Andrew Constantine

Gordon Brown needs the Union...but do we?
By Simon Heffer
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 29/03/2008Page 1 of 3


It has taken me some time to realise what Dr Johnson meant when he observed that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel, but finally the penny has dropped.

Our Prime Minister's lucubrations in this newspaper earlier in the week about the Union, and why he loves it, demonstrated what politicians feel they have to do when they become desperate. Happily, since our readers are so intelligent, they spotted this at once, and our letters pages have been full of their measured, but understandably angry, responses to this piece of opportunism.

Some things do not bear saying often enough. Mr Brown bangs on about the Union because, as a Scottish prime minister ruling England in cahoots with his Scottish cronies, he feels he has limited legitimacy. That is not the gloss he puts on it: but as a humble seeker after the truth, I feel it only right that I should express his real feelings in the matter.

His legitimacy is weakened because he was the second most important person in the Government that brought us devolution. Large amounts of English taxpayers' money is now spent in Scotland without the benefactors having any say in how it is spent. Nor were the English consulted about whether they wanted this arrangement. The final insult is that Scottish MPs at Westminster vote on matters that affect only the English. The Union has had it, and Mr Brown knows it. It is a state of affairs for which the term "democratic deficit" could have been invented.

Mr Brown seems to have no idea how most people actually go about being British. It isn't very British, to start with, to take oaths of allegiance: we have always assumed, usually quite rightly, that we are born into that. It isn't very British to fly the Union flag on public buildings all the time - we reserve that sort of thing for the Queen's birthday, and leave the permanent flag-flying to banana republics.

It isn't very British, either, to tell people how they must govern their consciences - as Mr Brown was trying to do on embryo experimentation, until even some of his supine ministers let him know that they wouldn't feel happy about the Frankenstein-style creation of half-men, half-animals.

Also, how he can have the front to bang on about a British identity when, for the past 11 years, he has been a senior figure in a government that has presided over uncontrolled immigration - and uncontrolled immigration that is having the most appalling social consequences, and about which, again, the fair-minded British people were never consulted? The hypocrisy of this position is so epic that I am amazed that, under the weight of it, Mr Brown can stand upright.

It is no wonder, given the increasingly unpopular way in which he runs this country - and is breaking it up - that Mr Brown and his party are now way behind in the opinion polls, even in the face of an opposition with no policies except those it promises to copy from Labour. No wonder, either, that Labour MPs are said to be steaming, with lists circulating of those whose seats are now at risk from Mr Brown's magnificent political management. What a disaster he is proving to be for them: what a disaster, too, for Britain.

We should not take his attempts to cloud these issues lying down. If we are going to have flags flying on public buildings, then give local authorities the choice of which one: I bet in most of England it would be the cross of St George, which would serve Mr Brown right. And what about a referendum for the English on whether they stay in a union with Scotland? Again, I could predict the outcome of that. His MPs must pray for a period of silence from the Prime Minister on all this. For every time he tells us about how British he is, a few more of their seats go clunking down the sewer.

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Andrew Constantine says: The EU is a French-German racket and is incompatible with democracy. An independent England will quit the EU forthwith.

Free England Party - Independence for England
http://www.freeengland.com

Signatory to The English Claim of Right
http://englishclaimofright.com

Englander 1

I must admit I enjoyed reading this article....we are not alone!

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"There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other.
That word is ENGLAND." - Sir Winston Churchill