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| Reconnecting with the grassroots, apparently |
In his article he points out that 81 Tory MPs voted for a referendum on EU membership and suggests that this is the political event of 2011. Just 81 out of 305 Tory MPs voted for a referendum, the other 224 voted against our national interest and the wishes of the majority of the electorate. Wee Willy Vague himself said that the EU was undermining our sovereignty and that we need a law to stop them doing it but he and the rest of the europhile Tory leadership pulled out all the stops to make sure that we didn't get a say in our membership. Just a quarter of Tory MPs defied the whips and we are supposed to vote for a pro-EU, illiberal, high tax, big state Conservative Party on the strength of the record of 81 MPs in one vote? You're having a laugh Montgomerie!
Montgomerie also thinks that under the rabidly europhile leadership of Martin Callanan, the Tory MEP group in the EU Parliament has reconnected with the grassroots. This group of MEPs has voted for EU regulation of the City of London, for EU control of national budgets, for EU supervision of banks and for the EU arrest warrant amongst others. Whose grassroots have they reconnected with? Certainly not their own.
Once again we are told that UKIP are splitting the Tory vote and preventing euroscepticism from triumphing but UKIP is the eurosceptic party, not the Tories. It is the Tories that are splitting the UKIP vote and preventing true eurosceptics from entering government, not the other way round.
Tim Montgomerie is way off the mark as usual - a party propaganda merchant through and through. Roger Helmer made the right decision in joining UKIP, as did all the other Tories (and there are a lot of them, especially in the last year or two) that have defected to UKIP. There is more to UKIP than opposing the EU and more behind the high profile Tory defections of the likes of Roger Helmer, Stuart Wheeler, the Lords Hesketh, Pearson and de Broke and Viscount Monckton than the continued Tory betrayals over the EU.
UKIP is attracting supporters from all parties and both ends of the political spectrum, not because they oppose the EU but because they believe in UKIP.
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
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Malfleur · 683 weeks ago
Nicholas
March 6th, 2012 - 00:02
... I think there is certainly an argument for those on the right to say my enemy’s enemy is my friend and to view the discontented youth as an opportunity. The confusion lies in the deceit of the establishment. Youth is traditionally anti-establishment but our establishment, which might be described as a predominantly left of centre wealthy elite with the motto “Do as we say not as we do”, has managed to pull a wonderful diversionary ploy to keep the ire of youth centred on a mythology, a long gone idea of an establishment of reactionary duffers, whilst it masquerades instead as some sort of “progressive”, popular insurgency “struggling” against those duffers. They boast “We are fighting the dragon of inequality, poverty, oppression and unfairness!” in that place, whereas in reality they have become the dragon themselves.
If we were therefore to view Parliament differently, to see, instead of opposing parties locked in ideological combat on our behalf, a turgid “establishment” of a back-scratching, self-perpetuating, dynastic, nepotistic, tax bleeding, law and regulation vomiting, arrogant, rich, occupying socialist elite going through the pretence and motions of democracy as a kind of lucrative game and supported by a vast, bloated, wasteful and inefficient bureaucracy requiring more and more tax from us for the privilege of being controlled by it we might find ourselves in common cause with many young people who have been alienated by it but who have been unfortunately subverted by the Left, which is part of it whilst pretending it is not.
Indeed, as Farage rails against the EU as a similarly parasitical institution of faceless, unaccountable but powerful dweebs we might legitimately rail against our “Parliament” in similar terms – as a kind of local branch of the EU running Britain. Any political insurgency against this monster would therefore not be constrained by the “idea” of party politics but more akin to the folk engaged in lawful rebellion. The “conservatism” comes from a tenacious desire to preserve the hard won freedoms and constitutional safeguards of the past, as precious and vital to the common man as to the traditional “Tory”. All the parties have pissed on our constitutional history and heritage with the deceit of “progress” and “reform”. Most of that “progress” and “reform” has entrenched their power (and the power of the EU) whilst disempowering ordinary people.
I realise that there are back benchers and MP’s who are probably just as frustrated by this but they are in the belly of the beast. Like Farage in the EU, but not as bold or as outspoken as Farage and trammelled by the Party system, the whips, the greasy pole climbing, the polite, tax-funded cosiness of it all. British politicians are certainly out of touch. They do underestimate the resentment and discontent. And the party politics game provides plenty of smokescreens and the self-delusion to continue to be detached and cloistered inside that bubble.