We all know that without UKIP, and without Nigel Farage, this remarkable victory for Brexit would never have happened.
However, the cunning Tories, with the help of the Electoral Commission, managed to take over the leadership of the campaign, for Vote.Leave, sidelining UKIP and Leave.EU and G.O.. Their conduct of the campaign could have been much better and more forceful – indeed some fundamental, vote-winning issues were ignored, such as the effects of continued EU membership on our legal safeguards of personal freedom and our Magna Carta heritage which would have been trashed and replaced by the Napoleonic-inquisitorial system of Corpus Juris if we had voted to Remain…
Was it Lenin who said, “The best way to curb opposition is to lead it”?
Nevertheless we won! Albeit with a smaller margin than we should have had.
And now the cunning Tories have arranged things so that the new Prime Minister is not even a Tory who campaigned for “Leave”, but a Remainian! And they all seem to be falling in line behind her.
This in itself is outrageous.
Theresa May has made some reassuring noises. She has said “Brexit means Brexit”, “Juncker will discover that I am a bloody difficult woman”, “I am going to lead Britain out and make a success of it”.
However, rather than “watch her lips”, we should watch her fingers and see what she actually does. Judge her not on her words but on her actions. We can of course “wait and see” what she does now. However, we can get a damned good idea of what she is likely to do by seeing what she has done so far, and some of the things she has said too.
Just look at her recent remarks during her campaign for leadership, about the 3mn EU citizens now resident in the UK: “they may face deportation”, she hinted strongly. Nigel Farage, statesmanlike, had said that those already here legally had nothing to fear. Can you imagine anything more calculated to stir up trouble and social tensions in the country? And when Leadsom in reply echoed what Nigel had said, May riposted “She wants foreign criminals to be able to stay here!”. Totally absurd. Boris Johnson, in contrast, said that “Theresa May should reassure the 3mn EU nationals now living in the UK, that they will have no problems”.
Even more serious are her remarks about the “benefits” of shariah law. When she was Home Secretary she should have been clamping down on shariah courts and especially shariah patrols. Like hell she did! And the horrors of Rotherham… on whose watch was that?
And who was the driving force promoting our reconfirmation of the iniquitous European Arrest Warrant and other EU JHA measures in November 2014? It was the Home Secretary – Theresa May.
And what about her tossing and turning over the European Convention on Human Rights? While campaigning to Remain in the EU, she tried to score a cheap political point by saying we should withdraw from the ECHR (knowing full well that being signed up to the ECHR is a precondition to EU membership). And then she changed again and now says we must not leave the ECHR. She either lacks the ability to think things through and join up some simple dots, or is deficient in principles.
And – most dangerous of all – her reply to Dominic Raab’s PQ in June 2012: “of course” she would welcome onto British soil “special intervention units from our EU allies”.
This means the lethally-armed, paramilitary EuroGendarmerie Force (see its own official website, for those who have never heard of it: www.eurogendfor.eu). The EGF is loyal only to Brussels, which claimed supremacy over us in 2012. And it still does and still will, until the terms of our exit are finalised, probably not before two years. Once inside the country, they will not leave if asked to by a merely British authority, but will take orders only from Brussels. So we would be under an effective military occupation – as are nearly all continental countries, each one being militarily controlled by its own lethally-armed, paramilitary, police force, centrally recruited, stationed in every borough and hamlet, under central government command. Of course Brussels wants to replicate this model across all Europe, hence the EGF.
I cannot understand why nobody else seems to have picked up on this incredible statement by a Home Secretary… Her Labour predecessors cannily avoided answering a similar question when it was put to them. I can only suppose that England’s 350 years of peaceful transitions of government, and unarmed traditional “policing by consent”, have dulled our senses! We Brits have largely been trained to see the trees, but not the wood. So we do not think about the fact that the State is the sole body that can legally use violence on the bodies of the citizens. Once we have armed men controlled by Brussels on our streets, Brussels will have its State, and we will be just a province in their State. How could we possibly trust the judgement of a Home Secretary who was willing to allow that?
So what can we expect now when she goes off to Brussels for the famed negotiations?
Doubtless she will huff and puff and be long on rhetoric and self-promotion for home consumption, (“I’m a bloody difficult woman…”). But, if the previous form of her Tory predecessors is anything to go by, she will be putty in the hands of Juncker and Merkel. They cannot wait to get their teeth into her, and are already telling her to hurry up.
Politics in Britain is played by and large according to the rules of cricket. So many of us are saying, “Oh well it’s May’s turn to bat now, let’s see how she does…”. On the continent – and this is the game now – they don’t use cricket bats to hit the ball but to hit the bowler and the wicket-keeper hard on the head.
It is curious how the leaders of the Leave side have all quit, one after the other. First Johnson, because he was unexpectedly “stabbed in the back” by Gove. Then Nigel, understandably exhausted after 23 years of hard slog crowned by success… though it would not be surprising if the dastardly threat by that rapper against his children were a factor. And now Leadsom. One is an event. Two is a coincidence. Three begins to look like a series.
So why did Leadsom suddenly quit? Insufficient support in Parliament? But she knew that from the start. Other reasons? Anybody’s guess. Here in Italy, where politics is a very rough game indeed, and Machiavelli’s book is considered not a gangster’s handbook but a useful guide for politicians, some have said “Oh, Brussels must have had someone whisper in her ear ‘you’d better not carry on like that – just see what happened to Jo Cox. And you have just reminded us that you have 3 children… wouldn’t it be a pity if something nasty happened to them…’.”. I certainly hope that this was not the case. But one does wonder…
So, May might even invoke article 50, just to throw a sop to EU-sceptic opinion at home, to show that she “means business”. But that will give the EU two whole years of our continued membership, therefore our subjection to all their laws and decisions, though excluded from the decision-making, when they can do whatever they like to us: ruin our economy, re-arrange our politics, have us all arrested by the European Prosecutor under EAWs, treat us, in a word, like a colony.
Of one thing I’d say we can be pretty damn sure – May will never, ever, move to repeal the ECA72 unilaterally and set us free before those two years are up, no matter how dirty the other side plays. I would love to be proved wrong. But I fear that, while we will be using our bats to try to hit the ball, they will be using their bats to try to smash our heads in. This faculty of repealing the ECA72 unilaterally if the other side plays dirty, is something we must never give up.
Oh, and I wish to register my utter dismay at the 1000 barristers petitioning Parliament to disregard the Referendum result which they say is “based on misrepresentation of facts and false promises”. Well, freedom of speech and propaganda does mean that any election to Parliament can also be said to be based on that. Political manifestos are not binding contracts, as the law courts have confirmed. Electoral promises do not give rise to legitimate expectations – well, not legally enforceable ones. Yet in the same breath these petitioners have the gall to say “Parliament is the guardian of democracy”.
In effect these renegades are trying to sidestep and to disapply the fundamental, universal, principle that the sole source of legitimate authority is the will of the people. The only societies in the world today that oppose this principle are those based on shariah law.
[Ed: Don’t miss Part II which will be published tomorrow!]
“I am going to lead Britain out and make a success of it”.
I’m left wondering what “success” means in this context and if she is going define it in clear terms now or wait until it can be made to fit the dog’s breakfast which we are likely to end up with.
The vote would have been 60% leave but for certain suspicious event in Yorkshire a week before the referendum. You would have thought they would have been original in their actions, whoever they were, but it must be difficult to come up with a new plan. 42 year old, photogenic female with children, pro-EU and shared an office with Stephen Kinnock. An identical victim from Sweden in 2003 with another EU referendum. What a dream candidate for a false flag event to pull on the heart strings.
Think about it who stood to benefit from an assassination of a pro-EU campaigner?. The fallout was never going to look good for the leave side.
Absolutely right Simon and the latest in a long series of such events.
I’m new to your page. Thanks for a great and pointed analysis. I really can’t argue with your train of thought.
I’m glad you mentioned the issue of the 3 million EU nationals already here that Theresa May wants to use as human bargaining chips. I know several EU nationals living here who are now terrified for their future and feel extremely unwelcome in the UK.
To clarify, I’m a member of UKIP (though not a spokesman) and I absolutely agree with UKIP’s position on this. Roughly that, as you say, they can and must be given an unconditional guarantee that their status will not be affected by Brexit. As far as I know, all Leave campaigners agreed too.
Jeffrey Corbyn put the question to David Cameron at PM’s question time (e. g. BBC TV daily politics Wed 13th July at around the 42 minute mark) and Cameron’s reply made me feel ashamed to be British. What he said was along the lines that their status would be absolutely guaranteed … provided the EU played their part. In other words they are to be used as bargaining chips. Unfortunately, the normally astute Andrew Neil of the BBC appeared to be taken in by this.
Andrew Neil has previously been very sharp on the issue (e.g. Daily Politics Friday 8th July). So was Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph on the 7th July, who rightly pointed out that this sort of policy is BNP territory. He reckoned that Civil Servants had advised May and her team on the basis that no leverage should be thrown away prior to negotiation. Valid no doubt in abstract game theory but wrong headed in the real world. As well as probably being in violation of various treaties, it would cause such an outcry in Britain that it could never be used. So it is a bluff and only an idiot would march into negotiation brandishing such an obvious bluff. Of course the UK should support UK nationals abroad too but that should be kept separate.
I agree with you about this stirring up social tensions. The trouble is that as the revulsion sinks in I suspect people will, quite wrongly, associate this with Brexit and UKIP. And at least some sections of the press will be all too happy to go along with the narrative in order to sabotage Brexit.
But my main objection has to be one of basic humanity and decency. I don’t know specifics about the hostility that it may have stirred up but I can imagine. Unlike some of those in the Westminster bubble. It doesn’t take too much imagination for example to see how this could be taken up by children, who can sometimes be particularly vicious, as a playground taunt.
I hope others will join in condemnation and so nip this whole unpleasantness in the bud. Many thanks for your article which is praiseworthy in other respects too. And just to end on a more upbeat note, I am hugely encouraged by David Davis’ appointment as Brexit minister. I really believe we’re going to get there.
Welcome to the game of international politics. The subject of individual rights will be on the table for a nano-second as to who has the right to live work and settle in the UK. It has already been decided long before in the Vienna Convention on treaties 1969. Those that moved legally to another memberstate will be entitled to remain with all rights that existed under the treaty that allowed them to move there.
The British Armed Forces are loyal to the Crown, and they know very well that the day foreign occupation troops move in the Queen (God bless her) will no longer be our sovereign. Maybe that nuclear deterrent will turn out to be useful after all…
Hello! This looks a nice site! And this a really great article which begins to show how the Metropolitan Elite, which I also call the Metropolitan Omertà, grab the agenda whatever the situation. The winning of the Referendum is truly only a beginning, not an end. We are ready for the fight!
Who are “we”?
and what leads you to believe we are “ready”?
certainly not UKIP
Now if you mean the Leave.eu and Cross Party GO organisation I would be hopeful
They must be kept in existence
This is the fatal flaw of radical movements of any kind: they bicker and split. In an ideal world UKIP, Leave.eu and Cross Party GO would resolve their very mild differences, unite under a popular leader (preferably whoever wins the UKIP leadership), and win MPs. As it is, a sad number of their members are behaving like babies who have tossed their teddy bear out of the pram — while their opponents are acting with horrible unity. For heaven’s sake, people, forget your petty quarrels, unite and fight. You are needed.