They’ve finally counted the votes in the corrupt London Borough of Tower Hamlets! For the benefit of non-UK readers, including my new readers in Sweden (hi!), politics in Tower Hamlets is dominated by Islamic extremists, a little bit like Teheran. It is a borough where recounts are ordered at the drop of a hat, non-Islamic votes mysteriously disappear and officials know the results in advance, like the bad old USSR.
That the Electoral Commission permits such democratic outrages simply reinforces the strong case being made by that nice man Nigel Farage MEP for its abolition. Its responsibilities should go back to the Home Office.
The final results, with percentage vote in brackets, were:
UKIP 24 MEPs (27.5%), Labour 20 (25.4%), Tories 19 (23.9%), Scottish National Party 2, Lib Dems 1 (6.87%), Plaid Cymru 1, Sinn Fein 1, Democratic Unionists 1 and Ulster Unionists 1. The percentage figures are for mainland Britain.
These figures are shattering. UKIP are the first party other than Labour or the Tories to win a national election for over 100 years. David Cameron’s response has been complacent in the extreme, arrogantly assuming that most UKIP voters will return to the Tories at the next general election. One recent poll suggests that 86% of UKIP voters will carry on voting for the party.
Even allowing for much a higher turnout (say 60%, or 2/3 more than on 22nd May), if UKIP voters remain loyal in anything like that sort of number the Tories could not possibly win. If Cameron remains leader, the most my party could expect to win in 2015 would be about 250 seats. Labour would probably get about 350, i.e. enough to form a government on their own.
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Deposing Cameron
George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Cameron however does not have to remain leader. Indeed, the case for deposing him is overwhelming. Having broken his promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty only the raving moderates in the Tory Party are buying his promise to hold an in/out referendum on EU membership.
Word on the street is that he would get out of the promise – which is only a political promise, remember, i.e. not a terribly meaningful one – by resigning, in favour of George Osborne, the fanatically pro-EU Chancellor of the Exchequer. Osborne is being careful not to tie himself to an in/out referendum.
So far as I know the Cabinet Secretary has vetoed any work on detailed negotiations with the EU on a return of powers to the UK. Since the Germans have ruled out reform (obviously an ersatz set of reforms would be on the table, as in 1975) negotiations would be pointless anyway. President Hollande of France has talked about supporting reform, but it’s only talk.
The obvious way forward, for UKIP, the Tory Party and the UK, is a UKIP/Tory pact. In a panic, the Tory leadership have taken to denying that the party has ever formed an electoral pact. As I explained last week this is nonsense, indeed, since the pact with the Lib Dems was covertly agreed in advance of the 2010 election, it is specious nonsense. Forming a pact was the whole idea behind Cameron’s agreement to Nick Clegg’s inclusion in the notorious 2010 televised debates.
Clearly any pact would have to be on the basis of outright withdrawal from the EU. Reform has never seriously been on the agenda, nor is it in the UK’s interest to be in the so-called single market. In reality of course there is no single market, and UK products, such as lamb and beef, are excluded if national economic interests dictate.
Since the UK trades with other EU member states at a massive deficit, and several million European workers are dumped here, neither free movement of goods, not free movement of workers, is in our national interest.
There would need to be a generous number of winnable seats for UKIP, and a generous allocation of Cabinet posts. UKIP would have to be offered more seats than they could hope to win on their own. Across most policy areas there is broad agreement between the Tory Right and UKIP, many of whose members are ex Tories anyway. Whether UKIP wished to continue as a separate party after EU withdrawal would be a matter entirely for them.
Since there would need to be a transitional period of say one year in any event, the logical way to proceed would be to give 12 months’ notice of withdrawal from the EU Treaty under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This would avoid the need for complex negotiations with our EU enemies, sorry partners.
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Blackman and Nightingale Appeals
The detailed reasons for the, with respect, disgraceful dismissal of these two appeals have now been released. I shall be doing an in-depth analysis in a future column, but not next week, as I shall be reporting from Normandy on D-Day 70.
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Flight MH 370
Some people dived for cover when I reported in this column that Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 had been shot down by the Chinese PLA/Navy and the US Navy had whacked one of their subs in response. People were asking ‘what was I on?’ Well, I can tell you what I was on: a quest for the truth.
It is now official that the radio transmissions on the black box frequency were nothing to do with the downed airliner. Readers of VT will have known that weeks ago! Of course the transmissions were nothing to with MH370. It was shot down thousands of miles away, in the South China Sea.
The whole idea of the Chinese dropping fake transmitters in the Indian Ocean was to keep the search away from the shoot-down area, to prevent discovery of Chinese missile bits in amongst the wreckage, not to mention evidence of missile damage on the wreck itself. Not too far away there should be a wreck of a Chinese Kilo class SSK. Note the non-denial from INTELCOM that the Chinese are minus one Kilo!
Next prediction: Inmarsat, or somebody, will row back from the satellite evidence. One of the more noticeable things that the Malaysian Government are covering up is MH 370’s fuel load.
Airliners do not carry a full fuel load for a medium-haul flight. KL-Peking is only about 2,700 miles. A 777-200 ER could probably do that on less than half tanks, although you need to allow for diversions and there would be a contingency beyond that.
I suspect that somebody screwed up and pushed out a predicted track based on satellite pings which went some way beyond MH 370’s maximum range with that payload at altitude, i.e. best range. If the southernmost point of the suggested satellite track could not have been reached then the ‘satellite pings’ could not have come from the aircraft, could they?
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that Inmarsat are party to the cover-up. I suspect the Third Department of the PLA were blowing smoke up them, probably by software manipulation.
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Response to Comments
John Kirby makes the point that the Germans are fundamentally kind, decent and intelligent people. I respectfully agree.
Indeed this point was made on British TV only tonight (Britain’s Greatest Pilot: The Extraordinary Story of Captain Winkle Brown (BBC 2, June 1st, 9 pm) by that brilliant pilot Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown RN, late of the Fleet Air Arm, of my acquaintance.
Winkle was treated with nothing but kindness by the Germans he met on his pre-war visits to Germany. He made the point that the suggestion that Adolf Hitler did not congratulate Jesse Owens on his Olympics triumph was a lie – Winkle was there and saw the Führer congratulate Owens and shake him by the hand. Quite right too!
Captain Brown then went on to describe his experiences on the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which revealed a darker side to Germany. The German people today are no less kind, decent and intelligent than their forebears in the 1930s. These were the same people who voted in large numbers for the Nazi Party, however. The problem is that the German people now are no more in control of German policy than they were then.
Blackburn Firebrand torpedo fighter
There is so much bribery and blackmail of German politicians and business leaders that in practice their intelligence agencies are in control. The blackest part of German intelligence is the most powerful, i.e. the DVD. It is accountable to no one.
Ironically, the only governing party in Germany to have broken free of intelligence control, because it set up its own intelligence apparatus and seized the Austrian gold reserves, was the Nazi Party, whose leader was nearly assassinated in response.
Fellow naval aviation enthusiasts are bound to enjoy the Winkle Brown program – catch it if you can, on BBC’s excellent I-Player, the only part of the BBC which works. Winkle holds the world record for deck landings – 2,407 – and the number of different airplane types flown, 487.
The program includes very rare footage of a Blackburn Firebrand torpedo fighter landing on, and taking off, from a carrier, plus footage of two of Winkle’s firsts: the first landing of a twin-engined plane (a Mossie) on a carrier, and the first jet landing, on HMS Ocean, in December 1945. Landing a Mosquito on a not very large carrier was a particularly tricky feat.
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Classic Movie of the Week : Cockleshell Heroes, (1956), dir. Jose Ferrer
The daring Cockleshell mission undermined the German belief in their own invincibility, which was of inestimable value
Shown again on British TV this weekend, this is a fine war movie, marked by strong performances from Jose Ferrer himself and Trevor Howard. Ferrer, a highly intelligent actor and director, plays Major Stringer, whilst Howard plays his no 2, Captain Thompson.
The movie is based on the real life Operation Frankton, a daring and successful kayak raid on enemy merchant ships in Bordeaux in 1942.
The raid itself was dramatic enough and the story hardly needed to be embellished for the screen. The movie is an odd mixture of fact and fiction, even odder when you think that the leader of the raid itself, Royal Marines legend George (Blondie) Hasler, and another survivor, Corporal Bill Sparks, were retained as technical consultants, and there was strong official backing from the Marines. Their director of music even composed the stirring theme tune!
It is not so odd, however, if you know the intelligence background. The year before it was made the knowledge that Lord Louis Mountbatten was a German spy had finally become more widespread, after he helped cover up Germany’s sabotage of the De Havilland Comet airliners. Mountbatten had first been suspected by Naval Intelligence as far back as 1941, when he was removed from command of the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious.
Too many people queried their analysis, however, screaming for proof, as a result of which a lot of good Canadians were left screaming on a beach, at Dieppe. It was the old story of non-intelligence types pretending that they had the intellectual firepower and expertise to query the conclusions of intelligence officers.
Drummond T9 1900-built 4-4-0
As the movie hints, Operation Frankton was betrayed. It was authorized by Mountbatten, who was in the loop on the date, as the movie again makes clear. Somebody was laying down a marker.
I attended an excellent presentation on this operation at the Britannia Naval Research Association’s 2014 Oxford Naval Symposium, only a few weeks ago. It was given by that well-informed man, with respect, Commander Bill Evershed RN, retired, although oddly he had not heard that Mountbatten was a German spy.
For rail buffs, there is a fine shot, in colour, of 1900 built Drummond T9 4-4-0, 30729, going across a level crossing. It’s a poignant scene, as poor old 729 was cut up only 5 years later, when she still had lots of life left in her. She was only 61 years old, for heaven’s sake! It was probably the only time she starred in a movie.
Spyhunter
Michael Shrimpton is a barrister, called to the Bar in London 1983. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counterterrorism. Michael was formerly an Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies in what was then the Department of National Security, Intelligence and Space Studies at the American Military University.
Michael’s ground-breaking, 700 page intelligence text “Spyhunter: The Secret History of German Intelligence” was published in England by June Press on April 14th 2014.
Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.
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