Brexit – Is the UK really free from the EU? Part 3 – Nothing “free” about this free trade agreement

This series of posts takes a closer look at the Agreement that was arrived at between the UK and the EU and signed on 24th December 2020.
Editor's Note: The use of the expression, "TCA" in this series of posts refers to the "Trade and Cooperation Agreement" signed between the UK and the EU on December 24th 2020. This series of articles was first written in early 2021, so please bear in mind that some of the content may appear somewhat dated.

Philip Gegan

[Click here for Part 1]

[Click here for Part 2]

In this part I am looking at how the Brexit “Trade and Cooperation Agreement” (“TCA”) affects trade in both goods and services between the UK and the EU.

Trade in goods

In 2019 the UK had a deficit of around £97 billion in trade in goods with the EU. The EU wants to keep it that way, and the agreement provides for just that. The UK negotiators let the EU have its cake and eat it. It gave us the dubious privilege of remaining the dumping ground for surplus EU products, made possible by a gross undervaluation of the Euro. And we’ve paid for this liability by agreeing to obey all EU rules on trade in goods. That includes any changes to those rules, in which we have no say, in perpetuity. So much for regaining our national sovereignty. The EU thereby managed to protect the integrity of their precious Single Market. What did our negotiators secure for us in return?

Very little, it seems. We should not be surprised here, because the UK’s negotiators, like all mainstream politicians of any Western country, believe in the fundamental goodness of free trade. They believe that all forms of protection of the home market – tariffs, preferences, and so on, are bad. Unregulated competition from foreign countries, however, is good. Even though that may mean the decimation of home industries, the closure of factories and mines and the throwing of good working men and women onto the unemployment scrapheap.

In order for us to grasp what the TCA does for trade relations between the two parties, we have to understand what exactly free trade means, both to its proponents and to everyone who has to live with it. In the absence of clear thinking, it means different things to different people.

Any free trade agreement involves an infringement of national sovereignty. It has superficial attractions to naive career politicians, but beyond that it is just a chimera.

An unworkable system

The popular conception of free trade is of goods and services freely moving from one country to another without hindrance in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. Everyone is happy. Consumers because they can purchase goods cheaply from the source with the lowest price, and manufacturers and suppliers because they have a much larger market to sell in. That’s how ignorant politicians, economists and broadcasters see it.

But in reality it’s nowhere like as rosy as that. It’s an unworkable system. Quite aside from the depressive effect on wages, which ultimately keeps most people as poor as the poorest in the free trade area, there are restraints on natural development and progress.

If one party to a free trade agreement is more inventive than the other parties, or becomes more efficient, or less prone to wasteful practices, they thereby acquire an advantage over the others. They become more productive and therefore more prosperous and they are rewarded with a higher standard of living.

But this is at the expense of all the others who are a party to the agreement, whose standards of living, on average, will tend to fall, whose balance of payments will suffer, whose industries will wither and factories close. It causes an imbalance, and this imbalance will increase with time until the cost to the other countries is too high and the whole agreement becomes unworkable. Those other countries, if they wish to survive, will have no choice but to raise tariffs and destroy the agreement.

Further restrictions on our freedoms

But if there are bankers and financiers profiting handsomely from the free trade agreement, as they are bound to do, then there will be pressure to keep the system going artificially by destroying the ability of the successful party to be successful. Everything depends on absolute equality, including equality of poverty and equality of inefficient working practices. This leads to the stifling of any form of inventiveness or enterprise on the part of a more successful signatory to the agreement, and acts as a break on human progress.

This artificial equality is built into modern free trade agreements, and it is right there in the TCA. If a situation such as I’ve just described arises then what’s called “the level playing field” concept kicks in.

This artificial concept provides that no party should have any advantage over any of the other parties, even though such advantage has been obtained honestly and fairly by prudent investment (e.g. government subsidies), technical ability or other such property that any other party could have utilised if they had had the ability and foresight.

Under the rules of free trade, the cry will go up, just like the children in a playground where one of the participants in the game is perceived as having an unfair advantage. “That’s not fair! The playing field isn’t level!”

So it can be no surprise that there are countless restrictions on our freedom to conduct our national affairs in the TCA.

The “level playing field”

For example, any sovereign nation has the right to extend financial support to any section of its economy that is in difficulties. But if we want to do that in the future, for any section of our economy that is involved in trade with the EU, we have to abide by EU rules so as to ensure a “level playing field” and eliminate so-called “unfair competition” (TITLE XI: LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR OPEN AND FAIR COMPETITION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT). The sole beneficiary of this arrangement is the EU and its “Single Market”.

The Single Market is the EU’s own incarnation of a free trade area and the preservation of this artificial construct was one of the issues at the forefront of the EU’s considerations during the negotiations. They were desperate to preserve the status quo, so that in the event of the UK becoming more competitive than EU member-states in any area of productive industry, it would be easy for them to use the TCA to reverse the process and make it difficult to impossible for British companies to sell competitively inside the EU.

All kinds of rules, regulations, and mechanisms were therefore embodied in the Agreement to cover such an eventuality (see, for example, Title XI, Chapter two: Competition Policy). Especially in a situation where one side (the EU) is seeking to punish the other side (the UK).

Looking at the Agreement itself, you can see where various “member-states” of the EU have successfully lobbied for the protection of their own important industries during the long-drawn-out negotiations. Hence we have special Annexes dealing with motor vehicles (Germany, France), wine (France), and chemicals (Germany, Italy).

The UK negotiators have agreed on our behalf that neither side can create for itself an advantage over the other. This is the “level playing field”. Moreover, there will be a dispute settlement mechanism on state aid, with both sides able to impose tariffs unilaterally, if the “level playing field” is upset, ostensibly to protect against “unfair competition”.

“Confidentiality”

If there’s one thing the EU is famous for, other than corruption and bureaucracy, it’s secrecy. So under the TCA decisions will be the subject of often-confidential discussions, while dispute resolution and arbitration will be subject to absolute and discretionary rules of confidentiality (See, for example, Article INST.29: Arbitration tribunal decisions and rulings, and Article INST.30: Suspension and termination of the arbitration proceedings).

That’s not part of the British tradition, which places great importance on openness and transparency in all court trials and hearings, and other decisions that impact on our citizenry. Secrecy and “confidentiality” are part and parcel of the doings of the EU. They evidently don’t want the workers and management of British companies put out of business by the decisions of the Partnership Council to know the identity of the individuals responsible for it.

The “level playing field” concept illustrates the hypocrisy of the EU perfectly. It’s all for free market competition when it benefits thereby, but when it has to face the reality of not being able to compete successfully, it resorts to the “level playing field” to keep in the game. This neatly brings us to the next item to consider, which is trade in services.

Trade in services

When it comes to trade in services, in 2019 the UK had a surplus of around £18 billion with the EU. In stark contrast to goods, the EU negotiators refused to come to any agreement on services. Any future agreement would have to be sanctioned by the EU Commission, which is not known for giving consent on these matters easily.

The TCA generally makes trade in services between the UK and the EU much more problematic than it need be. For example, service agreements can no longer be between the UK and the EU. They have to be signed by the UK and each individual “member-state” affected by such trade, i.e. be on a “country-by-country” basis. This adversely affects service companies in the UK more than it does their EU counterparts.

Yes, the EU Commission don’t mind returning a little national sovereignty to each of its members if, thereby, it can gain a little revenge against the UK for its blatant defiance in going through with the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

There’s still plenty of scope for contrariness on the part of the EU going into the future. Under the TCA, although the EU cannot impose tariffs it can impose “non-tariff measures” to trade in services. These can be, for example, additional proposed regulations that will have to be followed if a particular service trade is to be allowed to continue. Again, it has to be said – this isn’t what we voted for in 2016.

EU threatens UK services sector

There’s more (you didn’t think that was it, did you?). If the UK government wants to make subsidies to any of its service industries, such as finance, then it will have to follow the rules of Part Two, Title II of the TCA. As we’ve observed earlier, there must be a “level playing field”. So if the EU is behind us, for example, in the field of expert advice on some aspect of concern to the construction industry, and companies and authorities in the EU wish to purchase such expert advice from a UK company, then all parties, including the UK company, will have to follow as yet unwritten rules that will be dreamed up by Eurocrats in Brussels.

The EU is being so obstructive in the matter of service industries that UK service industry chiefs are now talking openly of the need to withdraw from the EU market and seek new markets elsewhere. The resulting loss of foreign earnings will doubtless be put down to “Brexit” by Remainers, using their usual simplistic logic and ever determined to find no fault at all with the EU.

Share trading

A good example of how the EU have outflanked the UK’s negotiators is in the sphere of share trading. London has long been the largest stock exchange in the world. Before this TCA was signed, anyone wanting to trade in European equities would most likely have traded on the London Stock Exchange, regardless of which country they operated from.

Post TCA, a UK investor can choose to trade in either London or one of the EU stock exchanges, but an EU investor can only trade on an EU stock exchange. This gives EU stock exchanges a vital advantage, and investors based in the UK will invariably choose to trade in the EU, where all their portfolios can be managed from the one platform.

Our negotiators were assuming that the EU would grant the UK what is called “equivalence”, i.e. the practice and procedure would be the same as it was when the UK was still a “member state” of the EU. But the EU have refused to grant equivalence. This should have come as no surprise. Switzerland had a disagreement with the European Commission in 2019. Equivalence was withdrawn by the EU and Switzerland, having done their best to compromise, are still waiting for it to be reinstated. Woe betide any independent nation that crosses the European Union.

Professional qualifications

Next is another good example of how the EU works. I’m referring to the Mutual Recognition of Professional Qualifications (MRPQs). It is the mechanism that allows professional people such as doctors, lawyers, engineers and architects to have their qualifications recognized all across the EU.

Such an arrangement shouldn’t be necessary if the EU was run on the basis of common sense. But it can’t allow anything like that to go unhindered by rules and regulations.

So the MRPQ came into existence. It was, surprisingly, an arrangement that worked tolerably well for many years, helping to facilitate trade, mainly in the services sector. In the negotiations this arrangement should have been little more than a formality to agree on. But the EU negotiators refused to agree.

As a result, our services trade with the EU is suffering due to uncertainty over whether professionals who become involved will have their professional qualifications recognized (and therefore their services paid for) in the EU. All the TPA does (in Part Two, Heading One, Title II, Chapter 5, Section 2, Article SERVIN.5.13: Professional qualifications) is to refer the whole matter to the Partnership Council, which can then “within a reasonable time [undefined]…. develop and adopt an arrangement on the conditions for the recognition of professional qualifications” which can then be shoved in as another Annex to the TCA itself.

In the meantime most UK service industries are in limbo as far as supplying services to any country that is a “member-state” of the EU is concerned. It would probably be easier negotiating a trade deal with the Mafia.

In Part 4 I will be looking at how the TCA affects our much maligned fishing industry.

Click here for Part 5 in this series, “What we face from the EU post-Brexit”.

Brexit – Is the UK really free from the EU? Part 2 – The “Trade and Cooperation Agreement”

This series of posts takes a closer look at the Agreement that was arrived at between the UK and the EU and signed on 24th December 2020.
Editor's Note: The use of the expression, "TCA" in this series of posts refers to the "Trade and Cooperation Agreement" signed between the UK and the EU on December 24th 2020. This series of articles was first written in early 2021, so please bear in mind that some of the content may appear somewhat dated.

Philip Gegan

[Click here for Part 1]

One moment before we examine the “Trade and Cooperation Agreement”. Note carefully the title. The ordinary Brexit supporter was expecting a withdrawal agreement. Those of us who followed the course of the long-drawn-out “negotiations” were expecting a trade agreement. But a Trade and Cooperation Agreement? Let’s see what is meant by “cooperation”.

Was such an Agreement desirable?

In 2016, when over 17 million people in the UK voted to leave the EU in the teeth of Operation Fear, these people just wanted their country to get out. Whether there should be an agreement or not was of little interest to them. Given the extensive artificial ties binding the UK to the EU, it is not surprising some kind of agreement should be deemed desirable by both sides.

An appropriate agreement would have been one that provided for an orderly and timely transfer of powers and sovereignty back to the UK from the EU. The UK would then treat the EU and its member states in a similar way to, for example, the United States or the Russian Federation. The EU would treat the UK in the same way as it does, for example, Japan or Australia.

An appropriate name would have been “Withdrawal Agreement”. But at an early stage it was termed a “Trade Agreement”, or even a “Free Trade Agreement”. Bi-lateral free trade agreements are very fashionable these days. Britain has recently signed such agreements with Japan, Canada, Cameroon, Jordan and Mexico, among others, and is on course to sign more with the United States (subject to the irregularities of the Biden regime), Australia and New Zealand.

Trade vs Cooperation

Remainers, as we know, were anxious to put as many obstacles and as much delay as possible in the way of the Brexit process. They latched onto the concept of a trade agreement being an essential component of Brexit in the hope that negotiations would flounder and the British people would eventually abandon the idea of leaving the EU.

So a trade agreement was acceptable in principle to most Leavers and most Remainers. But it took over four and a half years (a period longer than the duration of the First World War) before agreement was reached, and when it was published, it had become the “Trade and Cooperation Agreement”.

Trade between sovereign nations is, by its nature, mutually beneficial. But the concept of cooperation takes it a step further. Trade is something that takes place one unit at a time. Someone has something to sell. Someone else wants that item. A sale is agreed, and the goods or services and the money are exchanged. That is the end of it until next time.

But cooperation implies commitment. It assumes that the parties are going to have an on-going relationship, with ongoing rights and obligations. It impinges on national sovereignty and is something that was rejected in the referendum.

Moreover, cooperation is something that should come spontaneously, not as a result of contractual obligations.

As we shall see, this little, seemingly innocent, amendment to the name reflects a change in the nature of the document signed on 24th December 2020.

The Agreement Labyrinth

The Brexit process has given the EU a golden opportunity to spawn a whole new extension to its already bloated bureaucracy. And it gave the bloc a chance to produce a massive, intricate and tortuous document designed to make any meaningful interpretation impossible and to keep the UK tied to the EU into perpetuity.

The “Trade and Cooperation Agreement” (TCA) is 1,246 pages long and contains a Preamble and seven Parts. Part One contains three Titles; Part Two contains six Headings, the first four of which contain 18 Titles. The fifth contains four Chapters and the sixth ten Articles. Part Three contains 13 Titles, and Part 4 contains two. Part 5 contains two Articles and five Chapters.

Part Six contains three Titles, and Part Seven contains 10 Articles with rather strange names, in which sometimes the numbering is rather questionable, so that Article ‘FINPROV.3: Review’ is followed by ‘Article FINPROV.7: Integral parts of this Agreement’. One can well imagine the draftsmen drifting off to sleep whilst assembling this monumental work of verbiage and doublespeak, and losing track of the numbering.

There are 49 Annexes with names like ‘ANNEX ENER-3: NON-APPLICATION OF THIRD-PARTY ACCESS AND OWNERSHIP UNBUNDLING TO INFRASTRUCTURE’. All these Annexes have Chapters and many of those Chapters have Articles.

There are three Protocols (not including the Northern Irish Protocol, which is in a separate document). The first Protocol has five Titles. Title I has Articles 1 to 6, Title II has four Chapters, containing Articles 7 to 19, Title III has four Chapters containing Articles 20 to 38 (though Article 24 is, for some reason, not within any of those Chapters).

Title IV contains Article 39 and Title V Articles 40 and 41. Naturally, this Protocol has its own Annex, containing three Sections, the third of which contains six Articles plus a number of model forms, such as “Uniform notification form providing information about notified document(s) (to be transmitted to the addressee of the notification)” Quite so.

A Bureaucratic nightmare

It establishes, in Part One, Title III, an “institutional framework”, consisting, at the top, of a “Partnership Council”, whose job is to “oversee the attainment of the objectives of this Agreement and any supplementing agreement”. Rather strange, since the whole point of Brexit was for the UK to break free of EU bureaucracy and regain its sovereignty, not get entangled in new commitments.

Of course, I get it. We can have our independence, but naturally the EU has to make sure that our enjoyment of it doesn’t upset their Customs Union, Single Market, level playing field, and “Court of Justice”. And to ensure that, of course, we need an expansion of the existing EU bureaucracy.

The EU has always been a bureaucratic nightmare for small businesses.
Image: Harald Groven – Creative Commons Licence

At the top of the pecking order is the Partnership Council, supervising the operation of the TCA “at a political level”. The Partnership Council itself is run by the two-member Secretariat – one member from each side, naturally.

Under the Partnership Council are no less than nineteen committees, all of them “specialised” except for the “Trade Partnership Committee”, which seems to be regarded as the most important, being listed above all the others. Why do we need a “Trade Partnership Committee”? We’re supposed to be trading freely with each other, not going into partnership.

Below these committees are four “working groups”, each with the power to “set their own rules of procedure, meeting schedule and agenda by mutual consent”. These working groups, like the committees, consist of an equal number of members from the EU and from the UK, with co-chairmen, one from each side. They are the dogsbodies of the committees, who in turn are the gophers of the Partnership Council.

Then there is the “Parliamentary Partnership Assembly”, consisting of members from the European Parliament and from our own dear Parliament. It’s a forum to “exchange views on the partnership…..request relevant information regarding the implementation of this Agreement from the Partnership Council…….be informed of the decisions and recommendations of the Partnership Council, and make recommendations to the Partnership Council”. Pretty useless, then.

Next up are the “domestic advisory groups”. These comprise “a representation of independent civil society organisations including non-governmental organisations, business and employers’ organisations, as well as trade unions, active in economic, sustainable development, social, human rights, environmental and other matters.” Each party to the TCA has to consult with these groups at their annual get-together.

Each party also has to publish a list of the organisations comprising its own “domestic advisory groups”, with contact points, and also to “promote interaction between their respective domestic advisory groups, including by exchanging where possible the contact details of members of their domestic advisory groups“. So the pointless and corruption-ridden “twinning” schemes between towns in the UK and towns in the EU is set to continue.

We’re not done yet. The TCA sets up a new “Civil Society Forum” “to conduct a dialogue on the implementation of Part Two of this Agreement” (“Trade, Transport, Fisheries and Other Arrangements”). Isn’t that nice?

Oh, and just in case anything goes wrong (perish the thought!) we have the charmingly named COMPROV.13, which provides that, “For greater certainty, an interpretation of this Agreement or any supplementing agreement given by the courts of either party shall not be binding on the courts of the other party”. So each party can interpret the TCA in whatever way they like, regardless of how the other party does so. What could possibly go wrong?

Remember that all of this is in stark contrast to what happened ninety years ago, when Britain and the White Dominions got together, in the face of the Great Depression, and formed a trading system that was known as “Imperial Preferences”. It was this that saved Britain and its Empire from the worst excesses of the Great Depression that ruined whole countries elsewhere.

Did Britain and its White Dominion partners need to engage in a wrangle-fest that went on for four and a half years, and to form a Partnership Council (with Secretariat), numerous committees, a Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, “domestic advisory groups”, and so on? Did they need a series of agreements, the main one of which alone totals over 1,200 pages?

Of course not. It’s amazing what progress can be achieved when both sides are bound by a common purpose, common ancestry, the common law, and, above all else, common sense. And, on top of that, actually trust each other.

How can anyone trust the European Commission of failed and corrupt politicians?

In Part 3, we’ll be looking at the actual “trading” sections of the TCA.

Click here for Part 4 in this series, “Fisheries”.

Click here for Part 5 in this series, “What we face from the EU post-Brexit”.

Brexit – where are we now?

Philip Gegan

Brexit. This post was first published in November 2019, before the General Election of the following month swept the bulk of the Remainers out of the House of Commons and gave Boris Johnson a mandate to "get Brexit done" no matter what.

Brexit – We’ve heard so much in the news about

(a) the need for a “deal”; Remainers in Parliament have even passed a law prohibiting a “no-deal” Brexit;

(b) how a second referendum would “let the people decide”; and

(c) if we do insist on leaving, the need to follow the procedure set out in Section 50.

What are we to make of all this? At this time, only two things are clear.

(a) The majority of people in this country want us to leave the EU without any further delay. This includes the “Single Market”, the “Customs Union”, the “European Court of Justice” (sic) and all the other myriad institutions and bodies set up (both before and after the 2016 referendum) in order to make leaving the EU, for any “member-state”, impossible.

(b) The Establishment is determined to prevent us from leaving. If it goes along with Boris Johnson’s “deal” then that will only be because, although considerably better than Theresa May’s deal, it is still not a genuine withdrawal.

Do we need a “deal” at all?

Contrary to what many supporters of Brexit say, we do, strictly speaking, need a deal of some kind in order to continue trading with member-countries of the European Union.

The over-riding problem is this. Over the years the EU has gradually absorbed more and more powers and functions that were formerly exercised by the sovereign nations that were foolish enough to surrender such powers. One of these powers was the ability to conclude trade deals with other countries, both inside and outside the EU (the Customs Union and the Single Market saw to that).

This power is a fundamental component of national sovereignty. Now, no member of the EU can conclude such deals; they’ve lost the power, along with their national sovereignty.

This is an unfortunate fact, but the key difference between it and what the Remainers would have us believe, is that the correct order of events should be not to negotiate a deal and then leave the EU, but to ignore Section 50, leave the EU and only then negotiate a deal.

Let it not be lost on us that individual European countries would invariably be pleased to negotiate a trade deal with us, if they still had the power. But the EU has usurped that power, and will undoubtedly use it against us instead of for the common good of all. They do not want us to thrive outside the EU, and they are not interested in giving us a deal. All they want to do is to try to coerce us into re-applying for membership.

Negotiate from a position of strength

The next problem is this. Any dispute involving two “member states” of the EU, or involving a “member state” (which is what the UK still is) on the one hand and the EU Commission on the other can only be resolved by the EU itself through its Court of Justice (ECJ).

Such a system is contrary to natural justice and to common sense. The ECJ will always rule in favour of the EU. That’s what it’s there for. For that reason alone, the procedure of trying to negotiate a deal whilst still inside the EU is madness.

We should have placed ourselves in the same position as Canada, Mexico, or Japan. That is, outside the EU, and negotiating from a position of strength, free from the jurisdiction of the ECJ.

Another tool to try and stop Brexit

There’s another important point about not leaving the EU without a “deal”. I’ve covered this before, but it’s worth mentioning again. If you go into negotiations of whatever kind loudly declaring that you won’t come away without an agreement with the other side then you seriously need certifying. Yet this is what the Remainers have done, time and again.

You have to reserve to yourself the option to “walk away”. For anyone claiming to be compos mentis to vote in favour of a law making a “no deal” Brexit unlawful is simply absurd.

In reality, these people knew exactly what they were doing. They were using all this nonsense as another tool to try and stop Brexit altogether.

Remainer hypocrisy about
a “Second referendum”

Now let’s deal with all the Remainer pressure for a second referendum.

There’s a very important reason why a second referendum should not take place. A referendum in UK politics is a very rare event, and rightly so. Up to 1975, when the first referendum took place over whether we should remain in what was then the EEC, there had been no referendums in our history.

The 2016 referendum was the first nationwide referendum in the UK to have taken place since 1975. The device has been used as infrequently as it has because it has been universally recognised that too many referendums would weaken the government and tend to make the country unstable.

It is completely unacceptable to have another referendum on the same question (whatever the question may be — not just Brexit) so soon after the original (the same applies to the proposed second referendum for Scotland on “independence” from the UK).

The reason is that if there is a second referendum it would completely undermine the whole concept of referendums. Not only that, but,

(a) if the result is the same as the first one, then it would be shown to have been a complete waste of time and money, and

(b) if the result is different then which result should prevail? And who should decide?

If the first result, then why have the second referendum at all? If the second result, that would almost certainly lead to civil unrest, as supporters of the first result will rightly feel they have been gravely wronged and deprived of the result they worked and made sacrifices for.

The end of referendums?

In either outcome, it would fatally weaken the concept of referendums (as well as democracy itself), as the next time a referendum was proposed people would be inclined not to vote at all on the basis that, “if we vote the wrong way they’ll simply make us have another one until we vote the way they want us to vote“.

And they would be right. The concept of referendums would thereby be section 50destroyed.

In any event, calling for a second referendum is intrinsically hypocritical. Had the result in 2016 been the other way round and Leavers had called for a second referendum then you can imagine the avalanche of derision and mockery we would have had to endure at the hands of the Remainers and the mass media. They would have pulled no punches in telling us to grow up and accept the result.

When the 1975 referendum produced a “Stay in the EEC” outcome, we who had campaigned to leave stoically accepted the result without calling for another referendum, even though we still continued our opposition to UK membership of what was then the European Economic Community (EEC).

Do we need to comply with Section 50?

This article was signed up to, on our behalf, by Tony Blair, in December 1997 as part of the Lisbon Treaty, which was ratified by Parliament in 1998. Blair and his government had absolutely no mandate to bind this country in such a way, and it’s especially ironic that this nonentity of a former Prime Minister now struts around pretending to be a “democrat” and telling us that we can’t leave.

The truth of the matter is that such a clause would never be upheld by an impartial court. It would most probably be held to be unnecessarily burdensome, so there was no need to comply. We could have parted company with the EU before the end of 2016.

Boris Johnson’s new deal

Now Boris Johnson has a new deal, essentially the same as Theresa May’s deal, though with a few concessions in our favour. It has got rid of the Irish backstop, but at a price. The EU will have powers to station customs officials (all of them, of course, immune from prosecution) at our ports to ensure that goods shipped to Northern Ireland (and therefore not subject to any excise duties) are charged duties as if they were going to the EU.

Only when they have arrived in Northern Ireland will they be de-bonded and the excise duties made liable to refund. Northern Ireland businesses selling their goods to the mainland will have to complete a customs declaration. What a charade!

And all, of course, subject to the over-riding jurisdiction of the “European Court of Justice”.

Ongoing obligations under the “deal” inhibit our ability to modernise industrial infrastructure and practices by requiring us to prevent them from acquiring any competitive advantage compared to similar industries in the EU.

Using this part of the “deal”, the ECJ can step in at any time and sabotage any trade deal we are about to sign with an outside country, e.g. the US. So much for regaining our national sovereignty.

It must be said, however, that Johnson has been far tougher than May (who basically agreed to everything the EU demanded). For example, at least Northern Ireland is staying within the UK’s customs territory, and not ceded to the EU as it would have been under May’s appalling deal.

The coming general election

Until recently, hopes have been high in the Brexit camp that the Brexit Party would do sufficiently well in the coming General Election to win at least several seats, and possibly hold the “balance of power”. Johnson would be forced to implement a genuine Brexit in order to save his political career.

If only it were this simple. Those of us hardened racial nationalists who were around in the heyday of the National Front, in the 1970s, know just how difficult it is for a new political party to make any impact at a General Election.

In by-elections and European elections voters are more prepared to vote for the party or candidate or party leader that they most prefer. Minority and new parties often do well.

But in a General Election it’s different. The electorate, at a General Election, vote negatively. That is, they tend to vote against the candidate, or the party leader, or the party, that they hate and fear the most. There’s too much at stake to do otherwise.

The likely outcome

It’s never wise to try and predict the outcome of a General Election. Probably most voters currently hate and fear Labour and Jeremy Corbyn most, and want to keep them out of office. Sadly, in most constituencies the only way to do that is to vote Tory. This doesn’t bode well for the Brexit Party, and Nigel Farage knows this.

That, and not wanting to risk splitting the pro-Brexit vote, is probably why he has decided not to contest seats won by the Tories in 2017. It is alleged that some other Brexit Party candidates have been bribed by the Tories to stand down at the last minute.

As a result, it looks increasingly likely that the Tories will be the largest party after December 12th, and possibly have an absolute majority. As a political party, they will be united, on the surface at least.

The pro-Brexit faction will think the UK is free from the EU, while the Remainers will smirk in the knowledge that secret entanglements prevent a genuine withdrawal, and in the meantime they will work secretly to facilitate the UK’s re-entry into the EU in a few years’ time when a suitable pretext arises.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media will be able to convince us that democracy prevailed and that the strings still tying us to the EU and neutralising our sovereignty were authorised by the Tories’ convincing win at the polls. The fact that hardly anyone knew about them until afterwards will be ignored.

Johnson’s real motives

Johnson is a chancer by nature, and he took a chance in early 2016 when, with the referendum taking place in a few months, he threw his hat into the “Leave” camp, resigning from David Cameron’s Cabinet in order to be free to campaign.

Since then he has been careful to take advantage of all the in-fighting in the Conservative Party over Brexit so as to (eventually) manoeuvre himself into the leadership of the party and, as such, the post of Prime Minister.

So for Boris Johnson it’s all about his career in politics, his position as Prime Minister, and the success of the Conservative Party in the forthcoming General Election. He’s happy for most Brexit supporters to carry on believing that his “deal” with the reptilian “European Union” is the real thing, as long as he wins the election and retains his role as Prime Minister. He’s riding a tiger and he’s betting everything he has on staying on top of it.

Hope for the future

Boris Johnson’s deal is far from being a genuine Brexit, but we can console ourselves in the knowledge that it is merely the start of something much larger. Just think – if the Remainers had won the referendum then without a doubt further centralisation of powers in the EU, and further transfers of national sovereignty and power to the EU would have swiftly followed.

Even now we would most likely have the reality of a European Army, the Orwellian “European Arrest Warrant”, and the pending abolition of sterling, to be replaced by the Euro.

Even entrenched pillars of our ancient system of common law would be eroded by now, with the abolition of such guarantors of our liberties as the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, and Habeas Corpus (in the name of “harmonising” our laws to EU law).

So we have much to be thankful for. We have managed to avoid having the doomed Euro foisted upon us, and we also kept out of the Shengen Agreement. And key parts of our ancient liberties remain more or less intact.

Under the deal, we’ll be free of the ECJ at the end of the transition period, in January 2021. That alone is a massive blow to the Euro-federalists.

All these things, together with the Soros/Merkel backed Afro-Asian “refugee” invasion of Europe, the economic downturn the more prosperous European nations are now facing, and increasing Europe-wide opposition to Brussels, will lead to even more EU instability.

This in turn should encourage other Euro-sceptic nations, such as Hungary, Poland and Italy, to follow Britain’s example in regaining their national independence.

The days of the European Union are now surely numbered.

Brexit – Is the UK really free from the EU? Part 1 – Do we have a genuine Brexit? From Triumph to Betrayal

This series of posts takes a closer look at the Agreement that was arrived at between the UK and the EU and signed on 24th December 2020.

Editor's Note: The use of the expression, "TCA" in this series of posts refers to the "Trade and Cooperation Agreement" signed between the UK and the EU on December 24th 2020. This series of articles was first written in early 2021, so please bear in mind that some of the content may appear somewhat dated.

Philip Gegan

After four and a half years of negotiations, on December 31st 2020 at 11:00pm, Britain finally completed Brexit – the process of leaving the European Union with a “free trade deal”.

Yes, Boris had “got Brexit done”. Since the 2016 referendum delivered an unexpected body-blow to the plans of the “Global elite”, the British people had been treated to

  • all the delaying tactics, the manoeuvrings, and downright betrayal from Remainers both inside and outside Parliament,
  • betrayal by our judiciary,
  • sanctimonious humbug from former failed prime ministers,
  • the subterfuge and weakness of former Prime Minister Theresa May and her government and their attempts at total sell-out,
  • a well-funded lawsuit that sought to give Parliamentary Remainers the power to frustrate the referendum result,
  • the threats and lies about what would happen if we actually went ahead and insisted on leaving,
  • and all the other spiteful tactics that the Remain camp, the mass media and the EU itself could throw at us.
It took the Euro elections of 2019, and two general elections sandwiching them, in all of which the parties and factions supporting Brexit triumphed in the teeth of determined and well-funded opposition, to get to a position where we are a free and independent nation once more. That is, free and independent from the European Union.
Or are we? This series of posts takes a closer look at the Agreement that was arrived at between the UK and the EU and signed on 24th December 2020. The full title of the Agreement is “Trade and Cooperation Agreement”, and I am going to refer to it for the most part as the “TCA”.

Twists and turns of the Tory Party

The Tory Party, having hitched itself, for the time being, to the ‘Leave the EU’ cause, was especially pleased with itself. This is the party, remember, that was happy to have the arch-traitor, Edward Heath, at its head as Prime Minister, when the disgraceful negotiations to join what was then the “European Economic Community” went ahead without any mandate in 1971. The same party, without doubt, most of whose members applauded as Heath signed the Treaty of Accession the following year, surrendering our country’s sovereignty to Brussels. That subjugation was to last nearly fifty years.
It is sobering to think that, since the end of the Second World War, our nation has been a vassal state of an artificially constructed, anti-democratic European super-state for 48 out of less than 76 years. What would our fighting men have thought if someone had been able to whisper that into their ears as they departed these shores in 1940 to fight yet another European war?
But back to the present day. We are now, on the surface, no longer in the Euro superstate that the original European Economic Community had become. This is due to a number of factors, including long-standing opposition from minority parties such as the National Front of the 1970s and, more recently, Nigel Farage’s UKIP and Brexit parties. Nigel Farage himself has to be credited with having the single-minded resolve and determination to see through the whole campaign right up to the 2016 referendum and beyond. Let’s hope he receives some kind of national recognition for his achievement.
The Tory Party were always heavily pro-EU until UKIP and, later, the Brexit Party, threatened to keep them in permanent opposition. Of course, there always were plenty of Tory “Euro-sceptics” as well. They didn’t like the idea of our country being sold out to Brussels in the first place but went along with it for career reasons. Now they are celebrating our departure from the EU and congratulating themselves on getting our nation’s freedom and independence back.

Does the CTA “fully achieve the goal of Brexit”?

Let us take one of them, Andrew Bridgen, Tory MP for North West Leicestershire and member of their “European Research Group”, as broadly representing them. He wrote a piece in the Daily Mail of 30th December 2020 headed “I see no traps… that’s why I’ll seize our day of destiny”, heralding “a new era of free co-operation in place of the former dominance by Brussels”.
Bridgen is satisfied that the deal “fully achieves the goal of Brexit”.
Under the agreement, according to Bridgen, “free movement will end, as will the jurisdiction of the European Courts and the vast contributions to Brussels’ coffers”.
Try telling that to the good citizens of Northern Ireland.
“The biggest obstacle,” Bridgen writes, “was fishing rights, since control of our waters is a symbol of nationhood. But here too I am satisfied…”.
Try telling that to our fishermen. We have a further period of five and a half years before we see the last fishing vessel from mainland Europe cease from plundering our fish stocks.
EU membership has been a disaster for Britain’s fishermen

No worries, according to Andrew Bridgen. “The transition period…. will provide time to rebuild coastal communities.”

So all is well, according to populist politicians.

Sadly, all is not well. Before examining the “deal” in detail, let’s briefly recap on how things turned out this way.

The Brexit “negotiations”

May’s negotiators, at the start of negotiations in 2016, immediately announced that the UK would be giving the EU £39 billion as a “sweetener”, to give the negotiations the best chance of success for both sides. May’s team thought that this would be sufficient to induce the EU into granting a Canada-style free trade agreement that would be even better than Canada’s.

The EU negotiators immediately trousered that, and then acted as if it was the least we should have offered. They then scuppered any prospect of a Canada-style agreement with the UK. They realised that Canada is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The UK is just 22 miles away from the French coast. That fact, of course, only affects the fisheries part of the negotiations, but that’s the excuse they used.

At this point, if the UK’s negotiators really meant to protect our interests, they would have reciprocated by demanding the return of our £39 billion. There was absolutely no legal requirement for the UK to pay a penny for leaving the EU, and the fact that this money, and a whole lot more, has been paid is nothing short of a national humiliation and scandal. Withdrawing the offer of money would have signalled to the EU that we weren’t going to be pushed around any longer, and done wonders to make them more reasonable in the negotiations.

But May’s negotiators were Remainers at heart, and it was only taxpayers’ money. They were all too easily hoodwinked by Barnier and his cronies in the EU’s negotiating team. They had no real interest in securing a fair deal for the UK. Their main concern was to reach an arrangement that looked genuine to anyone who didn’t look at it in detail, and would make it as easy as possible for the UK to be re-admitted to the EU at an early date in the future.

They colluded with the EU negotiators and Remainers in Parliament and the media to bring about a phoney deal. A deal that would in reality bind us to the EU forever and make life so uncomfortable that public opinion would swing behind a move to re-join, just to relieve the pain.

Remainers fight to frustrate the Brexit vote

It wasn’t just the UK’s negotiators who were working secretly to frustrate the wishes of the British people expressed in the 2016 referendum result. As we’ve just seen, Parliament itself, even after the 2017 General Election, was dominated by Remainers. Nearly all these Remainer MPs had promised during the 2017 election campaign to honour the referendum result and play their part in securing Brexit. Almost to a man, they broke that promise and instead obstructed the process in every way they could.

One of the most blatant moves was to pass into law a provision that made it unlawful for the UK to leave the EU without a “deal”. I’ve commented before on how this move gave the EU’s negotiators tremendous power in making unreasonable demands of the UK and refusing any compromises.

The House of Lords was even worse. I’m not going into the history of treachery and betrayal over the period from the June 2016 referendum to late 2020 in Parliament. The important point is that until the 2019 General Election Remainers, both in Parliament and on May’s negotiating team, were openly and brazenly defying the referendum result.

Boris’s negotiators, headed by Lord Frost, were a little better, but not much. Their main fault was that they appeared to treat the EU negotiators as if they were genuine in wanting a deal that was mutually beneficial. That was a mistake. The EU wanted everything and didn’t want to have to give anything in return.

At least by this stage the UK’s negotiators had the prospect, and soon the reality, of a UK Parliament that had a pro-Brexit majority. It was only when Parliament repealed the notorious law requiring a “deal” and passed a new law binding the UK to leaving the EU by no later than 31st December 2020, with or without a deal, that the EU negotiators reluctantly eased their unreasonable demands and started to compromise in some areas.

Even so, the process of extricating the UK from the morass that the EU has become, was lengthy and complicated. Further months of negotiations followed. Deadlines came and went. There had to be a deal, if a “no-deal Brexit” was to be avoided, by no later than 20th December 2020.

Everything is covered

Negotiations still regularly ground to a halt. The EU seemed to enjoy displaying itself to the world in its true colours – an oppressive, intolerant, stiffling and anti-democratic bureaucracy. In the end Boris had to meet in person with Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, and smooth things out. The Agreement was announced on Christmas Eve 2020 to tremendous applause from the populist media.

That gave only a week, including the Christmas holiday break, for the Agreement to be scrutinised for any sign of a sell-out. The Conservative “European Research Group” instructed its “Star Chamber” of “top lawyers” to examine the document – all 1,426 pages of it – to determine if it really did deliver the Brexit promised.

This was duly done, or so we’re assured, and the genuineness of the Brexit deal negotiated was pronounced.

If Tory Brexiteers like Andrew Bridgen did actually read the full text of the TCA as they claim to have done, in the space of just a few days, then it was indeed a superhuman achievement.

The Agreement itself must be one of the most verbose, tedious, long-winded and unreadable documents ever produced in history. Page after page of it contain tables which in turn contain lists of things such as all the species of fish and animals likely to be affected by certain provisions, constituent parts of industrial products, agricultural products, medicinal products, and more, that have rules, and exceptions to those rules, for us all to enjoy. On and on it goes.

The Brussels bureaucrats who drafted the agreement sought to cover every possible permutation of every possible eventuality in all the minutia of commercial life that could possibly be imagined. Nothing has been left to chance. The problem with an agreement like that, as every lawyer knows, is that by defining everything you end up defining nothing. Rich pickings lie ahead for lawyers, especially those in the UK who specialise in European law, and those in Europe who specialise in UK law.

In the next part of this post, I will be looking at the TCA in some detail while at the same time attempting to preserve the sanity of my readers.

Click here to read Part 2 in this series, “The Trade and Cooperation Agreement”.

Click here to read Part 3 in this series, “Nothing ‘free’ about this Free Trade Agreement”.

Click here to read Part 4 in this series, “Fisheries”.

Click here to read Part 5 in this series, “What we face from the EU post-Brexit”.

Race is a reality

Will Wright

It’s by no means a new idea to say that race is a reality. In February 1947, Sir Arthur Keith, the Scottish anthropologist, wrote the preface to his new book, A New Theory of Human Evolution. This book is now out of print and hard to obtain. Why? It is out of favour with the commissars of political correctness. Yet in his day Keith was the President of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

This book not only covers Race in terms that I agree with, but the author also devotes chapters thirty-seven and thirty-eight to The Jews as a Nation and as a Race. He also deals with anti-Semitism and Zionism.

But since the 1930s, a secret cultural and political revolution has taken place in the Western World. This started in the United States of America and spread to the rest of the West. The Frankfurt School spread political correctness. The original members were all Jewish. They were aided and abetted by several fellow Jews.

Sigmund Freud and the Jewish psychoanalysts from Vienna and Franz Boas and his Jewish following of ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ anthropologists were prominent among these. These Jews radically shifted American cultural and political thinking. The poison spread to the UK and all the other White European countries.

Franz Boas’ contribution to the subversion was the hijacking of all Western universities’ anthropology departments. He enforced the lie that “There is no such thing as Race”. In the 1970s, the Communist Party of Great Britain put out a sticker stating: “One Race – the Human Race”. Those who know anything about Communism know that the CPGB had a large Jewish membership.

The Counter Revolution

Today both Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud have been largely discredited. Even Jewish left-wing politicians have publicly moved away from Marx. Even Jewish psychologists have publicly rejected Freud. But the ‘Cultural Marxism’ of the Frankfurt School and the lies of Franz Boas still persist. If the Western World is to survive, then those two camps need to be routed too.

Patriots of every White European nation should attempt to arm themselves with knowledge. Where to start? To this end I will be so bold as to recommend a few books on Race.

Edward Dutton’s book, Making Sense of Race, is a good place to start. He also gives a favourable mention to the brilliant US academic, Kevin MacDonald, which for me was an unexpected bonus!

Arthur Kemp of Ostara Publications has written two books worth reading: The War Against Whites, and the new Race and Racial Differences. This is billed as “A handbook for the 21st Century. How DNA shapes Mankind into seven major races. With 64 photographs, 16 illustrations, 7 maps, 6 tables, and 11 charts.”

The American academic, Charles Murray, has two books on the subject of Race: Facing Reality – Two Truths about Race in America and also, Coming Apart – The State of White America 1960 – 2010.

If the anti-White political correctness is ever going to be defeated then the lies of Franz Boas need to be exposed as lies. This means intelligent people who hate political correctness knowing about Race. It means us being informed and able to argue with those who hate our people – and for us to win the ideological war.

Copyright (c) Will Wright. For permission to reproduce this post please contact the author through this web site.

Do we have the will to survive?

Will Wright

Whenever a particular idea, such as the will to survive as a unique people, is very unpopular, some of the people who believe in that idea try to disguise the fact to protect themselves. An idea can be unpopular with the masses, in which case politicians pretend that they do not support it, or an idea can be unpopular with those who have political power, in which case many ordinary people try to avoid being in trouble for holding out of favour ideas.

In our own age, the most reviled idea is what we call racial nationalism, and the Media calls ‘racism’. No one wants to be called, or even thought, a ‘racist’. You might lose your job or your home. You might be ostracised or even physically attacked. You could be imprisoned by the state.

But preferring to live with your own people and favouring them in preference to foreigners is a natural instinct. Most White Britons are, on some level, racialists. But the great majority of them dare not say so. In some cases they are either ashamed of their natural instincts, or they do not recognise them for what they are. How a racial and political minority has managed to confuse, subdue, and terrorise the majority is a topic for another day.

People oppose immigration. But no one now wants to say that this should be on the grounds of race. Even the BNP, under Nick Griffin’s leadership, stated that stopping immigration was “about space, not race”. He dropped the BNP’s compulsory immigration policy – which effectively meant that Griffin was accepting a multi-racial society here in Britain. Griffin did not believe in this nonsense, but he thought this was a smart move to bring the BNP nearer to political power. I profoundly disagreed with him, both in principle and as a strategy, and I told him so.

When racial nationalists, or any other group of people, do not tell the truth, they cause themselves problems. As Britons become old and die, without having produced several children, then they create ‘space’ for racial foreigners to occupy. Anyone who is genuinely concerned only with ‘space’ cannot object to that. We must stop immigration on racial grounds, totally regardless of whether or not we have lots of living space.

A difficult question for British Nationalists

I regard non-White immigration and a high immigrant, and immigrant descended, birth-rate as a ticking demographic bomb that might destroy the British nation. If we British people do not reproduce ourselves, then we grow old and die. If racial foreigners pour into our country, then our country will become less and less White.

But clever enemies pose a question that we need to be able to answer: Who will care for you when you become old and infirm? If you do not have sons and daughters, you will need professional care of some kind. But there are currently vacancies for about 160, 000 carers and the problem is becoming worse.

Our ideological enemies suggest that we need immigrants to do our jobs and also to care for us in infirmity and old age. What is our answer? Do we say that we will admit some immigrants, thereby accepting a multi-racial society? Or do we have another answer?

Japanese men are believed to prefer pornography to Japanese women. The Japanese too are dying out. But Japan has millions of robots. Elderly Japanese will be cared for by robots, rather than by immigrants. Japanese factories work around the clock, staffed by robots, without a human being present. Japanese hotels are run by robots. That seems very weird to me.

I almost feel that, given a direct choice, I would rather be cared for by a young Nigerian woman than by a named robot. But should that be the choice? Shouldn’t we be trying to increase the White birth-rate, while excluding foreigners?

Increasing the numbers of indigenous Britons

The generation of Britons currently in their nineties and late eighties have lived to be an older age than their parents did. But I think that trend is already changing. Many White Britons will die before they get anywhere close to ninety.

If the British population figures were to surge due to a sharp rise in the White British birth-rate – rather than through immigration and immigrant births – then that would be a very good thing. Eventually, with fewer old people to support, and with a British Nationalist government stopping immigration and beginning to repatriate foreign peoples, our young people will be given a chance to thrive and prosper.

I am mindful of Edward Dutton’s warning about the two-hundred-year decline in our national intelligence. If we can succeed in increasing the numbers of our population, then should we also be seizing the opportunity to also lift the average intelligence of our population? We need many more of the most intelligent young Britons to have lots of children. Longer-term, we might also need for less intelligent families to have fewer children. For the present we need plenty of White births whichever part of the indigenous community they come from.

But there are a few nettles to be grasped. Things that would be unpopular with the current generation of British Nationalists. We need changes to our society. We need our youth to be less focussed on beer and more on marrying younger. We need British people to be more collectivist minded and less materialistic. We need British women to move away from feminism.

We need to reject Malthusian warnings of world over-population. Let other races reduce their populations – or let Mother Nature reduce non-White populations through natural disasters and wars. The White European Race needs to have a much tighter grip on life. We need to care more about our own and less about other peoples.

These thoughts are controversial in the present politically correct climate. They will be controversial even among racial nationalists. But we need something strong, something drastic for us to survive.

Copyright (c) Will Wright. For permission to reproduce this post please contact the author through this web site.

Do we really have a “free press”?

Will Wright

We’re supposed to have a free press. If you buy a newspaper and read the news pages, then you are supposed to be reading facts. But which stories are chosen, and which are ignored? Every day, thousands of things are happening in the United Kingdom and abroad. They cannot all be reported every day. So someone chooses which stories to include – and just as importantly which to exclude. That is a practical necessity, and it is done in a hurry. But it does influence readers’ political opinions.

When a story is being covered by other newspapers, it is hard for one paper to ignore it completely. But a newspaper can give much less prominence to a story that does not fit with the paper’s editorial line. By doing this, the paper is subtly telling its readers that this story is not very important.

You think that you are just reading the facts. But which facts? Some are included and some are deliberately omitted. Sometimes a newspaper is pulled to order for a story that is factually wrong. Is that a genuine mistake? Or was that a deliberate attempt to mislead the readers?

Even if you stick to reading the news, rather than the newspapers’ editorial and opinion columns, you are still being influenced. Intelligent readers can read the opinion columns knowing this this is someone else’s take on the news. We might do that and furiously disagree with that journalist’s opinion.

What we should remember is that most people are not political. They might consider themselves to be ‘middle of the road’ politically. But when they do not already have a firm ideology of their own, they are ripe for being influenced by what they read – both selected news stories and someone’s opinions on those news stories.

A free press?

Newspaper owners and senior journalists tell us that democracy depends on there being a free press. The argument is that the government of the day, and other prominent people in society, should be subjected to scrutiny and criticism.

Big circulation newspapers can, and do, influence how the public votes in general elections. We freely choose whether to vote, and who to vote for. But we are influenced by what we read in the papers. Or more likely, our favourite newspaper.

But while our politicians are mostly elected, our newspaper owners and editors are not. There are perhaps a dozen national dailies. But some of them have much bigger circulations than others. Some smaller circulation newspapers are read by people who are themselves powerful and influential – so circulation numbers are not always the most important thing to consider.

A handful of newspaper owners, editors and senior journalists have considerable power. They say that they are an indispensable part of democracy – but who chose them? Not the British public. The question is: who does freedom of the press benefit? Who is it freedom for? A small media class or the British public?

If you have ever tried writing letters to a newspaper on a frequent basis, you will know that not every letter gets printed. If your views are regarded as beyond the pale by the newspaper editor, then you might be banned altogether. Editors do not mind at all banning an individual, or a particular group of readers’ views – but they scream to high heaven if they think that their own right to express their opinions is likely to be curbed.

Who is doing the influencing?

A free press is not quite what those defending the concept suggest that it is. That situation, in itself, would be bad enough. But the situation is even worse if we consider the identity of those in charge of doing the influencing. Rupert Murdoch is a part-Jewish globalist. Conrad Black is married to, and heavily influenced by, Barbara Amiel, a Jewess, and a fanatical Zionist. Robert Maxwell claimed to be an Anglican and denied being Jewish at all. But after his death he was revealed to be “Israel’s super-spy”. He is buried on the Mount of Olives, a Jewish burial ground reserved for Israel’s elite.

If British newspapers are owned and staffed by foreigners and globalists, then they are hardly likely to put British interests first. That is not the type of people that we want influencing our political opinions, or our voting habits.

I feel that most editors and journalists working for the newspapers in Britain would happily ban my opinions. Just the same as most establishment politicians would happily exclude British Nationalist opinions from the political debate completely and permanently. Should we really care if some government restricts the power of the media? No part of the mass media speaks for us.

Copyright (c) 2022 Will Wright. For permission to reproduce this post, please contact the author through this web site.

An important article on Free Speech in the Daily Telegraph by Simon Heffer… (You can hear a ‘but’ coming…)

Martin Webster

Simon Heffer has an interesting article in The Daily Telegraph, “George Orwell’s chilling prediction has come true – it’s time to make a stand. The censorship of books, statues and history is an attempt to eradicate the past and enforce a single point of view”. It might be helpful to read the excerpts below first before returning to my commentary.

The points Heffer makes about the destruction of free speech resulting from the rewriting of Roald Dahl’s works are sound, as far as they go — but if he and his ‘Right Wing’ Tory kind wish me to express sympathy for the plight in which they now find themselves, I can only quote a phrase coined by the first Chairman of the National Front, A.K. Chesterton: “The level of the Thames will not rise appreciably as a result of any tears I may shed.”

Roald Dahl

Heffer and his kind of ‘right wing’ Tory believe that mass Coloured Immigration has been not been good for our country. But he and they have never revealed the cause of what I regard as a disaster — who was behind it — nor did they campaign with their might and main to halt and reverse it.

On a slightly digressive topic, he and his kind never wanted Britain to join the EEC — later the EU — and whined about our membership of it. But it took a brave non-Tory, Nigel Farage, then leading the United Kingdom Independence Party, to get the Brexit ball rolling. Thereafter, it took a sequence of chaotic Tory administrations to fumble the ball — whether by incompetence or deliberate slyness masquerading as incompetence we may never know.

Thanks to the Tories, a part of the United Kingdom — Northern Ireland — is faced with the European Court having the final say on trade between itself and all other parts of the UK. This is not, as Boris Johnson promised, “getting Brexit done”. His Brexit was not “Oven-Ready”. The full restoration of British national sovereignty may yet — and not for the first time — rest on an adamantine “NO!” from Ulster Unionists. (End of digression.)

What did Heffer and his kind do to oppose the imposition of the Race Relations Act and its subsequent increasingly oppressive anti-free speech amendments? Nothing. That Act was the start of the post-WW2 slide towards the suppression of rights and liberties hard-won by our ancestors over centuries.

The first draft of Race Relations Act was devised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1950s under the working title ‘Group Libel Bill’. All subsequent amendments were drafted by Jewish lawyers connected with the Board and pushed on to the legislative agenda of whichever party was in office, not only by Jewry’s massive media power but also by senior Home Office civil servants such as Neville Nagler who, on retirement, became CEO of — yes! — the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Did we ever hear about any of this from Heffer and his kind, who must have known? No. To speak up against the anti-free speech iniquities of the Race Relations Act legislation would have been deemed to be “anti-semitic” simply because organised Jewry was so hugely associated with its promotion — another essential fact it was crucial for careerists not to mention!

Apologists for Tory cowards plead that to have campaigned for the free speech of “Right Wing extremists” would have destroyed the career of a chap like Heffer, a clever, talented and industrious man.

No column in the Telegraph. No editorships with that group or with the Mail group. No professorship at the University of Buckingham, (a “private university” stuffed with Jews). No publishers like Weidenfeld and Nicolson willing to publish your books. No lovely home near Saffron Walden in the bliss of rural Essex.

As I write this, a phrase pops into my head: “…All this can be yours! All you have to do is bow down and adore me!”

So Heffer and his kind went rather quiet when patriots — some of them, perhaps, rough diamonds — got pulled into court for “incitement to racial hatred”. These ‘Right Wing’ Tories sought to justify the abandonment of their free speech ‘principles’ by attacking “Right Wing extremism”. Jewry patted them on the head and gave them another biscuit.

Thus the slide down the slope to outright oppression accelerated.

And now — mercy me! — Heffer and his kind find themselves oppressed by the very same forces which over the decades since WW2 have worked to criminalise and crush the free speech of “right wing extremists”.

Only a day or so ago we learned that these forces of oppression now include the government (Home Office/MI5) organised security outfit Prevent, set up to steer young people away from terrorist activities. Prevent has issued to its agents lists of books, films, TV programmes, journalists and the like which only a few years ago were part of Britain’s mainstream cultural fabric. Interest in any of them nowadays must be regarded as an indicator of terrorist proclivities. Reports must be made to the authorities.

I wonder if Simon Heffer is on that list? He did, after all, write a far from condemnatory biography of Enoch Powell 25 years ago. Say no more! Nudge!-nudge! — wink!-wink! I’ll tip-toe to the telephone straight away.

Thus far I have only referred to “Simon Heffer and his kind”. Who are “his kind”? The most telling example I can give of the kind of person in that company is Andrew Roberts, to be precise: Lord Andrew Roberts. He is a long-standing toady to Jewry, though likes to be thought of as ‘right wing’. Early in his career as a historian he held at least one private lunch at his Chelsea home for the late Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia.

As Roberts’ career progressed he found it expedient to make an attack on the late Dowager Lady Birdwood (Jane Birdwood) in the London Evening Standard’s ‘Londoner’s Diary’ because she quoted extracts from the last chapter of his book Eminent Churchillians.

This chapter recounted how the Conservative Party in the 1950s stifled the efforts by Cyril Osborne MP to get the issue of Coloured Immigration to the UK debated in the House of Commons. Roberts described how Osborne’s efforts were crushed by the Establishment’s resort to blackmail, intimidation and bribery. Roberts ended his account with the words:

“… and so the greatest demographic change to the population of Britain in a thousand years was achieved without any democratic ratification whatever…”

Yet in his comments to the Evening Standard he found it necessary to call Jane Birdwood “a danger” simply for quoting his words —  which by then I expect he wished he had never written — which establish that the multi-racial society was imposed on Britain without any democratic legitimacy through the deployment of conspiracy.

Roberts’ elevation to the House of Lords must surely indicate that he performed a sufficient number of Acts of Contrition to secure the forgiveness of those who must not be offended.

Background to the above photo from Choice.

After the National Front and I parted company in December 1983 (I had been the party’s National Activities Organiser since 1969) I set up a small typesetting/graphics business. In about 1987 Jane Birdwood asked me to type-set/design her occasionally-published newspaper Choice. I soon discovered that due to her advancing years she wanted me to write most of the articles as well.

In late 1994 I picked-up on the publication of Andrew Roberts’ Eminent Churchillians and in the review of it I quoted from his text which exposed the fraud perpetrated on the British electorate in the matter of suppressing a debate in the House of Commons about Coloured Immigration. The review praised Roberts for revealing those facts.

Because Choice had always been an anti-Jewish paper, its praise for anybody — even if not on a specifically Jewish topic — was always pounced-on  by the Jews and, as in the case of Roberts, they ‘leaned on’ on the person concerned for the ‘crime’ of doing/writing/saying anything that Choice would find praiseworthy.

They clearly got on to Roberts big-time. Steward Steven, who was Jewish, the then editor of the London Evening Standard, made room in the paper’s ‘Diary’ for Roberts to distance himself from Jane and subject her to gratuitous abuse. She was then about 88 years of age.

Extracted quotes from Heffer Telegraph article: 

[with, towards the end, one or two apposite comments from myself…]

[snip]

“What is it about the past that some young people find unbearable? After all, no one is expecting them to live through it. Indeed, some of us who did find the present infinitely worse. …”

[snip]

“…Sadly, it goes far beyond children’s books, and indeed books generally: films, statues, television programmes, indeed, if they are allowed into the public arena at all. Are we really so delicate? Why tolerate this lunacy?…”

[snip]

“…We have arrived at our own endless present, or Year Zero, where the record, historical and otherwise, is readily falsified. Its rules are designed to prevent what that arrogant and self-regarding minority who feel obliged to police and alter the thoughts of the rest of us consider the ultimate crime: giving offence.

“Most of us have spent our lives encountering things that could, if we wallowed in self-regard, offend us deeply. We were trained to ignore them and get on with life. Now, suddenly, we cannot be trusted to do that.

“Therefore books, art, films and television programmes must be censored or suppressed, statues taken down as though the lives they commemorate never happened, streets and buildings renamed to eradicate thought criminals. Like Pol Pot, that minority feels a moral duty to erase the past to attain Year Zero. Sadly for us, their main qualifications are an overbearing self-righteousness, a profound ignorance of history and a deep misunderstanding of the idea of liberty that few of us share.…”

[snip]

“…a section of society with high responsibility for preserving freedom of speech and discourse – the trade of publishing – now willingly sacrifices its historic principles, for which people once risked prison, to censor books. …”

[snip]

“…People like an argument and in a free society deserve to be allowed one: they don’t want some affronted youth telling them they can’t read, learn and dispute something, like the Victorians covering up their table legs.

“Prof Biggar’s book committed the crime of stating a simple truth: that the British Empire did good things as well as bad. The hostility with which such a contention is met today is deranged: it is literally undebatable.

“Indeed, a prime motivation in wiping out the past and creating the endless present is the determination of a young generation of British people – ironically almost all white, and expensively educated – to make their fellow Britons hate themselves for their heritage.”

[snip]

“The climate has changed violently, precisely because we have allowed it to.”

[MW: Yes indeed! You and your kind allowed this change by your silence when “Far-Right Extremists” were in the dock!]

[snip]

“They inflict their control freakery on their elders, who are equally terrified to gainsay them.”

[MW: Yes — people such as you; people who put ‘respectability’ and personal career first and the survival of our race and nation nowhere.]

“If we don’t make a stand, it will end with destroying our democratic right to liberty, and sooner than we imagine.”

[MW: When have you ever ‘made a stand’ when it really counted? The time for making purely intellectual / political “stands” is at an end because the likes of you funked it when such stands could have been effective. Now we face, as Enoch Powell predicted ‘…The Tiber foaming with much blood…’.]

This post was first published in Professor Kevin MacDonald's The Occidental Observer on February 26th 2023. We are grateful for his permission to re-post.

Harry and Meghan – An organised assault on the British Monarchy

harry and megan
Picture courtesy ofCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.

Harry and Meghan. It was bound to end in tears. Not so much for them, perhaps (though that remains to be seen), but for the rest of us.

Just their names seem to ring out a note of warning to all British people. With the publication of Harry’s ghost-written book, “Spare”, both he and Meghan have placed themselves in the vanguard of a concerted attack on, not just the Monarchy, but the very foundations of the nation state of Great Britain.

Harry and Meghan (1)

From the outset Meghan Markle had no intention of sharing in Harry’s Royal duties or contributing positively to the monarchy. In the early days her toothy smiles and dark eyes hid her malevolent intentions. In more recent times both her and Harry have dropped any pretence of wanting to be a positive part of the Royal Family.

I’m not going to cover the history of how Harry met Meghan, married her, came to be her puppet, rowed with his family over her and her mechinations, and became isolated in his luxury home in Hollywood. We’ve all read about that to saturation.

By playing the “victim” in the whole story, Harry hoped to gather public sympathy and place his antagonists in the Royal Family on the wrong foot. He has achieved precisely the opposite. The public support he has enjoyed since his mother’s untimely death, and especially since his engagement to Meghan, has all but evaporated.

His much-hyped book, with its accusatory title and photo of Harry looking suitably wronged and angry, will no doubt be on the pulp pile before long, being sold off at 99 pence to free up some storage space.

The fact is that Meghan’s influence on Harry and on the events that subsequently engulfed the Royal Family was malign in the extreme.

Harry and Meghan (2)

The current crisis in the Royal Family can be said to have started in January 2020, when Harry and Meghan announced that they were “standing down” from most of their Royal duties in order to divide their time between the UK and North America. They did this by posting on Instagram, as you would. After all, why bother telling the Queen first?

The Guerilla War against the Royal Family

It wasn’t long before they were bidding the UK goodbye and moving their home to across the Atlantic. Not just to the other side, either, but way out west. First Vancouver, and later Los Angeles, where Meghan wasted no time in re-establishing links with all the good folks she knew in Hollywood before she met Harry.

This latter move came as a surprise to many people, who recall Meghan’s vow not to return to the US to live as long as Donald Trump remained President (as he was, still, at that time). But she was not alone, as dozens of other Hollywood celebs had made a similar vow after the 2016 presidential election, and yet continued to live in the US afterwards.

Meghan’s hostility towards President Trump and friendship with the likes of Barack Obama were just the outward manifestation of what she really is, which is a Cultural Marxist. As such, she is irrevocably opposed to the institution of Monarchy, wherever it may be.

This explains nearly all of what has happened since she met Harry and realised he was a weak character whom she could easily control. She has since done so ruthlessly and in a way that is calculated to cause the maximum damage.

Since their move to the US, Harry and Meghan have been engaged in a kind of guerilla war with the Royal Family. They complain at every opportunity that their privacy is being breached. Yet they choose to live a lifestyle that has them constantly at the centre of public attention.

They appear frequently before the cameras, doing interviews and appearing on celebrity TV shows like Oprah Winfrey. They produced and starred in their own documentary series on Netflix.

Now we have the publication of Harry’s ghost-written book, “Spare”, containing accusations against people who are not only part of our Monarchy, but in many cases Harry’s own flesh and blood. The way in which he has betrayed his brother, William, is particularly unpleasant. Harry has now accused both his brother and his father of actual assault – an extremely serious accusation.

I won’t go into further detail of all the allegations as that’s not the point of this post, but it is clear that the breach between Harry and Meghan on the one hand and the Royal Family on the other is probably final.

Comparisons with Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson

The behaviour of Harry and Meghan has invited comparisons with that of King Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson. Both Harry and Edward VIII are/were weak individuals who married an older, more dominant and probably more intelligent, manipulative woman. Both Meghan and Mrs Simpson are/were Americans (Meghan is Canadian by birth but has chosen to live most of her life in the U.S.) and both were married before.

Mrs Simpson was married and divorced twice before she met Edward VIII. Meghan was previously married to an American Jew, Trevor Engelson, for two years. The extent of her lack of commitment is illustrated by the fact that, in order to marry Engelson she had to “convert” to Judaism, with all the rigmarole that entailed. Then, on leaving him, just two years later, she dropped Judaism just as easily as she had adopted it.

Mrs Simpson had no real career, other than marrying and dominating rich and influential men, it seems. Meghan had a modestly successful career in acting, though it is uncertain if she will act again. Both women are/were good at finding ways of making money, mostly involving their marriage to members or ex-members of the British Royal Family.

Yes, there’s money to be made by marrying a Royal. That is, if you’re prepared to stoop low enough. To their great credit, all commoners who have married into the Royal Family since the end of the Second World War have resisted the temptation to try and cash in on it. All commoners, that is, except Meghan.

Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson ended up isolated and living abroad. Harry and Meghan, also, are now rapidly becoming isolated, as well as living abroad. Even Barack Obama, who had been one of their most well-known supporters, snubbed them by not inviting them to his 60th birthday party a year or two ago.

But at least Edward VIII (when he was effectively banished and known as the Duke of Windsor) never attempted to cash in on his former Royal status or write a book “exposing” members of the Royal Family.

Now we have Harry revealing things that most people don’t want to know, and, worse, that can cause tremendous problems for the people he has left behind. The foolish revelation that he “killed 25 Taliban” whilst serving in Afghanistan has breached several protocols, and opened himself, his immediate family, and the Royal Family themselves to possible revenge attacks.

And the admission that he has taken illegal drugs on a regular basis has done nothing to help the fight against drugs and the degradation and death of White British youth who resort to them.

Harry and Meghan – Not all about money

Many commentators are saying in light of the latest developments in the Harry and Meghan saga that it’s all about money. The dramatic split between Harry and Prince William, the frequent “showdowns” between the two, and between Harry and his father. More showdowns between Harry and the Queen Consort, and Harry and Princess Catherine, and even Harry and the late Queen, have all helped to generate publicity enough to start the gravy train rolling.

But, ominously, when Harry met Meghan it wasn’t all about money.

Let’s take a look at where our nation is today. Our power and influence in the world is at rock bottom. Our economy is a shadow of what it once was, being propped up by a fiat currency that’s living on borrowed time. The lock downs of 2020 to 2022 have left a lasting, toxic legacy of bankruptcies, suicides of young people, fear and confusion. And that’s not just us. It applies to most of the rest of the western world.

But at least we in Great Britain have one thing that hardly any other country, outside the British Commonwealth, has. We have a monarchy. A Monarch who dedicates his or her life to representing the nation at home and throughout the world. A king or queen who has tremendous power, but who actually has very little power, thanks to the ability of our ancestors in coming up with a brilliant and unique solution to the problem that plagued them.

All powers in this country derive from the sovereign. All public office holders take an oath of allegiance to the king. When King Charles III is crowned at the forthcoming coronation, all the peers of the realm will take an oath of allegiance to him as King. The King personifies the nation. It is not the powers that he has that are important, but the powers that he withholds from other people.

He unifies the nation. He is the head of the Church of England, the chief lawmaker as the King in Parliament, and the chief law enforcer, above every Chief Constable in the country. He is the head of all branches of the armed services, and all courts in the land act under his authority.

Of course he delegates nearly all of these duties to the appropriate officers, who (in theory, at least) have specialist knowledge and experience in their field. But it is the King who represents and embodies this country, through his Prime Minister and other members of the government, at home, and through his ambassadors and diplomats abroad.

The important point is that he has the power to dismiss any of these officers if circumstances require. He takes ultimate responsibility and can himself, where necessary, be brought to account, as happened with King John (Magna Carta, 1215) and King Charles I in the mid seventeenth century.

Harry and Meghan vs our Constitutional Monarchy

This system of constitutional monarchy has evolved over several centuries. It took wars and battles, including the Civil War, to ensure its triumph. It is unique to us. It is precious. Those who decry the monarchy do so from a standpoint of ignorance. Because it is not the personages who comprise the monarchy at any given time that are important. It is the concept, the whole system of government, that is uniquely attuned to the British psyche.

We have a monarch with almost absolute power, in theory, but who seldom, if ever, has to use it. Thereby persons of evil intent who would impose an unpopular, authoritarian government upon us, are frustrated. Law abiding citizens can invariably breathe more easily on account of this institution. But in return for this absolute power, the Monarch has to forego most of his personal life.

Would those who agitate against the Monarchy be prepared to assume such awesome and fearful responsibilities for their whole lives? To forfeit much of their privacy, that most ordinary citizens take for granted?

To have their every move, potentially, photographed and videoed? And their every decision and, indeed, everything that they may feel obliged to be involved in, discussed and analysed by commentators in the media and on social media? And, of course, by the public at large in every inn and tavern in the land?

And to behave with dignity and restraint, whatever the provocation may be, and however unfair and unjustified any criticism may be?

Whatever wealth the Monarch may have or receive from the Civil List, it is doubtful that any amount of it would be sufficient to compensate him for the way of life he is obliged to follow, or his sacrifice of the things the rest of us enjoy without question.

Yes, we are a lucky nation, in this respect at least. But, as racial nationalists know, there are malevolent, evil powers in the world, becoming more powerful every day. They look upon us and our nation as an irritant, as something that is in the way of their grand scheme of destroying civilization in all civilised countries. They want to make us like every other country, before abolishing all nations completely.

With a monarchy ostensibly ruling our nation, that task is all the more difficult. They want our Monarchy out of the way. It is one of the very few things that could, even now, frustrate their plans to reduce human existence to that of digitised slaves serving a very small number of tyrants – a worldwide gulag from which there can be no escape. Big Brother will always be watching.

The abolition of monarchies in nearly all other countries of the world, sometimes in a most bloodthirsty manner, has made their work easier. Have these countries enjoyed more freedom and greater power and influence in the world through losing their Kings and Queens, their Princes and Princesses, their Dukes and Earls, their Emperors and Empresses, their Lords and Ladies?

No, they have not. They have, instead, become all the same. Cosmopolitan. They’ve lost their individuality. And they are less capable of standing up to the malign machinations of the international money power. This power, largely through its current manifestation of the World Economic Forum, has a particularly grisly vision of what the future will be like for everyone else. More on that in another post.

Harry and Meghan – Pawns in the Game

This is what the Harry and Meghan affair is really all about. They are the pawns in the game. Their string pullers smile grimly as they watch the pair trying to get their own back on the British Monarchy for perceived wrongs and making as much money as they possibly can in the process. They have made themselves part of the plan to enslave the British people.

By rocking the Monarchy with allegations of assault and other victimisation, and portraying leading members of it in a cruel, distorted light, Harry and Meghan are doing their best to destroy it. And the Monarchy is one of the few things left that stands between us and the dystopian future the likes of the World Economic Forum, the international money power, and all their grey-suited apparatchiks have in mind for us.

So let us all forget Harry and Meghan. They can do what they like now that they live abroad and have effectively resigned from the Royal Family. It will be refreshing not to hear any more of their bleating, virtue-signalling and self-pity. We have other, more important, things to think about. Such as raising public awareness of the dangers that our nation (and nearly all other nations of the world) face in these dangerous times. Goodbye, Harry and Meghan, and good riddance.

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