Notes on a programme for a national reconstruction, Part 1

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 04 November 2009 01:48.

Nation-building and the Constitution

The first task of a nationalist government in these islands, assuming that government comes into being through democratic elections and not through other means, is to declare this coming into government an act of revolution with all the destructive and creative legal and political powers of change that are predisposed by such events. Since by this declaration the government will lose its mandate, having disavowed the process which brought it to power, it shall rely upon a priori revolutionary status for the legitimacy to rule. Further, it will attach provisionality to this status, it being necessary that a provisional government shall enact the transition from the old national settlement to the new.

First and foremost in the process of change, then, will be a Declaration of the Impending Dissolution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, along with the voiding of the current Constitution serving the Union. A new state, based on the principle of federation, shall be brought into being. England, Scotland and Wales shall equally be member states within it, while Northern Ireland shall have the status of a self-governing territory, along with the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The division of powers between the Federal government in London and the subsidiary governments shall be established in a Constitutional Conference to be held within 50 days of the Declaration.

The Conference will settle all issues pertaining to the new national settlement, including the Articles of Federation and the adaption of certain elements of the existing British Constitution to the new founding Constitution. These latter will include the role of Monarchy, membership and powers of the House of Lords, the Rule of Law, Habeas Corpus, judicial independence and trial by jury, the supremacy of Parliament, free democratic elections, separation of power, etc.

Within a further 50 days all the necessary legal instruments will be drawn up to shape and establish the Federation, and brought before Parliament. The old state will be declared at an end. All agreements with foreign bodies, governmental, quasi-governmental or commercial, will be void. All forms of government debt will be void. All embassy buildings, ministries, government departments, land and other assets of the former state shall pass into the hands of the provisional government as agent for the future federal government, to be held or passed on by the latter to member states and territories according to the Articles of Federation. A fixed term shall be allotted to the provisional government, with arrangements for free parliamentary election at its end.

Citizenship

The right of British citizenship and of EU citizenship will fall with the passing of the Union. Citizenship of the Federation will be determined by dual jus sanguinis with reference solely to those ethnic groups native to member states and territories. Citizenship will be determined either by genetic testing or by descent through unmixed parental lines traceable to 22 June 1948. British passport holders who do not qualify for full citizenship under the new dispensation will be accorded a seven-year temporary citizenship.

A Law of Re-Settlement will be brought before Parliament to specify the terms of a time-dependent, decreasing cash incentive and an increasing property tax to encourage holders of temporary citizenship to emigrate.

A Law of Return will be brought before Parliament to specify the terms on which citizens of former British colonies who can meet the requirements for citizenship of the Federation will be encouraged to immigrate.

Economic Policy

The over-arching economic purpose of the Federal government will be:

1. To free the national economy and the nation generally from the grip of, respectively, global corporatism and finance capitalism.

2. To free the national economy from the crippling effects of high mortgage and personal debt.

3. To remove the power of the private banking sector to issue money.

4. To politicise capital allocation, with bias for domestic investment and for a wide distribution of productive asset ownership.

5. To end the practise of high capital-flow speculation.

Bills will be brought before Parliament accordingly, including:

a) A National Currency Bill to set out the legal process of replacing Sterling with a new currency, to be non-tradeable and pegged to a basket of international currencies, and backed up by the Federal government’s ability to levy tax on member states and territories. The peg-rate will determine the rate at which Sterling bank deposits may be converted into the new currency.

b) A Bank of England Nationalisation Bill to establish the means by which the new currency is to be issued and regulated. The economic management function of the old Bank of England will remain separated from political control.

c) A Temporary Banks Nationalisation Bill to bring all institutional, commercial and personal banking under state control and to end the practise of large-scale capital flow speculation, and the institution in its stead of politicised capital allocation.

d) A Private Debt Nullification Bill to cancel all private property debt held in Sterling by British lenders, and order the transfer of property title free and clear of charges and leins from lenders to borrowers.

In addition there will be a Bill for a National Training Levy on imported consumer goods historically manufactured in this country, a Bill to relax anti-cartel legislation thereby to encourage cooperation in research and development, and a Bill to fine companies guilty of socialising costs while privatising the profits from outsourcing jobs and production.

Tomorrow the revolution reaches foreign and social policy.

Tags: No particular place to go

Comments:

Posted by cladrastis on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:46 | #

Viva la revolucion!

Sounds good GW, but I think you should add Bowery’s citizens’ dividend to your economic policy and explain why you are pegging your New Pound to an international basket of currencies. Also, I think you should give the descendants of all post-‘45 migrants as well as mixed-race Brits the option to undergo sterilization in exchange for a worker’s visa in your New Insular Federation. They could then all move somewhere like…Birmingham (sort of like a humane Gaza).

Posted by Dan Dare on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:59 | #

I like it too but have a couple of minor cavils.

I have difficulty with the concept of reneging on foreign debt, that sounds too Latin American for my taste and probably unnecessary. A temporary suspension of interest payments on govt paper while the new regime bedded in would seem to be more appropriate and less likely to provoke reprisals.

The training levy seems misdirected, it isn’t the domestic production of consumer goods that needs to be stimulated but rather that of high-value capital goods, especially in strategic industries.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:40 | #

cladrastis,

I see James’ innovation of the Citizen’s Dividend as, to an uncontrollable extent, cutting across the need of the hour, which is to deliver our people from race-replacement. If the long-term end is to arrive at a highly libertarian polity, albeit one infused with the self-interest of the taxpayers as Volk, then James’s idea has traction in that respect and, therefore, value. But first one must recover the Volk from the MultiCult. That must be the aim of nationalism in Britain today, and it requires a political revolution of the old top-down variety, I believe, followed by a total revolution of the intellectual, social, cultural, economic and political milieu (Why? Because liberalism will be dead). Discussion on “where we go next” can follow at an appropriate distance, I think.

Dan,

If the foreign creditors want their money they can be mailed an envelope containing the appropriate number of billion pound notes. They can decorate their toilets with them. If they don’t like that and bring sanctions to bear they had better watch out, because once a nationalist government in Europe calls the money-bluff other nationalists will get the idea pdq, and the old way of doing business will be sucked straight down the S-bend.

On a National Training Levy, the seedcorn for an economic revivification plainly needs a lot more thought than I have devoted to it. However, the historical process that a nationalist government would be engaged upon has to be one of confronting and reversing the forces of race-replacement and economic globalisation. In economics that does mean some form of bias for the native British businessman and worker. We all know that economic aid provided directly to businesses results in complacency and inefficiency. So we have to go for a resolution of the problems of a sufficiently wide-ranging investment, of training, and of freeing the economy from debt generally, and that is what I have tried to fashion. Better brains than mine will be needed to arrive at a final and more practicable nationalist policy, obviously.

Posted by Dan Dare on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:58 | #

Dasein, I don’t want to ignite another BritKraut slugfest, but frankly if GW’s objective is debt elimination then a Mefo-style scheme isn’t going to be of any assistance in that. It’s certainly the case that the German economy did grow very significantly through 1938 (and actually all the way to 1944) but so did the public debt, in fact even more so. Not just that, but by far the biggest growth came in military expenditure which was absorbing half of all public expenditure by 1938, and 19% of GDP.

Adam Tooze’s Wages of Destruction is probably the best analysis of Thrid reich economics currently available.

Posted by Captainchaos on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:18 | #

I don’t want to ignite another BritKraut slugfest,

Not much to it, the beginning of wisdom for the English is to admit that they are a more individualistic, less idealistic brand of Kraut with a Celtic tinge.

Oh yeah, and if it comes to it, you guys could always burn Washington and New York (and Tel Aviv) in nuclear fire with Tridents launched from your subs. Just like those naughty Krauts attempted with London.

Posted by Wandrin on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:51 | #

I think the idea of a clean-break constitutional change is a good idea in itself and also as a citizenship tactic. This is especially so in the UK as promoting a federal structure could make it easier to leverage the separate nationalisms within the umbrella of British nationalism.

My view on the citizenship idea, assuming a democratic victory, would be to create a new citizenship that people would have to apply for while maintaining the existing ones as provisional. The new citizenship would be issued slowly starting with party members and relevant jobs would gradually be made to require this new citizenship e.g border police.

The point of the slowness and the lack of explicit statements about who would eventually get the citizenship would be firstly to avoid getting bombed and secondly to get as many invaders as possible to self-deport so when the later stages come things are a lot easier.

yet in the subsequent years the economy grew at a fantastic rate.

I’m not enough of an economist to judge the economic points made but i do think the quote is significant in that if a population is fired up they can do amazing things.