EU Establishment has only itself to thank for citizens preferring their own countries to EU bloviators. There are consequences to treating humans as a herd to be tamed. Precious center ground of voting politics has moved right-Janet Daley

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Feb. 4, 2014, "Democracy is a threat to peace in Europe," Janet Daley, UK Telegraph

"The German Foreign Minister has declared that political parties within European countries which hamper the cooperation between EU member states are a threat to peace. He means you, Ukip. Never mind that you are a perfectly legal party with every right to contest parliamentary, local council and European legislative elections. Ignore the fact that you have a larger proportion of popular support than the LibDems who are currently in government, and that you are not breaking any existing regulation in your public behaviour.

No, none of that is relevant to the matter. You express views which are – according to Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a minister of government in another country – not just contentious but unacceptable by the prevailing moral standards of the greater European consensus. So I'm afraid you can expect to become a banned organisation if Mr Steinmeier's views are at all representative of EU official opinion. He has, after all, lumped you in with the French National Front and various neo-fascist parties which threaten to revive what he calls "the nationalisms which could no longer be [tamed] by reason" thus giving rise to the First World War.

"We have got Eurosceptics getting together in parties", he warns apocalyptically. Presumably, this can only mean one thing: imminent armed conflict. Because, any sort of national pride or concern about sovereignty must, of course, be identical with the ugliest forms of nationalist aggression, mustn't it? God save us.

I wonder if the tactless motor mouths of the EU establishment have any idea how much anger and resentment they incur with their refusal to address the doubts and anxieties of the populations of their member countries – thus driving them into the arms of extreme anti-European groups? If anything is likely to provoke aggression in modern Europe, it is the suppression of dissident opinion and legitimate protest. Just ask the Greeks."

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5/24/14, "London-land can’t ignore this Ukip protest," Janet Daley, UK Telegraph. "Most voters see the major parties as members of a self-affirming, insular coterie."
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"If there is any real lesson to be learnt from this tumultuous electoral event it is that the party of protest is now on the Right rather than on the Left. 

That means that the precious centre ground of politics, on which all elections are said to be won, has moved. The Westminster establishment, from which the country is so famously alienated, is now seen as uniformly Left-liberal. All the major parties, along with most of their media friends, are regarded by much of the electorate as members of an insular, mutually affirming coterie who regard any outside voice as risible or dangerous. At one point during the marathon broadcast coverage of the results, Vince Cable described Ukip as “muscling in” to the political scene on the strength of public discontent over issues such as immigration. Muscling in? On what: a closed shop? An exclusive little club? 
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When politicians talk like this, do they have any idea how it sounds to the great mass of the population, particularly outside of London? And that brings us to the second great truth revealed (or reaffirmed) over the past few days: London is not just another country, it is another planet. The BBC was quite triumphant on Friday morning about the extent to which London had resisted the demonic Ukip thrall. 
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This could be attributed, it was quite sure, to the fact that London’s population was “educated”: sophisticated, cultured professionals who were not going to be swept up in a tide of ignorant, backward… whoops. No, we’ll leave the second half of that observation unsaid (but you know what we mean, right?) For a moment, we got a glimpse of just what an intense rapport the BBC believes that it has with its core London following. Indeed, some BBC staff got so carried away with the excitement of the past week that they took to posting satirical anti-Ukip tweets, quite forgetting that in their capacity as public-service broadcasting journalists, they had a statutory duty to be impartial."



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