Below is my speech to the English Democrats’ AGM at Nottingham on the 24th September 2022:-
Firstly I would like to thank Bridget Vickers in particular for all her work in organising this conference. Ladies and Gentlemen Bridget has worked very hard to make this conference a success and she deserves our applause!
We have had a bit of trouble with our NationBuilder email system. We are not alone. This is along with many other parties that are thought to be to the Right of the Multi-culturalist Establishment and a silicon valley problem. At least we have not yet had our payment system stopped like those using PayPal!
I would like to thank you all for coming.
We are however now making progress in getting ourselves organised and that is really important for the long term future of our Party and Cause.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to say Stephen Morris has been an active and highly effective National Secretary of the English Democrats for many years. He is passing on the torch within the family to Valerie Morris.
In Valerie we are getting somebody who is a professional administrator within the NHS and therefore a very good and well qualified successor to Stephen.
Stephen does however, I think, deserve our applause for all his hard work over many years.
Ladies and Gentlemen those of you who came last you will remember this superb hotel which was so pleased with us last time that they did actually ask us to come back! This current building was clearly built to be Nottingham’s answer to Balmoral. What do you think?.
Also on this site there was once a Royal Hunting Lodge from which Richard III left to meet his death on the battlefield of Bosworth. Richard then wound up being buried in Leicester under what became a carpark, intriguingly under the letter ‘R’, which the lady who had been trying to trace him pointed out as being the place where they should dig. Spookily they straightaway found him!
Obviously Nottingham, when coupled with Sheriffs, has a bit of an ominous ring to the Robins amongst us! But Nottingham is not only in central England but I hope you will all agree this is a fantastic place for us to have our conference?
Come on! At least it isn’t near the Race Riots in Leicester.
I think that this conference could hardly be at a better time for discussing the future of England. With the death of the Queen and our new King Charles III, we new Third Age Caroleans are entering very interesting times!
Let me start with the King. I ought to declare an interest as I was, long ago, in the Coldstream Guards and I am a supporter of constitutional monarchy, but I am not a supporter of Royal power or of royal political decision-making or interference.
As Prince Charles we had become used to the idea that Charles was quite internationalist and globalist and also, in many ways, quite politically correct. He is clearly pro multi-culturalism, diversity and very much a net zero Green activist and also he actively supported Black Lives Matter.
As part of his accession, King Charles has made a number of speeches in which he has said that he does not wish to interfere in politics, but then at the meeting of all the “Faith Leaders” before his Mother’s funeral, he said that he thought it was part of his role as King to “maintain diversity within our Nation”.
Professor Matthew Goodwin says that if you “look a little closer, dig a little deeper, even amid all the pomp and pageantry it is not hard to find the beginning of a serious challenge to our new King and thousand years of history which underpin our monarchy.
All Kings and Queens, it is said, inevitably find themselves caught between the past and the future, the old and the new, tradition and modernity. But for Charles III, walking this tightrope looks set to be particularly challenging.
He becomes King at a time when, much like the House of Windsor, the country that surrounds him has become visibly divided. All the cultural guardrails that held the nation together when his mother was crowned —a strong and shared national identity, the Union, belief in the Christian faith, class loyalties, resilient families, and the legacy of profoundly collective experiences, such as ‘our finest hour’ during the Second World War— have become much weaker or are fading from view.
In their place have emerged new divisions that are rooted less in class and wealth than generations, graduation, and geography. Increasingly, as the political revolts of the last decade underline, British society, like many other Western democracies, is steadily being pulled apart —economically, politically, and culturally —and in ways that will inevitably impact the new King and, most likely, the one that follows.
Increasingly, young Britons, a more assertive and individualistic new middle-class, and the country’s rising numbers of university graduates who live in the big cities and the university towns are drifting away from the middle-aged, the elderly, workers and non-graduates who live in the small towns, coastal and rural communities.
On one side of this cultural chasm stand all those who have rallied around populism, Brexit, and Boris Johnson to try and reassert their traditionalist values against a new elite that often seems to be accelerating away from them; on the other, stand all those who have rallied behind Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the SNP, and Remaining in the EU to try and reassert their very different socially liberal or radically progressive values which they feel have been overturned by these revolts.
Professor Goodwin says that:- Underlying this cultural rift, between those who hold a fixed vision of who we are and those who hold a more fluid one, are competing visions of Britishness.
Traditionalists, the most fervent supporters of monarchy, subscribe to a ‘thicker’ and deep-rooted vision which prioritises our shared ancestry, traditions, myths, memories, and strongly-felt loyalties to the collective group.
He goes on to claim:- The newly ascendant Millennials, Zoomers, and graduates, on the other hand, often subscribe to a ‘thinner’ vision of Britishness which is more focused on reshaping this national identity around internationalist liberal themes —such as multiculturalism and diversity. This vision is instinctively sceptical of the nation, its history, traditions, and group-based loyalties and feels less wedded to them. In its more radical form, held by about 15 per cent of the country, it wants to actively deconstruct them.
And this is important:- Traditionalists instinctively see their values reflected in the new King, his heir William and daughter-in-law Catherine —in the King’s call to push back against modernist values, return to traditional symbols of Britishness, such as the hedgerow and the Shire, and rediscover our love of the land and nature.
Last week, Professor Goodwin told us that he had polled a nationally representative sample of voters and asked them what they think about Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III. While more than eight in ten of the older Baby Boomers say Britain should continue to have a monarchy, only one in three young Zoomers said the same; whereas seven in ten older Boomers have favourable views of King Charles III, only one third of Zoomers do. Consistently, Zoomers, the generation who have come of age amid Megxit, Prince Andrew and intensifying debates about the legacy of empire are more sceptical about monarchy.
It is perhaps also significant that, unlike earlier generations, young Britons today are much less likely to align themselves with things that used to keep earlier generations connected to the monarchy, including the Christian faith.
Over the last fifty years, the share of all British people who identify as Christian has fallen sharply, from 66% to 38%, while the share who are non-religious (52%) or non-Christian (9%) has rocketed above 60%. Yet this decline, once again, is especially striking among the young —while one-third of the oldest Britons identify with the Church of England only 1 per cent of Zoomers do.
All these changes help to explain why, as the number of graduates, social liberals and atheists has steadily grown over time, overall support for the monarchy has fallen. While it remains strong and widespread today, those who are advising the new King will no doubt be aware of the longer-term trends.
Between 1983 and 2012, the share of British people who think it is “very” or “quite” important that Britain has a monarchy dropped by more than thirty points —from 86 per cent to just 55 per cent. Last year, amid Prince Andrew’s scandal and ongoing feuds in the House of Windsor, the share who felt the monarchy is “not important at all” or should be “abolished” reached 25 per cent —the highest on record.”
Ladies and Gentlemen I think that all this presents an interesting picture in which patriotic traditionalists are currently the main support of the monarchy. They may soon find that King Charles III is someone who is actively against their patriotic and traditionalist feelings.
Turning now to the web based publication UnHerd, that’s as in not cattle!
There was a recent UnHerd article about what is happening in Canadian politics in which I quote as follows:-
The title was “Will Canadian Liberals cling onto the Monarchy?
Canada’s dominant political culture descends in large part from loyalist exiles who fled the American Revolution in the late 18th century, and so it is no surprise to see their contemporary heirs, the present political establishment, expressing support for the monarchy
This runs contrary to the widespread image of Canada’s elites as post-modern cosmopolitans who despise their own history and traditions. But the recent outpouring of personal homages paired with pro-monarchy sentiment led by the likes of Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet, also former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney, and the editorial board at the national newspaper of record, is indicative of where the Canadian ruling class stands.
In 1982, the Queen came to Ottawa to personally grant royal assent to what had been the elder Trudeau’s life’s work: the pillars of today’s progressive Canada — the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, official bilingualism, multiculturalism — were codified.
Perhaps it is understandable that Canada is not as eager as its Commonwealth cousins to leave the royal embrace. When a newly-elected Justin Trudeau was asked by the BBC if he was sympathetic to republicanism, he replied: “We’re perfectly happy with our Queen of Canada.” No doubt he will be just as happy with the new King of Canada. [they] see in the monarchy a reliable ‘last resort’ to maintain ‘stability’ and prevent potential major upsets resulting from the popular will.”
What is notable these days is not so much how Canada’s centre-left elites have lent their support to monarchy, but how the Right-wing opposition to those elites has increasingly drifted into anti-monarchist territory. The highly online Right-wing base that bolstered Poilievre has begun to see things differently.
Scrolling through the Twitter replies to coverage of the King’s first speech by the conservative site True North Centre reveals how its Right-wing audiences view the new monarch: “An irresponsible globalist”; “Please don’t put his face on our money”; “All hail King Klaus”. As these responses suggest, Charles III’s record of speaking up on climate issues or taking the stage with Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum has not endeared him to the Freedom Convoy.
It is also notable that one of the most active media supporters of the convoy had previously come out in support of abolishing the monarchy in the conservative National Post.
In the UK I would say that the danger for Charles and for the Monarchy is, of course, that his politics will undermine support from the traditionalist group that is currently very pro the Monarchy.
I notice that Nigel Farage over the last few weeks has gone from calling Prince Charles “a clown” to very much applauding our new King.
By contrast my slightly sceptical view is based at least partly on the advice that I was given when I was a teacher for three and a half years before I started training to be a solicitor.
I was told of the importance of being a stern, unflinching disciplinarian, AKA “total all-out bastard” to the pupils first half term, but in the second half term easing up to the level I want to be at permanently.
The advice that I was given is that if I did that by the end of the first term I would be thought to be “firm but fair” and generally a teacher who could not be messed around with, but was quite nice under it all.
Whereas if I did the opposite of trying to be nice in the first half term, by the end of the term I would be seen as being weak and wet and that would be a reputation that I would never be able to shake.
I saw this in practice. One teacher that arrived when I was doing my “O” Levels, and taught me when I was at school, tried to be nice with us in the first half term. By the end of the second half term his lessons were literally a riot, in which I remember that boys were chucking raw eggs around in his class!
When I went back to teach at that school I found his reputation of being weak was still current and he still had no respect from the pupils or any control over them. So even after all those years his persona was still the same that had been established within the first half term of his teaching at the school!
What all this will mean for King Charles III and the British Monarchy over the course of his reign we will see played out before us. I suspect that any reduction of support for the Monarchy from traditionalist patriots will also undermine support for the Union and lead to such people in England identifying still more as English not British.
Now let’s turn and look at the Parties.
Firstly the Conservatives, with their new leader Mrs Mary Elizabeth O’Leary or as she wants us to call her Liz Truss.
Her husband, Hugh O’Leary is I am told an accountant! Just like her! They say that accountants know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
Wikipedia says that in 2000, Truss married Hugh O'Leary, a fellow accountant, at St Alfege Church, Greenwich, the couple have two daughters. From 2004 until mid-2005, she had an extramarital affair with the married MP Mark Field, whom the Conservative Party had appointed as her political mentor. She remained married to O'Leary.
Truss is an Anglican, telling a Conservative Party hustings: "I share the values of the Christian faith and the Church of England, but I'm not a regular practising religious person."
Mrs O’Leary’s parents were, by her own account, “far to the Left of Labour”. Most of us would probably call such people “Communists”.
Her father was a mathematics professor and her mother was one of the Greenham Common women protestors. No doubt you will all say, quite rightly, that we are not defined by our parents.
However I think it is worth bearing in mind her political career trajectory, since her first independent political manifestation as a student was as the President of Oxford University’s Liberal Democrats and as a National Council member of the Young Liberal Democrats, in which capacities she made appearances at Liberal Democrats Conferences calling for the abolition of the Monarchy and for the legalisation of cannabis.
She became a Director of the Europhile think tank Reform and eventually became one of David Cameron’s ‘A’ List candidates when he was trying to transform the Conservative Party into its current stance of Liberal, Internationalist, Multi-culturalism with more women and with more ethnic minority representation.
This is what Toby Young’s The Daily Sceptic had to say:-
“During the leadership hustings, when asked whether she “would ever authorise another lockdown,” Truss ruled them out: “No, I wouldn’t.” When asked whether she regretted any of her support for lockdowns during her time in government, Truss claimed she’d always been against them: “Every single time I was given the chance to express a view I was on the side of doing less.”
But that’s a stretch. Truss repeatedly urged her constituents to comply with lockdown measures. And in fact, on BBC as late as October 2020, Truss defended the Government’s lockdown measures and chided critics who, as she put it, claimed they “don’t like” the measures without “proposing alternative measures”.
She said:- “We’ve expanded test and trace and we are working to find a vaccine, but until we have a vaccine we do have to live with this disease, and the measures that we’ve put in place, whilst not measures that we’d want to have to do in normal times, are the best way of dealing with it that we have now. And I notice that none of the critics are proposing alternative measures, they’re simply saying they don’t like the current measures, and what I’m saying to you, Nick, is there’s a group of people saying the measures are too lax, and the others are saying they’re too tough, I think we’re striking the right balance…”
Truss later voted in favour of vaccine mandates for health workers, vaccine mandates for care home workers, and the use of vaccine passports for the right to access everyday venues.
Toby Young goes on to say:- “The lockdowns of 2020 failed to meaningfully slow the spread of the coronavirus and led to the deaths of countless thousands of young people in every country in which they were tried. While it’s reassuring to know that the new PM has foresworn future lockdowns, it’s deeply unfair to those who were bold enough to fight against those terrible measures from the earliest date – at tremendous personal expense, and despite the onslaught of shaming from those, like Liz Truss, who defended the measures – for Liz Truss to retroactively pretend that she was among them.”
Most of the front bench of Conservative Government are also products of the multi-culturalist push by David Cameron.
Like Cameron, Liz Truss supported gay marriage. I remind you of David Cameron’s famous oxymoronic statement. He said that he supported gay marriage “not despite being a Conservative but because he was a Conservative!”
Liz Truss actively supported Remain but became an apparent convert to Leave when doing so might be most expedient to her career.
Other Lib Dem’ish entryists into the Conservative Party, such as Anna Soubry and Heidi Alexander, did not do the expedient thing and so lost their political careers.
In short Ladies and Gentlemen what I am saying is that if you look at Liz Truss’s history, the idea that she is some sort of reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher is, shall we say, deeply questionable! We will see that play out over the course of the next few months.
Professor Matthew Goodwin has also written about where the “Conservatives” are about immigration.
His article sets out so clearly the problem with having a false “Conservative” Party which is actually a dishonest Statist, Multi-culturalist, Globalist Party which is only opposed by an openly Statist, Globalist, Multi-culturalist “Labour” Party.
Professor Matthew Goodwin is a Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, Canterbury and therefore it will surprise no-one that he is a Left-winger. Unlike most Left-wing academics however he is an honest and professional academic who genuinely reports what he finds, rather than dishonestly misrepresenting the truth in order to advance his political agenda.
The only criticism that I would make of his analysis of the figures is that he too readily accepts official figures.
The official figures of immigration are vastly below the real figures, as was vividly demonstrated by official bodies claiming that only three million immigrants had come into the UK as a result of membership of the EU.
When we voted to come out the EU we were told that a third of those had left the country.
In fact over six million EU nationals have registered as being a long-term residents here. Therefore, if it is true that a third had left, there was in fact nine million here when the Establishment were claiming that there was only three million.
I suspect that that has been typical of the British State’s official mis-representation of immigration figures.
Certainly if you look about you in any of our major cities you will see an ethnic mix which suggests vastly more immigration than the British Establishment has admitted!
Taking back control?
Britain’s new immigration system is not what many voters were expecting and that might soon have power political effects.
For many people, the whole point of voting for Brexit was to lower immigration. In every single study of why 17.4 million people voted to Leave the European Union, wanting to slow the pace and scale of immigration was —by far— the most powerful driver, alongside the closely connected desire to restore Britain’s sovereignty.
But for many voters today, promises to Take Back Control of Britain’s borders and reduce immigration sound increasingly hollow. While Brexit Britain does have more of a say over who is coming in and out of the country, since the last election its Conservative rulers have ushered in an immigration system which in many respects is more liberal than anything Tony Blair, David Cameron, or Theresa May presided over.
Contrary to misleading writers who portray Boris Johnson as a Trumpian figure and Brexit Britain as closed off to the world, the opposite is true. Britain’s outgoing Prime Minister oversaw a remarkable liberalisation of immigration policy while the country is now re-opening its doors, after the pandemic, to large-scale migration.
Always a cosmopolitan at heart, Johnson leaves office having introduced a series of changes which will transform Britain in the years ahead. While the changes have so far attracted little attention they will soon have profound implications on the country and, almost certainly, its politics.
Johnson scrapped the cap on work visas. He loosened salary and qualification requirements for somebody to qualify as a skilled worker. He allowed skilled workers to remain indefinitely in the UK. He lowered the salary threshold required for them to do so. He ruled employers no longer have to demonstrate their jobs cannot be done by British workers. And he reintroduced the post-study work visa, allowing international students who completed their university degree in Britain to remain for two or three years before then switching onto the skilled worker route if they find a job. Because of these changes, somebody can essentially qualify to work and remain on a salary as low as £20,480 —£18,000 less than the mean average salary.
As the University Oxford’s independent and highly respected Migration Observatory points out, while the new system is more restrictive for EU nationals who until Brexit had previously enjoyed freedom of movement rights, for the rest of the world ‘the policy reflects a notable liberalisation’. And we are now beginning to see its effects.
Contrary to the claim when the system was introduced that it would reduce overall immigration, the numbers that are emerging —now that the pandemic is moving into the rear-view mirror— tell a very different story. Britain is doubling down on mass immigration. According to data released by the Home Office this week, the number of visas given to workers, students, their relatives, and other foreign nationals has jumped by more than 80% in a year to more than 1.1 million —the largest on record.
Britain had already become a country of mass immigration before these changes. Because of the very high and sustained immigration which took place under the Blair, Brown, and Cameron governments, by 2019 Britain was running a net migration rate of nearly 350,000 each year. Between 2011 and 2021, net migration contributed about two million towards Britain’s population growth.
Immigration, rather than natural change, became and remains the primary driver of the country’s population growth while the overall share of the population that is ‘foreign-born’ —at 14%— is already higher than the equivalent in Italy, France, Greece, Denmark, the Netherlands, and even the United States. Because of these policy changes, it will now only increase further and faster in the years ahead.
And, unfortunately, the growing sense of public concern about these shifts is now also exacerbated by the rising number of migrants and asylum-seekers who are crossing the English Channel to enter the country illegally. Last week saw a new record of 1,300 migrant crossings in a single day —in 27 boats. This year, so far, more than 23,000 people have journeyed across the Channel —compared to 12,500 at the same point last year, 8,404 during all of 2020 and just 299 throughout 2018.
In the latest data, the most prominent nationalities on the boats are, in descending rank order, Iranians, Iraqis, Eritreans, Syrians, Vietnamese, Afghans, Sudanese, and then Albanians —who are clearly growing in number.
The blunt reality is that much of Britain remains deeply concerned about both the pace and scale of immigration —and this concern, I think, will only intensify as more and more voters tune in to the reality of the new system and the trends we have just surveyed. Much like it took voters a few years to grasp the full consequences of freedom of movement from across the EU, it will likely to take them a few years to grasp the fact that, despite Brexit, Britain not only still has historically unprecedented levels of immigration but that these flows are also more culturally, ethnically, and religiously distinctive from the flows that came before.
Even today, there is a large reservoir of public disillusionment. More than half the country think immigration was too high throughout the last decade. More than half of all voters and more than three-quarters of 2019 Tories think the government has been “too soft” on the Channel crossings. More than two-thirds think Britain should ‘refuse to accept asylum applications from people who have entered the UK illegally and could reasonably have claimed asylum in another safe country’. Nearly seven in ten think it is acceptable to use RAF planes and the Royal Navy to help secure Britain’s borders. Nearly 60% would support the Border Force turning back small boats carrying migrants. And more than half support sending asylum-seekers overseas or to offshore processing centres — a move only 18% oppose.
And while some people have certainly become more positive about immigration, it is worth remembering that only 22% of the country want immigration to increase —which it now certainly will. Others put the figure even lower. YouGov find only 12% of voters in England, which receives most immigration, want it increased while most, 54%, want it reduced (jumping to 77% of Conservatives and 80% of Leavers).
Contrary to those misleading voices who say voters no longer really care about this issue it remains the second top concern for both Conservative and Leave voters —behind the economy. Number 10 would do well to remember that the vast majority of voters who abandoned the Labour Party and the Brexit Party for the Conservative Party at the last election wanted to reduce overall immigration into the country.
There are two reasons why I think this really does matter for British politics. The first is that people’s confidence in the ability of their leaders to manage immigration is already at historic lows. Ask people how the government is performing on this issue and close to 80% now say “badly”. And when they are asked which party they back on this issue, ever since Boris Johnson came to power the share who refuse to back any of the major parties has been steadily rising —to 48%. Almost half the country, in other words, no longer support the established parties on the immigration question.
And when Ipsos-MORI asked people why they felt dissatisfied, most were instinctively negative, not positive —they said the government is not doing enough to stop the rising number of Channel crossings, they said the government is allowing too many people to claim asylum, they said immigration numbers are too high, and they said the government is too generous to immigrants and asylum-seekers.
The problem, as Professor Lauren McLaren has shown, is that when public concern about a big and emotional issue like immigration remains unresolved, it leads to a broader erosion of trust in the wider system. And when voters no longer believe the system is responsive it clears the path for a second problem: a virulent populism.
Today, Brexit Britain finds itself in the remarkable position of having no successful national populist party. Few other democracies can say the same. In France, Marine Le Pen just went mainstream. In Italy, Georgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy are leading the polls ahead of a crunch election this month. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán is stronger than ever. And elsewhere —in Austria, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden— anti-immigration populists remain a significant if not growing force.
Britain, through Brexit, managed to successfully neutralise its own national populists by absorbing people’s concerns over immigration and an unresponsive political class into the mainstream and then promising to address them. This is why, in 2019, the Conservatives won their largest majority for more than thirty years and demolished the Red Wall. Voters turned to them not just to regain control but lower the numbers —something the minority of Liberal Leavers appear to have forgotten.
Professor Goodwin then says that he thinks that - If the next Prime Minister fails to deliver on that promise then Brexit Britain will not remain an outlier in the West for long. By failing to take back control and reduce migration to sustainable levels our future governments on both the left and right will end up losing control. Britain will return, quickly, to the dark days of the pre-Brexit era when anti-immigration populism upended the system. Instead of calls to hold a referendum on EU membership there will be new calls to hold a referendum on net migration; instead of a populist party that is wholly focused on the question of Europe there will be a new party that is wholly focused on the question of immigration. The populist virus, in other words, will be back with a vengeance. And that would not be good for our politics, our country, or our democracy.
Turning now to the Conservative Party’s leadership election results. These cast an interesting question onto their membership data. Liz Truss, we are told, got the votes of 81,326 Conservative Party members and Rishi Sunak got 60,399. Thus 141,725 members voted. Curiously the Conservative Party accounts for the year ending 31st December 2021 show membership fees of £1,989,000 (let’s round that up to £2m). Their standard membership fee is £25 but they have concessions for the under 26 and those in the Armed Forces, so let’s round the average membership fee down to £20. That would equate to 100,000 members!
The final point that I would make about Liz Truss is when might she call the General Election?
As Gordon Brown found there is a short honeymoon period for new prime ministers. He thought about calling a General Election a few months after he became Prime Minister and then bottled it and he never had another chance to win. Liz Truss will either call a General Election within the next six months or she will probably lose the election in 2024 or early 2025.
What of Labour? Labour under Sir Kier Starmer had begun to look superficially to be rather more respectable than the Conservatives under Boris Johnson, as he seems capable of telling the truth.
Of course, according to Opinion Polls although Labour are well ahead of where they were in terms of their apparent popularity, Labour are still only at a point where they will probably be the largest party after the General Election, which constitutionally must be before early 2025.
But Labour may not find it easy to form a Government unless they go into a formal alliance with the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Perhaps also they may even need to persuade Sinn Fein to take up their seats. Such a situation will be very interesting. Particularly as it seems that their popularity outside of metropolitan England is very shaky, as we saw when Therese Hirst stood for us in Wakefield when the Labour vote went from 17,925 in 2019 to 13,166 in the By-election. That was a drop of 4,759 votes when the Conservatives had not only put up last time a tokenist Pakistani Muslim candidate, who turned out to be a homosexual paedophile and alcoholic. Also this time they had put up another Pakistani Muslim in a constituency where there are relatively few Pakistani Muslims but which is not far from Bradford or Rotherham and therefore white working class voters are aware of what has been going on there.
From their candidate selection you would almost think that the Conservatives wanted to lose that seat. Maybe they actually did because of course the Conservatives need Labour to exist so that they can continue to say on the doorstep that people cannot vote for what they really support because they might let Labour in!
The Conservatives were duly punished with a drop of their vote from the 2019 General Electionof 21,283 down to 8,241.
That dramatic drop and the decline in the percentage of people voting suggests that the majority of those who voted Conservative in 2019 did not go back to Labour and that Labour may have permanently lost them.
It suggests that the “Red Wall” voters are still very much up for grabs if any one patriotic party can break free of the pack. I remain of the view that it is English nationalism which will surge when that time comes.
We are of course entering very choppy economic waters and it maybe that will wake people up and make the electoral system more fluid than it has been since the War.
Turning to the Liberal Democrats, or Limp Dims as I prefer to call them, they are of course beginning to make a bit of a come back in by-elections but their technique is important to understand.
In the last three Parliamentary by-elections in a row the vote for the Conservative Party has dropped but not in the way that has been suggested in the Media, which insists upon talking about majorities when there are none.
In the by-election in Shropshire North the actual majority did not vote. Nor did the majority vote in either of the previous two by-elections, with turnout below 50%. “Turnout” does not take account of the fact that the Electoral Commission thinks that up to 25% of those that are eligible to vote are not on the electoral roll. So really a significant majority do not vote.
In Shropshire North what happened was very similar to what had happened in the Chesham and Amersham By-election which is that the Liberal Democrats pursued a successful two-pronged strategy. The first of those was to suppress the Conservative vote, which Johnson’s behaviour no doubt enormously helped them to do. The second was to get the “Progressive” vote to coalesce around them. This can easily be seen from the figures.
In the 2019 General Election in Shropshire North, the Liberal Democrats got 5,643, Labour got 12,495 and the Greens got 1,790, giving a total Leftist vote of 19,928. I am not sure whether the Shropshire Party who also stood would qualify as a Leftist Party. Most of these parties which appear to be locally patriotic turn out on investigation to be Liberal Democrats in mufti. So the total of LibDem, Labour and Green was 19,928, including the Shropshire Party that would be 21,074 vote.
On the 16th December the Liberal Democrats got 17,957, Labour got 3,686 and the Greens got 1,738. Rejoin the EU got 58 votes. Interestingly when the Liberal Democrats were pushing for a surge the Shropshire Party did not stand, which I think may suggest that they are simply Liberal Democrats in mufti. The total Leftist vote therefore in the By-election was 23,439. The total extra votes for the Left therefore in the Shropshire By-election was 2,365.
By contrast the numbers of voters voting Conservative dropped from 35,444 to 12,032. This was a reduction in the total number of Conservative votes by 23,412.
18,439 of whom was the reduction in turn-out of Conservative voters. There was also 1,427 Reform, 378 UKIP, 375 Reclaim and 79 Heritage, who all might previously have been Conservative voters.
It does seem clear therefore that relatively few, if any, voters actually went from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats. Whereas the tactical voting was in favour of the Liberal Democrats.
That leads to at least the encouraging conclusion that the numbers of deluded Left-wing voters in Shropshire North did not increase by any substantial margin, despite what the papers and BBC have tried to tell you!
In England the only other party that I think is worth commenting on is the former Brexit Party, now known as Reform UK, under Richard Tice. As the Brexit Party raised donations of £18.5m, the certainty is that the Brexit Party is going to carry on being a party that stands in by-elections and spends a considerable amount of money on each by-election. The interesting thing however is that they have made almost no headway in terms of votes. I think looking at any of their literature would give you a clear indication of why. They do not seem to have any political identity, apart from being a bit more genuinely conservative than the faux Conservative Party. Their version of conservatism is however not of traditional values, but of Thatcherite style 19th Century Liberalism that is one with a small State and low tax. Their vision of Britain is sometimes caricatured as “Singapore on Thames”. They have no interest in England.
Finally in England Anne Marie Waters has dissolved the For Britain Party.
The English Democrats remain the only English nationalist party.
Turning to Scotland. What of the Scottish National Party? The SNP continues to be a dominant political force in Scotland. It proposes to campaign at the General Election as if that is a Referendum on Independence.
When the SNP again win a majority of the parliamentary seats in Scotland they will claim that as a mandate for Scottish Independence.
They will however only actually get independence if they are able to be a critically necessary player in the formation of a government under Labour.
This is not impossible and it is worth remembering that the Irish nationalists did get the Liberals to support Home Rule for Ireland before the First World War by the same means. It really is therefore a possible future!
Turning for a moment back to King Charles I thought you might find this interesting:-
One of the first acts of the new Sovereign after making his or her Declaration is to take and subscribe to the Oath relating to the security of the Church of Scotland as required by the 25th Article of the Act of Union 1707 (6 Anne c.11). This Oath has been taken by every Sovereign at their Accession since George l in 1714. (By way of background, in Scotland there is a division of powers between Church and State, with each supreme in their own sphere. The Church is self governing in all that concerns its own activities. Its supreme authority is the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, presided over by a Moderator chosen each year by the Assembly itself. So the Sovereign is required to take the Oath to preserve the security of the Church of Scotland at his or her Accession.)
The new Monarch reads the Oath aloud.
The Oath
I, [INSERT TITLE] by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland and of My other Realms and Territories King, Defender of
the Faith, do faithfully promise and swear that I shall inviolably maintain and
preserve the Settlement of the true Protestant Religion as established by the
Laws made in Scotland in prosecution of the Claim of Right and particularly by
an Act intituled “An Act for securing the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian
Church Government” and by the Acts passed in the Parliament of both Kingdoms
for Union of the two Kingdoms, together with the Government, Worship,
Discipline, Rights and Privileges of the Church of Scotland. So help me God.
Ladies and Gentlemen Nicola Sturgeon signed her support for this! What do you think of that!
In Northern Ireland Sinn Fein is now the leading party in Stormont, with a good prospect of being able to get a “Border Referendum”, as set out in the Good Friday Agreement, which would allow for a vote on the ending of the Union and the re-unification of Ireland.
In discussing Northern Ireland, it is worth bearing in mind however that the High Court in Belfast has ruled that Boris Johnson’s agreement on Northern Protocol impliedly repealed the key part of the Act of the Union itself!
Progress towards the dissolution of the UK has already been therefore been started by the so-called Conservative and Unionist Party.
So Ladies and Gentlemen what of the English Democrats?
I believe that the political future for England will be a rise in English nationalism but we still have huge and discouraging hurdles to overcome. When the tide turns in our favour we must be ready for the challenge.
Problems piling up for the British Political Establishment
Race riots with Muslims attacking Hindus in Leicester. This appears to be spreading.
Yesterday it was announced officially that we are in Recession.
Inflation is set to rise steeply.
Lockdown has caused a breakdown of supply chains worldwide.
The impact the State’s multi-culturalist recruitment policies on the State’s competence is now daily visible to us all.
The British Political Establishments increasing but inefficient authoritarianism is undermining the legitimacy of the British State.
Albert Einstein tells us that:- “In the Middle of Difficulty lies Opportunity!”
These and many other difficulties for the Establishment are opportunities for us and for all insurgent parties.
Let’s hope that Shakespeare is right that “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to victory!” We await that revolutionary moment when we can finally destroy Liz Truss’s old Party’s ambition to “Dissolve all our petty nationalisms in the Greater European whole!
Labour no longer speaks for England. The Conservatives hate the very idea of England.
We are the only party bearing the sacred flame for England’s and for the English Nation’s future.
In this new era I say it’s time for a change. It’s time for English Democracy and it’s time for the English Democrats!
What do you say?
Is it time?
I think Scotland is a great nation. So is Wales, I support equality, freedom, tolerance and human rights.
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