Daily Express: Let us debate the real issues in the election campaign

Lord Pearson in yesterday's Daily Express ...

LET US DEBATE THE REAL ISSUES IN THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN

INDULGE me for a moment. Imagine an election ­campaign that actually talked about the things that really concern the British people rather than what the wives of the party leaders think about their ­husbands. What are the issues that should be tackled? What should the election be about?

I ask because this election will not be about the issues that really concern us: mass immigration, massive waste in the public services, crime, the European Union and our very democracy. These things will be avoided like the plague.

Why is this? Why is there no straight talking from those who fill our TV screens?

The simple reason is that the power over these and so many other issues no longer resides in Westminster, it has moved to Brussels. The promises of the establishment political ­parties melt away like the grin on the Cheshire cat once this stark reality shines upon them.

That's why they won't talk about immigration. The fact that 5,000 people a week are moving to this country to live, a city the size of Southampton every year. Last week all three establishment parties sang in harmony: Turkey must join the European Union, they said. You heard that right, not content with throwing our doors open to all European countries with the result that millions have moved here they want Turkey to join as well.

David Miliband, ­William Hague and the Lib Dems are all ­backing Turkish membership. Oh how pleased they are to be able to agree with each other. "Remarkable," they said and of course they are right. It is remarkable that they all want to give 70million Turks the right to move to the UK. Madness might be another word, or more like arrogance in the face of the wishes of the British public.

We should be discussing our public finances. The political class has brought our country to its knees. We look in pity at the Greeks humming and ­hawing about whether to apply to the IMF to bail them out. In Greece they are freezing ­public- sector wages (including for the highest paid politicians and the like), cutting social security spending by 10 per cent, closing down bulging aspects of the state and yet still the markets look with a wary eye.

Britain's deficit is similar but nobody is facing up to it. There is no mention of the £45million a day going to Brussels in cash, part of the £120billion a year cost of our EU membership, according to the Taxpayers' Alliance. No talk of a public- sector wage freeze across the board. Cosmetic gestures ­targeting the top 10 per cent just will not do.

The public ­sector has been deliberately expanded at the expense of the productive ­private sector. ­Public-sector pensions now cost each of us £516 a year while most private- sector workers struggle by without proper retirement ­provision. This ­iniquity will grow as time moves on and trouble will out.

The rise of the undemocratic quango industry must also be stopped. If ministers believe that a service should be ­provided it should be provided by the ministry. It would then be accountable and easily cut when no longer required.

Jobs and wealth creation should be on the agenda. Every­body knows most jobs in the private sector are created by small firms yet nobody is setting entrepreneurs free from the oceans of red tape which drown them. Instead we get more and deeper problems with forms, bureaucracy and cost. Our post offices close, our waste is not collected. We get equality laws that drive firms SDHpaway from employing women and lifestyle laws that penalise legal behaviour and destroy our pub culture.

We should be ­talking about the rise of political Islam. The attempted takeover of Tower Hamlets in East London by a radical Muslim organisation should be a wake-up to us all.

In a few years this country will be suffering from serious power shortages. Yet there are no plans to address this as the Establishment refuses to see reality, blinded by impossible dreams of carbon neutrality and the relentless swishing of 10,000 pointless windmills.

We should be discussing the horrifying rise in violent crime and why our legal system puts the rights of the criminal ahead of the wishes of the decent majority. Above all we should be talking about a serious ­devolution of power to the ­people and away from the ­political class with binding national and local referendums to make politicians do what real people want. The Swiss have been doing this for years and it is surely an idea whose time has come.

We do not talk about these things and more for one very simple reason: our political class is unanimous in its ­subservience to "Europe". Immigration? The EU controls our borders. Job creation? Business regulations are ­created in Brussels. The looming energy crisis? Environmental policy is dictated by Eurocrats. Why can't we treat criminals as criminals and ­protect our ­people? Because of European Human Rights ­legislation.

So why on earth are we not talking honestly about the very simple, very central argument in all this: our relationship with Europe?

This election should be about who governs Britain. Should it be politicians elected by the people of Britain? Politicians whom we can fire if they do not perform or prove themselves corrupt and dishonest? Or should it be run by ranks of ­foreign bureaucrats, unelected, unaccountable and immovable? Why shouldn't it be the people themselves who have the power to govern? To ask the question is to answer it. To answer it is to vote UKIP.