The foreign politicians and establishment figures who support Remain forget that the British electorate always stands up to bullies...
Why am I considered a bigot or an idiot for wanting Britain to leave the EU?
The foreign politicians and establishment figures who support Remain forget that the British electorate always stands up to bullies
Prime Minister David Cameron with French President Francois Hollande at Chequers Photo: Getty
By Janet Daley
05 Mar 2016
The Telegraph
3785 Comments
What kind of community threatens people who want to leave it? What exactly is this thing that we joined all those years ago – a cult? The argument that we were persuaded into membership of the European Union under false pretences becomes almost irresistibly credible. The Common Market as it was then seems to have transmogrified into the Moonies.
To be quite clear, that outrageous claim the French economy minister Emmanuel Macron threw out last week, that all the migrants now camping in Calais could be pushed into Dover, was utterly gratuitous. As responsible people in the debate pointed out almost immediately, the agreement for allowing would-be immigrants to be processed by UK border officials in France is a bi-lateral arrangement between our two countries which has nothing to do with the EU. It would not expire if we left.
Any suspension of it would be a unilateral act of vindictiveness by the French government as deliberate punishment for our withdrawal. In fact, as the responsible people also noted, such a move would be maniacally counter-productive since transferring the processing to Dover would simply mean that those aspiring migrants who are now stuck in Calais would be refused entry to Britain and sent promptly back, with even more chaotic consequences.
But there was an even nastier sub-text to that histrionic warning. Not only was it designed to be shamelessly scarifying, but it implicitly condoned the most unpleasant form of xenophobic anxiety: “You know what we can do to you if you pull out? We can dump all this scabrous human detritus on your doorstep – and you wouldn’t like that much, would you?”
Hardly surprising that the migrants will endure anything to avoid having to stay in France if this is the official attitude toward them. Indeed, the first thought that came into my head when I heard of Mr Macron’s delightful remarks was that if those unhappy hordes were to be sent to Dover they would be handled with more decency and competence than they have been at Calais.
Francois Hollande (R) speaking with Emmanuel Macron Photo: AFP/GETTY
And, I suspect, that would have been the nature of much British reaction: by playing on what they confidently expected to be fear and loathing of migrants, the EU bully-boys risked inciting fear and loathing of themselves. I don’t know about you (well actually, maybe I do) but I find myself wondering what sort of people we are in league with here. Are they prepared to say absolutely anything – however hysterical or unfounded – to get the result they want?
The spirit of “communitaire” – of social solidarity – was supposed to be about mutual support between states and the institutionalising of decency and fairness across the populations of Europe who had fought each other to a bloody standstill twice in the last century. How is that to be reconciled with the unforgiving vengeance handed out after any member’s resistance to central diktats – let alone conscientious doubts about whether a country’s membership is in its own best interests?
If this project was constructed to heal wounds and dissolve historic resentments, it seems to be going about it in a very odd way. But perhaps this is all just a phenomenally misjudged clash of political cultures.
The original European project was designed, to put it bluntly, by and for nation states which had disgraced themselves in the 20th century. Some of them had made criminal use of the democratic process to put demagogues and murderous tyrants in power. The great irony is that it is precisely these countries that should be most aware of the danger of promulgating fear and loathing: once you set these forces alight, you have very little control over where they lead.
But, needless to say, Britain’s historical experience is rather different. It has no reason to doubt either the judgment or the courage of its own people whose most remarkable national characteristic is their willingness to stand up to bullies. So when the EU message appears to be an orchestrated attempt to coerce – or frighten – the British electorate, why should anyone be surprised when it has the opposite effect? That brings us to the question of who is doing the orchestrating. The prevailing wisdom – which is to say, the almost universal assumption – is that Downing Street is behind it.
This theory is based on the remarkable coincidences of, say, a visitation by the Prime Minister to Francois Hollande in France or the Chancellor to a G20 summit, miraculously producing startlingly similar warnings – sometimes from people you’ve never heard of – about the very terrible (unspecified) consequences of a referendum vote for Leave.
Such coincidences do not escape the notice of those who are paying attention (who are the ones most likely to vote) and they lead to two possible conclusions: one is that this is a conspiracy of the elites who hold the concerns of ordinary people in contempt, and the other that it is a calculated deception devised by David Cameron with which his EU colleagues are co-operating.
In short, if Downing Street solicited the Macron intervention and the more amorphous Hollande warning that followed, then this is an unedifying cabal with its own self-serving motives. If it didn’t, then we are in a club that has some very unscrupulous members who are prepared to exploit prejudice and anxiety for the sake of an immediate goal.
Both of these possibilities rely on the assumption that the public is so inclined towards Leave that it will not be persuaded to vote Remain without being scared out of its wits. Again, there are two possible reasons for this assumption: Mr Cameron and his EU friends may have concluded that anti-EU feeling is so irrational that reasoned argument and the setting out of a positive case will never be enough, or there is, in fact, no overwhelming, completely convincing, evidence-based case for staying in.
Maybe that is the answer to this whole perplexing cycle of events. The best way to avoid losing an argument is not to engage in it at all: just threaten and alarm those who might be inclined to listen to the other side. Could this be why the Remain campaign has become so vicious and personal with so little apparent provocation from its opponents? Might it be relentlessly negative because it has so little to offer that is actually positive?
Its more moderate spokesmen do not tell ugly horror stories about hordes of migrants arriving in Kent but even they murmur fearfully of “uncertainty” and the amorphous danger of economic instability. Sajid Javid who seemed last week to be trying to restore his reputation as a sound Eurosceptic, said that uncertainty “was the enemy of jobs and growth” – which in the very short-term it may be. Markets particularly do not like uncertainty of any kind and will plummet precipitously at the mere suggestion of something unexpected – only to recover as soon as the momentary fright has passed.
But what Mr Javid calls “uncertainty” goes by other names: flexibility, fluidity, innovation. The capacity to adapt to unpredictable circumstances is what makes free economies strong and productive. It is essential to long-term growth and mass prosperity. Certainly nobody wants to face an immediate future of insecurity but how does remaining in the EU address that worry: by permitting the importation of infinite cheap labour with all the pressures on housing, schools and NHS resources that that involves? By supporting the interests of big corporations to the detriment of small entrepreneurial businesses which actually create more local jobs?
If there is a reasonable, substantial case to be made for Remain, then I would, seriously, like to hear it. In the meantime, I will continue – along with many of you – to be enraged by people who think that I must be a bigot or an idiot to want to vote for Leave.
Why am I considered a bigot or an idiot for wanting Britain to leave the EU? - Telegraph
Why am I considered a bigot or an idiot for wanting Britain to leave the EU?
The foreign politicians and establishment figures who support Remain forget that the British electorate always stands up to bullies
Prime Minister David Cameron with French President Francois Hollande at Chequers Photo: Getty
By Janet Daley
05 Mar 2016
The Telegraph
What kind of community threatens people who want to leave it? What exactly is this thing that we joined all those years ago – a cult? The argument that we were persuaded into membership of the European Union under false pretences becomes almost irresistibly credible. The Common Market as it was then seems to have transmogrified into the Moonies.
To be quite clear, that outrageous claim the French economy minister Emmanuel Macron threw out last week, that all the migrants now camping in Calais could be pushed into Dover, was utterly gratuitous. As responsible people in the debate pointed out almost immediately, the agreement for allowing would-be immigrants to be processed by UK border officials in France is a bi-lateral arrangement between our two countries which has nothing to do with the EU. It would not expire if we left.
Any suspension of it would be a unilateral act of vindictiveness by the French government as deliberate punishment for our withdrawal. In fact, as the responsible people also noted, such a move would be maniacally counter-productive since transferring the processing to Dover would simply mean that those aspiring migrants who are now stuck in Calais would be refused entry to Britain and sent promptly back, with even more chaotic consequences.
But there was an even nastier sub-text to that histrionic warning. Not only was it designed to be shamelessly scarifying, but it implicitly condoned the most unpleasant form of xenophobic anxiety: “You know what we can do to you if you pull out? We can dump all this scabrous human detritus on your doorstep – and you wouldn’t like that much, would you?”
Hardly surprising that the migrants will endure anything to avoid having to stay in France if this is the official attitude toward them. Indeed, the first thought that came into my head when I heard of Mr Macron’s delightful remarks was that if those unhappy hordes were to be sent to Dover they would be handled with more decency and competence than they have been at Calais.
Francois Hollande (R) speaking with Emmanuel Macron Photo: AFP/GETTY
And, I suspect, that would have been the nature of much British reaction: by playing on what they confidently expected to be fear and loathing of migrants, the EU bully-boys risked inciting fear and loathing of themselves. I don’t know about you (well actually, maybe I do) but I find myself wondering what sort of people we are in league with here. Are they prepared to say absolutely anything – however hysterical or unfounded – to get the result they want?
The spirit of “communitaire” – of social solidarity – was supposed to be about mutual support between states and the institutionalising of decency and fairness across the populations of Europe who had fought each other to a bloody standstill twice in the last century. How is that to be reconciled with the unforgiving vengeance handed out after any member’s resistance to central diktats – let alone conscientious doubts about whether a country’s membership is in its own best interests?
If this project was constructed to heal wounds and dissolve historic resentments, it seems to be going about it in a very odd way. But perhaps this is all just a phenomenally misjudged clash of political cultures.
The original European project was designed, to put it bluntly, by and for nation states which had disgraced themselves in the 20th century. Some of them had made criminal use of the democratic process to put demagogues and murderous tyrants in power. The great irony is that it is precisely these countries that should be most aware of the danger of promulgating fear and loathing: once you set these forces alight, you have very little control over where they lead.
But, needless to say, Britain’s historical experience is rather different. It has no reason to doubt either the judgment or the courage of its own people whose most remarkable national characteristic is their willingness to stand up to bullies. So when the EU message appears to be an orchestrated attempt to coerce – or frighten – the British electorate, why should anyone be surprised when it has the opposite effect? That brings us to the question of who is doing the orchestrating. The prevailing wisdom – which is to say, the almost universal assumption – is that Downing Street is behind it.
This theory is based on the remarkable coincidences of, say, a visitation by the Prime Minister to Francois Hollande in France or the Chancellor to a G20 summit, miraculously producing startlingly similar warnings – sometimes from people you’ve never heard of – about the very terrible (unspecified) consequences of a referendum vote for Leave.
Such coincidences do not escape the notice of those who are paying attention (who are the ones most likely to vote) and they lead to two possible conclusions: one is that this is a conspiracy of the elites who hold the concerns of ordinary people in contempt, and the other that it is a calculated deception devised by David Cameron with which his EU colleagues are co-operating.
In short, if Downing Street solicited the Macron intervention and the more amorphous Hollande warning that followed, then this is an unedifying cabal with its own self-serving motives. If it didn’t, then we are in a club that has some very unscrupulous members who are prepared to exploit prejudice and anxiety for the sake of an immediate goal.
Both of these possibilities rely on the assumption that the public is so inclined towards Leave that it will not be persuaded to vote Remain without being scared out of its wits. Again, there are two possible reasons for this assumption: Mr Cameron and his EU friends may have concluded that anti-EU feeling is so irrational that reasoned argument and the setting out of a positive case will never be enough, or there is, in fact, no overwhelming, completely convincing, evidence-based case for staying in.
Maybe that is the answer to this whole perplexing cycle of events. The best way to avoid losing an argument is not to engage in it at all: just threaten and alarm those who might be inclined to listen to the other side. Could this be why the Remain campaign has become so vicious and personal with so little apparent provocation from its opponents? Might it be relentlessly negative because it has so little to offer that is actually positive?
Its more moderate spokesmen do not tell ugly horror stories about hordes of migrants arriving in Kent but even they murmur fearfully of “uncertainty” and the amorphous danger of economic instability. Sajid Javid who seemed last week to be trying to restore his reputation as a sound Eurosceptic, said that uncertainty “was the enemy of jobs and growth” – which in the very short-term it may be. Markets particularly do not like uncertainty of any kind and will plummet precipitously at the mere suggestion of something unexpected – only to recover as soon as the momentary fright has passed.
But what Mr Javid calls “uncertainty” goes by other names: flexibility, fluidity, innovation. The capacity to adapt to unpredictable circumstances is what makes free economies strong and productive. It is essential to long-term growth and mass prosperity. Certainly nobody wants to face an immediate future of insecurity but how does remaining in the EU address that worry: by permitting the importation of infinite cheap labour with all the pressures on housing, schools and NHS resources that that involves? By supporting the interests of big corporations to the detriment of small entrepreneurial businesses which actually create more local jobs?
If there is a reasonable, substantial case to be made for Remain, then I would, seriously, like to hear it. In the meantime, I will continue – along with many of you – to be enraged by people who think that I must be a bigot or an idiot to want to vote for Leave.
Why am I considered a bigot or an idiot for wanting Britain to leave the EU? - Telegraph
