Political Economy

For nine years the English Democrats, under the slogan “Not Left, Not Right, Just English”, have been beating the drum about the importance of English culture, its values and its achievements in terms of democracy and human rights, not just to England but to the world. Because we do not need it the English Democrats will withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act.

For nine years the English Democrats have been campaigning for the establishment of a Parliament and Government for England to promote the interests of the people of England as does the Scottish Parliament and government.

For years it has been enduring abuse about its policy of “Multiple cultures and not Multiculturalism”. The English Democrats have been attacked as racist because they are against mass immigration and want jobs in England for the people of England, not for the people of the rest of the world.

They have been taunted for their call for the protection of  English industry from takeover by foreign companies and the subsequent removal of jobs and tax revenues from our shores and the removal of political correctness.

But that is now all in the past!

It is some months since Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy rushed to be the first to denounce multiculturalism. We have seen recently how the flawed European Convention on Human Rights cannot even stop you from being locked up without trial for four years in a Spanish jail! In England the Common law has guaranteed our basic rights for nearly 800 years. Chief amongst these rights is a prohibition on the State locking you up for more that four days (28 in the case of terrorism) without bringing charges against you, requiring that you are tried and judged by your peers and should not be subject to cruel punishments.

In a YouGov survey published today in the Scotsman newspaper (http://bit.ly/tC5O5u) an article headlined the move away from being British. The October survey questioned 1,700 adults in Britain about their identity. The responses were as follows:

English             63%

British              19%

Scottish             8%

Welsh                5%

European         2%

Irish                  1%

The population of Britain totaled 59.2 million in 2007 made up of England  51.1 million, Scotland 5.1 million and Wales 3.0 million (http://bit.ly/9jEWHj). In percentage terms this is England 86.3%, Scotland 8.6% and Wales 5.1%. This implies that 73% of the people of England now view themselves as having an English identity, 93% of Scots consider they have a Scottish identity and 98% of the Welsh a Welsh identity.

In the same survey in 2008, only 3 years ago, 41% of respondents considered they had an English identity and 42% of those polled considered that they had a British identity! At last the people of England are waking up to the fact that their quixotic loyalty to a British identity has laid them wide open to being scammed and subject to all sorts of chicanery by the political elite in Westminster.

The same article continues to emphasize the growing call for a Parliament for England reporting on Labour MP, Frank Field’s, motion in the House of Commons and  UKIPs sudden conversion to an English Parliament.

But the change is even more complete than that. UKIP a British party if ever there was one, has now accepted the inevitable. Its leader, Nigel Farage, in a letter to the Spectator of 19th November admits that Patriotic politics is here and is going to stay. In the letter Farage describes Patriotic politics as neither “left nor right” and that the common law is a better guarantor of our liberties than the Human Rights Act. Astonishingly he ascribes UKIPs recent advance in the poll to these factors despite the fact that UKIP is a British party that has never championed English issues before!

The English Democrats are in the process of being judged to have been comprehensively correct for the last nine years. Of having had the correct political policies for the last nine years. Of truly understanding the people of England and their needs for the past nine years.

Now they need to use this to make an assault on the high ground of politics and the people of England need to get behind them with their votes. Why? Because it is only the English Democrats who hold these policies because they believe them to be correct whilst other parties are coming to them for reasons of political expediency.

If elected will these other parties implement these new ‘expedient’ policies. You can bet your bottom dollar they will not!. Only the the English Democrats hold these policies from the heart. Only they will implement their promises because for them it is a matter of honour, not expediency.

 

GHTime Code(s): nc nc nc nc nc nc nc 

Seven score and eight years ago a man spoke to dedicate the cemetery on a battlefield which had seen over 46,000 casualties including nearly 8,000 killed.

He pointed out that the living could not dedicate that place since the dead had already consecrated the ground with their blood. The living, rather, had to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work for which the dead had died.

That work was to ensure “. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The man was Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America and the battlefield was that of Gettysburg, the key battle in a civil war that saw a total of over 210,000 killed in action so that his nation “. . . shall have a new birth of freedom”.

Lincoln was not the first person to enunciate such a  belief. In 1830 the Senator Daniel Webster in a speech described the federal government of the USA as “made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people,”

So freedom is protected by the correct form of government and Lincoln tells us how to distinguish such a government from others. Do we, the People of England, have such protection for our Freedom? The answer is not difficult to deduce.

Government of the People

Government “Of the People” is government “Made by the People”. It is government hewn from the people and it has in all times and in all places been a government that People have had to fight for.  In January 2007 a poll for Newsnight showed that 61% of the People of England wanted a devolved Parliament for England. In April 2010 an ICM poll showed that 68% of the People of England wanted a devolved Parliament for England.

Do we, the country where parliaments were invented. have a Parliament for England? No! Have the political elite in England said we will get such a Parliament? No! Do we have “Government of the People of England”? No!

Government by the People

“Government by the People” is the people governing themselves via the election of a representative that will do what the people want. Do we have such representatives? No! Why not? There are many reasons. The first and most important reason is that Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol, said in 1774 in a speech to the electors that he could vote in the House as he chose and not as they wanted, a vote mark-you that had been given him by those electors. Burke was hardly an objective observer in this and as a piece of self-serving claptrap this one has been religiously parroted by MPs ever since. Burke did not believe in democracy and is claimed as a founder of modern Conservatism.

Secondly few MPs actually have the integrity to vote according to their own opinions. Instead they hand their vote over to their party in return for a continuing flow of cash, perquisites and honours! Thirdly most MPs are not voted into office by a majority of those who vote. To get 40% of the vote is considered good and this of course usually represents less than 30% of the electorate.

Do we, in England, have MPs who represent their voters? No! Have the political elite in England said we will get such MPs? No! De we have “Government by the People of England”? No!

Government for the People

And so we come to the final act. I have already shown that in England we do not have “Government of the People”. I have shown that in England we do not have “Government by the People”. Do we have “Government of the People, by the People” in England? No!

So, do we have “Government for the People of England”?

In 1975 when the referendum on remaining in the Common Market was held I listened carefully, as did many, to the views expressed. We were told we needed to remain in the Market because of  trade despite the fact that we had a trade deficit with them of £2bn. Well now the Market is a Union and we have a trade deficit with the rest of the Union of £36bn. This deficit is equivalent to exporting some 1,000,000 jobs to Europe.

In the 13 years of Labour government from 1997 some 1.67 million jobs were created in the UK but 1.6 million of those jobs went to people with no prior connection to the UK. It appears therefore that the UK government has provided 2.6 million jobs to the world. The jobs that remain are increasingly part-time, minimum wage and unskilled. Recent data has shown the trend has continued and will continue, particularly since the coalition government has set no restrictions on the so-called Mode 4 immigration. This is where a company from another country is allowed to set up in the UK and bring in all its labour from its own country. These workers will be paid minimum wages plus a tax free living allowance. The Tory party will of course be the grateful recipients of political donations from these “UK” companies. UK workers will receive only the dole that has been much reduced by the Tories.

Will MPs work to protect and grow the number of meaningful jobs open to us? No! Will the political elite in Westminster allow us in England to get the jobs we need to lead satisfying and creative lives? No! Is this “Government for the People”? No!

A broken Democracy

In England we do not have “Government of the People”. We do not have “Government by the People”.  We do not have “Government for the People”. We live in a broken democracy where our freedom is compromised and not, as the Prime Minister would have us believe, a broken society where our property is compromised. Indeed the Prime Minister is currently driving this broken democracy deeper and further than anyone before.

Is it possible to fix the problem, to regain our freedom by instituting “Government of the People, by the People, for the People”? The answer is yes, but only if the a range of policies like the following are adopted. It cannot be fixed by adopting one or two of these policies, such as creating an elected upper chamber or adopting a parliament for England. It cannot be fixed by adopting policies but implementing them in such a way that they will not work. For example Cameron’s promise to make it possible for voters to recall their MP is going to be implemented by creating a committee of MPs to decide if one of them should be “thrown to the wolves”! Such a committee will only be used to punish an MP who has annoyed the party leaders!

So here is the list:

Government of the People

• A devolved Parliament for England with a government and First Minister.
• A smaller House of Commons and elected Upper Chamber to take on the role of a federal Parliament responsible for reserved matters.

Government by the People

• Power for the voters to recall a sitting MP for re-election
• Devolving additional responsibilities to the County level and its elected Mayor.
• Increased use of the referendum so that voters can decide what is done.
• Reform of the voting system to ensure that 50% is required for election

Government for the People

• A referendum on leaving the EU
• An end to mass immigration
• An immigration system that ensures that jobs are not taken from the People of England and that immigration is run effectively.
• Protection for companies from takeover and closure by foreign companies

A Party that Will

There is one political party that does have all of these policies, and more. It is the only party that has as one of its objectives the institution of “Government of the People, by the People, for the People.” That party is the English Democrats.

The Price of Freedom

Now here is the rub. It is your freedom and your government that I have been talking about. The good news is that you can do something about it. The price is your time and your interest. If you are concerned that your freedom is compromised then join the English Democrats, donate to their funds and get active in any way you can. There are a wide range of opportunities such as forming a county or constituency branch, or joining one if it already exists, leafleting, letter writing, standing in elections, writing articles or blogs, helping to run facebook, twitter and web sites. The list is almost endless.

Its Your Freedom. You Do Something About It.

GHTime Code(s):              nc nc nc nc nc 

The fact that there are so many voting systems in use around the world implies that the choice of system is more likely to rest on cultural values and context rather than on some scientifically developed, or socially accepted, theory.

The referendum today appears to be heading towards a defeat for the proposal to change to the Alternative Vote (AV) system. If that happens it will be a disaster on two levels.

On the level of national democracy we have been subject to an increasing number of parliamentary seats where the winner fails to win a majority of the votes. That means that the MP has failed to get democratic legitimacy for their position and is entitled to act in any way they wish, no matter how inimical that may be to the majority of voters who voted against them, provided they protect the interests of the minority. Currently only around 200 out of 630 seats in the House of Commons enjoys democratic legitimacy and this figure has been falling for decades. Under the current voting system it will continue to fall.

It is a disaster on the level of the English Democrats whose objective is a devolved parliament and government for England, the achievement of which will have been set back by decades by this vote. This is because under AV the winner has to get more than half of the votes (assuming all candidates are ranked by all voters). Since more than 60% of English voters want an English parliament and since more than 60% of seats currently fail to get a majority,  some, perhaps many, of the candidates would have to adopt support of devolution for England as part of their programme. Or if not devolution a referendum on leaving the EU! What’s not to like about that!

An early move to devolution for England will only happen if one of the major parties takes up the policy. Under AV it is reasonable to forecast that we would have an English parliament within 10 – 20 years. Under first-past-the-post system a better forecast is 60 – 80 years, if ever.

In a rational world all English Democrats would support AV but they do not; all those who say they believe in democracy, in the sense of rule by the majority, would support AV, but they do not; all those who want a voting system whose subtlety allows them to express their choices in an increasingly pluralistic world would choose AV, but they do not.

There appear to be two main arguments against AV. One is the principle of “One man One Vote” and the second is that it is “too difficult for people to understand”.

The first principal appears to come first from the USA where the framers of the constitution were keen to ensure that the number of seats in the federal Congress was apportioned on the basis of population so that equal population numbers gave rise to equal numbers of representatives and so, and this is the key issue, an equal chance to gain resources from the federal government http://bit.ly/kRzW4G.

In this sense the people of England have not had “One man, One vote” since the start of the Goschen formula in 1888 which was the start of systems to give more money to the People of Scotland and we are unlikely to ever have it in England. The “One man, One vote” mantra is in fact an argument for the equalisation of government funding on a ‘per head’ basis through the UK.   That Mr Cameron understands this interpretation is shown by his plan to equalise the number of voters in each constituency. In reality he wants to increase the likelihood of more conservative seats and hence more government resources to the Conservative Party money men. That he will not use the principal in its original form to make funding fairer in the UK is axiomatic – to do so would lose any chance of building up a significant number of conservative MPs in Scotland and Wales.

However most people will understand the slogan as meaning that one person has only one vote in an election. What they do not understand is that meaning in England dates only from the post-World War II period when most, but not all, plurality of voting was stopped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_person,_one_vote. So Cameron’s claim that “One Man, One vote” has served this country well for centuries is false, and as a student of politics at Oxford he knows it is false.

Could you enhance the democratic legitimacy of the current system? Yes and quite easily. You run the elections in a series of rounds, each round separated by perhaps a week or less and with no campaigning between rounds. At each round if no one has more than half the votes one or more candidates is eliminated and the voting goes through to a second round where once again the electors cast their one vote. No one has more than one vote in the voting ‘pool’ at any one time. This goes on until one candidate has more than half the vote. It is tedious but it ensures democratic legitimacy and it is fair. It is called, in the USA, a run-off system of voting.

But AV is merely an ‘instant’ form of the run-off voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_vote. AV ensures that no one has more than one vote in the voting pool at any one time and, like run-off voting, ensures that everyone has one vote in the voting pool all the time, if they wish. So if you like FPTP and you want democratic legitimacy you should like AV!

The second reason that ‘NO’ people go for is that AV is too difficult for some of us to understand (actually they mean “some of you”). In 1963 I became an apprentice in an explosives factory. One of the weekly rituals was placing a bet on the horses (but not by apprentices!). The work of collecting the bets on behalf of the bookie and calculating the odds of the complex bets that were placed was given to the labourer.

Now in the industrial triad of Journeyman-apprentice-labourer the latter was definitely bottom of the heap. Yet the labourer could do more complex calculations of odds than I could then, and probably even now. That was when I learnt that anyone can learn just about anything provided they are motivated to do so and have the time, means and persistence. That was also the time when I realised how arrogant I had been. If you want to see how simple AV is then review the ‘choice of crisps’ analogy in this leaflet

Attending the lectures of Prof. Hans Morgenthau at the University of Chicago I learnt that in a democracy, when the people realise that they no longer have the means to control their state, violence becomes ‘existential’. If violence does occur then the people to blame are the political elites who allowed this situation to arise.

How we vote is one of the many means we have to preserve out control, but only if the mechanism works. FPTP does not work in today’s England because it cannot deliver democratic legitimacy.

That is why, if the referendum vote today goes against AV, the issue will come back. The fight is not over!

GHTime Code(s): nc nc nc 

So says the National Museum of Afghanistan. If you go and visit the current exhibition at the British Museum you will get some idea of how ancient this culture is http://bit.ly/fzBANs.

The Taliban famously tried to destroy the culture by destroying its artifacts and inflicting their strict version of Islam on the country. Whilst much was destroyed the curators of the museum secreted the objects away that are now on display. They were only able to bring them back on display in 2003 once NATO had driven the Taliban out.

Afghanistan has had numerous groups come and go over the millennia.  Some of the golden artifacts on display were over 4000 years old and belonged to a bronze age civilization with what appear to be links to Mesopotamia.

The Greeks arrived under Alexander the Great and built the great city now known as Ai Khanum. This city was lost in antiquity and was replaced by a local civilisation, then by Persia, India, the Mongols and so on.

But however courageous are the curators of museums the Afghan culture or for that matter the English culture will not stay alive unless it stays alive in the hearts and actions of the people.

The Labour plan to crush English culture by allowing wave after wave of mass immigration to swamp our schools, to change the way of life of the people of England, to denigrate the very name “England” will not be ended by the wholly inadequate measures of the coalition government.

The policies of the English Democrats will do this. Having a devolved parliament and government of England, with fiscal devolution on devolved matters, will allow the English culture to be protected and promoted just as the Scottish culture is in Scotland and the Welsh culture is in Wales.

A referendum to leave the EU and the end to all mass immigration will allow immigration on the basis of fitness for the job and for a limited period only when no local people can do the work.

The removal of all illegal immigrants and a strict application of the convention on asylum which requires refugees to settle in the nearest safe country to their own will reduce the excessive demand being placed on hospitals, schools and housing.

Giving local people priority in housing will not only return natural justice to the social housing market, it will make England a less desirable place to emmigrate to.

Putting an end to multiculuralism and expecting everyone in their public life to respect and follow English values and ways of doing things, including speaking English for all residents, will protect and expand English culture.

Putting an end to political correctness will mean that the large amounts of money spent, and wasted, in this area can be directed towards the less well-off young and elderly.

The suspension of the European Human Rights act and its replacement by a sensible English variation will allow the deportation of immigrants and asylum seekers, who commit crimes, to their country of origin. In a number of cases this will cause those intent on criminality to think twice about their actions.

Policies like these are often branded as racist by knee-jerk anti-English groups. But actually not one of these policies is based on racial or ethnic criteria. English Democrat policies are based on a cultural identity. Englishness resides in the heart and so can be adopted by any person of good will.

If you want to preserve the culture of England as a living thing, as a matter of the heart, rather than an artifact in a museum, the Conservative party will not do this, the Labour party will not do this,  the Liberal-Democrats will not do this nor will UKIP, not the Greens and certainly not the BNP.

Only the English Democrats are wholly committed to the fundamental proposition that “A Nation stays Alive when its Culture stays Alive”. Vote English Democrats on the 5th May.

GHTime Code(s): nc nc 

The Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrats do not want to give the people of England their own Parliament. The reasons they give are varied. Some, such as Straw and Prescott are quite happy to insult the English cultural identity and care not that this is a deeply racist action, under the Race Relations Act, and also offensive, confident that their position will give them protection.

Some of them mutter on about England being 80% of the population of the UK and therefore do not need a separate parliament. This argument is either based on an ignorance of Pareto’s principle or an attempt to manipulate people by misquoting it (see my blog at http://www.politicaleconomy.me.uk/2010/01/only-english-mps-voting-on-english-matters/).

None of them mention democracy. liberty, equity, dignity, rights, fairness, self-determination, birth-right, entitlement. All words one would expect a serious and committed parliamentarian to use with respect to this issue. But notice how in this election campaign they have promised “fairness for all” in order to get your vote! How dishonest can they be?

You will, therefore, probably not be surprised that the real reason why they do not want a parliament for England is quite different from the one they give, and infinitely grubbier. Yes, it concerns money, lots of your money and my money, in fact £2,000,000 of our money. Money that they do not deserve, money that they are happy to scam off you and I, just as they did with their expenses

They are trying to kid us that they have cleaned up the financial systems in Parliament, that they are squeaky clean, that it will never happen again. What is “it”? Quite simply “it” is the same greed that made them unable to tell when a rule is immoral, dishonest, or unethical. Remember that MPs caught out ‘flipping’ their houses to make untaxed capital gains off the taxpayer, or claiming repairs to their boyfriend’s house? All said “We were only following the rules” (see my blog at http://www.politicaleconomy.me.uk/2009/10/how-the-rich-and-powerful-scam-the-rules-for-their-own-benefit/ .

Well here is another big, fat, round £2,000,000 rule they are quite happy to follow even though in doing so they are taking money they have not earned, money that comes from me and you, money that they should not be getting. Not that is if they were men and women of integrity.

Many of the plum jobs as Secretary of State or Minister in the Westminster cabinet are for devolved matters. That is those that matters such as Education, Health, Justice and Transport to name a few. These matters have been devolved to national parliaments or assemblies either in part or whole. Westminster Secretaries of State basically administer only England in these matters. They should get paid the same as their equivalent in the Scottish Parliament. In the case of a secretary of state this is £44,000 less, of a minister £24,000 less if they were in an English Parliament (they would also get £7,000 less for their salary). There are around 70 of these plum jobs to be handed out after the 6th May adding up to excess pay of around £2,000,000.

Now you get “it”, the real reason why they do not want an English Parliament. Men of Honour? I do not think they know the meaning of the phrase.

GHTime Code(s): 59b7c nc 

Surprisingly this is one of the questions that divides those who want a Parliament for England. And yet, as a look at the arithmetic od representation shows, the answer is very simple and one on which all sides of this question can agree.

The key here are the number of elected representatives associated with national government rather than local government.  The situation will be as follows after the next election. The House of Commons will have 650 seats.

England            533 seats    82%

Scotland             59 seats       9%

Wales                 40 seats       6%

N.I.                      18 seats      3%

If we are to continue to have an Upper Chamber then the House of Lords will have to go, to be replaced by an elected chamber. A government can then choose its cabinet, ministers and so on from both elected chambers.

The task then is to decide how many MPs will be needed to carry out the much reduced level of government expenditure that will result from devolving much of the work to the English Parliament.

Wading through the statistics of government expenditure is not much fun, nor very easy but it seems safe to make the assumption that about half of the expenditure of the government is associated with devolved matters. Another requirement is that currently a governing party has to be able to provide between 140 and 150 Secretaries of States, Ministers and so on to run the business of government.  To give a reasonable choice, since not all elected MPs will be suitable, the governing party currently needs around 300 members. If this is just sufficient for a majority then there needs to be around 600 members in the House. Around half of these posts will move with devolved matters to the English Parliament. These numbers indicate that the House of Commons can reduce to half its size or 300 – 325 without causing problems. In the USA Congress and the Senate have, in total,  535 members for a voting population of around 216 million. Compare this to the 45 million voters in the UK. This would equate to a House of Commons and Upper Chamber of 112, a vastly smaller number.

It seems then that if we had a harder working Parliament we would need no more than 300 members split 200 MPs to the House of Commons and 100 Senators to the elected Upper Chamber.

How big would the English Parliament have to be? There are around 38 million voters in England. The largest constituency has around 110,000 voters. Bearing in mind that English voters would have representation through their MP and Senator it seems that an English Parliament constituency could be sized between 100,00 up to  150,000 in size. This would indicate that there could be as many as 380 constituencies or as few as 250. Given that to provide the 70 or so Ministers and parliamentary secretaries required by an English Government the majority party would need around 140 MEPs (Member of the English Parliament, sorry but the other lot wil have to rename themselves, MEuPs perhaps!)  The English Parliament would have to be at least 280 in size. On this basis a total of 300 constituencies seems generous.

The question of where these various bodies would sit is now clear. They could continue to sit at Westminster. One debating chamber could be allocated to the English Parliament whilst the other would be shared by the Commons and Senate. Since much of the work of PArliament is done in committees there is no reason why, when one house is using the committee rooms the other cannot be using the debating chamber.

Such a proposal would show a savings of 100% of the current direct costs (members expenses, staff and other costs) of  the House of Lords of around £50 million. In addition with a total of 600 MEPs, MPs and Senators there would be the saving of the current direct costs of 50 MPs and some savings of salaries if MEPs are going to be paid less than an MP as are MSP at the moment. Say a saving of another £10 million or £60 million in total. Finally the House of Lords overflow offices at 1, Millbank will no longer be required. This building could be rented, sold or converted into accommodation for members. The same conversion could be done to part of one or other of the buildings currently also used for office space, Portcullis House and the Norman Shaw Buildings

We started with 650 elected MPs and over 700 members of the House of Lords, of whom, on average, around 400 attend daily. We have ended up with 600 elected reresentatives, with more than enough space to do their work and a not unreasonable level of cost savings.

GHTime Code(s): nc nc