The new, and laughable, narrative from the Establishment anti-Brexit cabal is that they are now the insurgents…that’s right…all those senior politicians, the most powerful media organisations, billionaires, lawyers and academics….the new insurgents. All routed it might be said by one bloke with a pint pot, a fag and a great disrespect for that unruly mob of the High and Mighty.
I might also suggest that rather than being the insurgents they are the same old Deadly Donkeys, with their deeply entrenched ideas and vested interests, misleading the Lions. This is the power elite desperately trying to cling on to that power.
The utter contempt that these Donkeys hold Leave voters in is the same attitude reflected in Clinton’s dismissal of Trump voters as ‘Deplorables’. Farron just has to open his mouth and the bile comes pouring out, the sneers and arrogant contempt that he has for Leave voters and democracy [apparently they’re not ‘decent nor moderate’ unlike the Richmond voters] whilst ironically claiming his push for a second referendum is ‘democracy’ rather than the Establishment seeking to crush one of the most democratic and representative votes this country has ever had. Having said that he has had a sudden damascene conversion it seems…a vote in Richmond [Isn’t Goldsmith a complete knob? When an MP he couldn’t block Heathrow…so stands down in order to get re-elected, he hoped, in order to er stop Heathrow as an MP], a turnout of 54%, or just over 41,000 voters resulting in a Libdem victory, apparently suggests to Farron that Brexit has been over-turned by popular consensus….ignoring the 74% turnout for the referendum and the actual vote of 52%, 17 million, in favour. Funny old world democracy. Never mind that the stats say the Remain vote fell.
Maybe Brillo is right….via Guido..
Nick Clegg follows in the footsteps of his old spinner James McGrory and takes a pasting from Andrew Neil on the single market. Brillo’s killer line: “Isn’t it time the LibDems had a rebrand and dropped the Democrat?” Cue Clegg silent death stare…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYdht0hg1ik
The BBC is of course, Andrew Neil aside, pretty well on-board the Remain bandwagon, with programmes practically turned over to subtle and not-so subtle Remain propaganda and narratives, and more often than not packed with Remain voices. We of course know, because the BBC keeps telling us, that the country is now ‘divided’…hmmm….isn’t that always the case? What about all those voters who didn’t vote Tory in the election? Where was the scream about a ‘divided country’ then? It’s just a convenient narrative dreamt up to force the Remain agenda on Brexit….we must not ignore the 48%. Why not? It was a clear vote on one question…in or out of the EU? How can you compromise on that without completely overturning the vote and thwarting Brexit completely? Wouldn’t want that to happen would we BBC?
Emma Barnett thought that the problem was the Brexit mob…they are so angry because Remain won’t accept the democratic vote that their anger is dividing the country…yes it’s the Leave voters whose irrational and groundless rage is driving a wedge across communities…not the Remain camp that steadfastly refuses to accept the democratic vote and is doing everything in its power to thwart the democratic process in order to crush Brexit then? The Remain camp that rather than ‘heal’ things by maintaining economic and political stability and working to enact and enable Brexit seeks to cause chaos, uncertainty and instability.
You just have to see the language the Remain camp uses to describe Leave voters to see the contempt they hold them in and just who is really creating any division, anger and dissent. We’ve already mentioned Farron dismissing Leave voters as not being decent and moderate, the wretched and untrustworthy Tory, Anna Soubry, calls them racist, prejudiced, ignorant and intolerant fools…though of course she tries hard to dress it up…saying they are ‘nativist’ rather than the Far Right Fascists she wants to call them. She claims that the British Public are being misled and misinformed….she tells us that we have ‘ceded the field to the ill-informed, intolerant and often prejudiced.’ That’s half the voters then.
That is of course the narrative that the BBC presses as well….only this morning we heard that Trump was elected by people who voted based purely on emotion, how they felt, rather than on any reasoned basis…Trump had no policies, he just ran his campaign on the soundbite…‘It doesn’t feel great does it?…so vote for me’...whereas as Hilary was ‘facts, facts, facts’. Naturally that is utter nonsense….Trump repeatedly stated his poplicies in reasoned and measured tones in interview after interview….none of which the BBC bothered to publicise or discuss preferring to shout racist and Islamophobe and sexist at him.
Historian Niall Ferguson quotes Salena Zito on Trump…..
‘The Press takes Trump literally but not seriously. The voters take him seriously but not literally’
Ferguson thinks this is ‘the smartest thing said about the 2016 election and deserves a place in every dictionary of quotations’. Which is quite funny as Ferguson spent the election run-up denouncing Trump as the spawn of the Devil…I guess as a historian it doesn’t do to be on the wrong side of history. The BBC should have that quote tattooed on every employee’s forehead as a reminder to dump the hubris, the prejudice and the bias and to do their job….report the facts, report reality, report uncomfortable truths. Don’t report only what you think the Public needs to hear, what you want them to hear….such as the BBC’s very own definition of the new evil that stalks the world…’Populism’.
Ah yes…’Populism’…the new obsession of the BBC…it’s a negative thing of course…can’t have people actually being allowed to vote the way they want to…and that is the essence of the debate. The BBC’s idea of Populism is a rampant, Far-Right mob out of control bringing to power someone who doesn’t hold the Liberal values they do.
The reality is that the BBC doesn’t like Populism because it is in fact people voting in their own interest and not how the elite, including the BBC, tells them they should vote….and, if they fail to vote that way, to vote again until they get it right…ala Clegg and Co. This is the Populism that Kirsty Wark so unashamedly sneered at this morning as that ‘corralled by‘…and she paused…‘groups like UKIP’. I think her language says it all as to how she views the Brexit vote….she compared the Levellers to Leave voters…..we heard they were ‘useful idiots’. Note all her guests were the usual media types and politically left cabal that we come to expect from the BBC as they talk of populism and patriotism. The whole programme was just one long, sneaky sneer at Brexit voters meant to dismiss them as fools telling us that the ‘elite’ would take over anyway once the ‘revolution’ was over….so the message was…why have the revolution? Stay in the EU.
CapX provides us with another example of the contempt the Establishment has for the voters…describing them as Barbarians….the next worst thing to Attila the Hun…
In the chancelleries of Europe, in the gilded suburbs and Michelin-starred restaurants, the cry goes up: the populists are coming! The populists are coming! Not since Attila the Hun swept towards Rome has there been such fear and trembling.
Europe has long been a drag anchor on the world economy, and is likely to remain so. But the best way to improve its situation is for mainstream leaders to provide good economics with good politics – that is to say, reform with reassurance.
Doing so won’t keep the barbarians from the gates. But it might just prevent them from breaking through.
However CapX at least recognises there is a massive problem with the EU….it needs reform or shutting down…and this is a subject that you don’t hear on the BBC….the problem with the EU and its unelected technocratic government….the one the People voted against, a vote the BBC doesn’t recognise as about sovereignty and immigration preferring instead to say it is all about the economy…..which is why the BBC whole narrative is about insisting that leaving the EU is economically bad….which proves they just don’t understand what the vote was about….and why they lost….
While we hear an awful lot about populism, we hear an awful lot less about the equal and opposite problem – technocracy.
The European Union is, at heart, a technocratic project – one reason why it has always been so reluctant to submit itself for popular endorsement. But it also tends to produce technocratic governance in individual nation-states.
After the euro, the ultimate expression of the Brussels ideal, succeeded in impoverishing half the continent, the governments that resulted were often as beholden to the international money-men as to their citizens, if not more so.
The result has been an ungainly gavotte, in country after country, between populism and technocracy. Grey men in suits take power. Disillusioned voters turn to colourful extremists. Colourful extremists screw everything up. Re-enter the men in grey.
There is obviously an argument that none of this can be fixed in a fundamental sense until the euro is either mended (via proper fiscal integration of the continent) or ended.
But in the immediate term, both technocracy and populism are dead ends: the one infuriates the voters, the other ultimately disappoints them.
Shame the BBC doesn’t see fit to enter that debate about the utter and complete failure of the Euro and the damage it has wrought across Europe in respect of the Leave campaign….the BBC always told us that the Leave side were not voting for something [when in fact of course they were voting for something…getting their country back in simple terms], a BBC narrative intended to push a message that there are no policies at the heart of the Brexit adventure…it’s just a nihilistic scream of rage that will ruin us all. The BBC never once raised the alternative, the inconvenient question as to what the future would be like if we voted to stay in the EU as it headed inevitably towards an ever-closer, stifling union [ie the total ending of Britain as a sovereign, united, nation] and dragged us ultimately into the ruinous Euro.
[As the Italian vote result came through this morning and the Euro fell the BBC rushed to tell us that the fall in the value of the Euro is a good thing….the Pound falls and it is armageddon….how different the narrative when you’re a believer]
An example of the BBC’s uniquely informative, thoughtful and educational programming…Wark’s programme ended with the thought that ‘Trump is terrifying for the world’. Not Obama then who stood back and allowed Islamist terrorists to set up a Caliphate, a policy that inflicted millions of Refugees upon Europe, that allowed Assad to destroy his country and kill hundreds of thousands, that allowed Russia to control the geo-political world narrative, that handed Iran the keys to the nuclear weapons box…not to be opened for a few years ….so that’s all right then? I can see why he got the Nobel Peace Prize.
I think that Churchill’s problem in the 1930’s was that he ‘terrified’ the world’, that is a world of comfortable, often elite , appeasers who didn’t want their convenience disturbed by the awful prospect of war, even if the alternative was a world dominated by fascism and the eventual death of democracy and freedom. Today’s elite don’t want their comfortable world of cheap unskilled labour ,including domestic servants, successful anti- competitive policies that favour big business, decision making by the elite, not the people, slush money for universities and other compliant institutions, all to be ended by terminating the EU model of co- operation.
There is a high level geopolitical case for European unity in the light of the two world wars, but the model presented by the EU is simply wrong. There is an irony that the EU is a model totally at odds with the cultural values of the two western victors of WW2 who actually saved Europe for freedom and democracy .
Remainers, including those who run the BBC, should recognise these basic facts and accept the verdict of June 23. Perhaps ,one day, a Britain outside the EU will be able to engage with continental countries in redesigning the model so that it is acceptable to a nation that developed representative democracy, free trade, competitive not crony capitalism, and a world, not a regional, perspective. But the current model is beyond reform and key players like Germany currently just don’t have the desire to dismantle it and start again, due to narrow self- interested reasons. Perhaps these are the same factors that put Germany on the wrong side of history in 1914 and 1939.
I had a business that involved travelling throughout the EU , out the other side of it and back into it . I saw it at the coal face . The more I saw the less I thought that Britain should be in it .
When I had a cosy chat over some beers with a high ranking EU official he agreed that I had reasons for the UK not to be in the Project . Nevertheless he believed in the aims of the EU .
I saw things the BBC would never see ( or Clegg et al ) so I reach my own conclusions . They don’t want to debate with me , only call me little Englander , left behind etc . The BBC doesn’t get any money from me .
From Brendan O’Neil’s FaceBook page –
“The liberal media drone on endlessly about the scandal of posh old white men running the world. Yet they’ve been notably silent about the spectacular poshness and whiteness of the Supreme Court judges ruling on Brexit, who were schooled at Eton, Westminster and Charterhouse, and of course Oxford and Cambridge, and who list their hobbies as skiing, opera and playing the viola. One of them describes his £1.6m wages as “puny”. These lords’ whiteness and poshness is overlooked because it is hoped they will temper the political passions of the white people the liberal media really fear — the throng, the unthinking demos, those cretins who voted Brexit and who in the process brought about a “triumph of unreason”, according to the New Statesman today. A tiny posh clique called upon to counter or at least tame the unreason of the mob — elitism has come violently back to life.”
Good point. It’s the same mentality that criticised the officer class in WW1 as being out of touch, but in WW2 left them alone because they were useful in the fight against fascism.
I don’t agree that Clegg’s interview was the car crash you describe. Within the nonsense that he uttered he was consistent and Neil chose not to press him to destruction (contrary to Julia Hartley-Brewer’s annihilation of Sarah Olney). Neil though produced sufficient evidence to prove exactly what Clegg denied ie that no-one was in any doubt that a vote for brexit was a vote for a complete departure from the EU. It wasn’t a vote for a “soft” brexit where, through the device of retaining “access to the Single Market”, we would remain financially part of the EU and (worse) subject to its laws and the ECJ, but (as Neil didn’t point out) with no influence – let alone a “seat at the top table” – to affect the rules of that market. In other words, with Cleggie’s proposals we’d actually be in a worse position vis-a-vis the EU than we are now.
As for the lack of a Leave “manifesto” this could also have been destroyed by Neil. There was no manifesto because the question posed in the referendum was (uncharacteristically) straightforward and unequivocal. There was no call – least of all from Cleggie and friends – for a detailed list of actions to be taked post a Leave victory. This was because, in his wildest dreams, Cleggie didn’t consider a Leave victory possible. Indeed, AFAIAA, Cameron (whatever happened to him?) on the same basis of belief forbade the civil service to prepare any plans for actions post a possible Leave win.
Neil could have destroyed Cleggie, not on Cleggie’s chosen ground of Leave “unpreparedness” but by sticking to the unequivocal nature of the question posed and the majority in its favour. Those of us little people who are able to read and understand what was said before the Referendum voted accordingly. Cleggie and his friends in the media (and, as it tragically happens, in the judiciary) are trying to revisit an issue which was never visited in the first place: what the words in the referendum actually mean. I know I left school more than 50 years ago but, you know, I can still read and, moreover, I can identify a shyster when I meet one or see one interviewed.
Why doesn’t anyone challenge Nicky & Timmy on the Destination/ Departure nonsense that they think is such a killer?
We all knew our destination – OUT. It is they that are preventing the Departure!
Excellent point . This deceitful Lib Dem mantra about departure and destination has been irritating me for weeks now. It couldn’t be more incorrect , as you say . Good job Little Timmy Farron and Anglo Dutch EU pensioner Clegg will be defeated by the British people in the end.
Departure: EU
Destination: UK
This invention of a “soft” brexit is whats winding me up.
we know what we voted for
No EU court
No Open Borders
No EU Budget contributions
and anything we cant have because of that fine, none of that either.
I totally agree. Soft Brexit is no exit.
Control over our borders = no access to the single market, we all knew that when we voted, we have it on the record. Unfortunately, the ball is back in the lawyers and politicians court, and I’m afraid they won’t be giving it back to us, they don’t want the likes of us playing their game with their ball anymore. And off they march, left right left right, Left and Right together, back to their leafy north London taxpayer funded homes, bistros and dinner parties. They will laugh at how hard they have all worked to do the ‘right thing’ and remain in the EU, solely for the benefit of those poor uneducated misguided 17.4 million racists.
As for the lack of a Leave “manifesto” this could also have been destroyed by Neil. There was no manifesto because the question posed in the referendum was (uncharacteristically) straightforward and unequivocal.
Agreed.
But there is an even easier way of destroying their argument because they – the Remainers – didn’t have a ‘manifesto’ either i.e. for staying in the EU. So what are they advocating: join the Euro? full political integration? continuing submission to every EU treaty that comes along? All of these are the main reasons the majority voted out, and using them to challenge the likes of Clegg who supports the EU in its most extreme forms of economic and political integration would shut him up good and proper.
I agree Umbongo.
Clegg has been so groomed and co-opted into the whole EU lifestyle, starting for his being the factotum for Leon Brittan way back.
So he was speaking as if his whole lifes purpose and future earnings( as well as those phone calls from the BBC)were at existential risk.
Hence his above-par dissembling, evasions and smears. Being a peach nazi in “lib dem” disguise is what his whole schtick is nowadays.
“Trump repeatedly stated his poplicies in reasoned and measured tones in interview after interview”
Alan, I must thank you for a new word that I shall shamelessly steal.
Popular policies are poplicies.
I just wish that I’d thought of it first.
I want to leave a burning building . Destination is outside . Further destinations on life’s travls should not impede leaving the burning building .
Barnier had just made Theresa’s job a whole lot easier although you wouldn’t know it from listening to the BBC. John Bull will soon tire of this posturing French cockerel .
Can’t think of anyone that I despise more at this point in time than the Illiberal Anti-Democtcractic party leader, Tiny Tim Farron. He says repeatedly that he accepts the vote of the referendum result … except in every word he uses he demonstrates that he so clearly doesn’t.
He asks the Prime Minister for transparency in her negotiations but, as a good little European lapdog, makes no such demands of the EU.
He continually spouts the lie that the Brexit voters didn’t know what they were voting for. Apparently there was no manifesto for us thickoes to read to be able to understand anything. Where was the manifesto that spelt out to the Remainers what they voted for. You know the one that Farron clearly has where he spells out: How he is going to deal with the African immigration crisis; how is going to deal with the Greek crisis; how he going to deal with the Italian Banking crisis; how he is going to deal with the Deutsche Bank crisis, how he going to deal with the European pensions crisis, how he is going to deal with the zero growth and mass unemployment, how he is going to deal with the EU caused Ukraine crisis. Surely without having all this spelt out in a manifesto the Remainers couldn’t possibly know what they were voting for ???
Still no stock market crash, still no emergency budget, still no recession, still no 500,000 unemployed, pound now at 2013 levels against the Euro, surely all those intellectually gifted Remainers and experts wouldn’t have lied …or lacked understanding of what might happen after the referendum … they’re educated aren’t they ????
Tiny Tim Farron sounds even more like a Div 2 football manager than Andy Burnham.
The alternative to being in the European Union is to not be in the European Union.
Nigel Lawson
I have never thought that Carolyn Fairbairn had the intellect to lead the CBI. Of course, maybe the CBI gets what it deserves. Perhaps she’s representative of the kind of “business leader” we get now that our industrial base has shrunk to negligible proportions. Our large businesses are mostly foreign owned and are all about finance, services selling to government and marketing/PR.They tend to be run by a fat cat elite who would not know a factory if they saw one and whose main object in life is to mix with their European brethren and to continue to see their reward packages grow at a pace totally unjustified by shareholder returns or the average salaries of their employees.
And of course, services are the one area where the “freedoms” – those indivisible and un-negotiable matters that must be observed at all costs – have not been implemented by the EU because that’s the one area where the UK excels.
What gets my goat is the constant one sided pro EU/remain drivel. Today for instance you have some bint on R5 parroting the line that the EU are going to be touch on us as we can’t have our cake and eat it. She goes on to say that if we want access to the single market we will have to abide by the rules, ie, free movement of workers (workers actually means any idle layabout). Not once is she challenged on the fact that the rest of the world has ‘access’ to the EU single market. Being a member of the single market is different to ‘access’ to the single market. If Canada for instance has access but no deal on free movement of people, why would we have to have such an agreement? Why aren’t these questions asked?
Clegg’s insistence that there was no manifesto from the Leave campaign is clearly negated by two counterpoints:
1. The Referendum Campaign was fought by two cross-Party alliances, neither alliance contained the Government and its political party completely; thus it would be patently impossible to present a Government or Opposition manifesto, and,
2. The Remain campaigners did not put out a manifesto either; what if the expected Remain vote had materialised? Would Cameron have said – and Clegg now agree – that the Reforms that he had obtained would be fixed forever and the UK could expect no change within the EU and no Treaty changes ever in future? Of course not.
Clegg should know that. He is merely being disingenuous to try and convince a few wavering viewers who voted to Leave & might think they would possibly now, if asked about the EU again, change their minds. But then, as Nick said, only a few people watch him making a complete fool of himself, er, I mean only a few people watch politicians on television, including The Daily Politics.
Nick Clegg is trying to face in so many new directions to frustrate a Brexit that he is falling flat on his face.
It is futile and more likely to drive disgusted Remain voters who value our British democracy to start a clamour to leave the EU and get it over and done with. There are signs of this appearing on BBC web-site HYSs on the subject of Brexit. I hope that he and other EU-philes will keep this going. It is starting to smack of that last but one weekend of the Referendum Campaign when Obama, Camera & Osborne started to threaten potential Leave voters. That turned out so well for Remain.
I have a growing desire, like Nibor above, to leave this burning EU building as soon and as completely as possible.
My response to this elite attempt to doublecross us is to ignore them .I switch off the lot and that includes May and Hammond. I ignore the Supreme Court charade and every single word the Media snowflakes utter. None of it is the slightest of interest to me.
So that means when the now inevitable fix goes in and we are well and truly shafted I am clear in my mind as to what needs to be said and done.
The elite has declared war on me and the rest of the deplorables and it had no right or need to do so other than it’s greed and power mad mind set.
Well worth watching this. Reminds me of why the likes of Tim Sebastian have been such BBC lapdogs all their empty working lives.
These are angry bitter people-as we saw with Nick Clegg on the Daily Politics with Andrew Neil. These people have finally discovered their inner anger bitterness and bile-and aren`t we seeing their true colours finally.
All those years of being nice and democratic-and look at them now these last six months?
Thanks for posting that, AS. Have watched half.
OK, I am biased but I thought that in trying to make out that Daniel Hannen had lied during the EU Referendum Campaign and all those campaigning to Leave had lied, Tim Sebastian made himself out to be … well, in effect, a liar.
He’s not a very good interviewer, judging by that first 13 minutes. Wonder how much he is paid. Good job it was visual with sub-titles. That would have been a nightmare on radio.
‘Isn’t it time the LibDems had a re-brand & dropped the Democrat?’ Like it! Very good question Andrew.