EU Referendum

The Significance Of That Bizarre Eddie Izzard Appearance On Question Time

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

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Eddie Izzard, Brexit Ambassador

While it was infuriating to watch at the time – I actually had to put down my iPad at times to stop myself tweeting things which I might later regret – Eddie Izzard’s tour de force of ignorance and condescension on BBC Question Time last night will have been a great boon to all Brexiteers.

Here, in one man, is embodied the distilled nature of the entire Remain campaign argument – a child’s level of understanding of the European Union’s history, what it does and how it actually works coupled with an unjustified level of arrogance and assumed intellectual and moral superiority which somehow makes them come off as smug, arrogant, condescending, pitying and self-aggrandising all at the same time.

Eddie Izzard’s strategy for the programme was clearly “Take Down Nigel Farage In A Blaze Of Glory”, and the comedian went at the UKIP leader from the outset. He would have been far better to focus his fire on the others. Nigel Farage is a man who has easily dispatched stageloads of Britain’s leading politicians in a single debate and twice bested Nick Clegg in one-on-one encounters. Coming at him with a paper thin case and the debating style of an over-excited sixth former is never going to work. It certainly didn’t last night.

The shriller Eddie Izzard became, the more he cut across Nigel Farage and make his grandstanding appeals to the audience, the more Farage looked like the adult in the room. As Izzard’s plea for more ice cream became ever more desperate, Farage leaned back in his chair with a look of bemused resignation. Considering that one of the Remain campaign’s key aims is to demonise Farage and then inextricably tie him to the Leave campaign, this was a huge unforced error.

But more than that, it showed the vacuity at the heart of the Remain campaign. Sure, there are a few honourable die hard euro federalists out there – my friend Paddy Briggs is one – but you will scarcely hear from them in this campaign. The only people with a coherent and honourable case for Britain remaining in the EU (and indeed deepening our participation) are shoved in the closet, the Remain campaign’s dirty little secret as they pretend to the rest of us that We Are All Eurosceptics Too.

The rest of the campaign is built on ignorance and fear. Yes of course large swathes of the Leave campaign are little better. But once Remain have dispatched with their meaningless pleasantries about “staying in Europe to reform it” and the importance of “cooperation” (which in europhile land can only take place between countries when facilitated by a supranational political union, for some reason), all they have left are their Armageddon stories about how Brexit would bring us all to economic ruin, or how the supposedly benign and friendly EU would behave like an abusive spouse to a departing Britain.

Pete North agrees:

We’ve heard all the europhile fluff. All the sanctimonious cliches about “not walking away from the table” and “getting in there to make it work better” and “respecting the rules of the club” and when you’re dealing with someone of great charisma it’s hard not to want to buy into that.

These are all positive and constructive sentiments reinforced with words like “cooperation” and “unity”. But sentiment is all it is. Contrivances. And if you hold only a superficial notion of what the EU is, how it works and the actual consequences of it, then that leap of faith is easier to make.

And this perhaps explains the gulf between age groups and voting intentions. Those who have wised up to the EU want out. The youthful ideologues lack the maturity and historical context to see through the veneer of shallow and meaningless rhetoric. This is what the remain camp is banking on.

And this is why I can muster a venomous contempt of Eddie Izzard. Think what you will of him and his politics but he is not a stupid man. Fatuous maybe, but not stupid. He has always been a true believer. He is a europhile to the core. And while they are capable of an extraordinary self-deception one thing europhiles do without exception is lie through their teeth. Up becomes down, black becomes white, dog becomes cat. No lie is too big and any lie will do.

Being a comedian and habitually attuned to audiences accepting a flawed premise in order to relate to the material, Izzard is able to lie with no self-awareness at all. It’s what permits him to lie as often as he does to an extent that even professional politicians would hesitate.

And this is what has characterised the European Union debate for as long as we’ve been having this debate. The attempt by europhiles to frame this as though it were a generational stand off between young progressives and old reactionaries. For one to be against the EU, in the mind of the europhile, one must naturally be a xenophobic, little Englander who could only possibly have selfish motives. This is the deceit that they wish to impress upon those new to the debate.

And this is actually what drives the blood curdling hostility between the two camps. We have a broadly europhile media class. A set of self-regarding luvvies largely culturally and financially insulated from the consequences of EU membership, believing themselves to be the living embodiment of virtue.

People wonder how the country will knit back together after this referendum. I’m not sure that it will. Pete North is certainly convinced that it will not. One thing is certain – there will be no magnanimity from the Remain side if they win.

Sure, a smiling David Cameron might come out of 10 Downing Street and make a little speech about his “renegotiation” just being the start, and how he will continue to fight for change in Europe. I can write the speech in my head already. But it will mean nothing, just as every single one of David Cameron’s convictions is built on sand. The Remain camp will take their gruesome little victory lap and crow about having defeated the forces of “xenophobia and isolationism”, and that will be that. A reconciliation reshuffle? That means nothing.

But the intellectual case for Brexit and the moral case for democracy will not have been defeated. What’s more, those of us who are custodians of these high ideals will not easily forget what has been said about us by sneering, grandstanding, virtue-signalling oiks in the Remain campaign, and their spokesperson Eddie Izzard.

Call someone wrong and they may be angry for a time. Call them morally deficient in some way (as Remainers do with their claims of boomer selfishness etc.) and it will wound a lot more. But call someone stupid and publicly mock them to their face, and you will nurture a resentment and antipathy which are almost impossible to undo. Over the course of this referendum campaign, the Remain camp have done all three.

Fortunately for Brexiteers, the glibness and shallowness of the Remain case become more exposed with every passing day. There is no new layer of complexity once one overturns their false assertion that Brexit means leaving the single market, or that all of the cooperation and partnership they seek can be accomplished just as easily outside of our current political union. The Remainers can hardly wheel out the hardcore euro federalist brigade to make their impassioned case – they would alienate far more people than they could possibly attract with their creepy, dystopian vision.

By contrast, a greater depth to the Brexit case is finally starting to emerge, as more and more influencers in the media pick up on the interim EFTA/EEA (Norway) option as an attractive first step in the Brexit process. Though it has taken an age (and may in fact still have come too late) at least the only thorough, comprehensive and safe plan for achieving Brexit is now finally starting to get a public hearing and an opportunity to allay the concerns of undecided voters.

I still feel that the odds of victory very much favour Remain, no matter what the opinion polls may say two weeks out from Referendum Day. But it is also undeniable that the broader Leave campaign has finally gained some traction – despite, rather than because of Vote Leave.

And if the Remain campaign continues to respond to these turns of events by wheeling out people like Eddie Izzard – who I think probably created a thousand new Brexiteers for every minute he had the floor on last night’s Question Time – then this might be a much more closely run thing after all.

 

Nigel Farage - Eddie Izzard - BBC Question Time - EU Referendum

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History Will Judge Left-Wingers Who Betray Their Principles To Support The Anti-democratic European Union

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Jeremy Corbyn - Labour In for Britain - 2

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Shining an unforgiving light on the wishful thinking and self-deception powering the naive left-wing campaign for Britain to remain in the EU

Your best read of the day comes from Elliot Murphy at Counterpunch, a writer from the Left who systematically deconstructs the fatuous assertion by the likes of Owen Jones, Jeremy Corbyn and Yanis Varoufakis that the EU can be reformed and turned into some kind of Utopian socialist paradise.

Certainly the EU as it is presently constituted is hardly friendly to traditional leftist interests and obsessions, as Murphy points out:

This groundswell of support for Remain across substantial parts of the Left is hard to square with the facts. State aid to declining industries, along with renationalisation, are not permitted by current EU laws (under directive 2012/34/EU), and any mildly progressive government which managed to get elected in 2020 would be hindered from the outset by the EU. Considerable reforms of the energy market would also be illegal under EU directives 2009/72EU and 2009/73/EU. Collective bargaining is becoming much weaker across the EU, most vividly in France and Germany.

McDonnell’s plans for People’s Quantitative Easing? Outlawed by Article 123 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The series of anti-trade union laws introduced in Britain over the past few decades? The EU has no qualms with these whatsoever, showing no interest in providing even modest forms of protection for workers.

As the Labour Leave campaign points out, the EU would also outlaw an end to NHS outsourcing, tougher measures on tax avoidance, and general improvements to workers’ rights. The soft Left’s talk of international solidarity and the brotherhood of man in relation to the EU is absurd, especially as it continues to drive forward deeply militaristic and undemocratic (or rather, anti-democratic) policies. The EU is, after all, one the world’s major post-war imperialist projects, boasting an inherently and aggressively exploitative relation with the global South. The entirety of the EU parliament could be filled with McDonnells and Iglesias’s and no substantial reform would be forthcoming: The parliament is an institution purely of amendment and all power lies with the civil servants and the unelectable Commission.

Brilliant. How marvellous it is to hear the fatuous, paper-thin leftist defence of the European Union being properly shredded by somebody who isn’t willing to furiously ignore their own political convictions, suppress the cognitive dissonance and blindly cheerlead for the Remain campaign.

And of course Murphy is quite right – you could pack the European Parliament full of Owen Joneses and Jeremy Corbyns and still it would make no difference to the work and impact of a body which cannot propose or strike down EU laws and policies. There is a reason why the EU’s architects made sure that the one “democratic” component of the entire project was utterly toothless, and this is it.

But what of these nascent leftist “change” movements like Democracy in Europe 25 (DiEM25) or Another Europe is Possible (AEiP)? Murphy has surveyed the work of these and other fantasist left-wing Remainers, and is unimpressed:

When Michael Chessum, a major organiser of the pro-Remain ‘Another Europe is Possible’ (AEiP) movement, is questioned about what concrete ‘changes’ he would like to see in EU, he simply dodges the question. Chessum’s behaviour generalises. To my knowledge, not a single supporter of Remain has presented a satisfying answer to the question of how we are supposed to go about reforming the EU. Even Yanis Varoufakis during his recent ‘Lunch with the Financial Times’ interview confessed that in reality the EU isn’t going to be reformed to anywhere near the extent the Remainers are hoping for (attempts to reform ‘will probably end in failure like all the best intentions’, he claimed). Even Remain supporter Ed Rooksby can write on his blog about how he is ‘not particularly convinced by arguments emanating from [AEiP] in relation to the possibility of transforming EU institutions in a leftist direction’. How is a new, reformed EU possible? How can we change it to break from the Washington Consensus? The answers are, worryingly, not forthcoming.

Quite rightly, Murphy has no time for those who waffle on about reform – “Of course the EU needs reform” being perhaps the most overused phrase of this entire referendum campaign – while failing to outline any concrete or probable steps to achieving that elusive change:

Airy-fairy proposals for ‘another Europe’ to ‘protect our rights’ and so forth simply fill a void lacking any concrete solutions to achieve this and any proposals for how to achieve a new EU constitution. In theory, another anything is possible: Another New Zealand, Another Skelmersdale, Another Isla Nublar, Another Tamriel. It is not as if another EU is inherently unreachable, but rather that without any posited, realistic steps to achieve it, the hopes of the Remain camp will quickly dissolve after June 23rd, no matter which side wins.

Concrete solutions are lacking, then, as it is no good for the Left camp of Remain to simply point voters in the direction of Owen Jones columns and Caroline Lucas YouTube videos instead. The powers of the European Commission, European Central Bank and European Court of Justice are guaranteed by EU treaties and can only be reformed as a result of a unanimous agreement within the Council of Ministers. AEiP may exert some moderate degree of influence over the UK’s soft Left, but it will have to become substantially more commanding if it hopes to influence the Council of Ministers. Likewise, the foundational pro-austerity, market liberalisation principles of the EU are established by the same treaties, which can be modified only by a unanimous agreement by all 28 member states.

Quite so. All of this, one must recall, is taking place in the context of David Cameron having singularly failed to extract even one substantive concession from his fellow EU heads of government during his damp squib “renegotiation” effort.

Now, this blog will be the first to concede that the entire exercise was a sham – the government didn’t even bother to properly consult the people as to the nature of reform which we wanted, arrogantly assuming that they already knew. But in any case, even when faced with the potential departure of the European Union’s restive second-largest contributor, the EU offered nothing by way of sweeteners. Would it have been different had Angela Merkel et al been dealing with a genuinely eurosceptic British prime minister? Perhaps. But if David Cameron couldn’t get any kind of deal from the EU, what chance do a fuzzy coalition of leftists have of achieving reform in another direction?

Neither does Murphy have time for the weak reasoning of foreign leftists who have sought to parachute themselves into the debate with a minimal understanding of the facts:

The Left Remain camp have also recently been galvanised by Noam Chomsky’s tenuous support for their cause, with Owen Jones and AEiP posting quotations of the professor’s brief statements on the matter. Chomsky’s reasons for supporting Remain are extremely weak and don’t stand up to much scrutiny. His reasoning is as follows: The racist Right is in favour of Leave, therefore we should Remain. But the racist Right is also in favour of Remain. Chomsky’s logic seems to be as follows: If P, therefore Q, so why not Z? Indeed, if an Out vote would simply ‘leave Britain more subordinate to US power’, as Chomsky claims, then why did Obama urgently, even desperately call for Britain to Remain? Owen Jones has in the past ridiculed what he calls ‘Chomsky fans’ on Twitter (while also labeling those who politely disagree with him ‘Stalinist’, ‘sectarian’, ‘ultra-left’ and ‘Gallowayite’), but deems it appropriate to sign up to his views when they align with his own. Chomsky’s opinions about the UK are naturally not going to be thoroughly well-formed and articulated, unlike his criticisms of US domestic and foreign policy: For instance, during a visit to the University of St Andrews in 2012 he expressed pro-monarchy feels for the rudimentary reason that if people enjoy it and find it fun, then who’s to object to it?

Many on the left simply cannot begin to address the limitations of the Remain camp: For instance, Media Lens, UK leftists sympathetic to Chomsky, have been oddly silent about the entire EU referendum. A certain level of unease and awkwardness pervades a lot of discussion about the EU, with many preferring simply to abstain or delay decision making until later. At Chomsky’s university, Matt Damon recently addressed MIT’s class of 2016 with ideas that Will Hunting would be far from impressed with, calling for a Remain vote with his typical mixture of casual arrogance and self-assurance, but devoid of any argument or apparent understanding. Damon ultimately retreated into the safe territory of banker-bashing, forgetting to justify his reasoning for supporting Remain.

So Matt Damon thinks that Brexit is a bad idea. Who the hell cares? Damon clearly has no understanding of the history or political issues at stake, and is merely parroting what he believes to be the “correct”, right-on opinions in order to signal his own virtue. More worrying is the fact that when it comes to the specific question of the EU, many thinking leftists are doing the same thing – temporarily switching off their brains and switching themselves over to “mindless repetition of approved talking points” mode.

As this blog conjectured when Owen Jones abandoned his nascent euroscepticism and went back to loyally cheerleading for the EU:

It is a shame to see Owen Jones – at his best an intelligent and articulate voice on the Left – frittering away his time on the EU referendum campaign by pointing out the foibles and tactical hypocrisies of the Leave campaign. But what other choice does he have? Despite knowing full well that the EU is unreformable, Jones has committed to supporting Britain’s continued membership.

I think that this is a betrayal of the democratic accountability and local control that Jones spends much of his time promoting. And I suspect that he does, too. Which is why we can all expect to see lots more “gotcha” videos on YouTube criticising individual members of the Leave campaign, but not a damn thing praising the European Union or explaining how this magical socialist “reform” of the EU is to be achieved.

After all, nothing distracts from a guilty conscience like pointing out the flaws, failings and inconsistencies of other people.

The behaviour of the British Left during the EU referendum campaign would probably make quite an interesting psychological study as an exercise in mass delusion. Thousand of not millions of people with solid left-wing beliefs and a rightful distrust of the establishment are now simultaneously trying to convince themselves that voting for the establishment and the status quo is somehow the brave, left wing thing to do.

European Union - EU Referendum - Tony Benn - Brexit

This coping mechanism takes its toll, which is why left-wing Remainers are so much happier when they are criticising the behaviour of the Leave campaign (making their slanderous allegations of racism and so on) – the more they talk about the wretchedness of the Evil Tories, the less time they have to consider their own betrayal of left-wing principles.

And just look at what it is the supposedly compassionate, generous and open hearted Left are endorsing by campaigning for a Remain vote:

One of the major disasters of the Remain endorsement by substantial parts of the Left is that many seem incapable of acknowledging that the EU has by now become masterful at generating racism and promoting finance capitalism. Acknowledging this dynamic is frankly essential in understanding the rise of Far-Right forces across Europe. The EU was more than willing to impose sanctions on Greece when it became tempted to disobey orders to kowtow to European banks, but it seems far less willing to do anything about the rise of the Far-Right in Germany, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary. As Kevin Ovenden recently put it in Counterfire: ‘Far from countering the far right and authoritarian tendencies, the EU – with its austerity, Fortress Europe, anti-democratic diktats and endemic national antagonisms – is generating those reactionary features: and not only on the far right. The EU is fully behind the French government of Francois Hollande. It has suspended basic freedoms under an eight-month old state of emergency and is using the militarised police to batter through new austerity measures passed not by parliament, but by executive decree’.

[..] The ‘choice’ of austerity in Britain is no such thing in the EU, being part of its treaty. Anyone who claims that the EU is beneficial to workers’ right clearly hasn’t read the text of its treaty, which makes it very clear what the EU’s intentions are, and always have been. The ‘freedom’ for big firms to move capital, labour and commodities without any restrictions in order to maximise profits, regardless of social or environmental cost, is something no genuine socialist, communist or anarchist could ever support. Moreover, the EU is infamously driven towards privatisation, ‘free markets’ and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (largely the work of the Troika) – which signifies game over for much of Britain’s indigenous industries if adopted, as the EU’s 28 states engage in a race to the bottom in order to diminish living standards and workers’ rights.

Hardly the kind of behaviour that a good comrade should be defending, surely?

Oh wait, this explains it:

In the face of this apparently austere ideology, the EU is nevertheless careful to generously fund British quangos, charities, arts groups, museums and universities to ensure the recycling of a healthy pro-EU sentiment amongst the influential middle class intelligentsia, academia and commentariat, ensuring that most of its major limitations are sidelined or forgotten about. It manages to do all this after having intentionally destroyed Britain’s fishing industry. This system amounts to one of the clearest definitions of a racket.

But it is more than a racket, isn’t it? It is almost what you might call class warfare – the privileged and well connected upper middle classes aggressively asserting their interests (continued funding for their quangos and charities) over the interests of the working classes. Again, Murphy is absolutely right to call out the hypocrisy.

Murphy is also right to ask how the Left will be viewed if Britain does vote to Leave, in a future where smoothly exiting from political union while maintaining access to the single market ensured that none of the Remainers’ apocalyptic warnings of economic ruin come true:

A serious Left argument against the EU needs to be presented both in the event of a Leave or Remain vote, since without the presence of any serious Lexit arguments being presented, in the event of a Leave vote left-wing Remainers will be thoroughly cornered and will be forced to rapidly re-orient their tactics to accommodate for the likely UKIP gains (among many other things). When Remainers focus purely on the positives of the (often dubious) positives of EU, we should ask how this dishonest and skewed set of priorities will be interpreted post-referendum.

Absolutely so.

When the dust settles, and when Britain continues its slide away from democracy in the event of a Remain vote, all that people will remember is the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Jones – people who pride themselves on their right-on credentials – standing shoulder to shoulder with the establishment in defence of the status quo. And when they tremulously offer their “battered spouse” excuse (but I thought we could change the EU!) they will rightly be scorned, and mocked and then ignored.

Already UKIP is starting to encroach on Labour’s heartland vote. Labour MPs and former ministers are lashing out in confusion and outrage at the unwillingness of local councillors and ordinary party activists to help them in their great establishment effort to keep Britain in the EU. On this issue, the parliamentary party and the grassroots are starting to come apart at the seams. And in the event of a Remain vote, you can be sure that UKIP will be there, ready to pick up swathes more disaffected Labour votes.

The question of Britain’s independence is not a partisan issue. It is equally as shameful when conservatives are willing to sell out their own democracy as when socialists do the same. But given the nature of the EU, and how this corrupt supranational political union benefits the wealthy and well connected elites far more than the people, it is Labour’s dogged support for Remain that stinks to high heaven.

Tony Benn would be ashamed of what his party has become. Labour are supposed to be the party of ordinary people. We know because they never shut up about it. And yet nearly the entire Labour Party is uncritically cheering the status quo and our ongoing membership of a dysfunctional political union which nobody would invent if it didn’t exist, and nobody would join if it did.

But of course, there were always two sides to the Labour Party – the cerebral middle class ideologues and internationalists, and the working class movement borne out of the trades union movement. Well, we know what happened to that particular branch of Labour in the age of the SpAdocracy. Now all that’s left is the middle class clerisy.

Now, the middle class left-wing clerisy want desperately to stay in the European Union – it funds their research, universities, development schemes, artistic projects and businesses, funnelling them British taxpayer money without the unseemly need to beg the taxpayers directly in elections.

They love the EU because it enables them to virtue-signal their enlightened progressivism, while also delivering a whole host of lucrative in-house side benefits. And if it means betraying democracy, betraying the poor and betraying the interests of Labour’s core voters, that’s just fine. So long as that grant money keeps flowing, of course.

Sadly for these parasitic folks and their defenders on the pro-EU left, some of us are watching, observing and taking note. And when the time for blame and judgement comes around, there will be no escaping accountability for having sided against democracy in their arrogance, fear, ignorance and greed.

We will make sure of it.

 

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Praising The EU And Supporting Remain Has Become A Virtue Signalling Sport

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

Monkey Cymbals 2

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Don’t take the bait. Don’t take the bait. Don’t take the — ah, screw it

The Huffington Post serves up the worst thing you will read all day (h/t Pete North) in terms of EU referendum commentary – this sneering, virtue signalling attempt at mockery of Brexiteers by author and commentator Johnny Rich.

It’s a bit like W. S. Gilbert’s “little list”, except written by a dribbling imbecile:

Some people think it’s completely irrational to want to leave the EU. So, to avoid looking like you’re ignorant or incapable of understanding the issues, here’s a handy list of 30 excuses you can give for your position.

You don’t have to believe them all, just use whichever you feel comfortable with.

Don’t worry, we are not going to go through them all. I’ll serve up the highlights.

2. Experts don’t always get it right. In fact, because I can think of one example of an expert getting something wrong, I’m going to assume they’re all wrong on the economic consequences of leaving the EU.

Like the experts who told us that Britain would fade away into irrelevance unless we joined the euro? Righty-o. And can we please move on from this tyranny of credentials? Richard Dawkins may hate living in a world where ordinary people get to make decisions based on their own values, but nonetheless it needs pointing out that the EU referendum is primarily a question about democracy, not numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.

4. I believe that there aren’t enough jobs to go round for EU immigrants, despite the fact that more workers create a larger economy, creating more jobs as well as a higher tax take.

This blog happens to be pro immigration and I do not normally like to dwell on this issue, but it needs stating that while more workers do indeed create a larger economy, other critical things like housing, infrastructure and public services do not increase in a smooth line together with the population. It takes concerted effort and political will by local and national government to ensure that our national infrastructure is kept up in line with a rapidly increasing population.

Now, whether you want more immigration or less, I think we can all agree that successive British governments have done a woeful job of ensuring that our housing sector, infrastructure and key services were well positioned to absorb the kind of net migration we have been seeing – whether it was the last Labour government which wanted to sneak in mass immigration under the radar, or the current Conservative government which shamefully prevaricates when it should be expanding airport capacity in London and across the country. So a little less of the smug would be good.

12. I believe that, contrary to intelligence experts, the UK would be safer from terrorists without pooling intelligence with other European countries, even though most of the 7/7 bombers were born and raised in, erm, the UK

I wasn’t aware that intelligence from other European countries could have prevented 7/7, or that intelligence sharing and cooperation can only take place inside a political union. One wonders how Britain manages such close cooperation with the United States despite the two countries not sharing a parliament and a supreme court.

14. I believe I am better represented by the first-past-the-post elected parliamentarians in Westminster than the proportionally representative elected parliamentarians in Brussels and it’s got to be one or the other, rather than both.

Actually, I believe I am best represented by a body which represents a distinct and known demos with which I identify. I happen to feel British, therefore I find legitimacy in the Westminster parliament for all of its flaws. And no, the unelected House of Lords does not excuse a puppet European Parliament elected on pitiful turnouts, beloved by nobody, and which is incapable of proposing new legislation or striking down old laws. We should strive for constitutional reform to renew democratic government in Britain, not give up on it and outsource all of the meaningful decisions to Brussels.

16. I believe the EU is all a Franco-German conspiracy and the best way of defeating it is to, erm, allow the Germans and French to get on with it.

It isn’t a conspiracy at all. To be fair to the European Union and many of its past and current leaders, they are quite open in stating their intention to move toward becoming a common European state. Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel hardly ever shut up about it. It is only here in Britain where people like Johnny Rich stick their heads in the sand and furiously pretend to themselves that the EU is all about “trade and cooperation”, and nothing more.

19. I don’t find Leave’s figure of £350Mn in payments to the EU a week remotely ridiculous, even though it takes no account of either the rebate or payments to the UK.

Thanks, Vote Leave. Thanks a lot. Now you’ve made this sanctimonious little twerp correct about something.

21. I believe Britain’s exit from the EU will bring the whole edifice tumbling down and I don’t like anyone else forming an international collaboration if we’re not part of it, even though, erm, I don’t want to be part of it.

But it is not just an “international collaboration” though, is it? If Johnny Rich (the author) knew anything about the history of the EU and the century-old movement for European political union, he would know that the EU is an explicitly integrationist club with the expressed intention of one day becoming a common European state. We all love collaboration, but somehow every other country in the world outside of Europe seems to have found a way to collaborate well with neighbours and allies without forming a joint political union with them. If Johnny Rich were capable of thinking, this might give him pause for thought.

22. I believe holidaying in Europe will be just as easy and no more expensive because they should be happy to have our fine British pounds, even though after Brexit they might be worth a lot less.

Exchange rate fluctuations take place all the time, and while the pound may lose a small amount of value against other currencies in the short term as investors watch and wait, in the long term this could easily be more than offset by future increases resulting from stronger fundamentals after Brexit. And of course a weaker pound actually helps our exporters and domestic tourism industry. Unless Johnny Rich doesn’t care about British manufacturers and B&B owners?

24. I’d like to be able to rip off music and videos, like they do in China and Russia, because they don’t have those pesky EU intellectual property controls which stop me stealing from artists whose work I like.

I didn’t realise that intellectual property was not protected in Britain, or that one of the key drivers of pro-Brexit sentiment was the prospect of pirating music and videos. But if you say so.

26. I believe an isolated UK will have more influence on a global stage because, well, we used to have an Empire you know. Just like, erm, Egypt, Mongolia and the Aztecs.

No. But I do believe that the fifth largest economy, second (by some measured) ranked military power, nuclear power, P5 UN Security Council member and a country with a vast cultural and diplomatic reach like Britain will do just fine when we speak with our own voice on the international stage rather than squabbling with 27 other countries to influence the collective voice of the EU.

29. I don’t mind my taxes supporting scroungers hundreds of miles away and with whom I have no connection so long as they’re this side of any sea, but I don’t want them supporting no foreign scroungers whose need might be even greater. After all, I do my bit by giving a fiver to Pudsy most years.

Remainers do not have a monopoly on compassion. But it increasingly appears that they do have a near monopoly on unbearable moral sanctimony.

30. I just want to shove it to Cameron and Osborne.

Guilty as charged. But that is not why I support Brexit. It is just a fortunate, delicious coincidence.

35. I genuinely feel no cultural connection to Abba, Archimedes, Aristotle, Bach, Beethoven, Brie, Cervantes, Chanel, Cicero, Croissant, Da Vinci, Einstein, Euclid, Goethe, the Grimms, Homer, Ibsen, Joyce, Leibniz, Michelangelo, Mozart, Pasta, Plato, Pythagoras, Rousseau, Schiller, Socrates, Tapas, Truffaut, Virgil, Zola or whatever, but on the other hand, I’ve got Morris dancing, Robert Burns, bara lafwr and the Orangemen in my veins.

I feel a tremendous amount of cultural connection to many of these artists – and foodstuffs. I live and breathe Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The opening of Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto slows my heart rate and instantly puts me in a more relaxed frame of mind. I find some passages from The Iliad to be some of the most beautiful poetry ever written, instantly bridging the gulf of ages separating the author from our modern world. Schiller, though, I can take or leave.

But crucially, I am able to have all of these connections, affinities and attitudes without needed to belong to the same political union – and eventually the same common European state – as these great artists. Is Johnny Rich really worried that leaving the EU might threaten his bragging rights of association with JS Bach or a bowl of penne? What part of his intellectual and cultural heritage does Rich think will be ripped away if the same supranational political union covering the land of Mozart stops overshadowing him? The man is insane. Or simply deluded.

Basically, Rich has swallowed every facile and superficial argument about the wonders and accomplishments of the European Union, hook, line and sinker. He has no understanding of democracy, and consequently no respect for it. Serious questions about how people can and should wield influence over the decisions affecting their lives go sailing right over his smug little head. Support for the EU is, to Johnny Rich, a mere act of public virtue signalling – a way to showcase to his equally insufferable friends that he is progressive, compassionate, and holds all of the necessary right-on opinions. And the net result is his “little list”, a sneering wink at fellow believers all utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause.

Or as Pete North put it when citing Johnny Rich’s drivel:

If I didn’t know anything at all about the EU and I was relying on Vote Leave for the arguments to leave the EU – and my only perception of leavers was through the media, I would vote to remain in the EU. But it would mean I was a virtue signalling, lazy narcissist. For the removal of doubt, here is one one of those looks like…

I shouldn’t do it, I know. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from getting into pitched battles with shrill, morally certain HuffPost bloggers, people too dim to do the first bit of research on opposing arguments but always ready with a snarky post or tweet.

But those of us on the thinking Brexit side have probably each spent more time learning the history of the European project and thinking through the various implications of leaving and remaining than Johnny Rich has spent doing whatever he does for a living – writing obscure, unread novels, by the look of it.

And there is only so much that one can take of being mocked and called stupid by the conclave of cavorting village idiots who make up the unthinking, virtue-signalling (and dominant) wing of the Remain camp before one has to punch back.

 

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Following A Remain Vote, The Slow, Inevitable Descent Into Irrelevance, Apathy…And Worse

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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In case of a Remain vote, brace for impact…

Pete North fears the consequences of a Remain vote:

If Britain votes to remain in the EU we will have permanently forfeited most of our rights to influence policy over trade, fishing, aid, energy and agriculture. These are absolutely crucial to our overall domestic industrial policy and these areas have a profound impact on our lives and our economy. Having sealed the deal to no longer take an interest in such affairs, parliament will be able to seal itself into its tiny little bubble where reality may never intrude. It will be the absolute final death of adult politics.

As much as Britain will withdraw from the world, it will largely delegate the important policy areas to the EU technocrats and will instead be fixated permanently on the minutia of our lives. Controlling what we do and our individual choices is all that will be left for them to influence.

And so I can see Britain becoming a distinctly illiberal place, where politicians use their remaining powers to restrict our personal freedoms in what we do, what we consume and what we say to one another. They will become ever more controlling over things which are none of their business. I see a political system making itself wholly redundant and resorting to displacement activity to fill the void.

Consequently the public debate will be an ever more diminished one, where the House of Commons becomes a gallery for vanity and virtue signalling. To many extents we are already there but a remain vote pretty much seals our fate.

It’s hard to disagree with this assessment. Unless, of course, one inhabits the EU apologists’ alternate universe, where a Remain vote signals a new era of enthusiastic British leadership in the European Union (despite not being a member of the euro or Schengen), and the EU starts falling over itself in its desire to reform and respond to the individual concerns of member states.

In Owen Jones / David Cameron / Jeremy Corbyn La-La Land, having positively re-affirmed our commitment to the EU with a Remain vote we will all join hands beneath a rainbow and “work together” to solve the intractable crises and internal contradictions of this creaking, mid century-era political union with a snap of the fingers. But for those of us back on planet Earth, the next few years will actually be profoundly depressing.

Pete continues:

I do not see this coming without a price to pay. Certainly I don’t see that I have a place in the new model of post-democratic politics. We will have a political class which does not believe in Britain’s capabilities and lacks the will to govern.

We will be an insular country of diminished significance having turned our back on global participation. We will have empty shells of political parties neither of which are worth a vote. And voting to be rid of them will accomplish little. We have seen how the system neatly castrates insurgent parties and we have see how those not native to the system can be marginalised. There will be no value in voting.

And when it comes to Euro-elections, where we have the dubious honour of selecting overpaid button pushers to rubber stamp global regulations, the details of which are already decided, we will, at best, send the very worst of what we have in protest. If we even bother at all that is. I won’t.

We will in effect be an occupied country where there is no value in participating in the public debate since the conclusion of any debate will simply not translate into policy or reform.

Consequently politics as a subject heading will be a subheading of light entertainment, where if anybody holding any expertise wishes to influence policy they will depart for Geneva and never look back. Anyone with a hectoring and nannying agenda though, will head for the Westminster gossip bubble.

Meanwhile the disconnect between the governed and the governors will grow. From there, there are only two paths. Permanent idiocracy or a furious backlash the likes we have not seen for generations. There is always a price for turning our backs on democracy. Always.

This echoes my own thoughts exactly –  it is not coincidental that our politicians increasingly seek to meddle in the minutiae of our lives at the very time they are divesting themselves of ever more power and responsibility for any of the truly big political and ideological questions.

And this is the reason why I simply cannot fathom so many people from outside of politics – usually the first ones to grumble about the state of the nation – enthusiastically cheerleading for the status quo and our continued participation in the EU.

Do these people like the fact that voter apathy is a major problem? Do they rejoice in the fact that all of the main political parties in Westminster fit within such a narrow ideological window that the views of many are entirely excluded? Are they happy that the British people have not been called on to strive together towards an important goal of any kind in nearly seventy years, and that we are increasingly a nation of passive, whiny consumers of public services? And assuming they are not happy with the status quo, how on earth to they think that any of this is likely to change while the single biggest drain on our democracy, independence and entrepreneurialism remains intact?

Already we have a parliament in Westminster stuffed to the rafters with politicians who would rather make grandstanding anti-austerity speeches in the hope of going viral on YouTube or wax lyrical about banning Donald Trump from our shores in a dismal act of virtue signalling than actually get to grips with policy. If we continue to divest power and sovereignty to the EU (and as Cameron’s fraudulent renegotiation shows, we sure as hell ain’t getting any of it back) then how is the calibre of our own politicians going to do anything other than decline yet further?

And yes, there will ultimately be a backlash. Pete is right. You can just about get away with governing in an aloof, high-handed and profoundly anti-democratic manner when you are delivering rip roaring economic growth – just ask the dictators of China. But in a mature advanced economy facing serious structural issues, the government can do little to distract us from the gaping chasm where real local democracy and an informed citizenry should be.

At some point the divergence will become too great. The EU’s primary purpose is to steadily integrate the various member states toward the goal of political and economic union – the common European state spoken of so fondly by Francois Hollande last year. This objective overrides everything else. Certainly, trivial matters like mass unemployment in Spain, Italy and Greece are utterly irrelevant compared to the obsessive desire to unite the continent under a single currency and government. The EU simply doesn’t care.

Of course, when the mass political disengagement and civil disorder comes, all of those now eagerly chanting hymns of praise to the EU and encouraging us to vote Remain will feign utter shock. In some cases it may even be genuine. But the blame will lie squarely with them.

For despite our material progress and the current flourishing of London as the world’s capital city, Britain is on a negative democratic trajectory right now, and a vote to remain in the EU is nothing less than a vote to pitch the nose downward a few degrees and turn up the throttle.

And the ground will make no distinction between Remainer or Brexiteer as it rushes up to meet us.

 

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Okay, Let’s Talk About Patriotism

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

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David Cameron thinks that Britain owes its limited greatness to the coiffured prancing of One Direction. This is a man who doesn’t know how to begin thinking like a patriot because he doesn’t appreciate the first thing about what makes Britain truly great

David Cameron spent much of his 20-minute grilling in last night’s damp squib of a television “debate” with Nigel Farage waffling on in the vaguest possible terms about patriotism.

Specifically, the prime minister wheeled out almost the identical meaningless phrases that he always uses when he finds himself scrambling to recover his footing – like when he failed to win an outright parliamentary majority in 2010, and when faced with worrying poll numbers in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

He then advanced the rather surprising argument that the way in which we might best show our patriotism and love of country is to vote for its continued subsummation into that giant self-help group for countries who have lost their mojo known as the European Union.

The Daily Mail summarises Cameron’s basic pitch:

The Prime Minister acknowledged that sometimes the EU “can drive me mad, it is a bureaucracy, it is frustrating” but “walking away, quitting, would reduce our national influence, would reduce our economy, would reduce our say in the world and as a result would damage our country”.

He told the audience: “You hear a lot of talk about patriotism in this referendum. As far as I’m concerned I love this country with a passion, I think we are an amazing country and I say if you love your country then you don’t damage its economy, you don’t restrict opportunities for young people, you don’t actually isolate your country and reduce its influence in the world.”

Warning that Brexit could lead to Scotland separating from the UK he said: “You don’t strengthen your country by leading to its break-up. So I’m deeply patriotic, but I think this is a case for a bigger, greater Britain inside a European Union.”

Urging voters to think of the next generation he said: “I hope that when people go to vote on June 23 they think about their children and grandchildren, they think about the jobs and the opportunities they want for them, the sort of country we want to build together and they vote to say ‘we don’t want the little England of Nigel Farage’, we want to be Great Britain and we are great if we stay in these organisations and fight for the values we believe in.”

He added: “Leaving is quitting and I don’t think Britain, I don’t think we are quitters, I think we are fighters. We fight in these organisations for what we think is right.”

This blog’s response to being labelled a “quitter” for wanting to leave the European Union is here.

Meanwhile, Tony Edwards of The Brexit Door blog picks up on the cognitive dissonance which must necessarily be involved in thinking that fearfully remaining in a stultifying regional political union rather than engaging with the world in the same way as every other advanced country on the planet outside of Europe is somehow the “patriotic” thing to do.

Edwards writes:

The Prime Minister is losing the debate on the EU – and so yesterday (7th June) he missed the funeral of Cecil Parkinson to attend a hurriedly arranged press conference in the run up to his appearance with Nigel Farage on ITV.

It’s not the first time we have heard this rather fatuous appeal to patriotism, this form of words first appeared late last week, but it is the polling that has driven this level of rather empty rhetoric. If you leave the EU, he says, you are a “Quitter” who doesn’t “love the UK”.

This was always the inevitable end for this campaign, this descent into pure nonsense. The trigger for the press conference was no doubt a mixture of things – the polling across the weekend, the Newsnight programme on Monday, and the recent articles in the Telegraph by both Allister Heath and Ambrose Evans Pritchard which have been very optimistic on the EEA/EFTA route out of the EU. This has been allied with the reporting of the BBC that civil servants are already planning for Brexit via this route, something that the Prime Minister has often denied, but we have heard talk of since the beginning of the year.

While there is an honourable and intellectually coherent case made for staying in the European Union and deepening our commitment to join the EU in its ultimate journey toward common statehood, this is not a debate which is ever heard in Britain. Most of our politicians, recognising that publicly suggesting that Britain join France and Germany on their long-established path to common statehood would go down like a bucket of cold sick, are unsurprisingly reticent to talk about the EU in these terms.

And so in Britain those who wish us to Remain in the EU argue from a purely fear-based economic perspective, which makes the sudden attempt to portray this as the “patriotic” choice sound especially contrived false, as Tony points out:

On the pro EU side, there is an honourable argument to be made for travel towards a single European state. On the mainland, this is a debate that actually breaks into the open. Many on the continent wish for an EU that is totally federal, and challenges the USA as the world’s leading business superpower. Some wish it to have a similar military strength, and others wish to see the elevation of large block political entities as a step towards a ‘Star Trek’ ideal of a single world government. All of these are laudable aims, but they have never been expressed in the UK debate by those who wish to remain in the EU. The argument here is always about trade, economics and migration – the short term issues.

And Tony’s brilliant conclusion:

Democracy has hardly had a word uttered about it in this debate. The EU is the beginning of the end of the rather short democratic experiment in Western Europe. For most of us, full suffrage is just less than a century old – the first truly democratic election general election in the UK was in 1929, an election which returned Ramsey MacDonald to power as the first Labour PM of a functioning Labour government. By 1961, our politicians were already looking to remove the power of the people by exporting it to the newly formed EEC, fully aware that its design was for a technocratic Europe rather than a democratic one.

So the experiment in the UK lasted no more than 32 years before politicians tried to unravel it. That is something that bears serious thought. Do we prise democracy above all else, or do we simply want a life in which the big questions are not asked of us as a people, so we are left untroubled by them?

That is the real issue at stake in this referendum, and judging by many of the responses I have seen, especially from younger people, there is a lack of willingness to engage with the deeper issues, something mirrored by the political class which plays only to the gallery.

Precisely so. The deeper question facing us is do we even want to be informed and engaged citizens any more? Are we willing to educate ourselves as to the issues, participate in our democracy and bear our share of responsibility for the resulting triumphs, disasters and (more usually) bland stalemates? Or are we happier being passive consumers of goods and public services, occasionally bleating our outrage when we don’t get what we want but otherwise content for others to do the dull work of running the country (or continent) while we devote ourselves to watching re-runs of Britain’s Animals Got Strictly Come Bake-Off On Ice?

Citizens or consumers? That is the deeper choice facing us in this EU referendum debate. Are we willing to put in the work which comes with being the former in exchange for the reward of greater control over our lives, or are we willing to wave away the responsibility in the hope that doing so keeps mortgage rates and the price of Chinese flat-screen TVs that little bit lower?

So how would a patriot act? I think it is now clear which side represents the strivers and which side the quitters. In any case, one can normally take a good cue from the words and deeds of those currently in power, and David Cameron sets a shining example for us all.

The lesson for would-be patriots, therefore, is this: speak and behave in the polar opposite manner to David “don’t be a quitter” Cameron and you won’t go far wrong.

 

David Cameron – a prime minister whose esteem and ambition for his own country is so pathetically small that when given an open-goal to sell Britain’s evident greatness to the world he fell back on delivering a weak impression of Hugh Grant in the film “Love Actually”:

 

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