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Samizdata quote of the day I can think of no easier way to get a cheap cheer than by appealing to the bigotries and credulities of any remaining remainers. How readily they swallowed the conspiracies of dark Russian money; how wide-eyed and trustful they looked to those who fed it to them. Maitlis’ talk of a ‘Tory agent’ within the BBC merely gives a new formulation to that old conspiratorial toxin.
It is now a cliché to say remainers think Brexit voters are thick, but it’s one that Maitlis ministers to well when she snarls about the BBC’s ‘both sides journalism’ (AKA impartial) approach to Brexit coverage. The impression being that Brexit was too dangerous an idea to be exposed to working-class minds unshaped by the civilising effects of higher education. Strange how those who say Brexit voters were fooled by ‘lies on a bus’ so readily accepted and repeated the government’s line of ‘follow the science’.
– James Bembridge
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Not saying there were no issues but the main problem with Brexit is down to one thing only.
For the last 25 years we have had cardboard politicians. They never had to make major decisions because the EU made them all. They just tinkered and played around the edges with irrelevancies and gold plating EU decisions to make it more difficult for us. They were gorging at the trough. Then after Brexit they were thrust into the light and had to make decisions and none of them were up to the task. They were actors whose skillsets were having a nice smile and being able to convince others they knew what they were doing and would serve them well. That worked well when they didn’t have to make decisions.
To cover up their incompetence they blame Brexit implying that everything is out of their control and it is down to our choices, the ignorant brought it on themselves. This is true in as much as now they have the steering wheel nobody is actually using it. They then stick with the EU decisions and try and bring us back onto the EU road, every time, we are six years down the other path and they still cling to the golden days trying to get back.
Everything they touch they screw up. We would have been better off with real cardboard since Brexit.
It is hard to know what to say to people who oppose the independence of their own country – as there is no “common ground” upon which to conduct a conversation.
However, it is no good to support independence in theory whilst just carrying on the policies of the power (in this case the European Union) one’s country was subject to. Prime Minister Alexander “Boris” Johnson never tried to repeal the policies of the European Union – or to repeal any other major thing either, not the Climate Act of 2008, not the Equality Act of 2012, not the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights – which is older than the E.U. but was adopted by it), nothing.
I am told that Mr Johnson wanted to be Prime Minister from a young age – but he never developed a clear policy to roll back the state as Prime Minister, instead he had a vague desire to “help people” – which shows a lack of understanding of the nature of the Sword of State, one can not improve the long term lives of people by the Sword.
Any & all remainiacs who even now – 6 years on & counting – refuse to accept the decision made in June 2016 can go swivel.
I saw the headline earlier today about Maitlis accusing Tory agents in the BBC *(and Kuenssberg denying it) and thought
When your criticism of Brexit depends on insisting that the BBC is a hotbed of right-wing politicos, then your ability to sell your argument to anyone who does not already hold it is perceptibly compromised.
One may justly suspect that the Remoaners (as against the remainers, who voted against leaving but accepted the result) have in fact transferred their loyalty to the elite and against democracy, and so to the EU as its more effective instrument and against the UK as not good enough at disempowering the common herd. No surprise they like the standard EU “vote till you get the right answer” tactic. There is indeed not much common ground when that is the real aim.
However the literal question claimed to be about the supposed advantages of being in an alliance. For comparison, Scotland and England have had a common head of state for over four centuries and a common supreme legislature for over three centuries – long enough (given that both unions were legal, not conquests) to be one country, and far, far longer than the EU has existed. However addressing the absurdity of those who claimed to want independence – so they could immediately give it away to Brussels – was necessary in 2014.
So I’m not disagreeing about the loyalties and motives of many an elitist, but just adding my 0.02p that, rhetorically, sometimes a remoaner
so makes it easier for the public to see just whose independence it is that they hate, but at other times the nominal question must be addressed on its own merits.
In a couple of weeks there is a Rejoiner march organised in London by various groups who have never reconciled themselves to having the hugely expensive obligation to lick Eurocrat shoe-leather torn away from them.
Will the BBC ignore it? Maybe give it a minute or so towards the end of news bulletins? Or will it be the headline item dominating the first ten minutes of the bulletin? Ooooh, it’s so difficult to guess, isn’t it?
And there is a certain irony in that, over six years after the Brexit referendum, the marchers will probably be the very same people who spent the entire period between the Maastricht Treaty and the referendum telling us that the EU didn’t affect the UK much, that it was really no big deal, and that only a handful of semi-demented swivel-eyed obsessives kept endlessly banging on and on and on and on about Europe.
Most people who I cross swords with who are pro eu still don’t admit the EU is little more than a government and membership is political union. I’ve even came across one who thought it’s laws didn’t have to be accepted across its member states.
Another thing to beware of is wandering too far west of your area of non-elite-supplied knowledge.
Oh dear; from the sublime (and Samizdata-quotable), James Bembridge falls so swiftly to the ridiculous. 🙂 He seems to know that it’s insane to imagine the BBC full of Tory agents – but not to have applied that knowledge to what he thinks he knows about the far side of the pond. Can he really think of
from Maitlis’ audience than to mock Brexit?
Fair point, Niall 😀
Just as post-Obama grumblers about lower tax rates were free to continue to pay their taxes at Obama rates during the Trump era (but somehow none of them did), aren’t Remainers perfectly free to continue to obey the myriad decrees pouring out of the offices of faceless eurocrats in Brussels? They can refuse to sell cosmetically non-compliant bananas in their stores if they wish, eh?
Remainers are entertaining and that’s a Brexit bonus.
It’s particularly amusing how they campaigned long and hard against a referendum, telling us that the matter is too complex for people to understand and vote on, then on 24/06/16 they suddenly became enthusiastic referendum fans saying we need as many as required to get the correct result.
Not ordinary referendums though. They’d be people’s votes.
There is a long list of people for whom being run through by the Sword of State would lead to a general improvement for the populace.
But in a sense Boris is like Meghan Markle. Wanting the glamour of being PM without the stress and work required to do the job.
Do I imagine that Liz Truss PM will be any better? Perhaps. I think she can read the political tea leaves a bit better than BoJo and no consequence stuff like either a mass repeal or sunset clause on EEC/EU inherited legislation is a good idea, preferably without the Mayist get-out of re-enacting everything into UK legislation.
As for NetZero – fine. Let’s move to domestic only energy production and only switch to alternate sources when they are price competitive without subsidy and remove all bureaucratic barriers to building more nuclear power stations.
Because, phuq the watermelons.
Liz Truss will be inheriting the worst situation of any Prime Minister in the lifetime of anyone on this site.
And although the origins of this mess go back many decades, Mr Cameron, Mrs May and Mr Johnson deserve a share of responsibility for this terrible situation. “The bureaucracy control the government” is only true to some extent – ministers, especially the Prime Minister, do have some influence and they did not even try to roll back the state. On the contrary they just went with the Collectivi8st flow.
Now the crises is upon us.