PURSUING A FRAUD CALLED BREXIT

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.

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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)