Britannia Radio

This illustrates the problem neatly.  UKIP, largely because of Farage 
himself, has boxed itself into a corner where the only effect it has 
on politics is to remove the eurosceptic voice from inside the Tory 
party where it is desperately needed.

This excellent article will have little effect because those who run 
the three main parties will not listen but the public will still vote 
for them

What Farage says here is excellent, on the limited front of British 
jobs though elsewhere I illustrate how almost all of Gordon Brown's 
initiatives still await approval by Brussels. .  What I want to see 
is a  mainstream party realising this and taking it up.  I fear they 
won't, though personally  I'll keep trying!

xxxxxxxxxxxxx cs
GUARDIAN 'Comment is Free'      5.2.09
We need our country back
We'll only have British jobs for British workers when we have a 
Britain run by Britons

"British jobs for British workers" simply cannot happen while we're 
still in the prison of nations that is the European Union. For we've 
signed away, without any consultation with the British people or, 
whisper it if you dare, any vote or referendum on the subject, our 
right as a country to decide who comes to this country or who works 
in this country.

We can all pore over the provisions of the Posted Workers Directive 
if we choose, agree with the Lindsey workers or not as we wish, but 
the basic fact is that the government, Acas, unions and hundreds or 
thousands of angry workers cannot have any effect upon the situation. 
For it is the law, confirmed by the highest court that applies to us, 
the European Court of Justice (ECJ), that this is so. The Laval and 
Viking cases are simply confirmation of how the unions themselves 
were sadly hoodwinked by Jacques Delors. He promised them a "social 
Europe" and they thought that was what they wanted. What's come back 
to bite them is that the Europe on offer is not what they thought. 
The absolute free movement of labour is what is on offer and there's 
no way of changing that without leaving the EU itself.

The ECJ rulings are not mistakes: they are the aim, the purpose. To 
stop any country, any nation, from deciding who may live or work in 
that country or nation. We must all be Europeans now and any dissent, 
any action that might change or threaten that has been made illegal.

This point is a great deal more important than those few hundreds of 
jobs that have brought thousands out on wildcat strikes. You may have 
noticed that there are huge infrastructure spending plans in the 
works. Tens of billions of pounds, possibly hundreds of billions, for 
a Severn Barrage, windmills on every mountain top, the insulation of 
every house, the Olympics. At least half of the argument for these 
spending plans is that they will mitigate, even end, the recession, 
that millions of jobs will be created for the willing British worker 
to do. But given our EU membership we cannot in fact ensure this. We 
must tender such contracts out right across the union, we cannot even 
prefer our own companies or people, let alone insist that our tax 
money should be spent on our own. When the very point of a fiscal 
stimulus is to provide an alternative to rotting on the dole it 
beggars belief that we'll be spending British taxes on foreigners' 
jobs. As we will be, for we already know that one third of those 
working on the Olympic sites are indeed foreigners.

There are those who say that to raise these points is xenophobia, 
that there's some heinous sin of protectionism being committed in 
simply pointing out the truth. But even that apostle of free markets 
and opponent of protectionism for either goods or labour, Milton 
Friedman, pointed out that you cannot simply open the floodgates one 
bright and sunny day. Huge changes like this require time, a certain 
management, otherwise society itself will fracture under the stress. 
Which is why we in Ukip call for two things. Firstly, a cap on the 
total number of inward migrants. How many can we absorb in: not that 
people cannot come here to work, but how many can we as a society 
cope with coming? The second is that there be a system of work 
permits. Again, we don't want to either stop or dissuade those whose 
skills we desire, we just want to be able to make sure that it is 
those with the skills that we desire and need who come.

Neither of these things are possible while we remain in the European 
Union, so they are both simply two of the many reasons we argue that 
we must leave. Reform from within is not going to be possible. They 
didn't listen to the Dutch or the French on their referendums, 
they're not listening to the Irish now and they'll not listen to 
anything that we say while we stay in. Only by leaving can we control 
our own destiny once again.

There are of course those who say that there is nothing wrong here. 
Like Lord Mandelson: well, he would say that wouldn't he?

Instead, Mandelson declared that he received a ministerial salary and 
a transitional £78,000 a year EU allowance following his decision to 
quit the trade commissioner's job and return to the cabinet.
Not only is he getting that £78,000 a year, he's also due a 
conditional pension, the whole package being worth £1m. To get that 
cash he's got to continue to uphold his oath as a commissioner: that 
he'll continue to support the aims and the objectives of the European 
Union. Thus the "move along now, nothing to see here" nature of his 
remarks on the issue. They would rather we didn't see that we've lost 
control not just of our own country but of our own fate.

While this is satire the basic point holds. There'll be some fudge, 
some symbolic act and victory will be declared. But the underlying 
reality, that we've parcelled up our right to govern ourselves and 
posted it to Brussels will remain. We're simply not in charge of our 
own country: all we're asked to do is pay for it without being able 
to influence what happens.

British jobs for British workers will only be a possibility when 
Britain is ruled by Britons again. When we leave the European Union 
and become a free and independent nation, when we who live here are 
able to decide what are the laws here, something that is the very 
essence of the democratic ideal.