My final speech in Strasbourg – Two-seat parliament a perfect metaphor for the hubris and futility of EU project

The European parliament: an apology

“Signing the retirement documents in the European parliament with Secretary-General Klaus Welle on May 31^st”.

I find myself in the rather unusual position of having to offer an apology to the European parliament, following the Guardian story “MEP resigns amid investigation into alleged misuse of funds”  on June 13^th.

Just to re-cap, the parliament approached me some months ago with questions about the work of two of my UK staffers, and asked for evidence that they had in fact done the work for which they were payed.  The parliament is of course perfectly entitled to ask such questions, though I must admit that I felt somewhat offended that they felt the need to do so.

I submitted substantial dossiers of evidence of work done in both cases.  A few weeks ago I heard that they had cleared the case of my Press Officer Nick Tite, but I continued to await the outcome on the other case, Paul Oakden.  On reading the Guardian story, and indeed the story in the Metro,  I naturally assumed that the parliament had decided against the case of Paul Oakden, that there would be a letter to me to that effect in the system, and that a copy had been leaked in advance to the Guardian and formed the basis of their story.

I was away from home from June 13^th to 22^nd, and expected to find the parliament letter on my return.  But it was not there.  Further enquiries showed that the parliament had indeed reviewed the dossier I had provided, that the Secretary-General Klaus Welle had referred it to the parliament Legal Services, and that they had reported back to the Sec-Gen on June 19^th – nearly a week after the Guardian report.

I should have been surprised if the parliament had reached a negative conclusion, because the evidence I had submitted was substantial and incontrovertible.  It included, for example, hard copy evidence of 800+ phone and e-mail contacts between me and Paul Oakden in 2016.  Given that Paul was contracted to work on a half-time basis for me, that amounts to an average of at least seven contacts per working day.  This would be an inconceivable level had we not been working together on an intense and continuous basis.

I should have been surprised if a negative letter had been leaked, but not too surprised.  On the one hand, the parliament is engaged in hostile and politically-motivated “investigations” into a number of Eurosceptic MEPs.  It is judge, jury and executioner in its own cause, and it has little sympathy for those who oppose the EU project.  It also has form in leaking letters to the press before the individuals concerned know what is going on.  I suppose it is just conceivable that a draft letter had been prepared in the parliament, and leaked to the Guardian, before the Sec-Gen’s final decision – but it seems unlikely.

So I am forced to the conclusion that the Guardian, in a fit of malice and opportunism, took the story of my retirement and chose to conflate it with the months-old story that that the parliament had launched an investigation into my staff, with the objective of implying that I was leaving the parliament as a result of the investigation.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As I have explained elsewhere, I had been pondering retirement for years, I had decided last year to retire this year, and indeed I signed the relevant papers on May 31^st this year, before the UK General Election and a fortnight before the Guardian story.

So my suggestion that the parliament had leaked a new letter to the Guardian in June appears to be mistaken, and I apologise for the misunderstanding.

While the Guardian was careful to put the quote marks in the right place, and talk about “alleged” misuse of funds, the Metro was less careful.  Its front-page headline read UKIP MEP quits over “misuse of £100,000 of EU money”.  It has placed the quote marks so that the misuse of money is merely alleged, but the causal connection between the retirement and the financial allegations is asserted as fact.  Of course it is no such thing.  The claim is false and defamatory.  I suspect the sub-editor who wrote the headline may come to regret it.

Meantime the flood of vitriol on social media continues.  Many media trolls are clearly no more than abusive idiots.  But I noticed that my Nottingham sparring partner Professor Michael Merrifield Tweeted a reference to my “retiring in disgrace”.  He should know better.  His comment is clearly actionable.  (Don’t worry, Michael – I’ll be happy to settle for an apology and a £5000 donation to the GWPF).

Of course I still await the final outcome, which should clear the case of Paul Oakden as it has cleared the case of Nick Tite.  If it does not, I shall certainly appeal, and if the appeal fails I will consider other avenues to clear my name.  In the course of a long career I have been criticised rightly or wrongly for many things, but I have always been scrupulously honest with money, and I am angry that between them the parliament and their friends in the media have chosen to air these false allegations just as I move on to a well-earned retirement.

COP21 climate agreement: An eye-watering amount of money for virtually no return

£100,000 mis-spent?

Today (June 14^th) the Guardian carries a report that the European parliament proposes to demand £100,000 from me for staff expenses which were allegedly mis-spent.  Naturally I have had many media bids from journalists who want more information.  And I’ve had to tell them that in respect of this alleged demand for £100,000, I know no more than they do.  I have had no communication whatever from the parliament on the question.

This may seem surprising, but it is not the first time that some allegation of this type has emerged through a press leak, with no information from the parliament to the individuals concerned.  Indeed the parliament has a technique where it deliberately leaks speculative allegations to friendly journalists, and then uses the consequent media reports as a basis for a hostile enquiry.  This procedure is totally improper and prejudicial, but it seems to be common practice.

The Guardian also seeks to link the £100,000 story to my resignation.  But I signed resignation papers on May 31^st, and my first inkling of the Guardian story was an e-mail yesterday morning from Jennifer Rankin, a Guardian journalist.  I immediately sent the Guardian e-mail to Klaus Welle, the parliament Secretary General, demanding an explanation, but so far I have no reply.

The story (such as it is) is a follows.  The parliament indicated to me at the turn of the year that it was concerned about payments to two of my UK staff – though it was not at all clear why they had such concerns.  Nonetheless, I prepared and submitted two very substantial dossiers of evidence supporting the work done by the employees.  After some time and several enquiries, I was able to establish that they had cleared one case, related to my regional Press Officer.

The other case relates to my Constituency Manager Paul Oakden.  Paul joined me shortly after I moved to UKIP in March 2012, and had been a hugely committed and effective Constituency Manager until his resignation in December last.  Initially he worked for me, or for me plus my regional colleague Margot Parker MEP.  In January 2015, Margot decided to make other arrangements, and I put Paul on a half-time contract, and reduced his salary accordingly by 50%.  Paul naturally decided to seek other employment for the remaining 50% of his time, and took a second half-time contract with another employer, as he was perfectly entitled to do under UK employment law.  The second contract was with UKIP.

Paul’s duties (for me) included running a busy office in Market Harborough, managing two or three administrative staff, dealing with or supervising correspondence with constituents, organisations, companies, pressure groups, charities and NGOs who phoned, or e-mailed, or visited the office in person.  He had overall responsibility for my UK diary and managed my events in the region.  He oversaw relations with the media and accompanied me on media meetings.  He and I had regular review meetings at weekends in the region, in Market Harborough or at the Costa Coffee Shop in Lutterworth.  He also occasionally accompanied me on overseas missions.  He was even my driver of last resort to get me to the airport when my car was in for service.

I do not issue my mobile phone number widely, but Paul’s number was on a notice board outside the office.  He was available to constituents 24/7.  He was also available to me 24/7.  Because of the nature of parliamentary work we often had to talk outside normal working hours, at anti-social times, and over weekends and so on.

In the dossier I presented to the parliament I provided hard-copy records of phone and e-mail exchanges during 2016.  These were incomplete.  The parliament’s own phone records, for example, only went back six months, while earlier parts of the e-mail record were no longer available.  Despite repeated efforts we have still been unable to obtain Paul’s phone records for 2016, and he frequently called me.  Yet despite these limitations, we identified around 830 proven contacts in the year.  There are typically around 240 working days in the year, and Paul was nominally working half-time (though I believe he did more than that).  But 50% of 240 days is 120 days, so we have hard evidence of an average of at least seven contacts every working day.  If the records were complete, I would expect the figure to be around ten contacts per working day.

Against this background, to suggest that Paul wasn’t working for me is simply risible.

An affront to natural justice: The problem, of course, is that the parliament is judge, jury and executioner in its own cause.  In a criminal case, the onus of proof is on the prosecution.  In a civil case, we deal with a balance of probabilities.  But in the European parliament, they demand proof beyond doubt that work was done – in other words, the rule is guilty until proven innocent.  Had I known that such an enquiry might arise, I might have required monthly reports and so on.  But I come from a business background, not a bureaucratic background.  Rather than pile up interminable reports, I prefer to hire good people and delegate.

There is an appeals procedure in the European parliament, but it amounts to little more than asking the same people who made the first decision to confirm it.  And the great majority of bodies in the parliament are dominated by pro-Europeans who would find against eurosceptics on an automatic ideological basis.  It may be time to consider other legal options.

 

 

 

EU energy labelling: confusing consumers and creating problems for industry

Five Live debate on Trump and the Climate Deal

Discussing Donald Trump and the Climate Deal on the Stephen Nolan Show. Click here.

Just under three hours in.

 

The IRA and ISIL

There is a legitimate parallel to be drawn between the IRA and ISIL (or ISIS, or Daesh, or whatever we’re calling it this week). Indeed I have cited the parallel myself.   We should be careful to recognise that while most IRA terrorists were Irish Catholics, they represented only a tiny percentage of the Irish Catholic community, most of whom rejected violence.  It was vitally important not to stereotype all Irish Catholics as terrorists.

The same is true of ISIL.  The great majority of British Muslims are decent law-abiding people, who are appalled by the violence in Manchester and more recently in London.  We can and must condemn the terrorists and their fellow-travellers while taking care not to stereotype the whole Muslim community.

But at one point the parallel breaks down.  The objective of the IRA was essentially political.  They were not fighting for their religion.  They were fighting for a united Ireland.  Now I personally reject that objective for a number of reasons – and I absolutely reject and repudiate the IRA’s abhorrent methods.  But I can at least recognise that Irish unification is a reasonable and legitimate objective for an Irish nationalist, provided it is pursued through a peaceful political process.

But this is not the case with ISIL.  Admittedly it is difficult to get a clear and coherent statement of ISIL’s objectives, and difficult to see how mowing down civilians with a hired van, or stabbing people at random, could serve such objectives.

However we can reasonably say that their objective is to impose their own Mediæval interpretation of Islam on the whole world, by force.  In the process they are happy to kill and torture and behead their opponents on an industrial scale  They will cheerfully kill any non-believer, but they are especially keen to kill apostates, blasphemers, Coptic Christians and homosexuals.  And they want to lock women into subservience to (Muslim) men, denying them their fundamental rights.

They want a global Caliphate.  This is not a political objective – or to the extent that it could be, it is not a legitimate political objective. It harks back to the early days of Islam, when it was imposed by fire and the sword.  In the case of the IRA, we could oppose the terrorists without setting ourselves against Catholicism.  But to oppose ISIL, we must be prepared to condemn not the Muslim faith as a whole, but at least this version of it – a version which is surreptitiously promoted in mosques and madrassas in the UK.

Earlier today I Tweeted: “It is quite wrong to stereotype all Muslims as terrorists. But it is equally wrong to deny that ISIL is inspired by Islam”.  In half an hour it had had forty re-Tweets and 4,000 views.  I’ve also taken the usual stick from the usual trolls, but I stand by the Tweet.

Trump and climate change

BBC Radio 4 World At One on Donald Trump and climate change – 13 minutes in

Road-map to the EU’s bio-paradise

On Thursday morning in Brussels, I attended a breakfast briefing on the Commission’s plans for “A bio-economy for Europe”.  It was billed as follows: “In 2012, the European Commission adopted the strategy ‘Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe’ — including agriculture, forestry, fisheries food and chemicals — stressed the importance of the bioeconomy sector as it provides an annual turnover in Europe of € 2 trillion employing around 22 million people. Forest-based bioeconomy is an important player in the picture as the forest-based industries have a production value of € 365 billion providing more than 3 million jobs”.

We heard a lot about the circular economy, the green economy, the blue economy (don’t ask), and so on.  Forests and other bio-products can be used not just for energy and biomass, but for chemicals, cosmetics, textiles (I happen to own a sports jacket made from bamboo), construction materials and other uses.  Mushrooms, blueberries and other food crops can be grown in forests.  The opportunities are endless.

Apparently the 21^st century economy will be powered by wind, and we will have wooden houses (each ton of concrete saved represents two tons of CO₂ emissions, they said).  It would be unkind to point out that these two technologies (wind power and wood construction), far from being ultra-modern, are millennia old.

After interminable speeches from forest-related interests, I managed to get a word in edgeways:

“I think everyone in this room this morning will be gratified to reflect that today’s elevated level of atmospheric CO₂ means more plant growth, higher crop yields and faster bio-mass formation.  But I fear that there are some conflicting trends in the use of forestry products.  I was recently approached by the European chip-board industry.  You will recognise that wood-chip-board is a key construction material, with high insulation properties, and will become even more important if we build more wooden houses.  

“Yet the industry is facing problems.  Previously it was the main user of forest waste from saw-mills – the branches too small to be used as timber.  But now, with its basic raw material in demand from the bio-fuels sector, the price of this forest waste has increased and is undermining the chipboard industry.

“I have been following these issues for all my eighteen years in the parliament.  Ten years ago, we thought that bio-fuels were the silver bullet to slay the dragon of CO₂ emissions and global warming.  Then we started to realise that the husbandry of bio-fuel crops, plus their transportation and processing, required considerable energy inputs, undermining their emissions savings.  Later yet, we started to worry about ILUC, the indirect land use change consequent upon the allocation of agricultural land for bio-fuel crops.  Factoring this in, we found that the savings achieved by biofuels ranged from derisory to negative.

“An example from my own country, the UK.  We used to have a large coal-fired power station, called Drax.  You may have heard of it.  In a grand green gesture, it was converted to bio-mass and wood chip.  So now we cut down mature forests in the USA, and we chip the wood (a very energy-intensive process).  We truck the wood-chip to the port, we transport it across the Atlantic in diesel-powered ships, and we truck it or rail it from the UK port to the power station.  Several studies reportedly suggest that the net savings in CO₂ are derisory – and the power station produces less power than before, at significantly higher cost.  This is gesture politics run mad.

I think we need to take great care that our bio-fuel initiatives do actually achieve the objectives we set for them.

There was no point (on this day when President Trump has pulled out of the Paris Climate Deal) in raising the point that cutting CO₂emissions is pointless anyway.  They already knew my views on that.

EU energy rules: Cat’s cradle or dog’s dinner?

Earlier this week I attended a dinner-debate in Brussels on the EU’s proposals for energy efficiency targets.  The plans are marked (like most EU plans) by overwhelming complexity, and several speakers made a good case that the proposals would have far greater impact on poorer member-states with relatively lower capita energy consumption, than on wealthier member-states.

I raised my concerns about another aspect.  Of course no one would argue against energy efficiency in a broad sense.  But the objective of all EU energy policy is to reduce emissions of CO₂.  I question whether that in itself should be a high-priority objective, but let’s take it as read for the moment.

The EU has created a huge range of initiatives which aim to support this objective.  We have renewables targets, emissions targets, the Emissions Trading Scheme, plus other “instruments” (as they like to call them) like subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewables obligations, capacity payments and (in the UK at least) a carbon floor price.  These overlapping measures frequently create both conflicts and market distortions.  They are not technologically neutral.  For example, nuclear power contributes powerfully to achieving emissions targets, but fails to help with the the renewables targets.

One might be justified in describing this morass of legislation a cat’s cradle, if not a dog’s dinner.

In my contribution, I pointed out that green measures had already driven up energy prices in the EU to a level where they are undermining competitiveness, and driving jobs, businesses and investment off-shore.  I mentioned that before politics, I had had a real job running real businesses, and I remembered very well that the issue of energy costs frequently featured at board meetings.  Even then, commercial organisations already had an urgent imperative to achieve energy efficiency.  Today, with the cost of energy so much higher, that imperative is even stronger.

So I presented my killer dichotomy.  Either:

1     If an energy efficiency measure is commercially viable – that is, it if provides a commercial pay-back – then an incentive already exists to implement it, and the proposed EU measure is redundant.  Or

2     If such a measure is not commercially viable, then enforcing it through EU policy or targets will damage the business concerned and further undermine EU competitiveness.

So the efficiency target is either redundant, or it is damaging.  Which is it?  What was the view of the panel?  I am still waiting for the answer.

Election debate 2017

Click here to see me taking part in the the Election 2017 debate for the East Midlands on BBC TV

 

Enemies of the Farmer?

 

Discussing the black grass problem with Lincolnshire farmers

“Friends of the Earth” are at it again.  This time they’re warning farmers of the dreadful loss of income after Brexit, when they get no more CAP funding. “Lincolnshire farmers could be at risk of losing more than £128 million after Brexit”.

They helpfully break down the figures with spurious exactitude, by constituency, with Louth & Horncastle facing the biggest hit at £33 million.

This is typical scaremongering from “Friends of the Earth”.  The government has formally committed to maintain agricultural funding for at least two years after Brexit, and there is a broad political consensus that agriculture is vitally important for food security, for our balance of payments, and for the maintenance of the British countryside and landscape which we all love.

There is a widespread belief that EU agricultural support is very generous.  In fact broad comparisons with other countries around the world show that the EU is about in the middle of the pack of advanced economies in terms of percentage of GDP devoted to agriculture.

While in an ideal world we might prefer a free-market model, the fact is that something like half of farm incomes come from farm support.  We cannot expect our farmers to compete successfully in world markets unless they have support broadly comparable to that in other advanced economies.

We should recall that Britain had a perfectly good farm support system before we joined the EU, and we will have a perfectly good farm support system after we leave.  We will also hopefully have a much simpler regulatory system designed for the UK, rather than the EU’s massively bureaucratic approach.  We want farmers to be out raising crops and cattle – not sitting indoors filling in compliance forms.

It is simplistic scaremongering for “Friends of the Earth” to look at current levels of subsidy and claim they are at risk.  They’re not so much Friends of the Earth – more Enemies of the Farmer.

Can we do more than light candles?

The vigil in Manchester last night was undeniably moving.  The assurances that we will stand together, we will not let terrorism win, love is stronger than hate, and so on, were resonant.  And yet … and yet … that is what we always do.  Politicians jostle to repeat the same platitudes.  Maybe the threat level is heightened for a week or two.  We debate the percentage of the anti-radicalisation budget that goes to the government’s disputed “Prevent” strategy.  Then the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on.  Until the next time.

Allison Pearson summed up the point beautifully: “Even before their bodies were cold, the great and the good were crowding on to the airwaves to murmur their self-soothing mantras about hope being stronger than fear, strong, vibrant communities, keep calm and carry on, businesses as usual.  How dare they? They insult the dead, who deserve the country to be outraged and anguished on their behalf. How can we be calm when our children are considered a legitimate target for mass murder?”

One theme to emerge is that the bomber was a loner, representing no one.  Responding to a Tweet saying that integration has not worked, Tim Montgomerie wrote “It largely has.  99.9% of Muslims are good neighbours”.  I responded by re-Tweeting some Pew research indicating that in the UK, 24% of Muslims and 35% of young Muslims express some sympathy for suicide bombing.  Rather more than the 0.1% implied by Tim.  My Bête Noire Professor Michael Merrifield responded with an alternative study showing that only 4% of British Muslims sympathise with extremists.  But as I pointed out, even if Merrifield’s figures are right, at 4% it’s still forty times Tim’s estimate.

Peter Whittle on Twitter quoted Mayor Andy Burnham “The bomber represents no one but himself”.  I responded “The bomber (so far as we can judge) represents a large and determined terrorist death cult which is a threat to all of us”.  Of course not all Muslims (nor even a majority of Muslims) are terrorists.  But we face a large and well-resourced terrorist organisation which claims to represent Islam, and is steeped in a highly conservative and paranoid interpretation of the faith.  To pretend that we can deal with the terrorism without responding to the distortion of the religion is fanciful and naïve.

The idea that the bomber was a maverick loner is further undermined by a Telegraph headline “South side of city (Manchester) is a breeding ground for Jihad”.  It sounds more like Molenbeek, the notorious jihadist suburb of Brussels which harboured the Paris bombers than a suburb of the City of Manchester, standing together to face down the terror threat.  It is clear that UK security services are anticipating further attacks.

I noted an interesting comment from Brendan Cox, husband of the murdered MP Jo Cox.  He suggests that the only alternatives are (A) to turn the other cheek; or (B) “To build internment camps and hold the billion Muslims on the planet responsible for the actions of a few”.  Admittedly he does suggest some other measures, but they are all rather vague generalities like “building stronger communities”.  Haven’t we been trying to do that through all the years of multiculturalism?

I suggest that there are things we can do.  For a start, we should set aside the ECHR and deport foreign nationals whom we realistically suspect of jihadism.  Second, we should deny entry and withdraw passports from British citizens who seek to return from jihad (yes, there are legal problems, but we face an emergency).  We should identify imams who preach jihad, and deport them (or if British, detain them – incitement to violence is a crime).  We should close mosques that give a platform to hate preachers.

Then schools.  It is evident that some Muslim schools are hotbeds of Wahhabism and anti-Western values.  They should be closed.  I’ve struggled for a long time with the apparent discrimination of closing Muslim schools but not other faith schools.  But it seems that only in Muslim schools (or some Muslim schools) are anti-Western values systematically promoted, and when we are faced with Islamic terrorism, there is every justification for closing them.

We should ban the burka.  You cannot be integrated into Western society with your face covered.  And if you aren’t prepared to be part of Western society, you shouldn’t be here.

Finally, perhaps the most radical point.  As a broadly libertarian politician, I am hugely reluctant even to type the word “internment”, but I am coming around to the view that the threat we face – the children slaughtered in Manchester – is on such a scale that we have to think the unthinkable.  No, Mr. Brendan Cox, we do not want to build internment camps for the world’s billion Muslims.  But we need at least to consider internment for the 3000 or so jihadist suspects on our streets.  We are horrified that the Manchester bomber was “known to the police” yet still allowed to go to Libya, to return, and to carry out his atrocity. Yet we have to recognise that it is impossible for the security forces to monitor 3000 people.

I was relieved to find I was not alone in what some may consider an extreme view.  I re-Tweeted Arron Banks this morning: “We should intern people on the terrorist watch and properly investigate them”.  I will not say at this time that we should necessarily do so.  But I believe it is time to have the debate.

 

Energy policy speech

Speaking on energy policy and the vital importance of UKIP post-Brexit referendum in George Street, Westminster. The first part of the speech is above and continues below:

 

VOTE BREXIT. VOTE HELMER.

Last year, voters in South Leicestershire backed Brexit by 60/40 on a strong turnout of 76%.  Yet most of the candidates for the General Election are against Brexit.  Just twelve months ago, the Tory was campaigning for Remain. The Lib Dems are trying to reverse the Brexit decision, while Labour can’t make their minds up.

I am the only committed Brexiteer on the ballot paper.  I have spent the last twenty years campaigning single-mindedly for the independence and self-determination of our country.  For the last eighteen years I have been privileged to serve you, the people of South Leicestershire and the wider East Midlands, as your number-one MEP.

The Prime Minister asks you to vote for her – but she’s not on the ballot paper.  If elected, I will support Theresa May on Brexit so long as she works honestly to deliver a swift and clean break.  But I will fight any signs of backsliding.  She is already going soft on the European Convention of Human Rights, which allows foreign terrorists and murderers to remain on our country.  She is talking about a long transition period, which looks like a fudge.  She is placing Remain-supporting Tory candidates in winnable seats.  She is repeating the old pledge on immigration which she failed to deliver as Home Secretary.

I will guarantee to hold Mrs. May’s kitten-heels to the fire, and to work tirelessly to deliver the Brexit that you, the people of South Leicestershire, voted for.  I will oppose mass immigration – which Mrs May promised but failed to curb.  I will call for a reduction in our grossly inflated Foreign Aid budget, with the money diverted to domestic priorities like the NHS.

The polls suggest we shall have a Tory government on June 9^th.  Many – perhaps a majority – of Tory MPs will be Remainers at heart, like local MP Alberto Costa.  Indeed Theresa May herself is a recent Brexit convert who backed Remain only last year.  It is vital to have clear, strong voices in Westminster who will speak up for the Brexit that Britain voted for in the referendum.

Before my life in politics, I spent over thirty years as a manager in international businesses, much of it representing British businesses in the Far East.  I understand international trade, and I am keen to see our country seize the opportunities that Brexit offers.  Britain must be a great global trading nation, taking its proper place in the world economy – not an offshore province in a country called Europe.  We must be governed by people we have elected, and whom we can dismiss – not by remote and unaccountable bureaucrats in foreign capital cities.

If elected, I will be your strong voice in Westminster for a confident and independent Britain.

JUNE 8^th: Vote for the Blaby Brexiteer.  VOTE BREXIT.  VOTE HELMER.