by Godfrey Bloom

We finish the annual party conference season a bizarre gathering for the benefit of activists who enjoy a monster knees up and party leaders who require their biennial adrenalin fix of adoring sycophants. Make no mistake; this is addictive to the very ordinary people who lead political parties. Interesting none of them played team sports at school or have military service, so the experience is particularly novel.

No serious policies are ever put forward; there is never strategic thought or originality; they desperately strive for the centre ground which actually means some form of socialism.

One Tory announcement on the morning of the UKIP conference claimed the government would offer a 20 percent discount to first time buyers. Very odd I thought; I did not know the government had any houses to sell either at a premium or discount. On further investigation it appears if a young couple starting out buy their first humble dwelling the conservatives have promised to steal less of their money when they do so. Another concession is when you die the government will not confiscate half your pension in tax depriving your spouse of her security in old age. Are we suppose to applaud this generosity? Vote Tory; we will steal less of your money than Labour.

Interestingly the supremely unelectable Ed Milliband promised over eight pounds an hour minimum wage. I have never understood why these politicos steeped in Keynesian thinking do not advocate a rate of pay worthy of a top QC, I suggest six hundred pounds an hour, we could all then be upper middle class, buy Bentleys, live in posh houses, consume our socks off.

The aggregate demand will immediately rescue the economy, shoot up the tax take and balance the books. We would rapidly overtake the Germans who are too stupid to have a minimum wage and regain the moral leadership of the world. By the by Ed would that not make us all Tories?

Nobody mentioned the national debt, over one trillion pounds and rising at one hundred billion a year, Ed was going to but forgot. Everybody talks of austerity but no one does it.

Not only is this debt unimaginable to the average Joe, but they have printed 350 billion pounds; that is counterfeiting to you and me. Yet we still have highly paid civil servants telling us not to smack our naughty children or there is too much salt in cheese. Incidentally it is highly unlikely Classic FM listeners burn their houses down by overloading the electric plug; am I the only one who thinks that woman is stupid? The conference season had a few laughs UKIP confirmed their deliciously amateur status by advocating a luxury goods tax, quite who decides that lord knows, but give it a few months and Farage will be rubbishing the whole document anyway. I left the economics committee of UKIP in the hands of a goatee bearded ex Lib Dem so it is a wonder there was not even more embarrassment.

Not that readers of my stuff will need reminding but I recommend a re-read of Hayek’s speech “Why I am not a conservative.” Osborne endorsed this speech in spades with his boastful advocacy of social engineering, for those unfamiliar simplistically a conservative believes he can run you and your family better than the socialists, but fatally also better than you. Oh for a new party that will let us go to the devil in our own way.

I failed dismally to persuade UKIP to libertarianism; shame on me. It is not without irony that Tory back benchers want to be UKIP and the UKIP leadership want to be Tory. I suppose all comedians want to play Hamlet and vice versa; good news GDP is up now they have included drugs and prostitution in the figures. No I have not helped on either.

Godfrey Bloom  served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber from 2004 to 2014