Who willm speak for England?

‘….man drest in a little brief authority,

plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.

 

We are now in purdah, which means that Cameron can no longer use legions of civil servants to invent new porkies to push for a ‘stay’ vote. Cameron’s statesman-like response to the challenge of Brexit is to warn about more expensive mobile phone calls and budget-airline fares. So vote ‘leave’ and it’s Clacton, not Benidorm. Yeah, right!

 

Heir to Blair? Heir to Neville Chamberlain, more like!

 

This does not mean that the lacklustre ‘ Brexit’ campaign will get any better, split as it is between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

 

There is no coherent message, and it is way past time when they should be setting out the issues in plain language that people can understand, not just the ’pollies’ who occupy the Westminster village. Here are a few:

 

Should 

·       Westminster  be the ultimate source of laws  for the British?

·       the Supreme Court to be the final legal authority for Britain, excluding any jurisdiction from any foreign court?

·       Britain have sole control over immigration, including terms of entry and visa policy?

·       Britain have sole responsibility for all public health matters, such as tobacco and alcohol policies? all consumer protection matters returned to Britain e.g. power of vacuum cleaners, standards for light bulbs?

·       Britain have complete control over fisheries and agriculture?

·       Our armed forces be merged into the proposed (but not disclosed) EU defence force?

 

And many more….

 

The outrageous ‘no-balls’ from Bremain should be whacked over the boundary right now. It’s not difficult.

 

‘Wages will fall’. The greatest threat to wage-levels is uncontrolled immigration from Eastern Europe as the €-zone falls deeper into recession.

 

‘House prices will fall’. And that’s bad? Not for first-time buyers in particular.

 

‘Unemployment will rise’. Like it has in the €-zone, to insane levels, especially under-25s, where it has hit 50% in some places?

 

‘Inflation will rise’. That’s a sign of a buoyant economy. But they say that the economy will shrink. Stagflation as in the €-zone, maybe?

 

‘Food prices will go up’. Hardly. The EU imposes swinging tariffs on the import of many foodstuffs. EU tariffs on agricultural products average 18% – over four times more than charges on other goods, with isoglucose (sweetener derived from starch) hit hardest by a staggering 604% duty. It would sell for 40% less than EU-produced sugar.

 

‘Farmers will lose their CAP subsidies’. Actually, the subsidy paid to farmers by Brussels is half what HMG pays into the CAP. It could double the subsidy without additional cost to the UK taxpayer.

 

Britain must decide whether it is to remain shackled to a corpse or free itself from a moribund economy (the slowest growth rate of any region in the world), a bloated, unaccountable, meddling and self-serving bureaucracy, and inevitable coalescence into an up-dated version of the Soviet Union, a collection of so-called republics slavishly answerable to Brussels.

 

The DT eloquently describes the EU ‘as an ultimately doomed, job-destroying, declining and mismanaged behemoth which stands no chance in an increasingly agile, globalised world’.

 

The alternative is for Britain to cut the painter.

 

After all, this is the world’s fifth largest economy and is destined to become the largest country in Western Europe as the population of  Germany continues to fall.

 

As to governance, we have the perfect example of the attitude of Brussels towards democracy.

 

Boss Juncker (elected by nobody, of course) threatened the people of Austria that if they had the effrontery to vote for a ‘right wing’ President, then there would be serious repercussions. We have been here before , in 1999 when the elected Government of Austria was effectively black-balled by the EU.

 

Juncker is also making threatening noises in the direction of Hungary and Poland.

 

And yet the rise of the ‘far right’ is inexorable for the time being. Blame can be heaped on the centre-left and centre-right parties. They form cosy coalitions, as was the case in Austria since 1945 until recently. The reaction of the people is ‘stitch-up’ and they look for alternatives, and this usually means ‘far right’, as there are few alternatives for the protest vote. The Eurocrats simply dismiss them as ‘neo-Nazi’.

 

The current referendum campaign is the most shameful episode in recent British political history on a par with  1930s ‘appeasement’.

 

The ultimate peril is that the EU will grow even more oppressive and authoritarian. Several member states have a solid track record of throwing the rascals out by force. There are modern examples of political violence in Spain, Portugal, Greece, where the regimes were overthrown; Germany and Italy which suffered years of nihilistic terrorism; France, which was on the brink of civil war over the abandonment of Algeria, has a long tradition of revolution.

 

To echo Leo Amery on 2 September 1939, ‘Speak for England, Dave!’

 

And finally:

 

‘’Fat cats with huge salaries should be cut in half’

UKIP leaflet.

 

Brussels.........Out!

O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear!

 

There still over a month before this truly wretched Referendum ‘campaign’ is over. Both Brexit and Remain campaigns have swung between the pathetic and the outrageous, the former because it has never got its act together, the latter because almost its entire approach has been  infantile scare mongering that is an insult to the electorate. And we are still waiting for Remain to tell us about the EU’s outstanding achievements so far this century

 

Brexit has harped on about immigration and little else. Important though this may be, there are many fundamental issues that it has not addressed.

 

At the back of all the stuff about the economy, the letters drafted by teenage scribblers in No. 10 for signature by big shot businessmen, luvvies, and especially economists who have got every single forecast wrong since the Great Depression is the basic fact that the British detest foreigners interfering in their lives.

 

The Common Market was presented as the ‘Vision Splendid’ that would sweep away artificial limitations and restrictions on the economies of the member starts, enabling free movement of capital, services and workers, the abolition of tariff barriers, and other growth-restricting practices.

 

And instead of the Grand Design, what did we get? Dictats on the power of vacuum cleaners.

 

More seriously, Brussels denies science and evidence when these do not fit the bureaucrats’ plans. The effects on our well-being could be serious.

 

There is the issue of GM crops. GM is currently banned in the EU. Imports are similarly banned. This seems to be based on a single piece of research years ago that suggested mice were affected by GM potatoes. Prince Charles raised the debate to a higher plane. He reckoned that GM was  the sole prerogative of God. The media reckoned that these Frankenfoods would turn us into something from a sci-fi horror movie.

 

Since that time, GM crops have been gown extensively throughout the world and have significantly improved the lot of people in poor countries by  increased productivity and lower food costs.

 

American scientists have given GM a clean bill-of-health, but that has made no impression on Brussels. Perhaps the findings of their own scientific officer that GM was harmless might have stirred some action.

 

Well, it did.

 

They fired her!

 

And right now, this very week, we see the Tobacco Products Directive.

 

Amongst other restrictions, it bans packaging. Henceforth, cigarettes will be sold in plain wrapping. Like pornography.

 

It is of no consequence to Brussels that when Australia did the same smoking marginally increased. There are more malign possibilities.

 

It is reckoned that 2 out of every 3 cigarettes smoked in Britain is fake contraband. The loss to the Revenue must be colossal. A likely consequence is that the increased market opportunity will result in cigarette smuggling being taken over by criminal gangs, as with hard drugs.

 

But what is of constitutional importance here touches upon the issue of sovereignty (on which topic both Brexit and Remain have had little to say although it is actually the fundamental issue).

 

Brands and trademarks are extremely valuable. The TPD has driven a coach and horses through British law of copyright and intellectual property, This, of course, matters little to our dirigiste masters in the Berlaymont, but it remains a mystery as to how this outrage conforms to the setting free of trade envisioned by the Treaty of Rome.

 

So by administrative fiat centuries of English law of intellectual property have been swept aside; no democratic inputs, of course. The votes of elected British politicians count for nothing.

 

Even more absurd is that e-cigarettes have been captured by the TPD, although they contain no tobacco and are in reality a tobacco replacement. So we have the Royal College of Physicians and other health authorities lauding vaping as a major contribution to public health and suggesting that e-liquids might be made available on the NHS to smokers as a quitting therapy. Instead Brussels will control the nicotine content which will reduce its  effectiveness as an anti-smoking tool, the size of the liquid container, advertising and the sale to under-18s. Adolescents will have to be content with Senior Service and Benson & Hedges until they grow-up.

 

And finally, there is the Big Issue of so-called climate change.

 

There is no conclusive proof either way about the claims of the Green lobby that we are all doomed unless we give up our dirty, polluting habits and revert to – what, exactly?

 

No sensible investor would put his money into Green stock until there was hard evidence that was beyond dispute showing that without drastic reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels disaster beckons.

 

And yet the EU, aided and abetted by bandwagon-climbing politicians, has spent millions of our money imposing carbon limits, and shows no signs of letting-up regardless of  members’ ability to pay.

 

The real Brexit message should be simple – ‘We want our country back; and we are going to get it!

Trumped?

What the Donald achieved in the business world is now evident in American politics. He has successfully executed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. He used his wealth, personality, notoriety and leverage to wipe out all the competition and bully the party establishment into submission. And now the party and the right wing media are clicking their heels and kowtowing. He may even overwhelm Hillary given his momentum and the accelerated rate at which former enemies are rallying to his side. 

 

The USA has just witnessed a modern marvel of unprecedented political engineering. Instead of being trumped by powerful Republican opponents, Donald has triumphed over them, the party and perhaps even the nation. Hillary's inability to make palpable gains in her state-by-state campaign belies a serious lack of liberal support. And liberal support is all it takes to capture the Presidency. Everyone agrees there are more liberal voters in the US than republicans and conservatives and independents. All she has to do is smile to aggregate black, Latino, women and other minority votes. Instead, she is losing one contest after another to septuagenarian socialist candidate Bernie Sanders. Given the prevailing set of state electoral rules however, Hillary continues to gain the all important delegate votes in spite of Bernie's popularity. 

 

The more sagacious of the American pundits are already begining to scrutinize the demographics of Sanders' popularity. He has mesmerized white youth, women and huge pockets of the middle class with his promises of free higher education, income redistribution, lower taxes, universal healthcare and what amounts to a seriously expanded welfare state. The impact of this sea change in political demography will not kick in until after the current election. However, those who pay no attention to it are likely to become its victim. One major element to public opinion Bernie has captured is the disdain for the super rich and their alliance with political leaders of all political colors and levels. He has made it abundantly apparant that entry into the privileged 1% club of America's wealthiest is near to impossible and the only way to gain access to manifold wealth is to re-structure Washington DC by excising crony capitalism. This means expanded access to privileged financial information, expelling lobbyists, limiting congressional terms of office, and imposing even more severe regulations on banking institutions and executives. 

 

Strange as it may seem, the USA is at once warned against the prospect of a tyrant and dictator in the form of Trump on the one hand while being cautioned into not becoming a welfare state like those of Europe on the other. The likelihood is that neither will result, but it would be prudent to keep close tabs on both of these propensities. 

Things fall apart.........

the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’.

 

The Referendum Campaign of which the public is heartily sick and tired nevertheless looks as if the end result regardless of the outcome will be the greatest political schism since the Gang of Four split the Labour Party and formed the SDP.

 

In one of my early posts I referred to the EU as ‘the Fourth Reich’. The Moderators obviously thought that this was in the worst possible taste, and chopped it. It has now entered current usage, the latest being by Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph in which he fulminates (and nobody can fulminate better than Heff) against almost total domination of the EU by Germany. Boris Johnson managed to get ‘Hitler’ into his latest assault on behalf of the Leavers. He said that the past 2,000 years of European history have been characterised by repeated attempts to unify Europe under a single government in order to recover the continent’s lost “golden age” under the Romans.

“Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically,” he says.

“The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods’.

 

Cameron got a well-deserved shafting for talking about Brexit enhancing the prospects of another European war. What was seen as a relatively amiable difference of views has now become a brutal contest over the future   of the Tory Party. Those two diametrically opposite positions  aptly sum up the state of the Tory Party.

 

Whatever the outcome of the referendum, things will never be the same again. The positions of the Brexiteers and Remainers have polarised to such an extent that, post referendum, civil war is almost inevitable. We have been here before, with John Major’s ‘bastards’.

 

The outcome was 18 years of Tories in the wilderness. What is much more intriguing this time is that there is no Tony Blair to charge through the breach; only a totally unelectable opposition party led by  a parody of a Labour leader..

 

In advance of his departure in 2020, Cameron is in the process of doing more farewell tours than Frank Sinatra; he may in fact be due for an early bath if Brexit wins. All that is needed for a leadership contest is  signatories from 15% sitting Tory MPs to the 1922 Committee, the device used to eviscerate Maggie.

 

Regardless of whether a Tory leadership contest happens in 2020 on Cameron’s promised departure, or earlier on a Brexit win, it is a virtual certainty that the contest will be between the winner and loser of the referendum.

 

The succession contest has suddenly become interesting.                 

 

Until very recently George Osborne was seen as a shoe-in and Boris Johnson’s ambitions seemed to have faded like the morning mist. Then the chatterati began to big-up Teresa May. Michael Gove then got on to the list of runners-and-riders.

 

Current odds are Boris 5/2, Osborne 5/1 and Gove and May at 6/1, so an election soon would probably see Boris home and dry in Number 10, but thereafter it is too close to call.

 

Cameron’s legacy is likely to be one of division, bitterness, enmities, and disunity. The Tories will very likely find themselves dumped by the electorate if the Labour Party gets a credible replacement for ‘Nowhere Man’ Corbyn. The front runners at this time are Dan Jarvis, Hilary Benn, Tom Watson and John McDonnel. The latter two are Corbynistas and therefore the Tories’ best hope for survival. Benn is very ‘yesterday’.

 

The man to watch is Jarvis. He is being quietly and carefully groomed. He is academically well-qualified. He has an appealing personality and an admirable domestic life. And as an ex-Special Services officer with service in Northern Ireland, the Balkans. Iraq and Afghanistan, he has rather more experience of life (and death) than most politicians.

 

And where does all this leave EU membership? If the Remainers win, look forward to ‘ever closer union’, which actually means a federal Europe dominated by Germany, the admission of Turkey and the extension of Europe’s borders to Islamic countries, and the continued growth of neo-Nazi parties.

 

After Brexit, what then?

 

Well, for a while not very much. There will need to be enabling legislation, another cause of strife, and the serving of 2 years NTQ. And expect at least 10 years to unscramble the omelette, which should keep our British Eurocrats in work.

 

‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity’.

 

Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Cameron?

This referendum campaign, which started as rather cheesy drama, has now gone beyond parody; even ‘Yes’, Minister’ would never have dared a plot line of ‘If you leave, it’s war!’.

 

Boris has mocked Cameron for his assertion that it was the EU that stopped Russia in the Ukraine. Now he is being hammered for stating the bleedin’ obvious. Security is the role of NATO. It kept the peace in Europe for 30 years before UK even entered the Common Market.

 

Then, we thought we had signed up to an economic community; free trade, free movement of goods and services, and all the rest that was going to restore Britain’s shaky economy. We were too naïve to see that the ultimate objective was the elimination of national states and the creation of a Europe-wide monolith. We should have known, because Monnet, the father of it all, said so, but that politicians should take care to ensure that the public was not aware.

 

Now Jack Straw has come out in support of Cameron’s absurd assertion that Brexit heightens the chances of another European war even though the EU does not, never has, and never will have a role that supplants NATO. With friends like him……….!

 

This was my take at the time began his adventure in the Crimea and Ukraine.

 

‘When this imbroglio first started I maintained it was all due to meddling by the EU in its attempts to bring the Ukraine within the Brussels orbit, and, by implication, eventually into NATO. Others, including John Redwood MP, have since endorsed my view.

 

The prospect of parking Western tanks on Putin’s front lawn, was bound to be taken as a provocation which played completely into Putin’s hands to give a pretext for all subsequent events, beginning with the annexation of the Crimea.

 

Everyone knows that the Minsk peace deal is a very bad joke. Putin will simply ensure that the Ukraine continues to be destabilised.

 

But it goes deeper.

 

Since the early 90s the West has been gloating over ‘winning’ the Cold War. The problem is that it has not moved on. The intelligent policy  would have been to have brought Russia in from the cold. Instead it treated Russia with a degree of disdain, a gangster state with a mockery of democracy, run by corrupt oligarchs who are Putin’s friends and backers. Very true, as it is true of many Western allies.

 

EU policy was to push up to the borders of Russia by signing on new members who possessed very few of the essential qualifications, which include sound democratic institutions, economic stability, good governance, free courts and judicial system, and financial and fiscal integrity. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria possess scarcely any of these. Their economies are almost ‘third world’ and none is in the top 50 countries for GDP per capita. (The quasi-criminal Balkan states are in the queue. Russia regards them as within an exclusively Slav sphere of influence, so Vlad is not going to like the idea one bit. Just for the record Bosnia has a GDP per capita ranking of 105, just shy of Jamaica)’.

 

So where is this threat to the peace of Europe coming from?

 

The simple answer is that it comes from the EU itself. Its role model is not the old-established democratic institutions of the UK, United States, and which, unlike all but three of the EU members, have had them for longer than a single lifetime.

 

It is the Soviet Union, a centralised self-perpetuating bureaucracy and a pretend-Parliament.

 

The threat is already present in the disorder resulting from Mutti Merckel’s unilateral ‘open doors’ policy on refugees which she clearly intends to impose on the other EU members; in the economic chaos a consequent human misery caused by the Euro disaster (which Brussels either cannot see that it must fail outside a unitary state or see it only to clearly as the entrée to ‘ever close union’).

 

It is present in the utter failure arising from Schengen to have border policing that would help to keep out terrorists, and now it is too late.

 

It is present in the appalling rates of unemployment in Club Med, particularly amongst young people who are unlikely to sit quietly in the face of the realisation that their political masters are unable or unwilling to offer them a life.

 

It is present in the inexorable growth of neo-Nazi parties in Austria, Scandinavia, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands and France in particular.

 

Welcome to Pax Europa!

 

 

 

 

 

This referendum campaign, which started as rather cheesy drama, has now gone beyond parody; even ‘Yes’, Minister’ would never have dared a plot line of ‘If you leave, it’s war!’.

 

Boris has mocked Cameron for his assertion that it was the EU that stopped Russia in the Ukraine. Now he is being hammered for stating the bleedin’ obvious. Security is the role of NATO. It kept the peace in Europe for 30 years before UK even entered the Common Market.

 

Then, we thought we had signed up to an economic community; free trade, free movement of goods and services, and all the rest that was going to restore Britain’s shaky economy. We were too naïve to see that the ultimate objective was the elimination of national states and the creation of a Europe-wide monolith. We should have known, because Monnet, the father of it all, said so, but that politicians should take care to ensure that the public was not aware.

 

Now Jack Straw has come out in support of Cameron’s absurd assertion that Brexit heightens the chances of another European war even though the EU does not, never has, and never will have a role that supplants NATO. With friends like him……….!

 

This was my take at the time began his adventure in the Crimea and Ukraine.

 

‘When this imbroglio first started I maintained it was all due to meddling by the EU in its attempts to bring the Ukraine within the Brussels orbit, and, by implication, eventually into NATO. Others, including John Redwood MP, have since endorsed my view.

 

The prospect of parking Western tanks on Putin’s front lawn, was bound to be taken as a provocation which played completely into Putin’s hands to give a pretext for all subsequent events, beginning with the annexation of the Crimea.

 

Everyone knows that the Minsk peace deal is a very bad joke. Putin will simply ensure that the Ukraine continues to be destabilised.

 

But it goes deeper.

 

Since the early 90s the West has been gloating over ‘winning’ the Cold War. The problem is that it has not moved on. The intelligent policy  would have been to have brought Russia in from the cold. Instead it treated Russia with a degree of disdain, a gangster state with a mockery of democracy, run by corrupt oligarchs who are Putin’s friends and backers. Very true, as it is true of many Western allies.

 

EU policy was to push up to the borders of Russia by signing on new members who possessed very few of the essential qualifications, which include sound democratic institutions, economic stability, good governance, free courts and judicial system, and financial and fiscal integrity. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria possess scarcely any of these. Their economies are almost ‘third world’ and none is in the top 50 countries for GDP per capita. (The quasi-criminal Balkan states are in the queue. Russia regards them as within an exclusively Slav sphere of influence, so Vlad is not going to like the idea one bit. Just for the record Bosnia has a GDP per capita ranking of 105, just shy of Jamaica)’.

 

So where is this threat to the peace of Europe coming from?

 

The simple answer is that it comes from the EU itself. Its role model is not the old-established democratic institutions of the UK, United States, and which, unlike all but three of the EU members, have had them for longer than a single lifetime.

 

It is the Soviet Union, a centralised self-perpetuating bureaucracy and a pretend-Parliament.

 

The threat is already present in the disorder resulting from Mutti Merckel’s unilateral ‘open doors’ policy on refugees which she clearly intends to impose on the other EU members; in the economic chaos a consequent human misery caused by the Euro disaster (which Brussels either cannot see that it must fail outside a unitary state or see it only to clearly as the entrée to ‘ever close union’).

 

It is present in the utter failure arising from Schengen to have border policing that would help to keep out terrorists, and now it is too late.

 

It is present in the appalling rates of unemployment in Club Med, particularly amongst young people who are unlikely to sit quietly in the face of the realisation that their political masters are unable or unwilling to offer them a life.

 

It is present in the inexorable growth of neo-Nazi parties in Austria, Scandinavia, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands and France in particular.

 

Welcome to Pax Europa!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Hillsborough, what next?

There is something intrinsically repellent about the eagerness of the media to squeeze the last drop of drama out of sudden death and tragedy. The departure of Michael Jackson lasted about three weeks; more recently we have been regaled with the lives and tragic deaths of David Bowie and a little-known entertainer called Prince (aids, if you really want to know).

 

But with the inquest report on the Hillsborough tragedy they really struck oil. BBC TV News went into overdrive. The whole of the main early-evening news was devoted to the story, plus a ‘special’ immediately afterwards. There was blanket coverage elsewhere and it was ‘front page’ for days in the print media. After all, it had all the elements of a great story – large numbers of dead, police cover-up, official lies and deception and of course, football.

 

Now for the hunt for scapegoats. Somebody must be punished.

 

And yet none of the pundits seems to have made a correct assessment of the tragedy.

 

The starting-point is that disasters of this magnitude almost never have a single cause; there is the build-up of a series of events which, possibly non-lethal or even relatively harmless in themselves, come together and the result is catastrophe.

 

To understand Hillsborough we must go back some years to the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

 

English football was the epicentre of soccer violence; its ‘fans’ actually coined the term ‘football hooligans’. The consequence was that England was banned from European competition for four years.

 

Many of the grounds of leading teams were dilapidated and unimproved since the days of cloth caps and terraces.

 

There was a major fire at Bradford that cost many lives; it appears that the grandstand was an ancient fire-trap.

 

We now move on to the tragedy at Haysel in 1985. Football hooligans alleged to have been mainly from Liverpool invaded territory of the opposing team’s fans. Thirty-nine people died in the ensuing violence. As a consequence English clubs were banned from all European competitions until 1990–91, with Liverpool being banned  for an additional three  years.

 

Fourteen Liverpool fans found guilty of manslaughter and each sentenced to three years' imprisonment. ^[

 

As a consequence measures were taken to prevent further clashes between fans during matches. They were the wrong measures. They mainly involved putting a security fence around the spectator areas to stop pitch invasions. And so there is a further step towards the Hillsborough tragedy.

 

Hillsborough Stadium itself was clapped out. It seems that entrances and exits were inadequate, certainly for a capacity crowd. There appeared to be no emergency plan, facilities or equipment. There were still terraces for the bulk of the fans. And it had ]previous’ for overcrowding, including an ominous foretaste in 1988, when a large number of fans were injured through over-crowding.

 

At the time of the disaster, it had no safety certificate.

 

And so we come to the fateful day.

 

As far as we can ascertain from then inquest evidence, the disaster began to unfold when a very large number of Liverpool fans arrived at the same time. Contrary to reports in The Sun and elsewhere they were not ticketless, drunk or violent. But only one of seven turnstiles was open  which losed obviously led to unmanageable congestion. The tunnel leading to the pens for the Liverpool fans should have been closed when the pens were full. On this day it was left open and unmanned.

 

Because of the congestion outside the ground the police opened the exit gates, allowing the fans to crowd in and crushing earlier arrivals against the security fence who were not allowed across by the police.

 

There were 44 ambulances deployed but the police would only allow one into the ground. ‘Why’ is not explained.

 

In the aftermath, the police went into warp-drive to cover their arses; for example, of 160 police statements no less than 116  were proved to have been tampered with. The cover-up survived for more than 20 years despite the stench of it being in  establishment nostrils  for years, leaving bereaved families with calumnies about ‘drunken thugs’, ‘soccer hooligans’ and much more.

 

The inquest verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ leaves a very big question mark..

 

What happens next?

 

The police commander responsible for crowd control, Chief Superintendent Duckenfield, may be charged with manslaughter by reason of gross negligence. This will mean a reprise of the inquest evidence but to  a higher standard of proof.

 

The tampering with police statements might lead to charges of misconduct in a public office or similar.

 

The inquest found both the police and ambulance service in breach of their duty of care.

 

The owners of the ground may be liable in damages  under occupier’s liability law.

 

There is, however, one certainty: another bumper pay-day for m’ learned friends!