My tolerance for fools is a tad limited these days, so it took Boiling Frog to pick up the ultimate stupidity from David Davis in his speech yesterday, the "money quote" being: "If we do not like a new law, Parliament should be able to reject it".

Davis calls in aid the corpus of law on justice and home affairs, where variously we have opt-ins and opt-outs, allowing something of an à la carte approach to the European Union. But that is the exception rather than the rule – the "colleagues" could hardly permit this to apply to the broad sweep of EU competences.

On this basis, Davis denies, as we would aver, that an à la carte approach is impossible. All he will concede is that " negotiations will be difficult", the ultimate arrogance of a man who deal with the realities of the EU treaties.

View full article here

Richard has again asked me to update the forum on our 3rd meeting held at Leamington Spa on Saturday.

First, let me quickly recap, 33 of us met at Harrogate in July. The results of which, after further debate and discussion via this blog, produced our 6 Demands for better governance.

Before our meeting in Leamington it was agreed by a few of the original supporters that there would be merit in a much smaller group meeting in September to iron out a few issues before our next meeting. As a result 5 of us met near Sutton Coldfield, which did not include Richard as he had another appointment, and discussed and agreed to the outline for our meeting in November.
Last Saturday 17th November 27 of us met at the conference centre at Woodland Grange just outside Leamington Spa. Those attending included 20 original attendees from Harrogate and 7 newcomers recruited via this forum. Out of interest, of the 13 absentees from Harrogate 8 still broadly agree and support our demands but were unable to attend for a variety of reasons. Only 5 have since decided that our direction of travel is not to their liking.

Two final additions to the attendees was a journalist and cameraman which had been arranged by Peter Troy, who has been handling Richard’s media PR for 12 years. The aim was to film various aspects of the day to be included in a film, to explain the early stages of the growth of our movement, for use on U-tube and on our website when up and running.

In the morning under my chairmanship our aim in the first session, led by David Phipps, was to discuss and ratifying our 6 Demands which we achieved. We also discussed in brief outline our draft pamphlet which Richard had produced and various suggestions and updates will be made as a result. Our next session discussed our future Organisation with a contribution from Drew Belobaba on the Tea Party’s organic structure and then Andy Baxter led the final session before lunch on suggestions for our future Strategy. Two very important decisions were reached during the morning. First we intend to form the Harrogate Agenda into an Ltd Company with a formal Company Board and Advisory Panel which would become the Executive authority for the movement and second through the use of independent franchises we would market our ‘product’ to the country.

After lunch we then considered the whole issue of a future referendum on the EU which we had not had time for in Harrogate. This portion of the day was lead by Mr EU Referendum himself with a contribution by Simon Richards from The Freedom Association who updated us on their cross party ‘Better off Out’ campaign. Richard clearly explained 3 things - First the reasons why any referendum was extremely unlikely before 2018, second how the only sensible solution to leaving the EU was via Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and third that there was a lot to play for as the No Campaign would be eligible for around £6 million of government money.

After a final break for tea the day was brought to a close after AOB finishing at 4.00pm.

This is probably the last of this type of meeting with Advisory Panel meetings being the likely format for the future with local, regional and national public meetings flowing from this as individual franchisees are recruited and trained to operate within their local areas.

Finally then those involved thus far have given birth to the Harrogate Agenda but before it can walk we must ensure all the many and varied central building blocks are in place before we present and launch ourselves at the public. Let me stress this is only the 3rd step on a journey of 1000 miles and we must proceed with caution and never court the media but let them find us. For what we need to avoid at all costs is becoming a ‘flash in the pan’ like so many movements in history before us.

The Harrogate Agenda is in this for the long haul however long it takes.

Leaving the EU would be difficult, but changing the way we are governed seems to me to be even more difficult. Therefore, although I can see that our governance is far from ideal, I would still like to leave the political side of the EU as it would allow our government to repeal many laws we don't need and also stop the flow of even more from Brussels.

I second that, saved me posting the same.

Richard, at the risk of repeating myself, it is my belief that it has been so long since we governed ourselves, we have forgotten how to do so. Once we have cast ourselves free from the EU yoke a significant amount of time will be needed to relearn how it's done

Do you really want our legislators learning on the job?

Was it not Ghandi who said:
" Better our bad Government than your Government" when addressing Mountbatten during
the independence negotiations for India?

It's not ideal, but how else are they going to learn if they've forgotten?

One thing which was touched on only briefly at Leamington Spa but which I believe is of vital importance if the Charter is to gain support, is attracting those of the 'Left' to our cause.

Our enemies will be very quick to label the campaign 'right wing' .. and indeed the make-up of all the attendees and supporters thus far do seem to bear this out. Nothing wrong with that, and of course the ideals which the charter espouses quite obviously transcend mere party politics, but our opponents will major strongly on 'perceptions', I fear.

This worries me a great deal.

How are we going to counter this?

Jo

That's a cracking answer, ELF. In a nutshell!


Me too.

The only thing I'd add to that is that the constitution of the demos is central to that sentiment. It has to be a demos which itself commands one's respect, one that is restricted specifically to "ones's own" and is not sullied (destroyed, effectively) by the inclusion of others with whom one has nothing in common and for whom one has no affinity, or less than no affinity in many many cases.

To be clear on this, I do not recognise, let alone respect, any majority achieved only with the help of aliens. That's because I do not recognise aliens as being part of any demos to which I belong.

To put this another way, without that differentiation—that restriction on who can be part of the demos—the very notion of a demos becomes meaningless, and the world may just as well plump for a one-world government.

If your name is patel, khan, or ojibwe, then there is no "us" — there's only me; the rest of you can fcuk off. You're not my fellow countrymen, you never can be and you never will be.

But even within "one's own", forming a demos can be problematic. For example, I regard all Tommies, Jocks, Paddies and Dais as "my own" and the four present so-called nations of the British Isles an artificial division of what is naturally one people. But if Scotsmen, for example, do not share that sentiment and see themselves as a separate people from the rest of us then it isn't for me to contradict them, much as I think they are mistaken. I shall recognise their desire to split as a decision entirely for them. Of course, that cuts all ways. In particular, Englishmen are accorded the same.

Finally, I'd like to remark on the ludicrousness of the situation we have now where, in the realm of a Britain fcuked up no end by marxoid peecee bots, we have a political class who very casually, implicitly even, acknowledge the legitimacy of (some) Scotsmen wanting to form an independent nation of their own yet would force turd-world aliens on us as part of our own. This contradiction is GLARING. I mean IT IS FCUKING GLARING.

And it is not one that can remain 'unaddressed'.