Britain Stronger in Europe

Love Our NHS? Prove It With Your Vote In The EU Referendum

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

Brexit - NHS - European Union - EU Referendum - Brexit

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The EU referendum meets our national religion

The major campaigns on both sides of the EU referendum are currently slugging it out in a tawdry contest for the affections of fearful, NHS-idolosing simpletons.

No British political campaign is complete without eye-rolling attempts by those without ideas or vision to trawl for votes by pretending that Our Blessed NHS (genuflect) is mere moments away from being abolished.

From Vote Leave’s latest mailshot, entitled “Save Our NHS”:

Lord Owen, the former Labour Foreign Secretary and Health Minister, today launches the Vote Leave ‘Save our NHS’ campaign with an important speech: ‘Protecting our NHS from the EU’.

He argues that the our National Health Service should not be under the control of the EU and cites serious flaws in The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which is a major new deal being negotiated behind closed doors between the EU and the USA.  This he says, disregards the purpose of social health care and undermines the responsibility each member state has for its own healthcare policy.  This is highly detrimental to our NHS.

And from Britain Stronger in Europe, the charmingly personalised “Love the NHS Samuel? You need to read this”:

When it comes to the NHS, you can’t listen to the people campaigning to leave Europe.

They describe the NHS as a “60-year mistake” (Vote Leave’s Dan Hannan), say there’s “plenty of room for cuts” (Nigel Farage), and think people should have to pay for services so they “value them more” (Boris Johnson).

No – instead, we should listen to the doctors and NHS workers who make our health service so special.

This week, 200 medics wrote a letter stressing that “the NHS, medical innovation and UK public health” are stronger in Europe.

They warned “Brexit should carry a health warning” – because the economic damage caused by leaving Europe would “jeopardise an already cash-strapped NHS.”

Samuel, those who work in the NHS couldn’t be clearer – we need to stay in Europe to protect investment in our health service. Volunteer for our campaign today, and help secure the NHS for future generations:

Well, that’s that then. Your friendly local NHS urologist is clearly such an expert on statecraft, diplomacy and constitutional matters that they are ideally positioned to tell you how to vote on a matter of existential importance to Britain.

The obvious, simple-minded manipulation being attempted by both campaigns would be offensive were it not so amateurish. And to think that political consultants and strategists are actually being paid money to come up with this stuff.

Vote Leave and you’ll get cancer, because Brexit is so dreadfully scary that it should come with a health warning!

Vote Leave and we’ll save so much money that we can build a brand new hospital every week. Just think of it! That’s fifty two massive new hospitals every year. In a decade, we’ll have 520 new hospitals! By the year 2036 we could have 1040 new hospitals! Enormous ones! Your descendants could live in a Britain with a humongous, fully staffed new hospital for every single person living on this island! Oh, what a paradise it will be.

What pathetic, manipulative nonsense.

Whether we vote to leave the European Union or remain in the burning building, the NHS will continue to exist. We can’t seem to shake it. And it will continue to churn out moderately priced but increasingly substandard levels of care while nearly the entire population gathers round to uncritically praise the holy creation of St. Aneurin Bevan of Tredegar from dawn to dusk. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change.

Do you really believe Britain Stronger in Europe when they suggest that “medical innovation” will cease or be harmed if Britain leaves the political construct known as the European Union? Exactly what is it about forsaking a foreign flag, anthem and parliament which will slow down the cure for Alzheimer’s?

Or do you seriously buy this idea that Brexit means that we can throw up a brand new hospital in every major British city within a year, and keep on doing that until the NHS is not only our largest employer but our only employer?

Don’t be taken in by this execrable, manipulative, transparently idiotic nonsense from the major Leave and Remain campaigns, all of which seem to be managed by B-student politicos and all of which are operating on the hopeful assumption that you are a frightened, credulous simpleton.

Recognise that this referendum is about sovereignty, sovereignty and sovereignty. Do your own research, and then make the right decision. And whatever you decide, don’t waste your vote virtue-signalling your love for Our Blessed NHS.

 

Save Our NHS

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Top Image: Daily Express

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The Daily Smackdown: Europhiles Cry About The “Brexit Bullies”

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It is laughable for Britain Stronger in Europe to claim that the Prime Minister and the Confederation of British Industry were “threatened” by two teenage hecklers

The Britain Stronger in Europe campaign group sent this victimhood-wallowing missive to their supporters today:

We always knew UKIP and the Leave campaigns would try and pull the wool over people’s eyes – we didn’t know they’d try and threaten them.

But this week the Head of Vote Leave tweeted: “You think this is nasty you ain’t seen nuthin yet (sic).” Classy, hey?

It’s clear what type of campaign they’re going to run, Samuel – they can’t win the argument so they’re going to try to silence anyone who disagrees with them. We can’t let them win.

Sounds like something serious happened, right? Wrong.

The “threat” that so upset BSE was a couple of young Vote Leave activists who stood up in the middle of a speech the Prime Minister was giving to the CBI and started shouting “CBI, voice of Brussels!” over and over again.

While it’s a documented fact that the CBI grossly misrepresented a survey of their membership to falsely claim that a majority of British firms back staying in the EU, these two first-time hecklers were hardly political heavies sent to intimidate the opposition. In fact, they were pretty poor even by modern dumbed-down heckling standards – the prime minister came off looking simultaneously wittier and more serious by the time the Vote Leave duo were escorted from the hall.

Watch this video of the encounter, and judge for yourself who comes across as calmer and more intelligent:

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Hilariously, BSE are now parading the incident to their supporters as evidence of some dastardly eurosceptic plot to threaten all those sweet, innocent europhiles.

And now failed Labour leadership candidate Chuka Umunna is getting in on the act too, writing in the Telegraph:

Rather than seeking to promote debate, however, the leave campaigns are now desperately trying to shut it down and muzzle those who take a different view. They are behaving like gangsters, trying to close down the debate with behaviour that has no place in public life.

In their repeated attacks on the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), trying to force the organisation’s hand and sit out of this debate, Vote Leave’s is making a concerted attempt to stifle the views of some of the country’s largest businesses. Protests outside the CBI conference, disrupting speeches, aggressive letters – these bully boy tactics are a sign they are losing the argument rather than embracing it.

Well excuse me, but I can’t find a violin small enough to play in mournful solidarity with the mighty CBI, let alone the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – who has the bully pulpit of his high office and the entire machinery of government with which to campaign against Brexit. It is frankly ludicrous to suggest that eurosceptics possess the official, financial or physical muscle to drown out the europhile message in the way that BSE pretend.

But what we lack in a bully pulpit, we eurosceptics more than compensate for by the simple virtue of being right. Right on the facts, and on the right side of history, too.

The pro-EU campaigns will inevitably get away with a lot of lies and distortions during this referendum campaign, simply because it will not be possible for us Brexiteers to refute each and every single one of them. But one thing that BSE and other europhile campaigns absolutely must not be allowed to get away with is successfully portraying themselves as the plucky underdog, fighting an uphill struggle against the mighty forces of euroscepticism.

I don’t think that there is currently a great chance of that happening, but we should take care to slap down any attempts to portray the pro-EU juggernaut as some kind of rough-and-ready insurgency. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But I do hope that someone remembers Chuka Umunna’s impassioned defence of the CBI – and how he came out swinging in support of downtrodden multinational corporations in their battle to be heard over the little guy – the next time he runs for the Labour leadership.

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Debunking BSE’s ‘Brexit Jobs Threat’ Misinformation Campaign

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FGqcgbv9l4

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The “Remain” campaign misrepresent and exaggerate every claim about jobs that might possibly be at risk from Brexit, but fall deafeningly silent on the innumerable jobs which are never created in the first place thanks to Britain’s EU membership

Here is Britain Stronger in Europe’s latest attempt to frighten and deceive the British people into thinking that a vote for independence from the EU’s explicitly political union will somehow cost millions of jobs at home and mysteriously devastate the sixth largest economy in the world.

It’s predictable stuff and spans only 30 seconds – any longer and the cracks in BSE’s argument would start to show – but it is worth watching, if only because it reveals a strategy which will be used to pummel the “Leave campaign” every day between now and the EU referendum.

BSE’s video attempts to take the words of Vote Leave campaign chairman, Dominic Cummings, and use them against the Brexit movement. Whatever Cummings’ other flaws may be (and they are well documented), the point he made here was an honest one and in no way injurious to the Brexit cause, though BSE were more than happy to misrepresent him and throw their hand up in mock horror to score a cheap political point.

What more would we expect from an organisation fronted by intellectual firebrands like June Sarpong?

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The “In” Campaign Reveal Their Best Argument: Cheap International Calls

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

European Union - Mobile Phone Roaming Charges - 2

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It’s official: the leader of the “In” campaign declares that cheap mobile phone calls from the continent are the best reason for Britain to remain a member of the EU

Five months ago, when columnist Mary Riddell revealed that her love of the European Union is based on the fact that open borders allow her to motorbike around eastern Europe with ease, I wrote:

We see this emphasis on narrow self-interest in other areas too, such as the EU’s plan to ban mobile phone operators from charging exorbitant roaming fees for making calls from other member states, as though the ability of predominantly middle class holidaymakers and business travellers to call and text more cheaply somehow makes up for the erosion of our democracy and national sovereignty.

[..] The Left’s anguish over the prospect of British secession from the European Union has nothing to do with any overriding concern about Britain’s future, or the plight of the unemployed or the working poor. No, it’s simply a collective howl of outrage from a cosseted and sheltered middle class clerisy, terrified at the prospect of losing out on a raft of perks which disproportionately benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Little did I know then that the “Remain” campaign would be so intellectually bankrupt, so totally lacking in good ideas or a positive argument for greater European integration, that the cheap gimmick of cheap international phone calls would be raised up as their openly stated chief benefit of staying in the EU.

As if their “youth spokesperson” June Sarpong had not embarrassed the pro-EU side enough with her ambivalent, paint-by-numbers endorsement in the pages of the Telegraph this week, the chairman of Britain Stronger in Europe – nepotism beneficiary Will Straw – has been working his magic in The Mirror:

Here are eight ways that the British economy and British families are stronger in Europe.

1. Cheaper mobile fees

The cost of using your mobile abroad dropped by 73p for every pound between 2005 and 2011 thanks to an agreement on roaming charges .

And they will be scrapped entirely by June 2017 after the EU forced companies to give a fairer deal.

Unimpeded bike rides and cheap mobile phone calls. This, apparently, is the best that the pro-EU side can muster as both sides fire their opening shots of the Brexit referendum. This, together with the gradual re-emergence of left-wing euroscepticism as a noteworthy force in British politics, give me hope that the eurosceptics may yet carry the day.

Brexit campaigner Pete North does an excellent job of pouring cold water on the europhiles’ claim that the EU is nothing more than a beneficent provider of cheap international roaming charges:

[..] with the advent of smartphones and wifi which is free to use, while it’s a marginal benefit to have no roaming charges, I don’t see why this comes to the top of their list of reasons to stay in the EU. It certainly benefits the eurocrats on large salaries jetting off to Brussels and Strasbourg once a month, but I really couldn’t give a tinkers damn.

But then the fact this comes to the top of their list actually tells you something more fundamental about Will Straw and the Remain campaign. I remember well the campaign mounted by the europhiles to get us to join the ill fated euro currency. They pulled the same trick then saying that it would save us all the inconvenience of having to change money when we go on holiday. The message here is that you are an ignorant pleb incapable of understanding the larger ramifications of surrendering our currency and will vote for it on the basis of convenience when we take our package vacations to Spanish seaside resorts. As patronising as it is, is actually shows these misanthropes really do hold us in contempt. Do they really think we’re going to base our vote on whether we can make a cheap phone call?

I’m with Pete. Is this really the best that the pro-EU side can do?

Do Will Straw and the shambolic “Remain” campaign really think that the British people are so stupid that their votes can be bought with the cheap bauble of low cost mobile phone calls? And worse still, if they really mean what they say, are they really willing to barter away British sovereignty – our right to national self determination – over such trinkets as these?

At best, this is an argument for continued European and international competition, and of the importance of removing barriers to trade and competition. But why do we need a European Parliament – a legislature being the quintessential expression of a nation state – to successfully co-operate to bring about cheaper phone calls? Why do we need European Courts which can overrule our own UK Supreme Court on any matter in order to liberalise energy markets?

Is Will Straw really so dense that he cannot see the ulterior motive at play? Does he honestly not see that the warm, fluffy waffle about international co-operation is just a smokescreen for the deliberate construction of a European superstate with all of the functions and institutions of a nation state?

Of course not. Will Straw knows exactly what the EU is now, and what it is very likely to become in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time. But he also knows that the British people would never vote for this vision of Europe – of Britain as nothing more than a small star on the EU’s flag. So Will Straw has to lie about it. He has to pretend that the political union currently in the process of devouring twenty-eight sovereign countries is a happy, friendly creature which does nothing but bring low-cost flights and cheap mobile phone calls.

That’s what the “In” campaign think of the British people and their capacity to grasp what is at stake in this referendum.

Take what you want from that lesson.

European Union - Mobile Phone Roaming Charges

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For Eurosceptics, June Sarpong Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

June Sarpong - Britain Stronger in Europe - EU Referendum - Brexit

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The faded TV presenter’s confused endorsement of Britain Stronger in Europe exposes the tawdry, deceitful tactics of the “In” campaign

For eurosceptics, the shambolic launch of Britain Stronger in Europe is the gift that keeps on giving.

And for those of us who spend our time writing about the EU referendum and the prospect of Brexit, it is nice when the europhiles do our work for us, which is exactly what June Sarpong managed to do in her (no doubt partly ghost-written) column in today’s Telegraph.

Two of the “In” campaign’s most basic tactics are quite simple:

  1. Talk and write consistently about “Europe” rather than the European Union, to plant the seed in voters’ minds that eurosceptics harbour some irrational fear of an entire continent and their people, and
  2. Make it seem like leaving one particular political union which happens not to suit Britain’s purposes would be akin to pulling up the drawbridge and becoming Fortress Britain, a quivering nation of agoraphobes who recoil from any form of international co-operation

It’s not rocket science and its success relies entirely on the British people being far more fearful and foolish than they are, but it is all the pro-Europeans have, so it is not surprising to see them running with it.

Unfortunately, put these basic weapons in the hands of June Sarpong and she handles them so ineptly that their clumsy and laboured use makes the tawdry strategy behind them pop uncomfortably into focus.

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