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On Thursday I voted Conservative in a general election for the first time, something I always said I would never do.

As a naïve teenager in 1997 I voted Labour and helped Tony Blair achieve his historic landslide victory. Yesterday I helped Boris Johnson achieve a different historic landslide victory of his own.

I joined the Conservatives a year ago on the strength of the local party and despite Theresa May and her treasonous behaviour. The local elections this year saw Labour take a lot of seats off the Conservatives in a campaign that consisted entirely of making promises to save the local A&E from closure that they had no way of keeping. They tried the same again with the general election but voters saw through it this time and rejected their politics of fear.

My own constituency of Telford went from a marginal seat with a precarious 740 vote majority for the Conservative MP, Lucy Allen, to being a Tory safe seat with a healthy majority of 10,941. All over England and Wales, traditional Labour voting constituencies turned blue. Seats that would normally vote Labour if they pinned a red rosette on a donkey returned Conservative MPs and the so-called “red wall” of Labour safe seats across the Midlands and north of England turned out to be more of a red curtain.

With the huge majority the Conservatives have we will now be leaving the EU at last. Boris’ deal is terrible but once we leave there’s no going back and our relationship with the EU can be changed in future.

Not everyone is happy with the result of course. The far left Socialist Worker’s Party had an anti-democracy protest planned in advance. Violent masked thugs took to the streets in London last night, attacking police and demanding the result of the election be ignored.

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Senedd Ceiling

The great and good of Wales are tackling the most important issue facing the Welsh with a letter urging the Welsh government to rename the Welsh Assembly to the Senedd.

The Welsh government are already planning a rebrand of the Welsh Assembly by giving it two official names: Senedd Cymru and Welsh Parliament. But having an official English name alongside the Welsh is apparently a problem as it will lead to the Welsh name and therefore the entire Welsh language falling into disuse.

Now, I’m all for preserving the Welsh language and even encouraging its use in Wales. I was born in Shrewsbury, just 10 miles from the Welsh border and have never lived more than 30 miles from Wales. Most family holidays as a child were in Wales and I am fairly proficient in road sign Welsh as most people in the western half of Shropshire generally are. It’s not unusual to hear Welsh accents in places like Shrewsbury and Oswestry or even Welsh being spoken in public. Almost a third of the population of Wales speak some Welsh and just shy of a fifth of the population are able to read and write Welsh as well as speak it. The language is not going to die out because the Welsh government has an official English name as well as Welsh.

When the time comes, maybe we’ll have the same debate in England about the naming of the Thæt Angelmot? Or should it be ᚦᚬᛏ•ᛅᚾᚴᛁᛚᛘᚬᛏ?

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Braveheart

Scottish nationalists are up in arms because Boris Johnson said that the Scottish Parliament has no role in approving Brexit.

The SNP think the Scottish Parliament should have a veto over Brexit because of a convention that says that British bills affecting devolved matters should be approved by the Scottish Parliament.

There are three primary reasons why the SNP are wrong.

  1. It’s a convention not an obligation. There’s no law that says it has to happen. At a time when parliamentary conventions that have been around for centuries are torn up in the name of overturning democracy, the SNP really can’t complain when their own side’s tactics are used against them.
  2. The convention exists to seek the consent of the Scottish Parliament when the British government legislates in their place. Brexit is taking powers from the EU and giving them to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament can’t legislate on these things currently as they are EU competencies.
  3. Devolution is power shared, not power given away. The British government retains the right to legislate on all matters, devolved or not.

Boris is right: the Scottish Parliament has no role to play on Brexit and no amount of huffing and puffing by Scottish nationalists will change that.

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Oliver Cromwell Dissolving Parliament

The new Parliament of Great Britain sat for the first time on 23rd October 1707. It replaced the English and Scottish parliaments on 1st May that year but didn’t sit for nearly 6 months. It sat for just 11 months before it was dissolved and elections held for the first time.

The Act of Union 1707 was the beginning of the end for England. The union of Great Britain started with England bailing out Scotland and it has continued thus for over three centuries. The Scots have been over-represented throughout the life of the British parliament in terms of numbers and influence.

The Scots never gave up their national identity or bought into the idea of being British. The English happily adopted this new fabricated identity as it was little more than a rebranded Englishness. The Scots adopted English laws and sent MPs and peers to what had been the English parliament. They saw little difference to how it had been before the rebrand.

Fast forward 312 years and England barely exists. English and British are used interchangeably far too often, we have no self-government, MPs elected in other countries make our laws, we have no national anthem and the very idea of Englishness is something dirty that should be eradicated at all costs to British politicians.

But there is still a glimmer of hope. The English identity is still strong and in fact more people than ever describe themselves as English or more English than British when asked. Unfair funding that steals from the English to bribe the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish makes people angry. The disgraceful way that the British parliament has been blocking Brexit that was overwhelmingly supported in England means millions hold the British political class in utter contempt. Having the Scottish and Welsh First Ministers insulting English voters for voting for Brexit and demanding that their views be given precedence over ours is increasing support for booting the Scots out of the union – something opinion polls show that the majority of English people would already be quite happy with.

We will see the end of the British union in the coming years, I am quite confident of this. The current system is unsustainable, built on privilege for the few at the expense of the many. Such is the narrow minded obsession with placating the rebellious Scots amongst the British political class that they have failed to recognise just how unimportant the union is becoming to the English. It is the English that will bring the British union to its long overdue conclusion, not the Scots and it will come to the complete (and satisfying) surprise of the British when it does.

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Jo Swinson with EU Flag

Sorry snowflakes, it’s not going to happen. The Lib Dems might be riding high in the polls thanks to their pledge to overturn the democratic vote to leave the EU but they’re not going to win an election.

But just imagine if they did (well, it is nearly Hallowe’en).

Jo Swinson, is the British MP for East Dunbartonshire in Scotland. Like Gordon Brown a decade ago she has no democratic mandate over about three quarters of what goes on in Westminster as her constituents give that mandate to Members of the Scottish Parliament. She has no moral or democratic right to be British Prime Minister.

If the convention of English Pauses for English Clauses was upheld we would see the ridiculous and unsustainable situation where the British Prime Minister spent three quarters of her time in the House of Commons unable to vote on legislation because as an MP elected in Scotland she would be barred from voting on something that was devolved to the Scottish Parliament in her own constituency.

There is no way that Jo Swinson – or any other MP elected in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland – could be British Prime Minister now that the constitutional fudges to paper over the gaping cracks in the union are embedded. They don’t stop MPs elected in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland from interfering in legislation that should be the responsibility of an English Parliament because MPs from all four member states of the UK get to vote on an English-only bill at the end but they stop the routine interference in English business that MPs elected outside of England seem to think they have a right to.

An MP elected in Scotland as British Prime Minister would be nothing more than a figurehead with the real power and influence being wielded by an MP elected in England who was able to vote on all parliamentary business. The only way someone like Jo Swinson could legitimately and effectively be British Prime Minister would be to create an English Parliament with at least the same powers as the Scottish Parliament and to devolve those same powers to the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies. Only when a British MP elected in any of the member states of the UK has the same mandate at Westminster as any other could a British Prime Minister elected somewhere other than in England be tolerated.

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Lutfur Rahman Outside Court

The British government have announced plans to introduce compulsory voter ID in a half-arsed attempt to tackle voter fraud.

Voter fraud is a real problem but voter ID will do very little to address it. The majority of voter fraud is with postal votes, not voting in person and for that there is no requirement to prove your identity. In fact, there is very little done in practical terms to prove a postal voter even exists.

The problem is that postal vote fraud is most common in areas with large immigrant populations and on the rare occasions that someone is actually prosecuted for postal vote fraud it’s usually someone of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. This isn’t speculation, it’s one of the conclusions of an investigation by the Electoral Commission. Attempting to tackle postal vote fraud by targeting communities where most of it is happening is denounced as racist of course it is vehemently opposed by Labour who benefit from it the most.

Postal voting on demand was introduced by Labour in 1999 and became law in 2000. It was sold as a measure to remove barriers to voting and increase voter participation. In reality it has resulted in widespread postal vote fraud which undermines trust in the system. Speak to most election candidates and they will have stories about the fraud that happens in elections and goes uninvestigated. Whether it’s “community leaders” collecting postal votes, “helping” people in care homes fill out their postal votes or simply inventing people who don’t exist or who live elsewhere, it is all facilitated by the availability of postal voting on demand.

Prior to the change to allow postal voting on demand, voters were required to apply to the local authority for a postal vote. To get one they had to give a valid justification for not going to the polling station in person on the day. Sickness, infirmity or holidays were valid reasons; laziness was not. The system worked perfectly fine and the only real disincentive to voters was that it made it very difficult to defraud the system.

There are, of course, instances of people committing voter fraud at polling stations and compulsory voter ID would probably put a stop to much of it but it is fixing the wrong problem. Postal voting on demand needs to stop.

Those who follow politics will be well aware of Lutfur Rahman, the former mayor of Tower Hamlets in London. He and his Tower Hamlets First Party were found guilty by a special election court of widespread fraud and corruption. The local authority was put into special measures, a delegation from the Department of Communities & Local Government took over the day to day running of the authority and Rahman and his cronies were booted out of office and banned from standing for election again for several years. But even with widespread voter fraud it still took years and the bravery of a few individuals to bring Rahman and his motley crew to justice. It was fought all the way by threats and intimidation, accusations of racism and editorials from left wing media deploring the witch hunt against those respectable men who were being unfairly targeted because of their ethnic background. What happened in Tower Hamlets and the stance taken by the media won’t change if voters have to produce ID to vote and the reaction by the Labour-supporting press (and the Labour Party itself of course) condemning the plans because it will deprive Labour of all those fraudulent votes backs that up. Returning officers will still be scared of investigating fraud for fear of being accused of racism, as will council officers checking ID for the same reason. Fear of spurious accusations will ensure the system remains open to abuse.

If compulsory voter ID does go ahead it will bring about a problem in itself. Whilst announcing the proposed change it was said that local authorities would provide a voter ID card free of charge to anyone who doesn’t have photo ID. That’s all well and good but how will the local authority prove the identity of the person requesting the ID card if they don’t have photo ID? What system can they put in place that is any different to what vetting system already exists for postal vote applications that fails to prevent fraud now? Fake identities will be legitimised by the existence of an ID card that is the product of a flawed system.

The biggest problem with the suggestion for me, though, isn’t that it’s proposing to fix the wrong problem or even that it will be quite obviously as open to widespread fraud as the current system is. It’s the idea of a compulsory ID card. These things are the thin end of the wedge, they always are. It will start with compulsory ID for voting and then it will be required for accessing council services. Then shops and other organisations will start requesting it and before long it will have to be centralised into one ID database by the British government to make sure it’s “safe and secure”. In a few years we will all be required carry an ID card by law. It might take a few years but it will happen, there is no doubt about it and I will not carry an ID card nor submit myself into an ID database. If that means I can’t vote then so be it but I will not participate in any ID card scheme.

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Edward III Great Seal of England

Fifty Scottish “celebrities” have signed a new declaration of independence, calling for the establishment of an independent socialist state.

The 12 demands in the declaration are:

  1. It is the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs, now and in the future. In all political deliberations, decisions and actions their interests should be paramount.
  2. Scotland should be an open and democratic society in which no individual is excluded, oppressed or discriminated against on account of their race, colour, faith, origin or place of birth, physical or mental capacity, sex, sexuality,gender or language.
  3. Scotland should have a written constitution which clearly lays out the rights of its citizens, the country’s system of government and the relationships that exist between government, its instruments and powers and the rights of individual citizens.
  4. Scotland should take its place as an independent country on the world stage, free to join international organisations and alliances for purposes of trade and commerce, and for the protection and care of the planet’s natural environment, without which the human race cannot survive.
  5. Scotland should uphold internationally acknowledged values of non- aggression and self-defence, and should refuse to maintain, stock or use, for itself or on behalf of any other power or government, chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction.
  6. There should be clear separation of the powers of the Scottish parliament and government (the executive). The judiciary should be completely independent of government.
  7. Independence will provide an opportunity to review and, where necessary, change the systems of both national and local government, in order to make them more accountable to the people and more beneficial to their needs.
  8. Ownership of land, property and natural resources should be subject to open and democratic scrutiny. The ability of communities, both rural and urban, to own the land in and on which they exist should be enhanced and extended.
  9. There should be total transparency in the way property in Scotland is bought, sold or possessed.
  10. Freedom of speech and action, and the freedom to work, create, buy, sell and do business should adhere to principles of environmental and communal sustainability and responsibility. Profit and economic growth should not be pursued at the expense of the wellbeing of the people or their habitat or that of other people or nations.
  11. We affirm the values of care, kindness, neighbourliness and generosity of spirit in all our dealings. Such values are the foundation stones of a fair, free and open society where all citizens have the opportunities to lead the best, most fulfilling lives they can.
  12. It is our belief that the best option now open to the Scottish people is for Scotland to become an independent country. The alternative is to accept that Scotland’s fate would remain in the hands of others and that the Scottish people would relinquish their right to decide their own destiny.

To be fair to them, there is some good stuff in amongst the pie in the sky lefty nonsense. Asserting popular sovereignty, improving democratic accountability and protection of freedoms are sentiments I can’t help but agree with even if the rest of it is less palatable.

It is a real shame that politicians and public figures don’t feel so strongly about England’s future or for the rights of the people of England. A group calling itself the English Constitutional Convention has been in existence for many years and has made half-hearted declarations that have been largely ignored, even at the height of the campaign for an English Parliament when the subject was in the news on an almost daily basis. Its close association with the toxic English Democrats means it is unlikely to ever gain mainstream support.

A similar declaration for England would do much to highlight the institutional discrimination against England within the British establishment and empower the English people to take control of their own destiny. The English identity is much more prevalent than the British identity and has been for many years but it is suppressed as a threat to British supremacy. An English people expressing their Englishness with the blessing and backing of public figures would deal a fatal blow to the status quo and consign Britishness to the history books once and for all.

British nationalists will view this with fear and dismay but they are an increasingly small minority. For too long we have been told that describing yourself as English is somehow wrong and not the sort of thing you say in polite company whilst our flag has been unfairly associated with British ethnic nationalists and white supremacists by those who wave the same flag as the likes of the BNP and National Front.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.

G.K. Chesterton, the Secret People