My Speech at the Joint English Democrats
and UKIP Conference on 5th October 2024
Here
is the shortened version of my speech delivered to the joint English Democrats
and UKIP session in the afternoon of our conference at Bestwood Lodge Hotel, a
fantastic Gothic country house hotel on the outskirts of Nottingham.
Ladies
and Gentlemen, Fellow English Democrats and also UKIPpers welcome to our joint
Conference here in Nottingham.
I
know Robin Hood was said to have all sorts of troubles with at least one resident
of Nottingham, however this Robin and we have a good relationship with this
hotel, which is keen to invite us back for our conferences and still are, despite
the spate of Leftist threats that the management recently received. Many thanks to the owners and managers for
standing firm!
So
here we are Ladies and Gentlemen, in this fantastic Gothic building, Nottingham’s
Balmoral, where there was once a hunting lodge at which the last Plantagenet
King Richard III heard the news that Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, had
landed at Milford Haven and was leading an armed rebellion against King Richard. Richard left them here and went to his death at
the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
The
building was built by the Victorian Duke of St Albans, who was a descendant of
Charles and Nell Gwyn.
As,
with so much of England, if you dig down into history you are likely to find
something of interest.
If
you go further back into the foundations of England, Nottingham was one of the
five Viking boroughs, which Alfred the Great’s children, Edward The Elder and Æthelflæd, the “Lady of the
Mercians" incorporated into England with their English unification project
which led to the ultimate result of England being united under Edward’s son,
King Athelstan, on the 12th July 927 outside Penrith at Egmont
Bridge. This unification of nearly 1,100
years ago makes England the oldest Nation State on earth!
It is this Ladies and Gentlemen that some
commentators have recently been talking about.
One of whom was Robert Jenrick, the
candidate who is currently in the lead for Conservative leadership, who on
saying in an interview that there were threats to English identity was then
faced with an attempted gotcha line his by Sky News interviewer.
Ladies
and Gentlemen Sky News has long been very hostile to any idea of Englishness. Adam Boulton is a particularly appalling
example of Leftist bias.
When
the English Democrats were in contention for second place with the Greens in
the limited by-election at Haltemprice and Howden, in 2008, Adam Boulton pointedly refused to mention the English
Democrats at all. When we had called for a recount, as we were just 44 votes
behind the Greens, he simply said “Another party has asked for a recount”
whilst he was interviewing the Green candidate!
So Ladies and Gentlemen if you think the BBC is
bad, then I would say it is worth considering just how biased Sky News is!
Of course in a way we do not mind Sky News being as
biased as it is since we do not have to pay for it but it is still worth
noting.
Political Survey
Ladies & Gentlemen, as all our
regular attenders know, I generally do a quick survey of the state of politics
in our great, although sorely put upon, country.
For all of us gathered here who
are both eccentric enough not only to be interested in politics but also to be
patriots, I think things are becoming more and more interesting and maybe also encouraging.
Take this
recent story from the Daily Telegraph by Tim Stanley.
If Welsh pride is fine, why not English?
Tories
should champion the UK’s Celtic cultures.
But they must not fear embracing Englishness.
“In Wales
it looks as if being anti-English has gone mainstream. The Labour-led assembly discriminates against
second-home owners; a Welsh village blocked a housing estate lest
English-speakers move in and become a “degenerate influence”; and Bridgend County
Council has ended free transport for certain pupils unless they attend a Welsh
language or faith school.”
We have
also just had the election of the Austrian Freedom Party in Austria.
Geert
Wilders, the veteran Eurosceptic, whose Party won the elections in the
Netherlands last year. Despite leading
his Party for Freedom to a convincing victory, he did not become prime
minister.
It seems his
calls for a Nexit referendum and for the Koran to be banned were too
controversial for his eventual coalition partners.
In
response to the result in Austria he said on X “The Netherlands, Hungary,
Belgium, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, France, Spain, Czech Republic and
today Austria! We are winning! Times are changing!
“Identity,
sovereignty, freedom and no more illegal immigration/asylum are what tens of
millions of Europeans long for”.
Here in
England we English are under attack - writes Old Labour activist Paul Embery
Yes, there IS such a thing as English identity
- The liberal progressive elites are on a mission to deny England’s
history and culture
“In his
1941 essay ‘England, Your England’, George Orwell wrote:
England is
perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own
nationality. In left-wing circles, it is always felt that there is something
slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and that it is a duty to snigger
at every English institution… [A]lmost any English intellectual would feel more
ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God Save the King’ than of stealing
from a poor box.
I suspect
that even the great man himself, a socialist and patriot to the core, would be
shocked by the degree to which the anti-English sentiment he identified over 80
years ago has become even more embedded in the psyche of the nation’s political
and cultural elites – and not just those who consider themselves to be on the
left.
We all
know the script. England has no distinct political or cultural identity – not a
meaningful one, at any rate. Most of the good and revered things that are said
to be ‘English’ are not English at all; they all came from elsewhere. Other
than ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’, naturally. Those anodyne concepts must be
cited ad nauseum in response to any enquiry of what it is that
makes us proud to be English. But that’s about it. (Oh, and didn’t you know
that St George was really a Palestinian?)
The bad
things, on the other hand – they are all definitely English. Slavery and
imperialism, for example. The English must forever be reminded of their
responsibility for these evils and be expected to engage in regular bouts of
self-flagellation by way of atonement.
It’s hard
to believe that any other nation’s intelligentsia would be so determined to
denigrate or deny its history and identity in this way. Many who demonstrate
such a mindset hold the belief that any expression of Englishness can stem only
from a feeling of superiority or xenophobia or pride in things about which the
English should be unproud. While Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism are seen
as largely benign – even admirable by those who deem these nations to have
suffered historical oppression at the hands of their larger neighbour – English
nationalism, even of the most innocuous, civic kind, is to be avoided at all
costs. (I wonder if these people have ever troubled to learn about Scotland’s
role in the Empire.)
Others are
motivated by the view that, in this age of ever-deepening globalisation,
national borders and identities are essentially redundant, and we are instead
all now citizens-of-nowhere – part of a great global cultural blancmange.
Anyone standing in the way of this phenomenon is deemed an opponent of
‘progress’ and treated as some sort of political or cultural dinosaur. This, I
am sure, explains why even some politicians on the right remain nervous about
promoting the politics of English identity.
Take a
recent much-commented-upon segment of an interview of Tory leadership candidate
Robert Jenrick on Sky News. Jenrick had argued in a newspaper article that
English identity had been placed at risk by immigration, ‘non-integrating
multiculturalism’ and a metropolitan establishment which ‘actively
disapprove[s]’ of the nation’s history and culture. Now, one may disagree with
Jenrick’s analysis. But the interviewer barely even considered the analysis on
its own merits, instead pressing Jenrick repeatedly on the question of ‘What is
English identity?’ – the clear implication being that there was no such thing.
For that is the premise from which much of the commentariat starts: that
Englishness is an illusory concept and there is nothing distinct about the
country at all.
Jenrick’s
intervention sparked a wider debate on social media and beyond, with the usual
suspects lining up to deride the entire notion of English identity and argue
that there is no such thing. When it comes to England of all nations – the
birthplace of common law, a near-universal language, an unsurpassed canon of
literature and poetry, the Anglican church, the Westminster system of government,
the industrial revolution, and numerous popular sports – such a theory is
patently ridiculous. You may not like or be interested in any of the
aforementioned things. But to deny that they have over a thousand years helped
to shape England into the distinct political and cultural entity it is today is
to demonstrate ignorance of the highest order.
These
attempts have over the past couple of decades engendered a sense of national
dispossession throughout many of England’s communities – especially in the
provincial quarters of the country – and led to an increase in the number of
voters identifying as more English than British. This development has, in turn,
had a tangible impact on our politics. As former Labour cabinet minister and
current director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at the
University of Southampton, John Denham, wrote earlier this year:
In the
first two decades of the 21st century, the politics of England and the UK were
transformed by voters who emphasised their English identity. The votes of the
‘more English than British’ took Ukip from obscurity to agenda setter, secured
the fateful promise of an EU referendum, and delivered the Leave vote. In the
2019 ‘Get Brexit Done’ election, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives gained the
support of 68% of the ‘More English than British’, 50% of the ‘equally English
and British’, but lost narrowly to Labour amongst the ‘More British than
English’.
Those bent
on ridiculing the whole concept of English identity might perhaps be wise to
start recognising the impact of their words and actions on the wider political
landscape.”
Justice System
Normally in my conference speeches
I confine myself to talking about mainly political matters. However I do think I should mention the
ongoing process of politicisation of the police and courts. Lots of people have noticed that it is very
much a two tier approach in dealing with public order matters.
Immigration
On this topic I can’t do better
than quote:-
Professor Matt
Goodwin – The economic case for mass immigration is COLLAPSING:-
“One of
the most detailed studies, the Borderless
Welfare State, at the University of Amsterdam, paints a striking and
bleak picture. It’s based on incredibly detailed and reliable data on
individuals in the population. What did it find? It found clear and
overwhelming evidence that much of the immigration that’s flooding into the
country is undermining the welfare state and imposing big costs on the economy.
Why?
Because much of the immigration into the Netherlands, like much of the
immigration into the UK, is being driven by less well educated immigrants who
cling to the welfare state and take more out of it than they put in.
As Jan van
der Beek’s research shows, the share of poorly educated people in the 25-65 age
group among non-European immigrants (34%) is twice as high as among the native
Dutch (17%). And because the poorly-educated are more likely to rely on welfare
this is increasing the proportion of net recipients in the population,
upsetting the balance. This is exactly why Milton Friedman said: ‘You cannot
simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state’. It’s also why other
scholars warn mass immigration erodes social trust and support for welfare —not
least as the native population begin to realise they are merely subsidising
outsiders from very different cultures who often hate who they are and are a
net fiscal drain on the economy.
As Jan van
der Beek also finds, while poorly-educated immigrants are a net fiscal cost on
Western economies, so too are migrants who are moving into the West to join
family members, study, or seek asylum (as many in the UK are doing). In the UK,
for example, while people often assume that international students are affluent
PhD students from Chile the reality is quite different. More than 40% of
graduate visa holders in the UK earn less than £15,000 a year, with many ending
up servicing the low-wage, low-skill Deliveroo economy. Only migrants who are
moving for work make a net contribution although even then the pattern is
mixed. As van der Beek finds, whereas labour migrants from North America,
Oceania and Japan bring a net fiscal gain to the economy of some £670,000,
asylum migrants from Africa, like many of those arriving in the UK, cost the
Dutch a net cost of £685,000 per migrant.
Family and
asylum migration is especially costly (which has also been found in Belgium).
In fact, in the Netherlands it’s estimated that granting one asylum request to
one migrant costs Dutch taxpayers about £1.1 million —to cover the
asylum-seeking migrant, their family members, and the impact of the second
generation.
There are
also enormous differences according to where migrant workers come from. On
average, migrant workers from Africa, the Middle east, and Central and Eastern
Europe are a net fiscal drain. Their education and income is low, making them,
on average, net recipients of the welfare state. This is aggravated by higher
rates of family-related migration that come with labour migration, which
doubles the cost.
One
example are low-skilled, guest-worker migrants from Morocco and Turkey who have
grown from 55,000 in the 1970s to 935,000 since. In 2016, in the Netherlands,
these guest-workers and their descendants were net fiscal recipients of an
astonishing £8 billion –equivalent to 2.5% of all government spending—which is
even more striking given they tend to be younger and in theory should be net
contributors.
In other
words, while the costs of mass immigration to the UK are finally starting to
emerge in the research, if you look at far more detailed and reliable studies
elsewhere in Europe they tell a consistent and worrying story. It is exactly
the kind of low-wage, low-skill, low-educated, and non-European forms of
immigration that the UK is now welcoming with open arms, much of it from places
like the Middle East and Northern Africa, that is precisely the most
financially costly and most likely to erode rather than bolster our national
prosperity.
The most
costly forms of migration are asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Northern
Africa.”
On a Geostrategic Level
Ladies and Gentlemen as I explained
in the Spring Conference we are moving into a period where the increasing
incompetence of the British State has got us to the point where it may well be
defeated in battle.
That is unchartered territory, but
I do note that States that are defeated in battle often collapse, which I think
is a sobering reflection on the challenges that we may face over the course of
the next 10 years.
It would be the British State that
is defeated. The UK is of course in some
senses a multi-national imperial state.
Empires in particular are very susceptible to collapse in the event of
military defeat. I would expect independent
Nation States to arise out of the ashes of the British State.
Parties
Let’s now turn to the Parties.
The electorate
in England is 39,860,421.
In the
General Election on 4th July 2024 (60% turnout) just 24,288,122
voted
The Conservative’s vote in England
was 25.9% of the vote or 15.8% of electorate a total vote of 6,279,411 in
England.
(6,828,925
(23.7% in UK)
(in 12th December 2019 the
Conservatives got 13,966,454 - more than double!)
In the
General Election Labour got just 8,365,122 votes in England that is just less
than 21% of the English electorate
Conservatives
So far as the Conservatives are
concerned, you might say that they will recover but of course they may follow
the 1993 Canadian example and never do so.
After all their membership is already quite small for a Party of
Government.
They claim to have a membership of
about 150,000, but if you look at their accounts you cannot really come up with
an estimate of paid membership of greater than 50,000!
Ladies and Gentlemen the
Conservatives are not a mass party any more, they are simply propped up by very
large donations from big business, often in return for favours.
I wonder if any of the Leadership
candidates can change the Conservative Party’s fortunes – Let’s hope not!
Labour
As I mentioned in my Spring
Conference speech, you can already see some aspects of how the Labour coalition
might collapse. We have the Corbynite
and Galloway tendency. Opposed to them
we see technocratic social democrats, like Free Gear Kier Starmer. Labour could easily become two or three
parties in the absence of any proper opposition. Who would have guessed how quickly Kier
Starmer’s reputation for honesty would have collapsed!
It is worth noting that under our
current electoral system that any talk of “Majorities” in the wholly
disproportionate “First Past the Post” system is false, none are genuine
majorities. The winners just got a
larger minority vote than their competitors.
Also Labour generally got almost
exactly the same number of votes as they did in 2019. So there has been no Labour “Landslide” –
only a “Conservative” collapse!
SNP
In the Spring Conference I said
that faced with their Far Left lunacy I thought that the SNP’s position would
collapse dramatically. This was correct
which meant that Labour got the benefit of that collapse and an increased
majority in the House of Commons.
LibDems
Got more seats in the House of
Commons than is proportionate.
Reform
Turning now to Reform.
They won 5 seats and an Ulster
Unionist has since joined them.
A key issue to note is “Short Money”
This is General funding for
Opposition Parties – the amount payable to qualifying parties is £22,295.86
for every seat won at the last General Election plus £44.53
for every 200 votes gained by the party.
£44.53 for every vote 4,117,221
divided by 200 = 20,586 x 44.53 = £916,699
6
Seats multiplied by £22,295.86 = £133,770
Total
£ 1,050,736 every year
This is what a Conservative, Peter
Franklin, from Conservative Home wrote about Reform:-
As the direct inheritor of the
Brexit Party and spiritual successor to UKIP, Reform UK is the first port of
call for the populist protest vote. The leadership may lack the vision and
courage to move beyond this strategic position, but they make it very hard for
a hungrier, savvier party to move into it.
As used to be the case with the
Liberal Democrats, and the Liberals before them, Reform UK is the bed-blocker
party. Along with the electoral system, it is an impediment to the raging
populism that has disrupted politics elsewhere in Europe.
I don’t suppose the strategists of
Downing Street have ever stopped to thank Farage and co. However, that’s only
because neither the Sunakites nor the Trussites nor the Borisites understand
the full extent of their errors.
Between them they’ve reduced the
Conservative Party to a state in which it is acutely vulnerable to replacement
by a rival party of the right. That this hasn’t happened (yet) is in no small
part due to the influence – and limitations – of Reform UK.”
UKIP
UKIP we are now in an electoral
pact with them so hopefully we will avoid standing against each other. UKIP’s General Election results were quite
similar to the English Democrats results.
I am looking forward to hearing Nick Tenconi’s speech.
English Democrats
That brings me to the English Democrats.
In the May 2024 Police
Commissioner elections we were clearly the foremost party on law and order
issues and we got 44,909 votes in Essex (13.6%); and 21,646 in West Midlands
(10.1%) and 7,739 in Lincolnshire (7.2%) for the lowest campaign spending of
all the parties which we were in competition with and another Councillor
elected.
In the General Election our
results were:-
GENERAL
ELECTION RESULTS - 2024
|
Shrewsbury
|
English Democrats
|
241
|
|
East Grinstead & Uckfield
|
English Democrats
|
2,036
|
|
Leigh & Atherton
|
English Democrats
|
376
|
|
Bolton West
|
English Democrats
|
202
|
|
Makerfield
|
English Democrats
|
368
|
|
Dover & Deal
|
English Democrats
|
185
|
|
Bradford South
|
English Democrats
|
248
|
|
Newark
|
English Democrats
|
156
|
|
Brentwood & Ongar
|
English Democrats
|
189
|
|
Boston & Skegness
|
English Democrats
|
518
|
|
Great Yarmouth
|
English Democrats
|
171
|
|
Bury South
|
English Democrats
|
224
|
|
Dunstable & Leighton
|
English Democrats
|
77
|
|
Makerfield
|
English Democrats
|
368
|
|
Barnsley North
|
English Democrats
|
42
|
|
Barnsley South
|
English Democrats
|
149
|
As political parties both we
English Democrats and UKIP exist to fight elections. I think we all should always keep in mind Bertolt
Brecht’s famous saying “He who fights,
can lose. He who doesn’t fight, has
already lost”. We both need to keep up
the fight!
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