BREXIT DESPAIR: Is it such a sin? - Mel asks the BBC.

MEL COOPER - OXFORD - UK

BREXIT DESPAIR: Is it such a sin?

By Mel Cooper, Oxford, UK - questions the BBC's Question Time.

I watched Question Time on the BBC last night and it nearly drove me to despair. There was Nigel Farage lying, avoiding real answers, and pumping out sleazy propaganda based on fantasy, misrepresentation and outright lies; claiming to be the Ultimate Defender of Democracy; and no one challenged him strongly or challenged those from the audience who were clearly just swallowing “The Word” from the Tinpot Totalitarian. They call him The Master! 

MEL COOPER ON BREXIT - 22 FEB 2018

What laws do we actually need to change, Nigel? What do you mean by getting back “control” of our money as advertised on that bus when you know that it amounts to roughly one per cent of our annual budget or even less? If we did not have control of our Sovereignty, which you claim we need back, how would we be able to even to leave the EU? Could it be that we have pooled our sovereignty for good reasons, just as the 4 nations of the UK have done, and did not give it away? Certainly, we did not give it away as much as did Scotland which, as I believe, does not have the kind of veto power within the UK that the UK has within the EU?

So come of it, Nigel! If we don't have control of our borders, how did Theresa Christian May institute her Hostile Environment? (The deal with the EU is a different issue!) Just why don't we have enough doctors in this country and how will we will bridge the gap for the next decade while we try to train people? 

You really think that we are going to bring the immigration to the UK down without harming our economy? Or is that just your neo-Totalitarian propaganda talking to rile up the prejudices, xenophobia and latent racism of your supporters? And how many of UK doctors will get so fed up with the NHS cuts that they will simply then emigrate to Canada or New Zealand? As far as the good of the nation is concerned you are diverting attention from the real issues. But I guess that is the way with people who have hidden agendas. Still, I was not quite ready to despair as you simply shouted down anyone who tried to challenge you and just kept on talking with the self-satisfied smirk on your face. Has anyone ever told you that you look quite a lot like Hiss in the Disney cartoon film of Robin Hood?

(Farage the Fake is of the Elite he claims to despise. Public School - Commodities and Stock Broker - City Millionaire - Screwing £100,000 a year tax-free for 25 years, from?? You guessed it - The European Union).

And then my news feed sent me the interpretations of The Express and the Mail and papers like that and their conviction that, oh boy, did Nigel ever give Anna Soubry a red face and a bloody nose from his nifty repartee! Boy, is he ever telling it like it is, how the MPs are betraying Democracy! We are being betrayed, betrayed yet again by our ruling classes!!! (Except it is ruling class blokes with Oxford and Cambridge educations that are promoting this unnecessary act of self harm.)

The real traitors, Nigel, are the Brexiteers and yourself and Jeremy Lazybones Corbyn and Theresa May and Boring Johnson and David Dimwit Davis and all those other self-centred, intellectually impoverished lightweights who are force marching this country into a Brexit that is unnecessary, kind of stupid, and designed to make us all poorer while opening the Pandora's Box of really vile racism, xenophobia, economic foolishness and riches for the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg. No deal we get leaving the EU can be as good as the one we have negotiated for ourselves while within it. Which must mean that even the EU recognizes we do have our sovereignty – not to mention a veto. And though the EU may not be perfect, the way to fix its flaws and improve its institutions is not by leaving it and fending for ourselves in a world of increasing instability. Do you think that Brexit voters have noticed yet that this is not the easiest negotiation ever and that there are not 40 countries lined up, pens at the ready, to sign trade agreements with us?

So I do despair. There is no other voice as strong as those of the Brexiteers countering any of this stuff, there is no one contradicting the Nigel Farage brigade strongly and intelligently enough to make people think -- so the only way to defeat the Brexit Bullies at the moment is to get out there in droves and vote for the Lib-Dems and Green and SNP in this EU election. But predictions are that the utterly unexcitable people who believe in slaying in the EU probably will not turn out in sufficient numbers to do that, especially compared to all the Brexiteers who will be there with their bells on, waving their Union Jacks. And the more I listen to Nigel and his cohorts, the more I see the reappearance and advance of Fascism and Fascist thinking. So here we are, folks! Back in 1932 or 1933; and yet again there seems to be no way that the people who can understand and perceive what is going on can stop it. I know. We gotta keep trying! Yet I despair!!! Mind you, it might not be exactly the same. We might not go as far this time as genocide or crimes against humanity, not on the same scale anyway. But who knows? Everything is up for grabs. And no one is issuing any warnings. One things seems pretty certain: It ain't gonna by nice. Oh, and that documentary about the EU experience trying to negotiate with what they experienced, in their words, as pathetic, narrow-minded, intellectually challenged Brits did not help my mood!!!!

So is anyone going to debate this properly or try to educate the people who might just figure out that they are buying into a Fascist project? And remind people that Ireland had TWO referenda once upon a time about the EU. What’s wrong with our doing the same? That was not decried as undemocratic.

We have wasted the last three years NOT setting up debating societies about what Brexit means. Why? Why have all the Remainers (I would rather call it STAY! - or Please Stay) not got together; and got teams of people going up and down the land having debates and discussion sessions in every damned Town Hall in the land? Why is Nigel Farage given so much time and publicity? Why is no one challenging the right-wing press loudly? Where is the voice of sober, thoughtful understanding? I know. I read the Guardian and so do a lot of my friends. But we are convinced already. “PLEASE STAY” is preaching to the choir that already knows the tune. So, let us get out the vote for the EU elections; and then for a second referendum to be held AFTER some really strong, honest, direct challenges to Farage, Jacob Rees-Smugg and the others.

My real fear is that we have maybe been pushing the intellectual arguments, but we have nothing to back them up in terms of emotion. 

The best spokesperson I ever heard for staying in the EU was Sheila Hancock the night before that damned referendum. Why not get her onto some platforms? People adore her and she is smart. And she clearly gets it!! Check out what she said on ITV the night before that ghastly, unnecessary and totally stupid referendum. Get ITV to put it up on You Tube. I wonder why they haven’t done that? And how about investigating just how corrupted the referendum campaign was in the first place? Would there be any point in getting David Cameron, who was for STAY, to come forth and explain just why leaving the EU is an even stupider mistake than giving Hitler the Sudetenland back in 1938? So, we are plucky and survived the Blitz and this is not even going to be quite as bad as the Blitz? And how do we know that it won’t be, in its own way, as bad for us all? We may have survived the Blitz, but as the man said on Radio 4 the other day, I don’t recall that we voted for the Blitz.

I have no faith in the Brexit movement as being anything other than a reappearance of Totalitarian thinking. Don’t get too excited, though. It’s early days. I am not comparing Nigel or Boris to Hitler in the 1940s. More to Mussolini or Franco in their earliest days of electioneering. (Try reading Hannah Arendt!?) 

Oh, and I think it would be great if Michel Barnier, Donald Tusk and Guy Verhofstadt and any other articulate, passionate officials of the EU came and blasted through the whole country encouraging voting in the EU elections and explaining that this is a chance to stay in the EU and actively "reform" it!  Surely, they would be more attractive to most of the people of the UK than creepy Nigel or crappy Boris or cloying Jacob Rees-Mogg. (Or should we spell that Jakob?)

Sorry, I cannot stop venting. I think this is the most serious crisis in this country since 1938 and has all the hallmarks of opening up a succession of even more potentially appalling events than those we have seen in the past three years, events that we cannot predict and will not be able to control.

And yet no one challenges the Brexit Brigade that is betraying the UK and actually says to them, "Shame on you!"

Mel Cooper - 13th May 2019.

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