If The Remain Campaign Succeed In Cheating Their Way To Victory, Their Joy Will Be Short Lived

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

EU Referendum - Divisive - Bitterness

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There will be no kissing and making up on 24 June

Much like this blog, Pete North is angry at the conduct of this referendum campaign by the arrayed forces of Remain, and sees little point in hiding the fact:

We’ve had decades of their rule, decades of their orthodoxy and no means to challenge their political dominance. We’ve been watching and waiting for years. Watching as successive governments have ceded ever more power, ever more control and have insulated themselves from the wishes of the public. Well, now we’ve got our referendum. And now we see just how deeply the game is rigged.

So we’re angry to say the least. Angry at what has been done to us, done in our name, and angry that once again democracy is being trampled on to preserve the orthodoxy. And we do not take kindly to being lied to.

There’s an old saying that politics is between you, me and the swamp. Minorities on either side, playing games for the votes in the middle. But unlike classic politics, this is not a left vs right dispute. There are only those above the line and those below the line. Those who have the power and those who do not. In this estimation, the establishment holds all of the cards. It has always known a challenge to its legitimacy would one day come which is why it set out to bribe institutions in advance.

We Brexiteers on the other hand have what we have. An angry rabble with keyboards. And let’s face it, none of us are ever going on the front cover of Vogue. We’re a bunch of griping, moaning angry people who seem to hate just about everyone in politics and everything they do. We’re not helped by a pretty shoddy Leave campaign either, with some fairly odious spokesmen.

We are irredeemably spit. We all hate each other. I despise the Toryboys and I loathe Ukip. I hate all political tribalism. I’m not a joiner of clans. But there’s one thing that unites us all. All of us can articulate a better definition of democracy than any of those would would have us remain in the EU – and though we can’t seem to agree on coherent Brexit plan, we all know what democracy is, why we should have it and crucially why the EU is the absolute opposite of it.

And that’s why this referendum really settles nothing. The Remainers will play their little games, steal the referendum and carry on as before; feathering their own nests and consolidating their power. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re not giving up. And we are taking names. Us Brexiteers hold deep grudges. We are in it for the duration.

We will remember Cameron the fraud. We will remember Hague and Corbyn as turncoats. We will remember the frauds like Boris Johnson who used the cause for their own advancement. We will remember the parasites who had their fingers in the till. We will remember all those hacks and policy wonks who twisted the truth. We will not forget what was done here. And unlike 1975 – we have a full record of who said what. The internet never forgets.

And North’s blood-chilling conclusion:

In fact, we are going to be pure poison. If you thought the SNP were sore losers, you ain’t seen nothing. A remain vote will ensure domestic politics remains permanently toxic. While these part timers waft into to the Brexit debate with their tedious rhetoric about Brexiteers being little englanders and xenophobes, and venting their empty rhetoric of cooperation and internationalism, we have been here from the beginning. Will be here at the end.

You can stifle an idea, but you can’t kill one. Especially not that seemingly antiquated notion that the people should be able to refuse their government. The EU may be powerful but it is not stronger than the desire for democracy. And if it takes another generation to get what we want then that is what we will do. There is only one way this fight ends – Britain leaving the European Union. We will either do it amicably and by the book – or we will do it some other way. The general public may well go back into their political slumber, but we Brexiteers will be back – and in between, we are going to cause merry hell.

I should say that I agree with nearly everything in Pete’s piece – as always, his diagnosis of the flaws of the EU is spot-on, and his objections rooted not in shameless partisan positioning (like nearly every Remain supporter on the Left) but in a deep love and respect for democracy.

I can’t say that I look forward to the idea of being “pure poison”, or causing merry hell. But increasingly, I cannot see an alternative if, as is still likely, the Remain camp prevails on the back of a campaign based on sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt.

There are some political issues where I don’t get my way – in fact, as a libertarian / conservatarian living in Britain, it is pretty near all of them – where I am still happy to play the game according to the rules. I think personal taxes are too high, for example, as a result of decades of fiscal drag and Gordon Brown’s only partially-repealed spiteful hike. But I’m not going to take my toys and go home in protest, refusing to engage and participate in the democratic process because we don’t have a flatter tax system.

Likewise with the size of the state. This blog believes that government does far too much for far too many people – including many who are already self-sufficient and do not need government largesse, as well as many who could know self sufficiency if only they had the right short-term help and weren’t indefinitely coddled by the welfare state. But it is not the relatively unambitious and half-finished work of implementing Universal Credit which has enraged me against this supposedly conservative government.

On all manner of issues I’m happy to play for incremental progress, accept the victories as well as the losses for my side, and then move on to the next battle. But this is different. The European Union question is different.

The EU referendum is not about whether we want politics to be a little bit more left wing or a bit more right wing. It is not about tweaking tax policy, industrial policy, reforming benefits, or social issues. It is so much more fundamental than that, because whether or not Britain votes to remain in the EU says in a single gesture what kind of country we are, and what kind of country we want to be.

And the same thing applies at the personal level. I have never had a problem socialising and being friends with people from all across the political spectrum. Most of my social circle probably leans significantly to the Left, if anything, and while it leads to the occasional lively conversation there is always a full measure of respect. But – and I don’t take any great joy in writing this – I do not think I will be able to help thinking less of people who vote for Britain to remain in the EU.

Now, that doesn’t go for every Remain supporter. If I knew that someone is voting Remain because they truly believe in the European project, that they admit that political union is being brought about by stealth but that the ends justify the means, that they “feel” more European than British and want to forge a new combined European state, then I would profoundly disagree with them but I could respect that position. It is a positive (although distasteful to me) vision of Europe, and it is an honest one. I know several people who do take that position, and I am at my happiest when I am debating with them because I don’t feel like part of my soul is dying while I do it.

My problem is with those who either see supporting the European Union as some kind of necessary virtue-signalling act to be accepted in their social circle (oh, aren’t UKIP simply awful, darling?), and those who abrogate any notion of acting as an engaged and enlightened citizens with a responsibility to this country and to democracy, and so vote based solely on their wallets or other narrow personal interests. I will struggle to look upon such people in quite the same way after this referendum.

Maybe that is easy for me to say – I do not have a lot materially at stake in this referendum, financially or otherwise. My job is not dependent on EU funding, and the immediate interests of my family are not threatened by Brexit. All of these are mitigating factors – if my own salary and job security were directly or even indirectly contingent on staying in the EU, I concede that it would take a superhuman effort to overcome the instinct toward confirmation bias which would encourage me to seek out other facts and opinions supporting the Remain case.

But human beings are emotional creatures and the fact cannot be denied: I have a lot invested in this campaign, in terms of this blog and my other campaigning activities on the side. With such an early referendum and with the government doing everything short of stuffing ballot boxes with fake votes to assure a Remain vote, I remain pessimistic about our chances, though I fight to win. But if we lose, the behaviour and motivations of many of those agitating for Remain is such that I will be very angry for a very long time. And I will not be the only one.

(None of this should be taken as a Rebecca Roache-style, “unfriend all my Tory acquaintances on Facebook in a fit of moral grandstanding, virtue-signalling post-election leftist pique” piece of melodrama. But there will be a degree of real disappointment, if for no other reason than it will confirm that those who vote Remain and I clearly see the world in a profoundly, irreconcilably different way).

Britain should be ready for the wave of anger that is likely to break over our heads on 24 June. In the event of a Leave vote, expect a lot of short term hysterics from the virtue-signallers and special interests, most of which will die down once it becomes evident that Britain will be exiting to an EEA/EFTA holding position and maintaining single market access. But in the event of a Remain vote, given the underhanded way that the government has been fighting the referendum campaign, expect the SNP on steroids – a long, guerilla campaign of attrition directed against anyone and everyone who betrayed the Brexit cause.

Chris Deerin painted a vivid and I believe accurate prediction of the future in a piece for CapX last year, comparing the likely fallout from the EU referendum to the aftermath of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum:

I have been bemused and fascinated by the number of English people telling me in recent weeks that “it won’t be like Scotland” – that this will be a more sedate affair, will inspire less passion, do less long-term damage. Well, perhaps. But, as we Scots say, ah hae ma doots.

What was most extraordinary about last year’s independence vote was the turnout: 84.5 per cent, the largest since the introduction of universal suffrage in the UK in 1918. Many of those voting were people who had never before even considered entering a polling station. What happened? There was certainly a long, noisy, impassioned campaign. There was global interest beyond anything we’d experienced before, but beyond this were two key factors that I believe drove this historic level of engagement.

The first was timing – the referendum came along after a decade in which every significant British institution had suffered either a scandal, a crisis of confidence or a loss of purpose, from Westminster to the media to the City to the military. The ties that bind had never been looser, respect for the status quo never lower.

Second, people were asked an existential question: who are you? This is not nothing. You will want to answer. You will want to answer on behalf of yourself and your family and your nation. Especially when you realise that the answer really matters – no safe seats to consider, no popular or unpopular incumbent MPs, no First Past The Post system ensuring only a few marginals get all the attention. Every individual counts. This is the big one, for keeps. So: in or out?

Deerin concludes:

Ultimately, we are about to ask the people of Britain an existential question: who are you? They will know that their voice counts this time, and that the consequences of the decision will be enormous and era-defining. They will think about themselves, their family and their country. They will get angry with the other side. Some very harsh words will be exchanged. Tempers will be lost and relationships fractured. And afterwards, whatever the outcome, the losers will be very sore, for a long time.

Not like Scotland? Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Like I say, I have no great desire to spend the next year walking around angry, holding nearly the entire political class in derision and many of my fellow citizens in open contempt. It does not warm my heart, in the same way that many left wing activists clearly revel in their anger and the righteousness of their cause, bleating about socialism and hating the Evil Tories.

But to my mind, there is a right way to vote in this referendum and a clearly, unambiguously wrong way to vote, and it is not hard to tell the difference between the two. The right way strikes a blow for democracy, self-determination and the normalcy of independence enjoyed by every single major country in the world outside Europe, while the wrong way would be to reward people who do not dare to advance their own positive argument for European political union, and so instead spend the bulk of their time pecking over the foibles, inconsistencies and other low-hanging fruit offered up by the hapless official Leave campaign.

In the event of defeat, then, the only question open to disappointed Brexiteers will be whether or not they use that anger and channel it toward some positive action to further the eurosceptic cause. This blog will do just that. Semi-Partisan Politics is in this for the long haul. Because as Pete North rightly says, you can stifle an idea like Brexit, but you cannot kill it.

I continue to fight this referendum campaign to win. But if we are fated to lose, I will not be going anywhere. If my generation is not to be the generation which restores democracy and self-governance to the United Kingdom then we can at least ensure that the flame of liberty is kept alive until it is time to try again – assuming that the doomed project does not implode under the weight of its own internal contradictions and the relentless pressure of global events, making the Brexit debate redundant.

And in the meantime, I and many others will make life as painfully difficult and unfulfilling as we can for all those in public life – particularly those in the Conservative Party – who come down on the wrong side of this referendum. That much I can promise.

 

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Top Image: CapX

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 28 – When Both Sides Use SJW Tactics

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Safe Space University

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If unchecked, identity politics and Social Justice Warrior tactics will lead to a stalemate on university campuses where everything is offensive, everyone is offended and both protest and counter-protest become impossible

Recently, this blog speculated as to what would happen if and when conservatives on university campuses finally get sick of being shouted down and censored on campus by social justice activists using the tactics of identity politics, and begin to adopt the same kind of arguments and tactics themselves as a kind of self-defence mechanism.

As I concluded at the time:

Nobody likes a pity party, but that is exactly what will get if conservative and liberal students face off against each other not as they should, through lively debate, but rather through constant, tear-stained appeals for the university authorities to intercede on behalf of their respective sides.

And in a sense, one cannot blame [conservative students] for behaving in this way. They have watched for months and years while identity politics-wielding left-wing students get every little thing that they demand from spineless university administrations, and shame into submission anybody who stands in their way.

It is not therefore an illogical leap when other students conclude that this is the best and most effective way of advancing one’s own agenda. If the Social Justice Warriors can mobilise support and win concessions by emphasising (and frankly, grossly exaggerating) their supposed victimhood and oppression, why should conservatives not do the same?

[..] But in the longer term, if through repeated practice young students become adept at flaunting their fragility and exalting in their helplessness, both sides will fight to a bloody draw, with nobody able to say or do anything on campus without immediately triggering a protest and counter-protest. University will truly no longer be a place for the discussion of ideas, but a sheltered place of “comfort and home” for weak-minded adult babies, an intellectual demilitarised zone protected by a field of verbal landmines laid by every competing minority group over the academic and political discourse.

And an “intellectual demilitarised zone” is exactly what we are now just beginning to see, with those people and groups who were traditionally the target of social justice warrior tactics now adopting the same language of victimhood and fragility in an attempt to deflect criticism of themselves and shame their accusers into dialling back their criticism.

The context in this case is that of UC Davis and the ongoing protests on that campus to force the resignation of their Chancellor, Linda Katehi. Much of the criticism of Katehi is actually justified in this case – she came to prominence for presiding over an infamous incident in 2011 where Occupy protesters were pepper sprayed by campus police, and subsequent efforts to scrub the internet of mentions of the event in the name of “online reputation management. Some of her failings are detailed in this local press report.

But the rights and wrongs of Katehi’s actions are irrelevant for the purposes of our analysis. What is if interest here is the fact that Katehi’s defenders among the university student population, faculty and administrators are now using the same language of beleaguered and bullied “victims” in an attempt to win public sympathy as well as respite from their accusers.

Jonathan Haidt comments on this phenomenon at The Atlantic:

At UC Davis, where student activists still hope to oust Chancellor Linda Katehi, critics of their activism are using concepts like “safe space” and “hostile climate” to attack it.

The student activists had occupied a small room outside Katehi’s office, planning to stay until their chancellor resigned or was removed from her post. By the time they left 36 days later, a petition that now bears roughly 100 signatures of UC Davis students and staff were demanding that they prematurely end their occupation, criticizing their tactics, and alleging a number of grave transgressions: The signatories accused the student activists of sexism, racism, bullying, abuse, and harassment, complaining that many who used the administration building “no longer feel safe.” The student activists say that those charges are unfair.

While regarding a different protest at Ohio State University, Conor Friedersdorf notes that this is not the only time that targets of a student protest have used the language and tactics of social justice warriors to plead vulnerability and seek to escape from criticism or protest:

Insofar as campus concepts like safe spaces, microaggressions, and claims of trauma over minor altercations spread from activist culture to campus culture, the powerful will inevitably make use of them. Where sensitivity to harm and subjective discomfort are king, and denying someone “a safe space” is verboten, folks standing in groups, confrontationally shouting out demands, will not fare well. When convenient, administrators will declare them scary and unfit for the safe space, exploiting how verboten it is to challenge anyone who says they feel afraid.

In cases like this one, it won’t matter that one of the least scary experiences in the world is walking into a university administration building at 7 a.m., well-rested and ready for work, to be greeted by a bunch of exhausted 18-year-old OSU students groggily looking up from the corner where they curled up with college hoodies as pillows. After years of reporting on occupations like this one, I’ve never heard of even one case of a college staff member of administrator coming away with even a scratch. Yet in the name of preserving “safe space,” these protesters were evicted.

This emergence of competitive grievance culture is only going to grow. Only last month, this blog remarked that competition between different identity groups all using the same anti free speech tactics is currently less marked on American university campuses compared to British institutions, but already it seems that the United States has caught up.

This is what our new victimhood culture has wrought. Expect to see this same scenario repeated again and again in the coming months, as those people who are traditionally the target of leftist campus activism – conservatives, university administrators and others – realise that they can “appropriate” the language and tactics of the SJWs to portray themselves as the real victims and get themselves off the hook.

As yet, the SJWs have no response to this tactic. As we have recently seen, many students indoctrinated into the Cult of Identity Politics are so terrified of putting a foot wrong themselves by saying or doing something “offensive” that their first reaction when confronted with any identity politics claim is to freeze like a deer in the headlights and then automatically accept it as valid.

According to this mindset, if a university administrator – heck, even a university Chancellor – claims that student protests and disagreement are making them feel unsafe, then it is the duty of the identity politics adherent to withdraw in deference to the fragility of the supposed victim. Thus any debate or protest, regardless of the participants, can now potentially be shut down simply by uttering the three words “I feel unsafe”.

As Jonathan Haidt notes, by using these illiberal tactics so freely and excessively, student activists have effectively created the weapon with which campus authorities may now attempt to silence them:

The civil-rights movement, the free-speech movement, the anti-Vietnam protests, and protesters on both sides of the gun and abortion questions have all deliberately tried to make others uncomfortable, intellectually if not physically. They’ve all shouted, insulted, provoked, and tried to deny their opponents “safe spaces.”

Today’s strain of campus progressivism has a more ambiguous relationship with traditional liberal values, finding them too viewpoint neutral and rough-and-tumble.

Still, most campus protests are left-leaning. And administrators cannot help but realize that almost all of that activism is, on some level, about confrontation—that it frequently involves a lot of shouting or chanting or marching or banging on drums. Now, any time such protests challenge the interests of the administration, or make their jobs marginally harder or their lives marginally more inconvenient, they can always pinpoint some folks who are earnestly upset or unnerved by all the ruckus.

They can always undermine the activists of the moment by finding the students experiencing “trauma” from all the conflict; the staff members who feel “unsafe” around protesters, the community member who, in the new paradigm, somehow feel “silenced.”

As best I can tell, this does not worry leftist activists yet, perhaps because they mostly operate on shorter time-horizons than other campus power brokers, or perhaps because they see themselves as marginalized and mistakenly believe these standards will never be applied to them, even though it’s already happening.

Haidt concludes his own analysis:

In the end, unreformed social justice activism may destroy itself.

One gets the slight impression that Haidt, despite his sterling work drawing attention to the growing illiberalism within universities, sees this as something at least partially regrettable.

This blog would regard the collapse of social justice activism under the weight of its own sanctimony – at least for as long as it is so closely intertwined with poisonous identity politics – as a great and unexpected triumph. But a prolonged stalemate with both sides using identity politics tactics to shame the other and parade their supposed victimhood in front of authorities and the observing public – with free speech rights being continuously eroded at both ends – still seems like the more likely outcome, at least in the medium term.

In short, our new victimhood culture is not going anywhere in a hurry. Therefore, those who oppose it must find other means of fighting back besides the counter-productive instinct to play the social justice warriors at their own game.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Flexcit For Newbies – A Comprehensive Plan For Safely Leaving The EU

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

The Leave Alliance - Flexcit Workshop - EU Referendum - Brexit

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There now follows a message from The Leave Alliance…

Richard North announces:

We’re all set up for the big day at the ROSL. The programme is all organised, with an opening address by Christopher Booker, the TED-style talk on Flexcit from me, and then Question Time.

The question-time is one of the key elements of the afternoon. Unlike the typical “talking head” presentation, you the audience are the stars. We’re looking for at least ten volunteers, each to ask a focused question, in a similar format. The questioner makes a short statement from the floor to introduce the subject, and then directs the question at the panel, comprising myself and Booker.

[..] Once we’ve chewed over the answer, the questioner gets a come-back, if they want it, and then we close on that issue and move to the next.  After editing, each becomes a YouTube clip, giving us a steady flow of material to post on the web.

Some of the topics to be addressed by the panel are as follows:

  • What will be the effect of Brexit on farming?
  • How will fishermen benefit from Brexit?
  • In view of the controversy over savings on contributions, how much do you think the UK will save?
  • Why isn’t Flexcit getting more (any) attention from the media?
  • Will expats be forced to return to the UK?
  • What guarantee can you give that the Efta/EEA option would not end up as the final step instead of the first?
  • What would happen if the UK failed to reach a trade agreement before leaving the EU?
  • Would the UK need to re-negotiate all its trade deals after Brexit?
  • Would the UK lose out by not being part of TTIP?
  • Will UK defence and security be damaged by Brexit?

Throughout the afternoon, we’ll have roving cameras, recording for vox pop contributions, with people responding to the simple question: “why do you want to leave the EU?” We’ll edit and collate the responses, which will make for another, and truly historic film clip.

I will be in attendance, representing Semi-Partisan Politics, for what promises to be a great event – and one which will answer many common questions about Flexcit.

The event will be held at the following time and place – do come along if you are able, I understand that tickets will be on sale on the door for £15 which is a small price well worth paying for an afternoon of education on the most important and existential question facing Britain today.

 

Princess Alexandra Hall

Royal Overseas League

Overseas House, Park Place, St James’s Street

London, SW1A 1LR

Saturday 23 April, 2pm – 6pm

 

The Leave Alliance - Flexcit

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Who Can Now Respect David Cameron The Liar?

Samuel Hooper11 Comments

David Cameron - Gloucester - EU referendum - Protected Status - Farming

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A visceral, unyielding, slow-burning anger

Then looking darkly at him swift-footed Achilleus answered: ‘Hector, argue me no arguments. I cannot forgive you. As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, nor wolves and lambs have spirit that can be brought to agreement but forever hold feelings of hate for each other, so there can be no love between you and me, nor shall there be oaths betweens us, but one or the other must fall before then to glut with his blood Ares the god who fights under the shields’s guard.

– Homer, Iliad

The process by which I fell out with the current Conservative Party has occurred in several stages.

First, there was the initial astonishment that David Cameron could not muster a proper election victory against a Labour Party led by Gordon Brown, of all people. Then there was the frustration of the coalition years, when it was not always entirely clear how much Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats might be shouting down and diluting the conservative “better angels” of the Tories. And then during the 2015 general campaign there was the incredulity bordering on rage that no, in fact the LibDems if anything had been a restraining influence on the more despicably authoritarian Tory tendencies, and that Cameron envisioned the same dismal society built on the continual feeding and worship of our public services (and sainted NHS) as Ed Miliband’s rootless Labour Party.

But until now, my beef with the Conservative Party leadership (and supportive rank and file) has been ideological, not personal. I had accused the Tories of selling out ideologically and failing to boldly make a proper conservative case to the country, but I still saw it in terms of political calculation.

No more. The EU referendum has awakened a rage against the Conservative Party within me that I do not know how I will manage to suppress when it comes to local and national elections, even (especially?) if it means handing victory to their enemies. Why? Because on the single most important political decision this country has to make in a generation, they lie and cheat and tilt the balance, and do so with such smug, smarmy condescension and aristocratic entitlement that it beggars belief. From the prime minister on down, with too few honourable exceptions, the Cabinet and parliamentary party are comprised of craven careerists who are in the process of selling out their country – and democracy itself – either out of laziness, ignorance, greed or a toxic combination of all three.

Now, in other words, my problem with the Tories is personal.

Case in point, David Cameron’s attempt to sow more fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of the British electorate by peddling false myths about Brexit. It now appears that the prime minister is going around the country coming up with tailored apocalypse scenarios for different voters and demographics in every region of the country.

Writing in the Gloucester Citizen, David Cameron warns:

In the South West alone, more than 60,000 are employed in agriculture and more than 28,000 in food manufacturing, with the region having received around £371million in EU Common Agricultural Policy grants in 2014 supporting those jobs.

Between 2010 and 2014, the total income from farming across the South West increased by 49 per cent, to £666million, as farmers – along with all British businesses – reaped the benefits of access to the single European market of 500million people.

If we leave the EU and our farmers have to operate under World Trade Organisation rules, things would be very different.

They could be faced with annual tariffs of up to 40 per cent and huge additional costs – for example, £240million for beef and £90million for lamb.

Protected status enjoyed across Europe by our unique products, such as Gloucestershire cider, Single Gloucester cheese and traditionally-farmed Gloucester old spot pork, will be lost.

In other words, if you so much as think warmly about Brexit and regained British independence from the EU, the commercially protected status of locally produced foods will be not only threatened, but definitively lost.

This is a lie. I’m sorry, but there is no other word for it. This blog is slow to anger and slow to impugn the motives and character of politicians, preferring to go for their ideas. But when he writes these words in a local newspaper, the prime minister is lying to us.

Richard North wearily explains over at eureferendum.com:

As usual though, the fear tactic relies on half-truths and deception – and the ignorance of the media and politicians. And not least of these deceptions is the omission of rather crucial information: the scheme also applies to third countries.

Applicants from outside the EU can register their products with their national authorities, which then pass on the details to the EU, where they are then – after due process – recognised as protected process.

The system can be seen at work here, when in May 2011 four Chinese agricultural products received protected status in the EU, bringing the total to five, with another five being processed through the system.

In a reciprocal move, the Chinese authorities set in motion the recognition process for “ten celebrated European products”. These were: Grana Padano; Prosciutto di Parma; Roquefort; Pruneaux d’Agen/Pruneaux d’Agen mi-cuits; Priego de Cordóba; Sierra Mágina; Comté; White Stilton Cheese/Blue Stilton Cheese; Scottish Farmed Salmon and West Country Farmhouse Cheddar.

Thus to represent British products being at risk when we leave the EU is a plain, outright lie. And even if the Prime Minister doesn’t know he’s lying, some of the people briefing him must know the truth. There is almost certainly calculated deceit being perpetrated here.

So the prime minister is blatantly lying. He is suggesting that protected status for foodstuffs is contingent on EU membership when this is clearly not so. And he is appealing to the basest instincts of Gloucester farmers, producers and citizens, hoping that they will unthinkingly vote for what he tells them is their personal interest without thinking for themselves.

Completely unable and unwilling to articulate a positive vision for the European Union of which he is so desperate to keep Britain a part, David Cameron is reduced to peddling outright falsehoods, deceptions and lies in local newspapers as his grubby Remain organisation trawls for votes.

North goes on to give the wider context, painting (as always) a vivid and fascinating picture of a world of global regulation and harmonisation in which the UK is constrained from fully participating by having to operate through the filter of the European Union:

Furthermore, these reciprocal arrangements are only the tip of the iceberg of what is, in fact, a vast global scheme based around the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), administering what are known as “geographical indications”.

The scheme relies on a network of treaties and agreements, starting with the Paris Convention adopted in 1883, the Madrid Agreement of 1967, the Lisbon Agreement of 1958 and the protocol to the Madrid Agreement concluded in 1989.

These tie into the 1995 WTO TRIPS Agreement (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), which enable the system to be extended globally. Part of the WTO Doha round, this agreement is opening the way for other trading nations to protect their own traditional products and brands, to the same level enjoyed under EU law.

Despite this, there are complaints The EU is using its coercive power and the UK outside its system could provide a vital corrective, helping other nations to develop their own systems.

All pertinent information which is lost as soon as our prime minister opens his mouth or takes out his pen and begins lying to us – and when the press fail to do their own due diligence, either parroting his scaremongering as unquestionable truth or doing the Fox News “fair and balanced” thing where they allow two deceitful idiots to yell half-baked untruths at each other for five minutes in place of objective reporting.

But exactly how much of this tawdry and manipulative behaviour are we supposed to accept from our prime minister, and still reunite as a big happy Conservative Party family afterwards, let alone as a nation?

I for one have reached my limit. I never renewed my Conservative Party membership when I returned from the United States in 2011 out of suspicion that things would go this way, but I still expended time and energy defending David Cameron and his ministers on this blog, which I now bitterly regret. And to this day I still believe that my natural home lies within the Conservative Party – albeit a more Thatcherite version, rather than David Cameron’s lame Ted Heath tribute act. So I will remain here, hanging around on the margins, waiting to see if the Tories one day rediscover their soul and become again the party which saved this country from decline and permanent irrelevance.

But this present betrayal will not be forgotten, and if I am ever in a position to cause David Cameron and his band of lying, manipulative fellow Remainers within the Conservative Party even the slightest annoyance, inconvenience or frustration I will do so with great relish and personal satisfaction.

David Cameron has made an enemy of me – but not only me, also the thousands and even millions of Conservative voters who found their prime minister fighting against them on the wrong side of this EU referendum campaign. This may not trouble Cameron now, while his opponents on the Left remain largely incoherent and disorganised. But this lack of effective and united opposition will not last forever, and at some point in the future David Cameron will be in need of allies and ideological defenders.

And on that day, the prime minister will come to realise his mistake in recklessly and brazenly encouraging open hostilities on his right flank.

 

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The Guardian, The EU Referendum And Britain’s Entrenched Sense Of Inferiority

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

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A cake-filled misery-laden grey old island…

When does the Guardian become an enthusiastic, uncritical cheerleader for US foreign policy?

Why, when the US president jets in to lecture us all on the importance of voting to remain in their beloved European Union.

Meanwhile, we know exactly what the Guardian thinks about Britain from this giveaway paragraph in their article hailing Barack Obama’s arrival:

The importance of the UK as a key figure inside the EU club will be symbolically underscored when Obama again meets David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Mario Renzi and François Hollande in Hanover, Germany, on Monday to discuss Syria, Libya and the consequent migration crisis. The implicit message is that the UK outside the EU would not have been invited to such a high-level transatlantic conclave.

Oh gosh! How kind of Italy and France to allow Britain to take part in their Super Important Meeting with Germany and the United States. Of course, puny little Britain – the fifth largest world economy and pre-eminent European military power – would never normally be allowed to sit around the table with François Hollande and “Mario” Renzi, but for the fact that we are part of the same supra-national political union.

Is the Guardian serious? Sometimes it is hard to tell whether this dismal, miserablist attitude toward Britain is entirely genuine, or an attitude which is affected purely for the purposes of keeping our self-esteem just low enough that we don’t get ideas of national independence above our station.

The trouble, though, is that the Guardian is very much a thought leader in this area. Where the Guardian sighs, tuts and shakes its head at the hopeless prospects of puny, pathetic Britain, so many of its readers have been conditioned to automatically do the same. I’m frequently amazed by the number of conversations I have with otherwise intelligent, knowledgeable people who genuinely believe that Britain is a small and inconsequential nation.

It is almost as though someone distilled Britain’s despairing psyche when we were at our 1970s nadir into its purest, bleakest form, and then injected that dismal serum into half of today’s population. Once the infection takes hold, the feeble country that these National Inferiority Virus sufferers hallucinate bears absolutely no relation to the objective reality of modern Britain.

And these are the people who will be voting in the referendum on 23 June. These are the the pessimistic, resigned views which millions of people sympathetic to the Guardian’s position will carry with them into the polling booth. Citizens of a nuclear power, a P5 UN Security Council member, the world’s fifth largest economy and home to the financial and cultural capital city of the world, who nonetheless believe that it is only our membership of the EU which gives Britain’s prime minister the undeserved privilege of being in the same room as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy.

God help us.

 

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