Vote Leave

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

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

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If you are deciding how to vote in the EU referendum based on what the rival campaigns are telling you is best for the NHS, you’re doing it wrong

The stupidity and incompetence of the Vote Leave  campaign reached such desperate lows today that at this point, I can no longer really blame anyone who has not been paying much attention to the EU debate thus far if they end up voting Remain. Heck, if I hadn’t been writing about politics every day and following the debate for years, I might well do the same.

After all, why put your trust in the Leave campaign, the people proposing a departure from the status quo, when the leaders of Vote Leave are conducting their campaign with all the political aptitude of the slow sibling from a well-connected family whose parents were grasping around trying to find something productive for them to do with their lives, and gave them the fate of our country to play with.

And so today we get this much-trumpeted open letter from “more than fifty” healthcare workers, telling us that only by voting Leave can we Save Our NHS.

The letter reads:

Dear Sir,

The NHS is a great British institution that families rely on in times of need. But as it slips into financial crisis the NHS itself needs some urgent attention.

The NHS is being asked to make huge cuts at a time of rising demand. Patients are having to wait longer for treatment, hospital deficits are increasing and doctors are on strike after being told they must take a pay cut. The Government must accept responsibility for this – they have starved the NHS of necessary funding for too long.

If we Vote Leave on 23 June we will be able to spend more on our priorities like the NHS. If we put the billions that currently go to EU bureaucrats into the NHS instead it would hugely improve patient care. For example, the £350 million a week we hand to Brussels is similar to the entire yearly Cancer Drugs Fund budget.

As healthcare professionals who have worked for the NHS for years we believe that the best choice in the EU referendum is to Vote Leave on June 23rd and save the NHS.

List of signatories

Well, I suppose it’s marginally better than the ludicrous suggestion that we use the money we supposedly save to whack up a brand new fully staffed hospital every week until there are ten mega hospitals in every town and ninety percent of us are employed by the NHS.

But still, what a bunch of utter nonsense this letter (and the decision to campaign off the back of it) is. Not only does this fail the “common sense” test, it fails the “does anyone at Vote Leave have any measurable brain activity at all” test.

The NHS is one of the largest organisations in the entire world, and the fifth largest employer with over 1.7 million people on the payroll. Rounding up fifty NHS workers to put their names to a letter supporting either Brexit or the Remain campaign means absolutely nothing – one could just as easily circulate a letter and get fifty signatures from NHS employees who believe they have been abducted by aliens, demanding a massive budget appropriation to build space lasers to keep us safe.

Furthermore, it would be utterly naive to base a geopolitical and constitutional decision like Brexit on the gut feeling of a bunch of people who not only work in an entirely unrelated field, but who toil for an organisation so large and all-powerful that it positively screams “vested interest” and “deeply ingrained bias in favour of the status quo”.

Besides, a bunch of predominantly conservative politicians and activists not known for their doe-eyed devotion to the NHS suddenly going prancing around the country acting like the health service’s greatest defenders is not going to fool anyone. By a huge majority, the most committed devotees of the NHS are the same people who will unthinkingly vote to stay “in Europe” come hell or high water. Worshipping at the altar of Nye Bevan doesn’t do great things for one’s critical reasoning skills, after all.

All of this time spent repeating the risible notion that only by voting Leave can we Save Our Blessed NHS is time that could be spent – oh, I don’t know, maybe promoting a comprehensive plan for a safe Brexit with the minimum of disruption. A plan which would instantly negate 90% of David Cameron’s fear-based Remain campaign and really bring this campaign to life.

But why do that, when Matthew Elliot and Dominic Cummings are more than happy presiding over their children’s finger-painting exercise of a campaign, preaching to the already converted and singularly failing to tackle any of the counterarguments quite rightly thrown in their faces by David Cameron and Britain Stronger in Europe?

Fortunately there is another shadow Leave campaign – an underground resistance, if you will – who are intent on fighting this referendum with facts, and who understand that the public rightly expect those who advocate for Brexit to have put some thought into what Brexit should look like.

I am never more excited and hopeful for the future of this country than I am when I read their work. Please follow The Leave Alliance, share their articles and (if you are able) donate to their all-important fundraising efforts. Every pound raised helps to spread the message further.

Semi-Partisan Politics will be diverting any kind contributions made to this site to The Leave Alliance from now until the conclusion of the campaign.

 

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Top Image: Daily Express

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

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

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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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Announcing The Leave Alliance

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

The Leave Alliance Launch

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A campaign that Semi-Partisan Politics is proud to support

I have written a lot of uneducated bilge about the European Union in my time.

My natural instincts – supporting democracy, self-determination, the nation state and accountable government – were generally sound, but too often I lapsed into lazy confirmation bias and weak, borrowed rhetoric when arguing for Britain’s independence from Brussels.

I would still be churning out even more bilge today, were it not for the eureferendum.com site and the group of activist bloggers who are coalescing around Dr. Richard North and Flexcit, that rigorous, comprehensive plan for safely extracting Britain from European political union while minimising risk.

If this blog has gone somewhat quiet on the finer policy details of the Brexit question over the past year, sticking to the bigger picture, it is only because through slowly becoming familiar with this body of work, I have come to realise how much I have yet to learn and understand about the workings of the EU and the international regulatory environment – and how much I thought I understood that turned out to be completely wrong.

The upshot is this: this referendum should not be about David Cameron’s fraudulent “renegotiation” deal (even though it is yet more evidence of the EU’s inability to reform even under existential threat), any more than it should be about the arbitrary and misleading statistics about jobs saved or threatened, hospitals built or universities closed. All of these alarmist talking points can be fought to a draw on the 24-hour news channels by the SW1 talking head armies of the establishment Leave and Remain campaigns.

This referendum – this rare, great opportunity that we have been given – should be about our democracy. It should be about who governs Britain, how they govern Britain and how we exercise oversight over the people who make the key decisions affecting our lives. And one thing is certain: the more people learn about the true nature of the European Union – and the more they are encouraged to think like engaged citizens rather than fearful consumers – the more they come to realise that Brexit is an essential first step toward reclaiming our democracy.

That’s what The Leave Alliance is about. TLA is an alternative to the dumbed-down, uneducated major campaigns battling it out for lead designation in the referendum campaign, whose dismal and unforgivable failure to embrace a properly worked through plan for Brexit – and then promote it in the media – means that we are now fighting the referendum campaign with our hands tied behind our backs, David Cameron chuckling to himself all the while.

The Leave Alliance launches later today, in Westminster, and it will be a campaign that engaged citizens and thinking eurosceptics and Brexiteers across the country can actually be proud to support. It is a campaign which understands that Brexit is part of a process of much-needed democratic renewal, not a fixed destination in itself. And it is a campaign which will never condescend to the British people by reducing this great question of human governance and statecraft to a disingenuous war of competing statistics.

If you feel let down and embarrassed by the well-funded but utterly amateurish Leave campaigns, then The Leave Alliance offers you a home for this referendum campaign.

If you get angry when bumbling Johnny-Come-Latelys like Boris Johnson blunder onto the Brexit scene, stealing the limelight while making a complete hash of arguments which more intelligent eurosceptic voices have been making for years and even decades, then The Leave Alliance is for you.

And if you read Semi-Partisan Politics and generally find yourself agreeing with what is written here, then I ask you to follow my lead and abandon the mainstream Leave campaigns who are cheerfully leading us to defeat, and instead support The Leave Alliance, whose strong commitment to eurosceptic principles and intellectual rigour will campaign for Brexit – and to keep the flame of genuine democracy alive in Europe – for as long as it takes to achieve our cherished goal.

The Leave Alliance

Wednesday 16th March, 2.30PM

The Council Room

One Great George Street

London, SW1P 3AA

Donate here.

 

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

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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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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The Daily Toast: To Win, Eurosceptics Must Show That The EU Is Outdated

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Old Europe Map

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Another new initiative for Semi-Partisan Politics – counterpart to The Daily Smackdown (same basic idea, but reversed). Will focus on a different praiseworthy or perspective-changing article, argument or action each day

Allister Heath has a good piece in the Telegraph, where he observes that the europhiles may end up wrong-footing themselves in the coming referendum by buying into the lazy, two-dimensional caricature of eurosceptics as ornery traditionalists who are stuck in the past and afraid of the future.

Heath rightly points out that the europhiles dismiss or underestimate we Brexiteers at their peril, writing “it is always a fatal error to assume that your political opponents are evil or stupid”. I certainly hope that this rule holds true just as it did for Ed Miliband’s vacuous, virtue-signalling Labour Party at the general election.

The hopes of many a lefty were extinguished on May 7  when it emerged that the left-wing echo chamber on Twitter was in fact not representative of the country, and that people other than psychopaths and billionaires actually voted Tory in good conscience. So by all means, let them assume once again that anyone who doubts the inherent virtue of the European Union must be a grumpy retired colonel, a Mafeking stereotype from a run-down coastal town.

Heath writes, in praise of campaign group Vote Leave:

Vote Leave’s core argument is that the EU’s institutions remain stuck in the post-1945 era: an industrial and agricultural world dominated by a few rich nations and overshadowed by the Cold War. In those days, bureaucratic centralism was the fashionable answer; 60 years on, the EU’s creaking, lumbering structures cannot cope with change involving genetic engineering, cybercrime, driverless cars and digital manufacturing.

They are just as debilitated when it comes to addressing contemporary geopolitical risks, including the crisis in the Middle East, the rise of terrorist organisations such as Isil, or even negotiating bilateral trade deals with emerging economies. It is Europe that now has a protectionist mindset, pretending that its borders stop at the Mediterranean while looking on uselessly as Syria is engulfed in a humanitarian catastrophe.

Rather than advocating a retreat into splendid isolation – which is what pro-EU activists wrongly assume Eurosceptics believe – Vote Leave will be calling for increased and improved international cooperation to deal properly with the forces that are changing the world. This, it will argue persuasively, requires different institutions to those that exist today: structures that can tackle problems quickly and that allow decentralised cooperation between nations.

I have my grave doubts about Vote Leave, for reasons well summarised over at the blog Vote to Leave the EU. There are serious doubts as to whether Brexit is the true goal of that group’s leadership, or if they are simply agitating for an initial “no” vote to then strengthen Britain’s hand for a future, “serious” renegotiation with the aim of securing a slightly sweeter deal. But Heath’s broader point is a very good one.

What threadbare arguments could have been made for the European Union back in the 1950s when the world was indeed divided into distinct and competing supranational blocs have lost all of their potency in the twenty-first century multi-polar word. For too long, europhiles have been allowed to portray themselves as forward-looking and progressive. And some really do believe it to be true. But it is increasingly hard to believe that Britain’s national interest is best served when represented through the collective voice of twenty-seven other distinct countries, each with their own unique circumstances and agendas.

Heath continues:

The future will belong to shifting networks of nations, not to monolithic empires. Voters will have to be empowered and kept involved, rather than bypassed through undemocratic transnational democracies. The Inners, who for decades have claimed to represent modernity, are about to be wrong-footed by a campaign and arguments that they will find very difficult to respond to.

It is absolutely essential that this is the case, if we are to achieve the goal of Brexit. This cannot be a campaign focused on some chimerical, glorious past, and if it becomes such a campaign we will be ripped to shreds and lose our last, best hope of regaining national sovereignty.

That means we must focus on all of the things that Allister Heath talks about in his article – how an independent Britain will be free to pursue advantageous commercial and diplomatic deals in our own interest rather than holding one 28th of a say over the common European position, how Britain’s membership fee can be repurposed and reallocated to focus on our own priorities and incentives, and more. But that’s all long term.

We also need an immediate plan mapping out what British secession from the European Union actually looks like. It is imperative that the “Leave” campaign pushes such a plan, otherwise voters will (rightly) conclude that a vote to leave the EU is a leap into the unknown, and choose the stultifying status quo as the safer option.

At present, you would be forgiven for thinking that there is no such plan. Neither of the two main campaign groups spend any time talking about what Brexit might actually look like. Vote Leave certainly don’t mention one (quite probably because Brexit is not their end goal), while Leave.EU are more focussed on attacking the EU than promoting a positive vision of post-EU Britain.

But such a plan does exist. It’s called Flexcit, and if I keep banging on about it on this blog in the coming weeks and months it is only because I have come to realise that the referendum cannot be won without a clear and unambiguous plan for Brexit, and it is high time some of the “heavyweight” eurosceptics publicly adopted this plan or ventured one of their own.

Flexcit is a serious, pragmatic plan which outlines a step-by-step process for leaving the EU and rejoining the world. It doesn’t make undeliverable promises of free chocolate and rainbows for everyone, but it is comprehensive and rigorous, and does what it says on the tin. As I have already said, every serious eurosceptic and Brexit campaigner should read it and give it fair consideration.

Only then, with the referendum won and Britain taking her first steps in the world as a truly independent and sovereign nation once again, can we do as Allister Heath says and show the vanquished europhiles just how forward-looking and ambitious we Brexiteers are for our country.

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Further reading:

The British Model

Is the penny dropping about Vote Leave’s true intentions?

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