Desperate Labour spinner Dan Hodges attacks UKIP

Champagne socialist, Dan Hodges, has described UKIP's upcoming election campaign as "one of the most dangerous campaigns in British political history" in an article for the Telegraph.

A former employee of the Labour Party, GMB trade union official and son of Labour MP Glenda Jackson, Hodges is hardly a source of impartial or even rational political debate and it's a sign of the times when a Tory supporting newspaper gives a platform to someone who describes himself as supporting Labour "with tribal loyalty and without reservation" just to attack UKIP.

It would be easy to attack Hodges just on his irrational, partisan politics (he supports Labour with "tribal loyalty", worked for Ken Livingston but supported Boris Johnson standing against Livingstone for Mayor of London and has shown some extreme authoritarian tendencies) but we'll hoist him by his own petard instead.

The Government has introduced an immigration cap, which is reducing the number of migrants entering the UK.

But this is only a cap on non-EU immigrants. We're applying an arbitrary quota on immigrants from the Commonwealth and beyond whilst continuing to allow unlimited numbers of immigrants from EU countries. The British government has no control over the total number of immigrants entering the country.

The Commonwealth accounts for the majority of immigration into the UK but the EU is closing the gap, increasing from 72m immigrants in 2000 to 151m in 2011. EU immigration overtook non-Commonwealth immigration from the rest of the world in March 2005 and immigration controls being applied to Commonwealth countries will further increase the EU's share of immigration into the UK to be the largest single source of immigrants.

Measures have been introduced to limit their access to health and social security provision.

But this only applies to non-EU immigrants. Immigrants from the EU are entitled to the same benefits as people already living here and a common loophole for EU immigrants is to claim that they are self-employed as soon as they arrive in the country which qualifies them for benefits from the day they arrive in the country.

The Tories have sent vans on to our streets telling migrants to go home, whilst Labour has again started to call publicly for British jobs to be reserved for British workers.

There was such criticism of the "go home" vans that they got pulled after only a few weeks and Labour can call for British jobs to be reserved for British workers all they want but that's illegal under EU law.

Many people, me included, have been trying to reassess our attitudes towards immigration. We recognise we took our eye off the ball. Our inclination towards tolerance meant we ignored the justified anger and frustration at the impact immigration was having on our fellow citizens.

It wasn't "tolerance" that drove the destructive abolition of border controls, it was an intolerance of the views of the majority that were telling people like Hodges that mass immigration was wrong and would damage the country. That intolerance still exists today, except people like Hodges now loath themselves as well as the rest of us for realising that their deliberate campaign to change society through immigration was wrong.

But next year we’re going to have to pick a side. Paul Sykes, Nigel Farage and their fellow travellers are preparing to run one of the most dangerous and divisive campaigns in British political history. Drunk on their new-found celebrity, and their wealth, they plan to target immigrants to secure their own narrow political objectives.

They are quite open about this. Ukip will attack those who see to come to this country legally, in pursuit of work and the opportunity to provide for their families; some of these people will find themselves portrayed as criminals or scroungers.

So when he says "the prohibition on discussing immigration has been lifted", what he means is that you can talk about immigration but only as long as you don't want to reduce it or control it and as long as you don't suggest that immigration also brings criminals alongside the ordinary, law abiding people. If you do then a perfectly sensible policy that says there aren't enough jobs or houses to go around the people already living here so economic immigration needs to be frozen for five years to help solve the housing crisis and rampant unemployment will be misrepresented as "dangerous and divisive" and framed as bigotry and racism. When we need economic immigration, a UKIP government will welcome skilled people from overseas who can plug the skills gaps we have at the time.

The collapse of the BNP and the EDL will see many of their supporters switching en masse to Nigel Farage’s party, whether he likes it or not. Ukip is famously disorganised; how can we be sure that extremists have not made it through the screening process and on to the candidates' list?

They won't because UKIP is the only mainstream party that bans past and present members of the BNP, EDL, National Front and other unsavoury parties and organisations from joining the party. The screening process for candidates is so robust that a sitting MEP failed to be reselected and the party disciplinary process is strong enough to have expelled the leader of the UKIP group on Lincolnshire County Council from the party resulting in UKIP losing its position as the official opposition group on that council. UKIP's actions in the past and to this day have shown that when tough decisions need to be made, they will be.

So we will all have to choose. We can stand back as Nigel Farage and Ukip attempt to drive a wedge between the people of Britain and the new arrivals from eastern Europe. Or we can challenge them.

Nigel Farage and UKIP aren't attempting to drive a wedge between any sections of society. Our immigration policy is sensible and straightforward and doesn't discriminate at all. Unlike the LibLabCon who discriminate against our friends and allies in the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the world to support a divisive and discriminatory policy of unlimited and unrestricted immigration from the EU, UKIP treats all prospective immigrants the same and will apply the same restrictions to everyone.

Telegraph says rapists are a "hidden danger" of UKIP

An article published on the Telegraph website this morning warns that UKIP is a party of rapists following an unsubstantiated, unreported and apparently unreliable allegation of rape at a party following the UKIP conference in Birmingham.

According to the article, a young party activists claims her drink was spiked at a post-conference reception and that she was subsequently raped.  She reported the alleged rape to the party but not the police, Michael Greaves, who is a former Crown Prosecutor and member of the International Criminal Court, investigated the allegations and found that she was unreliable.  The alleged victim didn't report it to the police.

If the allegations are true then the person making the claim needs to report it to the police because it's an extremely serious crime and nobody wants a rapist on the loose.  But it isn't for the party to report to the police if there is no evidence of it happening - it clearly isn't what the alleged victim wants for a start.

Even if the allegations are true, the Telegraph's suggestion that rapists are a "hidden danger" of UKIP is absolutely unjustified and I am deeply offended and disgusted at the implication that I, as a UKIP member and councillor, am a dangerous person because of this unsubstantiated accusation.  The warning (which has since been removed after I phoned the journalist to complain) was placed below a cropped picture of Nigel Farage and said:

You have been warned: the hidden danger of Ukip is waiting in the wings

I have contacted the Press Complaints Commission with a view to making an official complaint about this defamatory statement.  The journalist says that he wasn't responsible for the picture or the caption.

Booker lays into Camoron again

Christopher Booker has got the measure of Camoron.

Vote for us or the puppy gets it

He has written an article in the Torygraph referring to Camoron's "cowardly caveat on a Euro referendum" criticising him for being vague on the European Empire and covering up the true extent of the power they have over us.

Of course, the reason he puts a "cowardly caveat" on a referendum on the EU not-a-constitution is because it would be illegal under EU law to rescind the Lisbon Treaty once it has been ratified by all member states and enters into force.  To rescind the Lisbon Treaty once it has entered into force would require the agreement of all EU member states or to leave the EU and to leave the EU once the Lisbon Treaty is in force will require the agreement of all EU member states.  But that is an irrelevance anyway because Camoron has already said that the UK will never leave the EU under a Tory government even though that's what the majority of the electorate wants.

Telegraph: Monetary union has left half of Europe trapped in depression

Monetary union has left half of Europe trapped in depression

Events are moving fast in Europe. The worst riots since the fall of Communism have swept the Baltics and the south Balkans. An incipient crisis is taking shape in the Club Med bond markets. S&P has cut Greek debt to near junk. Spanish, Portuguese, and Irish bonds are on negative watch.

Dublin has nationalised Anglo Irish Bank with its half-built folly on North Wall Quay and €73bn (£65bn) of liabilities, moving a step nearer the line where markets probe the solvency of the Irish state.

A great ring of EU states stretching from Eastern Europe down across Mare Nostrum to the Celtic fringe are either in a 1930s depression already or soon will be. Greece's social fabric is unravelling before the pain begins, which bodes ill.

Each is a victim of ill-judged economic policies foisted upon them by elites in thrall to Europe's monetary project – either in EMU or preparing to join – and each is trapped.

As UKIP leader Nigel Farage put it in a rare voice of dissent at the euro's 10th birthday triumph in Strasbourg, EMU-land has become a Völker-Kerker – a "prison of nations", to borrow from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This week, Riga's cobbled streets became a war zone. Protesters armed with blocks of ice smashed up Latvia's finance ministry. Hundreds tried to force their way into the legislature, enraged by austerity cuts.

"Trust in the state's authority and officials has fallen catastrophically," said President Valdis Zatlers,
who called for the dissolution of parliament.

In Lithuania, riot police fired rubber-bullets on a trade union march. Dogs chased stragglers into the Vilnia river. A demonstration outside Bulgaria's parliament in Sofia turned violent on Wednesday.

These three states are all members of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM2), the euro's pre-detention cell. They must join. It is written into their EU contracts.

The result of subjecting ex-Soviet catch-up economies to the monetary regime of the leaden West has been massive overheating. Latvia's current account deficit hit 26pc of GDP. Riga property prices surpassed Berlin.

The inevitable bust is proving epic. Latvia's property group Balsts says Riga flat prices have fallen 56pc since mid-2007. The economy contracted 18pc annualised over the last six months.

Leaked documents reveal – despite a blizzard of lies by EU and Latvian officials – that the International Monetary Fund called for devaluation as part of a €7.5bn joint rescue for Latvia. Such adjustments are crucial in IMF deals. They allow countries to claw their way back to health without suffering perma-slump.

This was blocked by Brussels – purportedly because mortgage debt in euros and Swiss francs precluded that option. IMF documents dispute this. A society is being sacrificed on the altar of the EMU project.

Latvians have company. Dublin expects Ireland's economy to contract 4pc this year. The deficit will reach 12pc of GDP by 2010 on current policies. "This is not sustainable," said the treasury. Hence the draconian wage deflation now threatened by the Taoiseach.

The Celtic Tiger has faced the test bravely. No government in Europe has been so honest. It is a tragedy that sterling's crash should have compounded their woes at this moment. To cap it all, Dell is decamping to Poland with 4pc of GDP. Irish wages crept too high during
the heady years when Euroland interest rates of 2pc so beguiled the nation.

Spain lost a million jobs in 2008. Madrid is bracing for 16pc unemployment by year's end.

Private economists fear 25pc before it is over. Spain's wage inflation has priced the workforce out of Europe's markets. EMU logic is wage deflation for year after year. With Spain's high debt levels, this is impossible.

Either Mr Zapatero stops the madness, or Spanish democracy will stop him. The left wing of his PSOE party is already peeling off, just as the French left is peeling off to fight "l'euro dictature capitaliste".

Italy's treasury awaits each bond auction with dread, wondering if can offload €200bn of debt this year. Spreads reached a fresh post-EMU high of 149 last week. The debt compound noose is tightening around Rome's throat. Italian journalists have begun to talk of Europe's "Tequila Crisis" – a new twist.

They mean that capital flight from Club Med could set off an unstoppable process.

Mexico's Tequila drama in 1994 was triggered by a combination of the Chiapas uprising, a current account haemorrhage, and bond jitters. The dollar-peso peg snapped when elites began moving money to US banks. The game was up within days.

Fixed exchange systems – and EMU is just a glorified version – rupture suddenly. Things can seem eerily calm for a long time. Politicians swear by the parity. Remember John Major's "soft-option" defiance days before the ERM blew apart in 1992? Or Philip Snowden's defence of sterling before a Royal Navy mutiny forced Britain off the Gold Standard in 1931.

Don't expect tremors before an earthquake – and there is no fault line of greater historic violence than the crunching plates where Latin Europe meets Teutonia.

Greece no longer dares sell long bonds to fund its debt. It sold €2.5bn last week at short rates, mostly 3-months and 6-months. This is a dangerous game. It stores up "roll-over risk" for later in the year. Hedge funds are circling.

Traders suspect that investors are dumping their Club Med and Irish debt immediately on the European Central Bank in "repo" actions.

In other words, the ECB is already providing a stealth bail-out for Europe's governments – though secrecy veils all.

An EU debt union is being created, in breach of EU law. Liabilities are being shifted quietly on to German taxpayers. What happens when Germany's hard-working citizens find out?