Project Fear is now caricaturing itself.  Is mighty Luxembourg to mobilise against Holland if the UK leaves the EU?  Is Spain to launch a new Armada? Will France and Germany suddenly drop sixty years of working together  building a political union because the UK has opted out of their constitutional construction?  Of course not. These are all peace loving democracies, tied together in the defence alliance of NATO, with a common interest in avoiding war.

If the UK stays in the EU will peace suddenly be restored to Ukraine, when it was the EU/Ukraine Agreement that provoked Russia into its illegal grab of Crimea? Will the EU learn from its blunders intervening in the former Yugoslavia where it did anything but keep the peace?

We should expect the next move to be concerted action to get the pound to fall, and to talk up any bad news about the UK economy. The Remainian government has had one attempt with the Bank of England to talk the pound down, only to see it rise from end February to last week as the polls moved more in favour of Brexit. They will probably try again. They are desperate to tell us anything bad about the Uk economy and then to blame fears of Brexit for it.

They have decided to contradict themselves on interest rates. They both tell us that mortgage rates will go up if we leave, and they tell us the Bank will cut interest rates on Brexit to deal with the short term uncertainties! If you are going to make up a good fib of fear, at least agree one and stick to it. Arguing on  both sides of the fears serves to remind people that they cannot believe a word they  say.

The Treasury, Bank, IMF and the other powerful bodies that now want to talk the pound down and scorn the UK should we leave are of course famous for their incompetence at forecasting the results of European economic policies. These were the organisations  who told the UK  to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism which caused a big recession. None of them forecast the damage their dangerous policy produced. They also favoured entering the Euro , and issued no warnings about the obvious damage to employment and output which the Euro would do to many of its members. They did not forecast the 2011 Euro crisis.

Do not believe a word of their bad forecasts. The US economy has slowed more than ours, so is that Brexit? The Chinese economy has slowed. Is that Brexit?  The oil price collapsed last year having a big impact – was that Brexit?

Of course not. The world economy is largely unaffected by the issue of whether we remain or stay. Our trade is not at risk. We will be better off out when we have our own money to spend on jobs and output here at home.

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.

 

 

 

Using Mr Osborne’s method of assessing economic loss we have already lost far more than he fears we might by belonging to the EU.  (The approx.  figure for losses  is based on current price levels and level of GDP). Just look at the losses we can directly blame on our membership:

1. Membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism forced on us by John Major, the CBI, the TUC and the Labour party. It led directly to a large recession, costing us 5% of our National Income, with losses in the years that followed.
2. Membership of the Common Fisheries policy, losing us a third of our fishing output and putting us into trade deficit on fish.
3. Forced premature closure of our coal fired power stations, and consequent loss of coalmines.
4. Loss of heavy industry as a result of high energy prices required by EU energy regulations.
5. Loss of export opportunities during Euro crisis of 2011, and over the long term thanks to slow growth in Euroland resulting from the currency scheme and its austerity policies.

 

There is no evidence that our growth rate increased as a result of our membership of the single market, and no favourable upward wobble in growth when they “completed” the single market in 1992 or widened it again in the years thereafter. This is not surprising as the “single market” is a set of complex and expensive rules and laws, not a proper free market. The growing complexity of EU single market measures coincides with the last decade when growth has been slower than before.

It would not be right to blame the EU on its own for the banking crash of 2008, as this also occurred in the USA. The EU version of the banking crash has however turned out to be deeper and longer lasting than the US version thanks to the ill constructed Euro.

 

It is right to blame the EU for the recession  of 1992 when the European currency scheme swept aside any possible benefits of the single market completion that year.

The latest work programme from the EU shows little let up in the manic energy to regulate, legislate and continue its wish to impose its will on most of our government activities and law making.  There are 38 proposals in energy, 66 in so called financial stability and many others from everything from competition to agriculture and from fishing to the digital economy. There are no nooks and crannies of our daily lives free from further EU intrusion.

 

I wish to concentrate on some of the measures in the 39 proposals for Home affairs. The secret is in the name. These matters used to be regarded as central to a member state’s own powers and self definition. The UK used to opt out of all these things, and used to insist on them being undertaken by unanimity to protect state independence and national democratic control. Now under Mrs May and with the active encouragement of Labour and the Lib Dems more and more of our controls over borders, entry requirements, visas, serious crime, terrorism and the movement of people is passing to the EU.

 

Central to this latest drive to EU control is the issue of migration, refugees and border controls. The EU is waiving visa requirements for Turkey and Ukraine. We have been assured this does not apply to the UK.  It does mean however, if more people abuse the visa free system to establish themselves in another EU country they could  become eligible in due course to come to the UK under freedom of movement rules.

 

Of more concern are the proposals to have an EU wide resettlement system  and the proposed revisions to asylum application processing. Under 2016/Home 078 we are promised “greater international solidarity of the EU towards countries hosting large numbers of refugees”.  Is the UK opted out, as it claims to be an EU wide system? Will we see quotas re-emerge? How will people be made to move from one country to another, and how do you require them to stay in the country the EU allocates if they wish to move elsewhere?

The intentions of the EU are obvious. They wish to reimpose common frontiers and move away from all asylum applications taking place in the first country of arrival, as that puts too much stress on Italy and Greece. The EU wants the UK to take part in a sharing of the pressures. The UK government says it has kept out of it, but the work programme is for an EU wide scheme. Even if the UK manages to defends its opt out i n due course, once people have been accepted into the Schengen area they soon qualify for freedom of movement to come to the UK if they wish.

2016/Home 075 states their will be new rules over which country is to handle an application for asylum when a migrant seeks asylum on entering an EU country. The old rule stated they had to seek asylum in the first EU country they reached. This new system implies  “fair sharing” of asylum requests. Again it suggests some kind of quota system.

 

The EU is taking more and powers over borders and migration. Many of its members wish it to do so. If the UK stays in its position is going to become untenable. Mrs May has given great ground to the EU in other Home affairs surrounding criminal justice. More power could go soon on borders if we do not leave.