It all seems such a long time ago doesn’t it. Dave and Sam Cameron getting one of the biggest shocks of their lives in 2015 when the Conservatives scraped in with a tiny majority in the first Conservative General Election victory for 25 years. OK, Dave had been prime minister of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition but you can see Dave and Sam Cameron’s surprise when they squeaked in with 24% of the electorate’s votes, giving them a ‘working majority’ of 16 MPs.  Before we knew what our voting system had done, we found that, yes, even though no one really wanted it apart from those UKIP people, we were going to have a Referendum to decide if the country should stay in or leave the European Union.

As is now well-known,  Dave’s decision to hold a referendum was all to do with keeping his right-wing back-benchers tame in the face of an expected but failed surge in support for the EU hating UKIP party. In the end UKIP only won one seat at that election but the nation’s fate had been sealed as a result of the Conservative Party’s internal power struggle.

The nature of that struggle became only too obvious when Dave’s old friend and rival, former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson seized the opportunity to lead Leave against Dave’s Remain  campaign. Then all hell was let loose with one of the nastiest political campaigns in British history. The EU Referendum was not only unnecessary in a country that is a parliamentary democracy, but it was ill-thought through from the start, being a simple, or even simplistic, in or out vote (Leave or Remain).The debates were simplistic too. The Remain campaign was,  the BREXITERS said, Project Fear:

And, the Leave campaign was, well, yes, untruthful to say the least:

That £350 million pound claim was quickly dropped when Leave discovered that they’d won. Many but not enough of the Leavers distanced themselves from UKIP’s Nazi-style anti-immigration poster.

Very soon, in spite of an almost invisible Labour Party Remain campaign lead by Jeremy Corbyn, it became clear that Britain wasn’t really debating the EU at all but, immigration.

The EU Referendum had become the Immigration Referendum with added electoral anger aimed at rather nebulous ideas of ‘reclaiming control’ of the United Kingdom, well, England actually with the Welsh, a major recipient of EU funding, amazingly, in support. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to Remain indicating a future constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom. English people were angry, it seems, about a perceived lack of democracy in the European Union and wanted to get their ‘sovereignty’ back and to have all the nation’s decisions made by proper democratic voted majorities as the best way to represent Britain’s electorate.  Ho-ho-ho, as Father Christmas says.

Ho-ho-ho as the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, could’ve said too on the night when the United Kingdom found that it had voted, by 4%, to leave the European Union.

There was much initial rejoicing from Leave voters but it was followed by a lot of confused expressions as the reality gradually dawned.

The majority was small and the division has split the nation between the young and better educated, whose futures will be the most effected by BREXIT from the older generation whose working lives are nearing conclusion.

Well, we’re now all told that the decision, a democratic one, has been made and that, whether the 48% who voted Remain like it or not, the UK, well, England and Wales, anyway, will be leaving the European Union by 2020, the scheduled date for the next General Election. In the meanwhile, we can all sit back and worry about the economy.

The men, and they were men, who got us into this mess, have all resigned or been pushed from their various leadership posts leaving the country shocked, confused and for the time-being, leaderless. David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister on the morning after the result came in.

Boris Johnson resigned when it became clear that his great leadership gamble had faltered.

Then Nigel Farage resigned, finally realising that, he was going nowhere fast in Britain’s political system even after BREXIT.

I wouldn’t be so rude to call these gentlemen rats exactly and I don’t want to exaggerate by calling Britain a sinking ship but, well, you know what I mean. Luckily for all three of our former leaders, they will not be much inconvenienced by a new burst of austerity, falling share prices or rising unemployment. They can all watch the rest of us struggle from their comfortable nests.

So where are we now? Oh yes, we’ve got ‘control’ back and we’re now going to be more democratic now that we’re going to be out of Europe. For all those people overseas who always thought Britain was the mother of democracy, they must be really wondering now. The prime minister who was elected by 24% of the electorate has gone and we will now have either, Home Secretary Theresa May or Business Minister Andrea Leadsom, as Cameron’s successor. 199 Conservative MPs voted for May and 84 voted for Leadsom in the final round of the parliamentary leadership election. The winner will be announced when the 130 thousand members of the Conservative Party have their vote.

So, our government, elected by 24% of the electorate, brought in the Referendum which was won by BREXIT by 4%, bringing down the prime minister but, instead of holding a general election at a time of national crisis,  our new leader will be decided by just 130 thousand people out of an electorate of 44 million, seven hundred and twenty two thousand people. So much for democracy, folks. Ho-ho-ho!

The post Ho-ho-ho! Britain has got its sovereignty back and it’s all going to bedemocratic again. Or will it? appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I’m told people have stopped listening/watching the news in Britain because it is too depressing. Well, there’s no question about the gloomy nature of the World today so, I suppose, we can’t blame people for wanting to look away from so many serious issues. The problem is, dare I say, that people not just here in Britain, are not watching the news because they are frightened of the truth and are looking for solutions from populist politicians who are saying everything is easy – trust me, I’m an ordinary guy just like you. The trouble is, in our democracies, these ordinary guys might just get elected with their easily digested and simplistic answers to complex questions. In Britain this might happen next May just at a time when the country and the world needs politicians who can see beyond easy answers and who refuse to pander to the emotions of an anxious electorate looking for solutions in  single issue politics.

Here in Britain, we have the phenomenon that is Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party.  His simple political solution to the world’s problems is for this small island to leave the European Union and to close the borders. It is simple, no question, but it is also balefully wrong and, let’s face it, it won’t work.

The trouble is that he is very persuasive and is seen as an attractive alternative to Britain’s ‘main’ political leaders. It is easy to hate our politicians and all of us can come up with easy reasons why ‘the economy isn’t working’, ‘foreign immigrants are taking all our jobs,’ ‘Europe is the cause of all our problems,’ etc. etc. etc. We can all come up with other catch phrases over a pint of beer with the friendly Mr. Farage. He is so persuasive that he has Britain’s political leaders on the back foot.

Prime Minister, David Cameron, is tearing up his old ‘liberal’ speeches and looking for ways of sounding electable and acceptable to an electorate looking for scape goats.  Every day we are being fed new ‘back of an envelope’ policies from his ‘think tank’ and, increasingly, he is being pushed to the right and now he is alienating Britain’s European partners and worrying the United States. He knows, but daren’t admit it, that Farageing the Conservative party is a road to disaster.

Poor much got-at Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour party, is on the run too. He is only just holding on to a slender lead in the polls and is egg-splatteringly unpopular in the country. He is having to react to the Farage phenomenon too. Miracle-seeking Labour voters too are looking for happy endings in Mr Farage’s saloon bar politics.  Mr Cameron and Mr Milliband are not fools even if they are unloved – their sin will be ignoring what their intelligence tells them about British and international affairs and ducking their responsibility to inform the British electorate that next May’s general election is grown up time.

This is serious folks – like it or not. By ignoring the news, we ignore the developing problems in Europe and beyond – problems that Britain should be helping to resolve for all our sakes. All of us folk lucky enough to have a vote need to open our eyes and look.

President Hollande of France isn’t laughing , he’s made mistakes for sure and he too is deeply unpopular in his own land, but France should be our friend when we have enemies watching us with hatred in their eyes.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the great survivor but even she is beginning to look rattled by the future  and not just by the economics. She is much more Britain’s friend then Britain realises and she is depressed by Britain’s growing isolationism.

President Obama too is having a bumpy time. He is facing the Mid-Term elections in a country where the people there too have stopped watching the news because it is depressing. Ebola, a potential catastrophe for some African countries, has turned into an American nightmare, a symbol of fear and a stick with which to hit their politicians, both Democrats and Republicans alike. Everywhere in the Western democracies, people are looking for simple solutions to complex problems and distrusting their politicians.

They are looking for simple solutions in some of the most troubled parts of the Middle East too. When the news is bad at home in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia or Yemen, their young men look to ISIS for their own naively imagined happy ending and flock, along with European and American ‘Jihadists’, to Syria and Iraq. The result doesn’t need repeating – even if we don’t watch the news, we all know about the horrors that the world has ignored for too long.

So, ignore the news if you want but, please, don’t think the solution to these many crises will be solved over a pint with the dangerous Mr Farage. I say it again, wake up Britain, it’s Grown Up Time.

The post It’s Grown Up Time: We won’t save the World by turning off the News and looking for salvation in Nigel Farage. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I’ve often been told that I’m an odd sort of chap and that I’m, well you know, a bit different from other people. I’m not that strange, honestly, I fancy a pint down the pub as well as the next man and I like a laugh in congenial company and more often than I’d like, I get things wrong. So far so normal.

Today, though, I can see what all those people meant. I am a bit different.

I live in Lewes in the UK. I love this town for all its eccentricities, its beauty, its pubs and for the convivial company where I can often have a laugh. Today though I found out that, in the European Elections last week,  Lewes has joined the majority of the country by voting for a party that is led from the front by a normal sort of bloke who likes his pint and enjoys a good laugh down the pub. I’m sure that the jovial and remarkable Nigel Farage, is fun to spend the odd quarter of an hour with – well, maybe five minutes, just long enough to have one of those matey conversations at the bar while you’re waiting for your Guinness to be poured. It would become annoying pretty quickly once you realise that he is one of those people, often encountered after a few drinks, who thinks everything is easy. Economics: simple. International diplomacy: a piece of cake. Health and education: no problem. Just leave it to a few good blokes and everything will be alright. More than that, here let me get you another drink, let us govern Britain, it will be great again even just like it was, well, you know, in the olden days. Oh yes and one other thing, or two actually. Everything would be just great if we stopped all these foreign immigrants coming over here and if we left the European Union. See what I mean? It’s simple.

Sorry Nigel and everyone who voted for him, I don’t think things are that simple but thanks for the pint.

The European Union is, almost everyone admits, ripe for reform but it isn’t one of those baby’s rattles that gets thrown out of the cot the moment baby gets bored with it.  It has its problems, no question, and it has been going through the worst economic situation in its history but it is a remarkable thing this union of so many European countries coming together to share its rich cultural heritage, its vast industrial experience and skills, its potentially vibrant economy and its populations of people who, united, could make Europe a truly inspiring community of minds – greater than its individual parts.

 I like living in Lewes, I like being English, I’m proud of my Scottish and Irish ancestry and of all those ancestors who were brave enough to leave home and settle in India, Australia, the US and even as far away as Peru. I like being European too and, to quote the great, one time Lewes resident,  Thomas Paine, I would like to consider myself a citizen of the World.

Here in Britain, maybe for the first time, I feel alienated. I’m beginning to think I must be a bit strange after-all. Looking at those European election results, I wonder about my fellow citizens, I fear for democracy and worry about the future. Nigel Farage has won a remarkable victory, fought an extraordinary campaign and he should be congratulated on a personal achievement but he is dangerous when so many people feel so let down by their politicians that they could risk all and vote for a party that has no politics and that only preaches prejudice and fear.

The two main political parties in the UK have failed us over Europe. Divided amongst themselves, they have shrunk from rocking the boat by insisting on the importance of Britain being in the European Union and the pro-European Liberals have been sunk by their often under-rated and heroic role in diluting some of the worst extremes of Conservative politics. It will be a tragedy if Britain’s liberal voice is silenced.

There is no point just blaming Nigel when the pattern is so obviously been repeated across Europe with Neo-Fascist parties triumphing in too many countries for us to ignore the reality of this bleak moment in European history.

When I was a student, some years ago, I knew two respectable and, I thought liberal-minded ladies, sisters straight out of an Agatha Christie novel, who ran a music shop in Marylebone High Street, London. On one occasion I was there buying a book of Italian songs when a group of young people walked by eating sandwiches and drinking Coca-Cola from cans. One of the ladies tutted and said it was a depressing sight seeing the way society was going.  She asked why these lads had to eat immediately after buying those sandwiches and why they couldn’t wait until they got home. She said that we would learn to regret a society that got used to instant gratification. Europe has been through a truly serious economic crisis and life has been tough right across the World. In Europe this week, in England, in Lewes, people have voted for instant gratification: no more austerity, no more complicated solutions, no more global responsibilities. Europe has voted for that easily swallowed sandwich and, if not a can of Coca-Cola, then a comforting pint down the pub with Nigel Farage.

I truly hope that any responsible electorate will learn the error of its ways in time for next year’s General Elections. If not where does a weird guy like me go to live?

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

The post In the UK, sorry World, we’re all down the pub with Nigel Farage and UKIP. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

There were dramatic scenes at London’s airports last week as the dreaded day arrived…

Britain had read its newspapers and listened to its political leaders so all eyes were on the expected chaos at the country’s borders…

… The UK was on panic alert as rumours spread that hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians were going to flood into Britain now that  European Union rules opened the borders to our fellow Europeans.

Brave Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s main anti-European party,  gritted his teeth and faced the inevitable. Could it really happen? Could it really be as bad as this?

It was everything Mr Farage feared. There were no floods of marauding unemployed Romanian and Bulgarian workers overwhelming British airports – just a trickle of workers who already had jobs here and who were returning after their Christmas holidays with their families back in scary Romania and Bulgaria. Some of them even shook hands with that slick publicity conscious Labour MP,  Keith Vaz who was there to show us all that Romanians can actually be very nice, well-behaved people

..So why was everyone so scared?

…Could it really be true? We wondered. Well it must be because the nation’s favourite newspaper told us so…

..So even Prime Minister David Cameron was running scared.  The rumour had got to him that a notorious Romanian had sneaked through border control and was about to take his revenge on all us frightened Brits but David Cameron’s sidekick, cold-blooded George Osborne, looked as if he had already met the sinister intruder at a weekend party.

This is the man, look away now if you have a nervous disposition, he is hiding in the shadows somwehere near you, waiting to pounce. He’s a Romanian Count from the region of Transylvania….

…and he’s coming to get you, yes Mister, I mean you…

..and you Madam, no one is safe…

Yes – the Romanian is already here and he wants your blood!

Soon we won’t be able to trust anyone – you have been warned!

——————————————————————————————————————–

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

The post The Romanians are coming!!!!!! Britain on panic alert. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Most people in the UK had a drink or two over this sunny May bank holiday weekend, I hope there aren’t too many queasy hang-overs today. I’m sure that pint tasted good for Nigel Farage, the jovial leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party. If he couldn’t celebrate after his party took nearly a quarter of the vote in last week’s local elections, then when could he? Next year, I suppose, if his party rises to its big moment at the elections for the European parliament when some predict an overwhelming UKIP resurgence. We will have to wait and see but Mr Farage seems to have found a way of tempting large numbers of British people to his seductive saloon bar Utopia where there are comfortingly easy answers to Britain’s complex problems in this disconcerting time of national insecurity. With each new round of intoxicating drinks served up in Nigel’s bar, his followers feel that things don’t have to be so bad for Britain after-all. Inside his olde worlde tavern,  nicotine-stained nostalgia burgeons in smokey rooms where political manifestos are scribbled on soggy beer mats and where sober reality is banned from the club.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, may well scratch his head. He thought he was holding a nostalgia party until Nigel Farage jollied his way onto the scene. If things were looking bad for his chances of re-election, they have got a whole lot worse now that he has been party-pooped by so many of his traditional supporters, old-style Rule Britannia types, a coalition of tweedy suburban dreamers and abrasive Ford Mondeo-drivers who share the late Margaret Thatcher’s distrust of foreigners especially ones who don’t speak English and who see politics as an intellectual debate. David Cameron can hear the confident laughter coming from Nigel Farage’s bar down the road while he tries to humour the dwindling numbers of restless guests at his low key wine and cheese party.

Talking of coalitions, the Liberal-Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, is still at David Cameron’s party, he even chose the classy French wine and his own supply of Camembert cheese supplementing the David’s mature English cheddar, but he is not happy. He too can hear the laughter from Nigel’s bar and fears that David may soon have to roll out a barrel of old English ale and a hearty supply of pork scratchings. After those local elections, Nick knows that he can’t keep the party going on his own. No one has gone for his guacamole canapes and his Camembert has started to sweat. Maybe he should look for another party, I hear the Labour leader, Ed Milliband, is going to have a bar-b-que if the weather stays fine. Nick, just bring an 8-pack of beers, in case the wine runs out. This morning I heard my first cuckoo. Cheers everyone in the UK, hope you enjoyed the party.

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