As forecast - by Richard... Tuesday, April 06, 2010

As forecast - by Richard... Tuesday, April 06, 2010

http://www.eureferendum.blogspot.com/

None of the many political pundits who have so often predicted – with such very great confidence – that Brown was going to go to the country on such-and-such a date are now reminding their audiences that they got it wrong. We, however, can enjoy a quiet, self-satisfied (smug, even) smirk, having consistently said that the prime minister would go full term.

So much for these great pundits, these towering figures of modern journalism who are so close to the centre that they know exactly what is going to happen ... yea.

Anyhow, the deed is done. The Westminster parliament, we are told, dissolves on 12 April, with the election on the 6 May. The new parliament resumes on 18 May. Our government (in Brussels) stays the same.

The media, who got it so right about Brown's earlier election intentions, are in their seventh heaven, now that they have the real thing to play with. Clearly, the term "overkill" means nothing to them.

It would be a good time, methinks, to find a deserted island, well away from any broadcast media, failing which, there is always the "off" button on the TV – ditto the radio. I, for one, am going to rely almost entirely on the internet for election coverage. That is the only way to retain some semblance of control over the input.

That said, I'm opening up a forum thread for the duration (see below), and will keep it running until the election result is declared.

GENERAL ELECTION THREAD

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Labour could win? - by Richard...

With the prime minister expected to go to the Queen today to ask for the dissolution of parliament (possibly on 12 April, to allow the "wash-up"), the Labour-supportingGuardian publishes a poll which predicts that the Labour Party could end up winning most seats in the general election.

It is strange how supposedly independent pollsters seems to be able to deliver results which support their clients' wishes or expectations, and this Guardian/ICM poll is no exception. It "reveals" a four-point gap between two main parties, with Labour on 33 percent and the Tories on 37. This is the closest in an ICM poll for almost two years.

That, according to The Guardian would give Labour the most seats, but leave it 30 short of an overall majority, reliant on the Lib-Dims, who score 21 percent in this poll.

Skewed or not, it is enough to get The Daily Telegraph's Toby Young chirping about it, while Tory Boy Blog consoles itself with a poll in the Daily Express which gives the Tories a ten point lead. Young wonders whether skewed polls will be a feature of the campaign, with Labour-supporting papers publishing polls that show Labour closing the gap or pulling ahead, while Conservative-supporting papers show an ever-widening gap.

If that does happen, it means that the pollsters have ceased to be observers and are now players, leaving us bereft of any guidance as to the true position – not that we could ever rely too much on what the polls had to say. But, in a taste of things to come, we get Young warbling about the "phoney war" being over and "the most exciting election campaign for at least 13 years" about to begin. 

That is the view from the "bubble", but it is not shared by the wider population. Far from "excitement", I suspect that the majority look to the coming weeks with a mixture of dismay, resignation and sullen resentment – those who take any notice of the election at all – as they watch the politicians play their vacuous games.

And that is the real issue – the one that none of the politicians or their respective claques will want to address – that the prevailing mood is a "plague on all your houses". The only good thing about this campaign is that it will be mercifully short. The bad thing is that even the four weeks or so that it will take might seem like an eternity.

For me personally, it will be the first general election since 1992 that I have not been on the streets. In 1997, I was a candidate for the Referendum Party in Derbyshire South, up against Edwina Currie – who mercifully lost her seat. In 2001, I fielded a brace of candidates for UKIP in Bradford, acting as their agent, and in 2005 I was in Shropshire, supporting the local Conservative candidate.

This time, I do not have a dog in the fight, which puts me in the position of an observer, with more interest in who loses than wins. And, as we go into this "exciting" contest, there is only one certainty. With Cameron needing to gain 116 seats to win an overall majority, the biggest required swing since the war, the outcome is anyone's guess. At this stage, it is impossible to call.

COMMENT THREAD

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A train wreck coming - by Richard... Monday, April 05, 2010

Wolfgang Münchau in The Financial Times seems to be ruling out any possibility of fiscal union in the eurozone. That, he seems to be saying, will lead to a "terminal crisis" and the collapse of the euro.

I am not sure he's right – given that I've understood him properly. He could well be underestimating the sheer determination of the "colleagues" to pursue their integration agenda. The prospect of a "terminal crisis" is precisely the type of beneficial crisis which gives them their power.

Should the euro collapse – with the default of Greece – which Münchau suggests must happen next year, it will signal the end of the EU as a political project. It will not recover from such a blow and, once its agenda goes into reverse, it will not stop there. So weakened will it be that the EU itself will be under threat, and will have difficulty surviving.

The "colleagues" will know that, and have invested far too much in the project to allow it to fail so easily. They will break every law in the book – and some – and even suspend the laws of economics, as far as they can, in order to save it. And if they succeed, they will just stave off the inevitable, making the final collapse even more dramatic.

Either way, they have a train wreck on their hands – the die is cast and in the long run there is very little they can do about it. But it ain't going to be pleasant when it happens. A lot of people are going to get hurt.

COMMENT THREAD

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Organised hypocrisy - by Richard...

Gerald Warner sees the bigger picture behind the Grayling affair, and what it says about "the organised hypocrisy that is the Cameron project."

Addressing then the supine response of the Christians in this country, large numbers of whom intend to go out on polling day and vote "Conservative" (or even Labour), Warner notes that they have not made the connection between their supine support of their persecutors and the escalating crusade against their religion.

The laws that increasingly oppress Christians in this country, Warner says, are made by 646 individuals in the House of Commons. There are millions of Christians in Britain. They have the power, if they choose to exercise it, to consign those 646 petty dictators to the dustbin of history. 

Thus, he counsels, if Britain's Christians acted in their own interests and abandoned the three mainstream, aggressively PC political parties, the tyranny that oppresses them would be swept away. Everybody else is organised in militant interest groups, but Christians do nothing to defend themselves. They could start by withdrawing all support from the Cameronian Party and its anti-Christian agenda.

He is dead right there. The only reason these people will get back into power is if we vote for them. Never before in recent history has there been such an opportunity to make a statement against the established political classes. A vote for Labour, the "Conservatives" or the Lib-Dims is a vote for tyranny – to use Warner's word. The way forward is very clear.

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