An Open Letter To UKIP Voters

Samuel Hooper43 Comments

Open Letter to UKIP Supporters - Brexit - Immigration

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Dear UKIP Supporter,

There’s no easy way to put this, so I’ll just come right out and say it. If you truly want Britain to vote for Brexit and independence from the European Union in the coming referendum – if that is your top priority right now, as it is mine – then we need to drop our demand to scrap the free movement of people between Britain and Europe and stop calling for stricter immigration controls on people wanting to live and work here.

Before you dismiss me as some pro-European mole from the Remain campaign sent to deceive you, hear me out. I voted for UKIP in the 2015 general election after much soul-searching, because I share your disillusionment and disgust with the political establishment and three main legacy parties – all of which are pro-EU to their core, and all of which have lied to us for decades about the European project and ever-closer political union. I also have admiration and respect for Nigel Farage, without whom we would not be having this referendum at all.

But this is our last chance to save Britain from being absorbed into a European state, and I am terrified of waking up on the morning after the referendum only to find that by insisting on every single one of our demands – particularly on immigration, which is a controversial topic with strong feelings on both sides – we scare the public, lose the vote and squander our only chance of escaping from ever-closer political union.

By asking people to vote to leave the EU, we are already asking them to place a lot of trust in our shared vision for a stronger, more prosperous independent Britain. Unfortunately, many people are swayed by the Remain campaign’s pro-EU propaganda, which relentlessly tells them that Britain is too small and weak a country to succeed on its own. You and I know that to be nonsense, but we already have an uphill battle on our hands to overcome the establishment’s formidable misinformation machine. And demanding an end to the free movement of people within the European Economic Area on top of everything else is just a step too far. People are naturally risk-averse, and keeping this issue on our list of demands is one thing too many.

I know that having secured the referendum from a reluctant David Cameron, it seems like total victory is within your grasp – that you are on the verge of getting everything that you have wanted for so long. And I know that despite the difficult general election result, there are enough indicators to convince you that the tide is turning in your direction, that the entirety of UKIP’s agenda can one day be achieved.

But I implore you to remember what happened to overconfident Labour supporters at the general election. They imprisoned themselves in an ideological bubble of their own making, used social media to talk to each other rather than convincing undecided voters, were hypnotised by their partisan Twitter feeds and drew the false conclusion that the country was about to make Ed Miliband the next prime minister. Their hearts were broken on May 8. Don’t make the same mistake.

I’ve seen some of the UKIP discussion groups on Facebook and the online newspaper comments sections, and I know you have, too. Yes, there are good points made here and there, and some very honest and decent people. But there is also an obsession with immigration that borders on the fanatical. To win the Brexit referendum, we need 51% of the country to vote with us, and like it or not, too many people simply don’t consider immigration a burning issue. They do, however, think that harping on the subject too much strays very close to xenophobia, and if our movement is portrayed as racist or xenophobic in any way, then it’s game over.

Besides, is immigration itself really the problem, or is it the negative side effects of immigration which need to be tackled – the impact on schools, housing, public services and community cohesion? Because there are ways that we can address these issues other than campaigning on a platform of ending free movement and enforcing strict limits on immigration, thus scuppering any chance we have of winning the referendum.

We can look at making our welfare system work on a much more contributory basis, and we can do more to ensure that local areas feeling the greatest strain of inward migration are given significantly more money and resources to help them cope. We can invest properly in adult education, reskilling our workforce for the jobs of the future so that hardworking British people are never left behind at the mercy of cheap overseas labour. And yes, we can also have that important conversation about British values, so that everyone who lives on these islands respects the unique culture and heritage which make Britain so special. Many of the levers to help mitigate the impact of immigration are not possible under EU law, but they would be if Britain were an independent country again.

But by insisting on ending the free movement of people within the European Economic Area as part of our demands for Brexit, we are letting perfection be the enemy of the good. At the risk of using too many clichés, ending free movement is the straw which will break the camel’s back and end our dream of leaving the European Union. Why? Because there are not enough votes in an anti-immigration stance to win, and because opposing free movement loses us nearly as many votes as it gains.

By insisting on ending the free movement of people as part of Brexit, 25% of the electorate will shun us because no matter how misguided they are, they hear “immigration controls” and think “racism”. And another 25% will be very wary of us because they are young, pro-European professionals or students who like the idea of easily being able to live and work in Rome or Paris if they want to, and understandably don’t want to jeopardise their own life chances. That leaves us with no margin for error – we would have to win every single other vote out there, which is just impossible.

But if we campaign for Brexit while promising to respect the free movement of people for the time being, we take away our opponent’s greatest weapon – the false and ludicrous accusation that we are Little Englanders who want to pull up the drawbridge because we are somehow scared of Johnny Foreigner.

Truth be told, you didn’t begin supporting UKIP just so that you could talk about immigration all the time, important though it is. Like me, you recognised that something fundamental is at stake when it comes to our relationship with the EU. Are we to continue sliding down the greasy slope toward European political union, where so many key decisions are taken in Brussels that the idea of Britain as a sovereign state with unique national interests becomes a laughable absurdity? Or are we finally ready to do what every major non-European country does, and face the world as a fully engaged, globally connected and influential world power? Will we continue to be governed by laws and policies set in Brussels where we have just 1/28th of a voice, or are we mature enough to govern ourselves?

At the end of the day, it comes down to one small word – democracy.

Like me, you supported UKIP because you saw Nigel Farage standing up for democracy when it seemed like nobody else cared. And the country owes you a debt of gratitude for what you did. I know many of you have received insults, abuse and worse for daring to vote differently than your friends and family, but your courage has brought us to a place where the dream of independence from the European Union and the return of democracy to Britain are within our reach.

Having got this far, it is all too tempting to assume that the same strategy which forced David Cameron to offer the referendum in the first place will also help us win it. But this is just not so. Nigel Farage did an amazing job turning UKIP’s 3% at the 2010 general election into 13% in 2015, but that still leaves us a massive 38 percent away from winning the referendum. And you just can’t make up that kind of gap by shouting the same message with a louder voice.

Bearing this in mind, I ask you to consider that no great endeavour is won without great sacrifice, and that something major has to change if we are to win the referendum and secure freedom and democracy for our country. And at this critical juncture, like it or not, the sticking point for the electorate is immigration and the free movement of people. Accept the status quo on the free movement of people for the time being and we have a fighting chance of extricating ourselves from the tentacles of Brussels. But stubbornly insist on getting everything we want, and we will be left with absolutely nothing.

This is a difficult and unwelcome message to hear, I know. But making this one sacrifice, and taking this one leap of faith – on the understanding that as an independent country we will seek to deal robustly with the negative consequences of immigration – will put victory within our grasp.

And just think of what we gain by being more flexible on immigration:

The young first-time voter who has only ever been taught good things about the EU and immigration will no longer be scared away by our campaign, and can then be engaged with our arguments about democracy and persuaded to vote for Brexit.

The young professional couple living in Manchester or London will be forced to pick between one side which wants remote and unaccountable government in Brussels and another side which wants laws made by the people they affect. And when they no longer have to worry that their freedom to live and work in Europe is in jeopardy, they will be much more likely to side with us.

Small and large business owners who are naturally eurosceptic but fear the potential uncertainty of labour supply or harm to the economy will be free to follow their hearts and vote for Brexit, knowing that there is no risk to their livelihoods.

Meanwhile, the sneering europhiles of the Remain camp will be dumbfounded, and their campaign left in utter chaos. Their whole argument is built on lying to voters and insisting that people like us only oppose the European Union because deep down we hate foreigners and want to see a complete halt to immigration. This is a golden opportunity to show them – and the country – that they are wrong, that while we have legitimate concerns about unrestricted immigration, we support Brexit because we are on the side of democracy first and foremost.

And ultimately, it is our faith in democracy – not our policies on immigration or anything else – which is our greatest strength, and the greatest weakness of our opponents. Unlike the europhiles, we can look voters in the eye and tell them that Brexit is about trusting them to make the right decisions for themselves and for our country. The Remain campaign has nothing to say about democracy, because they distrust the British people so much that they simply don’t believe we can run our own affairs.

So there it is.

We can win this referendum and secure Britain’s future for our children and grandchildren. But nobody said that it would be easy, or that this victory would be possible without sacrifice. Therefore we must be adaptable and willing to look at plans which have a chance of winning over undecided voters while simultaneously de-risking Brexit, even if it means that we don’t get everything that we might want.

And remember: democracy is key. If we win the referendum and keep Britain from being irreversibly absorbed into a political union, we preserve our freedom to revisit any and all other agreements with the EU in future, and to stand up for our national interest. But if we allow our greed to lose us the referendum, then Britain will soon be unable leave or change the terms of our membership, even if we want to. Dropping our demands on immigration is the safest thing to do, and it is also the right thing to do.

I hope that you will consider what I have to say, and bear it in mind as we respond to demands to show our plan for Brexit. Thank you for hearing me out.

With best wishes,

Sam Hooper

British citizen, former UKIP voter, Brexit campaigner

Open Letter

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One Year Later, Are We Still Charlie?

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Paris - Charlie Hebdo Anniversary - Je Suis Charlie

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As we pass the one year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris – the terrorist atrocity which prompted us to declare Je Suis Charlie in support of free speech – are we still Charlie, one year on? Were we ever?

This past week saw the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, a sickening assault on journalism and free speech, and the worst thing to happen to France until the Paris attacks of 13 November ensured that 2015 would end much as it started for Europe: in the shadow of Islamist terrorism.

At the time of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, many of us rallied to the cause of the small, satirical newspaper which found itself in the crosshairs of a primitive, totalitarian ideology, and we declared “Je Suis Charlie”.

It was a nice gesture, even if it wasn’t strictly true. Though David Cameron was eager to be seen marching arm-in-arm with other world leaders through the streets of Paris in support of free speech, those of us back in London knew that any British newspaper attempting to publish some of the satirical cartoons that Charlie Hebdo published would have been vilified, sued and shut down, and its editor would likely languishing in a British prison cell.

Things didn’t get much better as 2015 progressed, as Glenn Greenwald notes in his latest column for The Intercept:

It’s been almost one year since millions of people — led by the world’s most repressive tyrants — marched in Paris ostensibly in favor of free speech. Since then, the French government — which led the way trumpeting the vital importance of free speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings — has repeatedly prosecuted people for the political views they expressed, and otherwise exploited terrorism fears to crush civil liberties generally. It has done so with barely a peep of protest from most of those throughout the West who waved free speech flags in support of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.

That’s because, as I argued at the time, many of these newfound free speech crusaders exploiting the Hebdo killings were not authentic, consistent believers in free speech. Instead, they invoke that principle only in the easiest and most self-serving instances: namely, defense of the ideas they support. But when people are punished for expressing ideas they hate, they are silent or supportive of that suppression: the very opposite of genuine free speech advocacy.

[..] In the weeks after the Free Speech march, dozens of people in France “were arrested for hate speech or other acts insulting religious faiths, or for cheering the men who carried out the attacks.” The government “ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism.” There were no marches in defense of their free speech rights.

Glenn Greenwald goes on to express his contempt for the fair-weather free speech advocates who are all to eager to shout their support for speech which offends people they happen to dislike, while simultaneously demanding that the authorities clamp down on speech which offends them or people with whom they sympathise.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the newly re-elected Conservative government was getting ready to “defend” free speech by expressing impatience with the fact that they did not have  more freedom to harass citizens acting in accordance with the law.

When David Cameron announced draconian new security measures, impatiently proclaiming “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'”, this blog retorted:

These measures have the look and feel of a side which feels unable to win the argument in favour of British and western values through open debate, and so seeks to impose them by force of law instead.

A truly free and liberal society would not need to take such draconian steps as requiring “extremists” (never defined, and certainly not necessarily convicted) to submit advance copies of public remarks to the police for review and censoring, an astonishing proposal. But our society is becoming less and less free by the day, opting instead for security and a quiet life.

And at its depressing heart, this is what it comes down to – a desire for cloistered security above all else. On the economy, on foreign affairs and now on terrorism, our politicians have decided that we are too frightened and worn down by the dangers and threats of this world to face our challenges as a strong, independent nation.

But government has not been solely to blame. The desire to trade liberty for a chimerical sense of security has been coming from the bottom-up, with an increasing number of citizens – particularly those on the Left who ostentatiously proclaim their concern for issues of “social justice” – insisting that core liberties such as the right to free speech should be curtailed when they negatively infringe on the feelings of another person.

This corrosive new development has its roots in academia and the university environment, where a generation of liberal professors espousing political correctness as their religion are finally beginning to reap what they sowed – a new generation of coddled adult baby students who require trigger warnings, safe spaces and dawn-to-dusk parenting by their colleges just to make it through the day.

These New Age Censors and their petty authoritarianism are toxic to free speech, and their growing influence has already resulted in calls to outlaw clapping and booing, tearful temper tantrums about dress codes, stifling ideas by labelling them ‘problematic’, the insistence on safe spaces and mandatory sexual consent workshops.

As I recently explained, deep down this has nothing to do with “social justice”, but instead is all about gaining power by wrestling control over the language and laying verbal land mines with the intention of destroying opponents who – regardless of how they actually behave – happen simply to say the “wrong” thing:

That’s where the New Age Censors, the Stepford Students, the resurgent activist Left step in, always watching over your shoulder and always quick and eager to tell you when you have crossed one of the many invisible lines that they are busy drawing across our political and social discourse. Only the telling always seems to take the form of a social media lynching rather than a friendly pointer.

When the rules over precisely what can be said and how it must be phrased become so fiendishly complex that we are all liable to fall over them at some point, it grants enormous power to the gatekeepers, those swivel-eyed young activists at the forefront of modern identity politics. Not only do they get to write the rules, they and they alone get to sit in judgement as to whether those rules have been violated.

[..] Who knew that the petty tyrants of today would be cherubic-faced, smiley student activists, chanting mantras about keeping us safe as they imprison us in their closed-minded, ideological dystopia?

As far as 2015 Year In Reviews go, all of this makes for depressing reading. Indeed there are many reasons to be concerned for the future of free speech and civil liberties in general, particularly when many of our fellow citizens seem intent on destroying our freedoms from within.

And yet there have been some good news stories too, providing small glimmers of hope. One such case has been the exoneration of a Northern Irish pastor, James McConnell, who found himself on trial for sending “grossly offensive” communications following a sermon in which he described Islam as “a doctrine spawned in hell”.

This was a spiteful sting by the prosecution. McConnell’s sermon – in which the 78-year-old pastor said some highly unpleasant and inflammatory things about Islam – had been recorded and then later posted on the internet, allowing the authorities to accuse him of “causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network”.

Too often, such show trials have resulted in conviction and a prison sentence, which in this instance could have been six months. But in this case, Judge Liam McNally, threw the case out, saying “the courts need to be very careful not to criticise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive”. If only this legal interpretation was more widely shared and disseminated throughout the English and Scottish legal systems, from the UK Supreme Court on downwards.

But the truly pleasing aspect of this case is the fact that one of the people who spoke outside the court in support of James McConnell was a Muslim academic, a senior research fellow in Islamic studies at the Westminster Institute named Muhammad al-Hussaini.

Taking a brave stance in support of speech which he himself must have found very distasteful, al-Hussaini nonetheless defended Pastor James McConnell’s right to say hateful things about the religion of Islam.

The Guardian reported at the time:

Speaking outside Belfast magistrates court to hundreds of McConnell’s supporters, Muhammad al-Hussaini, a senior research fellow in Islamic studies at the Westminster Institute, said he was in the city to back McConnell’s right to free speech.

Hussaini said: “This is possibly one of the most important things at our juncture in history; it could be the make or break for the continued survival of our planet actually.

“Against the flaming backdrop of torched Christian churches, bloody executions and massacres of faith minorities in the Middle East and elsewhere, it is therefore a matter of utmost concern that, in this country, we discharge our common duty steadfastly to defend the freedom of citizens to discuss, debate and critique religious ideas and beliefs – restricting only speech which incites to physical violence against others.

“Moreover, in a free and democratic society we enter into severe peril when we start to confuse what we perhaps ought or ought not to say, with what in law we are allowed to, or not allowed to say.”

At a time when freedom of speech is just as much under attack from safe space zealots and our own government as it is from radical Islamic terrorism, it is especially important that we stand in solidarity with those who defend free speech, and particularly those who have the moral courage to defend the speech that they personally hate.

In this regard, civil libertarians owe a debt of gratitude to Muhammad al-Hussaini and others like him. For in his defence of the rights of pastors – or anybody else – to say what they please, so long as they do not actively incite violence against another, this Muslim scholar is doing far more to defend the ancient British and enlightenment values of freedom and liberty than

In fact, one could quite easily say that al-Hussaini is more authentically British (in terms of extolling and living by the values which we supposedly hold dear) than our own government, the grunting anti-Muslim far-right and most of the academic safe space crowd put together.

This is the unusual situation in which we now find ourselves, with a British population and government cowed simultaneously by Islamic terrorism and by Islamophobia seriously discussing banning “hate preachers” like Donald Trump (of all people) from entering Britain, while it falls to a Muslim academic to stand up in defence of the free speech which the West supposedly holds so dear.

This landscape is not encouraging; few of us passed the Charlie Hebdo Test when those terrible shots rang out on 7 January 2015, and fewer still would do so now, based on their words and actions since that heinous attack.

But when a nation begins to forget its own values and once dearly-held principles, it is of some consolation on this first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo shootings to see the flame of liberty being kept alive in some unexpected places, and by unexpected – but very welcome – custodians.

Freedom of Speech - Free Speech

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David Bowie: 1947-2016

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

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Memory of a Free Festival

The children of the summer’s end
Gathered in the dampened grass,
We played our songs and felt the London sky
Resting on our hands
It was God’s land.
It was ragged and naive.
It was Heaven.

Touch, we touched the very soul
Of holding each and every life.
We claimed the very source of joy ran through.
It didn’t, but it seemed that way.
I kissed a lot of people that day.

Oh, to capture just one drop of all the ecstasy that swept that afternoon,
To paint that love upon a white balloon,
And fly it from the toppest top of all the tops that man has pushed beyond his brain.
Satoria must be something just the same.

We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw machines of every shape and size.
We talked with tall Venusians passing through.
And Peter tried to climb aboard but the Captain shook his head
And away they soared,
Climbing through the ivory vibrant cloud.
Someone passed some bliss among the crowd.
And we walked back to the road, unchained.

The sun machine is coming down, and we’re gonna have a party.

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RIP David Bowie, who died of cancer last night in New York.

Obituaries here, here and here.

Background to “Memory of a Free Festival” here.

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Don’t Believe The Europhiles: There Is No Status Quo If We Vote To Remain

Samuel Hooper9 Comments

European Parliament

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Anyone thinking of voting to Remain in the European Union through fear of the unknown must remember that the EU is on a journey of its own, and will look very different in ten, twenty and thirty years’ time

 

… The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.

– Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

 

In a must-read piece, UK Unleashed invites us to imagine a near future in which Britain has made the mistake of voting to remain in the European Union in the coming referendum:

It’s 2030. Thirteen years previously, after a torrent of negative campaigning by the Remain side and having been mind-crippled by unparalleled EU funded FUD, the UK population voted to remain in a ‘reformed EU’. The fight was down to the wire and, yet again, pollsters were shown to be wide of the mark, yet surprisingly on message. But when the count came in, Remain won by a mere 2%.

This ‘significant majority’ was accepted as a mandate by the then Prime Minister David Cameron to take the the UK in to a new relationship with the EU. ‘The British Option’ as it was called, brought us to the outer ring in 2022 after it was ratified by the people of the UK in a second referendum. Although originally seen as a triumph against ‘ever closer union’, in 2030 there are now well established concerns. Whilst the likes of Norway (which continues to top the world ranking for prosperity) sit at the top tables of global bodies where the rules are hammered out, the UK are now further retracted and marginalised, neither taking a global position or one of prominence within the EU.

To compound matters, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey have now all joined the ever growing federation, with Boznia Herzegovina and Kosovo also on the cusp of membership. Our margin of vote in the European Parliament and European Council are lower than ever and about to shrink yet again. In spite of complaints about the inability of any one member to stand up to the EU in any meaningful way, the committed europhiles, in thrall to their pay masters, repeat the mantra that we should be grateful to have the opportunity to ‘collaborate’. Our hands bound behind our backs, we’re unable to harness the power of the now maturing international markets, instead we remain chained to an ageing customs and political union in spite of the fact that EU exports have continued to decline year on year.

Unrealistic scaremongering? Hardly. Think of the organisation we joined back in 1973, and what a different beast it is today, both in size and competence. Then think of the current geopolitical crises and changes, and how they are already being used by the integrationists as a catalyst and excuse for further “essential reform”.

Only a fool could believe that the driving forces behind the EU think that their creation has reached a benign state of perfection, and that no further change is desirable. And only a fool could believe that the European Union’s response to the latest global challenges – from terrorism to climate change – will be anything other than “more Europe”.

This is a key point, because the chief argument of those who would keep Britain in the EU is the hysterical claim that leaving would be some terrible and unprecedented leap into the dark. Unable to wax lyrical about their beloved EU for fear of alienating vital swing voters – and because there is nothing remotely inspirational about the European Union – instead the europhiles hammer on relentlessly with the scaremongering notion that Brexit is scary while Britain’s future in the EU will be predictable, prosperous and permanently sunny.

Or as UK Unleashed memorably puts it:

I guess when you’re ensconced in the arms of the EU octopus and you’ve divested yourself of any sense of national identity, you’ll say what ever it takes to avoid being prised away. In their heads, these people probably don’t see themselves primarily as British, instead they’re EU nationals just waiting for the country to be hatched in the next treaty.

The europhiles are in absolutely no position to make such promises of security within the EU and destitution without. What little they know of the EU’s immediate future they cannot campaign on, because it would be repugnant to many British voters, and the rest is just as much a mystery to them as it is to everyone else. We simply do not know what future geopolitical challenges we will face, or precisely how they will be used by the arch-integrationists to continue the journey they began back in 1950.

All we can say with any degree of confidence is that the EU will look very different in 2050 than it looks today, and that the self-declared aspirations of many European national leaders and EU officials to pool even more sovereignty and undermine the nation state yet further will be in full fruition.

Dr. Richard North gives us a glimpse of what lies ahead:

Hidden in plain sight, as in various documents published in Europe including last September’s “State of the Union Address” by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, is the plan for a radical restructuring of the EU into two classes of member.

The 19 eurozone countries will move on to much closer political and economic union; while Britain and the rest become mere “associate members” (possibly also including countries outside the EU, such as Norway and Switzerland).

As Juncker explained, none of this is to be formally revealed until 2017, when the Commission issues a White Paper to trigger the laborious procedures now required for any new treaty. And these might not be concluded until 2025.

All of which completely transforms the game play. Mr Cameron can keep his original promise to hold a referendum in 2017, but only to ask the British people for permission to remain in the EU until the terms of the new treaty are clear. We will then have to hold a second referendum on whether we accept these terms.

Britain will then have the choice of belonging to the new inner core, the vanguard for the dissolution of the nation state, or membership of the outer rim of states, burdened with many of the same costs but with even less influence and fewer dubious benefits. That is what we can reasonably expect by voting to Remain – and if any EU supporter would care to argue otherwise, let them step forward and do so, presenting their own less dystopian vision of the future.

In reality, once the deceptive posturing of the Remain camp is stripped away, it is only the Leave campaign which gives the impression that they have given any thought at all to what life outside or inside the European Union might realistically look like for Britain beyond the next decade, or how such an exit from unwanted political union can be managed under a variety of scenarios.

And on this note it is extremely encouraging to see that Dr. Richard North, pre-eminent authority on the European Union and author of Flexcit (the best adaptive Brexit plan in existence), is partnering with Arron Banks and Leave.EU in a consultancy role to make Flexcit that group’s official exit plan.

This is great news, and means that one of the two largest Leave campaign groups (really the only one, since Vote Leave is teeming with people who don’t actually want to leave the European Union) actually has a robust, solid plan for Brexit. If Brexiteers learn about and support this excellent plan, we will be able to go into the referendum battle with the Remain camp’s best weapon – the false claim that Leave supporters have “no plan” for Brexit – broken in their hands.

The Remain camp’s whole fearmongering argument to persuade us to vote to stay in the European Union is that we are safer and more prosperous under our current arrangements, while Brexit would throw everything into flux, potentially create chaos and leave us worse off. Basically, their uninspiring campaign message is “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

But that is not the choice before us in this referendum. The EU is changing, moving down a swift and pre-determined path to further integration for most member states with powerless irrelevance awaiting those other countries not wishing to join the core. There will be no “devil we know” to side with, but only devils we don’t. And of those, staying part of an ever-tightening political union for which most of us have no love or affinity is far more threatening a devil than having the faith and confidence that Britain can succeed as an independent country playing a full and unfiltered role on the world stage once again.

That’s the choice before us now. And since the Leave camp now has Flexcit on their side while the Remain camp has nothing but smears, scaremongering and a vision of the future they are too ashamed to articulate, the only devil to be avoided is the one which pledges fealty to Brussels.

Brexit - Flexcit - European Union

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Keep On Shuffling, Jeremy

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Jeremy Corbyn - Shadow Cabinet - Revenge Reshuffle–

Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet reshuffle has not succeeded in purging those uncourageous moderates who pledge allegiance to their leader’s face but talk mutinously behind his back

After four long days, Jeremy Corbyn’s so-called “revenge reshuffle” is finally complete, the whole exercise resembling nothing so much as a tedious game of musical chairs played by a group of largely forgettable and unexceptional B and C-list politicians.

However, perhaps Jeremy Corbyn should not call an end to his shuffling just yet, given the fact that some notably less-than-loyal courtiers inexplicably remain in their posts.

In his latest column, devoted to examining deputy leader Tom Watson’s balancing act and divided loyalties, Dan Hodges writes:

Watson sees it as his mission to keep the Labour Party together. But everyone knows that is mission impossible. Labour is heading for all-out civil war, and there is nothing Tom Watson or anyone else can do to stop it.

“Tom’s going to have to make a choice soon”, one shadow cabinet minister told me. “Is he part of the solution to Corbynism, or is he part of the problem?”

To the mind of this Labour MP, serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, Corbynism is “part of the problem”. Imagine for a moment what outrage there would have been if, just months into Ed Miliband’s disastrous tenure as Labour leader, a shadow cabinet member had said that Milibandism was part of the problem and something to be undermined from within.

Imagine what everyone would be saying about the rank cowardice of that shadow cabinet minister, who disagreed with everything that their leader believes in but who lacked the courage to forsake their position and say so publicly.

Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle has only just been completed, and already a shadow cabinet minister has given this juicy morsel of a quote to Dan Hodges. Truly, the Labour Party seems to have a death wish, preferring to go down in a blaze of whining, sanctimonious victimhood rather than tough out a few dry years in the political wilderness.

Yes, of course both sides are at fault, although I would side with the Corbyn team’s bumbling ineptitude over the calculating self-interest of the moderates-in-exile every time. But one thing is certain: it will be impossible to keep the Labour Party together so long as shadow cabinet members are making such toxic briefings against their own leader immediately after having been re-confirmed in their own jobs.

Here we are again, confronted with yet another anonymous Labour “heavyweight” with the duplicity to profess loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn’s face and then run straight to sympathetic journalists the very same day with tear-jerking stories about how the Labour leader hurt their pwecious feewings.

Will they muster the courage to say to Jeremy Corbyn’s face what they so gladly regale to the Telegraph? Of course not. Because for them it is not about principle, or honour, or doing what is best for the Labour Party – despite their earnest protestations the the contrary.

If his detractors truly believe Jeremy Corbyn to be as terrible as they continually tell Dan Hodges he is, they have a moral duty – over and above any consideration for their own careers – to rise up and depose him immediately, just as those people who call the present government “evil” should be launching an insurrection on the streets of London rather than posting preening, overwrought status updates on Facebook.

But just as those angry keyboard warriors who accuse the Evil Tories of supposed human rights abuses will astonishingly not be found storming the gates of Downing Street in morally justified insurrection, neither will Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet detractors be spotted collecting signatures of fellow MPs in a serious attempt to oust their despised leader. No, instead they will be found moping into a pint glass at a dark Westminster drinking hole, spilling their sorry guts to Dan Hodges. What bravery. What principle. What courageous heroism is this?

I would understand the incessant carping and undermining of Jeremy Corbyn from within the Labour Party if there were some other great and noble faction vying for supremacy and influence – if some other, unfairly marginalised figure within Labour had a cunning plan to offer the electorate something different and reinvent the party for the twenty-first century. But there quite evidently is no such group or individual waiting in the wings with a burning vision for Britain.

On the contrary, instead of a King Across The Water waiting to reclaim their rightful throne, there is only the same ragtag assortment of fading New Labour machine politicians and grasping, telegenic SpAdocrats who so repulsed the voters last time round that it led to the election of Jeremy Corbyn in the first place.

This is why I balk at those malcontents within Labour who simply cannot stop themselves running to the media with salacious court gossip and bitter invective about their leader, seeking to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership at every turn. What is their bright alternative? What radical new platform will win back Scotland, inspire Middle England or turf out an uninspiring but power-hungry Conservative Party whose grasping, centrist tentacles are well on their way to establish a hegemonic lock on the levers of power for the next decade?

Exactly. The malcontents have nothing. Tumbleweeds.

Is Jeremy Corbyn going to win the 2020 general election and become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom? Almost certainly not. But guess what? Neither will Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Chuka Umunna, Dan Jarvis, Stella Creasy, Gloria De Piero, Luciana Berger, Hillary Benn, the Eagle sisters or Lisa Nandy. Neither the Labour front bench nor their back benches are brimming over with immediately obvious future prime minister material.

With the Labour Party already at such a low ebb, is a few years of Jeremy Corbyn’s red-blooded socialism really likely to do more damage than an Ed Miliband Mark II? Hardly. So in the absence of anything – anything at all – resembling a more appealing prospect, why not spend the next eighteen months trying something new and letting the Corbynites have a turn?

But the malcontents just can’t do it. They might not have the first inkling of what they want instead of Corbyn – let alone what the voters might want. All the plotting moderates know for sure is that they have been suddenly and unexpectedly turfed out of power and influence within the Labour Party. And it is just eating them up inside.

There is no violin small enough to play in mournful solidarity with these hapless centrists – Labour MPs whose only fixed and immovable belief was the desire to wield power and influence, shamelessly trading on the storied name of their party while peddling the same soul-sapping centrist consensus as nearly everyone else in Westminster.

May their richly deserved time in the wilderness be long and harsh.

May they suffer and roar together.

Jeremy Corbyn - Cabinet reshuffle

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