Is a Tea Party movement about to kick off in Britain?

I’ve often heard it said that whatever is happening in the USA today will probably come across the pond in about ten years from now. Something of a generalisation of course, and not always true – Reagan and Thatcher started their evil work at about the same time, and other menaces may not take ten years to get here…..   

In 2009, the Tea Party movement kicked off in the USA. The catalyst for it occurred in February of that year when Rick Santelli, a commentator on CNBC, made reference to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and proposed a Chicago version to protest about President Obama’s intervention in the housing market. The right-wing movement which developed opposed excessive taxation and government intervention in the private sector, while supporting stronger immigration controls. Disaffected Republicans were attracted to this movement, and its tone resonated with members of the paramilitary militia movement. The Tea Party also attracted ‘birthers’ – those who claimed that Obama had been born outside the USA – and others who considered Obama to be a socialist (if only!) along with crackpots who believed that Obama was secretly a Muslim.

The Tea Party movement’s first major action in 2009 was a series of rallies on 15 April, which is the annual deadline for filing income tax returns. Protesters claimed that ‘Tea’ was an acronym for ‘Taxed Enough Already’. At the national level, a number of groups claimed to represent the Tea Party movement as a whole but the Tea Party lacked a clear leader. When Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska in July 2009, she became an unofficial spokesperson on Tea Party issues, and in February 2010 she delivered the keynote address at the first National Tea Party Convention.

In the UK, Owen Paterson has recently been sacked as environment secretary. It’s hard to think of someone who was more unfit for the role in the first place. As George Monbiot writes: “Paterson insisted on a mass cull of badgers against scientific advice, he stripped away the last regulations protecting the soil from erosion, he believed that the purpose of waterways is to get rid of water, he sought to turn our rivers into featureless gutters, and he championed the pesticides that appear to be destroying bees and other animals.” Now he’s not in government, Paterson can speak directly; he attacks ‘the green blob’ which he fought against and lost.

Monbiot continues: “Tea Party politics can be defined as the interests of the ultra-elite cleverly repackaged as the interests of the common people. This requires a sense of victimhood.  In Paterson’s case, he made it up, saying he was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as he was recovering from an operation to save his eyesight. Greenpeace did no such thing.” Paterson claims that green movements oppressed him and hard-working country people in order to “keep each other well supplied with lavish funds”. He lists his opponents as rich pop stars, rich landowners, a dress designer and a public school journalist (George Monbiot!), who "don’t represent the real countryside of farmers and workers".

Paterson himself is a millionaire who owns a large country estate on which he lets out buildings and agricultural land. While in office, he doubled the public subsidy for grouse moors. He even defeated an attempt to limit the amount of public money rich landowners can receive. As a result, the dukes and sheikhs and oligarchs who own England’s biggest estates each receive millions of pounds in subsidies. He appointed as chair of Natural England (which is supposed to defend wildlife) Andrew Sells, a multimillionaire house-builder.

To be like the Tea Party you have to move the spectrum of political thought by planting your flag on the outer fringes of lunacy, a tactic often used in the USA by the likes of Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann. Paterson’s contribution is to identify the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, and the Canadian premier, Stephen Harper – both of whom have done  substantial harm to the living planet - as “champions of environmental protection”.

You might well be thinking that UKIP is already fulfilling the role of the British Tea Party (or maybe, with Farage in charge, it’s more like the Beer and Fags Party). In a furious row with Cameron after he was sacked, Paterson shouted: “I can out-UKIP UKIP, you’re making a big mistake". Monbiot concludes that Paterson has “positioned himself as a spokesman for a new strand of conservatism that is likely to consolidate as David Cameron seeks to distance himself, before the election, from his party’s whackier fringes on the radical right. Choked with resentment and self-pity, apparently convinced that despite a life of wealth and power he represents the whipped and wounded, Paterson has spelt out the essential components of something that might soon become familiar to us. Tea Party politics were bound to reach these shores eventually, and they will be lavishly financed by the very rich. It won’t be pretty, but we should be ready for it.”

Sources used:-

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1673405/Tea-Party-movement

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/22/british-tea-party-conservatism-owen-paterson

I think your right about Ukip been equivalent to the Tea party Ivan, all you have to do is look at Ukips 2010 Manifesto 31p for top rate of tax just for those poor buggars that only earn £100,000 per year. What you have said about what happens in USA will arrive here in the UK within 10 years I do not know if you have heard about the TITTP treaty between the EU and USA, and from what I have heard we will be the 52nd state of the USA if this comes to the UK.

It could also mean we have to leave the EU, I do know that Andy Burnham has been to Brussels to see if we could keep our NHS out of the treaty how he got on is what I do not know perhaps you may have heard ??

European official commits to safeguarding NHS in EU-US trade deal

"Although health services are in principle within the scope of these agreements and ongoing negotiations, we are confident that the rights of EU member states to manage their health systems according to their various needs can be fully safeguarded." (Ignacio Garcia Bercero)

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/11/nhs-safeguarded-european-commission-eu-us-trade-deal

A picture of the US Republican "Tea Party" movement has been outlined clearly in various postings from Shirina. In abstract, this appears to be a group of people thoroughly traumatised by the election of a not-white President, who have spent the past seven years in denial and in persistent opposition. Their cohesion lies solely in that opposition, because they object to almost every liberal improvement to the life of the less privileged. Asked if they would allow sick people to die if they couldn't pay hospital bills, the answer was an unequivocal "yes".

I'd like to think that like-minded people would find themselves in a minority in the UK, but the times they are a'changing.

IVAN thank you for the link, but have heard recently from Max Keiser RT TV, that through this treaty companies have Canada and couple of other countries in court with no reporting allowed plus there is no appeal allowed in these cases once the judgement has been given.