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Any sane person would insist on a 75% referendum win.
What were and are his motives? |
Pursuing a Fraud called Brexit
By
Mel Cooper
The
Leave Campaign was an act of fraud. It looks to me as if it might as well have
been based on the old 1930s Fascist playbook rules, the ones where you tell a
lie, you repeat the lie, you amplify the lie, you keep repeating the lie and
then people simply accept the various lies you are treating in this way and
believe them. The lies have to be aimed at the viscera and raw emotion and
avoid the intellect altogether. The Leave Campaign appealed precisely (if
somewhat covertly) to the basest instincts of us all and the people who voted
for it were being encouraged to give vent to xenophobia and even racism.
Why
is no one willing to point out that the whole thing was a fraud?
If
Brexit were a business deal, it should be possible to sue the Leave Campaign
for fraud. We were promised so many things that simply will never be possible.
And it was all based on false and pernicious premises! They said we will get
back control of our money, implying someone else is controlling it; yet we have
always had control of our money and still do. With an overall UK budget of
roughly 990 billion pounds a year, we have chosen for decades to se send a raw contribution
that currently amounts to about 14 billion (before all the rebates) for our
membership in the EU. It is just over 1.5% of the annual spend of the UK
government. That small spend is a bargain that buys us free access, without
tariffs, to a huge market; and gives us a seat at the top table actually
creating the laws and ideals. We are not therefore vassals of the EU but
members who have contributed massively to it intellectually and morally. Brexit
undermines our perceived position as moral, economic and intellectual leaders
in the EU.
Perhaps
the EU needs to be improved in some ways, as they claim. Let’s discuss that and
see what we want to do about it. We have had over 40 years of peace and
prosperity from it for a cost of around 1% of our annual budget year after year.
What is so wrong about that? What are the Brexiteers complaining about: the
peace or the prosperity?
As
for the borders of the UK, they lied about that too: we have control of our
borders. How else did Theresa May manage to cause such problems for the
Windrush people and many more? Brexit is a great distraction from the errors
and sins of the Conservative Government perpetrated over the past eight years.
There are plenty of rules in the EU system that would enable the UK government
to keep closer tabs on EU people who come here to work; and to send back those
who lose a job and do not find a new one. The government has been too lazy or
uninterested; and Theresa May has been obsessed with figures that are simply
provocative. She has insisted on including students who are here for a brief
spell, for example. And she has made it much harder for them to stay and look
for a job and settle in this country and contribute to our economy and culture.
Already, Brexit is discouraging people from the EU from coming here to work in
our NHS, our service industries, and so on. And the Brexit campaign did not
explain that we are very likely to have to give away visas to many countries
who want them badly in exchange for the free trade agreements that the
Brexiteers promised us would be ready to start the day after we leave the EU. So
much for “taking back” control of our borders. That was another falsehood.
So
tell a lie that will win you votes, repeat it endlessly, and make sure it
appeals to the viscera and not the intellect. Got that? Appeal to prejudices,
subtly or not. Threaten the influx of Turks into the country, for example; just
as Donald Trump threatens the influx of Mexicans. They are evil, dark skinned
bastards and will rape all our women. That’s because the millions of evil Turks
are all going to be violent and under-educated men, of course, full of raging
testosterone and without families or ties or a desire for a decent life. Only
we Brits understand what it is to have a desire for a decent life, not those
pesky foreigners. Hence we have to leave the EU before we are corrupted. (Besides,
if we are very good and leave the EU, God will make sure that we get our Empire
back. Just ask Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage.)
I
am puzzled by what the people who led Brexit actually hope to gain from all
this. I can only suppose that they hate the EU so much because it is actually a
democratic arrangement that might hamper their abilities to get even richer and
to place more and more of their money safely off shore. It hasn’t stopped one
of Jacob the Smugg from moving businesses to Dublin so that the businesses can
have access to the EU. It hasn’t stopped Freaky Farage from getting EU
passports for his children. Brexit suits them because, as Jacob Rees-Smugg
actually said, we will be able to redo the rulebooks for workers’ rights and
many other things that are a real nuisance to the privileged classes and their
entitlements. So we have been gulled into voting to make the rich richer and
probably to make the poor poorer as well, though believe me the Brexiteers are
not capable of even thinking beyond the “rich richer” aspect. As Tom Cruise
said in Jerry Maguire, Follow the
Money!
We
will leave the EU. Theresa May (whose husband is involved for his living in
sending money off shore, but hell, that probably has nothing to do with
anything) insists it is the will of the people. If we did not, then over 17
million people (who have seem to have paid no attention to the events of the
past two years and therefore have no motivation to question Brexit) will
doubtless feel betrayed and angry.
The
problem is that over 16 million people, when we leave, will feel even more strongly
betrayed and angry because the choice at the moment is non-existent and they
have no party and no champions to give them an adequate voice. Jeremy Corbyn is
not in Opposition, except to Capitalism as he conceives it from something he seems
to have thought about last around 1968. No one is brave enough to point out
that the whole Brexit campaign was a fraud (quite easily picked about, but no
one in Labour has bothered to do that properly) and that the 17 million had
their worst fears and motives played upon. No one is willing to point out the
Project Fear was actually Project Reality Check and an attempt to do what is
called Due Diligence. No one is as yet questioning the appalling, institutional
bigotry of the right wing press of the UK or its Leave campaign that has been
going on for decades.
No
one is using wit, intelligence or sheer indisputable fact to try to educate the
seriously ill-informed proportion of the people who were railroaded into voting
for Brexit. And everyone is fixated on the idea that somehow it is wrong to
rethink, reconsider, or question the accepted opinions pumped out by the Daily Telegraph, The Sun, or the other
tabloids..
Also
no one is willing to look at any of the parallels in history that show this
whole thing to be a scam. I can remember when Quebec tried to leave Canada
twice. They voted first to have a referendum by 80% on the question of whether
to leave Canada and this was seen as an indicator that they would leave Canada.
They then spent a year or two debating the whole issue. In the end, when they
voted again, 80% chose to remain with Canada. By that time Montreal had become
a much less prosperous place as many businesses that loved the city’s
atmosphere and European feel had moved to Toronto out of fear of what might
happen. This happened twice over. And each time the province of Quebec and the
city of Montreal were diminished and spent a lot of time and effort trying to
recover. And they stayed.
I
think that Brexit has opened up a Pandora’s box that is insidious and
dangerous. I think that we could easily see the breakup of the UK as a result.
We have not given up our sovereignty, as the Brexiteers kept telling us
implicitly by saying we would take it back if we left the EU like good little
lambs. We have, in fact, pooled our
Sovereignty and that is a very different thing. And what is the UK but four
pooled Sovereignties? If you do not believe in pooling your Sovereignty with
your European neighbours to gain more clout and power in this world, then why
would you think that Scotland, Ireland and Wales should pool their Sovereignty
with England? What is the point? If we are stronger together as the UK, how are
we not stronger together working with our neighbours in Europe? Somewhere I
perceive a disconnect from logic.
So
here is what we voted for. We are
turning our back on Europe. They
certainly see it that way, and that counts. We are introducing instabilities
into Europe and the UK economically and morally. We will only be able to make
trade deals with the rest of the world from a position of weakness. Does it not
occur to anyone that one of the reasons the UK was so successful in the past
four decades is because by opening businesses here, the US and Japan and other
countries were buying their entry into the EU? Japan now has a deal with the EU
that includes us until 29 March. Once we leave the EU, what use will we be to
them; or to any other businesses that need seamless access to EU markets?
But
above all, the Brexit vote is a slap in the face of History. Over 75 years ago
we had to defend ourselves and by extension the whole of Europe against Fascism
and we were dropping bombs on each other. Has the nation no idea of how that
connects up with the European Project? Have you forgotten? Are you willing to
take a huge risk and gamble the future of the UK and the EU? Think about what
this is doing to the Good Friday Agreement for a moment.
And
as for the Irish border, I can see no way that opposing the Backstop at this point
will not increase the danger of having bombs in Birmingham again. But,
according to T May, and to J Corbyn, that vote for a New IRA onslaught is
sacrosanct and we are not allowed to think again.
And
so, my message to all Remainers is let us give up. Let us get on with it. Let
us betray our own history, the peace of the past decades, and our role as good
neighbours in Europe. Why are you complaining? Brexit means Brexit and as T May
used to say, no deal is better than a bad deal, so let us even crash out of the
EU and play by the WTO rules it will take us a considerable effort and amount
of time to join. Unfortunately, Saint Theresa did not point out that any deal
for leaving the EU is worse than the deal we have by merely staying in and
playing a central, significant role in the development of Europe at every
level.
But
hey, the Brexiteers have their ears plugged and cannot hear what anyone who
questions their nonsense is saying. And they no more have a plan for what is
needed if we stay in the EU than they do for what happens if we leave, nor do
they care, so let’s just go. We have to keep Farage, Rees-Mogg, David Davis,
Boris Johnson and all our other betters happy, don’t we? And so we have the
tyranny of a tiny majority on a certain day in 2016 that simply holds sway and
no one is willing or able to come up with any arguments that will make enough
people simply stop and question the opinions dished out lavishly by people like
Farage, Rees-Mogg, David Davis and the rest. So carry on doffing those caps,
lads, because that is what you are best at!
It
may happen that we will overcome and win through ultimately. But I then wonder
what is the point of putting us through all this when we could be attending to
the crises in the NHS, our Schools, our environment. Think of the energy we
could have put into solving real problems in the UK and the EU over the past
two years if the vote had gone the other way? But no … The tail that is wagging
the Conservatives would have gone on wagging it.
If
you look at it coolly and clearly, Brexit is a No Win situation. But that is what we voted for. So let’s go
through with it, even though it was based on a series of outrageous myths and
lies; because that is what the rogues want; and who are we, cap doffers all, to
resist the blandishments of the Farages and Rees-Moggs of this little island
home of ours? Mel Cooper. Oxford, 13th February 2019.
*******
And Brian Hardy, Oxford, UK, writes:
A
Labour Party split?
Their
leadership has acted and continues to act (if you consider doing nothing as
acting) shamefully in many ways, and they deserve to split into little
fragments. But will they?
The
same, and probably more, could be said and asked of the Tories.
We
have been, and continue to be, served spinelessly by the MPs from just about
all parties. They haven’t shown any determination to stop the May Juggernaut,
which I can only see as headed for a no-deal Brexit if the Chequers Plan Two
isn't approved.
Events
(or, more accurately, lack of them) lead me to believe that May is play-acting.
Despite all her protestations to the contrary, I think she is really intent on
a no-deal Brexit if her own plan (and it seems she is still wedded to Chequers
One despite its huge rejection by Parliament) fails. That’s why she is merely
playing for time. Whether we finally get some version of her Chequers Plan or a
no-deal exit, she will claim “So, you see what I’ve been saying all along:
Brexit really does mean Brexit ... mission accomplished.” I suggest that, for
the sake of completeness, she adds: "and sauve qui peut, let the
devil take the hindmost”.
AND
WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME ARE OUR MPS DOING TO STOP HER?
Lord
Almighty, it makes one want to … oh, what the hell, I don’t know any more.
Yours
in sadness,
Brian (Oxford - 13th Feb 2019)
