The Jury Team

I've blogged before about people with more money than sense getting involved in politics, specifically Messrs Wheeler and Ganley, it's now time to take a look at The Jury Team.

The idea is nice. Nice was a word we always got told off for using at school as it was saccharine and had no substance, so it's ideal in this context.

The Jury Team set out with some basic principles such as being a party of independents, no policies, no whips, believe in what you believe as an individual, we'll be fine.

Love them or loathe them parties came about because independent MPs had to get together to push common causes through the parliamentary system. All The Jury Team would do if God forbid, they ever get in the position to, is turn the clock back a few centuries then watch their dream fade as they split into parties all over again. I saw it first hand as an independent councillor on a ruling coalition a few years back.


MPs and MEPs should serve no more than two terms. So if Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Gladstone or Disraeli were around today they'd have been scuppered while still on the backbenches? I don't think so.


This morning I looked at some of the statements their prospective Euro candidates have made to support their candidacies in the North West. Here are some of the best, or worst whichever way you look at it:

"Promising each constituent full access to contribute to my policy/agenda setting"

As there are several million electors, and around 8m inhabitants in the North West, this lad's going to have his work cut out.

Then there is:

"I have a wide interest in political issues and would place mysef near liberal"

That's right lad, you give it to 'em straight. So liberal, in fact, he daren't even call himself liberal in case he offends somebody!

What about.....

"I am dedicated to working with local communities.I think that there needs to be immediate changes over global issues"

Wow, today the local residents' association, tomorrow the world. I think she's going to need more than two terms on the gravy train to sort out this global shambles. Perhaps she's green?

In fairness visit The Jury Team website if you want to see their full biogs. Now that is a giggle!

Stuart Wheeler And Wealthy Idiots

Part of me thinks Dave 'The Rave' Cameron has played a very astute political game these last few days. On the Jacqui Smith debacle I thought he was very cool not calling for her resignation. If Brown has an ounce of sense her departure will come, probably when the dust has settled a little and it doesn't look like the man in charge has reacted to the mob.

Where Dave was so cool was the way he rubbed her nose in it in a very gentlemanly manner. He could almost have said: "Leave the poor girl alone, hubby was caught looking at naughties and we all know, the whole world. She must be mortified the poor little thing. The whole world is embarrassed for her". Bang, credibility of Home Secretary zero. In fact minus zero as her reputation was crap anyway.

Then up pops another super-rich entrepeneur to prove that making a mint doesn't make you intelligent. Step forward Mr Stuart Wheeler, quaintly described as 'spread betting millionaire'. What is it with UKIP and bookies? Now, Wheeler, I think he must be especially stupid. Donating £100,000 to a party's EU election budget is a bit like cobbing a bag of Sainsbury's ice cubes into the Arctic, or is it the Antarctic I can never remember, thinking it will save the Polar ice-caps.

No, by donating to UKIP Wheeler was trying to force Dave's hand, nothing more nothing less. But Dave called his bluff by chucking him out of the Tory Party for publicly supporting a rival party. Like Declan Ganley, who I will get to shortly, Wheeler has proved that making a wedge doesn't automatically make you a good politician. Quite the opposite in fact, people with pots of money lose their brains when they buy a football club, or try buying a political party, and end up looking and acting like complete clowns. Best to quietly make your donation then take a back seat. It also makes me think that if the Tories can sack a man who a few years ago gave them £5m, then they must have some very serious donors in the wings.

Now then, time for a pop at Declan Ganley. As I have blogged previously, here, I also think Declan is a chap with more money than sense. He was shocked that the UK accepted Lisbon immediately after the Irish voted no. I said then, and I repeat, that shows a naivety about the EU on a quite frightening scale. They don't listen to the people when they vote 'the wrong way' in a referendum, they just hold a second referendum and get the result they wanted. Ask the Danes, the Dutch, the French and the Irish, soon to have their re-run referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Ganley, in the meantime, will waste a lot more time and money standing Libertas candidates in the June European elections trying to reform the EU.

There Wheeler and Ganley diverge. The one thing they do have in common is a naive view that EU withdrawal (Wheeler possibly) or reform (Ganley) can be achieved by electing MEPs. Wrong, they do not have the power.

Electing MEPs does nothing whatsoever to further the cause of UK independence. I say that with confidence having worked for nearly five years for a UKIP MEP. Only our Parliament in Westminster can withdraw us from the EU. If all 70 or so MEPs in the UK after June represented UKIP so what? They would still be a mere 70 out of 500 or more. Since 1999 UKIP have gone backwards in terms of UK local and national elections and that, to those of us who had such high hopes in 2004 and before, is a very sad situation but true.

Mr Wheeler would have spent his £100,000 more wisely urging UK voters to boycott the June elections, increased turnout only gives the EU a veneer of democracy and returns people who are only interested in lining their pockets. Let's face it, the MEPs are the only politicians in the world who still, just about, make British MPs look like paragons of virtue and decency. And to UKIP I say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.