United Kingdom Independence?

UKIP is not going to win the Newark by-election. It is tied with Labour for a distant third place.

But the whole thing is an opportunity to shine a light on its candidate and sitting MEP, Roger Helmer.

Helmer is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC.

ALEC claims to be “federalist”, but it seems to have adopted the European rather than the American definition of the word.

It is a body of State Legislators who undertake to ensure that their respective states all adopt identical legislation drafted by that body’s corporate backers.

A handful of Democrats does belong to this thing, raising serious questions about the limits of the diversity within the Democratic Party, the Republican Party having arrived at the opposite extreme, with club rights extended only to those who subscribe, and that with sufficient fervour, to each and all of dozens of shibboleths.

But all except two of the State Chairmen are Republicans, and those two hold the office jointly with members of the other party.

What was once the GOP provides all of the “Public Co-Chairs” of ALEC's policy task forces that write the legislation, on which they enjoy no veto power, since that attaches only to the “Private Co-Chairs” who not merely come from, but explicitly represent, their own corporations.

The one for International Relations, which are constitutionally outside the province of State Legislatures but on which work is clearly being done, has as its veto-wielding Private Co-Chair a senior executive of Philip Morris International. To ALEC, the whole of foreign policy is subordinate to the interests of big tobacco.

ALEC contains one Australian Senator, as well as one Georgian MP and one Pakistani Assemblywoman. All of its other “International Delegates” sit in the European Parliament.

There to enact legislation written by giant American corporations, as if the European Parliament were an American State Legislature, with the United Kingdom having much the status of an American county.

Most of those MEPs sit for the United Kingdom, and all but one of those are members of the party led by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The sole exception is Roger Helmer.

So much for United Kingdom Independence.