The public have been treated to the unedifying spectacle of three party leaders squabbling in TV shows about bonbons of one or two billion pounds while the country is running an internal deficit of £170 Bn per annum, which is being borrowed from foreign investors at about £14 Bn per month, all of which has to be paid back.
As the LibDems are the beneficiaries of the “performance” of their leader in these debates, it will repay every voter to look at their policies carefully, particularly on immigration and defence, which has not so far figured very much in the election.
On immigration the LibDems want to give an amnesty to unknown numbers of illegal immigrants, which the Home Office estimates place anywhere between 600,000 and one million. Given the history of systematic underestimation of immigration, the figure is more likely to be a million or even more.
Given that current policy allows each granted asylum seeker the right to bring in at least one claimed dependant, Clegg’s policy, which he apparently defended yesterday, May 3rd, as a courageous act of equity to (yes you have guessed it) asylum seekers who have all been at the mercy of evil people smugglers, will end up by doubling or tripling this figure.
Hasn’t Clegg ever gone to Calais and spoken to the French authorities there or even our own Home Office? Talk of a few dozen people smugglers is throwing dust in the eyes of the British people. You have to ask why do LibDems and their allies have such a regard for immigrants that they want another two million or more of them in our country on top of the current annual flow of 500,000? England, where overwhelmingly they settle is already the most densely crowded country in the industrial world – more than Japan and the Netherlands.
On defence, the LibDem policy of throwing doubt on the continuance of the Trident deterrent beyond its current replacement date of 2020-24 will simply increase pressure on Britain to give up its permanent United Nations Security Council seat, a seat we have held since we, the USA and the former Soviet Union co-founded the United Nations in 1945.
In fact Clegg is personally committed to handing over our seat to the EU, which with his nuclear policy would leave France as the only credible independent country in Europe.
One or two former political figures like David Owen, who helped found the LibDems, and who have close contacts now with them, have advanced the idea that the nuclear deterrent could be carried more cheaply by cruise missiles. Unlike the Trident ballistic missiles whose route to target is set in the submarine in a vertical parabola, which cannot be interfered with after launch, cruise missiles are basically horizontal in flight, continuously corrected by the guidance they carry with them and therefore continuously exposed to electronic jamming and redirection. This is all apart from the colossal systems of communications, research, maintenance, dock systems at Faslane and Devonport which would have to be built from scratch for the new cruise missile submarines, but which are already built for Trident systems and their replacedments. But then these “details” are of no concern to politicians, acting out roles on the national stage or, in Owen’s case, trying to stage a comeback.
So vote LibDem with its European obsessions added to its defence illusions, UN Security Council Seat surrender and policy of uncontrolled immigration and you will end up with Britain ceasing to be an independent, self-governing country in any sense at all.