Labour Party's Betrayal of Northern Labour Voters.

In the Brexit referendum, scores of Labour-voting people in Labour's Northern Heartlands voted to leave the EU.

Northumberland, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Lancashire.... all voted to leave the EU. All are counties where Labour do well. Former industrial and mining areas.

All betrayed yesterday by Jeremy Corbyn and his policy to stay in the customs union. Pandering to his London-centric Remain Champagne Socialist Labour clique.

Labour will say that even though their heartlands voted leave, it wasn't the Labour voters (the majority) that did that, it was the nasty Tories (the minority) that somehow conjoured a referendum winning vote. So they're actually giving Labour voters what they want. They can believe that Bullshit all they want to excuse their trachery, but it just doesn't wash. Gordon Brown got it wrong when he called Gillian Duffy a bigot for her comments on immigrants. Jeremy Corbyn has just done exactly the same.

This should be as momentous for Labour voters as Maggie Thatcher crushing the miner's strike: this is Labour sticking two fingers up to the working class. Again. And this time you can't say it's Teflon Tony Blair the Tory in disguise, or Gordon Brown trying to be Tony Mk2. This is jeremy Corbyn, self-styled Trotskyite, man of the oppressed workers of the UK. This is inexcusable.

Of course the Chelsea Socialists say it's all about protecting worker's rights. It's nothing of the sort. It's protecting corporate interests and the influx of cheap unskilled Polish and Romanian workers. It's about keeping wages suppressed. With all that cheap labour on tap, wages for the rest of us stay low and working conditions poor. It's keeping profits flowing to low-tax countries with no penalties and avoiding paying tax in the UK.

After all, if we start to mention improvement of wages or working conditions, then all the business can just let us go and employ a foreign worker on high agency rates but getting paid minimum wage.  Huge margins for the corporate fat-cats. That's who your Labour party is actually working for.

If Labour truly wanted to improve the wages and working conditions of the working class of the UK, then the cheap labour tap would be turned off.  Out of the customs union and out of free movement.

Staying in "a", "the" or even "New" or any fucking flavour of  customs union automatically means free movement of people  i.e. no control over immigration. The EU provides no alternative on this. you cannot have one without the other. The tap cannot be turned off.

Staying in a customs union also means adherence to EU-negotiated trade deals. The UK would not be free to negfotiate on our own. Non-negotiable according to EU negotiators.

Membership of "a" customs union for anything longer than an interim period is a betrayal of those votes how voted to leave the EU. Permanent membership of a customs union goes against the will of the majority of people who voted to leave the EU and it's control.

Unless.... what Labour are saying they are aligning with Boris Johnson and his "have our cake and eat it" policy, where we choose to be part of a customs union, but are free to negotiate our own trade deals, part of a customs union and free of the ECJ, part of a customs union and not allowing free movement of people. ALL OF WHICH HAVE ALREADY BEEN REJECTED BY EU NEGOTIATORS.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union without the baggage that comes along with it like subservience of UK laws to the Court of European Justice.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union and stop the influx of cheap unskilled Eastern European labour.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union and stop huge corporations from banking profits and declaring corporation tax in other countries. Free movement of people and goods also means free movement of money as well.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union and negotiate trade with other countries at the same time. You are tied to deals done by the EU.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union without betraying the huge swath of Northern Voters that voted to leave.

The sad thing is that now UKIP have crashed out of UK politics in any meaningful way, there is no alternative party for the Northern working class Labour voter to vote for. That's why Labour have done this now. They know the working class have no alternative to vote for. Bastards.

If ever there was a time for a proper democratic people's party, for the working class and  free from the Westminster bubble and it's corrupt corporate influence, that time is now.

Can we just grow up and accept that Brexit means leaving the EU, the Customs Union, the Single Market, the primacy of UK courts, closure of our borders, the ability to trade freely with other countries and start to talk on those terms. The longer Politicians of all flavours push the customs union model, the bigger the crash at the end of it when the EU refuse our requests.

Spinning otherwise (because that's all it is, spin) is dangerous and devisive. Right now businesses should be planning all future trade with EU countries on a "fully out" model. To do otherwise would court disaster for the company. That's what good governance is all about and should be working towards.

The game politicians are playing is a dangerous one and costly for the UK. That our own politicians are working against us should also prove the need for an alternative party that puts the UK people first. After all there is a historical precedent: every now and then Parliament has needed a nudge from the people to show 'em who's boss.

Loss of Finace = Loss of Power....

Interesting news over at Guido that Labour are now surpassing the Tories for fundraising.

Of course the biggest contributors to Labour are the Unions where their members are forced to contribute to political funding unless they opt out, but the Tories seem to have lost a swathe of funding by comparison.

There may be a number of factors contributing to this, but I'm sure the Tory preoccupation with Brexit to the detriment of all other matters (and managing that poorly) is losing them considerable donations.

I did predict back in December that May would last as PM until May. I'm pretty sure the unchallenged college-level bullshit coming out of Labour on taking utilities back into public ownership without actually paying for them (in essence stealing them) has gone down well with the the youngsters down at the student uinion bar, but Theresa May's inability so slap down such naieve bollocks with proper grown-up facts has won her no favours with Tory funders. Or Tory voters.

There's also the fight between Tory central office and the local constituencies over who decides on candidates is losing them lots of grassroots support.

I think that Labour will win big in London and the North. They will pick up the UKIP places on local councils as UKIP has become irrelevant in politics again.

More gains for Labour will mean more crowing from the far-left trots in charge and a Tory Party looking more and more out of touch and at risk. Drastic measures i.e. getting rid of Theresa May might stem some of the damage, but the longer it goes on, the longer the distraction of Brexit continues, the longer Philip Hammond is in place and the even more strident "sack 'em all" Anna Soubry are allowed to brief against Brexit , the worse the damage for the Tory party. (and yes I know that differeing viewpoints is healthy debate, but really those two need to wind their necks in because they talk as if they represent the majority of voters.... and of course the anti-Brexit BBC laps them up.

May will be a pivotal month. Either the Tories have the spine and killer instinct to be able to do what is necessary to survive, or they lose power and wither and die politically.

In the back of my mind Theresa May keeps reminding me of Neil Kinnock. Sure she bested him by actually winning an election (just) by just seems the same wishy-washy, couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, indecisive sort of non-leader. Surely the Conservative Party have someone better to put in place?

Even Boris' speech last week on Brexit (has he been taking lessons on how to be serious for the past few months?) sounded like someone who you could actually see running the Conservatives. He swept away the cobwebs with passion in his speech, which was refreshing compared to the Maybot. Sure, the old Boris almost came through the new veneer and almost cracked a few off jokes, yes he even still quoted Latin during the speech (no-one understands it Boris!), but you could see he was trying his best to be un-Boris-like. he wants that job.

Well, only a couple of months of training to go Boris, hopefully by May they can have him talking without having to make a joke every 5 seconds and that urge to quote Latin will be put to bed for good. This is not school Boris, you don't have to be the cheeky chappie to avoid being bullied and you don't have to quote Latin every 5 seconds to prove you're an intellectual either. Just please, for God's sake talk plain Engish!

Hmm, Boris as PM and JRM on the front bench.... it could work. It would certainly earn the Tories undoubted reams of free publicity and column inches. They just need to make it positive.

Stealth Tanker

Way back when I first strted this blog, I used to chip the odd comment over on some miltary sites and I used to blog about things military.

Things have gone a bit stale on the military front: the F-35 is slowly coming on stream and I'm sure will eventually support most of it's requirements. The Typhoon will eventually start to be fitted out with upgrades to lower it's radar observability.

The big news is the Chinese and Russian low-observable aircraft that will over the next decade come on stream.

However, there is a weak link in the chain: endurance. Most fighter and reconnaissance aircraft need refuelling as part of their operation envelope. Refuelling is even more critical on stealthy aircraft because bulky extenal fuel tanks ruin the stealth aspect, so they have to carry fuel internally.

The F-22 Raptor has the ability to super-cruise at supersonic speeds without afterburner, but it still needs to tank once on a regular basis.

The stealth fighters are harder to combact, so the weak link moves down the chain to the tanker.

They may be flying their lazy 8's outside of the main threat area, but they are  vulnerable nontheless to attacks from stealthy enemy fighters. They are a big highly radar-observable and even IR-observable target vulnerable to attacks from Beyond Visual Range. Just the sort of attack low-observable fighters are designed for.

Stealth fighters are such an expensive commodity and maintenance so intensive that it would be very difficult to supply them in enough numbers to fly top cover for a tanker in enemy airspace. In any case a stealthy enemy fighter would be hard to spot before it got close enough for a guided missile kill on the highly observable tanker. Of course a bunch of unstealthy fighters and a big fat unstealthy tanker flying circuits are very very obvious targets not just from aircraft but from ground fire too.

Because of the risk from BVR attacks and the increased capability of foreign aircraft, the case for the stealth tanker becomes a higher priority.

A few aviation sites have already posted abouit the tanker capability gap and the need for a stealthy tanker, but nothing as yet has popped up on the radar.

It's possible the B-21 project could spawn a tanker variant and it's also possible that the USA already have a stealth tanker avaiable and are allowing their future enemies to base tactics on a very un-stealthy tanker fleet. After all, Northrop grumman pulled out of the KC-X tanker competition that Boeing eventually won... I just wonder if they had an alternative offer to build an alternative tanker, after all they built the B-2 bomber so have expertise in building large stealth aircraft under black projects.

After all in the recent decade, more large stealthy aircarft have been observed around the usual secret testing grounds in the USA.

It wouldn't surprise me if the US did have a stealthy tanker ready to go if push came to shove.

If not deep pentration missions into highly-contested enemy airspace will simply not be possible. Not through lack of stealth, but through lack of range.