VOTING FOR DECOY DUCKS

As a UKIP candidate in the general election this year in the constituency of Walsall South, and despite saving my election deposit again and getting a pretty good result for UKIP, the thing that got me most was the blind faith many placed in the Conservative Party when it comes to the very serious matter of protecting ourselves from the European Union.

Over the years since I first began campaigning politically in 1996 for the Referendum Party, I have seen a major shift in the electorate’s attitude regarding the EU. When I first donned my Referendum Party rosette and began pounding the streets of Walsall North, which was where I stood as the RP candidate in 1997, I was shocked by the sheer animosity and ignorance of the EU by 99% of those I met and spoke to. When I touched on the issue of the EU I got blank looks, I was often asked what the EU was and discovered that many did not even know we were members of it nor that, at that time, it was planning to launch its own currency.

In the subsequent elections of 2001 and 2005 I have witnessed a major shift in attitudes and a growing awareness and opposition to the EU over those years. Now when I go out campaigning at least 80% to 90% of people know what the EU is and at least 70% of those I meet are either not happy with it or want us to leave altogether, which is the stance of UKIP and, naturally, myself. So why do people still go out and vote Tory, Lib Dem and even Labour when all three of those political parties are pro-EU?

People know the stance of Labour and the Lib Dems on the EU, those parties still try to con us that the EU is not a threat to our liberty and independence, but sadly the biggest con artists are the Conservatives. They make out that they are EU-sceptics, some of their MPs are, but no where near enough and all their MPs these days just tow the line on the EU, unlike the Tory Euro rebels in the days of John Major’s leadership. The only one of those left in Parliament is Richard Shepherd MP who represents Aldridge Brownhills.

One of those past Tory rebels, Christopher Gill, who is now an active and influential member of UKIP, calls those few Tory EU-sceptics decoy ducks, as all they do is attract the EU-sceptic vote to the Tory Party which then in turn shoots them down by failing to protect Britain against the EU, as we have witnessed with the handing over additional powers to it by signing us up to the ‘European Investigation Order’.

So as Cameron’s sham promises of standing firm against the tide of EU laws and all its other nonsense, crumbles to the dust, as those of us who are true EU-sceptics predicted the EU continues to ride roughshod over him, his own party members and, more importantly, the betrayed people of the United Kingdom.

Reported in the Daily Telegraph on the 26th August 2010, was an article by Bruno Waterfield which reported that, despite Cameron’s meek and feeble pleas to the EU for spending cuts, it had every intention of defying him and the people of Britain who Cameron allegedly represents, by sticking up a continental two fingers and continuing with plans for an eight per cent increase in spending over the next three years. This is at a time when the rest of us are having to cut our spending.

The EU’s budget is due to increase by £8.8billion to a massive £125billion in 2013. The result of this is that the contribution from the hard pressed and weary taxpayers of the UK to the EU are due to rise by a further £10.3billion. Britain’s massive fiscal contributions to the EU are all for nothing, unless like the handful of insane pro-EU activists within the European Movement and Parliament, the concept of giving away our wealth as well as our freedom to govern ourselves is a good thing – which 99.9% of the people of this country do not.

Thanks to this larges to the EU and Cameron’s unwillingness to stand up to it or, better still, take Britain out, EU officials will be having a nice little jolly at our expense with pay rises of up to 5.3 per cent while British businesses and jobs will be lost due to the burden of EU regulations and harebrained bureaucracy.

However, one British person, if you can call her that as she most probably likes to think of herself as European, will be benefiting from the unwilling largess of British taxpayers, and that is the EU’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton. The EU is set to lavish millions of pounds a year on the renting of a grand headquarters for her and her diplomatic corps. £8million is being put on one side by the EU for the lease of an office block in Brussels for her and her 7000 staff in the EU’s new foreign ministry. This will have a budget of £5.8million a year. The Taxpayers Alliance has said in the Daily Mail article covering this sad tale: It’s a disgrace that the commission is throwing millions of pounds at the EEAS, just so that they can have swanky offices.

This is all thanks to the stance of our three main political parties who, despite their rhetoric, continue to hand power away from us to the EU. When will the people of this country stop voting for “decoy ducks”?