Mail.Even now they can't accept the verdict of the people.

That's Guardianocracy. Their next step will be to demand that Parliament disregard the verdict of the people, that we hold another referendum  and that people should be required to buy only the Guardian to protect their mental health. Give it a Euro subsidy for heaven's sake and stop it going as financially bankrupt as it is intellectually.

Sad end to all this I think

BRITAIN : FIRST NATION TO OPT FO FELO DE SE

Historians argue over whether Britain was the First Nation though everyone accepts that it was a proud one.Until it lost its pride and decided to resile from nationhood as though it was a nasty nineteenth century disease.

The establishment led the way.Germany and France started the EU to advance their nation's self interests. Britain took no account of national self interest .It went in because the political class found it difficult to govern and wanted a bigger stage to strut on at whatever cost.

Not only did they not get it but the consequence of membership was that Britain's industrial base fell from 25% of GDP to 10%. We'd asked to be clobbered and duly were but industry wasn't important to them.It was for the dirty people.

The consequence was that we couldn't,t pay our way in the world. The deficit is now 7% of GDP and growing. This was the first stage of the death of a nation .If it can't export enough to pay for its imports a nation must borrow or sell off assets like property companies Land to keep the money rolling in .This benefitted our upper class .They got the fees,asset prices rose at the expense of the workers who lost jobs while the nation was drained as profits and demand were exported to board rooms with no particular interest in Britain.Except to exploit it

EU membership boosted the drain  with the costs of membership,cur eleven billion plus the consequences of paying out more than we get back,losing our fish, and having to buy more expensive French food than we could get from other countries..

By this stage a large section of the workers,particularly in the North,wanted out because hey were feeing the consequences. They were easily bamboozled by a campaign of fear leaving Britain tied in to anything the EU wants to do.Which won't be anything to our advantage. So the EU can continue to drain us of money,demand and jobs and our timid businesses must run the competitive race with a ball and chain round the  leg not already shackled by takeovers..

And there's worse to come.Membership delivers us bound and gagged to the multinationals who dominate 80% of world trade and have concentrated their lobbying power on Brussels, land of the 30,000 lobbyists most of whom are pushing the interests of big business which are much easier to achieve there than from 28 separate governments.

They're now planning to consolidate this power by the  Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) designed to make Europe fit for the multinationals to rule it. This provides that they can sue government's decision to overturn decisions they don't like and that disputes should by resolved by an arbitration process they control so we won't be able to take democratic decisions on our own.

That's Rigor Mortis Brittannia..But not forthe loadsa-monney lot . They can always go elsewhere

Say not the struggle naught availeth. Thinking the worst

One could have hoped for a revolution like 1945 ;a people's revolt against the establishment  which had let them down so badly in the past and the start of an effort to build a new Britain.Necessary,exiting But too much to hope for .

Defeat for Brexit means that things will go on as they are,not well not badly but run by the people responsible for the long term failure of a country sliding down into debt,lower standards and irrelevance That may, after all,be what a people who've lost ambition want .

It's certainly what the vested interests and Britain's complacent business elite prefer. They want to be wrapped in the comfort of the single market without facing the trouble and difficulties of going out and fighting in world markets. It's easier exporting more to Luxembourg than to China and far less difficult and more profitable to fiddle their taxes there too.

Easier too for our European partners (we don't have to call them masters). Britain is sorted, confined to the periphery of Euroland and delivered, bound and gagged, to whatever the EU wants to do. Now it can get on with its real job of making the unworkable Euro work by punishing those lazy Mediterranean types and squeezing the skirts off those lying Greeks.

Easier  for Labour which seems to have recognised that it ain't going to hold power again unless it regains Scotland. So it's  accepted that  the EU alone can give it a bit of what it wants and get on with the job it's best at: opposition.

Bit better for the Tories who can play happy families. Osborne can  pile on the cuts he's held back for the referendum.Austerity can resume and be blamed on the disturbance of the referendum. All those who've helped can be given suitable honours,  perks or privileges.Bonanza. And the PR machine can go overboard concealing the bad news about debt,decline and difficulties arising from Europe to pretend we're doing well even if we ain't.

And best for the Brits. Slow decline is more comfortable than striving As long as their leaders keep reassuring them that they're the best it hardly matters that they're becoming a low wage cheap Jack second rate country declining to third. Complacency will keep us happy ever after.

Not a great outcome. But then as my mother used to say "beggars can't be choosers"

Never the same again

Harold Wilson's 1975 referendum on membership of what was then the Common Market was a political masterstroke. It healed the rifts in the Labour Party as the two sides in the debate came together,membership was accepted  and the government settled down to grapple with its major problem;tackling rocketing inflation .

David Cameron's 2016 referendum won't  have the same happy outcome.The country and the Tory party are more divided The bitterness is unlikely to heal quickly,.The promises made on both sides are too great to ever be delivered . Wilson's shaped a consensus on how to solve tbhe problems facing the nation Cameron's has produced  embittering divisions,and the Europe to which Wilson delivered us ,was far less demanding than the one to which a Remain majority delivers us bound,and gagged but grumbling and embittered..

The Prime minister has committed the most un-Tory sin of breaking under fire.He got rattled and panicked into fear overkill with blood chilling predictions about a Brexit future of high unemployment a collapsing pound and world war three.Osborne was even worse with his hysterical doomsday budget a forty billion pound package of cuts and tax increases which was immediately disowned by many in his party.

Having been told how well Britain was doing thanks to EU membership the public expects better times Instead, the Chancellor, back where he started with growing deficits in finance and trade will want to stick to his old programme and revert to austerity and cuts..He's in a hole;at least four billion adrift in budget balancing,growth slowing,exports suffering and a pound which must fall as a consequence of the growing trade deficit.Hard times lie ahead

As for Labour it showed itself better for opposition than power.Corbyn bored for Britain but showed not a glimmer of political nous.Looking to the EU to protect workers and unions indicated an assumption that Labour wasn't going to win power to improve their lot itself.Its fight against austerity was naive rather than believable. It's a little circuitous to fight austerity by saving the government imposing it so it can retain office to impose more It's incredible to be praising an EU which is imposing vicious austerity on Greece and the Mediterranean members.Labour is clearly more comfortable with preaching  than power.

As for the EU a victory for Remain means it can ignore Britain and stagger on to meet the worse problem of the rise of extremist politics everywhere else.The Euro is the cause of the problem but the EU can neither make it work nor  stop it producing economic disaster by imposing deflation and austerity on the Mediterranean countries in a futile effort to stay competitive with Germany.So Greece will continue to be punished and refused by the debt relief which is the only possible solution Spain,Portugal  and Italy will face horrendous youth unemployment,voters will rebel then find there's nothing they can do.All the praise Remain has lavished on the EU will look more relevant to Mars than reality

The Euro induced deflation in turn makes a mockery of the great benefits claimed for the single European market. We were already loosing out in that market with a growing trade deficit draining jobs ,demand and companies out of Britain That must  be compounded by the low growth high unemployment the Euro has produced.Other,growing markets will look attractive but the EU has to handle  negocitions with them and there French insistence on  agricultural protection weakens our hand. In the face of this British businesses claims about the joys of the single market and its pride in exporting more to Luxembourg than to China will look a little daft.

As for the prospect held out (once again)that staying in the EU will allow Britain to reform,even lead the EU it will vanish In the new Europe of sauve qui peut Britain is on the periphery,while the core,Euro,members concentrate on making the euro work by the development of Eurozone institutions and some form of central budgeting and financial management .Britain can be taken for granted and ignored. Our leaders will still have what they wanted all along,a bigger stage to strut on but now with nothing to say and no one listening

Jo Cox

I can't add anything to the wave of sadness and misery which Jo Cox's killing has produced. Perhaps I shouldn't either, because it's to upsetting to see that rare jewel, a Member of Parliament so committed to her constituents and causes rather than her ego and slippery pole climbing. Goodness always shines through in Parliament but is rarely lauded.

It is right however to think about the causes of her killing but to take politics out of that process.The media are agog at extreme right literature and Polly Toynbee in a disgraceful article in Friday's Guardian inferred that somehow it was due to the hysteria and fear produced by Brexit. Polly always sees things in black and white and she's right to say that the argument has become bitter and almost hysterical but honesty requires that we should recognise what a government running scared has done to up the ante by overkill in fear creation and the inevitable response of Euro denunciation that produces. Terrifying predictions produce fear not rational debate.

The problem is not the rights and wrongs of one side or the other or using Jo Cox's tragedy for partisan purposes. That demeans her and devalues her  tragedy.The sensible reaction is to recognise the impact of a disturbed society on disturbed minds. Already austerity recession and the death of hope have produced the politics of extremism in Europe and even here among the complacent Brits.

The impact is worse on the mentally unbalanced.The mentally ill take on the colour of the society round them. Their precarious balances are disturbed as they absorb the vibrations of a divided embittered society.They feel threatened, isolated, ignored and can't just ride them out or discount them as we ordinary mortals do so they seek help and support. Some can get it from family, friends, neighbours. Loners can't.

They can only seek help from mental health services which are inadequate, run down, undermanned and overburdened. So they end up treated by the police, usually helped but sometimes tasered, or told to fix an appointment in a desperately overburdened service and go away. Back to the solitary confinement of their own disturbed minds, to fester, fail and fanaticise.

That's the problem. That is, as I see it, the cause of Jo Cox's tragedy and that's what we must do something about rather than using her death to belabour one side or the other. 

The loneliness of the long distance Brexiteer

Sarah Woollaston's excuse for quitting Brexit to announce her conversion to Remain is not only slim but stupid. She's really very nervous  about the exposed position she's  been in as a Brexiteer.It takes courage to face up to the abuse and character assassination Brexiteers are exposed to and Sarah who's a conformist at heart like most politicians hasn't got the guts to do it.

She can't admit that of course so she produces the excuse that NHS funding is threatened by Brexit. Just the same arguement which is now being unleashed in London by posters saying "Save the NHS;Vote Remain" .Utter rubbish and dangerous too because you if you overuse the save the NHS theme it won't ring true or be effective when the NHS has to be saved from a real threat like government cuts,government meanness in not writing off the debt that nearly every area has got into, government's refusal to provide the extra two billion the NHS needs immediately or the daft insistence that the excessive payments forced on hospitals with PFI contracts be taken out of their grants for running health services to keep contractors happy but patients sick.The NHS has to be saved from all this but not from hypothetical fears conjured up out of the torturred malevolence of Remain's hysteria 

Being in or out of the EU makes no difference to the NHS. So it's not realistic to claim that Brexit will lead to cuts.But two things are clear.First the NHS is starved and desperately needs more money is it is to keep up with the costs of medicine,proper staffing and an ageing population. Secondly being out of the EU will free up more money that the government now has to pay to the EU in budget contributions the cost of agricultural imports from outside, and all the other things from Galileo project to provide an expensive EU sat tell guidance system which the Americans now give us for free, to the costs of the CFP in financing EU fishermen to loot the waters of developing countries.

 I could add in the costs of the marble halls they've built for themselves inBrussels,the perambulating  Parliament or the aid programme which a by-word for corruption and in efficiency but I don't want to sound as hysterical as a remainer.With all those drains plugged there is money for good purposes in Britain and our starved  NHS must be the foremost.

So come off it Sarah.Be honest and give us your real reasons or. Tell us that you're scared of loosing your chairmanship of the Health Committee  when the night of the long knives begins after the referendum.

STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES BUT WILL IT WIN ELECTIONS?

The Remain campaign after failing to inspire terror by its campaign of fear have now turned to character assasination. Brexiteers are being dismissed as odd balls, nutters, Maoists and trouble makers which makes it difficult to explain why the got into government in the first place. In the same spirit let me reply that Remain supporters are creeps, cowards and conformists. That really is the explanation of why they got into government.

I could say all that. But I won't because this has to be a battle fought on facts not fears true arguments not abuse. Remainers know that if the people knew the true balance sheet they'd vote Brexit.So they ask us to cling to a single market in which we're l osing out,pay higher food prices to keep French farmers happy, be grateful for EU grants when it's really our money sent back with their heavy cost taken out, donate our fish to keep the Spanish and the French happy and pay loans to their students who don't pay them back.They want us to live with lies so our elite have a bigger stage to strut on.

Labour Party: sleepwalking into the EU

Labour people are idealists which is why they are also naive as well as why the leadership has decided to campaign for Remain without any consultation of the party members many of whom are either opposed to membership or haven't the foggiest idea what their party is doing.

Naive idealism accounts for the fact that the party is campaigning for a very different EU to the one that hits its own supporters so badly. Jeremy says the EU is far from perfect, Alan wants to stay in a "reformed"EU others think that staying in will enable Britain to reform it.

Fat chance.The EU has been impervious to Britain's proposals except for the single market which we urged to benefit the City of London not its people.The creation of the EURO has moved Britain to a dog house somewhere on the periphery ,our former allies in Eastern Europe are turning fascist and the Franco-German block still dominates. The only likely reforms are more centralisation in a vain attempt to make the Euro work.

Meanwhile we're asking our supporters to vote for something which hurts them harder than any other section of society. It takes their jobs because of the de-industrialisation produced by the growing trade deficit.It hits their wages because the influx of immigrants keep them down. It increases their cost of living because of French agricultural protection and it hits their well being because economic demand and profits are sucked out of the country.It taxes them to pay the costs of belonging ,of building marble palaces in Britain and of keeping Europe's perambulating Parliament shutteling between Brussels and Strasbourg They see all this. Even if their party doesn't

Essentially Labour's support of the EU springs from our deep inferiority complex. We're so depressed and divided that we,be come too assume that we'll never again win power in Britain so that any gains in respect of labour and trade union legislation job protection or social improvements must come from Brussels.Our self confidence has gone so that we can only depend on crumbs from the Brussels table

There's no spending that comes from Brussels we can't improve on ourselves and no legislation that we can't do better for ourselves but because we've relegated ourselves to the role of a permanent opposition  we've abandoned the prospect of rebuilding Britain and rebalancing our economy when Labour comes in. This will require state aid and investment for industry,state help for exporters,,control of immigration to concentrate on the skills we need and an end to the tax fiddles throughly Luxembourg and Ireland the EU encourages.

Labour's not thought about any of that because it's begun to assume that it will never hold power anyway so why bother. We only need to control our own destinies if we know what to do with them.

Labour and the Referendum

The Labour Party has made a serious mistake in registering as a campaigning organisation  to stay in the EU.  Members weren't consulted. A sizeable minority are opposed, our core voters don't share the vacuous enthusiasm of the right and we're saving David Cameron's bacon. Not that he'll be at all grateful. If he wins it's straight back to the nasty agenda of cuts, austerity and handicapping Labour and the unions.We should have learned the lesson of the Scottish Referendum when supporting him damaged us in Scotland and he immediately ratted on English votes for English measures

We're campaigning for a cooperative, munificent EU which exists only in the head of naive idealists, a group which is very strong in the Labor party.

The better off might benefit from membership but the workers have suffered severe damage They're less interested in the political case for a seat at the top table than in the economic results and the uncontrolled immigration both of which have which have hit them.

Labour's happy picture of a comfortable cooperative EU makes no mention of the loss of our fishing grounds and the destruction of our fishing industry,of the higher food prices due to French agricultural protection  or the destruction of British manufacturing shrunk to 10 per cent  of GDP or of the huge and growing deficit in trade with the EU which exports jobs demand and companies.

We say we'll reform the EU but it can't even reform itself. It can neither abandon the Euro nor make it work. So it imposes a Europe wide deflation. The less competitive states have to cut costs, put people out of work and impose harsh austerity on their people.The result is the rise of extremism. The EU has been turned into the high unemployment -low growth black spot of the world, so our trade with it suffers even more. Nor can we lead it because with reform concentrating on the Euro zone we're in a dog box on the periphery.

Labour's enthusiasm for the EU is a result of its loss of faith in itself. As it has now come to a belief that it won't hold power it's decided that crumbs from the Euro table are the only way of improving things.We could  do better than all Europe's reforms for ourselves but have given up hope of ever gaining power to do so.So we have to get everything undemocratically from the EU.

For those of us who've not given up hope the EU will become an obstacle.When Labour sets out to boost  British manufacturing it will run up against EU rules on state aid, on regional policy, on support for investment and exporters, and on takeovers of British firms. Better prepare for that eventuality by coming out now. Otherwise we sentence our next government to being a pale imitation of the Tories.