“Project Fear” by “Cameron & the Remainians” Part 4
As each part of this gets to a certain size, updates take longer and longer…
So here is PART 4:
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5th April
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Letter in the Telegraph from Frederick Forsyth
EU superstate
SIR — Anna Soubry, the industry minister (Comment, March 28), argues that the EU is about trade and prosperity, not politics. On the contrary, the EU is entirely political.
The clash beneath the verbiage is between two distinct governmental systems: Britain’s parliamentary democracy and the system of Jean Monnet, the prime visionary and instigator of a wholly unified continent of Europe.
His title was President of the Action Committee for the European Superstate. The superstate is not a myth; it is the intent.
Monnet wrote: “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.”
Trade and prosperity are merely an adjunct; the EU’s true destination is post-democratic government by unelected committee.
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Nigel Lawson: “I love Europe! That’s why I live in France.”
Brexit is certainly not about being anti-Europe.
Brexit is not just about border controls or immigration, “important though they are”.
It isn’t only about economics, although there’s no doubt that we’ll be far better off out, economically.
“To suggest that the European Union is an economic success; well, it clearly isn’t. Look at unemployment rates around the EU, particularly very high youth unemployment rates. So the idea that somehow it’s an economic asset to us to be in the EU is, I think, bizarre. The EU has never made economic sense.”
One simple reason justifies Brexit for Lawson. “The important issue is democracy and self-government. It is about that principle. Self government is more important than anything else.”
Conservative colleagues including Philip Hammond and William Hague have issued quasi-apocalyptic warnings that Brexit could trigger the collapse of the EU. But if that were to happen, Lawson says casually, it would be no bad thing at all.
“No, it would be good for the countries of Europe. When you have an entity with a really serious democratic deficit, and proving to be an economic poor performer, the idea that there is anything to be lost if it breaks up peacefully I find totally unconvincing.”
Lots of people would describe it as a historic catastrophe. “No, well, they’re completely mistaken. I cannot see any rational case for believing that.”
You could make the case that once upon a time the EUSSR served a useful purpose, in confining Germany; but it’s passed its sell-by date; it’s served its purpose; it has no purpose at all now.
If it ceases to exist we’ll have better relationships within Europe.
There is far more hostility now between the different countries of Europe than there has been at any time since the war.
And the great majority of people in Europe do not want to be part of a political union.
“Well, that would be true of the French people.” Nigel says,
“I mean, it’s not true in Luxembourg, of course. The little countries, they have a slightly different perspective.” He chortles. “I mean, Luxembourg is very little indeed; about the same size as Croydon.”
Talking of small; he also insists that people are quite wrong to worry that Scotland might leave the UK in the event of Brexit, pointing out that; “There’s no connection. No connection whatsoever. The decision to hold another Scottish referendum is the decision of the British government; it’s not for the Scottish government to decide.”
Added to which the Scots actually voted “No” last time, when conditions were much more propitious; now all the risks have been multiplied; many a “Yes” voter is now thankful.
Others worry that the price would be Tory party unity, but Lawson dismisses this briskly. “I don’t see things in those terms; what matters is the best interests of the people of Britain.”
Lawson sees no reason why a vote to leave should precipitate the PM’s immediate departure. “He’s already said he’s going to stand down. In fact, I think in a sense he has a duty, he and his cabinet, to stay and implement the people’s verdict in the most effective way.”
He refuses to comment on the leadership prospects of Cameron’s potential successors; saying quite rightly that; “…whether we should leave the European Union or not is something of such fundamental importance, it trumps everything else.”
Asked to clarify what sort of future we would be voting for if we backed Brexit, he says: “Look, most of the world is not in the European Union.”
And dissolution of the EU would be a price worth paying for British sovereignty? “That would be no price to be paid at all.”
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The imposition on Greece of harsh and unwanted measures that eliminated its sovereignty and stripped the people of the democratic power they exercised in their referendum were not a departure from business as usual for the EUSSR.
They were, on the contrary, a manifestation of the EUSSR’s long-standing disrespect for democracy and the sovereignty of its member states, and the determination among EUSSR elites to impose a business-friendly vision onto any recalcitrant government and people.
The deal forced onto Athens; on pain of a forced crash out of the Euro; was a massive wake-up call to democrats everywhere. It is increasingly clear that the EUSSR, far from standing up for Europe’s people against overweening corporate power, is doing the exact opposite: ganging up with corporate and finance capital to suppress democracy and popular aspirations.
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Just in case you hadn’t noticed: something is rotten in the state of Europe.
The two key events that make it starkly clear that something is rotten at the top of our continent are;
First, the forthcoming EUSSR-backed, corporatist, anti-democratic ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership;’
And second, the imposition on Athens of a programme for privatisation and savage cuts even worse than that rejected by the Greek people’s decisive ‘NO’ vote, in their referendum last year.
The TTIP is the EU-US ‘free trade’ agreement currently being negotiated, to which the European Parliament, tragically, gave its provisional approval last year.
TTIP enables the democratic will of the people to be struck down by big business;
TTIP is in its very essence a project of secretive lobbying;
TTIP is about gigantic corporations being able to break open and gobble up public procurement and public services; and that includes our National Health Service.
This should not be viewed as some kind of aberration from EUSSR standard practice.
It IS indeed EUSSR standard practice.
The EUSSR has been from the beginning, and is now increasingly, a pro-business front, a vehicle for organisations such as Goldman Sachs and the European Roundtable of Industrialists to get their way.
There is far too little democracy in the EUSSR: for example, the Council of Ministers operates almost entirely in secrecy and holds the whip hand over the Parliament on most issues; Brussels is dominated by its unelected politburo (it calls its “Commission”) which in turn is in the thrall of corporate lobbyists wielding immense powers of hospitality and patronage. EUSSR rules make it difficult to impossible for say, the railways or the steel industry to be brought back into full public ownership in this country; however desperate the need may be.
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A former health minister, Gisela Stuart MP has warned that the EUSSR is a threat to patient safety, because it will soon prevent hospitals from making vital checks on doctors; saying that unless Britain votes for Brexit, the NHS will have to employ European doctors without being able to check their qualifications, in as little as two years.
This is because of the planned introduction of European Professional Cards, due to come into force for doctors in 2018. These will allow medics to work in the NHS without having their qualifications checked.
Mrs Stuart also said that without a Brexit, the UK will never be able to carry out systematic language tests on all doctors currently working in the country.
Under European rules, hospitals are only allowed to test those who moved to Britain after 2014.
New figures show that in the past two years, 900 doctors from the continent have been turned down for work in UK hospitals or GP practices because their English is not good enough.
This suggests that hundreds of doctors from the continent may already be working in the UK without sufficient English skills because they came before language tests began.
Almost 11 per cent of doctors working in the UK were first registered in another European country.
Mrs Stuart, a health minister between 1999 and 2001, said she was particularly concerned about European Professional Cards for doctors, agreed at an EU level.
They mean UK regulators will have to give applicants licences to practise without first checking they have the necessary qualifications and have not lied on forms or been suspended.
The General Medical Council, Britain’s regulator, has warned that the cards could put patient safety at risk because the NHS will have to rely on European regulators to do the checks on its behalf.
The issue of doctors being able to speak English well has been prominent since the case of Dr Daniel Ubani, a German doctor who, in his first GP locum posting in the UK, was allowed to treat patients despite having a poor grasp of English and subsequently killed a 70-year-old pensioner David Gray, in 2008, with a lethal dose of diamorphine.
In 2010, an inquest found that Mr Gray had been unlawfully killed and one of the much vaunted European Arrest Warrants was issued for Ubani.
He had returned to Germany in the meantime and a deal was reached under which he was sentenced there.
Charged with the lesser offence of causing death by medical negligence; he got a nine-month suspended jail term and a fine.
Daniel Ubani was banned from practising in the UK, but can still work in Germany; so how long before he gets a European Professional Card?
Mrs Stuart, one of the few Labour MPs to support Brexit, said: “This is not about being anti-immigration. We know the health service relies on a lot of doctors trained abroad, but this is about delivering proper healthcare and our ability to insist on proper standards which the professional bodies deem to be important. The GMC has stood us in good stead for years, and if they are worried, then so should we be.”
Almost 11,000 European doctors and nurses were granted permission to work in the NHS in 2014, and numbers are rising because of under-staffing.
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the GMC, urged David Cameron to include the issue of patient safety in his EUSSR “renegotiation,” but of course, the Prime Minister ignored him.
Mrs Stuart said: “This is not something dreamt up by politicians. A seriously respected person at the GMC is worried about this. They say it is a problem and is likely to become more of a problem. This extension of the professional cards to doctors is something the European Commission will do. However much concern we have, it is they who will decide.”
She added: “The current debate is all about scaremongering. This isn’t doing that; this is stating the facts. What we’re moving towards is this European Professional Card that recognises their qualifications without checking them.”
Mrs Stuart said: “It is vital the doctors and nurses have the language skills to take a patient’s history and communicate with them to find out their care needs. The doctor-patient relationship is more important than almost anything else. When the Government is talking about how physical and mental health are of equal status, surely language is important there. And it puts pressure on other professionals if some of the staff cannot speak English well.”
The cards are already in force for nurses, and while the Politburo has not yet made a final decision on their introduction for doctors, it is expected to happen in 2018.
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Anti-EUSSR campaigners in the Netherlands are urging Britons to take their chance to leave the undemocratic bloc by voting for Brexit in our June referendum.
A treaty, which is designed to bring Kiev into the EU’s sphere of influence, has been automatically accepted by mandarins in 27 member states including Britain.
But the Dutch people, furious with their Government’s constant ceding of powers to Brussels, came together to force a vote on it and the latest opinion polls show they will reject it overwhelmingly in the latest sign of how the country’s voters are turning against the EU elite.
Dutch voters though expected to reject the EU’s expansionist scheming when they go to the polls in a referendum on Wednesday 6th April, have been warned their views may well be ignored by unelected bureaucrats.
An overwhelming two-thirds of the population are expected to vote against a proposed Brussels deal with Ukraine in what is being interpreted as a widespread rebellion against the whole European project.
Arrogant EU bureaucrats were so confident of railroading the deal through that it is already provisionally in place.
The referendum will be watched closely in Britain ahead of our own.
Today Dutch opponents to the deal warned Eurocrats that railroading through the deal against their wishes would almost certainly spark a Brexit, as well as intensifying calls for a similar referendum on EU membership in Holland.
Thierry Baudet, one of the campaigners who were instrumental in bringing about the referendum, said: “If politicians ignore the Dutch ‘no’ then it will be an even stronger signal than what the British have already received — that there is no way to correct the European political class and that they should vote to leave.”
Noises have already begun to emanate from the Europhile Dutch government and Brussels that the referendum is not legally binding.
But Holland’s parliament is governed by an unstable coalition with a slim majority, which may find it increasingly hard to go against the wishes of its own people on Europe.
The proposed deal with Ukraine has already been signed off by David Cameron.
It proposes a huge shift in political, trade and defence cooperation between Brussels and Kiev, which is seen as the first step towards Ukraine becoming a full EU member.
But it has gone down like a lead balloon with the Dutch public, who are increasingly turning against the EU as calls for a Brexit continue to gather pace.
The predicted ‘no’ vote would be yet another disaster for beleaguered Brussels and would only add to the rising anti-EU sentiment sweeping Europe.
The whole project has become so unpopular that today Holland’s government issued a desperate plea to voters urging them to ignore the EU’s involvement in the deal.
Finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said: “I hope the Dutch can get over their chagrin and say: ‘Yes, we are annoyed with Europe, we are annoyed with this Dutch government, but we will still support Ukraine.”
He also angered the Dutch public by saying that, even if they reject the deal, “the government position is that we will follow the law, which simply says we will reconsider”.
That remark has added to a growing impression that the government will seek to preserve the treaty, or its essence whatever the outcome, in direct defiance of democracy.
In 2005 Dutch voters broke from a pro-European tradition and in a referendum rejected controversial plans for an all-encompassing EU constitution.
Their overwhelming “No” vote followed a similar verdict in a French referendum just days earlier and led to the plan being “withdrawn.” It was amended slightly and reappeared; but so slightly amended that when it was rubber-stamped as the Lisbon Treaty nobody could spot any real difference; except as a Treaty, it merely needed Europhile signatures; not referenda.
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Has someone been telling porkies?
On 1st April Cameron came out of the nuclear summit in Washington and told the Daily Mail, “Obviously being here is also an opportunity to talk to friendly nations about the European referendum issue. I had very good discussions yesterday with John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who made a very clear statement about New Zealand believing that Britain was better off in the EU, that it is good for New Zealand and good for Britain.”
Yet New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, speaking to the New Zealand Herald the same day, seemed to remember a different conversation; shall we say, not quite so fulsome in his support for our EUSSR membership
He mentioned some negative aspects of Britain’s EUSSR membership, suggesting that the UK is neglecting its long-standing partners around the world to be a member of a declining European bloc.
The main gripe Mr Key appears to have is with Britain’s immigration system, which due to our EUSSR membership prejudices against non-EUSSR member states as a source of immigration. It also creates a situation where Britain is inundated with cheap, migrant labour from Southern and Eastern Europe, rather than taking in the skilled labour from the Anglosphere.
“I said to him I thought no one individual action of itself is so incredibly significant but the combination of them is adding up to a picture which looks as if they are forgetting the history between our two countries,” Mr. Key said, adding: “I said to him it was an amazingly strong and warm relationship and Britain is still our number one source of migration.”
“We are at the core … a British colony and I thought there was an argument that New Zealanders could be treated in a way which reflected that.”
But Mr. Key went even further, stating: “We are migrants who have always pulled our weight in the UK and why should we be penalised for the migration policies of being part of Europe?”
Mr. Key said Mr Cameron assured him he was, “…going to go away and have a look at that.”
Well, an assurance from Cameron; don’t hold your breath, Mr Key…
Cameron also said, “What I find is it’s very hard to find a leader of a friendly nation that wishes Britain well that believes we would be better off outside a reformed EU.”
I’d suggest Dave hasn’t been looking very hard.
Only a few days ago Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, the PM of Iceland, was justifiably boasting of a free trade deal with China; acclaiming the benefits of non-EUSSR membership, saying, “Come on in the water’s lovely!”
And the Australian PM, Malcolm Turnbull did not shy away from criticising the Free Movement regime; forced on us by our EUSSR membership; which, in his view, has left us exposed to danger.
“There has been a real breakdown in intelligence. If you can’t control your borders, you don’t know who’s coming or going. We are in a stronger position from a security point of view in Australia than the Europeans are. We have strong border protection in Australia. We have a much greater insight into people who we would regard as being threats or likely to pose a risk to the safety of Australians.”
And we can’t do anything about that until the UK gets out of the EUSSR
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This evening, 31st March, on their 6 o’clock news the ever-neutral BBC took great delight in passing-on yet another morsel of “Project Fear” piffle; telling us that Brexit could cause problems for British football.
I posted this back in January…
Even the Football fraternity is being targeted by “Project Fear”
As some of you will already be aware, I know nothing about football; I don’t like it and am not interested in it.
Therefore I have taken most of this from “Euro-Guido,” who appear to know what they are talking about…
I hope they won’t mind…
Tory peer Karren Brady has come out with the idea that leaving the EUSSR would somehow knobble English football, making it hard if not impossible for top Premier League clubs (whoever they are) to sign the best talent from the European continent.
Lady Brady is apparently, the vice chairman of “Dave’s second team West Ham,”
Why would Dave have two teams?
I’m guessing that “West Ham” isn’t some form of pork product;
Anyway Lady Brady reckons:
“For clubs, free movement plays a big role in transfers and players’ contracts. Players from the EU can sign for UK clubs without needing a visa or special work permit, making it quicker and easier to secure top talent from across Europe to come and play in our leagues… Leaving the EU could have a big impact on foreign players, as independent analysis has shown that two-thirds of European stars in England would not meet automatic non-EU visa criteria and therefore might be forced to leave.”
As “Euro-Guido” says “Something doesn’t add up here.”
“…independent analysis has shown that two-thirds of European stars in England would not meet automatic non-EU visa criteria and therefore might be forced to leave”?
What a load of B**l**ks! (rhymes with rowlocks)
Who did that “independent analysis?
I wonder if shady Lady Brady would like to tell us…
“Euro-Guido” then tells us that, hundreds of non-EUSSR players have been easily signed by Premier clubs with no fuss at all.
With only a handful of exceptions, (don’t ask me!) non-EUSSR players have been granted fast-track work permits by the Home Office.
For example: ‘Arsenal’ signed Kolo Touré from Ivorian club ASEC Mimosas,
‘West Ham’ signed Carlos Tevez from Brazilian side Corinthians, (I suspect Lady Brady, being Vice-Chairman might know that one)
and Dwight Yorke signed for ‘Aston Villa’ having previously only played in his native Trinidad and Tobago.
Apparently, not one of these players came from a member state of the EUSSR or was even playing for a side in the EUSSR when they joined the Premier League.
“Euro-Guido” then waxes lyrical,
“Let’s indulge the barmy fantasy that Brexit might force “two-thirds of European stars in England” to pack their kit-bag and jog on to sunnier climes; it would never happen, but what if it did?”
Apparently, 65% of Premier League players currently come from outside of England, with this proportion even higher in the top sides. (Isn’t “top sides” the same as “Premier League”? No? OK)
An exodus of foreign players would mean clubs would be forced to promote English talent.
This is something Greg Dyke (He used to be at the BBC, didn’t he? How did he get into this?) has been pushing for throughout his tenure as FA Chairman, (Oh, I see) lamenting that;
“Home-grown heroes are fast becoming an endangered species, particularly among the Premier League’s top clubs.”
So according to Lady Brady, Brexit would make Premier League nurture home-grown talent, great news for young English players and even better for the future of the national team.
“Euro-Guido” then enters fantasy land, “In Lady Brady’s post-Brexit scenario, it’s not too far-fetched (apparently) to see how a revitalised England could win the World Cup…”
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Jackie Ashley (aka; The Honourable Jacqueline “Jackie” Ashley) in the Guardian, on 31st March, raised my hopes by writing this:
“I think it would be wise for those of us in the remain camp to seriously and honestly confront a few home truths.”
My hopes were that those “home truths” might include things like, of course “Dave’s Dismal Deal” is worse than useless; of course the UK will easily get a free trade deal with Europe after Brexit; of course we will be safer outside the EUSSR; of course CAP is a continuous corrupt disaster and of course the Euro is doomed.
But no, her “home truths” didn’t relate to facts; she was referring to the passion of the Remainians; or rather the lack of it; “There is a passion among those who want out that is not shared by the mumbling stay camp,” she wrote.
That will be because it is notoriously difficult to be passionate about something you don’t really believe in. And many Remainians actually claim to be Eurosceptics, deep down; so how can they be passionate about a cause they doubt?
She went on, “It seems to me that the anti-EU lobby is making most of the running for most of the time, and is dominating the media coverage. This is partly, I grant you, because most of the newspapers are ideologically hostile to Brussels, and the BBC is paralysed.”
Sorry, the BBC is what?
Did she say “Paralysed”?
Auntie Beeb isn’t paralysed; despite its supposed neutrality, it is valiantly backing the Remainian cause; never a day passes but we are spoon-fed some morsel of anti-Brexit tripe; without the benefit of an onion sauce.
You have to be a certain age to remember how unpalatable tripe is without onion sauce…
Just the other evening, the 30th it was; on the BBC News they were wittering about Brexit, saying that we would have to use Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, because that is “…what the EU rules say.”
Then they said that this would mean we would have wait for at least two years, negotiating, before we actually left the EUSSR; even quoting some Remainian poltroon who reckoned it could take up to ten years!
I have to acknowledge however, that her hubby, Andrew Marr, has so far been faultless in his portrayal of the impartial presenter…
But then she says that there was much more to it than a lack of passion in the Remainian camp.
She wrote; “Vote Leave, before it turned hysterical…”
Hang on a minute; she bemoans a lack of passion in the Remainian campaign and then criticises us Brexiteers for possessing the very sentiment that the Remainians lack; passion; just she labels it “hysteria” instead.
Anyway, she goes on: “Vote Leave, before it turned hysterical, managed to produce a whole series of arguments… …which the other side has struggled to match.”
And “the other side;” her side, surely; always will “struggle to match” them; simply because they haven’t got arguments; well, not arguments they can actually use…
The only two truthful arguments in favour of the EUSSR are;
First, the combination of free-movement & mass-migration producing cheap labour for the large international corporations;
And second, the ratchetting of power & control away from elected national governments into the hands of unelected Euro-rats; so eliminating National Sovereignty totally and creating the long-desired United States of Europe.
If those two; cheap labour & the USE, are your only two true arguments, how on earth can you use them?
They’re not exactly vote-grabbers…
Jackie then writes, “Gove’s essay on sovereignty has still not been properly answered.”
No, it hasn’t, and it was a huge disappointment that she didn’t try to answer it either…
She went on; “Given that we expected most big businesses would be in favour of staying, Vote Leave has produced an impressive series of business outers. From obvious and unexpected places, Vote Leave keeps finding new voices.”
Yes, there is an impressive and lengthening list of business leaders publicising their support for Brexit; even more impressive considering that canvassing by the EUSSR-funded CBI could only get 36 of the FTSE-100 to declare for the Remainian cause; meaning 64 of them chose not to.
Jackie then says, “What once seemed a weakness; the rivalry of the Tory and UKIP campaigns; is beginning to look like strength, as different voices reach out to different constituencies.”
That is something a lot of us realised right at the very beginning; and not just “Tory and UKIP campaigns;” we have plenty of (passionate) Labour Brexiteers too.
The Brexit campaign has only ever been about a message; not a leader; not one figurehead; not one political party; just the message; Brexit.
As Jackie says, “In contrast, the remain movement has so far been lacklustre, to say the least. Almost everyone seems to have left it to the prime minister. But David Cameron is hardly Mr Popular, and seems to be mimicking his general election behaviour: periodically rolling up his sleeves, and saying he’s getting on with it.”
“But the repetition of the very vague “safer in” message isn’t cutting through. It’s too bland; frankly too boring. The other side managed to produce new-sounding stories day by day. It is managing the politics better.”
But that “very vague “safer in” message” isn’t the only tactic the Remainians have been using. Unsurprisingly Jackie doesn’t mention “Project Fear,” which has been its constant companion; and has become just as boring…
Jackie then writes, “The Conservative remain campaign is, however, vigorous and exciting compared with the Labour one. I don’t believe for a second that either Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell believes passionately in the EU. They are both Bennite-era thinkers who fundamentally see the EU as a capitalist club.”
She’s right there; if Corbyn and McDonnell really are “Bennite-era thinkers;” whatever that means, perhaps they remember what Tony Benn said about the UK’s entry into the EEC, in 1973; “The most formal surrender of British sovereignty and parliamentary democracy that has ever occurred in our history.” Then during the 1975 referendum campaign, he said the UK had suffered, “Half a million jobs lost in Britain and a huge increase in food prices as a direct result of our entry into the Common market.” And that was at the beginning; before it became the USSR-clone it is now…
She then suggests that Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell are more concerned about the looming Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) than about Brexit.
Many of us are extremely concerned about TTIP, what we’ve been allowed to know about it. In fact TTIP encapsulates so much that is wrong about the EUSSR. It’s a trade deal, which has taken over two years so far, and it’s still not ready for signatures. All its negotiations have been in secret and unreported. This secrecy is on-going, with nearly all information on negotiations coming from leaked documents and Freedom of Information requests. It has been described as, “An assault on European and US societies by transnational corporations.” Like all EUSSR decisions, we have no say whatsoever in whether TTIP goes through or not.
If Corbyn and McDonnell really are more concerned about TTIP than Brexit, then a) they are more stupid than we thought; Brexit being the most important political decision they will ever be involved in; and b) they really need to support it, as it is the only way TTIP can be avoided.
Then Jackie continues, “So that leaves us with Alan Johnson, a thoroughly amiable man who has excluded himself from frontline politics. He should be angry and passionate; at meetings every night; demanding airtime; finding soapbox stunts to interest the cameras; drenching social media with fighting talk. Instead he’s calm, quiet, cogent — and losing.”
Well yes, he is losing; and not just because he isn’t being “angry and passionate;” as I’ve explained he has no arguments he can convert into, “fighting talk” with which to “drench social media.”
Jackie being a Labour supporter writing for the Guardian then gives us a paragraph about Labour machinations that includes reference to “the admirable Yvette Cooper,” Chuka Umunna, Tristram Hunt, Liz Kendall and Rachel Reeves; apparently these are all “…big-player Labour politicians,” but that’s news to me.
Jackie says that she’d like to hear from Liz Kendall exploring the risks to the NHS; which brings us smartly back to TTIP;
With TTIP, the NHS, is in the firing line. One of the main aims of TTIP is to open up Europe’s public health to US companies. This could essentially mean the privatisation of the NHS.
The European Politburo has claimed that public services will be kept out of TTIP. However, the UK Trade Minister, Lord Livingston has admitted that talks about the NHS are still on the table.
Jackie ends her paragraph about Labour’s no-show on the Remainian team with a heartfelt cry, “And where is Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary?”
Hopefully he’s sitting at home, thinking about some of the things his father said;
In his final speech to parliament back in 2001, after 50 years as an MP, Tony Benn listed the five questions he believed a Democratic government should ask itself: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”
And he added: “If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.”
Jackie ends with this; “Maybe they’re just too depressed. Maybe they think that somehow a victory for Brexit will destabilise Corbyn, and shake things up. It would. They’d wake up to find rump Labour trapped in a UK shorn of Scotland in which the victorious Tory right was in full control of government and party, in vindictive mood, and with no way back for liberal Britishness. So I’d would start the fight-back with a simple question: what would Boris’s Brexited, Broken Britain actually feel like to live in?”
First, Labour has a right to be depressed. They are led by a hard-left throwback that has a huge majority backing with the party faithful. That leadership election showed exactly what the Labour party is, and those champagne socialist “big-player Labour politicians” left over from the Blair/Brown years need to realise they don’t belong in it anymore.
That the Labour Party is looking at a few years in the wilderness, will not be the fault of Brexit; it’s going to happen anyway.
Second, it will be a complete, unbroken UK that survives & thrives after Brexit. The Scots voted “No” to independence, when conditions were much more favourable. Many Scottish “Yes” voters now realise what a lucky escape they had; and won’t be going down that road again anytime soon…
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On the BBC News this evening they were wittering about Brexit, saying that we would have to use Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, because that is “…what the EU rules say.”
They then said that this would mean we would have wait two years, before we actually left the EUSSR; quoting some Remainian poltroon who reckoned it could take up to ten years!
This is exactly like trying to leave the Mafia;
Apparently the Beeb tell us we can only leave the EUSSR on the EUSSR’s terms.
Wrong; we are leaving; get it?
SOD Article 50;
All we have to do is repeal or amend parts of The European Communities Act 1972.
The repeal of this Act would render European Union law unenforceable in the United Kingdom, and would immediately return the powers delegated to the EUSSR to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
That means the EUSSR’s petty rules will no longer apply.
So, once more; SOD Article 50
We would then negotiate trade deals with Europe; either with individual countries or with the EUSSR; and it would be done rapidly.
The EUSSR won’t like it; but their major manufacturers will demand it.
The alternative would be a “Tariff War,” which as we buy so much more from the EUSSR, than we sell to it; would hurt its industries much more than ours.
I can’t imagine the German motor industry purring with contentment as UK sales of Mercedes, Audi & BMW cars, fall through the floor; being 40 or 50% more expensive. Or French wine producers happily sitting back, quaffing and applauding, as Beaujolais, Beaune & Bordeaux, costing 60 or 70% more, lose out to their equivalents from Chile, South Africa & Australia.
It’s a racing certainty that free trade deals would be agreed rapidly…
This claptrap about ten years of uncertainty is just… you’ve guessed it… “Project Fear”… again.
On 26th February 2015, in the House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, admitted that a free trade agreement in goods ‘would be relatively simple to negotiate’.
On 4th November 2013, even the pro-EUSSR CBI said: “the UK is highly likely to secure a Free Trade Agreement with the EU, and such an agreement would be likely to be negotiated at an extremely high level of ambition relative to other FTAs.”
The UK’s former Ambassador to the EUSSR and leading supporter of the BSE campaign, in the House of Lords, on 2nd November 2015, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, admitted: “there is no doubt that the UK could secure a free trade agreement with the EU.”
Remember; The status quo is not on the ballot paper; the EUSSR is committed, by treaty, to “Ever Closer Union;” it’s their leit motif; it’s in its DNA; what they are currently calling “Political Integration,” which is intended to result in a United States of Europe.
With their characteristic instinct for scaremongering, EUSSR supporters like to pretend that Britain’s exit would be “a leap into the unknown”.
But it would be nothing of the sort.
There are 195 nations in the world and 167 of them manage without Brussels’ interference.
Just 28 appear need instruction, regulation & directions from the Big-Brother Politburo of the EUSSR.
With Brexit we will reduce that to 27; hopefully others will soon follow…
But we know where the Fear actually lies
We know who is afraid.
I’ve said this before; but it bears repeating;
It’s our Government that is frightened.
They want us to be scared about leaving the EUSSR
But it’s them; they are the ones that are scared about leaving
They are actually frightened about Brexit.
They are frightened of suddenly being totally Accountable.
None of them have ever experienced true Parliamentary Democracy
They don’t know what National Sovereignty actually is, because they’ve never experienced that either.
They have never had to make decisions as a Government on its own, without Big Brussels Brother’s help.
Not one member of the cabinet has ever served in a UK Government that has had to make all its own decisions.
Not many of them will even remember a UK Government that did.
And that frightens them
Michael Fallon (63) and Ian Duncan Smith (62) were 20 & 18 respectively when we joined the EEC on 1st January 1973.
The day Tony Benn described as, ““The most formal surrender of British sovereignty and parliamentary democracy that has ever occurred in our history.”
David Cameron was 6 and George Osborne was 19 months old.
Liz Truss, Environment Secretary and Stephen Crabb, now Secretary for Work & Pensions, weren’t yet born.
Fallon & IDS are also the only two that were old enough to vote in the 1975 Referendum, on 5th June 1975. Fallon at 23 was a student activist on the “Yes” campaign, and the 21-year-old IDS was commissioned into the Scots Guards as a Second-Lieutenant, just three weeks after the referendum.
Fallon is also the longest serving Cabinet member, becoming an MP in 1983; 10 years after we joined the EEC, and surrendered our sovereignty and democracy.
All but six ministers were first elected this century, to a parliament that had by then been without Sovereignty and Democracy for 30 years.
We complain about the lack of Accountability within the Politburo and Courts of the EUSSR, but really, while 75% of our laws are handed down from there, how Accountable is our own government?
If anything goes wrong, “It’s Europe’s fault” and although it usually is, our government is always able to say, quite truthfully;
“Our hands are tied by EU Laws, Regulations and Directives”
That’s why David Cameron, George Osbourne et al are frightened;
If we leave the EUSSR,
We will regain our national sovereignty and they, the Elected UK Government alone will be responsible for our future.
They, the Elected UK Government will have to make the decisions.
They, the Elected UK Government will be fully accountable to the electorate, just as they should be.
If this lot get it wrong, we can always elect a different lot
And the prospect frightens them;
That is their “Project Fear”
The UK gave vast swathes of the world Magna Carta, Parliamentary Democracy, Trial by Jury, Habeas Corpus and … …Railways; pioneering the Industrial Revolution along the way and winning two world wars.
We have the fifth largest economy in the world; we do not need to be tied to the apron strings of the corrupt & undemocratic failure that is the EUSSR
The UK can flourish again if we seize the chance to regain our freedom.
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In the past, the BBC has tried to hide its EUSSR funding and bias, as it is bound to political neutrality by its Charter, specifically because the organisation is funded by the British public who are forced to pay for it through a television licence fee.
But that doubtful impartiality will be called into question yet again as we learn that the new, uncritical documentary series about the presidency of U.S. President Barack Obama was made with funding from the European Union (EU) which in turn gets its cash from British and European tax payers.
The credits of the first film, “Inside Obama’s White House” revealed that the corporation received support from the EUSSR’s quango “Creative Europe;” an entity set up to “support the cultural, creative and audiovisual sectors.”
The info comes out as President Obama plans his April trip to the United Kingdom in order to urge the British public to stay within the EUSSR; an intrusion into our Referendum campaign that has pissed-off a lot of Eurosceptics, Brexiteers and the British public; prompting a petition demanding that the government; “Stop President Obama from speaking inside OUR Westminster Parliament concerning Britain staying inside the European Union..”
Over 30,000 people have signed the petition so far.
The government’s mealy-mouthed response at this point is; “It is an established convention that members of either House can invite whoever they wish and in whatever capacity, to Parliament, to discuss and speak on a wide range of issues.”
“Established convention”? Not during the lead-in to an election; and not during the build-up to a referendum
Over 100 Members of Parliament have signed a letter coordinated by Dr. Liam Fox, addressed to the U.S. Ambassador to the UK; Matthew Barzun.
The letter was signed by a serving Foreign Office minister, James Duddridge, and the serving Minister of State for Communities and Resilience, Mark Francois, as well as former cabinet minister Cheryl Gillan.
MPs from the Labour Party, UKIP and the Democratic Unionist Party also signed.
It says:
“It has long been the established practice not to interfere in the domestic political affairs of our allies and we hope that this will continue. While the U.S. administration may have a view on the desirability or otherwise of Britain’s continued membership of the EU, any explicit intervention in the debate is likely to be extremely controversial and potentially damaging. We hope that you will persuade President Obama from becoming embroiled in what is a highly delicate, sensitive and important issue for the British people.”
Chris Grayling MP, the Leader of the House of Commons said:
“It is important to say that this is a British matter. It is not for others around the world to try to encourage people to vote one way or the other. It is really quite important that our allies look at this as a decision for British people. Whether we are inside or outside the European Union does not affect our relationship with the United States.”
The latest message directed at President Obama comes less than a week after five other MPs and Nigel Farage wrote to him urging that he “butt-out” of the our referendum.
Peter Bone (Conservative), Kate Hoey (Labour), Kelvin Hopkins (Labour), Tom Pursglove (Conservative), Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party), and UKIP leader Nigel Farage have co-authored the letter warning Obama that an intervention by a foreign leader could have the opposite effect than intended.
This letter says:
“With so much at stake, it is imperative that the question of exiting the European Union is not one answered by foreign politicians or outside interests, but rather by the British people who must ultimately live with change or the status quo… …issues of national sovereignty must be decided exclusively by the people of the United Kingdom… …even a passive diplomatic recommendation in the matter of our national decision will receive the opposite of the intended effect. The referendum vote is an act of democracy in its most direct form, and the question of whether or not to leave the EU is a rare political topic that is not owned by any one political party. This is a chance for the British people to choose the path of their country. Interfering in our debate over national sovereignty would be an unfortunate milestone at the end of your term as President.”
So my open message to Mr Obama is: “Barack, get it into your skull; one of the reasons that this referendum is happening at all, is that we Brits do not like Foreigners, (especially those that we haven’t elected,) telling us what to do; you sticking your oar in won’t persuade us much either way; but will put our backs up.”
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29th March
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The US President is set to make a major intervention in the Referendum campaign next month when he jets into London after visiting Germany.
Remainians seem to think that Obama will help persuade undecided voters to back Remain… some hope!
An e-petition calling for him to be barred from speaking in Westminster on the issue has so far attracted 26,000 signatures.
At a meeting of Eurosceptic think-tank The Bruges Group last night, leading Brexit supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, known by parliamentary sketch writers as “the honourable member for the early 20th century,” tore into the US President’s plans.
(I can’t help liking eccentrics; back in February 2012 he made the record books with the use of “floccinaucinihilipilification;” an Eton neologism meaning “the habit of considering as worthless;” in the House of Commons; making it the longest word in Hansard.)
After describing Obama as a “funny fellow”, the North-East Somerset MP said: “I think he’ll be the greatest recruiting sergeant for the Brexit campaign. No true honest Briton is going to be told what to do by a Yankee president, they’re just not. He can come and tell us all he likes about what we should do but we’re not an American colony and they’re not a colony of ours anymore. It’s so splendidly arrogant for him to think that poor little Blighty is just waiting for big old Uncle Sam to come and tell us what we should do with our European neighbours and which garden we should play in. I think we just have to be very welcoming to him, thank him for his kind consideration and vote against being told what to do.”
Jacob is right; after all our dislike of being “told what to do” by foreigners we haven’t elected, is a lot of what this referendum is all about; does Barack not understand that?
Jacob’s comments echoed those of fellow Tory MP Steve Baker when commenting on the proposed Obama visitation, earlier this month, Baker said: “Whenever a US president intervenes in our constitutional future, I always reread the US Declaration of Independence. We will solve peacefully at the ballot box the problem for which their nation fought a bloody war of insurrection.”
And last week, Nigel Farage pointed out that Obama is “the most anti-British president” there has ever been.
Speaking to LBC Radio, he said “We would be horrified if an American president got involved in a British general election campaign just as Americans would be horrified if a British prime minister was to say ‘vote for Hillary’.
So he should butt out.”
Rees-Mogg said that America’s decision to exclude financial services from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal was in retaliation for France not allowing the film industry into negotiations.
Rees-Mogg said: “One thing very important in terms of free trade to the Americans is the film industry. Hollywood is a very big exporter for the US. The French won’t put in the film industry because they are worried about those dirty French films they like making, which they need to subsidise because proper people don’t watch them. They’re watched by teenagers, I think, who get excited by that sort of thing.”
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Continued membership of the EUSSR will leave the UK in huge economic turmoil, very much akin to what’s happening in Greece and Spain.
The EUSSR is inexorably transferring power away from its member states and handing it to unelected officials in Brussels.
As a result, countries like Spain and Greece, struggling to drag themselves out of an economic downturn, have no power over their own budgets and interest rates.
As he joined 249 other business leaders in openly backing Brexit; Tim Martin, the founder & chairman of JD Wetherspoon, said in an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 26th March; “Democracy has gone hand in hand with the highest level of prosperity for decades and decades and decades. West Germany was much more successful economically than East Germany; South Korea is more successful than North Korea. North America is the best example, with its democratic constitution; look at South America, poor people who live in so many of the countries there haven’t had democracy, and which is the most successful country? People know this instinctively, people know this.”
He continued; “We can have clever debating points, but democracy equals prosperity. If they take it away you are going to get Greece and you will get Spain and you will get the massive economic problems people are now having when democracy is removed from people. That’s the key issue.”
His comments came as the Vote Leave campaign announced that its Business Council will be chaired by John Longworth, the former director general, until Cameron’s cronies forced him out, of the British Chambers of Commerce.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave said: “We’re delighted that John Longworth has agreed to chair Vote Leave’s Business Council. His strong business track record and his courageous decision to share his true beliefs with voters make him an extremely powerful voice in the EU debate.”
Other business leaders backing the campaign include Joe Foster, cofounder of Reebok, Michael Geoghegan, former chief executive of HSBC, David Ross, founder of Carphone Warehouse, and the hedge fund manager Crispin Odey.
The Vote Leave Business Council will make the case for business, that EUSSR membership is holding back British businesses big & small; countering the EUSSR-funded CBI’s doom & gloom laden scare-stories, which are only supported by 36 of the FTSE-100 companies that they themselves canvassed…
Whilst the EUSSR might be good for some big multinationals; for smaller businesses it acts as an over-controlling, over-regulating, job-destruction machine; it hinders smaller businesses, who waste time and money complying with the myriads of EUSSR regulations, whether they export to Europe or not, particularly those firms who can’t afford to lobby Brussels to curry favour.
Jobs, wages and our economy will thrive when we get out of the EUSSR and retake control.
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Richard Littlejohn in the Mail;
Tony Blair says he does not intend to join the official Remain campaign, as any contribution he might make could be ‘negative’.
Depends what you mean by negative.
Hostility to the EU went through the roof during the Labour years, not least because of his cynical policy of encouraging mass immigration.
And Blair realises that migration will be the biggest single determining factor when Britain decides in June.
So he thinks he should make himself scarce.
Not that he’s apologetic.
Quite the opposite; as far as Blair is concerned, he’s never been wrong on anything, ever.
It’s not his fault if millions of jobs in this country have been filled by migrants.
Instead of moaning about it, jobless British workers should pull themselves together and get a better education.
Naturally, he was making this valuable contribution not from a platform at a Trade Union conference in some rundown British seaside resort, but at a glitzy global education summit in oil-rich Dubai.
After disembarking from his private jet and freshening up in his six-star hotel suite, Blair laid the blame for unemployment in Britain at the feet of the unemployed themselves.
“The answer . . . is not to blame migrants for taking your job. It’s to get the education and skills necessary in order to operate in the modern world.”
I wonder how this sermon was received by all those who were condemned to fester in Labour’s ‘bog-standard’ comprehensives during the Blair years.
You wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He became Prime Minister boasting that his priority was “education, education, education” but presided over a decade of falling standards and dumbing down.
Blair left behind a shameful legacy of failure and a betrayed generation. Employers regularly complained that school-leavers who applied to them for jobs lacked even basic numeracy and literacy skills.
As a result of the huge increase in the immigrant population, classrooms are overcrowded, parents are regularly denied their first choice of school and native British children are condemned to be educated in schools where a mere handful of pupils have English as their first language.
Only yesterday it was revealed that education authorities across the country are having to raid their education budgets to hire more and more interpreters to translate lessons for children recently arrived from Romania, Lithuania, Slovakia and Poland.
Often these newcomers have secured school places ahead of locally born boys and girls whose families have lived in the area for generations.
How are teachers supposed to impart vital knowledge to a class in which half the pupils speak several different languages?
More to the point, how are any kids supposed to learn anything in a Tower of Babel?
All of this madness is a direct consequence of Blair’s disastrous decision to open the floodgates to immigrants in order to “rub the Right’s face in diversity.”
To call his latest intervention disingenuous would be a serious understatement.
And to pretend that unemployment is all the fault of those who have failed to get proper qualifications is insulting.
If we have a problem with bone-idle British citizens content to sit at home all day instead of doing an honest day’s work, it’s because Labour made welfare dependency a lifestyle choice, and massaged the jobless figures by classifying perfectly able-bodied people as ‘incapacitated’.
(The latest numbers show that more than 100,000 are receiving benefits simply because they’re obese or addicted to drugs.)
Instead of compelling scroungers and shirkers to look for gainful employment and take jobs which they might consider beneath them, Labour imported foreign workers to fill the gap.
Even those upstanding citizens who studied hard at night school, college and via apprenticeships to become, for instance, plumbers and electricians, have seen themselves undercut by migrants prepared to live six-to-a-room in rental accommodation and accept lower wages.
How are British tradesmen, with mortgages and other bills to pay, expected to compete?
If we’d had a properly functioning education and welfare system after 1997, we wouldn’t have needed to import millions of workers from overseas.
For Blair now to turn round and blame the unemployed for their own plight is monstrous. We are still living with the consequences of his folly.
Blair was cheerleader-in-chief for the whole EU project.
His thwarted ambition was to become President of Europe.
If he’d had his way, we’d have joined the euro on day one.
Now he declines to take a leading role in the campaign to persuade us to Remain because his influence might be ‘negative’.
Why so reticent, Tony?
Go for it, my son.
If Blair bangs the drum for his beloved European project, millions of undecided voters will almost certainly decide to vote Leave.
It could be the greatest service he has ever done for us.
Come on, Tony.
Your Country Needs You.
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Even the most cynical opportunist finds it hard to become passionate about the need to stay in a club that is an overpriced cartel, excessively bureaucratic, anti-democratic, corrupt, economically ruinous and is promising more of the same.
Last Wednesday, Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, wrote to Mr Cameron to ask why one of his advisers, Daniel Korski, had issued a stream of anti-Brexit Twitter messages, including a personal attack on Iain Duncan Smith, in breach of the code of conduct for special advisers.
With his usual arrogance, Mr Cameron brushed this aside: Mr Korski, who used to work for the Labour Party, may now be called before Mr Jenkin’s committee to explain himself.
This dirty conduct stinks of panic.
Out of arguments already, with three months to go and new evidence of the damage the EUSSR does to Britain pouring in every day, a bad case is now being made even worse by incompetence and dishonesty.
If you are still making up your mind about how to vote, ask yourself this: if the case to stay in is so incredibly compelling, why do Mr Cameron and his friends seem to find it impossible to make it?
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The Prime Minister’s renegotiation has not delivered fundamental reform in our relationship with the EUSSR.
If we stay in the EUSSR it is a green light to be substantially and increasingly governed from Brussels, an unreformed EUSSR which will hoover up more money and more power at every opportunity it gets.
The Government’s claims of a ‘special status’ for the UK and of ‘reform’ of the EUSSR are inaccurate… … OK, lies
The renegotiation has changed nothing of substance: the European Court remains supreme and in charge of all the areas that it was in charge of before the negotiation and no powers have been returned to the UK.
Independent research by the House of Commons confirms that EUSSR judges could throw out the Prime Minister’s deal after the referendum as it isn’t legally binding. The European Court of Justice “could not enforce” the deal if it clashed with EUSSR treaties; the PM’s renegotiation could “effectively be reversed by the courts.”
Michael Gove told the BBC this, soon after Cameron came back with his hollow deal. Some of the top lawyers in the UK agree that the deal isn’t legally binding, such as Marina Wheeler QC, Martin Howe QC, Lord Pannick QC and John Howell QC.
The PM is asking people to risk voting to stay in the EUSSR based on vague assurances that EUSSR courts won’t throw out his trivial deal. His renegotiation doesn’t come close to fundamental change and isn’t legally binding.
The Icelandic Prime Minister has stated that the UK has little or no say over decisions made in the EU, as it is increasingly dominated by the interests of Germany and France. Despite being the fifth largest economy in the world, the UK’s influence in the EUSSR is diminishing.
Since records began, the UK has not managed to block a single proposal placed in front of the Council from becoming EUSSR law.
The UK has opposed 72 measures which have gone on to become law.
We have lost 101 out of 131 cases before the European Court.
As the Eurozone crisis continues, the EUSSR will make more & more decisions to protect and preserve the Euro.
One of the consequences of the renegotiation discussions is that Cameron has agreed that the UK won’t “…impede the implementation of legal acts directly linked to the functioning of the euro area.”
This is significant and underappreciated; it means that in an “emergency” (as defined by the Politburo) the EUSSR will be able to use British taxpayers’ money to prop up the ailing Euro; totally contrarily to what we have been promised.
Not only did “Dave’s Dismal Deal” not give us anything approaching what we needed; we are in a worse situation than we were before.
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As we decry the “Project Fear” tactics deployed by Cameron & the Remainians; spare a thought for Iceland. They witnessed something more akin to “Project Apocalypse” in the aftermath of the crash.
Where Britons are warned of the potentially cataclysmic implications of a UK exit from the European Union, Icelanders were told a tale of perma-doom that would plague the island until it became a member of the bloc.
That is what drove Iceland in desperation, to formally launch its bid to become a full member of the EUSSR in July 2009.
Lumbered with a currency that had lost 60pc of its value, draconian capital controls and mass austerity, the rationale for membership was simple: as part of the EUSSR’s supranational institutions and monetary union, Iceland would finally have shelter from the market speculators that bought the country to its knees.
2009 also marked the Euro’s first decade in existence. With financial calamity having descended on British and American shores, Brussels pronounced monetary union an unmitigated success.
In commemoration of its 10th anniversary, the European Politburo published a long report excoriating an entire body of economic literature which had prematurely “doomed the single currency to collapse.” (Note, it may have been “premature,” but it wasn’t wrong)
“The euro is one of the most exciting experiments in monetary history,” crowed the Euro-rats.
It was amid all this triumphalism that Iceland’s then left-leaning government began accession talks.
Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s current prime minister, says the membership debate was dominated by fears over Iceland’s very survival. “Without membership we were doomed, they said. There was never any discussion about the ideals and nature of the European Union or whether that was something Icelanders wanted to be part of. The application was simply presented as an economic necessity with claims that as soon as we applied, we would improve our credibility internationally and the Euro would be the solution to all our problems.”
But Iceland’s Project Fear failed.
Free to operate an independent monetary policy and allow its currency to slide, Iceland was soon brought back from the precipice. Its export sector — dominated by fisheries and energy — quickly began to thrive.
With the currency acting a natural shock absorber for the economy, wages remained steady and unemployment bottomed out at around 9pc.
Growth has since averaged 2.6pc over the past six years, and will exceed 3pc in 2016, according to the IMF. The jobless rate is also a far cry from the 25pc seen in the worst parts of southern Europe, at just 2pc.
“Not being a member of the Euro proved indispensable in our quick recovery,” says Gunnlaugsson. “There is hardly any doubt that if we would have been members of the EU and the Euro at the time, the country would have been bankrupted and put in an economic position more resembling that of Greece than what we see in Iceland today.”
This fantastic reversal of fortunes has all but eliminated any lingering case for EUSSR membership.
Gunnlaugsson’s centre-right coalition government formally withdrew from the accession process last year and public appetite for restarting talks has dwindled.
Polls carried out in the wake of the move; which was not put before a referendum; show an overwhelming 70pc of Icelanders are happy to remain out of the EUSSR.
Icelanders have settled their “Europe question.”
“For Iceland, the EEA Agreement is the best of both worlds,” says foreign minister Gunnar Sveinsson.
Prime Minister Gunnlaugsson says compliance has proven to be “quite a burden and even plain annoying at times, but all the stuff that really matters is still under our control.”
Chief among them is fisheries.
Exempt from the EUSSR’s common agricultural and fisheries policies, Iceland has managed to protect its sacrosanct fishing industry from the reach of Brussels quotas.
As a result, even Iceland’s hardened Eurosceptics show little agitation at the country’s current settlement.
“I am happy with the relationship,” says Guthlaugur Thor Thordarson, a Eurosceptic MP and former Icelandic health minister.
“Compared to the alternative, which is being a full member, there is no doubt we are in a better and stronger position.”
In 2013, Reykjavik became the first European nation to conclude a trade agreement with China.
“We have a free trade deal with China and a free trade deal with the Faroe Islands — some of the biggest and smallest economies in the world,” says Thordarson, a vocal advocate for Brexit who has urged the UK to take part in an EEA-like arrangement.
“Come on in: the water’s lovely,” he says.
For a nation the same size as the US state of Kentucky, many Icelanders seem baffled at the suggestion that the UK cannot go it alone.
One of the deterrents used by Remain campaigners is that the UK’s European partners would quickly turn vengeful in a post-Brexit world — making the prospect of striking up 27 potential bilateral trade agreements all but impossible.
But Thordarson is dismissive of the scaremongering.
“The EU has enormous problems and they would be piling plenty more on their public if they decided it was time to get even with Britain,” he says.
“It would mean German or Dutch politicians turning to their workers and industry and telling them they have to suffer because we are getting even with Britain after they voted to leave. That would have serious economic consequences for the entire economy of the EU.”
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Frazer Nelson, writing in The Telegraph, on 24th March
(Well mostly; I’ve added some bits):
In theory, counter-terrorism ought to be made easier by the European Union. Its 28 member states (ought to be able to) agree on how to spot and intercept jihadists, then (they could) share tips as they pursue a common enemy.
That’s the theory. In practice, however, it’s a terrifying shambles; as we are now finding out.
For example, its security database contains 90,000 fingerprints; but there’s no means of searching it.
Member states cannot even agree on how to spell Arabic names: a bit of a handicap when it comes to tracking Islamists who move across borders. The EU might have many uses, (“might” being the operative word) but security just isn’t one of them.
If such an argument was made by Nigel Farage, it would be easy for David Cameron to dismiss it.
Now why would you think that, Frazer? Nigel is not so easily dismissed; just ask Dave why he decided to give us a referendum in the first place; apart from thinking he’d win it easily, of course.
But coming from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, it’s devastating. The EU security apparatus, he says, is a network of talking shops suffering from “vastly varying levels of professionalism.” Pulling out of the EU would have very few security implications, he says: “…neighbours help each other regardless. If the Germans learn of an imminent attack on London, they would not keep quiet because we had left the EU.”
Week by week, Mr Cameron’s main argument for staying in the EU is collapsing.
The Prime Minister decided some months ago to campaign on security, rather than economic arguments.
It wasn’t plausible, he thought, to say that Britain couldn’t thrive on its own; especially at a time when our economy had been creating more jobs that the rest of Europe put together.
So he’d campaign on the theme that served him so well in the Scottish referendum and last year’s election: security.
Which is a nice way of saying: scare the bejesus out of the voters, and hope for the best. (That was Frazer who wrote that, not me.)
Project Fear worked in Scotland, because separation from the UK was a genuinely scary prospect; it would have left the new nation’s economy at the mercy of the, now-collapsed, oil price.
Project Fear worked in the general election because Ed Miliband had a long list of terrifying policies, and the prospect of his being propped up by the SNP was quite real.
Negative campaigning can work, if based on a powerful truth.
But without the truth, fear loses its potency.
Especially if voters can see that the EU’s woeful inability to handle security is making Europeans less safe.
And, Frazer, if voters recognise that most of the rest of Project Fear is “without the truth;” you do understand that “without the truth” means lying, don’t you…
The tragic events of the past few months have shown, for example, how the French and Belgians struggle to share intelligence with each other, let alone the rest of the EU.
The perpetrators of the Paris attacks were known to the Belgian police, but in spite of a common border, and language, they couldn’t communicate.
The dismantling of border controls makes it easier for terrorists move bombs.
The freedom works, but the security doesn’t; which is perhaps why, after the Paris attacks, a French intelligence chief said that his country had become a “victim of solidarity with the European Union.”
This week’s attacks in Brussels have also exposed breathtaking security failures.
We learnt that one of the perpetrators, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, was apprehended by the Turkish police en route to Syria and sent back; but let go.
The EU’s free movement of people means that the failings of one European country become a problem for all. So it’s hard, almost impossible, to argue with any honesty that the UK’s membership of the EU makes us more secure; Richer? Possibly; Better neighbours? Certainly (actually ‘possibly’ again); but does it makes us safer? No, never
Europhiles have been dismayed to see the Prime Minister defend EU membership with arguments that don’t just stretch credulity but actively insult intelligence.
Frazer, that “…don’t just stretch credulity but actively insult intelligence,” bit; that means “lies” again, right?
If the alleged benefits of freer access to this wonderful Union outweigh the headaches of being more exposed to its problems; it doesn’t follow that the Jungle in Calais would relocate to Kent if we left the EU, as Cameron insists.
Fresh hysterical, implausible claims (lies) arrive by the day.
On 23rd March, we heard Amber Rudd, the Energy Secretary, claiming that our fuel bills will rise if we leave the EU.
Why, given that a third of our energy comes from Norway?
Why should we fear Putin (as she claims/lies) given that we import almost no energy from Russia?
What’s more, as she admitted to The Spectator earlier this month, the green agenda means that fuel bills will rise anyway.
She said, then, that it was important to be honest about such things.
But honesty is the first casualty of political campaigning.
The Prime Minister normally panics at the last minute. This time, he’s panicking early.
The “in” campaign’s polling chief, Andrew Cooper, has advised him to calm down and assured him that there’s a comfortably low chance of “Leave” winning.
This, however, is the same Andrew Cooper who last year calculated Cameron’s chances of winning a majority at 0.5 per cent.
So the Prime Minister can be forgiven for being nervous: as he knows, he’s losing the argument.
Project Fear is being impaled by its own dishonesty.
Lies, Frazer, lies…
Rescuing the campaign might mean doing something dramatic..
In Scotland, he made what became known as “the vow;” a pledge to give Holyrood more powers.
He could try the same here.
His renegotiation was a pathetic failure, and I really don’t see that Cameron has any other cards to play, but more “Project Fear”
But Frazer, a self confessed Remainian, seems to think that Dave does have another card to play in the form of his Bill of Rights.
Dave has already said that the reform does not stop if he wins the referendum; which is a lie on two counts:
One; being that “the Reform” hasn’t even started; it cannot possibly “…stop” or “…not stop.”
And two; we all know that the EU has absolutely no intention of reforming; it is unreformable; and was designed that way from its inception.
The only changes it is able to make will inexorably continue to ratchet power from the elected national governments on its fringes to the unelected Politburo at its centre.
That is what has happened with every — single — EU — treaty and will happen with every — single — EU — treaty in the future;
Until the United States of Europe is a fait accompli.
So, Frazer claims, Cameron could lay out the next stage: he could promise that, if we all behave like good children and vote to Remain, he will deliver Michael Gove’s “Bill of Rights,” which would declare British courts free from any interference from the European Court of Human Rights.
So, according to Frazer, a Bill of Rights that declared the UK Supreme Court to be just that would fundamentally alter the balance of power.
God, if you exist, grant me patience.
Frazer, the European Court of Human Rights is not the problem.
Yes, a Bill of Rights might make the UK Supreme Court superior to the European Court of Human Rights;
But the European Court of Justice, which, along with the Politburo (Commission) actually controls the EU, would still be supreme.
By treaty all UK Law must conform to EU law. Michael Gove knows that; Dave knows that; the ECJ knows that.
The ECJ would very rapidly rule any such UK Bill of Rights to be contrary to EU Law; rendering it useless.
So even if, after all his Project Fear lies; after all his broken promises about “Fundamental, Far-reaching Reforms” he was going to get, which he didn’t even ask for; even if we believed Cameron’s promise to create a Bill of Rights; we all know it would be a waste of time.
And I, for one, would NOT believe him.
I have voted Conservative all my life, but on the issue of the UK’s membership of the EU, David Cameron has lied and lied again; his whole orchestrated & choreographed negotiation farce was littered with broken promises.
I don’t trust him; and if I don’t, I doubt many other Tory Brexiteers will;
And I’m bloody certain NO non-conservative Brexiteers will.
Frazer goes on to say, “It is still more likely than not that Britain will vote to “stay”, but the chances of Britain voting out; with the Prime Minister’s subsequent resignation; are rising with each laughably improbable claim from Project Fear.”
I think you are suffering from wishful-thinking, Frazer; I think the UK will vote “Leave” in a landslide, mainly caused by those “laughably improbable” lies…
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26th March
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Giving evidence to the Commons Treasury committee on 23rd March, Boris Johnson said the scale of the legislation underlined the growing threat posed by Brussels to British democracy.
Boris was referring to research by the House of Commons library showing that 60% of British laws start life in Brussels.
Mr Johnson said the stream of legislation from the EUSSR, “…flows irresistibly onwards …more than 2,500 a year.”
He pointed out that each new regulation broadened the scope of the European Court of Justice to interfere; to overrule British courts.
He said the problem was made worse by the tendency of British officials to ‘gold-plate’ EUSSR regulations, saying they had fallen into a sort of “Stockholm Syndrome.”
That’s an apt analogy, explaining UK bureaucrats’ over-zealous application of the decrees from their masters in Brussels.
He rejected the committee members’ claims that Brexit would cause an economic shock, as “rubbish” and “total tripe,” in a true “Boris-Bombastique” committee appearance/performance.
Giving more than three hours of evidence about the costs and benefits (or otherwise) of EUSSR membership, Boris insisted; “There aren’t any good arguments for staying in the European Union;” saying that, following Brexit, the UK could “very rapidly” strike a new deal.
He told the committee, that voting to remain in would mean: “We would be missing a massive opportunity to make this country more competitive and to set our own economic course, and restore democracy in this country.”
The Mayor told the committee that he was confident the UK would be able to quickly set up new arrangements “…based very largely on existing relationships,” but without the influence of the European Court of Justice.
Mr Johnson launched a strident attack on the ECJ for extending its remit to the entire charter of fundamental rights, saying, “The ECJ is militating against our ability to control our borders and also the UK’s surveillance efforts.”
Boris also quoted from one of his newspaper articles dating from 1991; warning about the possible arrival of 800,000 migrants into the then European Community; as it turns out an under-estimation…
But Boris was repeatedly challenged on detail by the committee, with Chairman Andrew Tyrie, a committed Remainian, accusing the Mayor of offering a “…busking, humorous approach” to the EUSSR.
That’s just our Boris, Andy; believe me, sometimes humour is really the only way of some of us can handle the stupidity of the EUSSR.
Mr Johnson and Mr Tyrie also clashed over regulations relating to the recycling of teabags.
The Mayor was forced to admit EUSSR regulations did not impose a ban; but he used the exchange to illustrate British ‘gold plating’ of regulations that led to over-implementation; pointing out that Cardiff council had banned teabag recycling on the back of EUSSR regulations which outlawed recycling of items which had, “…come into contact with milk or meat.”
After highlighting a series of Mr Johnson’s articles, Mr Tyrie said that while some of the issues to which Mr Johnson referred might support his case of excessive EUSSR bureaucracy, some of his claims should be subject to qualifications which were ‘omitted’ when he made them in speeches, press articles and books.
As an example, he told the Mayor his assessment of rules on children blowing up of balloons was not completely true; that it should have been “qualified.”
But Boris insisted that his point was that it was “ludicrous” that the issue of children blowing up balloons should be the subject of EUSSR regulation at all.
Boris then told the committee: “One big challenge is getting more housing built faster. There is no doubt at all that EU regulation and legislation of one kind or another — environmental impact assessments or whatever — slow down the planning process.”
The mayor blamed UK officials, who tended to interpret EU directives ‘over-zealously’ in ways which do not affect other countries;
That Stockholm Syndrome thingy
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Britain’s membership of the European Union is putting the security of the country at risk, the Armed Forces minister has warned.
Penny Mordaunt said the UK was unable “share the intelligence we need to keep us safe” as a member of the EU.
Speaking at a pro-Brexit LGBT event in central London on Wednesday evening, the Conservative defence minister also said the “freedom” enjoyed by gay people in the UK was “at stake” at the June referendum.
In the wake of the terrorist attack on Brussels on Monday, Mordaunt told the LGBT audience: “I understand that you understand why that freedom is so important. I understand, as well that you know, that freedom needs defending; the freedom for every individual, every human being to thrive, to reach their full potential. And to do that we need democracy. We need accountability. And we need our sovereignty back.”
Mordaunt said the “gains that have been made” in LGBT rights had been “because of that accountability, because of public pressure and because of our parliament”.
“All that is at stake,” she said. “It’s not just that freedom, but our ability also to defend it, which a subject very close to my heart.”
Mordaunt attacked the “forced harmonisation” imposed by the EUSSR which she said was “creating such immense austerity” and “meaning that people can’t have the prosperity they need to thrive to reach their full ambitions”
The Royal Naval Reservist, whose ministerial position puts her in charge of the Armed Forces, was critical of “the constraints that are being placed on our defence and security services so we don’t have the freedom of operation that we need”.
“We can’t form the alliances, we can’t share the intelligence we need to keep us safe. All of those things are stifling us and undermining our freedoms,” she said.
Mordaunt said people should vote for Brexit because “we need to defend freedom. We have a few weeks left to really give our nation the freedom it needs to thrive. Give Europe the impetus it needs to reform. To safeguard those freedoms we hold dear.”
Speaking to BBC Newsnight on 23rd March, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, Mordaunt’s boss; campaigning alongside David Cameron for the UK to remain a member of the EUSSR, said, “This is not the time for us to be leaving an international partnership like the EU”.
You have to ask; when, in Fallon’s view will be “…the Time” for the UK to leave the EUSSR?
And how does he get the gall; the utter audacity, to describe the EUSSR as “an international Partnership”?
In a partnership, partners have a say; influence…
“The EU has open borders, which we are not part of happily. We have control of our own borders. So we are in a different category from that,” he continued.
Anyone in possession of an EUSSR passport can swan-in and swan-out of the UK at will, Michael; that’s not, “…control of our own borders.”
Fallon added: “But we benefit of course. We, in a way, have the advantage of both worlds. We keep control of our borders but we benefit because we share the intelligence, the flight information and the cooperation that there is between security forces across Europe. We are not jeopardising the security of our citizens; that is a ridiculous argument.”
“…we benefit because we share the intelligence,”?
We now know that the Belgian security services had advance and precise intelligence warnings regarding the terrorist attacks in Brussels. They knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and the subway.
Did they share that?
No, not even with their own police…
You might say that “…in the very near future,” wasn’t all that precise; but the Belgian police had just arrested a major Daʿesh player; which should have told them that “…in the very near future,” meant “about now.”
Even more worrying are reports that the Belgian security services were also aware that, apart from carrying out a series of suicide bombings in Belgium, the terrorists were planning some sort of nuclear attack involving a radiological dirty bomb.
Were they planning to keep this juicy chunk of information to themselves a well?
Remaining in the EUSSR most certainly is, “…jeopardising the security of our citizens.”
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Israeli security officials tasked with assessing safety measures at various international airports that operate flights to Tel Aviv found “significant shortcomings” at Zaventem Airport.
That report came amid widespread criticism of Belgium’s approach to immigration and security and reports that Brussels officials had specific information about the planned attacks.
On Wednesday, Turkey revealed that Brussels attacker Ibrahim El Bakraoui was detained and deported back to Europe last year.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Belgian authorities failed to confirm the suspect’s jihadist links and released him despite Ankara’s warnings that he was “a foreign fighter.”
In the wake of the Brussels attacks, Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz on Wednesday criticised Belgian complacency in the face of rising terrorism.
Katz said the Belgians were too busy “eating chocolate and enjoying life” to properly identify terror as Islamist, and would not be able to combat the phenomenon until it did so.
In a similar vein, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin on Tuesday, 22nd March, accused Brussels of “naivety” over the spread of Islamist extremism in their country.
Belgium has faced disparagement in the past over its security failings, particularly in the wake of November’s Paris attacks that were largely planned in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, considered a hotbed of Islamist radicalism.
Belgian authorities knew that terrorists were planning to attack the airport and the metro, and yet they didn’t do enough to counter the threat, the Israeli newspaper, ‘Haaretz’ reported:
The Belgian security services, as well as other Western intelligence agencies, had advance and precise intelligence warnings regarding the terrorist attacks in Belgium on Tuesday, Haaretz has learned.
The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.
Despite the advance warning, the intelligence and security preparedness in Brussels, where most of the European Union agencies are located, was limited in its scope and insufficient for the severity and immediacy of the alert.
As far as is known, the attacks were planned by the headquarters of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Raqqa, Syria, which it has pronounced as the capital of its Islamic caliphate.
The terror cell responsible for the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday was closely associated with the network behind the series of attacks in Paris last November. At this stage, it appears that both were part of the same terrorist infrastructure, connected at the top by the terrorist Salah Abdeslam, who was involved in both the preparation for the Paris attacks and its implementation.
Abdeslam escaped from Paris after the November attacks, hid out in Brussels for four months until he was arrested last week by the Belgian authorities.
Abdeslam’s arrest was apparently the trigger for Tuesday’s attacks, due to the concern in ISIS that he might give information about the planned attacks under interrogation, particularly in the light of reports that he was cooperating with his captors.
The testimony of the detained terrorist, alongside other intelligence information, part of which concerned ISIS operations in Syria, should have resulted in much more stringent security preparedness in crowded public places in Brussels, along with a heightened search for the cell.
As of now, the search is focused on the terrorist Najim Laachraoui, who created the explosive vests used by the bombers and escaped from the airport at the last moment.
There is concern, however, that other cells connected to ISIS in Western Europe will attempt to carry out additional attacks in the near future, either in Belgium or in other countries involved in the war against the terror organization in Syria and Iraq.
Belgian authorities have named the two airport attackers as brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui. Laachraoui, who was photographed with the brothers at the airport and was observed fleeing the scene, is the subject of a massive manhunt.
Prosecutors identified Ibrahim El Bakraoui as one of two men who blew themselves up in the Zaventem airport departure hall while his brother Khalid struck shortly afterwards at the Maalbeek metro station, in the attacks on the symbolic heart of Europe.
Police stepped up a manhunt for a third airport assailant whose bomb failed to go off in the attacks claimed by the Islamic State group which have left European leaders once more grappling for ways to tackle the jihadist threat.
Belgian authorities had already been hunting the Bakraoui brothers, both Belgian nationals with long criminal records, over their links to Salah Abdeslam, the key suspect in the Paris massacre who was arrested in Brussels on Friday after four months on the run
Authorities are under immense pressure over their apparent inability to smash jihadist networks in Belgium, Europe’s top exporter of jihadist fighters to Syria per capita.
Analysts said the attacks pointed to a sophisticated jihadist network in Europe, and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said there was an “urgent need” to tighten the EU’s external borders following the attacks.
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Under increasing pressure in Iraq and Syria, Daʿesh has lost quite a bit of territory in recent weeks and is absorbing military defeats on the ground.
Now there are obvious signs that Daʿesh is changing its strategy; altering its modus operandi.
From attempts to expand and continue building a caliphate, it is shifting to a survival mentality; withdrawal into major cities and maintenance of its current assets.
In addition, it is now expanding the launching of terrorist attacks on sensitive sites in the West, with its focus on nearby Europe, in which it can operate relatively easily; almost with impunity.
In recent months, Israel’s intelligence and security branches came to similar conclusions.
Daʿesh, according to their assessments, is evolving into a more dangerous mutant.
On Wednesday 23rd March, there were reports that Daʿesh (ISIS) has sent 400 fighters from Syria to Europe, where they can move freely across the Continent with the aim of carrying out multiple attacks like those in Paris and Belgium
Europol has long suspected “…up 5,000 trained Jihadis,” may have been washed in with the Refugee tide…
“We are looking at a new battlefield,” said a former Mossad official. “The West must learn to understand it, prepare for it and immediately battle against it. Any delay will cause great damage.”
Europe’s open-border arrangement, the Schengen Plan, which enables travel through 26 countries without passport checks or border controls, is effectively an international passport-free zone for terrorists to execute attacks on the Continent and make their escape.
This is one of the most obvious lessons of the horrific terrorist attacks that struck Paris last year and in Brussels this week.
The sensible move would be for the Schengen Plan to be suspended, and each of the participating countries start to systematically screen all passports against Interpol’s database of stolen and lost passports & travel documents.
Did I suggest that the EUSSR do something sensible? Silly me
This Interpol database was created after 9/11, and now contains information on more than 45 million passports and identity documents reported lost or stolen by 169 countries.
As of last year, eight Schengen countries were among the top 10 nations reporting stolen or lost passports.
Not one of those countries systematically screened passports or verified the identities of those crossing borders by land or at seaports or airports.
This is like hanging a sign welcoming terrorists to Europe. And Daʿesh has accepted the invitation.
There is a major, full scale trade in false passports, in Syria, Turkey and the Eastern fringes of Europe, which allows Daʿesh fighters to pose as refugees among the swarm of those fleeing war and persecution.
In the past decade or so, terrorist attacks in Madrid and London and the assassination of Serbia’s prime minister were all linked to fake or stolen passports.
Now we have Paris and Brussels.
At least one of the deceased terrorists in Paris had used a fake Syrian passport to enter Greece to claim asylum.
The passport is in the name of Ahmad Almohammad, born 10th September 1990 in the Syrian city of Idlib.
The suicide bomber “Almohammad” reached Greece after crossing the Aegean from Turkey on a raft with 198 migrants.
He was arrested, but later released and given papers that allowed him to travel to Athens and mainland Europe, because officials believed he was a genuine refugee.
He was allowed to travel through the Balkans, passing through checkpoints in Serbia and Croatia, before heading for Northern Europe & Paris…
And no, he wasn’t the only “Ahmad Almohammad.”
Serbian authorities subsequently arrested another man, whose passport contained those identical details, suggesting that both passports were produced by the same counterfeiter.
Since then, six more migrants have reached Europe using identical “Almohammad” documents; all with same name, date and place of birth; the only differences were the photographs.
With their Passport Details logged, but not screened; those “migrants” are now in Europe, somewhere…
And Ahmad Almohammad won’t be the only name to be used in this fashion…
We know that Syrian passport offices in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour once possessed large quantities of blank passports and the machines needed to print in them.
For nearly two years those two cities, along with those “large quantities of blank passports and the machines needed to print in them,” have been in Daʿesh hands…
Salah Abdeslam, one of the perpetrators of the 13th November massacre in Paris, succeeded in hiding for months in the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek. This proves that that neighbourhood, like other places in Europe, has a terror-supporting infrastructure. This must be fully understood.
An ICM poll from 2006 revealed that 20% of British Muslims sympathised with the 7/7 London bombers. According to NOP Research for Channel 4, the same year, this figure was 25%. With a British Muslim population of over 3 million today, that translates to between 600,000 and 750,000 terror-sympathising people in the UK.
How many “neighbourhoods with a terror-supporting infrastructure” are there in the UK?
The main problem in today’s Europe is the lack of intelligence synchronisation.
In spite of Europe ostensibly being united, its security and intelligence organisations are scattered and unconnected.
They do not sufficiently cooperate with one another.
There are six police and security organisations in Brussels alone.
Belgium has 192 security organisations, while Germany has 16 intelligence organisations.
When intelligence doesn’t flow in real time throughout the entire continent, the struggle is useless
The more we learn about the rank incompetence of the Belgian security forces in dealing with Islamist terrorists, the more the argument unravels that continued membership of the EUSSR makes the UK a safer place to live.
In the past week we have had luminaries such as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe declaring that Britain’s security would be seriously compromised if we chose to leave the EUSSR in the June referendum.
Then there’s thick-as-Bisto Theresa May, an alleged Eurosceptic, who is trying to convince us we will be at the mercy of foreign murderers and terrorists if we’re outside the EUSSR.
Does she have any idea how ridiculous she sounds?
I’m assuming, as Home Secretary, she realises that while we are still members we can’t stop anyone from the EUSSR settling in this country?
And as for ‘safer and stronger’, do our security services really have anything to learn from the Clouseaus & Poirots who failed to stop the Paris or Brussels terror attacks?
Israel’s Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said: “If Belgians continue eating chocolate and enjoying life and looking like great democrats and liberals, and not noticing that some of the Muslims there are planning terrorism, they won’t be able to fight them,”
It is bad enough that the Belgian intelligence authorities did not act on warnings from Turkey that a known Daʿesh terrorist was living in their midst.
But now we learn that the Belgian government, one of the EUSSR’s most ardent advocates, did not bother to pass on the information to key allies, such as the UK, with all the potential implications that could have for their own security.
Even more worrying is the revelation that, apart from carrying out a series of suicide bombings in Belgium, the terrorists may also have been planning some sort of nuclear attack involving a radiological dirty bomb.
Were the Belgian authorities also planning to keep that to themselves a well?
Had this crucial piece of information not been leaked to the media, did the Belgians have any intention of sharing this information with key EUSSR allies?
Given what we now know about the way the Belgians responded to tangible intelligence about active Daʿesh terror cells in their midst, the answer is probably “no.”
It is a fact well known among the British intelligence community that the Belgians are pretty useless when it comes to counter-terrorist operations.
A combination of not wanting to upset Muslim sensibilities and the country’s divisive political system have meant that the Belgian intelligence and security establishment has rarely been inclined to take effective action against hardened terrorists.
Thus we should not be surprised by the catalogue of astounding errors that resulted in the Brussels attacks. If the Belgian authorities are not prepared to treat seriously warnings that there are known jihadi terrorists living in their midst, then what do you expect?
Certainly, if the Belgian authorities had acted on information passed to them by Turkey last June that the Turks had deported Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, a known terrorist and criminal who, together with his brother Khalid, carried out the suicide bombings in the departure lounge at Brussels airport, then the atrocity may well have been avoided.
But it is a measure both of the Belgian authorities’ incompetence, as well as its laissez-faire attitude towards radicalised Muslims, that no action was taken.
And their incompetence, and the impact this could have on EUSSR allies like the UK, is something we must to take on board as we ponder whether to leave or remain in the EUSSR.
The Brussels bombings, as well as the latest warnings about a possible dirty bomb attack, demonstrate irrefutably that the failings of some EUSSR intelligence services pose a grave threat to our own security, rather than enhancing it.
Therefore any decision taken about our future EUSSR membership needs to be taken with this clear understanding in mind.
We should ignore the ridiculous idea that, without the cooperation of EUSSR states like Belgium, the UK’s security would be seriously compromised.
These are just ill-founded scare stories put around by those who should know better; “Project Fear” again.
The European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has suggested that EUSSR nations needed to integrate their security services to tackle the menace of Islamist attackers such as the fanatics behind the Brussels outrage. “We feel we need capital markets union, energy union, economic and monetary union, but we also think that we need a security union, we need everything that will allow us to achieve a security union,” he said.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull did not shy away from criticising the Free Movement regime which, in his view, has left EU citizens exposed to danger.
“There has been a real breakdown in intelligence. If you can’t control your borders, you don’t know who’s coming or going. We are in a stronger position from a security point of view in Australia than the Europeans are. We have strong border protection in Australia. We have a much greater insight into people who we would regard as being threats or likely to pose a risk to the safety of Australians.”
The fact that every Islamist in Molenbeek with an EU passport is perfectly free to set up shop in the UK obviously leaves us more exposed to danger.
The EUSSR’s stupid proposal for a ‘Security Union’, putting inept and unaccountable Eurocrats in charge of our intelligence services, is not answer to this problem.
To anyone outside the SW1, liberal intelligentsia’s dinner-party circuit, this is just common sense.
Having open borders without the proper vetting aids and abets terrorists. The failure to thoroughly screen passports or check identities at border crossings is simply irresponsible in the face of global terrorism.
The answer for the UK is Brexit, with the restoration of the same strong border protections as Australia and reliance on our own intelligence and security services.
Daʿesh could attack again today, tomorrow or next week. Until passports are screened systematically at every single entry point, the 26 Schengen countries must suspend their open border arrangement and close this passport-free travel zone throughout Europe.
Daʿesh can be beaten, if we understand that this is a life or death struggle.
“The key to success,” a former Mossad senior official said, “…is that European leadership must understand that we are not talking here about a terror attack or some offensives against Paris or Brussels alone. This is an all-out war. In Europe, they still aren’t even able to utter the word combination ‘Islamic terror,’ as if it will go away if they don’t say these words. But it does exist, and it does threaten, and it seems to me, it is already clear that no compromise can be reached with it.”
Daʿesh (Islamic State) wants to destroy the West and replace it. The faster we understand this, the shorter and easier the path to victory.
The current “victory” photo belongs to Daʿesh.
It was taken at a press conference given by Federica Mogherini, the EU high commissioner for foreign affairs and security, and her Jordanian colleague after news of the attack in Brussels.
Mogherini broke down in tears and left the podium.
For Daʿesh, this is a victory photo.
The West and Europe sanctify life, while Daʿesh, al-Qaeda and the rest of radical Islam worship death.
This is why the West will, ultimately, win.
If it wants to live, it has no other choice.
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People complain about us Brexiteers banging on about “Project Fear”
But every single day we are drip-fed a diet of apocalyptic horror stories by the Remainian scaremongers.
The latest spine-chilling threat is that France will expel British border guards from Calais and we will be flooded with thousands more illegal immigrants from Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and beyond.
“Call Me Dave” floated this canard a couple of weeks ago, even though he knew perfectly well that the bilateral Anglo-French treaty which covers border controls at the Channel ports has absolutely nothing to do with our membership of the EUSSR.
Even so, he’s now enlisted the help of a French government minister to repeat this fairy tale; raising the spectre that the Garden of England will soon be carpeted with squalid Calais-style camps, overflowing with violent, testosterone-filled, knife-wielding young migrants hell-bent on rape and robbery.
Are we really going to be held to ransom by pipsqueak French politicians?
If we are, I can think of no better reason for voting Leave.
Is our own elected Government trying to say that it will be powerless to protect our borders if we become an independent country once again?
In which case, it’s time they fell on their swords and made way for someone who is prepared to stand up for the UK.
Foreign Secretary Hammond is just one of the spineless turncoats who have cynically elevated their own political ambitions above the interests and wishes of the people who put them into office.
Once a prominent Eurosceptic, Phil the Creep now wields dodgy dossiers that even Alastair Campbell would disown as he attempts to bully us into voting to stay.
How long before he declares that if we have the audacity to vote Leave, a plague of giant rats will immediately be unleashed, visiting upon us a Doomsday scenario of disease and destruction?
This week he was painting a picture of millions of British expats on the Costa del Boy being rounded up and sent home. He knows, under international law, it’s not going to happen but trots out this trash anyway.
Then there’s thick-as-Bisto Theresa May, another alleged Eurosceptic, who is trying to convince us we will be at the mercy of foreign murderers and terrorists if we’re outside the EUSSR.
Does she have any idea how ridiculous she sounds? I’m assuming, as Home Secretary, she realises that while we are still members we can’t stop anyone from the EUSSR settling in this country?
Probably not.
And as for ‘safer and stronger’, do our security services really have anything to learn from the Clouseaus & Poirots who failed to stop the Paris or Brussels terror attacks?
Is Theresa really admitting that she couldn’t protect us from terrorists and illegal immigrants if we were to become an independent nation once more?
If so, she should resign immediately and take a job more suited to her talents — in a nail bar, perhaps, or selling kitten-heel shoes in Russell & Bromley.
The whole tone of the political Remain campaign is depressingly defeatist, devoted to telling us how weak and powerless we are; despite our being the fifth biggest economy in the world and the fourth greatest military power.
“We shall fight them on the beaches, provided they’ve got an EU blue flag, certifying safety, water quality and sustainability.”
As far as the economic case for staying in Europe goes, that, too, is based on a narrative of lies, cowardice and fear.
They’ve even enlisted companies such as (German-owned) Rolls-Royce to threaten their employees with losing their jobs if they vote to Leave.
This is despite the fact that the Indian owners of export-led Jaguar Land Rover say the effects of Brexit on their business would be negligible.
The idea that all trade between Britain and the EUSSR would end tomorrow if we quit is patronising nonsense.
This country is the EUSSR’s single biggest export market.
They’ve got far more to lose than we have.
Is BMW going to refuse to sell cars to Britain in a fit of pique?
Will the French and Italians stop selling us wine, or buying Scotch whisky?
Don’t be so absurd.
Despite the doom-mongers, the City of London is fairly relaxed about Brexit.
Unlike Cameron and his self-serving cronies; who are scared stiff of losing their ‘influence’ in Brussels and are effectively admitting they can’t run the UK on their own; the financiers and hedge-funders have every confidence they can prosper outside the EU straitjacket.
London was a world financial centre long before anyone had ever heard of the European Union and will continue to be so whatever happens.
Having recently overtaken New York, London has just been rated as the top financial hub in the world. No EUSSR city registers in the top ten; the highest is Frankfurt at #14
As for the French minister who claims bankers and businessmen who deserted Paris for London will be desperate to return home in the event of Brexit; he must have been hitting the pastis over his petit déjeuner.
The 250,000 French citizens who moved here did so to escape the sclerotic, socialist, high-tax, inward-looking French economy and embrace Britain’s more dynamic, lower-tax, lower-regulation global market place.
Tout le monde back sur l’Eurostar?
Somehow I don’t think so.
Those financial institutions who want the UK to stay in the EUSSR are motivated not by national interest but by selfish considerations of their own advantage.
When push comes to shove, I’m prepared to bet they won’t relocate.
Ignore the scaremongering of Northern Rock, now owned by Richard Branson, a Euro-fanatic based in the Virgin Islands.
Northern Rock wouldn’t even exist had it not been for the British taxpayer bailing out its bad loans division after the 2008 crash.
That worldwide crash was caused by greedy banks such as Goldman Sachs, knocking out worthless sub-prime mortgage packages to mug punters who couldn’t afford the repayments.
Goldman Sachs is the Bond villain of finance, known as the Vampire Squid because of its blood-sucking tentacles which stretch across the world.
It made 450 million euros out of crashing the Greek economy.
So when it tells us Britain should stay in the EUSSR, you know it’s time to head for the life-boats.
Speaking of Vampire Squids, could there be a better description of the EUSSR itself?
No aspect of our lives is immune from EUSSR interference, from banning us catching our own fish to telling us what kettles we can buy.
The latest idea is bringing taxes on life-saving e-cigarettes in line with those on tobacco, in the name of ‘harmonisation’.
This has long been the goal of Big Tobacco, which has been losing sales to e-cigs.
The tobacco industry is among those giant corporations who maintain an army of 30,000 lobbyists in Brussels.
Instead of making their case to dozens of different governments, they only have to convince one lot of bureaucrats in the EUSSR.
No wonder the ruthless multi-nationals are all backing Remain.
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Andy Markham, corporate deputy head of weapons procurement for the MoD, has said that leaving the EUSSR would mean the UK would have a better value stock of military equipment.
It would also stop Britain sending money abroad to buy weapons which can be made in the UK, and thus save our crippled steel industry.
Speaking to students at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, he said that from a procurement position, if we looked at taking away process and adding value into acquisition, we’d be better out of the EUSSR.
The MoD said “This was an internal MoD presentation at a staff college course, and does not reflect the views of the department.”
Cameron has previously ordered the civil service to give its full support to the Government Remainian-line; Mr Markham’s head may be about to roll.
But politicians have praised him for going against the “propaganda” from Number 10.
Labour MP Frank Field said: “He should encourage his colleagues to speak out as well.”
Fellow Labour MP Khalid Mahmood added: “I applaud him for voicing his opinions on this. It is about time we stood up for British manufacturers and industries. No other country in the world would allow all of their industry to be decimated.”
UKIP MEP Mike Hookem, said: “We’ve had a deluge of propaganda from the MoD and Number 10 telling us we need to be in the EU to be more secure. But here we have clear proof that what equipment our troops use in warfare or to defend our country is being hamstrung by our EU membership.”
Current EUSSR law means European contractors have exactly the same competitive rights as British companies when it comes to the MoD procurement.
In answer to a question from Labour MP David Hanson during Monday’s defence questions, Defence Minister Philip Dunne revealed the MoD has placed a £3.5billion order for 589 Ajax armoured vehicles, to be made by General Dynamic UK, and a £348million order for three new Royal Navy offshore patrol ships, which will be built by BAE Systems with steel imported from Sweden.
Mr Hanson then asked Mr Dunne why 60 per cent of the new ships’ steel is being procured from Sweden when Wales has a “real crisis on our hands with the steel industry.”
Mr Dunne said 20 per cent was being sourced from the UK after 24 companies fought for the contract, including one British company.
Talking about the impact of the EU on UK businesses which rely on MoD contracts, the defence minister, said: “We continue to place contracts on the basis of open competition. EU procurement directives apply to our procurement, which means the EU contractors are eligible to compete for our contracts in the same way as UK and other international companies, other than when we declare an article 346 exemption for warlike stores.”
Which rather begs the question; why wouldn’t 589 Ajax armoured vehicles and three new Royal Navy offshore patrol ships, be considered “warlike stores”?
And if 589 Ajax armoured vehicles and three new Royal Navy offshore patrol ships aren’t “warlike stores,” just how much use; how good are they?
The creeping of EU law into MoD equipment procurement has meant big British companies such as BAE Systems have had to compete with European companies since July 2013, despite Philip Hammond, who was defence secretary at the time, saying he would resist centralised European defence procurement.
Another fine example of the UK’s “influence from within the EUSSR;” or rather lack thereof…
Of course an MoD spokesman, sticking to his or her script, parroted: “The Prime Minister and Defence Secretary have been clear that Britain would be safer, stronger and better off inside the EU.”
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Top Euro-rat Jean-Claude Juncker has provoked anger and ridicule by calling for a “European security union” in response to the terrorist threat.
The European Commission President suggested that EUSSR nations needed to integrate their security services to tackle the menace of Islamist attackers such as the fanatics behind the Brussels outrage.
But UKIP last night rightly rubbished his idea as “literally mad.”
In a news conference a day after the Belgian atrocities, President Juncker said Europe needed a more co-ordinated response to terrorism.
“We feel we need capital markets union, energy union, economic and monetary union, but we also think that we need a security union,” he said during a joint press conference with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
“We need everything that will allow us to achieve a security union,” he added.
MEP Mike Hookem, defence spokesman for UKIP, said:
“Juncker must be literally mad if he thinks British people will sign up to a security union with the EU after it has shown itself dangerously incompetent on this issue. As limbs and dead bodies are scattered over the streets of Brussels, does he really believe that inexperienced bureaucrats at the European Commission are better placed to deal with British security than British security services?”
Mr Hookem claimed the Schengen zone had allowed Islamist fanatics to “create a crisis in the centre of the European Union.”
He added: “What Britain needs to do is to stop the flow of the unknown, the illegal and the undesirable crossing the Channel from the Schengen area via Calais. Brussels is now a hotbed for Islamist terrorists in Europe. All the Commission can do is share incompetence as its open borders allow terrorists to pass through Europe at will. That seven countries have already closed their borders in Schengen shows they acknowledge the idea of open borders without checks is both a delusion and dangerous.”
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In an interview with ABC television yesterday, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull did not shy away from criticising the Free Movement regime which, in his view, has left EU citizens exposed to danger.
“There has been a real breakdown in intelligence. If you can’t control your borders, you don’t know who’s coming or going. We are in a stronger position from a security point of view in Australia than the Europeans are. We have strong border protection in Australia. We have a much greater insight into people who we would regard as being threats or likely to pose a risk to the safety of Australians.”
The fact that every Islamist in Molenbeek with an EU passport is perfectly free to set up shop in the UK obviously leaves us more exposed to danger.
The EUSSR’s stupid proposal for a ‘Security Union’, putting inept and unaccountable Eurocrats in charge of our intelligence services, is not answer to this problem.
To anyone outside the SW1, liberal intelligentsia’s dinner-party circuit, this is just common sense.
The answer is Brexit, with the restoration of the same strong border protections as Australia. That will go a long way towards reducing the risks we currently face.
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Leaving the EUSSR would improve the UK’s security, a former head of MI6 has said, as a series of serious intelligence blunders in the run-up to the attacks in Brussels emerged.
Sir Richard Dearlove said in an article that the UK’s borders could easily be strengthened in the event of Brexit and extremists could be more easily deported, moves which he said were “security gains” with no downside.
His intervention, which contradicts claims from the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary that EUSSR membership makes the UK safer, helped intensify the row over the security of Europe’s borders in the wake of the Brussels attacks.
On Wednesday night there were reports that Daʿesh (ISIS) has sent 400 fighters from Syria to Europe, where they can move freely across the Continent with the aim of carrying out terror attacks.
According to European and Iraqi intelligence officials, the fighters have been instructed to carry out multiple attacks like those in Paris and Belgium.
It also emerged that Belgium was warned that one of the bombers was a “known militant” by the Turkish authorities, who arrested and deported him. The Belgians failed to follow up the information, according to Turkey.
Sir Richard, who led MI6 between 1999 and 2004, said that the UK would experience “security gains” from Brexit.
He said: “Whether one is an enthusiastic European or not, the truth about Brexit from a national security perspective is that the cost to the UK would be low. Brexit would bring two important security gains: the ability to dump the European Convention on Human Rights; remember the difficulty of extraditing the extremist Abu Hamza of the Finsbury Park Mosque; and, more importantly, greater control over immigration from the European Union.”
One loss that would result from Brexit and which has been cited by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, as a reason for her supporting the UK’s continued membership of the EUSSR, would be the European Arrest Warrant. But its importance has been exclusively criminal and even then exaggerated; few would notice its passing.
Sir Richard said the UK’s status as Europe’s “leader” in intelligence and security meant it was “difficult to imagine” European nations breaking off their relationships with it.
He dismissed the role of Brussels security bodies such as Europol, saying they were “of little consequence”. Information is not shared across all 28 EU states because they are potentially a “colander” for intelligence, he said.
Yesterday, 23rd March, Boris Johnson warned that the European Court of Justice was hampering the Government’s ability to deport terrorists and carry out surveillance on suspects.
Donald Trump said that Europe was “a mess” because of “unregulated” immigration. His rival, Ted Cruz, called for heightened police scrutiny of areas with large Muslim populations.
Yisrael Katz, Israel’s intelligence minister, said Belgium “continues to eat chocolate and enjoy the good life with their liberalism and democracy” and has lost focus of its security issues.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, said the Belgian authorities were told that Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of the Brussels bombers, was a “foreign fighter”.
El-Bakraoui was named as one of three suspected suicide bombers. He was part of a cell of Daʿesh fighters who took advantage of the refugee crisis and free movement within Europe to travel to Syria and back to plan terror attacks.
His brother, Khalid, was thought to be the bomber on the metro train. The third attacker was identified as Najim Laachraoui, the fugitive bomb maker of the Paris attacks.
The Belgian prosecutor said the two brothers were known to police and “had a heavy past criminal record”.
In the weeks before the bombings, the el-Bakraouis and Salah Abdeslam, one of the Paris suspects, had evaded police by hopping between flats across Brussels. Abdeslam escaped a raid on 15th March by climbing across the rooftops, possibly with one or both of the brothers.
Time line:
13th November 2015; a series of explosions rock Paris in the worst terrorist assault on Europe in a decade. A number of restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and the Stade de France are targeted. 130 people killed and hundreds more injured.
18th November 2015; Belgian extremist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected of masterminding the deadly attacks in Paris, dies along with his female cousin in a police raid in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. A third body is later found and eight people are detained.
20th November 2015; Belgian authorities file terror charges against a third Paris attacks suspect with two more already behind bars facing similar charges.
21st November 2015; Brussels is placed in lockdown, remaining at maximum alert over information about an “imminent threat”, possibly a series of co-ordinated attacks at different locations
22nd November 2015; some 19 raids are carried out in Molenbeek, home to many of the Paris attackers, and other boroughs of Brussels, and there are three raids in Charleroi. A total of 16 people are arrested.
23rd November 2015; An explosive vest containing bolts and the same type of explosive used in the Paris attacks is found by a street cleaner in a pile of rubble in Chatillon-Montrouge, just south of Paris. A fourth suspect; one of the 16 arrested the previous day; is charged with terrorism offences; the other 15 are released.
25th November 2015; French parliamentarians overwhelmingly vote to continue air strikes against Daʿesh in Syria beyond early January. Schools and some subways reopen for the first time since emergency measures were imposed in the Belgian capital.
26th November 2015; Belgian authorities raid three more places outside of Brussels which they say are linked to the Paris attacks, but make no arrests. The Belgian terror threat is lowered to the second-highest level in the capital Brussels, with officials calling a threat “possible and likely”.
3rd December 2015; Two more suspects are arrested. A French national, identified only as Samir Z, is detained at Brussels national airport as he bids to fly to Morocco. A second man, identified as Pierre N, is arrested during a raid only hours after the detention at the airport.
20th December 2015; Prosecutors find Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam’s fingerprint during a search of an apartment in Schaerbeek, Brussels. They believe it served as a bomb factory for the Paris attacks. Three handmade belts which could have been intended to transport explosives, as well as bomb-making equipment, traces of TATP explosive residue and a fingerprint from Abdeslam were found there, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office says.
20th December 2015; Belgian authorities search a house in Molenbeek, and detain an unidentified person for questioning.
24th December 2015; Belgian authorities arrest a ninth suspect linked to the Paris attacks, a Belgian citizen born in 1985 they say had been in contact with the suspected ringleader’s cousin.
31st December 2015; a 10th suspect is arrested in the Paris terror attacks probe and numerous mobile phones seized, the Belgian prosecutor says.
13th January 2016; Belgian investigators identify three homes used by suspects to prepare for the Paris attacks.
15th March 2016; An Algerian man living illegally in Belgium, Mohamed Belkaid, is killed by police during a raid on an apartment building in the quiet Brussels suburb of Forest, where authorities also find a stock of ammunition and a Daʿesh flag.
18th March 2016; Salah Abdeslam is wounded in the leg and captured by Belgian police in a raid in the Molenbeek district of Brussels after four months on the run. Two other men are also arrested.
22nd March 2016; Just days after Abdeslam is captured, Brussels is hit by attacks on Zaventem airport and the city’s metro system, near a station close to European Union buildings.
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Speaking to centre-Right think-tank Politeia, on 22nd March, Lord Howard said: “The European Union, in its current form, is a flawed and failing project which is making many of its inhabitants poorer than they should or need be and is failing to keep its people safe.”
“The first, making its inhabitants poorer than they should be, is a consequence of the Euro, which has an exchange rate far too high for the crippled economies of southern Europe; though, because it is lower than the Deutschmark would have been, it helps to make Germany’s exports competitive.”
“The second, failing to keep its people safe, is a consequence of the Schengen agreement which, according to the former head of Interpol, is like hanging a sign welcoming terrorists to Europe.”
“These two projects … are seen by many leaders of the EU as the crown jewels of the new Europe. But both are creaking. The cracks are widening. The very future of the EU is uncertain. So staying in is as much a leap in the dark as leaving.”
Lord Howard rubbished claims that the EU has helped keep the peace in Europe for decades, saying they had “no basis in fact.”
The European Commission and the European Court now control how we find and fight terrorists.
EU judges also prevent us from removing criminals who assist terrorists.
He said fear of the Soviet Union had prevented European countries from fighting each other, adding: “I just can’t understand how the EU is entitled to any of the credit.”
The peer also warned that EU membership had left the Government “unable to keep its promises” on immigration. He said that failure to reassert national sovereignty would cause further disillusionment about politics in Britain.
The Tory peer had written his speech before the atrocity in Brussels, that morning
But he added: “I do not believe that this morning’s callous and cowardly acts should prevent us from discussing the broader issue”
No 10 had yesterday said it was not the time for “broader debates” about whether EU membership enhances Britain’s security.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Today is a day for focusing our support on the Belgian people.”
But she said Mr Cameron believes EU membership has security benefits, such as sharing passenger data and tackling the proliferation of firearms.
The PM signed a declaration by EU leaders saying the atrocity, “…strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant.”
Yesterday, the PM led an emergency Cobra meeting to determine the UK’s response to the bombings.
He will hold a second meeting this morning before Prime Minister’s Questions. Home Secretary Theresa May could also update MPs.
Mr Cameron said: “These are appalling and savage terrorist attacks … we need to stand together against these appalling terrorists and make sure they can never win.”
That’s it Dave, sign a “Declaration” and have a couple of meetings… that’ll show ‘em
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Here’s a sobering fact for you: in the Brussels attacks, Daesh sympathisers killed five times as many civilians in one hour as British airstrikes have killed or injured Daesh fighters in Syria since December.
At the last count, in late February, British airstrikes over Syria had killed or hurt just seven Daesh fighters in three months; seven; not even ten; seven.
In Brussels, a small gang of Daesh fanboys killed 35 civilians.
British airstrikes in Syria were launched to great fanfare in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris in November.
Hillary Benn was widely hailed for his Commons speech in which he said, “What we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated.”
Much of the media went into Churchillian mode. There was a feeling that, like our grandfathers 70-odd years ago, we were off to fight fascism.
The reality has been rather different. It took four weeks for British airstrikes to kill a single member of Daesh.
Many of the strikes were done with drones, leading one military aviation expert to brand Britain’s intervention a ‘non-event’.
And then in February it was confirmed that, so far, only four British strikes have hit Daesh fighters, causing seven deaths or injuries; Churchillian?
Dad’s Army, more like.
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In November 2015, Ronald K. Noble, who was secretary general of Interpol from 2000 to 2014, wrote:
Europe’s open-border arrangement, which enables travel through 26 countries without passport checks or border controls, is effectively an international passport-free zone for terrorists to execute attacks on the Continent and make their escape.
This is one of the most obvious lessons of the horrific terrorist attacks that struck Paris last week.
And it offers one of the simplest solutions.
The open borders arrangement should be suspended, and each of the participating countries should begin immediately to systematically screen all passports against Interpol’s database of stolen and lost passports. The database on stolen and lost travel documents was created after Sept. 11 and today contains information on more than 45 million passports and identity documents reported lost or stolen by 169 countries.
Leading up to these latest attacks, none of those countries systematically screened passports or verified the identities of those crossing borders by land or at seaports or airports.
This is like hanging a sign welcoming terrorists to Europe. And they have been accepting the invitation.
In the past decade or so, terrorist attacks in Madrid and London and the assassination of Serbia’s prime minister were all linked to fake or stolen passports.
Now we have Paris.
One of the terrorists in Paris used a fake Syrian passport to enter Greece to claim asylum.
Serbian authorities subsequently arrested a man whose passport contained details identical to the one found at the scene of the Paris attacks, suggesting that both passports were produced by the same counterfeiter.
It should come as no surprise if further evidence shows that the perpetrators of these attacks used fake or stolen passports.
Europe’s open border arrangement was negotiated in 1985 in Schengen, a town in Luxembourg, and is known as the Schengen Agreement. It took effect in 1995. The idea was to abolish internal border controls and initiate a common visa policy, eliminating lines at border crossings and reducing costs to central governments. Twenty-two European Union nations and four others, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, are now parties to the agreement.
In September, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, called the free movement under the Schengen Agreement “a unique symbol of European integration.”
But what once seemed a sensible idea now offers real and present danger.
Stolen, doctored and fake passports from the Schengen area are among the most sought-after forms of identification by terrorists, drug smugglers, human traffickers and other criminals.
As of last year, eight Schengen countries were on the list of the top 10 nations reporting stolen or lost passports in Interpol’s databases.
Not one of those countries systematically screened passports at their borders.
Among the European countries that are not parties to the Schengen Agreement is the United Kingdom, which began screening passports against Interpol’s database following the 2005 terrorist attacks in London that killed 52 people and injured more than 700.
The U.K. now screens about 150 million passports a year, more than all other European Union nations combined, and catches more than 10,000 people a year trying to cross its borders using invalid travel documents.
This record underscores the value of screening against Interpol’s database.
The United States had a long history of terrorists using stolen, lost or fake passports and identity documents to enter the country. In 1993, for instance, Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the first World Trade Centre bombing, entered the country to claim asylum using a stolen Iraqi passport.
In 2007, the United States began vetting identification documents and today leads the world in passport screening, with over 300 million checks annually against Interpol’s database, which has flagged thousands of invalid documents.
The United States is safer as a result.
Having open borders without the proper vetting aids and abets terrorists. The failure to thoroughly screen passports or check identities at border crossings is simply irresponsible in the face of global terrorism. Based on my 14 years of experience running Interpol, I know that terrorists will be much more likely to succeed as long as countries fail to properly check the identities of those who cross their borders.
In the wake of these latest attacks, some European countries are rethinking their open border policy. On Friday, European Union interior ministers are expected to consider immediate, tighter border checks on their citizens entering or leaving the Schengen zone, at the request of the French government.
These are positive steps. The so-called Islamic State could attack again today, tomorrow or next week. Until passports are screened systematically at every single entry point, the 26 Schengen countries must suspend their open border arrangement and close this passport-free travel zone throughout Europe.
Only then will words of sorrow and solidarity from our heads of state have real meaning.
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The increasing pressure on Daʿesh is causing the organisation to change and to alter its modus operandi.
The organisation has lost quite a bit of territory in recent weeks and absorbing military defeats on the ground. In light of this, there are signs that Daʿesh is changing its strategy.
From attempts to expand and continue building a caliphate, it is shifting to a survival mentality; maintenance of its current assets.
In addition, it now emphasises the launching of numerous terrorist attacks on sensitive sites in the West, with its focus on nearby Europe, in which it can operate relatively easily.
In recent months, Israel’s intelligence and security branches came to similar conclusions.
Daʿesh, according to their assessments, is evolving into a more dangerous mutant.
“We are looking at a new battlefield,” said the former Mossad official. “The West must learn to understand it, prepare for it and immediately battle against it. Any delay will cause great damage.”
After the 22nd March Daʿesh attack in Brussels, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said, “This is a Third World War against our common values.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Every day high-level delegations land at Ben Gurion Airport. They come from America. They come from Europe. Increasingly they come from Asia, from Africa, from Latin America. … They wish to learn from Israel’s proven security and intelligence capabilities how to better protect their own people.”
On this issue, a senior Israeli security official said, “Israel should also adopt some humility on the issue. While it’s true that we teach everyone else how to fight terror, we ourselves are unable to cope with the current terror wave that is mainly comprised of teenagers with knives or improvised guns.”
Despite this rider, we still know that Israel has the most accumulated experience in dealing with Islamic terror, which has accompanied the state since the day it was founded.
“The most important thing is intelligence,” said Yaron Bloom, a former Shin Bet senior official. “It all begins and ends with intelligence. You cannot win without it. You must map out the areas in which the seeds of terror are sown and cultivated. You have to know what is being said in the mosques. You have to know where the extremists are located and then create a network of informers that will prevent ‘surprises.’”
Salah Abdeslam, one of the perpetrators of the 13th November massacre in Paris, succeeded in hiding for months in the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek. Israeli security sources say that this proves that that neighbourhood, like other places in Europe, has a terror-supporting infrastructure. This must be fully understood.
The main problem in today’s Europe is the lack of intelligence synchronisation.
In spite of Europe ostensibly being united, its security and intelligence organisations are scattered and unconnected.
They do not sufficiently cooperate with one another.
Apparently there are six police and security organisations in Brussels alone.
Belgium has 192 security organisations, while Germany has 16 intelligence organisations.
When intelligence does not flow in real time throughout the entire continent, the struggle is useless
For example: Abdeslam was stopped at a checkpoint after the attacks in Paris, but released after a cursory check; because the necessary information did not arrive in time at the right place.
Europe also has a knotty problem with political correctness; a very high percentage of airport workers in Europe are Muslims. Although the vast majority of the workers are law-abiding citizens and have no connection to terror, even one lone worker who agrees to smuggle a bomb or detonator belt onto a plane or into a terminal can cause terrible damage.
Such a scenario has already played out with the Russian passenger plane that was brought down in the Sinai Peninsula in October.
This means that security branches must prepare for all scenarios and that security must be run by the state, as in Israel.
This is one sphere that should never be privatised.
The state should be responsible for training, guidance, supervision and control. A large number of security circles must be in place, both visible and concealed. There must be active and passive security safeguards as well as synchronisation among the systems.
Daʿesh can be beaten, if we understand that this is a life or death struggle.
“The key to success,” a former Mossad senior official said, “…is that European leadership must understand that we are not talking here about a terror attack or some offensives against Paris or Brussels alone. This is an all-out war. In Europe, they still aren’t even able to utter the word combination ‘Islamic terror,’ as if it will go away if they don’t say these words. But it does exist, and it does threaten, and it seems to me, it is already clear that no compromise can be reached with it.”
Daʿesh (Islamic State) wants to destroy the West and replace it. The faster we understand this, the shorter and easier the path to victory.
This brand of terror knows how to reach its audiences, knows how to use the networks and Internet, Sony PlayStation, Twitter and the social networks, in order to recruit and activate its agents. We’ve got to learn to monitor all these networks and terminate the recruitment systems. These are the new rules of the game, but with the proper allotment of resources and correct understanding of reality, victory is possible.”
The current “victory” photo belongs to Daʿesh.
It was taken at a press conference given by Federica Mogherini, the EU high commissioner for foreign affairs and security, and her Jordanian colleague after news of the attack in Brussels.
Mogherini broke down in tears and left the podium.
For Daʿesh, this is a victory photo.
The West and Europe sanctify life, while Daʿesh, al-Qaeda and the rest of radical Islam worship death.
This is why the West will, ultimately, win.
If it wants to live, it has no other choice.
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Statistics; just statistics:
On the back of the Brussels terror attack it is worthwhile remembering that while a majority of Muslims in the West appear to have no truck with terrorism or extremism, there are a significant number who sympathise with terrorism and repeatedly attempt to justify attacks on the West.
An ICM poll from 2006 revealed that 20% of British Muslims sympathised with the 7/7 bombers who brought terror to the streets of the British capital, killing 52 and injuring hundreds. This number rose to one in four British Muslims, according to NOP Research for Channel 4. With a British Muslim population of over 3 million today, that translates to roughly 750,000 terror-sympathising people in the UK.
The number rises for younger British Muslims; a sure sign that radicalisation through schools, mosques, and prisons; usually via Saudi-funded groups; is creating a long-term problem in Europe.
31% of younger British Muslims endorsed or excused the 7/7 bombings of 2005, with just 14% of those over 45 doing so.
27% of those polled in the United Kingdom say they had sympathy with the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, with 78% supporting punishment for the publication of cartoons featuring Muhammed and 68% supporting the arrest and prosecution of British people who “insult Islam.”
And this number pales in comparison to global Muslim population figures. According to World Public Opinion (2009) at the University of Maryland, 61% of Egyptians, 32% of Indonesians, 41% of Pakistanis, 38% of Moroccans, 83% of Palestinians, 62% of Jordanians, and 42% of Turks endorse or sympathise with attacks on Americans or American groups.
A 2013 study found that 16% of young Muslims in Belgium believed that terrorism is “acceptable,” while 12% of young Muslims in Britain said that suicide attacks against civilians in Britain can be justified.
Pew Research from 2007 found that 26% of young Muslims in America believed suicide bombings are justified, with 35% in Britain, 42% in France, 22% in Germany, and 29% in Spain feeling the same way.
And Muslims who are more devout or dedicated to Islam are three times more likely to believe that suicide bombings are justified; a harrowing statistic when you consider that 86 percent of Muslims in Britain “feel that religion is the most important thing in their life.”
While just 5% of UK Muslims said they would not report a terror attack being planned, the number rises to 18% percent amongst young, British Muslims. The anti-police narrative fuelled by groups like British Muslim Youth, which recently urged a “boycott of police.”
Contrary to David Cameron’s oft-stated view, that extremists don’t represent “True Islam;” in 2015, it was revealed that 45% of British Muslims think that hate preachers that advocate violence against the West do represent “Mainstream Islam.”
40% of British Muslims want Sharia law in the West, while 41% say they oppose it.
Despite the fact that recorded reports of “Islamophobia” did not rise after the Paris Attacks, there remains a grievance industry across the Western world which targets young Muslims especially, urging them to feel victimised by Western governments for taking a stance against Islamism; which has scarcely been a tough stance at that.
No more was this evident than in the case of Tell MAMA, a government-backed Muslim grievance group which saw its state funding removed after it was found trying to artificially inflate statistics on hate crimes against Muslims in the UK.
Earlier this year it was reported that one in five prisoners in the United Kingdom’s top security jails is now Muslim, a rise of 23% from just five years ago. In total, a 20% increase in the jail population in Britain has been outstripped by the rise in Muslim inmates; up 122% over 13 years.
The same disproportionate figures are borne out across the United States, where Pew data from 2011 revealed that Muslims made up 9% of state and federal prisoners though at the time Muslims made up just 0.8% of the U.S. population.
In 2008, the Washington Post reported, “About 60 to 70% of all inmates in France’s prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12% of the country’s population.”
“An average of 55% of Western European Muslims harboured anti-Semitic attitudes. Acceptance of anti-Semitic stereotypes by Muslims in these countries was substantially higher than among the national population in each country,” an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report found in 2015.
A Swedish government report from 2006 found that that 5% of the total population held anti-Semitic views, with the number rising to 39% amongst adult Muslims.
In Germany in 2012, a study of the country’s burgeoning Turkish population revealed that 62% of Turks in Germany said they wanted to only live amongst each other, with 46% wanting the country to become a Muslim majority nation. This report also found that 18% of the Turkish population thought of Jews as “inferior.”
Breitbart News reported in January, of an ongoing exodus of French Jews; with some 8,000 headed for Israel in 2015 and many others migrating to the UK or the U.S; as a result of rising anti-Semitism
Despite hundreds of millions of pounds, dollars, and euros spent on integration projects, it appears to be a Sisyphean task; calling into question the rate at which immigration is occurring throughout the Western world and the tolerance with which our societies have operated thus far.
The BBC found that 36% of 16 to 24-year-old Muslims believe that if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death. 35% of Muslims say they would prefer to send their children to an Islamic school, and 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds say they want government-funded Islamic schools to send their kids to.
The report again highlights the radicalisation of the Muslim youth in the West, with 74% of 16 to 24-year-olds preferring Muslim women to wear the veil, compared with only 28% for those over the age of 55.
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Another day, another city, yet the script that started unfolding in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 and that shocked the world on 9/11 in New York is the same; Jihadi killers let loose on unsuspecting “infidels.”
On Tuesday, Belgium’s capital of Brussels fell in line with London, Madrid, and Paris as Western capitals murderously attacked Jihadi terrorists seeking the annihilation of Western civilisation.
If the actions committed by the soldiers of international jihad were predictable, the reaction of Western leaders was also familiar to ordinary, anxious citizens of North America and Europe — cowardice wrapped in political correctness.
When Jihadis struck New York, President George Bush saw it as his duty to defend Islam and save it from any serious critique. “Islam is a religion of peace,” he declared as his White House pandered to American Islamists.
As anger at the inability of Western countries to fight the spread of Jihadi Islamism grows, the reaction of their leaders has numbed into cliché-ridden rhetoric.
U.S. President Barack Obama, whose administration has gone out of its way to avoid linking Jihadi terrorism in any way with the words “Islam” or “Muslim,” kept to his script once again, making no mention of Islamist terrorism.
In brief remarks while in Cuba, where he was making an address to the Cuban people, Obama said, “We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible. This is yet another reminder that the world must unite … we must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.”
As if there was any doubt the Brussels attack was carried out by Islamist terrorists on behalf of the Daʿesh (Islamic State, ISIS.)
When the leader of the free world is careful not to name the entity that attacks the U.S. and its allies, how can we expect it to defeat this evil cancer that keeps spreading?
Imagine President Franklin D. Roosevelt not naming the Nazi regime of Germany as the enemy the Allies fought in the Second World War.
If Obama was ambiguous in his condemnation of the Brussels attack, the Canadian prime minister, too, was careful not to name Islamic State or the ideology of armed jihad.
Justin Trudeau tweeted: “I strongly condemn today’s deplorable terrorist attacks in Brussels. My thoughts are with the victims as we stand with Belgium & the EU.”
But calling it a “deplorable terrorist attack” without naming who was responsible, just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Our NATO ally, Belgium, deserves more than clichés. Trudeau’s tweet reflects his earlier surrender to the forces of international jihad when he pulled Canada out of the air war against Daʿesh.
But Trudeau and Obama are not the only ones who dare not call a spade a spade.
Across the West, few leaders were willing to utter the word “Islam” in connection with the Brussels attack, although Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz tweeted: “Radical Islam is at war with us. For over 7 years we have had a president who refuses to acknowledge this reality.”
If there is one thing we can learn from Brussels, it is that our enemy is international Islamism, and we shouldn’t be afraid to name it.
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The full scale of the trade in false passports that allows terrorists to slip into Europe was exposed last night.
It lets Daʿesh fanatics who are bent on murder pose as refugees fleeing war and persecution.
Eight migrants have reached Europe using documents almost identical to those carried by one of the Paris suicide bombers.
He claimed asylum on the Greek island of Leros last month with a fake Syrian passport in the name of 25-year-old Ahmad Almohammad.
In a shocking indictment of the EU’s porous borders, yesterday Serbian police revealed they had arrested a man carrying a Syrian passport which was almost a carbon copy of the one found on the Daʿesh bomber’s corpse on Friday.
It had the same name, date of birth and place of birth. The only difference was the photograph. Serbian officials said as many as six other men this year had entered the EU with virtually identical passports.
The discovery has heightened fears that all the documents are fakes made by the same forger in the Middle East to dupe authorities into believing the holders are asylum seekers.
And worse, it has sparked concerns that the bogus papers could be in the possession of jihadists now lurking undetected in the EU’s passport-free Schengen travel zone.
The shocking ease with which the terrorists who murdered 129 innocent people in Paris were able to travel across Europe has sparked a renewed debate about the open borders policy.
The development raises fresh worries over the potential security threat posed by 670,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in Greece this year after fleeing war and poverty.
Lord Green of Deddington, the chairman of campaign group MigrationWatch, said: ‘This underlines the extent to which the southern borders of the EU is now wide open to fraud. It will take a huge operation to recover any controls worth the name. Meanwhile, the security risks of people carrying bogus passports around Europe speaks for itself.’
James Berry, a Tory MP on the Commons home affairs select committee, said: ‘In the UK we have the reassurance that we are not full members of the Schengen agreement so the passports of all people travelling here are checked thoroughly. ‘But Europe is too porous — if terrorists get though the initial border then there are no further checks before they get to the place they want to attack.’
Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the home affairs select committee, added: ‘We need to urgently provide EU countries on the southern border with the equipment and expertise to deal with this immigration fraud. ‘To fail to do so will put the lives of EU citizens at risk’
The fingerprints of the suicide bomber who blew himself up outside the French national football stadium matched those of someone who passed through Greece in October.
Serbian police have confirmed the same passport-holder passed through the camp in Presevo, near the border with Macedonia — the same place the second passport holder was arrested on Saturday.
French investigators believe the documents found on the remains of one of the three jihadists who died outside the Stade de France may actually have belonged to a loyalist Syrian regime soldier killed several months ago, the AFP news agency said.
The passport is in the name of Ahmad Almohammad, born September 10, 1990 in the Syrian city of Idlib. Sources said it was either taken or fabricated based on a real identity.
Forgers in the Middle East are offering fake Syrian passports, ID cards or birth certificates for as little as £165. In September, Mail Online journalist Nick Fagge obtained for £1,300 the same forged Syrian passports being used by Daʿesh fighters to trick the authorities into believing they are asylum seekers.
And just this week a Guardian journalist in Iraqi Kurdistan was offered fake Syrian passports by two separate smuggling rings.
We now know that Syrian passport offices in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour once possessed large quantities of blank passports and the machines needed to print in them.
For nearly two years those two cities, along with those “large quantities of blank passports and the machines needed to print in them,” have been in Daʿesh hands.
Which kinda makes forgery easy…
In another indication of the lack of passport controls, the EU border agency Frontex revealed it does not have the equipment to assess the authenticity of identification documents of every migrant landing in Greece.
Despite promising to beef up Frontex’s presence on the islands, EU countries have provided the agency with less than half of the manpower it needs to properly operate.
Suspected suicide bomber Almohammad reached Greece after crossing the Aegean from Turkey on a raft with 198 migrants. He was arrested but later released and given papers that allowed him to travel to Athens and mainland Europe because officials believed he was a genuine refugee.
He was allowed to travel through the Balkans, passing through checkpoints in Serbia and Croatia, before heading for Northern Europe. And no, he wasn’t the only “Almohammad;” and that won’t be the only name to be used this way…
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