UK Politics

While People Obsess About UKIP, The Real Far Right Marches On

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Britain First Muslim Protest 2

 

Did you click “like” when you saw that Facebook picture denouncing cruelty to dogs, or share that touching message exhorting us to honour our veterans on the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings? Did you also notice the little lion and union flag logo tucked away somewhere deep within the post? You didn’t?

Well congratulations. You probably unwittingly played into the hands of the British far-right’s latest viral social media strategy. You are officially on the same level as the caricatured bumbling, resentful, low-information UKIP voter. Hang your head in shame.

But don’t worry, you were not the only one taken in. So many of the commentariat’s dire warnings from the 2014 local and European election campaign are now coming true. “Well, they make a show of being patriotic and decent,” they said, “but it’s all just a mask concealing their despicable racist views”. Or sometimes it was proclaimed that “people support them without really thinking through what they actually stand for; if only they really knew, they wouldn’t like them”.

Wise words – only they were not so descriptive of UKIP (the establishment’s principal target at the time) as they are of Britain’s real-life far right parties, who are alive and well, take themselves very seriously and who charted a course through election season almost entirely undetected and unengaged by the forces of left-wing and popular outrage.

For those who were too busy throwing eggs at Nigel Farage or dismissively equating euroscepticism with little-England xenophobia to notice, there’s a new kid on the block of British far-right organisations. They call themselves Britain First, and describe themselves as a “patriotic political party and street defence organisation” – because a heady mix of strong political views, mob psychology and unapologetic vigilantism couldn’t possibly lead to anything unpleasant.

As the British National Party faced electoral annihilation in the local and European elections, haemorrhaging supporters and losing the two MEPs they gained in 2009, Nick Griffin’s dying organisation seems to have breathed its hate-filled spirit into a new host, Britain First – itself comprised of disgraced and disgruntled former BNP members.

Britain First is prospering where the BNP failed because they grasp the fact that the old foaming-at-the-mouth racist with a grudge to bear approach to political argument has a naturally low ceiling of support, whereas appeals on behalf of animal welfare or generically patriotic feel-good posts on social media are virtually guaranteed positive click-bait.

Vowing to end dog-fighting or encouraging people to “like” a picture of Prince William may not do much to directly further the party’s core goals, but it does allow them to now truthfully claim that theirs is the most popular political party on Facebook.

Britain First Animal Welfare

 

But as always with political parties, the carefully polished façade presented to the public and the real sentiments and motivations of Britain First’s activists are two very different things. On Facebook, Britain First may be all LOLcats and union flag bunting, but their activists are generally much less cuddly.

Many videos shown on YouTube and the party’s own website give an idea of what Britain First mean when they call themselves a “street defence organisation”. The following video should be all the introduction needed:

 

The footage shows a representative sample of the organisation’s work, which largely consists of hitting the streets in a large group, wearing identical quasi-military jackets and berets and holding aloft many union flags, often trailed by one or more decommissioned ex-Army Land Rovers.

Once assembled and decked out in their regalia, the Britain First squads may do one of several things. One of their favourite stunts is the “mosque invasion” whereby a number of squad members (almost all men) burst into a mosque, disregarding the notices to remove their shoes or observe other courtesies, and then start aggressively asking for the imam.

While the imam is being found, Britain First team members berate the bemused-looking worshippers for not acting more decisively to root out what they call “Muslim grooming gangs” or for promoting extremism. They then hand out Britain First literature on the same topic, together with a number of British Army-issue Bibles (this is the visible extent of their piety), exhorting the Muslim worshippers to abandon their “false prophet” and convert to Christianity. Message and literature thus delivered, they depart as rudely as they arrived.

When not invading mosques, Britain First like to assemble to protest in front of the homes of prominent Muslims such as the mayor of Bradford, arriving and standing outside in large numbers (in full uniform, of course) while the leader, Paul Golding either knocks on the door or telephones the victim from the doorstep demanding an audience. When the targets fail to make an appearance, intimidated by the tactics of the Britain First street team, the protesters begin their various chants and make a racket until the police arrive.

Popular chants include “Muslim pedos off our streets!”, “Benefit scroungers off our streets!”, exhortations for various other bogeymen of the paranoid to vacate our streets, and the inevitable battle cry of “Onward, Christian soldiers!”. For you see, theirs is a crusade.

Whatever the activity, the protesters typically film their actions from start to finish and upload them to the Britain First website where they are viewable by members of the public. The production quality is somewhat overwrought, with apocalyptic “Independence Day” style soundtracks suggesting the climax of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie rather than a ragtag group of far-right activists going out on “Christian Patrol” in Bradford.

When interviewed for these in-house videos, activists insist that the British people are “sick to death” of the Muslim grooming gangs that “we’ve all seen in the news”, a preoccupation that eats away at them and which they are convinced is being ignored by communities and local authorities, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. One “defence force” activist added: “English girls are suffering all across the north of England”.

And it’s not just Britain First – there are many other splinter organisations vying for a slice of the far-right nationalist pie. This coming Saturday, the equally unpleasant South East Alliance will be holding a demonstration in Cricklewood, north west London, going up against the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters have a presence there – extremism coming face to face with extremism.

Britain First Armoured Land Rover

 

There is clearly a real, ever-present and ever-threatening far right element lurking in Britain. Filled with hatred and fuelled by ignorance, these groups acknowledge Britishness only according the narrow criterion of ethnicity, viewing all other races and cultures in Britain with automatic suspicion and fear. Anger and violence are never far from the surface in this xenophobic, nationalistic powder-keg.

The far right was neither dealt a mortal blow by the setbacks of the BNP or invigorated by the rise of UKIP (not a far right party), but it is on the move in Britain once again, only this time aided by a combination of particularly low scruples, social media savvy and viral appeal that the regular political parties can only dream of.

Whose fault is this? The media, the main political parties and those who make it a mission to fight against racism all share a portion of the blame.

Because the establishment – political parties and media alike – expended such huge efforts in their efforts to smear UKIP and halt their advance in the local and European elections, Britain’s actual far right parties have enjoyed a virtual free pass this year. All guns were trained on UKIP, a legitimate party with well-publicised racist bad apples, while the parties that are profoundly and unapologetically racist to the core were scarcely challenged.

When organisations such as Unite Against Fascism temporarily forget their purpose and start actively campaigning against eurosceptics or conflate an opposition to immigration (wrongheaded though it may be) with outright xenophobia and prejudice, they don’t have much left in the tank to take on other groups with really toxic viewpoints when they start to come out of the woodwork.

That’s the problem with crying “racism” every time you encounter a viewpoint that you don’t like or agree with – when you do eventually stumble upon a real life case of racism in action – like Paul Golding’s Britain First organisation – you have already used up all of the warnings and counterarguments in your rhetorical canon, making it impossible to be heard above the noise or to draw attention to the serious cases that we need to tackle.

In one sense, the fact that we collectively took our eye off the ball is not the end of the world – the BNP performed appallingly in the recent election, polling barely above 1% (which was five points down from 2009), while the repackaged Britain First managed just 20,272 votes nationwide, a less than awe-inspiring 0.13% of the national vote.

But to dismiss the far right because of these paltry election results is to miss the point. The fact that BNP and Britain First voters together make up less than the population of Northampton is irrelevant, because they don’t need to win elections to succeed in their goals.

Britain First will never achieve its ultimate aim of turning back the clock and reverting to a bygone time when spotting a non-white face walking around in town is an unusual event worth telling your friends about at the pub, but they don’t have to.

Their ‘street defence volunteers’ are quite happy walking up and down Brick Lane in their quasi-military uniforms with their armoured Land Rover escorts, ‘raiding’ mosques, spreading misinformation, sowing fear, talking apocalyptically about the end of the British people and generally making life miserable for the rest of us. And with their wide range of Britain First branded merchandise available for sale, some of their leaders will likely become quite rich in the process.

This is the type of far-right activism that we can work together to thwart if we are properly focused on eliminating racism and promoting tolerance and respect – not by squashing Britain First’s democratic right to free speech, but through a concerted campaign to inform people that when they share the organisation’s viral Facebook or Twitter messages they are inadvertently helping to spread the word about this BNP offshoot.

Such a “Let’s Unfriend Britain First” campaign could starve the party of the resources and reach needed in order to continue its worrying growth trajectory. The blog Another Angry Voice also lays out good suggestions for fighting back against the group’s manipulative tactics.

The time has also come for some people (they know who they are) to finally take a break from calling UKIP a racist party, desist from the public wailing and rending of garments at the fact that they share a country with such ignorant, backward hillbillies as UKIP supporters, and to admit that there is in fact a vast difference between the radical right and the far right.

Though some may be loathe to give up one of their favourite rhetorical weapons against the political right, they should remember that the marginal wavering UKIP / BNP / Britain First voter has little incentive to select anything other than the most extreme option if even voting UKIP will bring scorn and charges of racism upon them.

(Yes, it is concerning that there are marginal UKIP-BNP voters, but it should be remembered that there are marginal Conservative-BNP and Labour-BNP voters too. All political parties draw some support from the far-right’s natural territory).

In the wake of the local and European elections, the three main political parties are all busy devising strategies to halt the rise of UKIP and stop the erosion of their own support leading up to the 2015 general election. Whatever they ultimately decide to do, it would be encouraging to see passionate anti-racism rhetoric and anti-fascist efforts being launched against the correct targets from now on.

The enemies of fascism and racial hatred – which should be all of us – need to stop using unfounded accusations of racism as a political weapon, get together and identify the real far-right threats in Britain.

Hint: It’s not UKIP.

 

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How Can We Teach British Values In School If We Are Afraid To Assert Them Ourselves?

Samuel Hooper9 Comments

British Values Twitter 3

Just what are British Values?

Well, apparently the concept is sufficiently fuzzy in the minds of some people that we all now need to take time to argue amongst ourselves and reach a common consensus while one of the biggest and most worrying educational scandals in recent years plays out unobserved.

In response to the ongoing scandal of Birmingham schools being compromised by activist governors to deliver covert Islamic religious teaching, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, made the slightly awkward if well-meant assertion that in future, all primary and secondary schools will be required to “promote British values”.

The Guardian reports:

Michael Gove, the education secretary, has seized on a finding byOfsted that a “culture of fear and intimidation” existed in someBirmingham schools by announcing that the government will require all 20,000 primary and secondary schools to “promote British values”.

These values will include the primacy of British civil and criminal law, religious tolerance and opposition to gender segregation. Gove also suggested girls wearing the burqa would struggle to find their voice and must not feel silenced in the classroom.

In what is being described by ministers as a decisive shift away from moral relativism in the classroom, the education secretary took action after a landmark series of reports by the schools inspectorate into 21 Birmingham secular schools found an atmosphere of intimidation, a narrow, faith-based ideology, manipulation of staff appointments and inappropriate use of school funds.

Unfortunately, the predominant response thus far has not been one of outrage that such a thing could happen to compromise children’s education in the UK’s second city; instead, we have seen race to come up with the funniest self-deprecating anti-British putdown as expressed by the #BritishValues hashtag now trending on Twitter.

When presented with the opportunity to express outrage that local school curricula could be so easily hijacked by fundamentalist members of any faith and ‘turned’ to start promoting beliefs very far from the British values of democracy, equality, non-discrimination and obedience to the law, a majority seem more interested in having an introspective discussion about what modern British values really are (at best), or suggesting through Twitter witticisms that any concern is tantamount to xenophobic intolerance  (more common).

The Huffington Post has collated a selection of what it considers to be “the best” responses, which take an almost uniformly dim view of British culture and history:

British Values Twitter 4

(It should be acknowledged that there have also been some very sensible and thoughtful contributions from others, such as the pianist Stephen Hough).

The hashtag activist comedians and earnest scolds of Twitter currently attempting to look cool by running Britain down on social media are actually revealing a few ingrained British traits of their own – excessive self deprecation and an almost craven desire not to offend or appear controversial – which easily become insidious and harmful when taken to extremes.

There is a gnawing anxiety behind some of the mocking #BritishValues tweets. “Isn’t patriotism so old fashioned?”, they scream. “Let’s list all the bad things that Britain has done so that no-one thinks we’re being boastful”. It may come across as cool, trendy liberalism but look closer and you see that some of it is actually rooted in fear.

Somewhere along the way the idea of expressing pride in Britain, and in British exceptionalism, became interchangeable in the minds of many people with that altogether darker and more insidious disease of racism. To express the former is, in the eyes of many, to come uncomfortably close to embracing the latter. And as a result, people instinctively turn away from patriotism, and instinctively oppose suggestions such as teaching British values at school, mistaking it for something else (and, incidentally, leaving a vacuum that the far right is only too happy to exploit).

And yet there is a serious issue at stake here, with the integrity of children’s education in question. Even the Guardian’s John Harris felt the need to weigh in to the ongoing argument about the fundamentalist Muslim influence in Birmingham schools, reminding his readers that state-subsidised religious indoctrination or interference with the curriculum is wrong whatever the source, and that this is no time for those on the left to bury their heads in the sand:

At the risk of reopening old wounds on the liberal left, for all the noise from those on the right of culture and politics, it is no good crying “witch hunt” and averting your eyes from this stuff. It should have no place in any state school, and most of it is an offence to any halfway liberal principles.

But Harris still felt the need to couch his tortured article in the wider context of a state education system which is failing and falling into disarray under the hated Tory government – the harsh unexpectedness of his gentle reminder that it’s not okay to look the other way and pretend to ignore the fundamentalist corrupting of education for fear of seeming racist or intolerant having to be soothed with a good old swipe at the real enemy, those on the political right.

Efforts to stamp out casual and institutional racism in Britain, while incomplete, have come a long way, even since the 1980s and 1990s. A large part of eradicating the scourge of casual racism has been (quite rightly) to mock it, deride racist thoughts and speech as backward and out of place, and doing everything possible to make racism distinctly uncool. The campaign to eradicate racism from football is a prime example of how successful Britain has been, especially when compared with continental and eastern Europe.

But while there is unquestionably still much work to be done, we must also begin to ask ourselves if one of the side effects has been a growing inability for people to express deeply felt but harmless national pride and patriotism in any but the safest, media-approved settings (such as the 2012 London Olympic Games).

If our generation’s instinctive response when they see criticism levelled at a person or group within a religious or ethnic minority is not to check the veracity and demand action if it is found to be true, but either to flinch and avert their eyes out of shock and unwillingness to believe or to become so embarrassed that their only coping mechanism is to resort to self-deprecating humour on social media, perhaps this is the price that our country has to pay in order to purge itself of the ingrained, widespread, casual racism that was common and socially acceptable for so long. Perhaps.

But being this way makes it much harder for us to deal with the problems facing Britain today, where the pernicious influence of fundamentalists (of all religions) on the young and the lack of assimilation of some cultures into wider British society are real issues that are being only half-heartedly tackled because of the paralysing fear of saying the ‘wrong thing’ or giving the wrong impression.

When asked why it was that Americans are so much more openly patriotic than Brits, the late Christopher Hitchens attributed it to the fact that overt displays of patriotism and love of country in the United States are borne out of the fact that as a nation of immigrants, Americans have no real shared history going back more than a couple of centuries. Therefore, simple acts such as reciting the pledge of allegiance every morning in schools and singing the national anthem before sporting events have, over time, helped to forge that unity within diversity.

But what has always been true of America is now increasingly becoming true of Britain. Immigration into Britain may bring profound economic and cultural benefits, but with each successive year of high net immigration and a lack of assimilation in some quarters, that degree of shared common history is diluted a bit more. And that’s absolutely fine, if other measures are in place to balance it out – like reciting a pledge, offering comprehensive British history as a mandatory subject at schools, or, shock horror, teaching children “British values”.

At the moment, though, these countermeasures are lacking. It should come as little surprise then that certain groups within society do not feel as much desire or pressure to integrate as they rightly should, and that when the door is left wide open in places like Birmingham to influence schools to teach children according to certain subcultural norms, some people will seize the opportunity with both hands.

Unfortunately, in the age of hashtag #Britain, not only does it surprise us when this happens, the thought of condemning or intervening in these events embarrasses us so acutely that we are barely able to have a national conversation without descending to xenophobic conspiracy theorising on one side or accusations of scaremongering on the other, topped off with a sprinkling of nervously self-deprecating Twitter jokes.

As John Harris noted in his article, by this point “inflammatory language and alarmism” have now done their work and made it harder to get to the bottom of what has really been going on in Birmingham’s schools. But there is an equally powerful countervailing force working in the other direction, suggesting that any concern is an unwarranted attack on a minority and misrepresenting any calls for the assertion and teaching of British values as xenophobic, Islamophobic and a direct attack on the principle of multiculturalism. It is not.

If we carry on in this way, we will never succeed in building and maintaining the unified, diverse and tolerant Britain that we all say we want.

 

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The British Immigration Debate: From The Inside Looking Out

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

SPS UK Immigration Life In The UK Test 4

 

Most British people will go through life not knowing what it takes for a foreigner to become a citizen of the UK. Why would we? By accident of birth most of us had the immense good fortune to grow up in one of the greatest, most wealthy, powerful and free countries on Earth, never giving our 0.89% against-the-odds luck a second thought. We have no experience of uprooting our lives and moving to these isles from somewhere else, or of the financial and bureaucratic hurdles that must be overcome in order to settle here and acquire a British passport.

Our lack of empathy – together with widespread ignorance of the various types of immigration and the differing rules and laws governing them – makes it very hard to have a rigorous, fact-based discussion of past and present British immigration policy. Throw in the careerist short-term focus of our politicians and a sane debate becomes next to impossible, as we have seen over and over again, most recently in the 2014 European elections.

Witnessing the British immigration system close-up when you are already a UK citizen, safe and secure in your legal status, offers a dispassionate but revealing glimpse of what it is actually like to go through the arduous and often stressful process of settling permanently in Britain. If only our political leaders and opinion-setters in the media would disengage from the battle of the 24 hour news cycle for one day and take the time to see for themselves, they might have a small epiphany and (for those with genuinely open minds) become willing to think and talk about immigration in a different way, giving us the debate we need rather than the one we have.

You don’t have to travel far for this reality check because the heart of Britain’s current immigration problem is best expressed not at passport control at Heathrow airport, the migrant camps in Calais  or the Polish grocery store on the high street, but in the accredited test centres up and down the country that administer the “Life In The UK” test to people seeking permanent residency or citizenship of the UK.

To be clear, the problem is not the “Life In The UK” test itself – though one could certainly quibble with the curious selection of factoids and trivialities that the Home Office proclaims to represent a sound working knowledge of modern Britain, or speculate endlessly about the percentage of immigrants who exercise their right to take the test in Welsh or Scottish Gaelic (at unknown cost to the taxpayer).

The problem is that the “Life In The UK” test takers are in the midst of a long, demanding and expensive process to settle permanently in Britain, one which an equal number of immigrants – by virtue of being EU citizens – are free to bypass altogether. This disparity of treatment, a function of Britain’s membership of the European Union, inadvertently reveals almost everything that is wrong with the current British immigration debate.

Observing the waiting room in of one of these anonymous-looking test centres as an existing, documented British citizen is a revelatory and slightly humbling experience, because here you are surrounded by people who fiercely covet something that you already have. As you enter, you are quite likely to pass by people leaving in tears because they have failed the test and have to take it (and pay the fee) again.

The prevailing mood is one of fear – the candidates sit in tense silence, often with heads bowed over test prep books, going over a few final practice questions before showtime. Did the Roman occupation of Britain last for 150 years or 400 years? Who fought in two wars against Napoleon – Horatio Nelson or Winston Churchill? And is driving your car as much as possible one of the two things you can do to look after the environment?

Softball questions aside, the bar to settle here when you come from outside the EU is set very high. To seek permanent residency or citizenship is to make a significant investment of time, energy and money towards an application which may not even be successful (and for which there is no refund in the event of rejection).

It involves divulging every conceivable detail about your life and proving to immigration officials beyond reasonable doubt that you are capable of sustaining yourself economically without becoming a burden on the state. And to top it off, your biometric information is taken and added to a database for identity verification whenever you enter or leave the country, and for any other purpose that the government may concoct in future.

SPS UK Immigration Life In The UK Test 2
A and B might be more fun.

 

The process by which someone from the European Union settles in the United Kingdom is rather simpler. The single market ensures that citizens of any EU member state  can move to the UK to work and live indefinitely as they please, bypassing all of the steps and hurdles facing a Sri Lankan, American, Turkish or Chinese immigrant. The minimum logistical requirements consist of packing a bag and turning up.

This is great for those of us who want (and are able) to live an itinerant life or pursue a multinational European career – the benefits of the single market cannot then be overstated. But for every British person who sees only opportunity in the EU’s free movement of people, there is another working for the minimum wage who will never be offered a secondment to the Brussels office by their company, and who must console themselves with the second-order benefits of free movement – such as “delighting in the capital’s kaleidoscopic culture” or being served their “early morning coffee” by someone from Spain.

The single market in its current and unamended form may yet be in Britain’s best interest, and the free movement of people may be a net positive thing – but the British people have not had a say in the matter since the 1975 European Community referendum, and it’s quite clear that they want to have a debate about it now.

Sometimes that desire is expressed forcefully and unpleasantly – any talk from politicians and their supporters about “hordes of Romanians” or slurs about eastern European workers is rude, disrespectful and unbecoming – but it is categorically not racist. Those who disagree need to check their dictionary and contemporary history books to reacquaint themselves with the true meaning of the word.

(It should – but does not – go without saying that just because the immigration sceptics have their fair share of racists within the ranks, this does not imply or prove that all anti-immigrant positions are necessarily racist. All racists are against immigration by definition, but not all people – or even most people – with concerns about immigration are racist).

Our British democracy is neither perfect or universal. That’s how it comes to pass that people have voted in every general and European election since the 1975 referendum but still ended up in 2014 with an immigration policy widely considered unsatisfactory. We have been guided to this bad place by generations of politicians who were too cowardly to start a difficult conversation on the subject during their own tenures, happy to leave the issue on the back-burner until it is now finally starting to boil over in the age of Cameron, Clegg, Miliband and Farage.

A real leader would seize the opportunity to give the British people the debate that they want, and which has been wrongly suppressed for too long by a political consensus that cried “racism!” at the first mention of immigration. A real leader would step up and proclaim the many benefits that immigration confers on Britain, while acknowledging its wildly varying impact on different sections of society, and discussing ways to mitigate the negative aspects. A real leader – and for all he has done to start the debate, Nigel Farage has failed here – would do all of this without resorting to scapegoating or undue exploitation of people’s fears.

In short, none of Britain’s party chiefs can at present be described as a responsible leader on one of the most important political issues of the day for many people. As it stands, our country loses no matter who wins in 2015.

If Labour (who have been almost entirely captured by their metropolitan professional class at the expense of their former party base) win the general election, nothing will change and the increasingly poisonous status quo will continue. A majority within this rootless Labour Party still see any questioning of immigration as morally equivalent to owning a signed first edition of Mein Kampf, and Ed Miliband has apparently decided that refusing to acknowledge UKIP’s victories and the public sentiment behind them will somehow be interpreted as a sign of his strength and resoluteness.

If the Conservatives win, they will likely fail in their attempts to extract meaningful concessions for Britain on inter-union movement of people from the EU or changing the eligibility for immigrant access to public services and the welfare state (getting unanimous support from the other 27 member states being a dim prospect). The only way the Tories will then be able to save face is to increase the already onerous barriers and impediments to those seeking to come to the UK from outside the European Union, many of whose talents and skills we urgently need – and the last thing we should be doing is further discouraging them from coming here.

If the Liberal Democrats avoid complete electoral annihilation in 2015, their best hope is to join another coalition government, in which case their natural instincts could only lead them to solidify Ed Miliband’s “full steam ahead” policy on Europe in the event of a Labour-led government or act as a minor brake on any destructive moves to crack down further on non-EU immigration in the event of another Conservative-led coalition.

And if UKIP were to perform well and capture a significant number of seats at Westminster without toning down their overly strident rhetoric or adding any kind of nuance or acknowledgement of geopolitical reality to their own policies, the other parties would likely be so unwilling to deal with them that their MPs would simply be frozen out of the process altogether.

SPS UK Immigration Visas

For all this ambivalence, Britain is a diverse and mostly tolerant land, and immigrants have played a huge part in our history and heritage. In today’s modern economy we need to be able to compete for the brightest and best of all the world’s talent, making it attractive for people to study at British universities, work for British firms and settle here with their families.

Somewhere between the onerous and expensive application process for non-EU immigrants combined with quotas and limited access to public services on one hand, and the EU single market’s wide open borders on the other, lies the best answer to Britain’s immigration conundrum. Unfortunately, Britain is not able to choose the perfect point along this spectrum because  the EU mandates an all-or-nothing approach. You are either part of the European Union and a full member of the single market, or you are on the outside.

The free-movement aspect of the single market makes perfect sense in the context of the ‘ever-closer union’ that the EU’s founders envisaged would one day become a single political European superstate – indeed, such a goal cannot be realised without total, unimpeded free movement of people. But if the goal is anything less than total political union (and a vanishingly small proportion of Brits  or other Europeans want to be subsumed into such an entity) then there is no real reason for the absolutist status quo, in which any controls on people coming from the EU to live and work in Britain are prohibited.

Unlike the United States of America – a real political, cultural and economic union – in Europe there are naturally occurring impediments to the free movement of people anyway, due to differences in language, culture, currency (not all of the EU is within the Eurozone) and other factors. Imposing modest, light-touch limitations in response to the wishes of the people need not bring the European Union crashing down or mean the imposition of ‘fortress Britain’.

The free movement of people within the EU may or may not remain the correct policy for Britain once all is said and done. But those who trumpet only the benefits and view any discussion of the cost as tantamount to xenophobia are guilty of shutting down an important debate whose time has come.

In this age of austerity, the main political fault line is over how much the rich should contribute versus the poor at a time of cuts to government services. Some of those who speak out most eloquently and forcefully on behalf of the poor are the same relatively wealthy middle class people who also unquestioningly support unlimited immigration.

These left-wing champions of the downtrodden would be aghast at the suggestion that their noble and high-minded political beliefs are in any way hurting the working classes for whom they presume to speak, but in supporting unlimited EU immigration and seeking to shut down any debate on the matter with accusations of racism and ignorance, they are doing just that – preserving benefits for themselves at the expense of the less privileged.

And if you personally benefit from immigration because it keeps your gentrified city neighbourhood more interesting and makes it affordable to get your house cleaned twice a week, but you don’t care about the effect – real or perceived – on those who are never likely to enjoy these benefits, how are you any better than the hated ‘bankers’ who protest higher taxes because (according to the received wisdom) they are good for society but bad for them?

The current immigration debate sees the British metropolitan left doing what it does best – high mindedly pontificating on what’s best for the country and for the less well-off in particular, and then being horrified when those same people actually express ideas and opinions of their own rather than following the script carefully prepared for them.

Immigrants studying for the “Life in the United Kingdom” exam often use the official Home Office approved test preparation book, which contains 408 practice questions to rehearse before subjecting themselves to the real thing. As a result, some newly-arrived immigrants find themselves better versed in fundamental aspects of British life than those of us who have lived here our whole lives.

Those politicians, journalists and activists who still seek to police the immigration debate and preordain its outcome could do worse than studying up on this one, known to every new British citizen:

Is the statement below TRUE or FALSE?

In the UK you are expected to respect the rights of others to have their own opinions.

SPS UK Immigration Life In The UK Test 3

 

 

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Newark And Beyond: What Will It Take To Stop UKIP?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Roger Helmer Newark UKIP

 

If UKIP manages to defy the odds (and the polls) and win the Newark by-election, claiming their first seat in the House of Commons, the achievement will speak for itself – and the strength of the British political earthquake will be confirmed.

But what will a Conservative victory in Newark mean? What will it mean if the Tories squeak across the finish line ahead of UKIP when the votes are counted on Thursday?

The Conservatives will spin a very upbeat narrative, as would be well within their rights. For an incumbent governing party locked into an unpopular coalition and coming off the back of a double mauling in the local and European elections, managing to staunch the bleeding and retain the confidence of the voters of Newark would be just the shot in the arm that David Cameron’s team needs.

But given the extraordinary amount of effort that the Conservatives are expending to beat UKIP (in a race where Labour and the Liberal Democrats are relegated to the status of also-rans), have the Tories blundered by raising expectations so much that anything other than an emphatic Conservative victory will now be perceived as underwhelming, even worrying?

Be in no doubt, the Conservatives are desperate to hold on to Newark in the by-election. David Cameron has ordered all of the key cabinet members to go to Newark to campaign, while prospective Conservative Party candidates for 2015 and beyond have been sternly warned that they will be struck from the list of approved candidates unless they campaign vigorously enough in the town. Meanwhile, the local campaign office has an MP “roll of honour” prominently displayed on the wall, where visiting Tory MPs have to clock in and out. CCHQ takes the UKIP threat in Newark extremely seriously.

But many Tory seats are vulnerable to a UKIP surge in the general election, and no party will be able to mount the kind of desperate scorched-earth campaign against UKIP currently underway in Newark, replicated 30 or more times across the country. If this is what it takes for the Conservatives to halt the UKIP advance in just one parliamentary constituency, how will they cope when all of their incumbents are up for re-election in 2015 and all of their seats in play?

Of course, the opposite could also hold true. Some argue – quite plausibly – that it is the growing, insurgent party that fights best in a single constituency but which will struggle to marshal the resources to compete in multiple constituencies in a national general election. These people certainly have overwhelming evidence from other parties once seen as “the next force in British politics” on their side.

But what they miss – those who still blithely write off UKIP’s future prospects – is the fact that UKIP’s appeal and current performance is very little to do with their party organisation chart or their untried and untested voter mobilisation tactics. Previous insurgent parties such as the SDP were formed from schisms at the top of the establishment; the power of UKIP comes from the grass roots and lies in an idea.

The idea of UKIP is sometimes fuzzy around the edges, is articulated slightly differently by each activist the media might stop and question in the street, and is sometimes expressed forcefully and unpleasantly in a way that the party would not like; but for all that, it has the huge advantage of being small-c conservative without the long half-life toxicity of the Conservative party, unabashedly pro-British and demonstrably not of the “same old” political establishment.

Such is the British public’s current disdain for the same old Westminster political parties with their platitudes and broken promises, and such is the growing desire for a return to conviction politics where ideas and principles actually mean something and are worth arguing about, Britain could now be entering a phase where the country is unusually receptive to new ideas and bold solutions. If this is the case, even Grant Shapps, his computerised voter data models and his army of young student activists may be powerless to stop the advance of Nigel Farage.

We last saw this weariness with the status quo and desire for radical change in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher won election. Back then, the crisis facing Britain was economic and existential – would we continue to allow the trades union and the tired accommodations of the post-war consensus to continue sapping away at Britain’s vitality until there was nothing left but an impoverished, third-rate, failed socialist state.

In 2014, many Britons (save UKIP) do not see an existential threat, but there is nonetheless a crisis of ennui, disengagement, democratic illegitimacy and the return of that 1970s fatalism that says Britain can no longer prosper without pooling political sovereignty with Europe on the unfavourable terms of the vanquished.

The Newark by-election campaign is revealing exactly what the revamped Conservative Party machine and ground game is capable of when the Tories really, really want something. Thursday’s result will give the first hint as to whether this will be enough to stop UKIP in 2015.

 

 

UPDATE:  The Telegraph’s James Kirkup appears to be in agreement with this assessment. He writes:

A win in Newark would show that the Tory election machinery is in good nick – or at least that a professional party campaign apparatus can trump a band of amateurs with more conviction than organisation.

And is that the same thing as winning the argument? Have a quick glance at the national opinion polls: the Tory number is hovering around 33, with Labour a couple of points ahead. Remember 2010? Those figures were CON 36 LAB 29. And that still wasn’t enough for a Tory majority.

A win in Newark will solidify Tory optimism about the general election, but it won’t change the awkward fact of national politics: the party still has a long, long way to go to win that majority.

Anti-Independence Bribes For Scotland Could Wreck The Union

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

RBS banknote

 

Hearteningly for those who believe in the United Kingdom and do not want to see the fragmentation and balkanisation of our country, the latest opinion polls still show a large (if slightly falling) majority in favour of voting No in the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence. But this has not put the No camp at ease, as evidenced by new reports of more hurried ‘concessions’ being offered to sweeten the deal for those Scots still vacillating over how to vote.

The Guardian reports:

David Cameron has backed plans for Scotland to set its own income tax rates, including the freedom for the first time to cut taxes below the level of the rest of the UK. He said the proposals, published by Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson on Monday, would offer Scottish voters “real powers with real consequences” if they voted no in September’s independence referendum.

The new powers, potentially including control of housing benefit and Scotland’s share of VAT receipts, were described by Davidson as a radical and “thoroughly Conservative vision” for greater devolution.

It is certainly true that additional devolution of powers could fall within the remit of a “thoroughly conservative vision”, as the Scottish Tory leader says – but only if the entirety of the Strathclyde report is implemented, not just the eye-catching parts about tax. Ruth Davidson has taken an excellent piece of constitutional work and boiled it down into a single policy that would actually be harmful if implemented.

The ill-conceived focus on tax is just another reactive move, likely to serve only two purposes, both negative:

1. Offering additional concessions suggests fear and panic on the part of the “Better Together” campaign. When issues of momentum and public perception are known to be so important, it reeks of political amateurism to carelessly give the impression that the pro-Union campaign is somehow on the back foot and in need of new eye-catching reasons for Scots to remain part of the United Kingdom.

2. Offering additional areas for devolved power in a reactive way because of opinion polling is just about the worst way of charting a path toward constitutional reform imaginable. And this latest bribe raises all sorts of questions that our political leaders (many of whom are out of their depth on constitutional matters anyway) are unable and unwilling to answer at the moment. Why, for example, will Scotland be given this new power over income tax, but not Wales, Northern Ireland or England?

The danger is that by touting ill-conceived bonus incentives such as these to remain within the Union without the context of broader constitutional change for the UK (which Lord Strathclyde gave in his report but is going largely unreported), the “Better Together” advocates are simply punting on the issue and creating more problems that the UK must wrestle with in future.

Offering greater income tax and VAT altering abilities may have the short term effect of pleasing a few wavering Scottish voters, but it will also sow the seeds of discontent in the other home nations which are not equally favoured with these powers. How is it wise to fight the flames of Scottish separatism today in a way that can only fuel the fires of Welsh and English nationalism tomorrow?

As with any discussion about devolution of powers, there are also important considerations around the West Lothian question that remain unanswered.

From what little we currently know of the proposal, the Scottish Parliament would be given full power over income tax rate setting (over and above the +/- 3% deviation currently allowed), as well as some control over VAT. But while there is a partial link between taxes raised in Scotland and the amount of money available for Scottish public services, in reality most of the UK’s finances are ultimately fungible, with a big central pot satisfying demands from all corners of the United Kingdom.

If the Scottish Parliament assumes these new powers of taxation but Scottish MPs at Westminster are not prevented from voting on matters of taxation involving England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it would create an extraordinarily strong perverse incentive for Scottish MSPs to vote to lower income tax and VAT as much as possible within Scotland while Scottish MPs vote to keep taxes higher in the rest of the UK, knowing that the rest of the country must continue to subsidise Scottish defence, infrastructure and other critical areas.

But more than questions of hurt pride, inequality or the creation of an incentive to effectively steal from the rest of the Union, this represents yet another cack-handed attempt by politicians to solve a short-term problem at the expense of the longer-term stability of the United Kingdom. More devolved powers over taxes and other areas are a great idea, but all of the home nations deserve these power equally; they should not be granted to Scotland alone.

Giving out important constitutional waivers whenever one part of the union becomes restive is a terrible way to govern, and yet this is increasingly becoming the norm, with the incomplete rollout of Strathclyde’s excellent report being preceded by Gordon Brown’s one-sided suggestion of the same thing – more devolution on taxes and not much else.

This blog has strongly and consistently advocated for a full constitutional convention to be held to debate and agree precisely how we want to move forward as a United Kingdom of four home nations, which powers we want to reserve for “we the people” and which we lend to government at the local, county, devolved country and national level – with equality of powers among the home nations a central tenet.

The current settlement – with broad powers given to the Scottish Parliament, lesser powers to the Welsh Assembly and the fractious Northern Ireland Assembly never more than five angry words away from suspension and the reimposition of direct rule from Westminster – is rapidly becoming more complicated than any of us, least of all our politicians, can wrap our heads around.

At the time of Gordon Brown’s unrequested intervention in January, this blog warned:

When the unionist side is already making such a convincing case and steadily holding a majority of public opinion, why come out proposing “major constitutional changes” as a deal-sweetener? Not only does it reek of panic and desperation, it is a cast-iron certainty that the constitutional changes being proposed will be of a narrow, specific and non-universal nature, designed to bribe voters but carrying with them the unintended consequence of making the architecture of the UK’s political governance even more complex and inequitable than it is today.

Unfortunately, it seems that what was just a doodle in the margins of Gordon Brown’s notebook in January is now well on the way to becoming part of the UK government’s official pitch to Scottish voters, and blueprint for the constitutional future of the entire UK.

Scottish tartan enjoys timeless fashion appeal not just because of the rich culture and history associated with it, but also because of the intricacy and precision, the warps and wefts intersecting and being spaced apart just so in order to produce a unique pattern in the larger tapestry.

It is sadly ironic that the panicked and misguided efforts of short-sighted politicians north and south of the border risk turning the UK – if it survives 2014 at all – into a far messier, less pleasant patchwork than we are today.