There is a famous expression which seems to be used rather less these days. "Pull the ladder up, I'm alright Jack" was a popular phrase used in the UK to highlight selfishness. It was so popular that a cult British film from that era was called "I'm alright Jack". It starred Peter Sellers as the epitomy of the Union Shop Steward and satirised British Industrial life in the 1950s. It was the most popular British film of 1959 which served to demonstrate the extent to which the unions dominated at that time.
Peter Sellers was on his way to becoming one of our biggest stars having been a member of the Goons before embarking on a glittering film career which culminated in the Pink Panther films. In his role as Fred Kite, the Shop Steward, Sellers excelled at portraying the paranoia and control which ruled the UK at the time. That movement of course was largely extinguished when Margaret Thatcher successfully took on and beat the National Union of Mineworkers in the bitter dispute of the 1980s. Nowhere was the bitterness of that strike more apparent than in Barnsley in South Yorkshire. I lived there not long after the strike had been defeated and I can not adequately convey to you the absolute hatred of the Tories which pervaded the entire region. To this day, Barnsley remains about as safe a Labour seat as you can imagine and it always amuses me to see the Tories going through the rigmarole of even fielding a candidate. In a by-election in 2011, the new Labour candidate scraped home with 14,724 votes followed by UKIP on 2,953 votes. The Tories managed narrowly to garner more votes than the British National Party. To put that result in to some kind of perspective, the previous Labour incumbent had resigned the seat after admitting to defrauding £14,000 in Parliamentary expenses. That equates to roughly one embezzled pound for each vote gained by his successor - not exactly what you might normally expect in the face of such a blatant abuse of public money.
Like Simon Cowell, a local Barnsley lad called Paul Sykes left school with no qualifications. Like Simon Cowell, Sykes made a lot of money. Unlike Cowell, Sykes didn't achieve his fortune through luck. The son of a miner, he set up a business at the tender age of 18 stripping bus engines and selling the parts to the Middle East. That was in 1961. In 1990, his business had expanded to building the Meadowhall shopping complex on the site of the old steel works in Sheffield. As I write, his wealth is estimated to be around £650 million give or take the odd million. It was always claimed in Barnsley that when the private number plate PS1 became available in the late 1960s, Peter Sellers bid for it but lost out to the lad from Barnsley who had started out with nothing. Paul Sykes has an impressive track record of getting what he wants and being prepared to fight for the privilege.
Sykes has famously been a Tory party donor but famously left in 1991 in the aftermath of the Maastricht treaty. With the late Sir James Goldsmith, he financed the Referendum Party. Their aim was simple - they wanted a straightforward "in or out" referendum regarding our continued membership of the European Union. Sykes remains a vehement opponent of the European Union and is willing to spend his hard earned brass in fighting for everyone to have a say on our membership of the EU. He is a massive donor of UKIP and has today announced that he will be bankrolling their election campaign for 2015.
In making this announcement, Sykes has pretty much dictated the outcome of the next General Election. Two thirds of British voters want an EU referendum to have their say. Sykes intends to let them which is not unreasonable given that we haven't been deemed worthy of one since 1975! This will boost the UKIP vote and dent the Tory vote. It will also dent the vote of Labour and the Liberals too so the only foreseeable outcome now is another coalition but this time featuring a concession to UKIP regarding a referndum. Nigel Farage could scarcley have hoped for better news than this. The irony of the lad from Barnsley having no affiliation to Labour is not lost on me. Had the Tories been more united in their stance over Europe, the next election would have been theirs bankrolled by the likes of Sykes. Instead, their disunity which has plagued them since the mid 1980s has once more spelled their downfall. Make no mistake though. Paul Sykes will agree to a coalition with anyone just as long as the referendum is delivered. This is because he knows what most people have known for a long time. Such a referendum will see us leaving the EU immediately. Cameron, Clegg, Milliband and the CBI are all petrified at the prospect thinking that British jobs will be threatened. On the contrary, such a decision will require Britain to once more stand on it's own two feet - something that we haven't done for a very long time. The rest of Europe needs to be more afraid of us leaving because we'll be alright Jack...
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