European Parliament Vice-President defies rules to frustrate legitimate democratic protest by UKIP MEPs over TTIP vote delay

UKIP press release, June 10, 2015. Immediate.

This evening in the European Parliament, Jonathan Arnott, UKIP MEP for the North East and EU budget spokesman, led a protest against the suppression of debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Arnott proposed a procedural motion to suspend the sitting "to allow Parliament the opportunity to reflect on the undemocratic actions by President Martin Schulz and other officials to suppress the vote and debate on this issue which is of concern to millions of people across the EU."

Arnott said: "I proposed suspending Parliamentary debate for the day to highlight this point.  The officials on the podium responded with what looked like panic, ringing the division bell and breaking their own rules.  The rules demand an immediate vote, but they delayed for over forty minutes to allow their supporters to flood the chamber."

Roger Helmer, UKIP MEP for East Midlands and energy spokesman, was in the chamber to support the protest. When it became clear the vice-president (Ildikó Gall-Pelcz) was acting in breach of the rules, Helmer broke procedure and went onto the podium to ask her if she realised she was in breach of the rules. "She replied yes. I then asked her if she was happy she was breaking the rules, and she said she was not. And yet she broke the rules anyway."

ENDS

Notes for editors:

1. Article 191 of the Rules of Procedure states: The sitting may be suspended or closed during a debate or vote if Parliament so decides on a proposal from the President or at the request of a political group or at least 40 Members.  Such proposal or request shall be put to the vote immediately.
2. The Rules were broken by:
• The vice-President (Ildikó GÁLL-PELCZ) challenged the number of members present, even though it was requested on behalf of a political group
• The vice-President stalled proceedings by claiming incorrectly that "a sitting may not be suspended twice in one day"
• The vice-President permitted the issue to be debated at length, despite the rules requiring it to be "put to the vote immediately"
• The division bell was rung continuously to call MEPs to the chamber apparently to frustrate this protest

Mansfield UKIP shop opening tomorrow

The UKIP shop in Mansfield is being opened by Douglas Carswell MP and Roger Helmer MEP tomorrow. Light refreshments and a buffet will be available.

Roger Helmer elected leader of UKIP's MEPs

Roger Helmer was voted in as group leader of UKIP's MEPs yesterday amid uncertainty over the future of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

The EU has consistently raised the bar for the formation of groups in the EU Parliament to try and squeeze out the smaller parties and keep all the influence with the europhile parties. The current rules require a group to have at least 25 members representing 7 member states which UKIP managed to achieve last time but is struggling to do this time after losing members to the European Conservatives & Reformists that the Tories run and a new group being set up by the French National Front.

The unwillingness of the EU to listen to what they're being told has not only allowed extremists to win seats across the EU, it has allowed them to gain influence in the EU Parliament by poaching members from UKIP's moderate EFD group to join a group led by the French equivalent of the BNP. Once Le Pen and her allies are settled in, the Tories and the other eurofederalists will wish they had UKIP and the EFD moderating the eurosceptic contingent in the EU Parliament.

It's looking increasingly unlikely that the EFD group will survive but never say never, Farage always has something up his sleeve.

Roger Helmer MEP on the EU budget

The Tories and Labour are claiming that UKIP MEPs have voted for an increase in the EU budget.  Roger Helmer MEP explains why UKIP voted against the "cut" EU budget ...

Derbyshire Councillor defects to UKIP

Cllr Juliette Stevens, a county councillor in Derbyshire, has defected from the Tories to UKIP.

More details will be released by the branch soon.

Police Commissioner candidate announced at Corby Launch

UKIP's by-election campaign for Corby was launched today with UKIP candidate Margot Parker joined by UKIP MEPs Nigel Farage, Roger Helmer, Derek Clark and Stuart Agnew and activists from all over the country.

The UKIP candidate for the role of Police & Crime Commissioner for Northamptonshire Police, Jim MacArthur, was also officially announced at the Corby campaign launch.  MacArthur has served in the RAF, Army, SAS and as a Special Constable.

Cameroon tokenism is busting his Party open.

When Tory MPs are blasting their own Party Chairman as the "worse ever", then you have a problem.

Of course the Cameroon virus is about promoting women and non-white faces not on merit, but in the name of 'diversity' for the sake of it.

That has led the the rapid promotion of Baroness Warsi, who recently got hammered by Tory MPs after her treatment of Roger Helmer, who of course defected to UKIP at the Party's Spring Conference.

This is what happens when a 'Notting Hill' cartel takes over your Party with a focus on political correctness and metropolitan feel-goodness, instead of focusing on the promotion of quality, principle and true conservatism.

With the A-list, all-women shortlists and other patronising measures now becoming common practise within the Tory Party, expect annoyance to grow on their backbenches. After decades as a Tory, Roger Helmer finally turned his back and became a UKIPer. It looks increasingly as if he will be followed by many, many more.

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Desperate times call for desperate Tories

The editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, has penned a desperate appeal for eurosceptics to stay with the Conservative & European Unionist Party.

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.

Roger Helmer MEP defects to UKIP

Roger Helmer MEP has defected from the Conservative & European Unionist Party to UKIP.

Helmer had intended to resign at the end of 2011 but withdrew his resignation after the Tories tried to bump their preferred candidate above his rightful replacement.  He has always said that people elected under one party banner should remain under that banner or resign and in fact he said as much in October 2011 when he announced his intention to resign, saying he wouldn't be defecting.

However, in today's resignation letter he explains that he has waited long enough for the Tories to do the right thing and is now doing what he believes is right and join the only party that actually stands for what the Tories falsely claim stand for.

Helmer's resignation letter, courtesy of the Northampton Chronicle, reads as follows:

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to let you know that after a great deal of thought, and much heart-searching, I have decided to leave the Conservative Party, and to join the United Kingdom Independence Party.

After decades with the Conservative Party, this has been a tough decision to take. I well understand that many of my friends and colleagues in the Party will greet the news with dismay, and I greatly regret that.

In recent months my increasingly tenuous relationship with the Party has been predicated primarily on people, not policies, and I cherish the hope that at least some of the good friendships I have made within the Party, both in the East Midlands and in Brussels, over my dozen years as an MEP, will survive my change of allegiance.

Peter Oborne has described UKIP as “The Conservative Party in exile”. He has a point. UKIP is closer than the Tory Party to the conservative principles and values that brought many of us into politics in the first place. It is right on Europe, right on climate and energy, and much closer to the views of most Conservatives on a range of issues including tax policy, immigration, “human rights”, foreign aid, University admissions and defence.

I have always argued that a parliamentarian who finds himself no longer able to support the Party should stand aside in favour of another Conservative, and I have roundly criticised former colleagues who failed to do so, like Bill Newton Dunn and Edward McMillan Scott. But in this case, as you will be aware, I sought in good faith to do the honourable thing, and to resign in favour of the next-in-line Conservative, Rupert Matthews. Indeed in October I announced my intention to resign at the end of 2011. But that plan was frustrated by the deliberate obstinacy and recalcitrance of the Party Chairman.

I wrote to Baroness Warsi in early January saying that I would not resign without a clear undertaking on the succession issue. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received. In these circumstances I believe that I have fulfilled my obligation to the Party, so far as I am able, and I therefore withdraw my offer to resign. I had made it clear to Baroness Warsi that I would not allow the stand-off to continue indefinitely, so I will now plan to fulfil my current term until 2014.

By seeking to do what I took to be the decent thing, and offering to stand aside in favour of another Conservative, I hope at least that I shall retain the respect of Party members in the region. They have selected and reselected me three times over the years, and I know that for the most part their views are closer to my own than to those of the Party leadership.

I will continue to work for a free, independent, sovereign and democratic Britain, trading and cooperating with our neighbours but governed from Westminster, not Brussels. Roll on Independence Day.

You dear much from that David Campbell Bannerman chap nowadays do you? I wonder how he's getting on in the SS Torytanic.