I will ask the technicians to look at the configuration of the system to help you all read it easily.

An English Parliament.

I am surprised at how many want a seperate English Parliament. That means more politicians, more advisers, more bureucrats, and many more bills for taxpayers to pay. You are already paying for English MPs at Westminster. Surely the sensible answer is to make us MPs do both jobs for our money - discussing and voting on English issues at Westminster a couple of days a week, and Union matters for another couple of days a week. If Scotland and Wales were sensible they would make their MPs work harder, by asking them to do what needs doing in the devolved assemblies when the English MPs are using Westminster as the correct home of the English Parliament. There is no need for different people to staff the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. Whilst we are at it, it would also be a good idea to cut the number of MPs. The USA has fewer Senators and Congressmen and women than we have MPs, and they staff two Chambers of a sovereign legislature for a much larger country.

Has no-one told Labour Ministers they are all responsible for every policy and action of their government? If they don’t like something, and they cannot persuade their colleagues in private to change things, they have to resign.

We now see Labour Ministers rushing to distance themselves from the NHS cuts that are becoming visible. As the next couple of years unfold there should be many more pressure points on public spending. The blow out years are past, and even this Chancellor and this government are going to have to

Parliament has set a bad example again, breaking for Christmas on 19th December and not reconvening until January 8th. Now many other parts of the public sector seem to take a long Christmas break. It’s such a contrast with the private sector, where many shops opened up on Boxing Day and are open all this week, where newspapers and taxi services have been available since

The government is right to worry that children who achieve the highest standards academically are often held up or let down by state schools. I am glad they at last acknowledge there is a problem. It is

Happy Christmas to all you bloggers. There will be no Happy Winterval on this site.

There is something for all to enjoy at Christmas, especially for children who love the Christmas story of the baby Jesus, and the folklore of Santa Claus and his reindeers. Our Christmas is a blend of pagan and Christian, Victorian and commercial. it can be enjoyed by people of all faiths and of none.

I myself love the Nine Carols and lessons from Kings Cambridge, as the voices soar in that superb setting. There is magic in such powerful words, such melodious music, such glorious architecture.

Yesterday when the trains were fully booked and many internal flights were cancelled, to cap it all the authorities closed two lanes and then the whole southbound M40 for the whole day.

As someone trying to get to the Midlands and back that day I experienced the chaos for myself, as thousands of cars were routed through the narrow roads of Banbury and headed south on roads suitable for light local traffic only, leading to very long delays and annoyance to people living near the roads.

The government and the BAA together have given air travellers a dreadful year, and they are still at it over the Christmas period.

Over the last two days fog at Heathrow has created scenes reminiscent of the badly managed security measures in the summer. There are some simple steps which the government and the BAA ought to take to help people in such a situation.

Crisis, what crisis?

Today I have set out in the Daily Telegraph why party funding is such a problem. Politicans are just beginning to realise that people do not like the way so much money is raised from so few people, companies and Unions, but most still have have not accepted that people also dislike the way so much of it is spent.

The last election produced more negative than positive reactions to the campaigns of the main parties. It is not suprising. If you spend money on finding out what the public already think, and then play it back to them, they will be cynical about the exercise. If you add to that iron discipline over what every candidate is allowed to say, to pretend that everyone thinks the same, the story is just not credible. You can only form a worthwhile cabinet or shadow cabinet if people do disagree about some things, to make it useful to meet and hammer out a common view.

People want a more honest, local politics where they feel they have some influence, and can get something other than the national spun response to their queries. If we had fundraising llimits and a stricter national camapign epxenditure limit that would help. Let’s limit donations to a maximum of

If anyone suggests spending less than Labour from taxation and public borrowing, the government always counters by saying that means they wish to cut teachers, nurses and doctors. It is a crude misrepresentation of the true debate. I know no MP who wants fewer teachers, nurses, or doctors, but I do know that many of us

I have been asked

The

People tell me they do not hear enough from the Conservatives about Europe. There is a strong Eurosceptic tide of opinion in Britain which I welcome. Many of us feel that Brussels takes too much of our money, wastes too much of it, interferes too much in our lawmaking, is far too bureaucratic and wrecks any industry like fishing that it gets its hands around completely. We want far less interference from Brussels, dislike the regional Government that is all part of the Brussels scheme, and would be delighted if Brussels took a few years off from legislating.

I do, however, find it extraordinary that well intentioned Eurosceptics can think the UKIP strategy is a winning one which will make the problem better. The last three General Elections have shown that neither the Referendum Party nor UKIP can win a single Westminster seat, however strongly and fiercely they put their case for disengagement or withdrawal from the European Union. They have also shown that by putting some of their better candidates and strongest efforts into opposing Eurosceptic Conservatives in seats the Conservatives can win, they may give us more federalist MPs by tipping the balance in favour of the pro-EU Liberal Democrat or Labour candidate. How stupid can you get?

The facts of British political life are very simple. The Labour Party favours more unaccountable EU power, want the Euro in principle, would like to sign up to the European Constitution if given half the chance, and merrily give away power after power in the Treaties of Nice, Amsterdam and in a whole series of day-by-day decisions on directives and regulations. The Conservative Party opposes the Euro in principle, opposes the European Union’s constitution in principle, wishes to get powers back from Brussels and opposes many of the directives and regulations that come to vex us. Either of these two parties can form a majority Government. In recent years, partly because of the splits amongst the Eurosceptic majority, the federalist Labour Party has ruled the roost and has been able to effect a further substantial transfer of power from Britain to Brussels.

The Liberal Democrats could hold enough seats to have important influence, should Britain ever vote for a hung Parliament. They are an even more pro-federalist party than the Labour Party.

Eurosceptics are often asking me what assurances I can give them that the current leadership of the Conservative Party wants to reverse the slide to federalism. They say they do not hear anything from the Conservatives to give confidence. I find this particularly surprising. I am David Cameron’s advisor on economic policy, chairing his Economic Competitiveness Commission. In 1997 I published Our Currency, Our Country? (Penguin), exposing the dangers of European Monetary Union and setting out the case against joining the Euro.In 1999 I published The Death of Britain, a strong attack on the constitutional changes being forced through by Labour, preparing the ground for Britain to be a fully integrated part of the EU state. In 2001 I published Just Say No, One Hundred Arguments Against the Euro?, which ranged more widely, opposing federalist transfers of power generally. In my most recent book, I Want to Make a Difference, But I Don’t Like Politics?, an integral part of the case I make is that remote, bureaucratic unelected and unaccountable Brussels Government is part of the reason people are so turned off politics.

Most Conservative MPs feel as I do. We make this clear in debate after debate and through our opposition to directive after directive. More importantly, the leader of the Conservative Party imposed a whip on the Parliamentary Party to vote for Bill Cash’s excellent amendment to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill last summer. New Clause 17, would have amended the European Communities Act of 1972 providing the legislative means to remove European burdens we do not like. It would fundamentally change Britain’s relationship with the EU in favour of democratic common sense. If Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs had supported us in the lobbies we would now be a sovereign country again, able to pick and choose from amongst the legislative ideas coming from Brussels. Britain would no longer have to accept rules and regulation which its people and Government opposed, where it had lost the argument or the vote under the Qualified Voting System.
Eurosceptic critics of the Conservative Party forget that we have now had three leaders of the party who have all opposed the currency and the EU Constitution in principle. They forget that the whole Parliamentary Party was whipped to vote against the big transfer of powers represented by the Nice and Amsterdam treaties, and we constantly made the case in the Commons that there was absolutely no need to strengthen central powers in order to invite in new trading partners amongst the Eastern European countries.

There is no pleasing some people. Every time a leader of the Conservative Party talks about some other subject, Eurosceptic critics shrug their shoulders and say, There you are. You cannot trust the Conservatives as he has made another speech on something other than Europe?. Many voters are more interested in the state of their local hospital, whether they have the choice of a good school, how much tax they are paying to Gordon Brown, whether their local environment is green and clean and whether there is a transport system that helps them get to work in the morning, than they are in constitutional issues surrounding the European Union. A great national party which wants to win the trust of the British people to govern again cannot ignore these legitimate concerns and has a natural interest in them anyway. Our stance on Europe, shown by our words and our votes, shows we understand that in some cases to do what we need to do at home we first have to remove EU obstacles abroad.

Many people now have a very consumerist attitude towards politics. Most people going into the local department store do not want to get involved in an argument about the company structure, the corporate governance of the shop, its stock policy, what contractual relationship it has with its suppliers, or what its staffing policy may be. They just wish to see a good choice of goods and will buy the ones that are attractively priced and to their liking. The same is true for many of politics. Whilst to the connoisseurs and the patriots the question of constitutional arrangements is fundamental, because it determines how all other matters are settled or resolved, to most voters the constitutional issue is unimportant. They are more preoccupied by their Council Tax Bill or by how long they have to wait to get a hip operation.

A big democratic party that wishes to do the right thing for Britain needs to take this on board and to talk to people about their problems. Sensible Eurosceptics will understand that we can achieve nothing in sorting out the relationship between London and Brussels unless we have a majority in the House of Commons. The hard facts of political arithmetic are very simple. UKIP is not about to win seats at Westminster. All it does is aid and abet the federalist cause by opposing good Eurosceptic Conservatives. If it really wished to be positive, it could use its base and support to help Eurosceptic Conservative candidates and to put its best and fiercest critics of this Government’s federalism into opposing high profile Labour and Lib Dem figures in seats they currently hold with a big majority.

International businesses are telling us that the UK is losing its competitive edge. That means less investment and fewer jobs coming to Britain. Top of their list of complaints is often taxation. It’s not just that the UK’s corporation tax rate is well above the most competitive countries in the world; it’s also that people in business detect a far more aggressive attitude by the Revenue, with little certainty about how the Revenue will judge matters and a lack of consistency in their treatment.

There is also growing concern about the inadequacies of our transport system, where we lack capacity on both rail and road; about high energy prices and shortage of supply, and about over regulation. The UK lives by foreign trade and investment. It needs to stay competitive to ensure enough jobs and deecent living standards here at home. If governemnt continues to place burden after burden on business through regulation and taxation, and fails to tackle the urgent problems with our transport networks, skills and energy supply, unemployment will continue to rise.