Bruges Groups meeting 24 September 2014 – The EU’s attack on Britain’s most successful industry [the City]

Prof Tim Congdon  (Founder of Lombard Street Research)

Dr Gerrard Lyons  (Chief Economic Adviser to Mayor of London )

Lars Seiet Chistensen  (CEO Saxo Bank)

Robert Henderson

The three speakers were all agreed on this

1. The desirability of Britain’s financial services sector continuing to grow.
2. The dominance of London as a purveyor of financial products.
3. The damaging effect of the EU on the City in particular and British financial services in general, both at present and the great potential for much more destructive EU policies in the future.
4. The resentment of other EU members, particularly the large ones, of Britain’s dominance as a financial centre. Congdon and Christensen suggested that this resentment led to active attempts by the EU to take away this British dominance through EU legislation.

Other points to note were (a)  Congdon and Christensen being  certain that the only way forward for Britain was to leave the EU   because Cameron’s promised renegotiation would produce nothing of consequence and (b)  Lyons coming out with the “London benefits from immigration”  fantasy (exactly who  benefits?) and claiming, curiously , that what was needed was the “financial equivalent to the Luxembourg  compromise” to protect the City, curiously because the  Compromise, if it has any practical force at all (which is dubious), already covers such  financial matters because it embraces all aspects of the EU open to majority vote, viz “Where, in the case of decisions which may be taken by majority vote on a proposal of the Commission, very important interests of one or more partners are at stake, the Members of the Council will endeavour, within a reasonable time, to reach solutions which can be adopted by all the Members of the Council while respecting their mutual interests and those of the Community”.

“However, the Compromise, which is only a political declaration by Foreign Ministers and cannot amend the Treaty, did not prevent the Council from taking decisions in accordance with the Treaty establishing the European Community, which provided for a series of situations in which qualified-majority voting applied. Moreover, qualified-majority voting has been gradually extended to many areas and has now become normal procedure, unanimity being the exception. The Luxembourg Compromise remains in force even though, in practice, it may simply be evoked without actually having the power to block the decision-making process.”

It is a little bit disturbing that someone advising  a powerful politician such as Boris Johnson  is so ill informed about the reality of the EU.

The great omission from the event  was any consideration of what the British public wants.   All three speakers  completely ignored the democratic will of the British people.  The British may not like the EU,  but neither do they like globalism. It will be impossible to win a referendum on Britain’s membership of  the EU if the electorate know that all they are being asked to do is to swap the overlordship of Brussels for the  ideological despotism of free trade and mass immigration. (The laissez faire approach involved in globalisation is those with power enforcing an ideology by refusing to act to protect what the vast majority of human beings regard and have always regarded as the interests of their country and themselves.  It is a tyranny caused by the neglect of the rightful use of state power for the common good.)

Come questions from the audience  I was unable to get myself called. Had I been able to do so I should  have raised the question of  the democratic deficit and the impossibility of persuading the British electorate to vote to leave the EU if the alternative was more state sponsored globalism.  Sadly, those who were called to ask questions complete ignored these  vital questions

After the meeting I  managed to speak to Congdon  and put the question I had been unable to ask to him.  Congdon’s response was a simple refusal to discuss the question of protectionist measures. Indeed, he  became extremely animated in his refusal  saying he would have no truck with such ideas.  This is par for the course when I attempt to debate with laissez faire religionists.  They either do what Congdon does, refuse to debate or become abusive.  These are the classic behaviours of religious believers when their ideas are challenged.  These people know in their heart of hearts that their religion, whether it be sacred or profane, cannot stand up to close examination so in the vast majority of cases they a either refuse to debate or resort to abuse  which has the same effect.

Congdon also made the fantastic  statement that come an IN/OUT  referendum,  the British would vote to come out because they “have always valued freedom”.  Apart from this being historically a highly questionable claim, the vast  demographic changes over the past 60 years wrought by mass immigration have both diluted the Britishness of the population and the British population as a whole has been cowed by more than half a century of political correctness being enforced with ever increasing ruthlessness by  those with power in the country.

The other  issue  I raised with Congdon were the implications  that ever deeper  devolution had for the UK’s relations with the EU .  I put forward a plausible scenario: an in/out referendum is held. England votes 70% to leave while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland vote 70% to stay in. I asked Congdon what  he thought would happen if such a vote occurred.  Amazingly,  he said he had no idea.

I need not have weighted the votes so heavily towards a vote to leave in England. The discrepancy in size between England and the other home countries is so huge that  England  would not have to vote YES to leaving the EU by anything like 70 for and 30% against to ensure the referendum was won by the leave the EU side.

The official number of registered electors  qualified to vote in Parliamentary elections at  the end of 2012 and their geographical distribution was as follows::

The total number of UK parliamentary electors in December 2012 was 46,353,900, a rise of 0.5 per

cent from December 2011.

The total number of parliamentary electors in each of the UK constituent countries and the

percentage changes during the year to December 2012 are:

• England – 38,837,300, a rise of 0.5 per cent
• Wales – 2,301,100, a rise of 0.1 per cent
• Scotland – 3,985,300, a rise of 1.1 per cent
• Northern Ireland – 1,230,200, a rise of 1.4 per cent

Assuming for the sake of simplifying the example that there is a 100% turnout,  23,176,951 votes would be  needed for a vote to leave the EU.  If England voted by 60% to leave that would  produce  23,302,380 votes to leave , more than would be required  for a simple majority.

But that is obviously not the full picture, There would be a substantial vote to leave  in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The combined electorate of Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland in 2012  was 7,516,600.  If  70% of those voted to remain in the EU that would only be 5,261,620 votes.   There would be 2,254,980 votes to leave.  If England voted 54% to leave (20, 972,142 votes) the votes to leave in the whole of the UK would be  23,227, 122 (20, 972,142 +2,254,980) , enough to  win the referendum.

Of course that is not how the vote would be in the real world. The turnout would be nowhere near 100%,  although  it might well be  over eighty per cent if the Scottish referendum is a guide.   How   Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would vote is of course uncertain,  but  I have allotted  such a generous proportion of the vote to the stay in side in those  countries that it is unlikely I  have seriously over-estimated  the vote to  leave.  What the example does show  is that under any likely voting circumstances there would not need to be a very strong YES to leaving vote in England to override a very strong vote to remain part of the EU  in  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

If there was such an unbalanced result, that is with England voting to leave and the other three countries voting to stay or even if just one of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland voting to remain in the EU, this would ostensibly produce a potentially incendiary constitutional crisis, especially if  Westminster politicians keep on grovelling to the Celtic Fringe as they did during the Scottish independence referendum ( a practice which  grossly inflated the idea of  Scotland’s ability to be independent without any pain in many Scots’ minds).

I said an ostensibly incendiary situation because in reality there would be little appetite to leave the UK  if the hard truths of  what leaving the UK and joining  the EU would mean were placed in front of voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. England or England plus one or two of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be a completely different kettle of fish compared with Scotland leaving the UK with the rest of the UK still in the EU. If any of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland wished to leave the UK they would  and join the EU with the rest of the UK or just England outside of the EU,  they would be faced with an England or a remnant UK state which had regained its freedom of action and would not be bound by EU law.

The strategy of those in who want  the UK to leave the EU should be to reduce the idea amongst voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern  Ireland  that leaving the UK and joining the EU after a UK vote to  leave has taken place would be an easy choice.  To diminish  the  vote to stay in those countries  a pre-emptive strike is required before the referendum  laying before voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the realities of their relationship with the EU and the  UK if they  seek to leave .

This is something which should have been done during the Scottish referendum.  Indeed, the refusal of the Better Together side of the argument to point out these realties was one of the prime reasons for the NO vote not being much larger than it was, handsome as that result was.  The unionist side generally was deeply patronising  to the Scots with their  line that only Scots could have a say in the debate and that the rest of the union had to keep quiet for fear of upsetting the Scots and driving them to a YES vote.  It implied that Scots are essentially less than adults who could not either bear contrary views or have the wit to listen to hard facts.

The primary things the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish should be reminded of are:

1. Wales and Northern Ireland are economic  basket cases which rely heavily on English taxpayers to fund their public expenditure. To lose that subsidy would cripple them both. Nor would they get anything like as much extra  funding from the EU – assuming it would have them as members –  as they would lose from the end of the English subsidy.

Scotland is in a better position because it is larger and has for the present at least significant oil revenues. But it is a very narrow economy relying very heavily on public service employment – a significant part of which deals with the administration of English public service matters –  while the private business side of is largely comprised of oil and gas, whiskey, food, tourism and financial services.

The figures below are the latest official estimates of the tax raised in each of the four home countries to the end of the 2012/13 financial year. These figures should not be treated as exact to the last million because there are difficulties in allocating revenue to particular parts of the UK, for example, with corporation tax, but they  are broadly indicative of what each country collects in tax I give two sets of figures to show the differences when oil and gas is allocated on a geographical and a population basis.

Table 1 Total HMRC Receipts (Geographical Split of North Sea Revenues), £m

UK         England    %       Wales      %     Scotland   %        N. Ireland %

2012‐13 469,777   400,659 85.3%    16,337 3.5%   42,415 9.0%       10,331   2.6%

Table 2 Total HMRC Receipts (Population Split of North Sea Revenues), £m

2012‐13 469,777   404,760 86.2%   16,652 3.5%   37,811 8.0%        10,518    2.6%

Compare this with public spending for each of the   home countries in the calendar year 2013 (I was unable to find expenditure figures for the financial year but they would be little different) :

England        £456.2 billion – difference of  £56 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent

Scotland        £53.9 billion  – difference  of £12 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent

Wales            £29.8 billion   – difference  of £13 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent

9. Ireland £19.8 billion   – difference  of £9  billion approx. between tax raised and money spent

NB differences between I tax raised and money spent are based on Table 1 figures which give the most favourable interpretation of Scotland’s tax position.

The approximate  percentage of overspend  (spending less tax collected) by each of the home countries is

England      12%

Scotland     22%

Wales          43%

1. Ireland 45%

The three smaller countries are accumulating debt at a much greater rate than England. In addition, small countries which go independent would find raising the money to meet their overspends would be much more expensive  than the cost of financing the debt as part of the UK

It is also worth noting in passing  the per head differences which are substantial between England and the other home countries.

In 2012/13, public spending per head in the UK as a whole was £8,788.

–              England £8,529 (3% below the UK average).

–              Scotland: £10,152 (16% above the UK average)

–              Wales: £9,709 (10% above the UK average)

–              Northern Ireland £10,876 (24% above the UK average).

If public spending per head was reduced to the present  English level in the other three home countries  approximately £16 billion would be removed from the UK  budget.

2. The vast majority of their trade is with England. Barriers created by England’s departure from the EU could have very serious economic consequences any of other home countries remained  within the EU.
3. Much of what they export to countries outside the EU has to pass through England.
4. All three countries would be net takers from the EU budget not contributors. The EU are unlikely to welcome with open arms three more small pensioner nations. There would be no guarantee that the EU would accept any or all of them as members, but even if they did they terms they would have to accept would be far more onerous and intrusive than they experience now.  In particular, they would almost certainly have to join the Euro as this is a condition for all new members.
5. An England or a reduced UK outside of the EU would have to impose physical border controls because any part of the UK which seceded and joined the EU would be committed to the free movement of labour within the EU (more exactly the European Economic Area – EEA). That would mean any number of immigrants from the EEA would be able to enter either England or a reduced UK via whichever part (s) of the UK had seceded and joined the EU.
6. Being part of the UK gives the smaller home countries great security because the UK still has considerable military clout – ultimately Britain is protected by nuclear weapons – and the size of the population (around 62 million and rising) is sufficient in itself to give any aggressor pause for thought. The proposal for armed forces made in the SNP sponsored White Paper on independence recommended armed forces of 10,000  regulars to start with rising to 15,000 if circumstances permitted.   That would be laughable as a defence force for a country the size of Scotland which has huge swathes of land with very few people on the land.  An independent Wales and N Ireland would be even worse off.
7. They could not expect to walk away from the Union without taking on a share of the UK national debt and of taxpayer funded pension liabilities proportional to their population, have a currency union to share the Pound, have UK government contracts for anything or retain  the jobs exported from England to do administrative public sector work  for England, for example, much of the English welfare administration is dealt with in Scotland.

If  this is done,  with any luck the enthusiasm for leaving the UK to join the EU if  England or England plus one or more of the other home countries has voted to leave the EU will diminish sufficiently to make a vote to  remain in the EU unlike or at least  reduce  the vote to stay in to level where there is not an overwhelming vote to either stay in or leave.

The persecution of Emma West continues

Robert Henderson

Emma West  was arrested in November 2011 after she protested about immigration whilst travelling on a bus. Her protest was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube as well as being copied by many national media outlets. The video was  viewed millions of times.

Following the upload of the video Emma was arrested, held in the UK’s highest security prison for women , released and then subjected to a year and a half’s intimidation by the state as the powers-that-be desperately tried to get her to plead guilty to charges relating to racially motivated serious crimes (racially aggravated intentional harassment and racially aggravated assault)  which would have almost certainly sent her to prison. Eventually, worn down by the stress she pleaded guilty to the  lesser charge of racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.

I say Emma’s outburst was a protest against immigration because that is precisely what it is. Here are some of her comments:

She says: “What’s this country coming too?

“A load of black people and and load of f***ing Polish.”

One commuter challenges West, who rounds on him telling him: “You aren’t English”, to which he replies “No, I’m not”

She then scans the tram, pointing out people one-by-one, saying: “You ain’t English, you ain’t English, None of you are f***ing English.

“Get back to your own f***ing countries.”

“Britain is nothing now, Britain is f***k all.

“My Britain is f**k all now.”

You can argue that is foulmouthed,  but you cannot argue it is anything but a protest against immigration. In fact, it is the most grass-root form of political protest there is, namely, directly engaging with the effects of policy.

Emma lives in a country which has been made unrecognisable by the permitting of mass immigration for over sixty years. Neither Emma nor any other native English man or woman (or Briton come to that) has had any say in this invasion of the country. This most fundamental act of treason has been committed by generations of British politicians who to date have got away with their crime. But to continue to get away with the crime the guilty men and women need to suppress public protest against what they have done.  That is why the authorities were so desperate to get to plead guilty. She was a refusnik and they could not let that pass.  That she resorted to foul language in her frustration is entirely understandable.

But those with power were not satisfied simply with her criminal conviction. Emma has now had her livelihood as a dental nurse taken away by the General Medical Council with this preternaturally smug judgement:

A [Dental Council] spokeswoman said: “Her conduct was truly appalling.

“It clearly has the capacity to bring the profession into disrepute and to undermine public confidence in its standards.

“Furthermore, her violent and abusive conduct would demonstrate a real risk to the safety of patients.

“In relation to her racially aggravated offence, this was committed in a public setting and received further public exposure, as a person had uploaded the video clip to the internet which has been viewed extensively.”

So there you have it, political correctness can not only send you into the clutches of the law but take your means of living away.

For the full story of Emma West’ persecution see

The oppression of Emma West : the politically correct end game plays out

Posted on July 2, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson In November 2011 Emma West was arrested  and subsequently charged for a racially aggravated public order offence (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/). The charges concerned her  public denunciation of the effects of mass immigration whilst on a tram in Croydon,  a suburb … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged Emma West, ethnicity, invasion, political correctness, race|61 Comments | Edit

Emma West and the State – The State has its way (sort of)

Posted on June 5, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West has finally been worn down. Eighteen months after she was charged with racially aggravated intentional harassment and racially aggravated assault , she has agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of racially aggravated harassment, alarm … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Politics | Tagged birthright, Emma West, independence, invasion, liberal bigotry, political correctness, quisling elite, race | 21 Comments | Edit

Emma West’s trial scheduled for the sixth time

Posted on April 10, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West was due to stand trial at Croydon Crown Court for  two racially aggravated public order offences  arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 . The … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged birthright, censorship, crime, Emma West, ethnicity, invasion,laws,political correctness, race | 36 Comments | Edit

Emma West trial scheduled for the fifth time

Posted on March 13, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson A fifth, yes that’s fifth,  date for the start of Emma West’s trial on criminal charges arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 has been set  for  … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood | Tagged crime, Emma West, English, ethnicity, invasion, laws, liberal bigotry,political correctness, race | 28 Comments | Edit

What has happened to Emma West?

Posted on January 8, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson It is now 14 months since Emma West was charged with racially aggravated public order offences after she got into an argument on a tram which led her to make loud complaint about the effects of mass immigration. … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, ethnicity, invasion, political correctness, race | 31 Comments | Edit

Emma West trial delayed for the third time

Posted on September 8, 2012by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson The trial of Emma West on racially aggravated public order offences has been delayed for the third time ( http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Emma-West-trial-adjourned-time/story-16820636-detail/story.html ).  No further date has been set.   The trial was originally scheduled for June, then July and finally September … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, free speech, invasion, liberty, political correctness | 13 Comments | Edit

Emma West has her trial delayed yet again

Posted on July 27, 2012by Robert Henderson

The trial of Emma West on two racially aggravated public order offences has been put back to 5 September to allow further medical reports (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Trial-alleged-YouTube-tram-racist-Emma-West-moved/story-16543355-detail/story.html).  Her trial was meant to take place on 17th July but a request for … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged authoritarianism, crime, Emma West, English,independence,invasion, political correctness, race | 12 Comments | Edit

Courage is the best defence against charges of racism

Posted on June 12, 2012by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson The trial of Emma West on two racially aggravated public order charges which was scheduled for 11 June has been postponed until 16 July to enable further psychiatric reports to be prepared. (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Emma-West-race-rant-trial-moved-July/story-16346869-detail/story.html). As Miss West was charged … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged censorship, Emma West, invasion, laws, political correctness | 7 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 3

Posted on January 4, 2012by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West appeared at Croydon magistrates court on 3rd January.  She  will stand trial  on  two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She will next appear in court  – Croydon Crown Court –  … Continue reading →

Posted in Anglophobia, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, Englishness, ethnicity,invasion,laws, political correctness, public order, race | 12 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 2

Posted on December 7, 2011by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West has been remanded in custody until 3rd of January when she will appear at Croydon Crown Court (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tram-race-rant-woman-court-052333359.html).  By 3rd January she will in, effect , have served a custodial sentence of 37 days,  [RH She was … Continue reading →

Posted in Anglophobia, Culture, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, English,ethnicity,invasion, political correctness, quisling elite, race | 23 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state

Posted on December 1, 2011by Robert Henderson

Emma West of New Addington, London has been arrested and placed in “protective custody” following the publication on YouTube of  a two minute 25 second  recording labelled by the YouTube poster as “Racist British Woman on the Tram goes CRAZY …Continue reading →

Hands up everyone who still takes NATO seriously

Robert Henderson

There is an indecent amount of huffing and puffing  by NATO members as they  posture and strut futilely in the face of Putin’s Ukrainian adventure.  The latest NATO gathering in Wales has produced a new 3,000 rapid response force and a reiteration that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all NATO members and will be met by all NATO members. That is the treaty obligation as laid down in  articles 5 and 6 of the NATO Treaty

Article 5

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .

Article 6 (1)

For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:

on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France (2), on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;

on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.

Does anyone honestly believe that NATO would  engage in armed conflict with a  nuclear-armed Russian state?  Can anyone imagine the USA risking nuclear war if Russia attacks European territory?   Unless the answer to those questions is an unqualified yes then NATO is a dead letter as far as European security is concerned.  For myself, even during the Cold War  I never believed  that the USA would risk nuclear war unless its own territory  was attacked and  that Russia (then in the guise of the Soviet Union) would, however belligerent their rhetoric , always pull back  from provoking nuclear war, as happened over the Cuban missile crisis.

But let us suppose that the threat of nuclear war was ignored. Would NATO members, and most particularly the USA, be prepared to engage in a conventional war to, for example, eject Russia from  the Ukraine and Crimea?  That would also seem improbable, not least because most European NATO members  lack the military capacity to join in such action and US action without meaningful support from European members would be very unlikely in the present political atmosphere in America.

How should the West deal with Russia?  It should recognise that Russia has  (1) its natural sphere of influence which includes the Ukraine and (2) reasonable fears of the Ukraine becoming a Western vassal state through membership of the EU and NATO.  The senior conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh is one of the few MPs to recognise these facts, viz:

“My personal view is that we should balance any moves to the West, either to the EU or Nato, with convincing the Russians that we have no desire to take Ukraine out of Russia’s traditional orbit.

“The fact is that for all of its history, bar a couple of years in the 1920s, and since 1990, Ukraine has been part of Russia. It’s not just power politics, to the average Russian, the source of their country – the Kievan Rus’ – comes from Kiev in the middle of Ukraine.

“They consider that Ukraine is as much a part of the Russian soul as we consider Canterbury or Kent is part of our soul. So this isn’t some power grab by the Russians to take over the rest of Europe. I don’t approve of Putin sending in tanks, but whatever we say, this is the facts on the ground.”

“Putin is not going to give up, and therefore let’s try and accommodate and deal with him, and reassure him that we’re not trying to grab Ukraine.”

In addition to the Russian problem,  NATO’s open-ended commitment for members to come to the assistance of any of  the  twenty eight current members  (see below) is  a standing danger . For example, suppose Turkey was attacked by Iran. The  NATO member states would be obligated to fight Iran. Nor is it clear what would constitute an armed attack. Articles 5 and 6 do not stipulate an attack has to be from a nation state or alliance of states.   Would an attack by ISIS on a NATO member qualify?  There would seem to be nothing to disallow such an attack as qualifying under the NATO treaty obligations.

Then truth is NATO is worst than useless: it is a standing invitation to war. European nations need to attend to their own security. The simplest way of doing that is to scrap treaty obligations such as NATO’s  and, at least in the case of the larger states, to build their defence around  nuclear weapons and have conventional armed forces designed to defend national territories not forces to act in the interests of liberal internationalism.

Current NATO members

ALBANIA (2009)

BELGIUM (1949)

BULGARIA (2004)

CANADA (1949)

CROATIA (2009)

CZECH REPUBLIC (1999)

DENMARK (1949)

ESTONIA (2004)

FRANCE (1949)

GERMANY (1955)

GREECE (1952)

HUNGARY (1999)

ICELAND (1949)

ITALY (1949)

LATVIA (2004)

LITHUANIA (2004)

LUXEMBOURG (1949)

NETHERLANDS (1949)

NORWAY (1949)

POLAND (1999)

PORTUGAL (1949)

ROMANIA (2004)

SLOVAKIA (2004)

SLOVENIA (2004)

SPAIN (1982)

TURKEY (1952)

THE UNITED KINGDOM (1949)

THE UNITED STATES (1949)

The white liberal fantasy collides head-on with the reality of Islam

Robert  Henderson

NB: The territory taken from Iraq and Syria has gone by various titles: ISIS, ISIL and IS.  I shall use ISIS standing for the  Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

The present mess in the Middle East and North Africa is largely the creation of the prime political absurdity which lies at the heart of the  modern liberal fantasy, namely,  that what they call  liberal democracy  (in truth a politically correct illiberal state)  can be manufactured if only the right circumstances are created.  This woefully wrongheaded  idea  reprises the mistake made during the dissolution of the  British Empire. The British withdrawal strategy was simple: for each ex-colony create the formal structures of a parliamentary democracy – parliaments, written constitutions, electoral systems and so on – and then,  like a climbing plant covering a trellis, democratic behaviour  would grow and wrap itself around the formal structures.  It was at best laughably naïve and at worst a cynical fig leaf  to cover the unseemly haste with which Britain relinquished control of  her colonies.

The  reason why the British post-colonial strategy failed is  beautifully simple: political systems  cannot  be self-consciously created. They are organic growths. When it comes to  representative  government elected on a broad franchise  ( a more honest description of the  reality than  democracy) ,  such growths are remarkably rare. Look around the world and see how many secure representative  political systems  there are. The Britain, the  USA,  Canada, Australia and New Zealand qualify because they have such representative systems and have  not experienced violent revolution either at all or for centuries.  All are Anglo-Saxon in origin. Who else? Switzerland and Iceland. Being generous we can perhaps add  the Scandinavians and Holland.  For the rest, including all the major European states,  there is not one which has not had governments overthrown  since 1900 by outright violence committed by the native population or by unconstitutional means.

To the rarity of stable and lasting representative government growing organically,  can be added the problem of  territories with  immense ethnic and racial variety  routinely producing disputed elections  on the grounds of electoral fraud or falling into  violence afterwards because one particular  ethnic or racial   group believes they are being hard done by.   Indeed, such ethnic and racial variety is probably the  prime reason why stable representative government is so rare.   Such disabling heterogeneity  was the situation with  the colonies Britain freed after 1945 and is the situation with the ethnic, racial and religious kaleidoscope  that is the Middle East and North Africa.

The fruits of recent Western meddling

A complaint is often made that the European colonial powers caused much of the post-colonial difficulty through their drawing of colonial boundaries which produced territories without a natural national  unity. This complaint does not hold water. It is not that the European imperial powers did not draw such boundaries, but rather that it would not have made any general difference where the boundaries were drawn because  the same problem would  have arisen as a consequence of the exceptionally diverse nature of the lands involved. There were no  discrete territories   with populations which were large enough and  homogeneous enough  in race,  religion  and culture to form a  natural nation state.   That was the case with the Middle East and North Africa.

The consequences of Western interference in the Islamic world since the turn of the century  has been  uniformly dismal: it has either  replaced harsh order with growing chaos or replaced one dictatorship with another.  Consider  how the present situation in the Middle East and North Africa  has come about. First, Bush junior and Blair go gallivanting into Afghanistan and reduce that to a battleground for violent Islam and tribal hatreds and jealousies to play out.    From there they decide to meddle in Iraq by invading on the  entirely spurious grounds that Saddam Hussein represented a threat to the West because he had weapons of mass destruction.   That the  UN Weapons inspectors reported  they had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction and asked for more time counted for nothing. Neither did  the fact that at the time of the invasion  Saddam was being  restrained in his behaviour  by  sanctions and a Western-enforced no-fly zone over the Kurdish areas.  Having deposed Saddam and his regime Iraq was placed under a military occupation which went the way of all military occupations, gradual dissolution through the exhaustion of the occupying power.

Then came the miserably entitled Arab Spring, whose fruits  have been bitter indeed. Because there are natural  nation states in the area, the “Arab Spring” was doomed to the horrific failure it has been because the states involved were all fissile territories whose diverse populations were only held in check from internecine fighting by harsh dictators, whether republican or monarchical. The facile cheerleading of  Western politicians and liberals generally was adolescent in its self-indulgent idealism and encouraged the populations in the Arab world to rebel when they had absolutely no chance of producing anything other than chaos or another dictatorship.

Libya has been reduced to a state of anarchy with rival militias, tribes, gangs – call them what you will- making hay with the weapons made freely available by the overthrow of Gadhafi, with violent Islam joining in.   With a grim irony Egypt has swapped a  covert  military dictatorship for an overt military dictatorship,  whilst dispensing with an elected  if Islamist president on the way.  Iraq has lurched into an increasing state of disorder  as the US has gradually withdrawn  and is now divided between Iraq, Kurdistan and   ISIS.

Most gruesomely for Western politicians,  the tyrant of Syria, Bashir Assad,   has withstood the attempts, vociferously supported by the West, to destroy him and his regime by the  rag-tag  and politically indeterminate “Free Syrian Army” and is now through the emergence of ISIS  the only  plausible obstacle to ISIS ‘ continued existence and expansion.  If realpolitik ruled the West would be acting in concert with Assad , but because they have labelled him a devil they cannot bring themselves to do the sensible thing and make common cause with him so that he can restore some sort of order to Syria.  Liberals who shudder at this should bear in mind how often they have been in bed with the most insanitary  bedfellows – Stalin, Mao and  the Taliban in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation to mention a few.  Sometimes it is necessary to take the my enemy’s enemy is my friend route to protect the national interest.

What can and should be done now by the West? 

The liberal warmongers  are ever more eagerly saying that  If the West does not intervene militarily  to destroy  aggressive Islam then  parts of the  Middle East  will be breeding grounds and safe havens for terrorists to carry their terror into the West.  That may or may not be true , but  if the West does intervene militarily to successfully snuff out  ISIS,  then the likelihood would be that ISIS members, especially those who come from Western states, would  return to their various countries determined to wage terrorist war there. Moreover, the West would be committed to remaining indefinitely in the territory they have taken from ISIS, their very presence being a standing motive for violent Muslims in the West to attack the countries which harbour them.

Nor would the destruction of  ISIS in Iraq and Syria be an end of violent Islam creating havens to protect, train and send terrorists into to the West.   Afghanistan is ripe to fall to the Taliban once  Western military forces are withdrawn.   Parts of Pakistan are controlled by violent Islam.  Libya  is little more than a geographical expression filled with petty warlords  and ripe for violent Islam to go to if it is not already there.    Deeper into Africa there is  Boko Haram spreading throughout the West.  In the East   Kenya  and Uganda  suffer from Muslim  terrorist attacks,   Ethiopia  and Somalia have serious  Islamist incursions to deal with,  while  in Sudan  violent Islam holds power. Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to point to parts of Africa which remain untouched by violent Islam.

The plain truth is that even if the West were willing and able to suppress ISIS  in Syria and Iraq by force, they could never control violent Islam because violent Islam would simply keep on the move from one accommodating territory  to another.

How serious a threat to the West  is ISIS?

The potential of ISIS to create a lasting  aggressive and powerful  Islamic state is grossly  overblown.  It  has taken a great deal of territory very rapidly,  but that is unsurprising in a place like the Middle East where  there is a good deal of desert and  the  formal states whose land  has been captured  were  all  in some governmental disarray , which is  not a recipe for inspiring troops to resolutely  fight a determined  aggressor such as ISIS.   In the case of Iraq the  discriminatory behaviour of the Maliki government had seriously alienated the Sunni minority through his highly discriminatory behaviour in favour of the Shia majority.   This has provided a  reason for Iraqi Sunnis to have some fellow feeling with the Sunni  ISIS and consequently to tolerate or even welcome ISIS violence directed at the non-Sunni parts of the population.    Moreover, even where there are  large numbers of people  willing to  resist  ISIS, as appears to be the case in Kurdistan,   that  is of little avail if they are equipped with much inferior weaponry and training.

But taking territory is one thing, maintaining control of it quite another.  That is particularly the case where the territory conquered has a  population which is  chronically divided by religion  and ethnicity and is spread over several formal states.  ISIS need to  rapidly show they are up to administering the land  they have taken.  Easier said than done, especially as they are likely to be engaging in warfare for quite some time to come, both with elements within the territory they have taken and from outside. Terror tactics only take a conqueror go so far. They are not a sufficient basis for ruling.

There is also considerable scope for ISIS  to fracture because  the land they have captured is ethnically and religiously diverse. Moreover,  the ISIS personnel is very cosmopolitan and may come to be resented by even the native Sunnis in the ISIS territory. In addition,  ISIS will have to fight the remnant of Iraq (with its hostile Shia majority) and Assad’s Syrian Army.  There is also the possibility that Iran may join in to protect the Shia population of the captured territories.

Much has been made of the modern weaponry and auxiliary military equipment  ISIS have taken , but the  equipment will require considerable expertise to maintain and operate it.  Such  skills, especially those  needed to maintain the equipment,  will  probably not be available in the quantities needed. Moreover, ISIS will need to buy more modern weaponry, especially munitions,  as time goes on and it is not clear who will sell it to them in sufficient quantity and quality.

A  ghastly irony for  the West, and most particularly the USA,  is the fact that they have supplied much of the military equipment which ISIS are using , either because the equipment has been captured from Iraqi forces or because the equipment was supplied by the West to the Syrian rebels fighting Assad, significant  numbers of whom share the mentality of ISIS or may even be part of ISIS.     The fact that ISIS have had the success they have  had is unsurprising given the circumstances. Keeping hold of what they have will take up all their energies for the foreseeable future.

The enemy within

The real threat to the West comes not from ISIS but the large Muslim populations in the West , which the treacherous and deluded liberal internationalists have allowed to settle as they pursued their fatuous dream  of a  world without borders or nation states.  The last UK Census in 2011 shows  2.7 million people identifying themselves as Muslims   (4.8 per cent of the population). This is almost certainly substantially less than the real figure because the Census depends on self-reporting and  there is a significant minority of the UK population who never complete the Census form  because they are either here illegally or have a mentality which makes them think that giving any information about themselves to any  government is dangerous.

How does the West protect itself  from homicidal Muslims within its own territory?  It would be a next to  impossible question to find an adequate answer to even in  a country which has meaningful border controls because of the number of Muslims born and bred in the West.    In a country such as Britain which effectively has open borders,   the question becomes  not merely hideously difficult but absurd.

In Britain the Coalition government has floundered around talking about removing passports from people  trying to leave Britain if they are suspected Jihadis, , the banning  from Britain of those  who have been in Iraq and Syria, the reintroduction of control orders  and,  most pathetically, the idea that Muslim coming back from fighting for ISIS can be turned into good British citizens through re-education.   Even if such policies are put in force the idea that this would seriously hinder Muslim terrorists in Britain is laughable because of the numbers of Muslims living here as British citizens. The current official estimate of British Muslims fighting in in Iraq and Syria is 500. That is probably an underestimate, but even if it was only 500 that would be more than enough to create severe problems in this country. As for the British Muslim population in general, there is evidence that a substantial portion of them share the “I don’t agree with their methods but…” mentality of Irish Republicans towards the Provisional IRA.

The Western political response

Any action by Western politicians is problematic because  as a class they have  lost the ability to instinctively  act in the national interests of the people they are supposed to represent. They ignore   the first duty of a politician in a democracy which is to ask what is best for their own people. Instead their  calamitous mentality is that described in Jean Raspail’s “Camp of the Saints” where the response of politicians and the liberal elite generally to the  passive-aggressive  misery of huge numbers of migrants from the Third World  arriving in the West overwhelms the needs of their own people.

But  Western political elites are becoming seriously afraid of both the danger represented by violent Muslims in their countries and the anger of their native populations .   As a consequence there are things being said now by public figures which would have been unthinkable only a few short weeks ago.   The one-time Shadow Home Secretary David Davis pushes for  British Muslims who go to fight with the likes of Isis to be stripped of their British citizenship regardless of whether this leaves them stateless  so that  their  “trip to Syria is no longer a short violent holiday but a life sentence to the lifestyle they claim to espouse, complete with Sharia law and a desert climate”.  The Leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage advocates the same thing while the  former  Archbishop of Canterbury  Lord Carey says that “ Multiculturalism has resulted in honour killings, female genital mutilation and rule by Sharia law” and supports the call to remove British citizenship from those who go to join  violent Islam.  The Mayor London Boris Johnson wants Muslims returning from Syria and Iraq to be considered guilty until proven innocent of terrorist activity, a bald reversal of the ancient right under English law to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

The journalist Leo McKinstry  places the responsibility for the present danger firmly on successive British governments :

“The fact is that extremism has flourished in a climate formed by the twin strategies of mass immigration and multiculturalism. Open borders have led to a phenomenal expansion in Britain’s Muslim population to almost three million, many of the new arrivals hailing from parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia where Islamic sectarianism is rife.

At the same time the dogma of cultural diversity has become one of the central obsessions of the state. We are constantly told that we must celebrate the vibrant enrichment of our society. But, by its emphasis on cultural differences and its loathing for traditional British values the doctrine of diversity has been a catastrophe for Britain.

In place of integration it has promoted division and separatism. We are a land increasingly without a mutual sense of belonging or shared national identity. It is little wonder that, according to one recent survey, 26 per cent of Muslims here said they feel no loyalty to Britain.”

The problem is that while the public rhetoric is changing  nothing significant  alters on the ground. The words change but the circumstances remain much  the same.  The Western  liberal elites are still  paralysed by both political correctness and the ghastly fact that dangerous fifth columns now exist because of their mass immigration policies and the consequent need to suppress native British  dissent about its effects.  In addition through their policy of multiculturalism the liberal elite has encouraged  ethnic and racial minorities to both live culturally apart from and  behave in a  flagrantly provocative manner towards the native population.  The upshot of all this is that those with power in the West  dare not admit there is a general problem amongst immigrant communities ( which live largely separate lives in their own communities)   because to do so would be to admit that the fault lay with them.

In an attempt to circumvent the danger of being held to account, Western politicians and the mainstream media try to peddle the “violent Muslims are only a tiny percentage of Muslims living amongst us; the vast majority  are well educated, peace loving, hardworking  law abiding citizens”.   This is a dubious proposition  in itself when the crime, educational attainment, benefit  take up  and unemployment statistics throughout the West show Muslims to be  more prone to crime, to have below average educational attainment  and are more likely to be unemployed or on in-work benefits than the population as a whole. But even if none of those things were true the problem of violent Islam in Britain would still be there because many of the Muslims who have been outed as  sharing violent Islam’s ideas are not from the lower reaches of society.

The important thing to understand is that it is never the peaceful minority which counts in these circumstances.  What matters is the terrorist minority. They drive the terror and enlist the non-violent to aid them  in various ways.  The Provisional IRA (PIRA) in Ireland probably never had no more than a thousand  people actively engaged in terrorism: sanctioning and planning terrorist attacks, making bombs, planting bombs, killing or  maiming those thought to untrustworthy or simply disobedient to PIRA’s will.  But there  were very large numbers who were willing to provide PIRA  with safe houses, to  store of weapons, to tell PIRA about  informers and come out  on the streets at the drop of a hat to protest in the PIRA interest.   In addition, the existence of a large population with a very well nourished  sense of victimhood  (the Irish Catholics) allowed in Mao’s words  the PIRA “guerrilla to move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea. “

But there are terrorist and terrorists. There are two  radical differences between PIRA and violent Islam.  PIRA were not driven by religious fanaticism (it was a Marxist organisation) and its members were drawn from communities which shared similar moral values to those of the British.  This meant that when the time came to make a peace  of sorts between Britain and Irish Republicans there was a great deal  of cultural similarity between the two parties.   The representatives of violent Islam, even those born and bred here, will have little fellow feeling  with or understanding of  the native British population.

The second and most important difference is that the  nature of  the PIRA and ISIS  end games. For PIRA it was a united Ireland. That was a genuinely possibility because the British government accepted that if Northern Ireland voted for union with the Irish Republic they could have it provided the Republic agreed. Although hardline members of PIRA did not want to make peace,  many PIRA members did , together with  a majority of ordinary republicans . Crucially, the republicans  in favour of peace could see it simply as a stepping stone to the unification of Ireland, not as a defeat for their cause.  In addition, the demographics of Northern Ireland were heading towards a Catholic and therefore largely republican majority by the time peace was formally made.  That also gave republicans hope.

Violent Islam does not have an end game which any Western government could concede either in  whole or in part. Its practitioners want the overthrow of Western society and the imposition of Islam.  There is no conception of compromise. If Britain existed under the control of such people it would be an unforgiving theocracy.  Because violent Islam is implacable,  no concession short of outright victory for violent Islam will end the violence.  If Western governments make concessions such as granting Sharia courts parity with civil courts violent Islam will simply pocket the bribe and march on towards the final end of total dominance.

Where does this leave the West?   It leaves the countries with large Muslim populations at perpetual risk from both terrorism and the likelihood of Western elites diluting their own cultural integrity by  attempting to appease Muslims by granting them more and more privileges. These  risks will  increase because Western Muslims  have higher  birth rates than native Western populations. In addition,  further substantial Muslim immigration  will probably occur because Western governments will try to placate Muslims by relaxing entry requirements and  border controls are always likely to be ineffective.  Black Western converts to Islam could also swell the numbers significantly.

Is there a silver lining or two amongst the Islamic clouds?   Well, at least the realities of the situation the liberal elite have created are becoming impossible to ignore. Most encouragingly, the concept of treason is suddenly back on the political agenda. This is fundamentally important because patriotism is not an optional extra but the glue which sticks a society together.  Yet t the storm cloud which cannot be dispersed is the immoveable fact of millions of Muslims living within Western societies  who harbour substantial numbers of people who are unquestioningly hostile to the countries in  which they  reside.  That is what rule by the politically correct devotees to internationalism have brought us, a huge and potentially very dangerous fifth column in our midst.  It has been an act of the most fundamental treason.