The Backlash Has Begun
We are in a very dangerous situation in Britain. I am made aware of this every time I go out, read or hear the news, or speak to relatives and friends. A number of things have occurred which means an increasing number of people are rejecting the main political parties and swinging to the far right, namely the UK Independence Party, which has now overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the third political party in Britain (this presumably excludes local variations, such as the Scottish Nationalist Party north of the border.)
While the UKIP may not be as extreme as, for example, the BNP (British National Party), it is attracting support from many people who would previously have been regarded as liberals (with a small ‘l’) or even progressive (code word for aligned to the Left in politics.)
One of the reasons for this is the shameful decision of the Liberal Democrats to first of all go into a coalition government with a right-wing Tory Party, and second to then go along with virtually all its policies just to keep Liberal Democrat politicians in privileged positions. It smacks of the kind of coalitions that existed in, for example, East Germany and Czechoslovakia in the Socialist era when leading members of other political parties got privileged positions as MPs provided the followed without any dissent the policies of the Marxist-Leninist party, which always dominated these coalitions.
All the Liberal Democrats got in return for this total subservience to a right-wing Tory Party was a referendum on our unfair voting system which was almost bound to fail to change the system since it only helped the top three political parties and discriminated against all others. Ironically, now the UKIP has overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the third main political party, the Alternative Transferable Vote electoral system, had it been adopted, would benefit the UKIP and consign the Liberal Democrats to political oblivion along with the Greens and all other minority political parties. This is because, under this system, seats are not allocated proportionally to the votes cast for each party, but secondary choices are taken into consideration eliminating the first choice of many voters. This favors the top three political parties, any one of which can win an election on the second or third choices of many of the electorate. Meanwhile many minor parties are denied the right to representation even though the number of votes they received across the country should entitle them to such representation.
What other causes are there for the rising popularity of the UKIP? Basically it is uncontrolled immigration, and the fact that the Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour now seem to have achieved a consensus in many areas of policy, so that differences between them appear to be only minor.
I am all in favor of the EU, but I can also see that it cannot work as a halfway house between independent states and a full federal union. All the problems with the Euro are caused by the fact that it is impossible to stabilize a currency when there is no central control over financial policies and no level playing field such as uniform prices and salaries across the Eurozone. Similarly, without a level playing field, free movement of EU citizens within the Union inevitably means those from poorer states with a lower standard of living will gravitate towards the richer states.
The EU can only work properly if it becomes a full federal union with a Constitutuion along the lines of the United States of America, or indeed any other federal union that has existed in the past such as former Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union (though obviously with a democratic multi-party system and free elections.)
In the process of becoming a federal union, the various institutions of the EU would need to become fully democratic, and member states would need to be guaranteed a great deal of autonomy as in the case of the 50 states of the USA, all of which have their own laws and state capitols. However one area where the US differs from the EU is that in the former there is central control over the economy and financial matters, so that poorer states cannot run up huge debts and then have to be bailed out by the richer states in order to stabilize the US dollar.
As to immigration, this has become a very sensitive issue especially in certain areas of big cities where the indigenous white population has been swamped by people of ethnic origin, many of whom have not fully integrated into the British way of life. Some don’t even speak English (my own father’s family come from Cyprus, and many of these who came to the UK and lived here for years don’t speak English properly or even at all).
In many areas of our cities the schools are over 95% ethnic, local shops and take-aways are ethnically owned, many being Hal-al, and even doctors’ surgeries are sometimes fully staffed by members of the ethnic communities and most of the patients are also of ethnic origin, with indigenous white citizens made to feel they are second class citizens. In one incident I personally witnessed where I accompanied a friend to his GP’s surgery, after a wait of two hours in which all or most of the ethnic patients were seen before my friend, he entered the surgery to have an ethnic doctor fire insults at him, clearly not even having read up on his medical notes or ascertained the reason he had been requested to attend the surgery. Had the situation been reversed and the doctor been white and the patient of ethnic origin, the personal remarks made by the doctor would have been deemed racially abusive, and would no doubt have caused the GP to be disciplined.
This feeling, now widespread in certain areas where ethnic populations now dominate, that indigenous whites are now treated as second class citizens in our own country is also leading to more and more people to gravitate towards the extreme Right in politics. At the moment this favors the UKIP, but it could swing further to the Right and favor the BNP or even more extreme fascist political parties.
All countries need to control both immigration and emigration. In extreme examples this results in things like the fence between Mexico and the United States and the inner German border installations when that country was divided and, of course, the Berlin Wall.
It is economically and politically impossible to allow complete free movement of populations between countries with different political and economic systems, where either the standards of living are vastly different or some have high prices and high wages, while others have controlled prices and wages. Where some have inflation and unemployment, while others have no inflation and full employment.
Every country has the right to control both emigration and immigration, but the problem with the EU at the moment is that it is not a country, but has laws which normally apply to countries. Therefore member states of the EU find they have little or no control over certain areas, such as immigration from other member EU states where the standards of living are vastly different.
There are two solutions to the problems associated with the current European Union. One is UKIP’s policy of complete withdrawal from the Union and retreat into the mentality of Little Britain, which might find it difficult to survive economically. The other solution is to move forward rapidly to a fully federal Union with the Euro as the federal currency, a United States of Europe with central control over the economy and the Euro, and with a fully democratic federal political system along the lines of the USA backed up by a Constitution which guarantees the rights of all EU citizens.
