Well, just when the great and the good were hoping that UKIP might be losing momentum because Dave was going to make His Great Speech about having a vote on renegotiating that EU directive on turnips rather than a straightforward in/out referendum the genie jumps out of the lamp and grants Nigel Farage and his party three golden opportunities.

The speech is still some way off but already dire warnings have been issued by “business leaders” (bankers – yeah, they have proven to be so upright honest and businesslike) – CBI (aka big global corporations) – and assorted suits. “We will lose out on exports to the EU” they cry. Excuse me? Presumably EU countries buy our stuff because it meets their needs, not out of charity for the UK.

Then some smooth US State Department poobah says that President Obama wants us to stay in the EU as a bagman for the USA since the French and the Germans, who actually run the EU, have never been fond of America. Also, of course, Obama and his henchmen are still wedded and glued to that old 1950s shibboleth of regional superstates – after all they are working hard to undermine the powers of the individual US states and upgrade federal power (Obamacare, Stimulus, gun control etc). A Washington/Brussels Axis would be so much easier to manage with no pesky politicians upsetting the apple carts – just the bureaucrats and diplomats codifying and making deals in cosy conferences.

Then, of course, the entry of the ultimate cartoon character, the German..

Gunther Krichbaum, chairman of Germany’s European affairs committee and acting as Angela Merkel’s ventriloquist’s dummy, used a visit to Britain to condemn Dave’s referendum tactics. “Ve distrust allowing ze voters to have any say in ze way ze EU is run. Ve know vot ze people vant much better than zey do und ve vill not be blackmailed into renegotiating ze EU Turnip Directive” (well he didn’t actually say that but it sums up the gist of his blathering)

With the carpet being pulled away from under Dave’s feet his Master Plan (kick in/out into the long grass by waffling on about renegotiation) is already looking like last weekend’s pizza. Several of the Tory government’s big guns have noticed UKIP snapping at their heels in recent polls and are leaning towards a referendum on in/out rather than one on a cobbled together list of renegotiated powers.

Which is why Nigel Farage’s UKIP has been given this good fairy gift. A banker, an American and a German telling us that we shouldn’t even have a referendum on our relationship with the EU? That will make most of us even more determined to demand one – because, oddly enough, what is good for global banks, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel does not always align with what is good for Britain.

Jake Wallis Simons (novelist, BBC broadcaster) is the latest hired gun to join the “Let’s derail UKIP” offensive but in terms of broadsides a peashooter would have been more effective.

After a public row about same-sex marriage, Ukip have gone from smug to scared

What actually happened was that a spotty student type who was leader of a UKIP youth group had been interviewed on BBC radio and burbled as only callow youths can. He appears to be, from his utterances, a rather immature type of libertarian, blathering on about gay marriage, bestiality, incest etc. The UKIP leadership ditched him fairly quickly, not because of his views but because, as a party official he would be expected to publicly support party policy

Jake Wallis Simons (novelist, BBC broadcaster) thinks that UKIP has blown a gasket here and will immediately lose support.

I am not so sure about that.

Gay marriage is a massive issue amongst the media class but outside the North London dinner party circuit it remains a very damp squib – and this is exactly why people are taking a closer look at UKIP. Farage and company are very much not part of the political/media/academic elite, an elite which over the past fifty years has ridiculed and despised the views of ordinary people on issues like crime, immigration and political correctness. So using gay marriage as a stick with which to bear UKIP is a surefire loser.

As for the squashing of a pimply 21 year old narcissist….most of us are sick and tired of having to treat the immature views of youthful politicos as if they are of great import. They have little sense of responsibility, many of them catapult straight from university into some form of media/political internship with little, if any, long term experience of the real world of work – then, like Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Milliband they then have the audacity to lecture us on how we should behave.

Sorry Mr Jake Wallis Simons (novelist, BBC broadcaster), far from putting off potential support, giving a pompous and opinionated young whippersnapper a swift kick in the backside – and out of the door – will have most ordinary folk giving UKIP a standing ovation…..

Cameron is now bigging up childcare costs

Working mothers will be given thousands of pounds-worth of support for child care to help them to return to work, under plans being considered by David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Stay at home mums will be given an additional tax allowance to help pay someone else to look after their kids to get them back to work. But if they decide to remain at home to look after their kids themselves they will get zilch – even though they are creating the most stable, family friendly environment for those key formative years.

In effect Cameron is saying to those mums who want to stay at home that they are of less significance than those mothers who get back into the workforce as soon as possible. He is essentially devaluing motherhood and the concept of the traditional family – a strange move for the leader of a so called “conservative” party.

Time was that parents of young children accepted the fact that they had to downsize their own expenditure because there was now just a single earner….usually dad. So you made do with the same car for a few more years, you had the odd family day out rather than an expensive foreign holiday, restaurants and pubs became a fond memory, you kept the old black & white TV when everyone else had colour.

School hours and term dates were geared for education not for child minding. You were expected to keep your children with you rather than dump them in a crèche. Nobody complained because that was just the way things were.

But many of today’s parents don’t seem willing to make those sacrifices. They want to maintain their childless lifestyle. So both of them need to be earning as soon as possible – then they can pay someone else to look after their kids.

Now Cameron is saying that dumping your young children so that you can have the plasma TV, the expensive foreign holiday and the new car(s) is not only OK but you’ll pay less tax to make it even easier – so the rest of us will have to pay more to make up for it.

And he thinks it’s UKIP members who are odd?

WTF…..

News that all 800 members of SO6, the armed police unit guarding the UK’s political elite, are to be questioned over suggestions that – shock horror – some of them were a little economical with the truth over the Andrew Mitchell “Plebgate” affair has caused a bit of a ripple in the media.

The Met helpfully added that this investigation will cost about £64.000 and occupy 3,000 hours of police time.

Naturally Labour Party mouthpiece Daily Mirror found a rentaquote MP to sound off about wasting resources at a time of “cuts” and “police sources” (AKA the Police Federation) muttered about “witch hunts”……Labour politicians and Police Federation agitprop activists, of course, had previously milked the whole incident until the arrest of the SO6 officer when they then became strangely silent.

Some might suggest that the details of this police investigation and the accompanying press release have been deliberately designed to stir the pot again and paint the current government (which coincidentally is attempting to reform the police service) in an unfavourable light.

But that cannot be the case for we all know that every police officer is absolutely “wonderful”………

That notorious latin windbag and fiery drama queen Cristina Kirchner, President of Argentina, is back in the headlines with yet another “demanding the return of the Falklands” tantrum in a feeble attempt to distract the rest of the world from her administration’s rather dodgy accounting.

The British government’s response has been succinctly robust (even US website Hot Air is impressed) and if any Foreign Office mandarins, after quiet chats with the US State Department have been smoothing out the wrinkles of UN supervised “joint sovereignty” agreements, just to please Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and all the other “usual suspects” in Washington, not a whiff of it has seeped into the UK media.

Good job, too. British blood was spilt driving the Argentinian invasion force off the islands in 1982 and there would be deep public disquiet for any backroom deal that would mean their sacrifice was in vain.

Recently published papers show that the invasion took Margaret Thatcher and her ministers completely by surprise. Initially there was a degree of confusion about what should be done.

‘There was great concern about what could be done about it. Our forces in the area were very scant confined to a small troop of marines and the HMS Endurance.
‘If there was going to be an invasion there was little we could do to stop it. People were sitting round wondering what on Earth one could do about it. Sir Henry Leach came in and listened to what people were saying – then he said he could have a task force on the water by Monday. That transformed the situation

Margaret Thatcher was always impressed by people who offered solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

“She was undoubtedly seeking positive factual data on which to make her own mind up. Could we do it, against all the risks we’d discussed? I said, yes we could and, in my judgment, we should – which was not my business. That was a political matter.
“She was on to that in a flash. ‘Why do you say that?’ I said if we don’t, or if we do it half-heartedly and are not completely successful, we should be living in a different country which counts for very much less [in the world].” It was the turning point, not only of the meeting but of the entire Falklands crisis. As Nott admitted in the same programme, Leach’s intervention “helped our self-confidence in a very difficult situation”, even if it had been typical “Nelsonian gung-ho”.

From that moment she resolved that force would be met with force and her determination never faltered. As The Heritage Foundation suggests Britain’s reaction astonished the world.

Once Argentina invaded, Britain had to respond. What was remarkable was that it responded with force. No one—certainly not the Argentines—believed that Thatcher’s Britain would fight back or that it could do so effectively. They were proven wrong on both counts

What also shocked the world was the fact that Thatcher had public opinion behind her. Media pundits were convinced that casualties and body bags would weaken resolve – that a post WW2 generation would be dismissive of military action…..far from it. It showed once again the value of decisive political action and the power of political will.

Sorry, President Kirchner – you need to perform your tango on someone else’s dance floor…

As the FT has recently suggested UKIP and it’s leader Nigel Farage are riding an anti-politics wave. The latest poll puts the party’s support at 15%, almost double the numbers for Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats (8%)

Perhaps more people are beginning to agree with Nigel Farage when he says this…..I know I do……

“We just think it’s about time we started to put the interests of Britain and British people first.

“We’re run by a bunch of college kids, who have never had a proper job in their life.”