Tuesday 3 March 2020

Don't blame voters for Brexit


24-hours after the EU referendum of 24 June 2016, I posted this on my blog:


‘Just over half of those who voted bought manky lies dressed up as a better life after Brexit.
‘They were told they’d get their country back. Their lives would be transformed. More jobs, homes, schools and hospitals. Less migrants. No more rule from Brussels. We’d be British, and Great Britain again.
‘They were duped. They were deceived. They were sold a dodgy time share by cowboy politicians, who made claims and promises they can never deliver because it was all a delusion.
‘Those conned voters, when they realise they’ve paid dearly for faulty merchandise, will need support and direction. The rogue politicians will need to be kicked out.
‘We can do without those politicians. We cannot do without voters.’
Now that Brexit is going ahead, the blame game has started in earnest – even though Brexit for real won’t happen until January next year.
On Valentine’s Day last month, a Brexiter tweeted annoyance that he had to wait in line for almost an hour to enter the Netherlands via Schiphol airport.
Wrote Colin Browning:
“This isn’t the Brexit I voted for”
This immediately caused a furore on Twitter and over 34,000 comments. Remainer, Liz Webster, tweeted back,
‘What Brexit did you vote for? What did it look like? What were you hoping for?
‘And btw, Brexit hasn’t even happened yet, this is just the beginning.’
Of course, Liz is right. The queue into Holland had nothing to do with Brexit, because until 31 December, we still enjoy many EU citizenship rights, including free movement across much of our continent.
But from 1 January next year, there will be queues and delays when visiting or holidaying in EU countries, as we will no longer enjoy the privilege of joining the ‘EU Passports Only’ line.
The fact that a Brexiter, however, can be complaining about the bad effects of Brexit before they’ve even kicked in, tells us something about what’s ahead.
There will be millions of complaints as Leave voters finally realise that what they’ve voted for isn’t what they were promised or wanted.
Pleaded James O’Brien on his LBC radio show:
“Don’t blame Colin.
“Because Colin believed people who now occupy the highest posts in the land. And there is no shame in that.
“Colin was told by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, Daniel Hannan, Nigel Farage, and various other individuals that his life would improve.
“So, he’s right, this was not the Brexit he voted for. Because the Brexit he voted for never existed. It’s NOT his fault.”
James O’B concluded:
“Blame the people who sold it, please, not the people who bought it. That’s going to be my most important message for the next couple of years.
“Don’t laugh at Colin.
“Get angry with the people that Colin, through no fault of his own, believed.”
It’s the same message I posted just a few hours after the referendum result, but now of course, it’s almost four years later.
Today, we are all rapidly realising that politicians from across the political spectrum must own and take full responsibility for the horrific, catastrophic mess that Britain is getting into as a direct result of Brexit.
▪ DAVID CAMERON – the Prime Minister who called for an unnecessary referendum not for his country, but as he confided in Donald Tusk, “only for his party”. He then led an inept, lacklustre referendum campaign that was so appalling that anyone would think he wanted to lose.
▪ BORIS JOHNSON – the Prime-Minister-wannabe who used to be a Remainer, but then at the last minute, switched sides to be the Brexit poster-boy, as he thought that would be his best route into 10 Downing Street (he was right). To win, he lied on a colossal scale – the biggest deceit being his claim that Britain sends £350m a week to the EU, that could instead be spent on the NHS.
▪ MICHAEL GOVE – another PM-wannabe, who also lied to win, telling the nation that EU migration in the next ten years could be as high as 5 million. But it was based on another lie – that Turkey would be joining the EU soon, which Gove must have known was impossible.
▪ NIGEL FARAGE – the on-off-on-off UKIP leader who introduced the nation to raw racism, turning Britons against EU citizens living here who were actually helping our country to thrive.
He called for racial discrimination laws to be scrapped, and said he wanted not just Brexit, but the end of the entire EU. He also conveniently forgot his pre-referendum announcement that if the result was 52%-48% he’d want another vote (but only if the result was 52% for Remain).
▪ THERESA MAY – another former Remainer who changed sides so she could put her career before country. In other words, she wanted to be PM more than she didn’t want Brexit.
She over-interpreted the referendum result, ignoring that almost half of those who voted didn’t want Brexit. Instead, she acted as if Brexit had won 100%; did her best to demean and bypass Parliament to get her way, and used vile, Nazi-type terminology such as, “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.”
▪ JACOB REES-MOGG – the upper-class MP with the honed posh-voice who promoted Brexit pretending it would benefit the poor, whereas in reality, it’s only some of the rich who will prosper. On the one hand he claimed Britain had no real power in the EU, then called for Britain to be “as difficult as possible” if there was a long extension to our membership.
“We could veto any increase in the EU budget,” he claimed and “obstruct” an EU army and “block” Mr Macron’s “integrationist schemes”. ‘Shurely shome mishtake’ as Private Eye would say. How is it possible for a country that has no power in the EU to wield such power in the EU?
Rees-Mogg did, however, say that it could take “50 years” to reap the benefits of Brexit. What a useful get-out clause…
▪ JEREMY CORBYN – the life-long Brexiter who only gave a lacklustre performance during the referendum, with claims that he sought to “delay and water down the Labour remain campaign.” After the referendum, he insisted on a three-line whip to force Labour MPs to back the Brexit bill, with or without amendments.
He threw away the chance for a confirmatory referendum, instead supporting a disastrous snap general election late last year that denied the country a proper say on Brexit, and led to Labour’s worst election defeat since 1935. He also promoted that there could be such as thing as a “credible and jobs-first Brexit” – all bunkum.
▪ DOMINIC CUMMINGS – the unelected Svengali-style string-puller who masterminded the Leave victory all based on lies, mistruths and false promises. He is the man who gave Britain Brexit. His primary insight was to weaponise unregulated social media. Of course, in their day, the Nazis were ahead of the curve in their use of broadcast media, but Cummins didn’t add anything that Goebbels didn’t know.
Today, Cummings wields the most undemocratic power in politics. When he entered 10 Downing Street last July, he announced that from then on, Number 10 would be run like NASA, with him at Mission Control. One government insider told the Financial Times: “He’s all-powerful and he’s running the country.”
………………
Of course, there are many other politicians who must take full responsibility for Brexit when it finally hits the fan from next year onwards. 
  • Remember this: most voters in Britain didn’t vote for Brexit – Leave was only supported by 37% of the electorate. That would not be enough for Leave to have won in most democracies across the world that hold referendums, where at least 50%, and often at least 60%, of all voters would be required before such a big change could happen.
  • What’s more, in December’s general election, most voters chose parties that wanted to offer the nation a new referendum on Brexit, to give us a final say on the Brexit we’d be getting, that nobody had a choice about in the 2016 referendum.
Our system of politics and voting is broken and unfit. It’s allowed a result that the country at large doesn’t actually want.

What a cunning, clever, coup this has been.

  • Watch this 4-minute video in which LBC presenter, James O’Brien, gives a powerful case for blaming the politicians and not the voters.

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Other articles by Jon Danzig:
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