Both the leader of the country and the leader of the opposition are in their forties. These facts don’t fill me with confidence.
Mrs Thatcher (now Baroness Thatcher) was in her fifties when she became PM – Mr Churchill was in his sixties. Compare this with Mr Cameron who was 43 when he became PM.
The leader of the opposition Mr Miliband is currently 41. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is 45.
Messrs Atlee, Churchill and Macmillan were all in their sixties when they became prime ministers.
It is strange that in a decade in which anti-ageism laws are being introduced to prevent people being sacked or denied promotion because of their age, in Politics ageism seems to be on the rise.
I am concerned that others may see me as an age traitor since after all, I myself am only 31.

Surely I should think that young people are capable of anything? Well, to be honest, I don’t.
To be a Prime minister you require certain qualities, a certain gravitas and the knowledge that comes from life experience alone, and cannot be learned in books.
The current party leaders are lacking in these qualities.
Most of the current crop left higher education and almost immediately went into the political world. Meaning they have made the transition from student to party member, to Spad (special advisors) to MP to minister or shadow minister, rarely entering the ‘real world’ the rest of us inhabit.
And it’s not just the leaders themselves. Ed Miliband has Ed Balls advising him – a man who at 44 has spent much of his adult life in politics.
While some young people can be very capable – for example our (UKIP) deputy leader Paul Nuttall MEP is only 34 at time of writing and has achieved a great deal – he can be considered the exception that proves the rule.
Mr Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP is now 47. Before he entered the political world he had a successful business career in The City of London.
At the next general election he will be 51. That to my mind is an ideal age for that position.
Perhaps by then the world will have turned from its current youth obsession and want to elect older and wiser heads.
Let’s hope so.

In the past, the Tories were supposed to be the party of small government and low taxes, Labour the party of  the average working man, and the Liberal Democrats the party that represented a real alternative and champion of civil liberties.  But now UKIP have an opportunity to be all of these things, yet at the same time be distinct from these three parties who have so badly failed this country.  We have to be the party that campaigns for liberty, prosperity and democracy.  For far too long we’ve allowed us to be portrayed as disgruntled Tories, or worse, because we’ve let others control the narrative.  Michael Howard told the country we were cranks and gadflies, David Cameron told them we were racists and fruitcakes and countless other people in positions of power have used these positions to shape our identity.  We’ve campaigned away against the EU, yet other policies have been seen as superfluous by some in the party who see us as a pressure group, whilst others – albeit dwindling in number under the leadership of the libertarian leaning Nigel Farage – have seen UKIP as a way of imposing their notion of Britishness on others.  The way I see it, we’ve often been seen as single issue because we campaign against the EU as well as liberty, prosperity and democracy, yet the reason we campaign against the EU should be because we stand for these things.  We stand for no income tax on the minimum wage,  a rethink on the war on drugs, a flat tax, grammar schools, electoral reform and free trade precisely because of these three values.

But we should realise these values do not stop here.  Nigel Farage has already taken an important first step with the rethinking of the burqa ban – surely choosing what people can and cannot wear is fundamentally un-British?  Here’s another potential tricky area for the party – should we campaign to allow people to marry who they wish?  Certainly the party does have socially conservative members and they are more than entitled to their opinions, but is it right we impose these views on others?  Perhaps the world’s most famous libertarian, in politics anyway, Ron Paul is anti-abortion, but in his view this for states to decide, not his if he were president.  In UKIP, we have done well to come up with sensible and pragmatic solutions which help open up the public sector to free market competition, namely in the voucher systems we propose for health and education.  To me, the most sensible position to adopt on same sex marriage would be to allow people to marry who they wish, regardless of gender, but also allow religious establishments to choose they want to marry without fear of repercussion.

Across the world, we can see parties like UKIP growing, such as the Libertarian Party in the USA (and Gary Johnson for President would be my ideal choice) or the Freedom and Solidarity Party in Slovakia, led by the brilliant Richard Sulik, but also parties formerly considered in the same way Cameron wishes to portray UKIP.  Parties such as the Progress Party in Norway or the Alliance for the Future of Austria have changed from parties often portrayed as far-right by certain sections of the media into parties which are liberal/libertarian learning – rechtsliberal is quite a good term German speakers use, meaning right-wing liberal.  These parties have strong libertarian leaning factions led by their youth movements – Young Independence need to take note.  In other countries, we have individuals making a stand, such as Frank Schäffler of the FDP in Germany.  As the call for liberty, prosperity, and democracy grows across the world, we need to make sure that UKIP is ready to answer the call.

The advocates state that the English Democrats will continue to come over to UKIP as many ex-BNP members have joined the ED’s, which many ED’s were not favourable about. Yet although some ED’s have joined UKIP, the ones who haven’t aren’t too likely to now, or at least Robin Tilbrook, ED chairman, told me.

Yet the camp against the policy change and also some advocates have stated that this will make the steady trickle of disaffected Tories lessen into more of a slow drip. Then you have the UKIP members in Scotland and Wales, some, if not many of whom will quit the party if they are forced to change their stance from the abolishment of the Welsh assembly and supporting an English parliament; the former is an issue the Welsh UKIP have campaigned tirelessly for years in all elections.

It would not be a vote winner for UKIP Wales if this policy changed, they would no longer be the alternative. The leadership state that the vote on the Welsh assembly clearly illustrated that the Welsh were clearly in favour  (517,132 voted Yes, and 297,380 No) the Lion’s share of the yes vote will always belong to Plaid and Labour, with Lib and Con fighting for the scraps. UKIP will go from a field of 297,380 people whom the aforementioned four parties do not appeal to in this policy, to swimming in the ocean of the 517,132 voters whom are more likely to vote for one of those four parties.

UKIP Wales members do not see this in the same light as the national leadership, as they know that the Welsh assembly is a pro-EU establishment and that this assembly along with the Scottish parliament is the real reason for the new, larger calls for an English parliament, in a form of they have one, why can’t we?’ attitude.

This is the crossroad where UKIP must either chase votes or do what they think is right, their excuse with the possible Welsh assembly policy change is that the public have voted in favour of it, yet the public also voted in favour of being pro-eu in the last general election in terms of taking Labour, Liberal Democrats and half of Conservative votes against UKIP votes, yet will that mean they will change this policy accordingly, too? No.

The whole basis of the Welsh assembly vote was on a false premise; the sensible option would be to let Welsh MP’s vote on Welsh only matters in Parliament, not to create a whole new layer of government (something else UKIP are supposed to be against) which costs the taxpayer extra millions.

Paul Nuttall MEP for UKIP is the biggest advocate of the English Parliament, hopefully he made read this and understand that some problems are not solved by choosing the weakest path, and some policy vote winners will turn out to have the opposite effect.

If UKIP are to stand by what they believe in and not chase votes (which might not even be there) then they must adopt their policy of abolishing all regional governments such as the Welsh assembly and Scottish parliament and have all laws and decisions made in Westminster; with x amount of days in a month allocated to the Scots, Irish, English and Welsh MP’s for their countries only.This way any talk of unfairness will be cast away and the Union would not be left in question by the likes of Alex Salmond.

Local councils are in place for a reason; to tackle local issues. These councils represent their constituents at the most intimate level and the Welsh assembly et al are really just acting like middlemen between parliament and local councils.

There are not many issues, if any, that cannot be sorted out either via parliament with a day or two per month for each country to sort issues out and local councils.

Libertarians advocating more layers of government and defending existing layers of government that aren’t necessary doesn’t look good. The UK independence party should also remember the UK in UKIP.

Even Baroness Warsi looked impressive and sharp as she easily countered the slow, stolid and obtuse claims from Lucas that the Falklands should be handed to the Argentines, with arguments consisting of  ’why would anyone want to be associated with Britain’ and ‘the people of the Falklands should have their say’.

Lucas, if you don’t know the former, then why would you want to represent Britain unless it were to change it to something far different. To the latter, the vast majority of their population happily consider themselves part of the British brand.

I have made this entry short as I don’t even want to get started on your view that cutting public sect spending shall harm the economy as if the private sector didn’t exist.

Lucas also received the joker of the night award by stating that it is illogical that the Falklands should want to remain British if they have no voting power in British parliament. We have a great friendship with the Falklands and they have never indicated that they want such power, for a ‘friend of the Earth’ you were certainly quick to point out the distance between the Falklands and Britain. Perhaps you should stay away from foreign policy and stick to the green energy ticket you were elected on. Not that there is any proof of anthropogenic cause there, either.

Yet although the left, centrists and media-perceived right, or pseudo right as one tags them, have indebted, stolen from and continuously lied to the mass public over the foreseeable past, the thought of having a real right-wing government elected is still a ‘dirty’ thought among most mediums of media. What could be the straw that breaks the shackles of political correctness and fear of electing the right?

Extremists such as Abu Qatada, of recent media fame, may just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of threat to national security, with recent news of the Muslim Brotherhood (founded by devout Hitler-admirer Hassan Al-Banna) gaining what a year ago was thought of as unthinkable ground in Egypt (today claiming 47% of the election vote) and beyond- we must ask whether future immigration from such newly fundamentally run islamic countries as the aforementioned is going to have a tendency to be more extreme.

Taking Egypt as a current example with news breaking that the Brotherhood has won what appears to be a landslide, backed up in second place by the heavily islamist Al-Nur party, then it is not hard to see that the future of any immigration from such regions as being hazardous at best. Call this scaremongering if you like, call it what you like; yet to think the ranks of vehemently islamist migrants whom currently dwell in Europe today are to diminish in future with the shaping scene in certain African countries is ill advised.

One can only hope in ten years we will not have to admit; suddenly, Gaddafi didn’t look too bad.

Yet on the other hand, the hordes of younger (self-confessed) liberal socialists will also continue to insist that they shouldn’t have to pay for their University fees, even though these are times of deficit and austerity Britain. You will also hear the echo of  ’there are no jobs’ yet you’ll then here any talk of immigrants taking jobs from future graduates dismissed as racist scaremongering.

It seems, as often as ever, that the liberal youth want both options; they’re rallying against the cuts and protesting about lack of jobs yet reject any notion that having 370,000 migrants on jobseekers allowance and having an influx of an estimated 575,000 new immigrants in the first year of the coalition on top of the Labour years has had a contributing effect on what they’re upset about.

This would be fine if the socialists had a good answer to this predicament they have placed themselves in; yet ‘tax the rich’ is not such an answer. To the contrary, taxing the rich would make the problem of the rich moving abroad worse, never mind killing off any aspiration for the next generation whom might otherwise want to work hard in the education system to succeed and earn what they are due.

The socialist stain on Britain is still lingering, it’s is alive and kicking in many University campuses; and their process of marching against anything they disagree with throws their whole ‘equality’ motto out the window.

The new young left SWP types that horde Universities are actually encompassing a deep hatred for all things quintessentially ‘British’ and thus want to change the demographic, even if that means ignoring the fact that many immigrants bring values over from the 1800′s,the same values that they’re trying to rid.

Ergo, they are often racist themselves for wanting to rid a culture of its right to exist and will do so by any means; they will insist on equality and freedom of opinion as long as it’s an opinion that is equal to theirs.

this article has been temporarily removed due to an ongoing internal investigation by UKIP into the matters raised. I was asked by the Author to take it down until there is a conclusion to this episode and so I have, Thank you

Can I just reiterate that this was written by someone I know and trust but who wished to remain anonymous, I put it up as was asked and took it down when he also asked. I had no help in writing it and make no comment on the content

Secondly, UKIP needs to complete its policy review so that we have a comprehensive range of policies that tie in with the libertarian leaning image that we have been attempting to portray under Farage’s leadership.  It seems the burqa ban will not be retained, which I believe is a step in the right direction, even if dropping it may upset the party’s social conservative/traditionalist wing – I believe banning an item of clothing is fundamentally un-British!  The plan for a federal UK needs to be sorted out as well, despite some bizarre assertions from some people who see an English Parliament as an EU plot.

Thirdly, UKIP needs to keep building up its membership – widening the demographics associated with UKIP too.  Too many branches are relying on a couple of dedicated individuals to keep going and as a party we are always short on candidates in local elections.  This includes addressing the churn which sees many members join up for just one year, then leave as their local branch is, or perceived to be, inactive.

All in all, this year needs to be one of consolidation for UKIP.  Last year saw a remarkable rise in the party’s fortunes up until Cameron started playing the eurosceptic with the veto, but already people are seeing through the façade.  If we carry on building the party up, fight the local elections with a real desire to win seats and make a difference on a local level, and hold the Coalition to account, then by the end of 2012 we will definitely be seeing the double figures in poll ratings that we achieved in November’s Survation poll.

Tory backbenchers and grass roots activists were cheering and celebrating after the EU summit negotiations, claiming that their man had been right all along. They had backed the right horse and Dave really was a Eurosceptic. UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s claims that Cameron had done more damage in the long run were dismissed as ‘ranting’ and quite right too! Didn’t he realise that Cameron had vetoed a Treaty?

Never mind that there never actually was a Treaty on the table and that the result left Britain without a friend in the EU. For withdrawalists that’s not so bad: we have the Ace up our sleeve of wanting to leave the EU and replace membership with a free trade agreement. We can afford to have political differences.

But it’s not quite the same for this coalition government who made their sentiments clear on the people having a say on their own future by whipping their MPs to vote against a referendum.

In particular, for those of us with a keen interest in defence we were remembering back to November of last year (2010) when we heard that Britain was going to have a defence agreement with France.

The plan was that the two countries would share nuclear testing and aircraft carriers. Whilst the former may well save millions of pounds and be less controversial given the likelihood that nuclear weapons are more of a deterrent, the plan to share aircraft carriers is considerably more controversial. David Cameron talked of developing an “integrated strike force” to be used in jointly agreed operations. Both sides would also have a veto on the use of the Aircraft Carrier which for those of us who remember or know about the Falklands crisis is a matter of considerable concern. Thank goodness we still had a task force to deploy whilst the French were busy twiddling their thumbs back in Paris.

Mr Sarkozy said it would be unlikely that Britain would face a crisis so great that it needed an aircraft carrier without France being affected: “If you, my British friends, have to face a major crisis, could you imagine France simply sitting there, its arms crossed, saying that it’s none of our business?”

In recent history, this has been regularly the case with the French taking a back seat in many military campaigns save Libya when even they were less involved than Britain. Because of course Britain doesn’t just have the EU it is an integral part of NATO, something France only fully rejoined in 2009 after over 40 years outside the integrated structure.

The photos and footage of the snub of Mr Cameron by President Sarkozy certainly begs the question about whether we are considered such good friends now. We are only at the start of some very difficult treaty negotiations which fundamentally want to give the EU powers over financial markets and fiscal decisions, something which will never be in the interests of Britain.

If Mr Cameron will be keeping his promise to the British people that he will not sign up to anything that damages the City of London then he will continue to anger leaders in the EU with whom he wishes to stay in political union with. If he gives away powers he will infuriate, and rightly so, the British people to whom he has already broken so many promises.

Defence is always an emotive issue and it’s one of vital importance because the defence of the realm is one that even libertarians agree requires government control. Sharing facilities and equipment may seem like a good idea on paper when relationships are going well but political leaders have the sorts of relationships with foreign counterparts that make teenage liaisons seem long-lasting and committed.

We have a gap in our defence funding due to years of mismanagement by Labour and alas the party which used to be considered the friend of the forces is no longer, as shown by their negative attitude towards the men and women who are still at war and still sent into foreign war zones as some kind of world police whilst salaries, redundancies and pensions are eroded at home by men and women with secure salaries and second home allowances.

The lack of Aircraft Carriers, for example, was hugely important in the extraction of British citizens from Libya and other Arab countries earlier in the year. The new carriers which are being delayed by the defence and security review will not have aircraft for many years. This means that we will not have an independent deployable capability for any current or future crisis. The only vessel currently in use, HMS Illustrious, has been converted for helicopters only (which makes sense given that we have sold all our Harriers to the US for spares) and will be decommissioned in 2014.

The Queen Elizabeth will be the UK’s future deployable and mobile air-base. As part of a Task Group, it would be able to launch a wide variety of offensive, defensive and surveillance aircraft in support of UK operations without the need to rely on other countries cooperation for basing, for diplomatic clearances for over-flight and landings, for maintenance or refuelling. It also dispenses with the need for long range air-to-air refuelling, freeing those assets for other duties such as in support of combat air patrols, vital for intelligence and safety of ground troops. It enables a large, integrated force to deploy to an area of threat to be ready should it be needed.

The decision to tie us to the French may seem like a good, moneysaving opportunity but already we have seen how quickly political alliances weaken and the disunity between Sarkozy and Cameron, which can have no real solution unless one side gives in, places us militarily in a very difficult position. The loss of the critical supply route through Pakistan to Afghanistan also shows just how vitally important it is to be free and independent.

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Young Independence continues to grow after Jakob Whiten, a Deputy Chairman of Conservative Future in the East Midlands up until last week,  announced that he is joining UKIP.

Jakob, 19, commented that the Conservatives “showed their true colours” earlier this month after enforcing a stringent three line whip to compel their MPs to vote against the prospect of an EU referendum. The decision didn’t sit too well with the former CF member’s libertarian, democratic values.

“I entered politics and joined the Conservative Party to help people” reflected Jakob, before revealing that he was unable to discuss the EU and other issues of national importance when in his official role with the Tories. “I believe being a member of UKIP I can now be honest about the issues that matter most to people” he added.

His defection is another example of a notable Conservative member switching allegiance to UKIP and follows names such as former government Chief Whip Lord Hesketh and respected South Tyneside Councillor David Potts in what has been an increasingly troublesome period for the Tories.

While the Conservative Party have broken promises and continuously ignored the views of the British public, UKIP have become a highly credible and well-oiled alternative for youngsters across Britain. I’m sure that I speak for all of YI when I say that I am pleased to welcome Jakob to UKIP and I look forward to his contribution.