Deeper Into Darkness?

The imminent electoral victory of Nigel Farage’s facade of a party into an institution they despise, and the possible arrival of Boris Johnson into No 10 is causing apoplexy in the two main political parties who may be facing a near-death experience. Have no sympathy. It’s a bin-fire entirely of their own making by decades of Jeremy Kyle politics, contempt for ordinary people and simultaneously stoking and assuaging racism in many forms. It’s too late for a “moderate Conservatism” or a “return to the middle ground” to emerge from the carnage of Brexit or the endless prevarication of the Labour shambles. Mainstream British politics is being broken in the maelstrom of toxicity it helped create. As Farage’s notional “party” – in reality it’s essentially a website, a shell company and front for dark money – sucks up all of the Brexit anger – Labour voters are defecting to the Liberals and Tories are defecting to the Brexit Party.

In this scenario it’s entirely futile and at least a decade too late for Sir John Major and former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine to demand an end to the “virus of extremism” that has divided the country and left the Conservative Party trailing in fourth place in two opinion polls for the European elections. Heseltine revealed that for the first time he will not vote Conservative but will cast his ballot for the Liberal Democrats, dismissing his party as “myopically focused on forcing through the biggest act of economic self-harm ever undertaken by a democratic government”. He said the party was infected by a virus and risked descending “deeper into darkness”.

Will Hutton has noticed that:

Boris Johnson, a charlatan and an inveterate liar, will complete the transmutation of the Tory party into an ultra right-wing English nationalist party. All those preparing to save Corbyn after these catastrophic Euro elections need to reflect that Johnson prays he stays leader.

But all is flux and chaos.

Hutton may be right that Corbyn’s strategy is a disaster in Europe, but less so in England. A survey out polling people in England yesterday suggested Jeremy Corbyn is preferred PM and most likely to improve schools and NHS, with 26% of voters saying he would make the best PM, pipping Theresa May on 25%.

What does this mean in Scotland?

Currently YouGov polling shows (YouGov Scotland):

SNP: 38%
BXP: 19.8%
Green: 11%
Lab: 10.2%
Con: 10%
Lib Dem: 7%
ChUK: 2%
UKIP: 2%

That would result in  a change from the current tally of six Scottish seats: 2 SNP, 2 Labour, 1 Conservative, 1 Ukip to 3 SNP, 1 Brexit Party 1, 1 Green 1, 1 Labour and no Conservatives.

As Kirsty Hughes, the Director of the Scottish Centre on European Elections points out that: 

“The Brexit Party is ahead in all regions for European Parliament elections except London with Libdems ahead & in Scotland with the SNP ahead. Latest poll: 3 MEPs for SNP & 1 each for Lab, Greens & Brexit party in Scotland, none for Tories or Libs. Scottish politics is essentially distinct.”

It would mean that Alyn Smith, Christian Allard, Aileen McLeod would be elected for the SNP, Maggie Chapman would be elected for the Scottish Greens, David Martin for Labour and Louis Stedman-Bryce for the Brexit Party.

This result, if born out in actual voting would represent an extinction event for the short-lived Change UK, a portrait of failed opportunism, a testimony to the staying power of the SNP and a major victory for the Scottish Green Party. It would also mean a personal disaster for Richard Leonard as his own MEPs turn on the abject failure of Corbyn’s Brexit strategy. Whilst this week has centred on the Tories efforts to slide Theresa May out of office with as little shame and blood on the walls as they can manage, the reality is that both Corbyn and Leonard’s leaderships are also on a shoogley-peg. Labour’s campaign – only nominally “overseen” by either Leonard or Corbyn, but for which they are responsible, is as ineffective & useless a Labour campaign as ever been seen in a Euro elections. The desultory Labour offering looks like they will have started off in first place, fell to second and now in many polls are trailing in third place. The result would also be a disaster for Ruth Davidson’s ailing return as she aims to distance herself from her parties right-turn and her own discredited and empty campaign.

Does any of this matter?

These are elections for an entity we (Britain) may not be part of after Halloween. Paul Hutcheon argues that it will not have any bearing on the next Holyrood election, and he may be right. Scottish voters have become accustomed to traversing through the modalities and different voting systems of council, national, UK and Euro elections. The Brexit process has bizarrely breathed new life into European elections people previously ignored in huge numbers.

There are dangers and ironies in what is essentially a protest vote at the Euro elections. The Brexit Party may destroy the Conservative Party but have nothing to offer in a domestic Westminster election. The Labour Party may succeed in the remarkable achievement of resuscitating the moribund Liberal Democrats from the grave, but fail to capitalise on the internal collapse of the Tories as they stagger to the right and become even more toxic to many across the whole of Britain.

In Scotland, we have the life raft option of voting against the relentless xenophobia of contemporary Britain and the basket of lies and liars as represented by Farage’s Brexit Party.   Five key questions remain:

  1. As the mountain of evidence stacks up about the dark money behind Farage and the Brexit Party will this make any difference?
  2. Can the Green Party sustain the sort of surge there’s been across Europe?
  3. How far will the collapse of Labour and Conservatives translate into domestic UK politics?
  4. How far will the far-right advance across Europe?
  5. What impact will a disastrous Euro election have for Richard Leonard and Ruth Davidson’s leadership?

 

 

 

 

 

Comments (28)

Leave a Reply to Chris Connolly Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

  1. Mark Bevis says:

    NW England – leaflets through door re EU elections – 1 Green, 2 Tommy Robinson, 2 Labour, 2 Farage
    (I kept the Green one, binned the rest).
    We have the absurdity of “parties” standing for election into a system they want abolished. By that logic then, they would resign on being elected. But no doubt the EU gravy train will be too tempting…..

    One thing for sure we need, as current state of politics shows, is a PR system in the UK parliament, FPTP is clearly failing when each of the main parties has multiple factions, mostly spread across the neo-liberal spectrum. Whilst the neo-liberals hold the MSM though, it can only get worse.

    In some ways it is merely a sideshow, competing to see which will collapse first – the political system, the economic system or the environmental system? All of which we need to maintain civilisation as we currently know it.
    Forward thinking activists should be looking at building a civilisation as we currently don’t know it, that only relies on the environmental system. Although, with 60% of that system now deceased and the rest in decline, is it even possible to build any alternative civilisation now?

  2. Jo says:

    Is anyone else worried about what’s currently going on in the SNP and the extraordinary attacks on Joanna Cherry in particular?

    I don’t necessarily disagree with Mike’s take here on the state of the other Parties but I’m quite alarmed about the situation with Cherry. The Herald is claiming today that a “senior SNP figure” has labelled Cherry the SNP’s Boris! What sort of ridiculous quote is that and who are the people behind this very clear crusade to bring Cherry down?

    There is a sequence of events that stinks. The people involved are indulging in filthy tactics which will, I’m sure, delight the media but ultimately create division and strife within the Party. Shame on them.

    1. Legerwood says:

      I would be very careful if I were you as to how much credence you assign to any quite in the Herald from ‘unknown sources’. Just a few short weeks ago the Sunday Herald blazoned a headline all over its front page that bore little if any relation to the content of the actual article or the actual quotes from the named sources in the article., but, as intended, provoked a response. Again, however, the author of the article referred to ‘unnamed sources’ and attributed remarks to them. Why when you have 3 prominent members of the SNP being quoted do you have to go for ‘unnamed sources’?

      The Herald/Sunday Herald have kept the pot boiling on this angle and you have to ask why. Who gains?

      1. Jo says:

        Legerwood

        I agree that great care should be taken these days when reading anything in the Herald. It has sunk to depths that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

        That said, we’ve seen some events of concern. We’ve had the leaking of private messages between SNP elected representatives. We then had the leaking of details about a Commons investigation concerning complaints brought by people who worked for Ms Cherry. Some of those people were prepared to speak to journalists and label her a bully, a transphobe and even a homophobe. Damaging indeed. All while the investigation is ongoing.

        I don’t question anyone’s right to bring a complaint but when details are then passed to newspapers I call that a deliberate attempt to destroy a person’s reputation and character even before an independent body can form conclusions on the original complaint. And I call that malicious and devious.

        Joanna Cherry’s profile has risen considerably in recent months thanks to her contributions during the many Brexit debates. It seems odd that she has now become the target of a vicious campaign to seriously damage her.

        It’s all very well to say we should ignore tittle tattle. The fact remains, this poison is being fed to the Herald and to others. It’s also becoming the norm to use the media in order to destroy the reputations of others…and the sad fact is, the media doesn’t much care whether allegations are true or not. It seems clear to me that there are definitely problems within the SNP and some real pieces of work too!

        1. Legerwood says:

          Yes it is wrong for people to go public when they have lodged a complaint but are they SNP party members?

          Again, is the ‘campaign’ being bigged up by the Herald and other news sources? Lots of articles but not much meat on the bones each article just rehashing a previous article. Currently several articles about Ms Cherry in the Herald and online Herald but no comments. Odd . Not like the Herald to pass up the chance of lots of comments.

          1. Marga says:

            You’ll no doubt think “what’s Catalonia got to do with It” but the indy crisis leading to current state crackdown started with outing of founding Catalán figure (Salmond?) in moral scandal then series of character assassinations, and election tampering, all revealed now as state black ops (Operatión Catalonia). The establishment complicit.

            Farage outrunner of a deeper problem,? Black money seems awash in UK and there’s noone at home in the democratic institutions.

            The Cherry slur sounds all too familiar, expect more. Where do your judges & police stand? In Cat 2 yrs ago this sounded crazy too and look at us now

    2. Is there a connection here I’ve missed?

      1. Jo says:

        I think there’s a connection if we’re talking about the state of the various Parties as we approach the EU elections.

  3. William Habib Steele says:

    Questions: 1. does the Scottish Government and Parliament have a duty to save Scotland from the harm that the English Government and the English parties’ branch offices in Scotland will cause after Brexit? 2. Should the SNP stop being nice to the Unionist English government of the UK and pursue a more radical course? 3. Since, under International Law, the Scottish Parliament elected by the Sovereign People of Scotland has the right to resile the Treaty of Union and revoke the Act of Union, should it go ahead and do so if it wins a majority in the EU elections, and follow those Acts by a confirmatory referendum, which if Yes wins it would begin negotiations as an independent state with the English parliament for the just sharing of assets?
    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/12/the-scottish-parliament-does-have-the-right-to-withdraw-from-the-act-of-union/?fbclid=IwAR1qusDGh12Jqivd6-GcnVSaOF3iy9loIUepK5da2W5Fl5hHZ4k82pwyJdI

  4. Welsh Sion says:

    East of England here.

    Promotional leaflets from Greens, Labour and Lib Dems and English Democrats so far. No one seems to knock on doors anymore seeking to persuade you to give them your vote. (Not that I could anyway, or those who haven’t bothered, being a Member of the two National Parties – but I can’t vote for them, either.) What a comment on the state of ‘shamocracy’ in these islands. Thinking of spoiling my ballot paper …

  5. Justin Kenrick says:

    So the likelihood is the following sequence:

    1. Brexit Party tops the EU polls in the UK on Thursday (except London and Scotland), 
    2. T May resigns in June, 
    3. B Johnson becomes PM, and runs the clock down to the default Halloween Brexit, and 
    4. The only hope is a general election to stop him, and the chances are high that that will deliver N Farage as PM, 

    If we see this as a symptom of our democratic/ emotional/ social/ planetary health being smashed by a system geared to profit not care, then here’s three small suggestions:

    1. Vote Green on Thursday to signal that we need to get out of the whole mess
    2. Join autumn’s Extinction Rebellion (XR). 
    3. Join the move to transform a system that feeds off fear, by instead creating a deep democracy of hope. 

    XR’s proposal is for a citizens assembly made up of a (randomly selected) representative sample of ordinary people, whose task is to assess the evidence and decide the actions needed to tackle the cause of the climate/ ecological/ social emergency we are in. 

    People want decisive leadership. 

    The only decisive leadership that is trustworthy is that of the people themselves. 

    Using a deliberative form where there is time to consider evidence and expert witnesses, where no one is there because of party or other allegiances, where they have the power to make the decisions our political system seems designed to stop politicians being able to make (even if they wanted to). 

    This would require us taking the risk of trusting ordinary people, which is exactly what our system pours huge resources into making sure we won’t want to do. 

    We can do it. 

    We can take the right risk, the one through which we can reestablish a system based on trust, rather than always try to lessen the risk by choosing the lesser of two evils and be always surprised evil-doing continues.

  6. Derek Henry says:

    Missed the elephant in the room again Mike.

    You’ll do almost anything to avoid talking about it when writing articles on brexit from a Scottish perspective.

    The highlight of the MMT conferences in Scotland for me was when Warren was asked to explain his view how Italy could leave the Euro. He talked about it for 3 secs then turned to Tim Rideout and said to Tim Rideout the EU is not going go to change is it and Tim agreed.

    Next time you put world currency experts on your site why not ask them what their view is on the EU ? Why not ask them to give their view on the EU and Nicola’s position ?

    Instead of just using them to get independence at all costs and end up being trapped by the Growth and stability pact, 2 pack, 6 pack, excessive debt proceedure and the corrective arm ? Not to mention all of the other crap that comes with the neoliberal globalist EU treaties.

    What was it the currency experts said again. ” As an independent nation you would need rocks in your head wanting to be at the heart of Europe ”

    What are you afraid of Mike ?

    The truth ?

    By not talking about the EU or writing about the EU in any way shape or form all that’s happend is the Indy movement has allowed Farage to move into that space. Farage couldn’t believe his luck it was an open goal for him. The indy movement continues to ignore France, Italy, Poland and what happened in Greece and the rise of populism everywhere. Just writes and speaks as if the EU is going to save them as if the EU is a socialist paradise.

    I’ve wanted Indy all my life and wanted out of the EU ever since Mastricht and Lisbon treaties and now in Scotland I have nobody to vote for. That makes me a populist Mike. I’m neither a racist or xenophobic and infact my wife is German so I have more at stake in this than most. I’m just a guy who studied currencies and government accounts, central banking and commercial banking for nearly a decade that who will continue to warn Scottish people of the real dangers of EU membership.

    If the Indy movement want to stop the likes of Farage then they should go back to what they do best. Actually write and start talking about the HUGE pitfalls of EU membership which is not independence and at all. Let the Scottish people decide for themselves instead of just giving one side of the story.

    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=35572

    I will ask you again Mike. When an Indy Scotland will need to run 10-12% government budget deficits and high debt to GDP ratio’s to get the Indy we all want. How in any way, shape or form will that fit in with the EU rules of 3% deficits and debt to GDP ratio’s of 60% ?? Or are you just going to keep on ignoring it even though the currency experts are right ??

    The SNP have turned me into a populist a working class label I will wear like a badge of honour.

    1. You say: “Next time you put world currency experts on your site why not ask them what their view is on the EU ?”

      I dont remember putting world currency experts on my site. When did I do that?

      You ask: “What are you afraid of Mike?”

      You write: ‘The indy movement continues to ignore France, Italy, Poland and what happened in Greece and the rise of populism everywhere. Just writes and speaks as if the EU is going to save them as if the EU is a socialist paradise.”

      I certainly dont think the EU is a socialist paradise at all and have published many critical arguments about the flaws at the heart of Europe.

      I think you can be pro-European and internationalist, acknowledge the genuine concerns of many Leave voters but also highly critical of the elite forces and racism at the heart of much of Brexit campaigning. This is the position I hold.

      Nothing in particular, its just sometimes difficult to discern what you’re on about.

      1. Graeme Purves says:

        Indeed so!

  7. Chris Connolly says:

    I have taken a lot of abuse on here for defending the English working class but just now I wish I’d not bothered. After reading some of the reports of adoring Yorkshire ex-miners chanting “NI-GEL NI-GEL” in Featherstone (Featherstone!) and reading that my own good friend, a staunch socialist, reacted to his re-election to Wakefield Council by launching into a public rant about Yvette Cooper costing Labour votes in the former coalfield by opposing Brexit I’ve changed my mind. If that’s really how a majority of them feel (and I’m not convinced it really is a majority but I guess we are about to find out in a few days’ time) I’m not sticking up for them anymore. Why they think Brexit will benefit them I have no idea; I can only imagine that rampant xenophobia has taken over their brains.

    For 35 years the former miners of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire have been bitter enemies; it’s taken their shared racism to heal the wounds and bring them back together on the same side. How appalling is that?

    1. Derek Henry says:

      Only because you refuse to recognise what has happened.

      An immigration system that excludes EU immigrants that wouldn’t otherwise get a work visa instantly removes all those people who came to the UK to compete with the working-class sub-median wage earners. These were the people who voted in the largest numbers for Brexit. These people have paid the heaviest price of EU membership.

      Reintroducing a work visa system that is on same lines as every other civilised advanced nation outside the EU, solves that problem. Then only higher waged, higher skilled individuals come into the country from all over the world, but they compete with a different class of people and compete less because they are in areas with genuine skill shortages. From the point of view of the sub-median wage earner, immigration has ended. So the ex miners are happy.

      Maybe that’s why the middle class liberals the metropolitan elite love the EU so much. They know with a proper immigration policy they would be the ones that would need to compete for the jobs and not the poorest in society.

      Why the middle class liberals the metropolitan elite still believe in Empire and love stealing doctors and nurses from poor countries who actually need them themselves. They allow these poor countries to use up their real resources to train Doctors and nurses and then steal them. It’s immoral and unethical a begger thy neighbour policy. We are wealthy enough, smart enough and big enough to use our own real resources to train up our own nurses and Doctors.

      1. willie says:

        Sad fact is that we are not wealthy, smart and big enough to use our own real resources to train up the doctors that we need.

        Human capital is the key to a society’s wealth and wellbeing. Food banks, poverty, tuition fees, tuition debt, poverty – they’re the tickets that our neo liberal government deploy to ensure that only a portion of our human gene pool aspire to the educational levels that they are capable of.

        Genetics and the distribution of ability in the neo liberal thinking disregards and discriminates against the human development of huge swathes of our society.

        Low wage ands low education for the masses. That’s it. A navvy class and rationale for economic and social success. And like turkeys voting for an early Christmas the Scots voted for in in favour of a Westminster Tory government – and now a Euro exit.

        Ah well, they’re getting what they voted for. Better Together. How could one disagree?

    2. Jo says:

      Chris
      I honestly didn’t realise how strong the Leave vote was in England until I went through all the constituencies one day and I was really quite shocked. It also became clear how difficult the Labour position was in the aftermath.

      The rage is clear but it’s frightening too if there is more to it. When you see people like Robinson being courted things take an even more sinister turn. I think Thursday is definitely going to be depressing but goodness knows what’s still to come ….all because Cameron thought a single vote would kick the lunatics in his own Party into touch.

      1. Chris Connolly says:

        Indeed, Jo. I doubt that anyone would seriously deny that “Tommy Robinson” and his followers are exploiting the divisions over Brexit to gain more publicity for themselves, and in so doing increasing tensions in the North and Midlands of England.

        My mum lives in Chesterfield, on the cusp of the North/Midlands and in the heart of Brexitland. It’s a town with a proud history of working class solidarity, with its industry based on mining and heavy industry, all of which disappeared long before any immigrants from the EU or anywhere else came along to “compete” with the local workforce. Tony Benn was the town’s MP for 17 years. Unlike, say, Lincolnshire, where backbreaking labour tends to be performed by poor immigrants under the iron fist of a gangmaster, immigrants from Europe make up less than 1% of the local population, which is overwhelmingly white and British. Look in the Obituary column of the local rag and you’ll find that the vast majority of the deceased are described as “a lifelong resident of the district.” When I was at school there were a handful of kids with Polish surnames whose parents came over after WW2. I don’t remember any of them ever suffering any racial abuse; I’m still in touch with one of them and he tells me that he doesn’t remember ever being on the receiving end of any racism resulting from his dad being Polish and his name being Podgorski.

        Chesterfield voted 60/40 for Brexit. This is inexplicable to me for any reason other than xenophobia, whipped up by the tabloid newspapers that the townsfolk tend to read. Derek Henry’s analysis simply doesn’t apply there. The jobs disappeared during the 1980s and immigrants had nothing to do with it any more than they are “competing” on any meaningful level with the local population for the few that are left.

        1. Jo says:

          Chris

          Don’t tell anybody but I don’t read Derek’s posts any more! I’m not saying my own are perfect but I just scroll past his. There’s only so much you can take!

  8. Derek Henry says:

    Those in favour are an interesting coalition that make Farage and Galloway look like best mates. You have the corporatists on one side who want rule by wealth, and then on the other side you have those that appear to want to replace democracy with a liberal aristocracy (“rule of the best”) or technocracy (“rule by experts”). Hence their love of Higher Law.

    The liberal elite’s position is we need centralised parliaments under proportional representation at the EU level ‘to prevent extremism’. Which of course is code for ‘ensure nobody gets any power so they can change things’. Problem with PR as it largely seems to be a way of neutralising power so nothing gets done. What power there is is placed in the hands of the politicians since they get to decide *after the election* what on their manifesto gets discarded and what doesn’t. Hence a referendum on alternative vote rather than abolition of tuition fees.

    Why liberalism has failed in Scotland and why some of us now want independence. As the SNP found out they are running nothing more than a big county council.

    Once we leave the EU the restrictions on State Aid and access to the Scottish central bank would be lifted. Along with the requirement to compensate capitalists if we nationalise industries. So once we leave the EU we can nationalise the railways for a £1, nationalise the banks and cancel all the PFI contracts. And we can stop paying money to China on Gilts by using the ‘Ways and Means’ overdraft facility at the Bank of Scotland instead.

    The question for those wishing to remain in the EU is why they think we should have to pay millions to capitalists to recover assets that were stolen from us. Why we should have to maintain PFI contracts that are closing A&E departments and why we have to continue to pay millions in interest to other countries when we don’t need to.

    And that’s before we get onto the benefits of a government freed from the EU treaty shackles – direct investment and support of industry, a full job guarantee for all. House building and rated pensions and the rest of it that we all want.

    In terms of changing the EU from within. It is a futile exercise and is put forward by people who seem to be more energised by the continuing 40 year struggle than by actually gaining the ability to change anything. I do wonder whether the perpetual protesters want the EU to remain so that they don’t have to go get a proper job and just keep turning up at brand new shopping centres to cut a ribbon.

    The point is that outside the EU, you can make a case for massive spending on the NHS (because you have infinite fiscal capacity to do so, if you can find the staff and real resources!) and a net zero migration strategy. But to do that you have to dump the neo-liberal economic attitude and the bizarre focus on people overseas ahead of people here who actually may vote for you. In other words, we need an Opposition that debates the Hannans and the Farages on the issues that matter for the future.

    Once we have been freed from the UK and EU fiscal rules straitjacket. Asking for it to be put back on, because the new movement in your arms and legs is scary, looks a bit bonkers to anybody outside the echo chamber.

    The growth strategy of the UK has been for many years “import cheap labour to keep the middle classes in their delusions of grandeur”. It’s actually called The British Growth Model. But we didn’t reject New Labour to have it replaced by Cheap Labour. Our future must lie in improving productivity and increasing investment so that we can do more things with a stable population and a sustainable ecology. And a constraint on the labour supply is one of the ways that gets done. Employees should always be reassuringly expensive to force the capitalists to invest and innovate. Frances’s productivity is surely linked to their Labour laws.

    The international strategy must be to encourage other nations to follow our lead in pushing productivity and increasing investment, and solve their unemployment problem at home rather than exporting it. That means that activity needs to move to where the people are. Bizarrely we appear to be focussed upon national GDP figures and international people, when, in a nation, the focus should be the other way around — international growth figures and the local people who actually vote for you. It shouldn’t matter where the work gets done as long as it is more productive and less real resource intensive than before. To do that you have to have an immigration system that works.

    An immigration system that excludes EU immigrants that wouldn’t otherwise get a work visa instantly removes all those people who come here and compete with the working-class sub-median wage earners. These were the people who voted in the largest numbers for Brexit. These people have paid the heaviest price for EU membership.

    Reintroducing a work visa system that is on same lines as every other civilised advanced nation outside the EU, solves that problem. Then only higher waged, higher skilled individuals come into the country from all over the world, but they compete with a different class of people and compete less because they are in areas with genuine skill shortages. From the point of view of the sub-median wage earner, immigration has ended. So they are happy.

    And importantly you need to send out higher skilled individuals from this country to the rest of the world to balance those you take in. Otherwise you are stealing skills from other nations which they need to develop internally That is a ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ attitude and morally unacceptable. Immigration should be more of an informal exchange process than a capitalist ‘free market’. It’s ridiculous that an Indy Scotland should steal nurses and doctors from poorer countries to staff the NHS when those poorer countries need them themselves and used their real resources to train them in the first place. An Indy Scotland should use up our real resources to train our own nurses and doctors.

    This is a civilised solution that addresses all the concerns. Eminently reasonable and fair to all who believe in nations and borders. A win-win all round.

  9. Derek Henry says:

    Scotland – currency and the EU

    Says it all really

    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=42380&cpage=1#comment-63298

  10. Mick leach says:

    Dark money my arse

    1. Hi Mick – what there’s no allegations about dark money backing Farage? (!)

    2. “Ever since Nigel Farage revealed, in an interview with LBC’s Iain Dale, that the Brexit Party has had “one big donor”, questions have rightly been asked as to who this anonymous benefactor might be.

      It seems peculiar that a ‘grassroots movement’ which sells itself on being different to the traditional parties should be so unforthcoming about something as basic as funding.

      It’s also in stark contrast to the other new kid on the block – Change UK (also known as TIG – The Independent Group) which, for all its many flaws in presentation and style, has been transparent from the start. Even before it formally became a political party and had a legal requirement to declare its funding, Change UK revealed this on its website.

      By comparison, the Brexit Party has been decidedly bashful. In an interview with Farage on Sunday, Sky’s Sophy Ridge tried once again – to the obvious irritation of the Brexit Party leader – to get an answer.

      Here is their exchange:

      Farage: “Oh yes I’m really going to tell you his name!”

      Ridge: “Well why not?”

      Farage: “Because then you would all hound him!”

      Ridge: “This is the new transparent politics, isn’t it?”

      Farage: “Yeah and we’ll be declaring it at the end of July.”

      Electoral Commission (EC) rules oblige political parties to reveal donations that are given to party HQs quarterly over £7,500.

      That the Brexit Party’s big donor won’t be named until the end of July suggests that the money was given in the second quarter. Conveniently – for both the cagey supporter and Farage – this means no awkward revelations until a full two months after the EU Elections and right in the middle of the summer holidays when everyone is at the beach building sandcastles.”

  11. Jeff wright says:

    Since when have opinion polls ever proved to be right ? They were proven wrong again in the recent Aussie elections when they predicted a win for the left. CORBYN or even Unce Tom Cobblers might be more popular than May is,however in comrade Corbyns case it is a close run thing and hardly a ringing endorsement that the vast majority or voters want this old Marxist racist for their leader.

    1. Chris Connolly says:

      Jeremy Corbyn is not a racist. As far as I know he is the only MP in the current House of Commons to have been arrested on an anti-apartheid demonstration. Meanwhile, Baroness Warsi is trying hard, but not particularly successfully so far, to interest the media in the issue of Islamophobia in the Tory Party and our current Prime Minster, as Home Secretary, sent vans onto the streets telling immigrants to get out of the country. That is what I call racism, along with Nigel Farage & Stephen Lennon’s rabble-rousing & attention-seeking antics.

      There are plenty of reasons for criticising Mr Corbyn but a racist he certainly is not.

      As for being a Marxist, what’s shameful about that? Free market capitalism isn’t exactly working a treat, is it?

      1. Jo says:

        Well said.

Help keep our journalism independent

We don’t take any advertising, we don’t hide behind a pay wall and we don’t keep harassing you for crowd-funding. We’re entirely dependent on our readers to support us.

Subscribe to regular bella in your inbox

Don’t miss a single article. Enter your email address on our subscribe page by clicking the button below. It is completely free and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.