For English Independence!

For English Independence

Recently I was invited onto Hearts of Oak for a videoed debate on the pros and cons of English Independence.   

You can watch the debate here >>>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsDK8z7Nw30&feature=youtu.be

Here is some of what I could have said.

English or British?

In a sense the question of which Nation we should belong to is not a purely rational one - on either side of the divide.

It’s emotional.

It’s who do we think we are?

It’s home is where the heart is.

Personally I am proud to be English.  I am proud of England.

England means something to me, but Britain and the United Kingdom don’t and I am not alone.

2011 Census 60.4% English only (including London!)

In England most people with a history in England feel English.

British is what people who are not English say that they are.

People who feel strongly patriotic or nationalist, like those who voted for Brexit, care about their country.

This is why 56% of Brexit voters in a recent opinion poll support English Independence.

English Independence would also get us out of the EU and all treaties entered into by the British State so there is a potential to reshape our politics if we dissolved the UK.

Then there are the grievances against the way that the UK is run.  The British Political Establishment are increasingly politically correct - partly as a strategy to do down the English.  They welcome mass immigration. They are all Internationalist and Globalist Liberals. 

They are progressively destroying our country.  They want to break England up with bogus “Regions”. They want to build all over it!

The British Establishment have destroyed all our old English regiments in the army.  They have configured our “Defence” forces for foreign interventions and not for defending our country.  We have got two vastly expensive aircraft carriers which were built on Clyde-side both over budget and to a poor standard, and all defence shipbuilding has been stripped out of England to help subsidise Scotland in order to help buy Scottish votes for the Union.  British politicians say that we need the Union to “Punch above our weight on the world stage”.

Which brings me onto the Barnett Formula.  2009 - £49billion.  £32billion for Scotland.

It is the English that pay for the Barnett Formula. 

Last year:  Northern Ireland spent the most per head at £11,590 followed by:-

·       Scotland at £11,247

·       Wales at £10,656

·       England at £9,296

It is also the English assets that the British State has been busy asset stripping, selling off freeholds for hospitals and mental health facilities and our historic court buildings. 

The British run MoD has sold off so many of our bases that they now cannot bring our tank regiments back from Germany as there is no- where left to house them!

Our systems are already quite separate.  Just look at the differences of emphasis in the way in which the British Government has dealt with its control over English Health Policy in comparison with that of the Scottish Government (and Welsh and Northern Irish).  This is just a reflection of the way that the British Establishment manage the NHS against the interests of the English, leading to us being the only UK Nation that has to pay for prescription charges.  All the others have their prescription charges paid for – by us!

It is no exaggeration to say that England is the last British Colony!  This has to end.   

Let us demand Home Rule for England.   

We want our country back!   

The time is right for English Independence!

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM COMES A STEP CLOSER!

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM COMES A STEP CLOSER!

Although the “Mainstream Media” (AKA “Legacy Media”) newspapers and broadcasters, such as in the article below by Alan Cochrane, focus on the risk to the Union (of the UK) from Northern Ireland and Scotland, it may well be that the more important longer term “threat” to the Union will be from England and from English Nationalists.  As William Hague when he was the Leader of the “Conservative” Party said:-  “English nationalism is the worst of all nationalisms” for the future of the Union!

The constitutional position about Theresa May’s agreement, if she manages to get it through Parliament and ratified by all the relevant parts of the EU will be interesting, because, if that happens, with the majority Leave vote in England, of well over 15 million English people voting for Leave, can then only be satisfied by the dissolution of the United Kingdom!

From a legal and constitutionalist point of view this works because the dissolution of the UK as the contracting state means that the deal is dissolved too.  This was threatened against the Scottish Nationalists, in the run up to the Scottish Independence Referendum, when the then Commissioner Barosso pointed out that, if Scotland left the United Kingdom then (because the United Kingdom would be dissolved), Scotland would be a new State and therefore not an ‘Accession’ state and so not part of the EU. 

The EU is composed of “Member States”.  If a Member State is dissolved and ceases to exist, then the arrangements with the EU also cease to exist.  The EU is not a territorial entity, nor an entity of individual people, nor of peoples, it is an entity only of accession Member States.  This means that the general legal principles on dissolution or death of a participating entity in an agreement apply.  Generally that means that the agreement itself ceases to exist as well as the dissolved entity upon its dissolution (or death).

I explained this in my Blog article quite a few years ago.  Here is a link to that article >>> https://robintilbrook.blogspot.com/2012/12/england-to-be-free-of-eu-in-2014.html

The article below by Alan Cochrane is also interesting but is of course yet again looking at the Union from the Scottish perspective rather than from the point of view of English nationalists. 

In short I think Theresa May’s proposed deal may actually fill the sails of English nationalists and of English nationalism because our way of thinking will then be the only practical way of coming out of the EU. 

What do you think?  Here is Alan Cochrane’s article :-

Warring Tories have put a hurricane in the sail of the nationalists 

With the Conservative Party tearing itself and the government of Theresa May asunder last night, one of its hitherto more successful parts appeared to be also heading for the intensive care ward.

In a bitter, and unprecedented Cabinet-level war, the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party accused resigning Brexiteer ministers of threatening to wreck the United Kingdom. In one of the most outspoken attacks one senior minister has ever launched against colleagues, former or otherwise, David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, described Dominic Raab and Esther McVey as “carpetbaggers”.

Just for good measure, he claimed that Mr Raab’s departure was more about a future leadership bid than the Brexit deal.

In their resignation letters, the former Brexit and Work and Pensions Secretaries had both cited the threat to the Union posed by the fact that special provisions were proposed for Northern Ireland in Mrs May’s withdrawal deal.

And there is little doubt that this escalation in insults reflected the fact that the Northern Ireland aspect of the deal has put immediate and intense pressure on Mr Mundell and, also to a lesser extent, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader.

Their partnership has been largely responsible for the revival of the Conservatives north of the border – leaping from one MP to 13 at the last general election and forming the official opposition to the SNP at the Scottish Parliament.

However, significantly, at least in terms of their current embarrassment, both signed an open letter to the Prime Minister last month in which they threatened to resign if there was a “differentiated deal” agreed for Northern Ireland. And, no matter how you cut it, that is precisely what is contained in the deal Mrs May put to her Cabinet on Wednesday.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the view expressed in Scottish Tory circles that Mr Raab and Ms McVey used the threat to the Union as “cover” for their resignations. And I can also understand Mr Mundell’s intense irritation that many of the most ardent Brexiteers care little for the maintenance of the Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Indeed, I can’t remember any of them making an appearance during the Scottish independence referendum campaign four years ago.

That’s neither here nor there now, however. No amount of name-calling and foot stamping will alter the plain fact that, by including a distinctive feature for Northern Ireland after Brexit in the deal, the Prime Minister has done two things: she’s delivered a major boost to the SNP, whose sole aim is the break-up of Britain, and she’s ignored the warnings she received from Mr Mundell and Ms Davidson.

In one of the great ironies of the situation, the nationalists claim that Scotland should be given a different deal from the rest of the UK but haven’t got it, whereas Northern Ireland is getting one but its majority party doesn’t want it. And yesterday First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed that Ulster’s special treatment would give it an unfair trading advantage over Scotland.

There is a hope within Scottish Conservative circles that Mrs May might yet be able to retrieve the situation by clarifying and playing down the differences in the deal for Northern Ireland. But given the furious reaction from DUP MPs yesterday, she has a mountain to climb in that direction.

Nevertheless, the Scottish Tories’ main problem is that threatening letter sent to the PM and signed by Mr Mundell and Ms Davidson. It was seen at the time, by some observers, as a silly piece of grandstanding and it has now come back to bite them – hard.

Ms Davidson is on maternity leave and, last night Mr Mundell said he was staying put, insisting that he would fight on for the maintenance of the UK, adding: “That’s what I’m focused on, not being the heart of some soap opera of resignations and I’m not going to be bounced into resigning by carpetbaggers.”

Notwithstanding his determination to fight on and his angry words about his now former colleagues, I’m sure that he wishes he hadn’t signed that letter. It’s boxed him in, good and proper.

"No defence for shrinking the military in times of terror"

"No defence for shrinking the military in times of terror"

Sometimes in all the fog of fake news and pointless or downright silly opinion pieces there shines through an article of real insight. Here is a really good example of one such.



It is sober reading for all who want to know the genuine geo-strategic situation of the UK.



It is only by understanding this kind of issue that we can get a real bearing on just how close to collapse the vainglorious post imperial British political system has now come to.


What do think?



Sunday Telegraph 17thSEPTEMBER 2017

General Lord Richards interviewed by Simon Heffer

"No defence for shrinking the military in times of terror"

In one of London’s grandest military clubs, its walls hung with portraits of moustachioed generals and field marshals evoking an age when Britain’s Armed Forces were perhaps the finest in the world, General Lord Richards and I discuss how well the country is defended today. Despite David Richards’s measured tones, it is an unsettling conversation.

He retired as Chief of the Defence Staff, a post he had held for three years, in 2013. Before that, he had been Chief of the General Staff. Lord Richards saw plenty of action. He did three tours of Northern Ireland and commanded the 4th Armoured Brigade in Germany in the 1990s. He served in East Timor and Sierra Leone, where his initiative prevented revolutionaries from overthrowing the capital, Freetown, in 2000.

He then commanded Nato’s rapid reaction force, and the international force in Afghanistan, before becoming Commander-in-Chief, Land Forces. He brought a high level of practical soldiering to the CDS’s job, and it still underpins his thinking.

I ask him whether the world has become more dangerous since he retired. “I think it’s at least as dangerous, and potentially more. I give advice on geostrategy to governments around the world, and if I were to look at Britain, I’d say it’s a particularly dangerous time for a country that’s steering an unknown course post-Brexit and has global pretensions.”

North Korea is one such danger. “I think Kim [Jong-un] has no intention of provoking a war,” he says. “He knows it would be the end of him. But my worry is that he miscalculates, and America is forced to intervene. And the result of a military intervention will, in the short term, be awful. There should be a diplomatic outcome in which Russia – or, more likely, China – is the major influence.”

And what could Britain do? “Very little. This is not something we could any longer become involved in. Even if the new aircraft carrier were up and running, why would we send it all the way over there to add a few planes to the American effort? This is not one for us.

"For Britain, with its Army of 78,000 and its Navy of 20 frigates and destroyers, to have the conceit to think it can fight a war in the Far East is almost laughable. Our practical role should be confined to Nato, Africa and the Middle East. We lost all other capability not in the recent cuts, but in the cuts of the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War.”

A year after Lord Richards ceased being CDS, he compared Britain’s declining capability to that of a “banana republic”. Now he says: “I exaggerated for effect. We’re certainly not at the banana republic stage. But the runes are not good.

“The nation’s apparent ambitions are not going to be met without putting significant amounts of fresh money into defence. At a time when we are leaving the European Union and there’s much talk of being global, and with a navy that effectively cannot get out more than 12 to 14 destroyers and frigates, even if you look just at the maritime component of military power, things don’t look good. It hardly fits an image of a prosperous Britain with active, vibrant, sizeable Armed Forces that can influence other nations.”

Some of the decisions that cut the Forces were taken on Lord Richards’s watch. “I do feel guilty in that I was part of a process that led to very disappointing outcomes. In 2010, when I took over as CDS, the decisions on the Strategic Defence and Security Review had been taken. Even David Cameron said it hadn’t been very sensible to let another CDS be the major influence on this.

"I should have owned the process. The way I rationalised it was that that country was in a hell of a state. We agreed to a 7.8 per cent cut, but were given all sorts of promises that, come 2015, things would improve: and I think, to be fair to David Cameron, he meant to deliver.

“But there was another cut the following year, and in 2015, while there was in theory a one per cent increase in equipment, overall there was a cut. So the Army today is far smaller than I signed up to as CGS, which I think was 94,000. My successor agreed to a cut to 82,000, and it’s only 78,000 today.”

A plan to use reservists to bolster the numbers has failed. “I’m afraid it hasn’t been able to deliver and never will, because of real combat capability. However proficient they are, a part-time soldier cannot be as effective as someone who’s devoted his life to it and puts on a uniform every day.”

Despite Kim’s instability, he says that “extremism in all its forms, notably jihadism, is the biggest threat. I don’t buy the idea that Russia need be the big threat everyone says it could be. There are regimes – and North Korea is obviously one – that could be pitched into doing things they perhaps don’t intend to. One day you can find yourselves fighting a war you didn’t expect, and I suspect we are neither psychologically nor physically ready for that to happen.”

I press him about Russia. “I think we’ve mishandled Russia since the end of the Cold War. I think good diplomacy, of which military activity is a part, and clear red lines will enable us to have a good relationship. We share many things in common, not least a concern about extremism. Russia doesn’t need to become a threat. In any case, we’re all dependent on America for any effective response to Russian aggression.”

The Libyan intervention also happened under Lord Richards: he says it was prompted by Downing Street saying that “we cannot have a Srebenica on our watch”, referring to massacre of Muslims in Bosnia in 1995. “Bearing in mind we had no plan for what came next, I had the temerity to say: ‘This is an opportunity to pause and negotiate with Gaddaffi.’

"But it had become a regime change operation, and there was a view in Paris and London that we were on a roll and ought to finish the job off. Asking what the plan was then was an inconvenient question. You shouldn’t go to war unless you have a good plan that you are confident in for the day after.”

He adds: “Even in 2011, Britain and France could not run a war against a pretty minor dictator, because of the technicalities of a modern military operation. We needed Nato, because we needed America. That should have been another lesson.”

Nor was Libya the only problem “Back in 2012, I gave the Government a plan to deal with Assad. There was no interest in it. We did enough to keep the war going, but not enough to give our putative allies there a chance to win.

"I said if our Government were not prepared to do this then it would be best to let Assad win and win quickly, because otherwise we were fomenting all sorts of other problems further downstream – but that was politically unacceptable. So we let it drag on. Then Russia intervened and demonstrated the decisive use of the military instrument. And now we are tacitly supporting Assad, because the real enemy is Isis.”

He claims that, then, Islamic State "was not a huge military challenge. They could have been dealt with in weeks. Now there are five to 10 million Syrians displaced, their lives ruined, hundreds of thousands killed. Much of that could have been avoided by early decisive action. But we couldn’t contribute the sort of force we had in 1990-91, or in 2003.

“If our ambition is to be the second military power within Nato, and to be conspicuously proficient so that the Americans see us as their partner of choice, then having a navy of 19 ships, 12 or 13 of which might be available, but even some of those prevented from getting out of harbour because of financial constraints, then we are in a pretty sorry state.”

He feels his own service is struggling. “The Army, which has made a gallant effort to retain all its skills, can’t do so because it can’t re-train soldiers to the highest degree. The Challenger tank becomes obsolete in four years. The Warrior vehicles are 1970s designs. There’s a lot of gesture strategy – putting 200 or 300 people in somewhere. We’ve got 350-500 people in Afghanistan now, but there’s a debate about whether we should do more, as America now is.

"It’s a prime example of how our forces can fight extremism. If Afghanistan collapsed tomorrow, because we haven’t finished the job properly, we’d have to start all over again and sort it out. We couldn’t leave Afghanistan as a massive rogue state exporting extremism around the region and to us.”

He believes the Army is desperately short of soldiers. “I think mass matters hugely. That’s why the numbers of ships in the Royal Navy and the number of planes in the RAF are so important, too. A ship can only be in one place at a time: and an example of where we are caught short through and absence of ships has been the hurricane in the West Indies. It’s not just fighting wars, extremism or insurgencies in which you need mass.”

Mass, of course, costs money. “Our ambitions and the requirements of the various challenges we are confronting cannot be matched by the capabilities we have.” The new aircraft carriers, which he opposed, “are having a huge distorting effect on the rest of the defence budget. Now we have them we have to make them work. But you make them work at the expense of the rest of the Navy, of the RAF and of the Army.”

He says we may have to revert to being “a maritime nation with a good little Navy, with the Army put on the back burner and used only in very selective ways. If we go on as we are, we won’t even deliver on the government’s goals for defence.”

Although retired, he is constantly among soldiers of all ranks - and discerns that morale is “fragile”.

“At the moment there’s a consensus that joining the Forces, whether you’re heir to the throne or the son of a dustman, is a good thing. If the government breaks that consensus by not looking after the people in the Armed Forces properly, word will get out. It will affect potential recruits and those we wish to retain.

“These people aren’t idiots. They know the sums don’t stack up. Recruitment and retention are very difficult. I think there’s a question about the government’s commitment, notwithstanding the much-vaunted military covenant, to people rather than equipment.”

He is concerned that married quarters aren’t being properly maintained, and there’s no commitment to their provision in the long term. The Major government sold them to the private sector, and from 2021, the owners can charge a commercial rent.

“It all creates doubt and worry, and so people take the chance to leave when they might previously have continued a career with the Armed Forces.”

He hopes an element of defence spending might soon be included in our overseas aid contribution of 0.7 per cent of GDP, to pay for more “mass” – and he knows ministers, including Priti Patel, the Overseas Development Secretary, share his frustration that it isn’t already.

“I think the Government must conduct a campaign with those who write the rules, and if that doesn’t work unilaterally extract themselves from the process. To not be able to include the military contribution to overseas aid is ridiculous.”

But then, he concludes: “There is an absence of grand strategic thinking in Whitehall. Where is Britain trying to position herself in the world in 20 or 30 years time? And where is the plan to get us there?”

It sounds like a challenge to Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, who rarely allows the present CDS to speak in public on such matters, and only then when he has vetted the remarks. Grand strategy, like our first-world defence capability, seems already a thing of the past: and Lord Richards is unlikely to be alone in expressing the concerns that such a vacuum inevitably raises.
Here is a link to the original article >>> General Lord Richards: Why I'm certain North Korea won't start a war

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/general-lord-richards-certain-north-korea-wont-start-war/

ENGLAND AND WALES: IS IT TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?

ENGLAND AND WALES: IS IT TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?

I recently wrote an article about the above for publication on the Institute for Welsh Affairs’ website “Click on Wales”. It was published slightly amended here >>> England and Wales: is it time to split the legal system? - Click on Wales

http://www.iwa.wales/click/2017/03/england-wales-time-split-legal-system/



Here is my full original article:-

ENGLAND AND WALES – TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?

There are now beginning to be moves afoot to split the unitary “jurisdiction” of England and Wales into two separate national jurisdictions.


In many ways such a split is not as radical a move as it might seem, bearing in mind that there are already separate jurisdictions in Scotland; in Northern Ireland; in the Isle of Man and in the Channel Isles with different Judges, procedures and often different substantive legal rules. Separate jurisdictions do not necessarily cause much practical difficulty in dealing with either civil matters or criminal matters. What it does however mean is that there would be separate legal professions.


Furthermore, even outside the Commonwealth, jurisdictions like Southern Ireland have relatively similar rules.


The jurisdictions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and quite a few others of the old Empire/Commonwealth are similar to. There are also often less differences between their legal systems and the English/Welsh legal system than there is with the Roman Law based jurisdiction in Scotland.


It is more difficult to deal with continental European systems since they are not based on Common Law principles but rather on civil law codes deriving from Roman Law, with substantively different legal rules and often dramatically different legal procedures!


My interest in the splitting of the current unitary jurisdiction of “England and Wales” into two national ones was first raised by a discussion that I had some months ago with a senior Welsh Judge who said that he wants to see a split.


Then, just before Christmas, the Law Society Gazette had an article called in the printed version “A bridge too far” talking about splitting the jurisdictions. The on-line edition was called: English solicitors 'could pay extra to practise in Wales'. (It can be found here >>> https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/english-solicitors-could-pay-extra-to-practise-in-wales/5059013.article)

Increasingly the Welsh Parliament/Senedd are legislating for Wales, in a way that is different than the legislation for England. There will therefore come a time very soon when it no longer makes sense to have a single jurisdiction.


Putting my hat on as Chairman of the English Democrats rather than as a solicitor I would also welcome separation of the jurisdictions as being an important step in the direction of Independence between our two Nations. In our modern world there is no reason why our two separate Nations should be constrained into the same grossly expensive and inefficient, grandiose and extravagant UK State!



If I were a Welsh solicitor or barrister I would be optimistic about the prospects of a successful separate Welsh Jurisdiction.



As long as the Welsh Government could be persuaded to reduce the currently absolutely ridiculous level of court fees, by which the British Government has been exploiting litigants in the “England and Wales” jurisdiction there would be real benefits.



The Welsh Government would then have the right to run its own Legal Aid scheme. This could be more like the successful Scottish one and less like the unfair disaster that the “British” Government has created.



It should also be pointed out that the Welsh Government ought to want to take-over the judicial appointments system, which in England and Wales is currently very politicised.



Judges here are currently appointed and promoted by the Judicial Appointments Commission. The JAC was set up by Lord Derry Irvine, when he was Tony Blair’s Lord Chancellor, which he publically boasted would prevent the appointment or promotion of “those with reactionary views”. This aim might appeal to you or repulse you depending on which side you stand on politically, but what cannot be denied is that this is an expressly political criterion for the appointment of Judges. It is wholly inappropriate to getting the best lawyers appointed as Judges. It is also contrary to providing the best service to those who use the court system!



Far from being a problem the separate jurisdictions could make the Welsh jurisdiction very attractive and might lead to many businesses having a Welsh-only legal jurisdiction clause in commercial contracts since there would be less expense and less delay and perhaps a better selection of sensible Welsh Judges.



Also from an economic point of view the current arrangements are clearly not working very well for Welsh lawyers as it appears that fees in Wales are dramatically lower than those in England.




A separate and overhauled and sensibly rationalised completely Welsh legal system could well be much more competitive with the English jurisdiction and provide a boost not only to Welsh lawyers but also to the Welsh economy.



As the Gazette article says:- “The buildings are all here (in Wales), the judges are all here. More is spent per head in England,’ said Hughes. ‘At the moment Wales is not gaining [in terms of] access to justice. SMEs in Wales are subsidising multi-million-pound litigation between oligarchs in London. That does nothing for the community in Wales – the fees are not coming back.’



A legally independent Wales would be able to do ‘imaginative’ things to enhance access, Hughes suggested, such as introduce a contingency legal aid fund. ‘Wales would not be a particularly small common law jurisdiction. If it were a US state, 20 [states] would be smaller,’ he added.



‘The problems of the Wales bill are largely to do with the mania for preserving a fused jurisdiction,’ said Hughes. ‘But the bill is a con. It is not a reserved powers model on any sensible understanding. There is a presumption against competence in private law.



’Since our pamphlet came out the Assembly has come out in support of a separate jurisdiction and the Welsh government is using the arguments we put forward – both economic and constitutional.’



As both an English Solicitor and also as the Chairman of the English Democrats, I welcome these moves. Also if any reader in Wales supports a separate Welsh legal system then I would urge them to write to their Assembly Members and MP to lobby them to support a separate legal system. Do not forget also to write in to Barrister David Hughes, of 30 Park Place Chambers in Cardiff, supporting him as well!

THE UK TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

THE UK TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

Back in the 17th Century there was a popular song called ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ which it is said that the band of the British Garrison played as they marched out after the surrender at Yorktown to the American rebels to make the point they thought that it was contrary to the natural order of the world for “Yankee Doodle” to have beaten the world conquering Red Coats of the British Army. Here is a link which includes the tune third >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-N0ckzU1mI

Above is a picture of the surrender at Yorktown.

Although no such tune was played in the recent General Election it may be, with hindsight, that the result in Scotland will be seen as a similarly epoch marking change. Yorktown occurred before the United Kingdom came into existence in 1801 with the Union with the Kingdom of Ireland. It did of course however come after the foundation Union of the United Kingdom in 1707 between the Kingdoms of England and Scotland to create the new United Kingdom of Great Britain.

It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain which is again under threat as a result of the almost total victory of the Scottish National Party in Scotland reducing each of the three British Establishment parties to a rump of one MP only. It isn’t now only Conservative MPs that there are less of in Scotland than pandas. The same applies to both the Liberal Democrat MPs and Labour MPs! It is the 56 (out of 59) SNP MPs that will over the next 5 years until the next General Election on the 7th May 2020 that will mark out the increasing need for a nationalist voice for England. There is of course only one political party that is interested in being that voice, which is of course the English Democrats.

That brings me on to the next most interesting result in the General Election which was the nemesis of UKIP. All the academic commentators including Drs Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford had pointed out in their studies that UKIP’s appeal depended to a very large extent upon an English nationalist base.

It always was a contradiction that a party with a British nationalist leadership should actually depend upon an English nationalist support base. UKIP, despite the books and articles published about it, which I think should have been a matter of detailed and careful study by the leadership of UKIP, failed to learn the lesson and during the course of the General Election published a manifesto which managed to barely mention England let alone provide for a proper English nationalist vote winning set of policies. As a result UKIP had left clear space on the political spectrum for the Conservative Party to “triangulate” them.

We therefore then had the spectacle of a specifically English manifesto being launched by the Conservatives. It was therefore a strange backdrop to the great change of heart that seems to have occurred amongst the electorate at the last moment that in fact the party that was ticking most of the boxes of English nationalism (with talk of reducing immigration, an EU referendum, English votes for English laws, and an English manifesto and talking up the need for fairness for England) should in fact be the generally fairly anti-English Conservative and Unionist party whose Leader not so very long ago had been talking about his determination to fight “Little Englanders” wherever he found them!

In contrast the party that had been talked up as being a potential voice for English nationalism, namely UKIP, went from bad to worse not only with his interview by their MEP for Scotland in which he made clear that he thought UKIP were all about maintenance of the British Union (rather than of course about England). Click here >>> https://youtu.be/QSuT0JjgSjY

Then, a few days later, UKIP actually launched a specifically Scottish manifesto without having done anything of the sort for England. Nigel Farage even talked about increasing the Barnet Formula rip-off of English taxpayers to give the Welsh yet more of English taxpayers’ money!

The UKIPs mis-positioning of itself on the English question, which for some commentators seems wholly inexplicable but seemed quite inevitable to me, given what I have seen of the internal party politics at the leadership level of UKIP, not only left the Conservative Party in a good position to undermine UKIPs appeal, but it also undermined UKIP’s position in trying to get the English white working class vote to come over to them in many former Labour seats. (Click here for an academic article on this >>> http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-shy-english-nationalists-who-won-it-for-the-tories-and-flummoxed-the-pollsters/ ).

So far as Labour was concerned the Conservative appeal to English nationalism and also their scaremongering over the impact of the Scottish National Party, not only insured an even more massively impressive result for the Scottish National Party in Scotland, but also unsettled some of Labour’s support in England.

Whilst the Conservative appeal to English nationalism has delivered a bumper and largely undeserved harvest to the Conservative Party in this election, the long term effect may well be of much greater interest to us English nationalists.

The fact is of course that for the first time one of the major British Establishment parties (since the First World War) has appealed to and called upon English nationalism to help it. In the long term I think that can only do the English nationalist cause good as English nationalism has now become much more of a mainstream phenomenon.

Interestingly I am aware that even the Conservative Party had great difficulty in placing stories that were pro-English nationalism in the “mainstream media”. Also their very appeal to it raised a storm of protest by all sorts of media luvvies. One of the results is that the media has come out of cover and exposed itself as being infested with Anglophobes (anti-English).

The Anglophobic British media is a factor in national politics in England which we English nationalists need to deal with. In my view we need to be looking at an assertive policy of attempting to get anyone who comes out with Anglophobic views not only prosecuted, but, if at all possible, excluded from journalism by Ofcom. Until we make Anglophobia as dangerous to the careers of journalists as racism, Islamophobia and homophobia are currently seen to be, we cannot hope to make an effective breakthrough without being unfairly blocked or attacked by the Anglophobia British mainstream media.

The other feature of course of the General Election was the probable end of the Liberal Democrats. Given that the only purpose to many of its voters of the Liberal Democrats Party was simply that it was a vote for none of the above and, as it turned out, that only a few of their votes were actually for Liberal Democrats’ policies it is difficult to see them making a recovery or indeed of there being any point in there being any such recovery.

In short, I think this General Election will turn out to be a sea change that nationalists will look back on with some affection as we move more towards nationalism as the driving force in our politics!