Political Economy

The people of Scotland have elected a government that, as part of its election manifesto, said that it would hold a referendum on Scotland leaving the UK. They should be allowed to do so unhindered by a panicking Westminster establishment.

However as everyone knows this referendum has no legal force. The legal locus for decision making in this respect is at the Westminster Parliament, created by the Act of Union in 1707 and the only body that can bring the Union to an end.

Should Westminster bring the Union to an end if the people of Scotland wish it? I believe that they should. We cannot talk about democratic government unless we allow “Government of the People”, which means “Government made by the People”.  In a democracy if the people of Scotland wish to change the form of their government then that democracy must allow them the right to do so.

However this split, if it occurs, will require a treaty, perhaps many treaties, to decide on many things. One of these things will be property rights, another will be the distribution of the national debt, another will be defence, yet another will be taxation and things like customs duties and so on.

All of these treaties will affect the wealth and future well being of the people of England and as a result not one of these treaties can be agreed without the agreement of the People of England through a, or a series of, referendums. If the People do not agree then the politicians will have to go back to the negotiating table. If there is no agreement then there will be no end to the Union!

Is this important? Are there likely to be areas of disagreement? Where are the sticking points?

The first one will be oil. Alex Salmond likes to claim that 90% of the oil is Scottish. As Robin Tilbrook pointed out in his blog “Some of it’s ENGLANDS oil” that, on the basis of international law, between 25% and 50% of the oil belongs to England and 100% of the gas is English. If Salmond is unable to agree a reasonable compromise of between 25% and 50% of the oil, and 100% of the gas, being English then the People of England should not approve the treaty.

Alex Salmond has refused to take on the £187bn of government exposure to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s bad assets. His claim is that as the regulation of RBS was in London it is London that must bear the cost. Now, the matter that brought down the RBS was the purchase of the Dutch bank ANB Ambro. Until that point the RBS was reasonably clear of toxic assets, clear enough certainly to be able to handle any problems with its own reserves. Who then encouraged this merger? Why the same Alex Salmond that refuses to take on the costs of his actions. The Financial Times (12/12/12) reports that in 2007 Mr Salmond encouraged Sir Fred to purchase ANB and wrote to him “It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide. Good luck with the bid”. In 2007 he also promised “a light touch regulation suitable to a Scottish financial sector”. As the Edinburgh MP, Alistair Darling, has said “The decisions that RBS made that got it into trouble were made in Edinburgh, not in London”. Any treaty on the breakup of the Union would have to transfer to Scotland 100% of of the £187bn exposure on RBS.

What else is there? One thing that needs to be examined are the payments to Scotland for running its affairs that have exceeded those made to England. This started in 1888! George Goschen, the then Chancellor, decided that Scotland should have its own source of funding. To begin with this was not a very good deal but as 1900 came and went the cash paid per head to Scotland exceeded that paid to England, very soon increasing to a fifth more and then to more than a fifth extra. Currently it is 19% more than goes to England. If Scotland has received, say, 20% more than England over, say, 100 years then it will have received a total of 20 times that given to England, in a year, during that period. Currently England gets £8,588 per head (2010-2011) so 20 times this is £171,760. There were 5.2 million (mid-2010) people in Scotland so this adds up to a total of £893.2bn in current money terms! Now Scotland’s population has been lower over the last century. If it has averaged half the current size then a fair estimate is £446bn in current money terms rather than £893.2bn. This is an enormous sum of money and over the years it has made Scotland the third wealthiest region in the United Kingdom. The poorer regions of England who have contributed to this Scottish wealth might reasonably think about the size of the dowry that Scotland is going to leave them.

The question of dowry leads us to the division of the national debt. this is probably fairest done by dividing it by population. To this should be added a portion of the £893.2bn identified above. What sort of portion. Well much of the UK’s debt is long term, which is why we are not worried about the markets attacking us. If this represent 12 years say, then it would be reasonable for 12% of the £446bn to be added to Scotland’s share, say £50bn. This could then be used to regenerate the North. It would be their dowry!

How much debt would Scotland have to take on? If that were calculated based on population then Scotland with a mid-2010 population of 5.2 million out of a UK total of 62.2 million would take on 8.4%, say £85 – £110bn of peak debt, which with the £5obn mentioned above could be £135 – £160bn

Clearly the English cannot leave it up to their politicians to put the interests of the People of England first. English politicians are so used to giving away the wealth, and the name, of England that they would even agree to give away England’s gold. Oops, sorry, they have already agreed to that haven’t they! So the People of England must start insisting NOW! that there will be no treaty agreed on any further changes to the constitutional set up in the UK without their agreement through a referendum.

Despite the protestations of the coalition government it is clear that they are not prepared to do anything substantive to help the North’s economy. A recent report showed that of a £5bn transport program some 80% was to be spent in the south and only 6% in the north. Recently the government announced an extra £1bn that has to do for all the regions of England!

A recent report in the Financial Times  (London widens gap with the regions, 4/1/12) shows just how far-gone things are and also shows why the continuing subsidies to Scotland  are at the expense of the northern English. Expenditures under the Barnett formula are:

At the same time data shows that Scotland is in the same league for wealth per head (measured in gross value added or GVA) as parts of the south.

Scotland is in fact a third wealthier per head than Wales and nearly 29% wealthier than the North East of England. Why does Scotland get  £8.3bn more than English regions with similar populations, all of whom are poorer than Scotland, when it is neither fair nor economically astute?

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together get £15.8bn more than England. Would it not be fairer to allocate this excess between the regions on the basis of GVA and population leaving something over to use for the particularly bad spots that occur in each of the four nations?

If you allocate £24.42 per percentage point that the GVA per head is below the national average  then you get a much fairer distribution per head with Wales getting the most at £635 a head, Northern Ireland  next at £586, the North East £562 down to Scotland at £24 per head. Multiplying these figures by the population then gives a new, fair, and economically justified way of distributing the £15.8bn excess. The final figures are as follows:

The first point to note is that there is now an excess £1,386mn left over that can be allocated to poverty ‘hot spots’. There is no reason why less could not be allocated per point, say £22.00 per point, instead of £24.42 and more allocated to the hot spots. . If this is done in a transparent manner using criteria that can be understood by the public and using proper project management techniques to plan and monitor the expenditure against predetermined goals, then there is no reason why the regional inhabitant should object to getting less cash up-front.

The second point to note is that the English regions are allocated the funds on a fair basis. The £11.3 bn that is now allocated to England is done because of relative poverty levels and will do more to generate growth, jobs and wealth for all four nations than the current Barnett formula cash allocations has ever done.

Certainly giving Scotland, the third wealthiest region in the UK, £8.3bn more than much poorer regions is an offense to decency and democracy.

On the 27th September 2009 I made a speech to the English Democrats AGM and autumn conference entitled “  The ABC of Banking Regulation” (http://bit.ly/u2vCYM). I made the speech because as I said, “It [the bank crisis] happened because we had the lightest touch, and probably the most dysfunctional, bank regulatory scheme going”. The recent report on the Royal Bank of Scotland failure (the RBSR) by the Financial Services Authority, who were responsible for regulation, appears to agree with me.

Overall I am happy with the progress to date. Some of the matters I suggested have turned up as proposals or have been enacted. But we still face tough times and there will have to be a greater degree of  implementation of these ideas if we are to build a stable base for the future.

My A was accountability. I suggested that in order to achieve this we should have something akin to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the USA. The difference would be that bankers, the directors and senior managers, would go to prison for 5 years and suffer a £5,000,000 fine if their bank needed saving by the authorities. I still think that this is the one regulatory change that would ensure compliance with prudential banking practices. The RBSR is suggesting fines and exclusion from working in banks again for those who transgress. This is far from enough.

I had two Bs, both of which have been taken up by the coalition government. First was to put the Bank of England in charge of the regulation of banks and other depositary institutions. The second was based on a law in cybernetics called “Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety”. Put simply this states that any regulator must have as wide a range of control measures available to it as there are ways of change in the system. The economic system is, and always will be, subject to wide gyrations that we call “boom and bust” caused by a variety of events. The regulatory authority must have a similar wide range of responses available and not just, as in the Bank’s case, the ability to raise or lower interest rates to control inflation. The coalition’s response to this suggestion has been the “Financial Policy Committee” which has wider powers of intervention.

I had three Cs; clarity, capital and compensation.

Clarity referred to stopping the ability of banks to create opaque, multilayered derivative product that are sold “over the counter” and thus in secret. The dangers are self-evident. The opaque nature of the the security makes it much more likely that that collapse will occur and the secret nature of the transaction means that banks do not know who holds this toxic junk and so will stop lending to other banks, the so-called “contagion” effect. The Frank-Dodds Act in the USA is in the process of moving these transactions to open exchanges where much greater clarity exists. The final report of the Independent Commission on Banking (The Vickers Report) has proposed the banning of dealing in derivatives by the ring-fenced commercial arms of banks whilst the investment banking arms going through a process to improve clarity, somewhat.

It became clear that banks relied too much on borrowing and not enough on their own capital as well as having a deficient method of risk calculation, which would in itself lead to too little capital. I was being far too optimistic. The RBSR infers that there may not have been any risk calculation on occasions.

The new rules under Basel III will increase capital levels and the UK wants to increase the levels of capital held by larger banks even more (the EU on the other hands wants to reduce the levels of capital proposed). It was clear that increasing the levels of capital would result in lower level of lending and liquidity in the banking system. This is very evident in eurozone banks, where the appalling level of management of the system, has meant European banks withdrawing cash from the international system where its effect will be felt not just in the EU but in developing countries as well as elsewhere in the world.

I suggested that some of the problems of increasing capital could be overcome by requiring (investment) banks to insure against sudden, but infrequent, requirements for increased capital. This could be done by a mixture of government and private sector insurers, provided that the premiums that go to the government are deposited in a ring-fenced fund to keep off the sticky fingers of politicians who, when it comes to giving goodies to voters using someone elses money, can show a degree of “stickiness” that far exceeds that of your average banker!

The third C is compensation. I suggested that commercial banks could be subject to a significant regulation including control of compensation. In return directors and senior managers would not be subject to custodial sentences if the banks needed saving. The RBSR suggestions concur with my mine on this matter.  The question of excessive compensation is still an issue and solutions are still being discussed. There is no sign yet of criminal penalties, a situation that needs to be speedily changed.

My D was for division. I felt then, and still feel, that investment banks and commercial banks must be split. The Vickers report is recommending a half-way house of strict firewalls. I hope this succeeds but fear it will not. We should remember that investment bank are by nature risk taking and piratical institutions. If they were not they would not be successful.  Whilst a group of greedy investment bankers have within their line of sight a pile of someone elses money sitting in deposits they will move heaven and earth to get their hands on it. The subterfuges they will employ will often not be discovered by the regulators who will end up being powerless to stop it. Only the strong threat of a prison sentence could have any hope of stopping this behaviour.

If we are to have a strong banking regulation system in a sea of lighter touch regulation it will be all too easy for the banks in the later environment to undercut UK regulated banks in their product and service pricing hence leading to a decline in English banking. To do this we need to take powers to tax companies, fairly, that have used foreign products that are cheaper due to easier regulation. This should not extend to taxing solely on the basis of cheapness, some of which is due to efficiencies. There is no sign of this yet. This was my F

My L was for government to stop being lead by the nose by bankers and to start leading themselves. This, at least in the UK, but not it would appear in the EU, is starting to happen.

The score to date is zero for A, two for B, two halves for C, a half for D, a zero for F and one point for L, a total of four and a half out of nine suggestions or 50%. We still have a long way to go. It will be interesting to see what emerges.

What I have found most amazing about the comments on Cameron’s veto is that very few of those participating, from BBC reporters, presenters and interviewers to the vast herds of unwashed politicians and their advisors,  is a complete lack of understanding of the part that financial markets will take in determining the future of the euro and as a result what needs to be done.

The fact that so many politicians, both in the UK and in Europe, fail to understand even the simplest of economic realities is of course why we are in the situation that we are in and the reason why it could yet all end in tears.

Prior to the summit the Germans wanted a treaty whilst the French did not.

The Germans were of course responding to the long-term requirements for stability with little understanding of the urgent need for significant short-term action, whilst the French, who do not want their deficit budgeting exposed to the full force of the European court, as a treaty would have required, were focused on the short-term requirement at the expense of long-term stability.

The British are not going into the Euro but were interested for reasons of trade and stability in both the long-term (changes to the Eurozone rules on governance) and the short-term (the big bazooka).

Not being in the Eurozone, nor having any intention of being in the Eurozone, there was absolutely no need for the UK to send its budgets to the Commission for prior approval. In spite of this Cameron was willing to enter into a treaty with such a requirement, provided it was made clear that the City was a key matter for the UK just as the CAP is for France and manufacturing policy is for Germany. This the French and the Germans refused to admit, to their eternal discredit.

The EU was already requiring the UK to soften its position on bank regulation (despite what the Sarkosy said) and the UK believes that the EU move is wrong-headed and will hasten the next financial panic, a belief in which I concur. The Tobin tax proposal was also seen as a problem. The Germans and French are not attacking the ability of London to rule its financial matters for the good of the EU. Their only intent is to continue the harm to London and the UK that has already occurred, to the benefit of their two countries.

What did others in the EU think in the run-up to the summit. An article in the 8th December Kindle edition of the Financial Times makes it very clear:

1. The president of the Commission called every EU head and warned them “that if they agreed to change the treaties they had better be prepared to deal with the consequences”
2. In Finland parliamentarians had prevented their government for agreeing to the treaty setting up the rescue fund.
3. In the Netherlands, which has a minority government, the pro-EU opposition parties threatened to call an early election if treaty changes were agreed.
4. In Slovakia, which is facing elections, “EU issues have become pre-eminent”
5. Ireland, which is desperately trying to appease Germany, did not want to have a referendum on the treaty changes.
6. In the UK, despite what the coalition has said, there would have to have been a referendum.
7. In Germany the Free Democratic partners in the coalition have said they would hold a referendum to block an element vital to the eurozone’s €500bn rescue fund,
8. The FT quoted one European diplomats as saying of a treaty change “Even if we would succeed, we may end up with a perfect treaty but no Europe to govern”.
9. In pre-summit meetings core eurozone countries urged reforms without a treaty or only limited ammendments, These included Belgium and Italy
10. Even Portugal wanted a short-term solution

So why were 25 heads of state backing Germany’s idea of a treaty? The answer of course is that they were sucking up to the Germans, hoping to gain through flattery, and at little cost to themselves, the benefits they could not gain for themselves. This has happened because Germany has benefited hugely from the Euro.

Before the Euro the Deutschmark was very strong and, as a result, Germany’s trade was more or less in balance. On the other hand the exchange rate of the Euro against other countries was an average of the various economies in the Euro and this would have been much lower. As a result Germany has benefited from a low exchange rate and its exports have boomed.

The Germans of course think that this is down to them but in reality it is a transfer of wealth to Germany from, not only all other Eurozone countries, but any country to which Germany exports – legalized theft if you will. Germany should be willingly using the wealth it has extracted from the others to back them up now that the bad times have come. But like all robbers this is not going to happen easily. Hence the crowd of fawning sycophants in the Hall of The Robber Baron telling her how great her ideas are and how, if only it wasn’t for that little weasel, they would happily be going along with it. Liars, liars, liars.

If Cameron’s strategy was to bring down the euro and the EU it is clear that his best strategy would have been to agree, softly, to the Treaty and then engage in months of vicious negotiating not only fighting for relief for the City of London and UK manufacturing but also for the inclusion of clauses that would get right under the noses of the president of the Commission, Finnish parliamentarians, opposition parties in the Netherlands, the Slovakians, the Irish, the German Free Democrats and European diplomats, before floating it off onto a sea of hostile referenda and parliaments.

To his credit Cameron did not take the “European” option as the French, German and many others would have done. Instead he showed a degree of honesty and integrity which is quite lacking in European politicians, showing them up for the cynical and dishonest bunch that they are; and for this he has incurred their eternal enmity.

In saying this I am damning Cameron with faint praise. He has shown that at heart he is a European, despite his sometimes heated rhetoric against it; he has shown that whilst the playing fields of England might be a sound foundation for going to war to save the Europeans from a tyranny they are incapable of stopping themselves, they are entirely irrelevant for engaging in politics with them; that at heart he does not have the best interests of England or the people of England at heart; interests that are best served by leaving membership of the EU.

He has instead committed the worst political blunder of his life; he might have saved the Euro! On the other hand the long known weaknesses of the eurozone and their equally long predicted outcomes have come to pass. But it is the same old crew who connived in the eurozone deception and caused the current probem who are still in charge. Will they succeed this time. Well pigs might fly but it won’t be a pretty sight.

The Europeans, who have got what they wanted all along, but none of whom were brave enough to vote for it at the summit are going all out to pin the blame on the UK, presumably because they all secretly think that they cannot succeed and they will be able to blame Cameron. Will Mr Cameron expose the lying and lack of integrity of European politicians when he makes his statement to Parliament on Monday? Will he claim, rightly, that he did more than anyone at that summit to secure the best chances of saving the Euro? Will he make very clear to Parliament that the eurozone now has the best chance of success it will ever get? Will he make it clear that the European politicians are men and women without honour, their word is never to be trusted and their lack of interest in anything except their own advantage at the expense of England’s makes them unfitted to be allied with now, or in the future. Will he call for a referendum on Europe NOW!

Well that pig will not fly! Instead we risk being tied to a Europe of no growth for a decade. Outside the EU we can develop and engage in innovative approaches to growth and social justice. Inside the EU we will remain subject to the dead hand of corrupt and deceitful European politicians.

It’s a no brainer and here’s why.

Risk

The only risk that public sector pensions face is that they will become so large that the taxpayer will be unable to afford to pay them and as a result seek to reduce them to a reasonable level.

If you have a private sector defined benefits pension (one that pays on on the basis of the number of years you have worked) then you face the risk that your company will go into liquidation leaving you high and dry. At this point the Pension Protection fund will come into play. If you are already in receipt of a pension this will get 100% protection. If you are not only 90% of the pension payable will be protected.

All of this only applies if the scheme has sufficient assets to secure benefits on wind up that are at least equal to the compensation that the Pension Protection Fund would pay if it assumed responsibility for the scheme. Most schemes will not. Many will only have sufficient assets to pay 50% or 60% of the pension.

If you are in a defined contribution scheme then your pension will depend on how much you and your employer paid in to it, how much the fund increased in value over the period you were in it and the interest rate on the annuity you buy to pay your pension. So if your fund returns 5% per annum over 30 years, instead of the 7% you had expected, your pension fund (and your pension) will be only half of what you expected. If the annuity that you buy to pay your pension gives a lower return than the return you had anticipated when you where doing your planning then your pension will fall even further. This could quite easily mean a pension of only 40% of what you had planned for.

In fact according to IFAOnline.co.uk funds have returned 3.2% over the 10 years to 2009 and over the past few years annuity rates have dropped from around 6.5% to 4.5% reflecting big pension losses to private sector workers.

Public Sector +1          Private Sector -2

How Much Pension?

The Belfast telegraph reported on the 30th November 2011 that to get the £30,000 pension  (and, incidentally, the £90,000 tax free lump sum) of a headteacher a private individual would require a fund worth £1,200,000! In effect the taxpayer has made that headteacher a millionaire.

To get a public sector pension of £7,800 a private sector worker would need a fund of £340,000. Saving a sum like this, even with an employer contribution, is beyond the means of most workers in the private sector.

These pension fund equivalents represent a huge wealth transfer from the private sector taxpayer, many of whom will not have a workplace pension, to the public sector worker via the tax system.

The average pension of the 3.2 million private sector workers and the 5.4 million public sector workers on defined benefit pensions is approximately the same, £5,800 versus £5,600 a year. The 6.2 million private sector workers on a personal pension will get an average pension of £1100 according to the BBC Look East programme.

Public Sector   +2   Private Sector    +1

How Much Pay?

It used to be that the public sector got paid much less than the private sector. This is no longer  true. The latest figures show that on average the public sector gets £300 a year more than the private sector. However this excludes the pension bonus. Of course public sector unions like to point to the very high salaries earned by much less than 1% of the private sector and in comparison point to the pensions earned by low paid, possibly part-time, public sector workers with possibly few years of service. They do not compare with the equivalent private sector worker who has no pension but whose taxes pay for their private sector neighbour’s pension.

Public Sector 0               Private Sector  0

Who contributes?

Price Waterhouse Coopers recently published a report that showed that a private sector employee would have to contribute between 15% and 40% of their pay each year to get the same pension as a public sector employee. My own research using pension calculators on the Internet indicated that total contributions of employee and employer would have to be between 24% and 39% per year depending on the assumptions made. A reasonable average of this is around 30%. Deduct the 6.4% that the average public sector worker currently pays, before the 3% increase, and you get an average of 23.6% of salary that is contributed by the taxpayer. Adding in the proposed 3% increase that the public sector employee will pay means that the taxpayer pays 20.6%.

To be fair to the public sector they constitute around 6 million people compared to total employment of 29 million or 21% of the total. Hence we can assume that the public sector worker pays 21% of the taxpayer contribution and the private sector pays 79%.  Of the 20.6% taxpayer contribution 16.3% then is paid by the private sector worker.

This means that the teacher or nurse on £28,000 is getting an annual bonus to their salary from the private sector taxpayer of £4,500 per year. Yet more than half of those private sector workers earn less than £28,000. The head teacher on £70,00 gets an annual boost of £11,400. this is equivalent to a year’s work on minimum pay.

Public Sector +1      Private Sector   -1

The Result

Everyone who contributes to a pension gets tax relief, the only fair element in the whole situation. So whose pension would you prefer?

Public Sector    +4     Private Sector     -2

It’s a no brainer isn’t it!

For nine years the English Democrats, under the slogan “Not Left, Not Right, Just English”, have been beating the drum about the importance of English culture, its values and its achievements in terms of democracy and human rights, not just to England but to the world. Because we do not need it the English Democrats will withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act.

For nine years the English Democrats have been campaigning for the establishment of a Parliament and Government for England to promote the interests of the people of England as does the Scottish Parliament and government.

For years it has been enduring abuse about its policy of “Multiple cultures and not Multiculturalism”. The English Democrats have been attacked as racist because they are against mass immigration and want jobs in England for the people of England, not for the people of the rest of the world.

They have been taunted for their call for the protection of  English industry from takeover by foreign companies and the subsequent removal of jobs and tax revenues from our shores and the removal of political correctness.

But that is now all in the past!

It is some months since Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy rushed to be the first to denounce multiculturalism. We have seen recently how the flawed European Convention on Human Rights cannot even stop you from being locked up without trial for four years in a Spanish jail! In England the Common law has guaranteed our basic rights for nearly 800 years. Chief amongst these rights is a prohibition on the State locking you up for more that four days (28 in the case of terrorism) without bringing charges against you, requiring that you are tried and judged by your peers and should not be subject to cruel punishments.

In a YouGov survey published today in the Scotsman newspaper (http://bit.ly/tC5O5u) an article headlined the move away from being British. The October survey questioned 1,700 adults in Britain about their identity. The responses were as follows:

English             63%

British              19%

Scottish             8%

Welsh                5%

European         2%

Irish                  1%

The population of Britain totaled 59.2 million in 2007 made up of England  51.1 million, Scotland 5.1 million and Wales 3.0 million (http://bit.ly/9jEWHj). In percentage terms this is England 86.3%, Scotland 8.6% and Wales 5.1%. This implies that 73% of the people of England now view themselves as having an English identity, 93% of Scots consider they have a Scottish identity and 98% of the Welsh a Welsh identity.

In the same survey in 2008, only 3 years ago, 41% of respondents considered they had an English identity and 42% of those polled considered that they had a British identity! At last the people of England are waking up to the fact that their quixotic loyalty to a British identity has laid them wide open to being scammed and subject to all sorts of chicanery by the political elite in Westminster.

The same article continues to emphasize the growing call for a Parliament for England reporting on Labour MP, Frank Field’s, motion in the House of Commons and  UKIPs sudden conversion to an English Parliament.

But the change is even more complete than that. UKIP a British party if ever there was one, has now accepted the inevitable. Its leader, Nigel Farage, in a letter to the Spectator of 19th November admits that Patriotic politics is here and is going to stay. In the letter Farage describes Patriotic politics as neither “left nor right” and that the common law is a better guarantor of our liberties than the Human Rights Act. Astonishingly he ascribes UKIPs recent advance in the poll to these factors despite the fact that UKIP is a British party that has never championed English issues before!

The English Democrats are in the process of being judged to have been comprehensively correct for the last nine years. Of having had the correct political policies for the last nine years. Of truly understanding the people of England and their needs for the past nine years.

Now they need to use this to make an assault on the high ground of politics and the people of England need to get behind them with their votes. Why? Because it is only the English Democrats who hold these policies because they believe them to be correct whilst other parties are coming to them for reasons of political expediency.

If elected will these other parties implement these new ‘expedient’ policies. You can bet your bottom dollar they will not!. Only the the English Democrats hold these policies from the heart. Only they will implement their promises because for them it is a matter of honour, not expediency.