In the light of Theresa May offering MPs a vote on delaying Brexit, which is being joyfully and rationally welcomed by Remainers as the crack into which can be inserted the political lever to renege on delivering the referendum vote entirely, this twitter thread from Matthew Goodwin is timely:
One critical point about vote for #Brexit is that it marked the first moment when a majority of British people formally asked for something that a majority of their elected representatives did not want to give. It was always destined to lead us here
Contrary to popular claims, we now know from a dozen + studies that Leavers knew what they were voting for. They had a clear sense about how they wanted to change the settlement; they wanted powers returned from the EU & to slow the pace of immigration
We also know that for large chunks of the Leave electorate this vote -a rejection of the status quo- was anchored in high levels of political distrust, exasperation with an unfair economic settlement & a strong desire to be heard & respected
I do not think that it is hard to imagine what could happen if Brexit is delayed, taken off the shelf altogether or evolves into a second referendum that offers Remain vs May’s deal, which Leavers would view as an illegitimate ‘democratic’ exercise
We have evidence. (1) Professor Lauren McLaren has already shown that even before the first referendum people who wanted to reform the existing settlement but who felt politicians were unresponsive became significantly more distrustful of the entire political system
(2) Professor Oliver Heath (& others) have found that as British politics gradually converged on the middle-class at the expense of the working-class the latter gradually withdrew from politics, hunkering down and becoming more apathetic
This is partly why the first referendum was so important, where we saw surprisingly high rates of turnout in blue-collar seats. Because for the first time in years many of these voters felt that they could, finally, bring about change.
And we’d already seen an alliance between middle-class conservatives and blue-collar workers to try and bring about this change when they decamped from mainstream politics in 2012-2015 to vote for a populist outsider
So I think that we do know what the effects of a long/indefinite delay to Brexit, or taking it off the table altogether, will be. Either we will see a return to apathy & ever-rising levels of distrust which will erode our democracy and the social contract from below, or …
Another populist backlash, anchored in the same alliance of disillusioned Tories & angry workers who -as we’ve learned- are very unlikely to just walk quietly into the night. If anything, this will just exacerbate the deeper currents we discuss here
I have one thing to add: if the establishment (which includes MPs of all parties) demonstrates that campaigning for forty years for a referendum and finally winning it does not work, it will not only be the populist Right who learn the lesson. The radical Left and the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English Nationalists will also learn that the strategy of peacefully winning consent from voters is a mug’s game.
Let us hope this does not lead us into a situation where a critical mass of people can see no way other than bloody rebellion. But if the referendum is indeed thwarted, that will indeed be what happens.
Need we part with one p of our £39bn if there is no deal? Is the retention of that sum not enough for the Remainers as compensation for the losers on a no deal situation? I can’t surely be the only one who does not understand the fuss.
I think the mass Facebook bannings show that TPTB are doubling down. They are going to thwart it. God help us.
Saw that ghastly munter the execrable Jess Phillips dial up the fake emotion in parliament to ask May to “do a brave thing and do … what is best for the country not what is best for any of us.” What’s best for the country is no deal Brexit, the sole reason it hasn’t happened yet is because of quislings like her in parliament doing what’s best for them. Good god is that woman awful, almost as bad as May
An excellent post.
I have never been so angry nor so cynical about politicians and our “democratic” system. And I’m not alone.
Yellow Jackets first then civil war if need be. If May and the rest–inc Jizza– can be replaced at the ballot box by decent govt–unlikely but not impossible–she and the rest must be tried for treason and receive long sentences. Meanwhile any tactic to fightback is worth considering. Perhaps the ERG/DUP might find the nerve to force a GE. After Jizz has fucked up by betraying his own voters the formerly expected Labour Shoo-in is OFF the cards. And good to punish them all–ZaNu and BluLabour alike while the blood is up.
Consider Democracy and “democracy”.
Precious little mention of either in the Magna Carta or the British Bill of Rights, even the US Constitution and Bill of Rights are pretty coy on the subject.
LIBERTY used to be prized above having ones “betters” grant the privilege of having a token say in one’s own fate.
Think of all those “nice” countries who had or still have the word “Democratic” in their official title. That should tell you something.
https://www.amazon.com/101-Things-Til-Revolution-Self-Liberation/dp/189362613X
Originally written for the US, might be useful for someone to adapt it to the UK.
“Asked”?! WTF! It was a vote!
And . . . “give”?! Your elected representatives possess the power, and only “give” it to the people when they want to?
Let me suggest a better book for y’all: The NEW AR-15 Complete Owner’s Guide by Walt Kuleck.
Can a Britain that slumbered while its cities morphed into third-world Shariah ghettos, and while its citizens were carted off to jail for thoughtcrimes on Twitter – can this Britain rouse itself to fight for Brexit?
Unlikely. There will be anger, and some protests, but the rot of statism has wormed itself too deeply into the national psyche.
But … the IRA got such a good result out of its peaceful agitation for change.
How many of the tenets of the Frankfurt School of Thought have either been enshrined in UK law or accepted by society?
Destruction of the family – done; unlimited immigration to destroy national identity – done; making the victim the offender, and vice versa – done. I could go on, but what’s the point? What was it Private Frazer used to say on “Dad’s Army”?
The EU are part of the globo-elite and part of their plan for THEIR happy future is to flop ordinary folk lower than whaleshit using eco-freakery as the excuse. So the scum are going to stir the pot by constant actions against the well-being of ordinary people. EG Macron’s quite brazen attempt to impoverish the French. We can’t afford just to lay there because the arrogant cunts are going to kick us repeatedly if we do. Treason May has a raft of anti-internet shit upcoming as well as EU Article 13 attempted takeover.
We have no choice but to fight back or let ourselves be flopped lower than whaleshit.
That doesn’t help the broader argument as that is somewhere between nonsense & insane
The statement those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it is clearly true as our young grab hold of socialism in a big way.
The one bit of history they have learnt though is that violence gets results. Nelson Mandela, a terrorist, is lauded as a saint. The IRA leaders, all terrorists, are all lauded as peacemakers. Even the founding fathers of America would have been labelled as terrorists now.
We are told violence isn’t the answer but it is clear that violence always has been the final stage in the negotiation process. The stage that we go to when all hopes of a peaceful settlement are lost. Violence works.
It has always been the case that the longer you leave an issue the harder and more expensive it is to fix. Our political system has been an issue for a while now. Brexit has pointed out that issue to everyone in the UK and they see that our political class don’t care what we want. Fixing it will be painful. For our politicians as well as us.
If we don’t leave the EU on March as planned then it is clear that a peaceful settlement isn’t working. Not sure where we go from there. 😉 Perhaps we can call on the US for help. They can supply arms, invade, throw over our oppressors and put democracy in place. Isn’t that what they do when countries have dictators at the helm?
Lord T (February 27, 2019 at 9:58 am), while I welcome developments in the US that show the power of a similar resistance to the beltway/SW1 (and those in France that have some similarities and lessons), I think we will free ourselves or not at all.
Reflecting on how everything looked the day after Munich – and at certain times afterwards – can help one practice my Churchillian quote about being an optimist.
Meanwhile, expressing as clearly as possible the dangers of parliament despising the vote is one way of reducing the probability of their doing so. I welcome Natalie’s post.
Niall,
I was being flippant about the US invading. They are not exactly what I envisage when I see democracy in action either. The abuses of power and the corruption in there are, imo, worse than what we have here. How the democrats (LOL), see a democratic vote is treasonous.
If pushback does not come and the sheep that are the majority of people in this country don’t fight back and reform our systems without foreign help then we deserve what we get. What you sow you reap
What a disasterous shambles all done secretly. How can we take action in those circumstances? We voted for a Conservative Government so how on eath did we get a cultural marxist one? I will not vote Conservative again until such times that they become a proper true Blue conservatives. All we have now is a bunch of self seeking, money grubbing thieves like Deben. Democracy went out years ago!
I still think it’ll be no deal, and in some ways I think May probably wants it that way. The deal is crap, she knows it’s crap, and nobody will accept better. And I don’t think any alternative can win a majority in Westminster, nor will the EU accept a delay(they want England to suffer more than they want England to come back). No deal is the default for a month from now, and I have difficulty imagining that month resulting in any alternative with a majority.
The day democracy died.
The normal process by which a democratic society conducts its business no longer works. If there is a general election, another referendum, what will be the point if it changes nothing and the ruling elite just do what they, not the People, want anyway?
I don’t think anything will change until the pitchforks come out. The cost and consequences of the antics of politicians do not fall on them, they fall on the People – always.
Moral hazard arises when someone knows there will be no penalty for them for their actions. As long as that continues, politicians will not fear the People and change their behaviour.
Alsadius (February 27, 2019 at 11:15 am), when I said to imitate Churchillian optimism, I was not suggesting going quite so far as you do. 🙂 If it were to emerge that May’s secret thoughts were as you suggest then the embarrassment of granting your superior insight (and regretting some harsh thought’s I’ve had about her) would be a very small price to pay. 🙂 But I will not hold my breath.
I am very much hoping you are right as regards your other predictions – as per my poem. I see mere delay as the greatest danger – greater than that of their agreeing anything.
BTW, there is one point to bear in mind. Katya Adler, BBC European editor, was smiling as she reported that the eurocrats thought the ‘brief delay’ idea was ‘smart’, but she noted that they would refuse more than a short delay because otherwise the UK would have to vote in the European elections, due 23–26 May 2019. The eurocrats really do not want that – even if our MEPs leave soon after, they might still affect a few votes – and I suspect our own parliament will feel concern at giving us so obvious an opportunity to express our opinion. So it is being said the EUrocrats feel any delay can only be till the end of May (the month, not the PM).
(This would hardly compensate for the treachery of not honouring next month’s date, but the attempt would have its own problems over and above the British public.)
Haven’t followed this very closely, but 2 things seem obvious to me:
1. On the EU side, there won’t be any more concessions to the UK unless May makes some concessions to the EU in return: that’s how negotiations work. So there is no point in a delay. Once the UK is out, we can all forget any previous agreements and start from scratch.
2. Even after Brexit, there is no point in further negotiations as long as May remains in Downing St. She is worse than useless at negotiating.
Can we all agree on the above?
All these references to Churchill makes me wonder a few things.
1) Did Churchill also have to deal with the-then equivalent of Metropolitan Intelligentsia Elites that sneered at the non-Metro “less educated”?
2) Is this going to be a new “Darkest Hour”?
3) Is Boris waiting in the wings to be Churchill Reborn?
4) Where (the hell) is any rational new middle-ground political party going to come from?
5) How far can Churchillian analogies be usefully stretched?
I am not convinced May’s latest announcement is such a bad thing. If she hadn’t made the offer it is possible that parliament would have attempted to force an extension. Now, we have four Scenarios:
1. May’s deal gets accepted
2. It does not get accepted and No deal gets given parliamentary approval – won’t happen, only the ERG and DUP will support it, plus maybe 10-15 Labour MPs. It’s possible that some strategically minded moderate Tories would also support it, especially if May were to. Anyway, hard to see it passing as it would require the majority of wet Tories to support it.
3. A vote is made for an extension to be sought – needs unanimous approval of all EU countries so not that straightforward. Still it could happen. May has said the extension would only be short. If an extension does not happen then “no deal” is the default.
4. Extension is granted – back to square one.
There is a risk that the EU gives us an extension. The more time passes the less likely it is that we will leave properly. It actually helps our side if the EU plays hard ball.
But the main risk is that May’s deal gets accepted. It seems unlikely to me that the final agreement with the EU will look very different. The WA will act as a ‘hard benchmark’ and once the plebs have their restrictions on immigration they’ll forget all about our sovereignty.
When I cast my vote I was aware that, should Leave win, it may never be implemented. But the upside of this is the potential for political unrest. Unfortunately when you are trying to make major change that requires ripping up institutions and rules that have developed over a long time, and which are subject to ratchet effect that is both legal, political and sociological, you need to break things before you can rebuild. The prize that we seek is disruption.
I don’t find demonstrations in the street very likely. The most likely result of a failure to leave is for the Tory party to be totally destroyed at the next election. If you read the comments to Brexit pieces on ConservativeHome or Guido the anger is at extremely high levels. Granted, the people predisposed to commenting on such website might be from the Breitbart reading crowd, but if they stay at home then that is enough.
The best option right now would be to go straight into a no deal scenario, but the slugs in Parliament seem to have their hearts set against that and against the majority who voted “Leave”.
Fine, then in that circumstance, defer Article 50 for 3 months and have a general election, since both parties have clearly repudiated their manifesto commitments to the electorate and have no intention of honouring them they should face the electorate at the polls.
The Tories will mostly be decimated unless the Remoaners are deselected and actual Tories put up who represent their constituencies. The Remoaners can bugger of to the TIG’s if they like, where they will no doubt be welcomed.
Same applies for Labour, since about 40% of Labour seats are majority Leave and even then most Labour seats have a margin of victory smaller than the number of Leave voters.
Perhaps that will concentrate their minds.
“But who will we vote for if not the usual LibLab Con?” – My suggestion would be the same as Farage (I think), have a single issue BRExit party whose mandate is to see a real BRExit through.
Given the shenanigans that we’ve seen over the last NEARLY THREE YEARS!!!! since the referendum it wouldn’t surprise me if finalizing BRExit after the GE and then fixing the resultant trade and other problems takes a full parliamentary term (Thursday 9th May 2019 – sometime in 2024)
We know full well that the EU will attempt to shaft us after a hard BRExit anyway and the likes of Treason May and her Remoaners are too lily livered for such a task which requires Churchillian steel and determination.
I’m not a great fan of Farage, but given the credentials required for doing this he might be the only one with sufficient trust and capacity to do it.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
As Daniel Hannan has pointed out – we face a “choice” between the “deal” of Mrs May which keeps us under the rule of the European Union – “or” staying in the E.U.
So we are ruled by the European Union – “or” we are ruled by the European Union.
I must confess that I did NOT think this would happen – very stupidly I assumed the result of the referendum for independence in 2016 would be carried out.
I must apologise to those people who thought that the establishment elite would never allow independence – people I actually mocked in 2016.
I am deeply ashamed of my conduct – they were right, and I was wrong.
Paul – Many of us thought that Cameron was a fool to offer us a referendum on the EU because we knew that outside of the London bubble lots of people (i.e. people like us) wanted OUT of the EU at pretty much any price. Lo! and Behold! that is exactly what happened.
Even on the morning after the referendum I remember a discussion about whether they will actually take us out, despite Dave Cameron’s resignation still cascading through the airwaves, I was dubious. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see.”. It seems I was right to be dubious.
Maybe this IS THE ONLY WAY we can force our traitorous politicians to do as they have been instructed and LEAVE, by essentially making politics so toxic and the possibility of majority government for any of the main parties in the near future so unlikely that leaving the EU (as in REALLY LEAVING) is the least worst option.
Maybe in the time between now and March 12th the MP’s of all parties should have a good long think about what the future will be like if they press the big red button to nuke parliamentary democracy. Because that is what they are doing, whether they realise it or not.
As I say the globo-elite intends to flop us ordinarys lower than whaleshit. That is not going to go away and they think they can outlast us. But since they keep making things worse for us –we have no option but to fight by any, every and all means.
Take Macron’s fuel scam–and now 10% + on food. The plans over here are for this ULZ zones shite –where an ordinary car gets extra charges cos pollution and green freak bullshit. Attacking eco-freakery is what we need to do as well as Yellow Jacketing, tax strikes, covering our number plates en masse so that fucks their ANPR snoop system and millions of others. We have no option but to fight.
Don’t be lazy–spend your time to the 12/3 threatening –carefully for now–Tory Remianiac MPs. Promising to confiscate the bastard’s pensions is a good move.
What about another vote of no confidence in the government? That would be a cat and pigeons moment.
Nah David. I reckon were past that sort of thing. Time for an election. Oust the traitors and see if what’s left can find their arse with both hands afterwards.
I’m not hopeful…
ERG/DUP best shot. Now that Jizz has fucked his own gang and is no longer a shoo in. Time the no confidence vote right No Deal will happen while House of Scum suspended.
Would be interesting if May thought. Fuck it, I’ll force the issue and put her deal through as a confidence motion. Thus rejecting her deal would lead to the fall of the government (although that is different under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act), it would give her 14 days to try again.
Interesting how the calendar dates line up, isn’t it?
What Britain needs now is not a Churchill, but a Leo Amery to tell his friends that the nation’s life at stake and their time is up. “You have sat to long here for any good you might be doing. Begone I say and let us have done with you. In the name of God Go!”
In fairness, Leo Amery was only channeling Oliver Cromwell in 1940.
Sure, but at least back then our “betters” knew the history of our people. Not to mention had balls. Not just physical courage, moral courage as well.
Time to for parliament to dissolve itself and as Jim Callaghan famously said at the fall of the government in 1979 “…take its case to the country!” (TL/DR – He Lost)
May’s shite deal isn’t unbreakable. With a decent govt–the difficult step–we tell them to fuck off or send their EU army if they think they are hard enough. We boost our case by dragging the FFC out of her nice cozy retirement and trying her–along with her Cabinet/SCS gang–for treason.
🙂
In fairness Mr Ecks, we’re playing a game of Chicken. It is clear that, not only has Treason May not played a game of Chicken, but she doesn’t even know what a chicken is…
* – Chicken
In answer to Rudolph Hucker’s question (Did Churchill also have to deal with the-then equivalent of Metropolitan Intelligentsia Elites that sneered at the non-Metro “less educated”?) – here’s what George Orwell had to say at the time:
I can’t help but think that this happened on our watch. Instead of allowing this lefty idiocy to sneak up on us since the 70’s we should have been “punching back twice as hard” for the last 45 years.
Alsadius, I hope against hope that you’re correct. But the circumstances under which we, you know… leave the European Union are becoming ever more unlikely.
It’s been the classic EU tactic: bore the plebs into submission. It was three years ago now. Gosh, that’s a long time. What did we vote for, again? Something about limiting freedom of movement for chlorinated chickens, wasn’t it?
Quentin Letts (now that the Mail’s been Assimilated, in the Sun):
With all the talk about what the PM thinks she’s doing, this arrogance is being lost in the noise. They really do think we won’t notice what they’ve done, that they can overturn the biggest vote in this country’s history and blithely carry on with politics as usual.
They thought they’d win the referendum too.
John Galt–Treason May is a vile cunt and the gap between what she deserves and the nice cozy retirement she will likely get boils my piss.
We can still wreck her treasonous sell out dreams however.
I seem to recall that Vidkun Quisling didn’t quite manage to get away with it. As for Treason May? “Who knows what tomorrow brings?”
In truth I expect, post expulsion from number 10, she will enter that form of cursed exile we reserve for the likes of Ted Heath and the Duke of Windsor. Surrounded by the trappings of past glamour while the rot of Miss Havisham gradually sets in.
Not as cathartic as a public execution in Whitehall, but probably the best we can hope for in the current climate.
🙄
Treason used to be dealt with on a more visceral level…
“Treason used to be dealt with on a more visceral level…”
The common law sentence was if I recall it properly, “that you be taken from this place to the place from wence you have come and from thence to a place of exicution where you shall be hung by the neck, but not untel dead, and cut down whilst still allive and your entrails cut out and burned before you, and your head head struck off and your body be quartered and put at the pleasure of the king.”
The 1813 extract of Parliamentary Debates in relation to the sentence of David Tyrie in 1782 shows the text as:
Note that his crime was “guilty of High Treason in corresponding with the French“. As the bible observes, “nihil novi sub sole” (Trans: “there is nothing new under the Sun” [Ecclesiastes 1:9]).
Nice!
Losing means… counting how long before the accusation of treason is made a hate crime.
Myno, isn’t that the point of hate crimes? To keep other people from saying things you don’t like?
The EU-as part of the globo-elite is going to keep pissing on ordinary folk –Article 13 attempted Internet control is only a part of it. Green freakery is to remove the West’s material prosperity. That is what it is for.
In addition Treason May’s game plan is that the EU pisses on the UK for five years and we crawl back begging to be re-admitted with the Euro-etc. There is not any human population anywhere on EartH that would sink that low but that is what the stupid , treacherous bitch thinks of us.
The hag is not cleaver merely deceitful and she has got so far ONLY because of the Tory Party being subject to BluLabour takeover via CCHQ parachutists. But the Tory Party does not have long to go. They will not be in power to oversee the “progress” of their attempted destruction of the UK. I think anti-EU parties–hopefully UKIP who are right about stopping the left’s new voter imports but whoever–will be the big winners. Vote UKIP next GE even if only one time. Labour will not be able to form a majority govt and if they cobble some shite together it will add general socialist wrecking to the EU’s toxic mix.
So May and her shower of shite have bought only a toxic future in which their overthrow is inevitable. And declaring democracy–unofficially of course but still real- dead is not too good a plan anyway.
A thousand underaged girls were raped in Rotherham with impunity by Muslim gangs who considered Muslim girls haram.
Almost a third of Birmingham and Blackburn is now Muslim, the Muslim population in the UK has doubled in ten years, about 40% of British Muslims want Sharia law and half want homosexuality to be illegal.
Nonsense? Not according to data and statistical trends.
Yes. As someone who grew up in England, emigrated and returns frequently I’m shocked at the changes.
The complacency in the face of expanding authoritarianism is something I thought I’d never see. And for some reason, most British expats I meet are as fed up as I am, but relatives and friends at home often don’t see there’s a problem.
And isn’t it strange that so often unsaid is that the EU is largely a dismal failure. The continent has almost no economic growth, it’s universities are unrepresented in the top 50, it’s becoming dependent on Russia for energy, allowed its militaries to mostly disappear and increasingly strips the people of power in exchange for what – slow inexorable decline.
I think it’s terrible, Chip, and I’ve been stuck here.
Occasionally I go back and read archived articles from the BBC, from 2005 or earlier, when all those hate laws were being passed. An instructive lesson on how the thin end of the wedge is a real thing – pretty much everything the critics warned us about, which at the time was of course pooh-poohed as paranoid, has since come to pass.
And bear in mind that nobody under the age of about 25 even remembers this. The age of hate crime and restricted speech is the norm. I’m sure the further back you go the freer we were, but the 90s were my sort of political coming of age time and compared to now it was libertarian idyll. That was 20+ years ago now, and most people don’t think about this stuff really, so all the authoritarianism has been thoroughly assimilated by the masses.
Even some of the EU’s egregious piss-takings have passed almost into myth, when I talk to europhiles about the farce of the European Constitution for example a great many of them have no idea it even happened. It’s all before their time, or in the case of the older ones they don’t even care/remember – perhaps not too surprising when you consider a lot of europhile drones only got excited about the EU after 2016.
It is interesting to me that when I said there wouldn’t be any Brexit as the last votes were being counted, I was roundly told here that the people’s will was sovereign in Britain and that the Referendum’s command would be carried out.
Yet no one would bet with me that it would.
I believe that even three years ago no one, not even the most pro Brexit, really believed that your Masters would deliver. It appears a sad truth that the descendants of Cornet George Joyce and the Barons of Runnymede by and large accept that even on immense and simple national questions the people’s will is irrelevant.
Yes, @Staghounds, I hear what you are saying and agree.
However, 1. the treachery hasn’t yet happened (although it looks both likely and imminent) and 2. the consequences of such treachery are long lasting, severe and incremental.
I believe that those who would rule over us are peripherally aware of this, but whether that awareness spreads sufficiently far-and-wide between now and the next round of Parliamentary voting in mid-March is unclear. Hopefully it will.
Even our Parliamentarians can’t be so deaf as to ignore the sharpening of axes across the country, literal and political heads will roll if the choose to defy the 17.4 million who voted to Leave.
I remain both-pessimistic and at the same time hopeful that the juggernaut of BRExit can still be brought home to safe harbour without a cataclysmic collision that would contaminate our polity for decades.
I have faith that, the selfish self-interest of our MP’s being paramount, they will eventually do the right thing even if it is for the wrong reasons.
May’s shite deal isn’t unbreakable. With a decent govt–the difficult step–we tell them to fuck off or send their EU army if they think they are hard enough.
I am inclined to believe the best option for Leavers is for some wanky deal of any sort to be in place, be it May’s fudge or Corbyn’s Brexit-in-name-only, but the important point is to leave the clubhouse. Once the UK is out, then another election eventually looms, and woe betide any MP outside London or Scotland who thinks they’ll be re-elected on a platform of “let’s be nice to the EU again and consider re-joining”.
If anything, the push may be for less and less involvement in the EU, there will be times when their silly rules don’t wash, something sparks up the electorate or some firebrand MP, and, rather than quietly bend over and take it like we’ve been used to, we can politely refuse to follow any stupid rule without retribution.
The key issue is that the “automatic EU” law is no longer operational, every EU rule will have to pass through parliament, with the consideration of how this affects our trading arrangements, and someone is bound to take issue with a stupid piece of EU legislation that harms us and clearly just benefits another country.
The Norway option is only bad when you are like Norway and have to rely on continuous flow of oil and a good trading arrangement, with the UK as an independent trading powerhouse there will be plenty who will ask why we follow daft EU legislation to keep a trade deal that benefits none of us. Not forgetting we will have the option to be able to negotiate separate trade deals elsewhere rather than through the EU monkeys.
Revolution is for when we don’t actually leave, when the UK continues to remain a member of the EU, not actually that likely. In the meantime any option that gets us out is further winnable through peaceful perseverance.
This entire sorry exercise has one silver lining, it has exposed the fascistic tendencies of many of our elitist parliamentarians, and that might provide valuable fodder for future elections. I for one will be only too keen to remind the potential candidates for my own constituency of how treasonous they were last time round, perhaps there are many of the silent electorate who feel the same way, whether they voted Leave or Remain.
“A thousand underaged girls were raped in Rotherham with impunity by Muslim gangs who considered Muslim girls haram.”
They raped a lot of Muslim girls, too.
“about 40% of British Muslims want Sharia law”
Under Sharia law, the Rotherham rapists would be either publicly flogged or executed. Kuffar girls are haram, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njPcf6Kh374
Nullius – you write falsely. “Kuffir” girls are not “harem”. Muhammed was a slave trader – he was quite clear about what could be done to women (whether virgins or married women) who the right hand takes – for example after a surprise attack on a place he had sworn peace to (treachery being a favourite tactic of his). As every soldier knows, the left hand is for wiping the backside (which is a comfort, of a sort, for the women taken). It is a little (only a little) irritating that you are still about spreading your blatant falsehoods (by the way even a Muslim women can be raped – unless she can produce witnesses to say that she was raped, if she complains of rape she will be sent to prison for fornication or be executed for adultery) – but I have turn to serious people.
John Galt – yes you were right to have doubts, and I was a trusting FOOL. I admit that. I did not understand just how corrupt (how utterly evil) our “liberal” rulers are – they are NOT real liberals, Gladstone (who, by the way, had a realistic view of the Koran) would have nothing but contempt for them.
Mr Ecks – once I thought your language was too harsh. Now I realise it is not too harsh.
the last tory boy – I have had at least one barrister claim to me (on line) that we still have Freedom of Speech in this country – the lies of these creatures have no limits. They will tell any lie (no matter how extreme) in order to protect the FALSE “liberalism” of the establishment elite.
Runcie B.
“Leave” under the “deal” of Mrs May and they will soon say “we have to obey the rules of the E.U. – but we have no say in making those rules” – and (for once) the establishment elite will be telling the truth. That will not lead to us ending the rule of the regulations of the E.U. – quite the contrary, as it will have been “proved impossible” to do so. The people will be so cowed in spirit – that despair (utter despair) will likely result.
To take but one “small” example – the British fishermen who take to the seas on the day AFTER “independence” at the end of March 2019 will see European Union fishing boats still in British waters, then they will know that everything the Prime Minister has said about carrying out the referendum result of 2016 has been a LIE.
Ditto every other area of British life – the rule of the European Union will remain in place. It, the talk of accepting the result of the referendum for independence of 2016, was all a lie. After almost three years of waiting it will all be exposed as a lie.
Staghounds.
I believe that I may have been one of the people who mocked you in June 2016 – I apologise to you Sir.
I was WR0NG – and you were right.
As for what happens in Parliament – all sound and fury signifying nothing. As the “deal” of Mrs May and the “plan” of Mr Corbyn (which are supposed to be total opposites) are, in fact, much the same thing in practice – rule by the European Union. It is all a distraction – a Punch and Judy show, designed to deceive the people. In reality neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition has any love for either the independence of this country or for individual liberties such as Freedom of Speech.
As Terry Arthur wrote in a book in the 1970s (I remember reading it Lancing library when I young) – 95% of what our rulers say is “crap”, and actually “crap” is a kind word for their endless stream of vicious lies.
“Nullius – you write falsely. “Kuffir” girls are not “harem”. Muhammed was a slave trader – he was quite clear about what could be done to women (whether virgins or married women) who the right hand takes – for example after a surprise attack on a place he had sworn peace to (treachery being a favourite tactic of his).”
Kuffar girls are indeed haram, unless they are wives or slaves, which these were not. Sex is only allowed with wives or slaves. Believer/unbeliever makes no difference – either can be wives, either can be slaves.
But I’m very impressed that you made an effort to get it right! Even if you didn’t succeed. Well done, sir!
My (limited) understanding of the situation was that these were girls that the men considered to be prisoners taken in the war of jihad against the evil non-Muslims – and, thus, slaves.
“My (limited) understanding of the situation was that these were girls that the men considered to be prisoners taken in the war of jihad against the evil non-Muslims – and, thus, slaves.”
Sounds interesting. Where did you get that from?
It’s not according to Sharia, but I guess they may have been deluded somehow. It’s amazing how many people are prepared to make confident declarations of what Islamic orthodoxy says with absolutely zero authentic knowledge of the truth. That includes so-called ‘Muslims’ too.
@Runcie Balspune@Mr Ecks
May’s deal is very much breakable.
The UK has an unwritten constitution which is embodied in the laws, principles and statutes by which we are governed: unlike the US which has a written constitution, so it is very difficult for an administration to do anything unconstitutional since the all they have to do table an Act of Parliament:
“No Act of Parliament can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea.”
All they have to do table an Act of Parliament for it to become law.
This is why I wrote “limited understanding.” I don’t know. I just remember it as an explanation offered on several news/discussion shows back when the story first came out. It sounded plausible as the outrage here grew, and then it passed out of thought when it started to seem ridiculous that we should be more incensed by this than were the fathers of Rotherham.
Chip: The complacency in the face of expanding authoritarianism is something I thought I’d never see. And for some reason, most British expats I meet are as fed up as I am, but relatives and friends at home often don’t see there’s a problem.
Yes, that famed scepticism of authority and dislike of bullying that we Brits are allegedly famed for is not what it was. And we can see some of this change in the way the Brexit process has unfolded, with figures such as Gina Miller, the wife of the investment fund chap who made a pile in the City, openly sneering at the intelligence levels of voters who dared suggest that Britain seeks independence outside the EU. And then there is the whole “safe spaces” issue in the UK and worse, in US college campuses. By contrast, in places such as Asia, where they are used to often authortarian regimes, people hold a touchingly high regard for the UK and its parliament and Common Law. I have been working in Hong Kong and the affection is still there. It is an asset that is, alas, wasting.
terence patrick hewett (March 1, 2019 at 5:54 am), you are very much correct enough for the purposes of this discussion, but I will pedantically note that you are not literally correct that no act of parliament can be unconstitutional.
For example, it is a rule of common law that the courts treat acts of parliament as laws (obviously, parliament could not pass an act saying so – since it would have to be already true for such an act to mean anything) and this creates some (very extreme-case-only) limits on Parliament. Other restrictions are analysed in Burke’s ‘An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs’.
(These days, when ‘liberal’ in the States at least, means the opposite of what it once did, Burke’s title might seem as apt as ever it did.)
You are perhaps not up-to-date with the news on this side of the pond, Bobby. Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, Labour peer, and before that a Rotherham councillor, is facing issues more serious than his (very) dangerous driving and anti-semitism. Specifically, police have formally charged him with two counts of attempted rape of a girl and one of indecent assault on a boy. (Two others from Rotherham, Mohammed Farouq and Mohammed Tariq are charged as acting with him.)
You will perhaps understand why the city fathers of Rotherham, at least, were not overly concerned.
Wow. Just . . . wow.
Because of my lucky circumstances, I get to exist and function in a number of different social systems across parts of the USA.
In at least two-thirds of those systems, Ahmed and his brother Mo and his other brother Mo would be dead, or at least living as involuntary transgenders.
Y’all made him a lord.
(But it’s not Islam. Nothing to do with Islam. Raping little kids is haram in noble Islam. Can you imagine how many more Muslims would be raping little kids if their noble religion didn’t prohibit such conduct? Thank goodness for Islam.)
“But it’s not Islam. Nothing to do with Islam. Raping little kids is haram in noble Islam.”
It’s forbidden in Catholicism, too. (And while I’d not say that Catholicism was particularly noble either, I’d certainly not blame the current scandal on Catholic orthodox teaching!)
There are certainly plenty of things about Islam that are authoritarian and evil, but this isn’t one of them. People who happen to be Muslim can do bad things for other reasons besides Islam, just as Christians can do bad things for reasons other than their Christianity.
Any individual has many different characteristics, and is a member of infinitely many different identifiable groups. Their political beliefs, who their friends and family are, who they work for, what school they went to, what books they’ve read/liked, what town they live in, who they bank with, what restaurants and clubs and pubs they frequent, what football team they support, and so on ad infinitum, ad nauseam. People’s motivations have many sources.
It’s a special technique. You mention their crimes. You mention just one particular selected characteristic – that they are a member of a particular group. You leave it to the reader to (fallaciously) deduce a causal connection. The feminists for example would instead point out that they were all men – from which you are supposed to deduce that all men are rapists, and we need to do something to control them. We need to do something about male culture, that tolerates this. Masculinity is the problem, they would say.
It’s just as true that Lord Achmed is male as that he is a Muslim. (More true, probably.) So why don’t we accept the argument of the feminists drawing the corresponding conclusion?
That is true. However it is also true that Muslims can do bad things by directly imitating the actions of Mohammed. They can, for example, kill people – including people whose offence was to make fun of Mohammed.
If a Christian feels like killing someone, direct imitation of Christ is no help.
The same applies to enslaving people. If a Christian feels like enslaving someone, direct imitation of Christ will not help, but if a Muslim wishes to then, as with killing, Mohammed will serve.
For god’s sake! One, ONE of the differences with Catholic priests’ sexual crimes is that no one believes that Catholicism, Catholic doctrine, encourages or even excuses Catholic pedophilia, nor any sort of rape — nor do the run of Catholics or even of Catholic priests condone or engage in such behavior, even if it’s true that a great many Catholic priests have gotten away with it via chicanery and a look-the-other-way policy on the part of superiors in the Priesthood. Once again moral equivalence fails.
Of course, you could say the same of the “particular group” Murder, Inc.
And the Radical Feminists indict all men as rapists or rapists-to-be and horrible creatures to be castrated socially if not literally. This is hardly the attitude or agenda or belief of most people with respect to individual Muslims. Most of us do believe in “benefit of the doubt” at the least, and some even go so far as to practice a belief in “innocent until proven guilty” even in the court of public opinion or of their own heads, with respect to individual Muslims; even though we are far from so foolish as to pretend that rape, torture, and murder are not practiced by all too many Muslims under color of rotten “religious” teaching or of cultural savagery that’s hardly discouraged by a Muslim background of a certain sort.
Whether bad behavior is an inherent part of being a member of a particular group is the desideratum by which one categorizes the barbarity of the group, which means the putative barbarity of its members.
.
I feel a great deal of sympathy for such Muslims as are not barbarians or savages, which I with my Western outlook on things tend to assume is the majority of them. And we all know of Muslims who’ve gone to the wall to protect or save non-Muslims from evildoers. But to claim that the other kind don’t exist and that where they do it can be explained as a cultural or personal defect of some sort and excuse doctrinal Islam as presently proclaimed by the more vocal of the Muslim clerisy is willful self-delusion at the least.
I hope to be diving off the Great Barrier Reef or something equally fascinating and time-consuming, like paying my taxes, for the next few months. Ciao.
“That is true. However it is also true that Muslims can do bad things by directly imitating the actions of Mohammed. They can, for example, kill people – including people whose offence was to make fun of Mohammed.”
That’s correct. (Reliance o11.10(5).) But just because Islam endorses many bad things, it does not imply that all bad things are endorsed by Islam. It’s got rules.
“For god’s sake! One, ONE of the differences with Catholic priests’ sexual crimes is that no one believes that Catholicism, Catholic doctrine, encourages or even excuses Catholic pedophilia, nor any sort of rape — nor do the run of Catholics or even of Catholic priests condone or engage in such behavior, even if it’s true that a great many Catholic priests have gotten away with it via chicanery and a look-the-other-way policy on the part of superiors in the Priesthood.”
Exactly my point!
“But to claim that the other kind don’t exist and that where they do it can be explained as a cultural or personal defect of some sort and excuse doctrinal Islam as presently proclaimed by the more vocal of the Muslim clerisy is willful self-delusion at the least.”
I’m not claiming Islam is nice. Islam *does* teach and endorse many things we would consider evil, but sexual immorality of this sort is strictly forbidden.
If a Muslim steals and eats my bacon sandwich, should I blame the teachings of Islam?
Sometimes only with slaves: one of Mohammed’s directions for a jihading army in certain campaign circumstances strongly deprecates the taking along of wives and directs that instead slave girls should be provided if necessary.
More generally, your claim does raise the issue of the ways in which a Muslim may reclassify Dar el-Harb females as slaves. Your 14th-century islamic law text, in recent English translation, has caused you to have one take on the subject – which you seem to regard as ‘gospel’ (e.g. your remark to Paul in March 1, 2019 at 12:44 am implies certainty in your superior knowledge). What I have read of the unabrogated statements and practice of Mohammed and the first Jihadists have given me a different impression. I think it possible some Muslims in Rotherham studied their 7th-century Koran and Hadith more closely than the 14th-century ‘Reliance of the Traveller’.
As a sort of off-topic knee-jerk reaction I have to this statement, I need to point out that the proportion of Catholic priests who are pedophiles and/or abusers of minors fairly well mirrors the proportion of all Western males who are pedophiles and/or abusers of minors.
The shame of the Catholic church isn’t in its surfeit of pedophiles, but in the manner with which it dealt with them when they were discovered.
There is about the same chance that a Catholic priest is a pedophile as there is that any male westerner is a pedophile. They just had a better protection racket than most, and so individual Catholic priest pedophiles tended to have more victims than unaffiliated pedophiles.
“As a sort of off-topic knee-jerk reaction I have to this statement”
Quite so. If the technique is applied to a group you know or are a member of, you can see the fallacy immediately. All the many reasons why the ‘obvious’ conclusion is wrong immediately spring to mind. It doesn’t follow. I only mention the Catholics to bring all these reasons to your mind.
I call it the ‘Group A Group B Trick’. There’s a Group A you don’t like and want to attack, but the public don’t agree. So you find a Group B that the public rightly reviles, and that overlaps with Group A. You highlight the members of this intersection, emphasising their Group B crimes and their Group A membership. The crimes described stoke public outrage, but it is Group A that the response is aimed at, not Group B.
It can be applied to any Group A – including groups that you or I might be a member of. Radical feminists use it against men, and male culture. BLM race-baiters use it against whites, and white culture. It can, as you see, be used against Catholics. If you’re looking out for it, you can spot examples everywhere.
“There is about the same chance that a Catholic priest is a pedophile as there is that any male westerner is a pedophile.”
Agreed. That’s exactly the right sort of question to ask. And what’s the percentage of Western Muslims identified as paedophiles?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/418475/number-of-perpetrators-in-child-abuse-cases-in-the-us-by-race-ethnicity/
https://fullfact.org/crime/what-do-we-know-about-ethnicity-people-involved-sexual-offences-against-children/
NiV, you’ve quite confused me now.
I had thought that your thesis was that Islam, as a religion, did nothing to encourage or mandate all of the bad acts that we had been discussing – that there was a correlative break – that, even though Muslims were doing all of the terroristic murders and fashioning the Rotherhams of the world, it was not because of their religion. It was, I thought you were arguing, in spite of their religion.
Are you now arguing that Islam isn’t actually statistically over-represented as the religion of choice amongst the terrorists and the organized-child-rapists? Do we take appalled note of Rotherham and the several other Muslim-led municipal child-raping organizations throughout England in the news, but ignore the many organized Jewish or Christian or Zoroastrian child-raping organizations because of personal or media bias, even though they’re (from what you say) statistically just as likely to exist and prosper as the Islamic ones?
I addressed your point concerning Catholic priests because the idea that pedophilism is statistically over-represented among them has been proven to be false. You came back with, ah ha, see!, we assign fault to groups without basis! I call it my “Encourage a Strawman Response Trick”. 🙂
Statistically, it seems that we DO have the basis required to believe that there is a link between Islam and violence and child-raping – but I’m not sure that was the topic of discussion at hand, which was of causative factors within the religion itself. A mention of Catholic priests in this same discussion would seem to be inapt. That’s all I was saying.
“I had thought that your thesis was that Islam, as a religion, did nothing to encourage or mandate all of the bad acts that we had been discussing – that there was a correlative break – that, even though Muslims were doing all of the terroristic murders and fashioning the Rotherhams of the world, it was not because of their religion.”
Regarding Islam:
Terroristic murders – Yes. Orthodox Islam mandates jihad, which inspires terror attacks.
Rotherhams of the world – No. Orthodox Islam forbids sex outside formal marriage/slavery and everything that leads up to it.
Regarding Muslims:
Orthodox Muslims would call for flogging or the death penalty for Rotherham, but support the jihad.
Non-orthodox but decent Muslims would call for jail for Rotherham, and oppose the jihad.
Criminal/sinful Muslims do what they like.
“Are you now arguing that Islam isn’t actually statistically over-represented as the religion of choice amongst the terrorists and the organized-child-rapists?”
Islam is over-represented among terrorists, and there is a clear orthodox teaching that explains this.
Islam is NOT over-represented among child-rapists or rapists generally. It MAY be over-represented among those child-rapists who happen to do it in gangs in certain UK towns. Organised gangs are only a small fraction of child-rape generally, and the sample size is too small and subject to too many biases to come to firm conclusions about the population as a whole. It IS over-represented when it comes to prosecutions involving gang-rape of children. About 75% are Asian. The reasons for that are unclear. It’s against Islamic teaching, so it’s not due to Islam per se, but it may be something else to do with the culture. Or it may be something generic to criminal gangs that form in any poor area, recent immigrants tend to be poor, and it so happens that the poorest areas in Northern UK cities consist largely of Muslim immigrants. Or it may be the result of the English Defence League running a massive publicity campaign about it to prod the authorities into action targeting Muslim communities specifically. Or it may be any of a hundred and one unknown factors that might have contributed. We don’t know. We shouldn’t assume.
Correlation does not imply causation.
However, my main point was that even if Muslims are over-represented in certain crimes, that doesn’t in itself say anything significant about Muslims generally. This is the fallacy I’m trying to explain.
It’s just as true to say that 100% of organised-child-rapists are male. Men are over-represented. We could also say that 100% of them are living in Yorkshire, so people living in Yorkshire are over-represented. We could also say that 100% of them are living in Britain, so British residents are over-represented. What do you think that tells us about the attitudes and behaviour of men generally, or Yorkshire folk generally, or Brits generally? The logical step doesn’t work.
99%+ of Muslims are NOT convicted child-rapists. What does that fact tell us about Muslims in general?
And it bothers me that people are making lots of noise about the minority of cases of child-rape done by large gangs, but are virtually silent about the large majority of cases where it is done by individuals and smaller groups. If the point of all the outrage is that you don’t like children being raped, why isn’t there ten times the outrage here from the same people about all the other child-rapes? Why are people annoyed at the ‘distraction’ when anyone brings the subject of non-Muslim rapes up? It smells like the sole point of the exercise is to have a go at the Muslims, and they don’t make the same fuss about the non-organised majority of child rapes because that’s not useful to the narrative. And if the authorities get the idea that all the complaints and accusations are ethnically motivated, it makes them less willing to believe them and investigate.
There are all sorts of reasons why this sort of short-term tactic is bad strategy. It sets a precedent that can be used against us. It creates a vulnerability in our case that can be used to discredit us. It directs precious crime-fighting resources against the wrong targets. It makes it harder for victims to be believed. It fails in our duty to educate, and enable people to spot these tactics when the other side use them. It leads us to abandon the moral high ground, and our duty to truth, honesty, and integrity.
I’ve got no problem with criticising Islam for what it says, but I strongly believe that such criticisms have to be accurate. If an apologist can pull up a commonly-repeated accusation and demonstrate that it is false, it discredits all the true accusations that others have made. They just say “These are the sort of nonsense false accusations we have to put up with from those right-wing conspiracy theorists,” and the public turn off on anything said against Islam in future. That’s dangerous.
My poem included the line
because exactly the same is true of Nazi Germany. I have seen estimates that by 1945 less than 200,000 (far less than 1% of Germany’s population in WWII) had become legally war criminals (most of them were never punished, of course, though a few tens of thousands were). Later in the poem, I point out that it would similarly be only a subgroup, percentage-wise, of islamic immigrants who might imitate them.
So, “What does that fact tell us about Muslims in general?” It tells us that your particular statement, as phrased, is not in and of itself a statistical bar to Nazi comparisons, let alone the lesser points urged by others in this thread.
Let me go to one of the two sites you linked above.
In the second site, we see this:
“Studies on those involved in grooming children do suggest that a disproportionate number of offenders are categorised as being of Asian ethnicity. The proportion of offenders or suspected offenders varies from study to study, but was anywhere from 27% to 75% in the studies we looked at.” The article then spends pages explaining why the data – from several studies, all of which ended up implicating “Asians” – are lacking.
(I note that “Asian”, in this article, primarily means Pakistani. I understand that this is not the same thing as explicitly saying “Muslim”, but it strikes me as very near. My reading just isn’t uncovering Japanese or Chinese grooming gangs.)
“The article then spends pages explaining why the data – from several studies, all of which ended up implicating “Asians” – are lacking.”
The article first explains where the claims being discussed in the media come from – if you only look at those child-rape cases involving gangs, then they are indeed over-represented. It then spends the second half of the article explaining that if you look at rape, child-rape and child sexual assault as a whole, they are not.
Which is what I said.
and
On prosecutions, there is a big block of “unknown”s, so we can’t tell if the proportions are exactly representative, but they are at least consistent with being so, and we can be sure whites are the majority of cases. On convictions where the data seems better, they are roughly proportional. If you don’t narrow your field of view to the small fraction of child-rapes involving gangs, then the association disappears.
So the question is – why narrow our field of view this way? Do we not care about the other cases of child-rape? (That is to say, the majority of them.) When are we going to get around to castigating the white Christians for all of those?
“I note that “Asian”, in this article, primarily means Pakistani. I understand that this is not the same thing as explicitly saying “Muslim”, but it strikes me as very near.”
They don’t generally collect statistics on religion. They do on ethnicity. So that’s all the data there is. Like I said, on a lot of these questions we simply don’t know. Nobody knows.
I don’t comment here often. I haven’t yet read any of the above comments, but if you want to understand WHY, Donald John Trump won the election in 2016? This is why. We the people of flyover country are sick and tired of the BS coming out of the coasts. People who are beyond contemptible, yet believe they are our betters…