Author: johnredwood

On Saturday I had my first chance to canvass door to door just on Brexit, with the local elections and the Police Commissioner elections behind us. It was very different to canvassing in support of individual candidates for office.

Many more people wanted to answer the door and engage in conversation on the topic. Many more wished to test out their current thoughts on UK membership of the EU. More were grateful that I had troubled to call, and were very friendly to us  volunteers delivering the leaflets and putting the case. This probably reflects the obvious point that none of us are motivated by self interest in the way a candidate and party seeking  office is partly motivated by the wish to take on a job. An MP or Councillor campaigning on one side of the referendum is clearly running the risk of annoying some voters when he or she need not do so, because he or she believes in the cause they are  supporting.

The national polls seem to be right in several respects. People who want to leave feel much more strongly about it than most of those who might vote to stay. They are more determined in their vote and more determined to vote. Older voters are more likely to be for leave than younger voters, though there are plenty of young voters who want out. Few people who remain like the EU or  buy into the idea of political, economic and monetary union. Most who say they may vote to stay do so out of fear that the economy could be damaged, reflecting the lies and absurd fears put about by the Remain side.

Most people who want out that I spoke to majored their case on the wish to restore control over our own laws and decisions. The best reason I heard was someone who began by saying he was a businessman and took a  business  view of the issue. He had found his own business had been damaged by an EU law, so he now saw the EU as unhelpful, leading in his case directly to a loss of jobs and activity.

Many of the  possible Remain voters are unsure of their position and open to persuasion. Many do not like many features of the organisation and want to stay opted out of much of it as possible. All of you who believe in leaving need to help us get out the leaflets and talk to the voters. There are  not many days left before the postal votes at the end of this month, and many people who would appreciate a call and a talk. If the media wont give us the airtime to explain how we will be better off out, we need to do it door by door.

(Apologies for late posting – I tried to post this under local pages as well and it seems it only appeared there. )

I wish Mr Khan well as London’s new Mayor. He said the right things on taking office when he said he  wishes to govern for all Londoners, and recognised the great strengths of the city he now administers. He then went on to spoil it by attacking the Conservatives after beating them and falling out further with Mr Corbyn.

I confess that I did not  help Mr Goldsmith in the closing days of his London campaign, despite plenty of requests to do so. I have known Zac for several years during his time as an MP and always found him good company with a gentle approach and good Eurosceptic views. I did not understand the nature of the campaign fought in his name with its heavy negative bias and its constant challenges to the Labour candidate. I did not wish to go campaigning on that basis. Clearly it did not work, with Conservatives  starting from behind and remaining well behind. The incumbents first contrived to look like the challengers, and then to look like  losers.

As a part time resident of London who works a lot in Westminster I wanted to hear a positive vision of what London will look like in  a few years time. The issues surely  were transport, planning, the environment and taxation. What will the Mayor do about the shortage of road  capacity for cars, vans,  buses, lorries and cycles?  How will the tube be expanded? When will there be proper 24 hour running? When will all trains be air conditioned with larger carriages? How will London create more affordable homes to buy and to rent?  What will happen to the Council tax? Is there a working plan to improve air quality? These questions Mr Khan now has to answer. How can he afford his fares freeze and the large sums needed to expand capacity on the tube? How will he prevent the streets of London from snarling up under the pressures of reduced roadway, more roadworks and more incursions onto the carriageway from the myriad of building projects?

Mr Cameron the morning after the results suggested that they showed how campaigning in the centre ground as One nation Conservatives gave the party a good boost from third to second in Scotland. This was a curious observation. The crucial day  before the elections in the Commons Mr Cameron chose to highlight the London Mayoral race, not the Scottish Parliamentary elections. His message then did  not seem to be a One Nation emollient plea for the centre ground, and did  not mention what we might do to make London better under Mayor Goldsmith. I think that was a missed opportunity. Instead he concentrated on angry challenges to Mr Khan, who emerged in many electors eyes unscathed from the attacks.

There was something for all the main parties to be pleased about in Thursday’s election results, to get their spokesmen and women through those painful interviews analysing the outcome.  Labour can point to winning London for the first time in 8 years, and to holding more of its English Councils than expected. UKIP can point to wins in the Welsh Assembly, and to coming a good second in two Labour held by election contests. The Conservatives can be pleased to have overtaken Labour as the official Opposition party in Scotland, and to holding most of their English Council seats. The Lib Dems can point to a few wins after their mauling in 2015. The SNP can rejoice at a third victory in  a row in the Scottish Parliament, though they fell just short of an overall majority of seats this time.

Underneath these predictable statements lies a deep unease in all the parties. The truth is that with the advent of a strong SNP, more nationalist sentiment,  more effective challenges from the Greens and UKIP alongside the Lib Dems, UK politics is a lot more competitive than it was in the days of two party dominance. No overall control in Councils and Parliaments and Assemblies without majorities are now much more likely. This in turn can add to disillusion with politics. As more governing bodies fall under the control of officials and follow the hand me downs of EU requirements and regulations, a greater sense of frustration and powerlessness arises amongst electors. This in turn encourages people to vote for untried or challenger parties more, which in turn creates more elected bodies without proper political control.

Even if the two main parties emerged again who could provide an effective challenge to each other and alternate in power, they would find it difficult to be in charge given the extent of EU interference and control over our laws and policies. Some  majority Council groups struggle to provide good strategic leadership and policy direction, falling back on official guidance or being advised into accepting the conventional wisdom of Brussels and Whitehall even when commonsense tells electors and Councillors that consensus is wrong or unhelpful.

In a democracy people usually prefer it if an elected group is in charge. They either do a good job and respond to public opinion in a helpful way, or they can be dismissed. Too many layers of government , too much confusion over what is an EU requirement, what Whitehall wants and what a Council is entitled to do leads to endless unproductive arguments and to people angry or dismissive of the inability of their local or national government to get obvious things done and problems sorted.

Taking out the whole layer of EU government would transform many things for the better. It remove the excuse or the reality that EU laws and requirements prevent us doing what we want.  It would leave open  the issue of the correct relationship between local and national power, where England still needs a devolution settlement to match Scotland. In Scotland the new Conservative opposition has to learn how to make the Scottish government truly accountable for the many things it does now have the power to do. For a stable constitutional settlement to emerge, Scotland has to spend more time discussing how things are managed and working, and less time discussing who should manage them.

The last stand of the Republican establishment behind Ted Cruz turned out to be futile. Ted Cruz’s small c conservative platform has not normally recommended itself to many in the Republican establishment. Their belated endorsement of Mr Cruz looked like a reluctant wish to salvage the pride of established politicians against the insurgent outsider. The rank and file Republicans turned out in numbers in Indiana to tell Mr Cruz not to bother.

If you compare the policy platform offered by Mr Cruz with Mr Trump’s it makes an interesting contrast. Mr Cruz highlighted the need to keep “under God” in the oath of allegiance, and made “restoring the constitution” his number one issue. Second choice was defending the right to carry arms and third was a Trump lite policy of building a “wall that works” to improve border security. Jobs, opportunity and tax were all lumped together as his eighth area of interest, after religion, defence, standing up for Israel, and abortion. Mr Cruz was trying to put together a Republican coalition of the gun lobby and  the Christian lobby. There were simply not enough of these conservative Republicans interested in these rather narrow issues to give their “unity” candidate  enough votes to win.

Mr Trump’s slogans of “Make America great again” and we’ll be winning again were designed to lift spirits, to appeal to the many, and allow people to place their own ambitions and expectations on them. The policy platform behind the slogans concentrates on major tax cuts for all income levels, uniting rich and poor in wanting a Trump Presidency to leave them more of their own money to spend.

Now Hillary tries to take the full mantle of the establishment, and tries to win over Republicans who do not like Mr Trump. Fashion and the commentariat will assume she will win. She has to watch out in case Mr Trump’s  positive messages and tax cutting promises  start to take her working voters away. They  too might find the Trump enthusiasm and optimism infectious, and may buy the idea that a non politician could be a breath of fresh air.

I do not of course have a view on who I want to win, as that is a mater entirely for US voters to decide.

Yesterday we raised in Parliament the issue of the EU’s wish to abolish the Dublin convention.  Anne Main MP asked an Urgent Question of the government. We wanted to know how asylum claims would be handled under the revised law the EU is discussing.

The Dublin Convention states that the first country receiving an asylum seeker in the EU should normally handle the asylum claim. The idea was to work with national authorities rather than overriding them all the time. Now the EU thinks that it ought to introduce a system of burden sharing, where the states most likely to receive asylum seekers – Greece, Italy, Spain etc – can require other member states to take a quota or share of the new arrivals and to process their asylum requests and offer those successful a home.

The Minister explained that the UK could opt out of this new arrangement, though he fell short of promising the UK definitely would opt out. He said the UK would still work under the Dublin approach, and regard its duty as being to handle asylum requests only from people arriving first in the UK, or people with family connections. He saw that if the EU abolishes the Dublin  Convention to replace it with a quota system then the new EU law will somehow have to keep the Dublin approach just for the UK. He seemed to think that would be the case. We will need to see the language of the proposals as the negotiations develop. It would make the new law more complex.

It is all a timely reminder of just how fluid fundamental matters are in the EU. The UK supports the Dublin rules, but does not seem to think it can stop major revision to the system. Once again the UK will be fighting from the sidelines for special treatment. Ahead of the referendum the rest of the EU will doubtless allow the Uk to imply nothing need change in our arrangements. But what would happen if we voted to stay in? The other countries probably think the Uk should do more and should help them in their hour of need by accepting a substantial quota under the new rules they are designing.

I asked the Minister about the extracts I published from EU documents yesterday on the question of the Turkish borders. I did not get an answer to my queries within the reply of the Minister. .

This week sees the EU offer visa free access to Turkey for the Schengen countries. In return the EU has set Turkey 72 tasks to improve her border controls, visa and passport handling and  more general human rights improvements along with better access to asylum for those fleeing terror.  Turkey has borders with Syria, Iraq and Iran. The EU, in an effort to stop illegals coming by sea from Turkey to Greece, now has to be more concerned about Turkey’s borders with the Middle East. .

The UK government claims this has no impact on us, as we are not in Schengen. That is not true. The EU is paying for some of the improvements to Turkish migration handling and border security. The UK will be expected to pay her share of the costs through the EU budget – there is no separate Schengen area budget. The UK will be affected as more Turkish people enter the Schengen area and maybe gain citizen rights within the EU, allowing them entry as residents to the UK.

Reading the documents the EU is seeking to make Turkish systems and policies the same as EU ones. It is clearly preparatory to full Turkish membership of the EU, which is underway at a slow pace with a formal Turkish application. This border agreement could result in some speeding up of the full application, as it deals with many of the issues the EU has found difficult about Turkish membership in the past. The 72 measures Turkey has to implement for the visa free movements includes the right to a fair trial, freedom of expression and no discrimination against people on racial or religious grounds. This week will see the EU say in terms that Turkey has gone far enough in fulfilling these requests to justify visa free  status, whilst no doubt urging further improvement.

The Turkish authorities have to offer judicial protection to asylum seekers, and a proper appeals process. At the same time the EU is assisting Turkey to strengthen her borders with Syria, Iraq and Iran. This according to the EU official report includes “ditch excavation, lighting, wire entanglement, trellis fence, road maintenance and construction and modular wall construction”. Turkey is required to negotiate readmission agreements with 14 countries including Afghanistan and Algeria, and to impose airport transit visas on travellers from 18 countries.

In 2013 25,121 “irregular” arrivals of people were recorded by Turkey.In 2015 this shot up to 888,457. Turkey is housing many Syrian refugees and others and wants help from the EU neighbours. As a result the EU’s border controls now require strong controls on the Turkish borders, and the UK along with all other member states has to help design and pay for a better border system for Turkey.