How inconvenient it was for the anti-Brexit march on Parliament that a policeman guarding the home of British democracy should have been murdered there only days before their planned mass demonstration.
The Metropolitan Police had indicated to the organisers that it would place further strain on the force’s stretched resources as they dealt with the aftermath of the terrorist attack there last Wednesday.
But Unite for Europe pressed ahead with its march, which finished just yards from where Khalid Masood butchered PC Keith Palmer....
DOMINIC LAWSON: Heseltine, Hitler and the most insidious anti-Brexit insult of all
By Dominic Lawson for the Daily Mail
27 March 2017
How inconvenient it was for the anti-Brexit march on Parliament that a policeman guarding the home of British democracy should have been murdered there only days before their planned mass demonstration.
The Metropolitan Police had indicated to the organisers that it would place further strain on the force’s stretched resources as they dealt with the aftermath of the terrorist attack there last Wednesday.
But Unite for Europe pressed ahead with its march, which finished just yards from where Khalid Masood butchered PC Keith Palmer.
Among the posters brandished near the improvised shrine of flowers marking where the policeman fell was one portraying Theresa May stark naked, with the blond-thatched head of Boris Johnson as her genitalia.
Unite for Europe pressed ahead with its march on Saturday despite police saying it would place further strain on resources following Wednesday's terrorist attack
Admittedly, very few of the banners carried by the Unite for Europe marchers were as odious. Most carried variations on the same theme: ‘No to Brexit’, ‘Don’t Quit the EU’ and ‘May, May, let us stay’.
But these slogans give the lie to the claim by the politicians who spoke at the rally: the lie being that they ‘accept the verdict of the British people’ in the plebiscite of June 23. It is all about not accepting that verdict.
Tasteless
Some last-ditchers at Westminster are honest about it. The Labour MP and former minister David Lammy, who attended the march, had earlier called on Parliament to ‘stop this madness’ and reject the referendum result.
Lammy is the twit who, on the BBC during the run-up to the referendum, claimed that in World War II, the one million Indians who gave their lives had been fighting for ‘the European Project’.
An ignorant reference to the war against the Nazis is now standard among those most unreconciled to the fact that on Wednesday the Prime Minister is to send a letter to Brussels invoking Article 50, triggering the formal negotiations of our departure from the EU.
Sheer tastelessness: Michael Heseltine - Defence Secretary under Thatcher and Deputy Prime Minister under Major - cited the Nazis in his fury at the PM’s decision to honour the result of the referendum during an interview last week
Yesterday’s Observer newspaper, in a leading article as hysterical as it was tendentious, described these negotiations as ‘the peacetime equivalent of the ignominious retreat from Dunkirk... Theresa May, figuratively waving the cross of St George atop the white cliffs of Dover like a tone-deaf parody of Vera Lynn’. In fact, the Prime Minister has been anything but warlike in her dealings with the EU, and has studiously eschewed the sort of bellicose rhetoric which The Observer gratuitously invokes.
But even those editorialists, intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity, do not approach Michael Heseltine for sheer tastelessness. In an interview last week, the former deputy prime minister also cited the Nazis in his fury at the PM’s decision to honour the result of the referendum:
‘For someone like myself, it was 1933, the year of my birth, that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. He unleashed the most horrendous war. This country played a unique role in securing his defeat. So Germany lost the war. We’ve just handed them the opportunity to win the peace. I find that quite unacceptable.’
Lord Heseltine’s carefully worded reference to the ‘democratic election’ of Hitler is simultaneously offensive and insidious.
It is offensive in linking the democratic vote for Brexit with the German people’s vote for Hitler in the March 1933 federal election. It is insidious in implying that our 2016 vote was tainted: a disgusting attempt to discredit a free choice of the British people.
In fact, that election in March 1933 (in which Hitler’s NSDAP gained 43.91 per cent of the votes cast) took place just days after the Reichstag fire, when Nazi stormtroopers unleashed violent intimidation against all their opponents from other political parties. Voting at polling stations was ‘monitored’ by Nazi organisations including the fearsome SS.
To link last year’s British referendum campaign with this brutal travesty of democracy demeans Lord Heseltine much more than it does those he aims to discredit.
He must be sore after Theresa May sacked him from his government advisory role, following his vote against the Government’s Brexit Bill in the House of Lords, but this outburst only proves she was right to do so.
Banners
David Lammy (whose own grasp of history was immortalised on Celebrity Mastermind in 2009, when he volunteered that the king who succeeded Henry VIII was ‘Henry VII’) also used the anti-Brexit rally to declare: ‘We are living in a dictatorship.’ Actually, Mr Lammy, in real dictatorships people such as you would not be able to march on the seat of government amid banners portraying indecent images of the leader of the ruling party.
David Lammy used the anti-Brexit rally to say 'we are living in a dictatorship' while Tim Farron said marchers were there to show solidarity with Leave voters
And, when it comes to fiddling with the most basic facts, why did Unite for Europe put out a press release at 21.17 on the day of the demonstration, saying its march attracted 100,000 people — then issue a second release a minute later, claiming it was 150,000?
For the record, the police estimate that about 25,000 were on the march. Given that more than 16 million voted for Remain, this suggests the overwhelming majority of those people are not so unreconciled to the outcome as the likes of Heseltine and Lammy.
Perhaps one reason is that those Remain voters — let alone the 17.4 million Leave voters — do not buy the argument, advanced by speakers at the rally, that it was never made clear Brexit would involve leaving the EU’s single market.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, told the marchers, with breathtaking cheek: ‘We are here to show solidarity and respect for those who voted Leave. We do not believe they wanted this. Theresa May does not speak for the 52 per cent. She barely speaks for 5 per cent.’
This ‘5 per cent’ figure demonstrates that Farron’s only source of knowledge is his own imagination. There has been no statistically significant loss of support for Brexit since Mrs May outlined her plans to leave both the EU’s single market and its customs union.
Retort
Yesterday, interviewed by Sky’s Sophy Ridge, Farron’s predecessor Nick Clegg repeated (once again) the canard that ‘no one’ realised Brexit would mean leaving the single market. He brushed aside Ms Ridge’s accurate retort that this was exactly what David Cameron and George Osborne had said would happen if Vote Leave won. ‘They were on the other side,’ he sniffed.
Nick Clegg told Sky's Sophy Ridge that 'no one' realised that Brexit would mean leaving the single market
Yet the pre-eminent member of Vote Leave in the Cabinet, Michael Gove, made this clear during the campaign —so clear that last May the Financial Times splashed on its front page with ‘Michael Gove says leaving EU would mean quitting single market’. Almost all other leading members of the Leave campaign followed this line.
The reason for this was obvious. At the heart of the Vote Leave campaign was a pledge to end free movement from the EU into the UK. Yet the rules of the single market are that all members must allow such free movement. It is one of the founding principles, theological in its force. So if we were to remain members of the single market, we would have to continue with unchecked migration from the other 27 members.
There was never a chance that the EU would allow us the one without the other. Such a negotiation would end as soon as it began. That is why May is instead seeking a bilateral free trade agreement with Brussels, akin to that negotiated between the EU and Canada.
Even a majority of those who voted Remain seem to sympathise with this approach. A poll published last week by the National Centre for Social Research found that not only did 86 per cent of Leave voters think that ‘prospective EU migrants should have to go through the same hoops as non-EU migrants’, but 54 per cent of Remain voters agreed with this proposition, too.
No wonder the turnout at last weekend’s anti-Brexit rally was a fraction of what its organisers had hoped or claimed.
The Metropolitan Police had indicated to the organisers that it would place further strain on the force’s stretched resources as they dealt with the aftermath of the terrorist attack there last Wednesday.
But Unite for Europe pressed ahead with its march, which finished just yards from where Khalid Masood butchered PC Keith Palmer....
DOMINIC LAWSON: Heseltine, Hitler and the most insidious anti-Brexit insult of all
By Dominic Lawson for the Daily Mail
27 March 2017
How inconvenient it was for the anti-Brexit march on Parliament that a policeman guarding the home of British democracy should have been murdered there only days before their planned mass demonstration.
The Metropolitan Police had indicated to the organisers that it would place further strain on the force’s stretched resources as they dealt with the aftermath of the terrorist attack there last Wednesday.
But Unite for Europe pressed ahead with its march, which finished just yards from where Khalid Masood butchered PC Keith Palmer.
Among the posters brandished near the improvised shrine of flowers marking where the policeman fell was one portraying Theresa May stark naked, with the blond-thatched head of Boris Johnson as her genitalia.
Unite for Europe pressed ahead with its march on Saturday despite police saying it would place further strain on resources following Wednesday's terrorist attack
Admittedly, very few of the banners carried by the Unite for Europe marchers were as odious. Most carried variations on the same theme: ‘No to Brexit’, ‘Don’t Quit the EU’ and ‘May, May, let us stay’.
But these slogans give the lie to the claim by the politicians who spoke at the rally: the lie being that they ‘accept the verdict of the British people’ in the plebiscite of June 23. It is all about not accepting that verdict.
Tasteless
Some last-ditchers at Westminster are honest about it. The Labour MP and former minister David Lammy, who attended the march, had earlier called on Parliament to ‘stop this madness’ and reject the referendum result.
Lammy is the twit who, on the BBC during the run-up to the referendum, claimed that in World War II, the one million Indians who gave their lives had been fighting for ‘the European Project’.
An ignorant reference to the war against the Nazis is now standard among those most unreconciled to the fact that on Wednesday the Prime Minister is to send a letter to Brussels invoking Article 50, triggering the formal negotiations of our departure from the EU.
Sheer tastelessness: Michael Heseltine - Defence Secretary under Thatcher and Deputy Prime Minister under Major - cited the Nazis in his fury at the PM’s decision to honour the result of the referendum during an interview last week
Yesterday’s Observer newspaper, in a leading article as hysterical as it was tendentious, described these negotiations as ‘the peacetime equivalent of the ignominious retreat from Dunkirk... Theresa May, figuratively waving the cross of St George atop the white cliffs of Dover like a tone-deaf parody of Vera Lynn’. In fact, the Prime Minister has been anything but warlike in her dealings with the EU, and has studiously eschewed the sort of bellicose rhetoric which The Observer gratuitously invokes.
But even those editorialists, intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity, do not approach Michael Heseltine for sheer tastelessness. In an interview last week, the former deputy prime minister also cited the Nazis in his fury at the PM’s decision to honour the result of the referendum:
‘For someone like myself, it was 1933, the year of my birth, that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. He unleashed the most horrendous war. This country played a unique role in securing his defeat. So Germany lost the war. We’ve just handed them the opportunity to win the peace. I find that quite unacceptable.’
Lord Heseltine’s carefully worded reference to the ‘democratic election’ of Hitler is simultaneously offensive and insidious.
It is offensive in linking the democratic vote for Brexit with the German people’s vote for Hitler in the March 1933 federal election. It is insidious in implying that our 2016 vote was tainted: a disgusting attempt to discredit a free choice of the British people.
In fact, that election in March 1933 (in which Hitler’s NSDAP gained 43.91 per cent of the votes cast) took place just days after the Reichstag fire, when Nazi stormtroopers unleashed violent intimidation against all their opponents from other political parties. Voting at polling stations was ‘monitored’ by Nazi organisations including the fearsome SS.
To link last year’s British referendum campaign with this brutal travesty of democracy demeans Lord Heseltine much more than it does those he aims to discredit.
He must be sore after Theresa May sacked him from his government advisory role, following his vote against the Government’s Brexit Bill in the House of Lords, but this outburst only proves she was right to do so.
Banners
David Lammy (whose own grasp of history was immortalised on Celebrity Mastermind in 2009, when he volunteered that the king who succeeded Henry VIII was ‘Henry VII’) also used the anti-Brexit rally to declare: ‘We are living in a dictatorship.’ Actually, Mr Lammy, in real dictatorships people such as you would not be able to march on the seat of government amid banners portraying indecent images of the leader of the ruling party.
David Lammy used the anti-Brexit rally to say 'we are living in a dictatorship' while Tim Farron said marchers were there to show solidarity with Leave voters
And, when it comes to fiddling with the most basic facts, why did Unite for Europe put out a press release at 21.17 on the day of the demonstration, saying its march attracted 100,000 people — then issue a second release a minute later, claiming it was 150,000?
For the record, the police estimate that about 25,000 were on the march. Given that more than 16 million voted for Remain, this suggests the overwhelming majority of those people are not so unreconciled to the outcome as the likes of Heseltine and Lammy.
Perhaps one reason is that those Remain voters — let alone the 17.4 million Leave voters — do not buy the argument, advanced by speakers at the rally, that it was never made clear Brexit would involve leaving the EU’s single market.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, told the marchers, with breathtaking cheek: ‘We are here to show solidarity and respect for those who voted Leave. We do not believe they wanted this. Theresa May does not speak for the 52 per cent. She barely speaks for 5 per cent.’
This ‘5 per cent’ figure demonstrates that Farron’s only source of knowledge is his own imagination. There has been no statistically significant loss of support for Brexit since Mrs May outlined her plans to leave both the EU’s single market and its customs union.
Retort
Yesterday, interviewed by Sky’s Sophy Ridge, Farron’s predecessor Nick Clegg repeated (once again) the canard that ‘no one’ realised Brexit would mean leaving the single market. He brushed aside Ms Ridge’s accurate retort that this was exactly what David Cameron and George Osborne had said would happen if Vote Leave won. ‘They were on the other side,’ he sniffed.
Nick Clegg told Sky's Sophy Ridge that 'no one' realised that Brexit would mean leaving the single market
Yet the pre-eminent member of Vote Leave in the Cabinet, Michael Gove, made this clear during the campaign —so clear that last May the Financial Times splashed on its front page with ‘Michael Gove says leaving EU would mean quitting single market’. Almost all other leading members of the Leave campaign followed this line.
The reason for this was obvious. At the heart of the Vote Leave campaign was a pledge to end free movement from the EU into the UK. Yet the rules of the single market are that all members must allow such free movement. It is one of the founding principles, theological in its force. So if we were to remain members of the single market, we would have to continue with unchecked migration from the other 27 members.
There was never a chance that the EU would allow us the one without the other. Such a negotiation would end as soon as it began. That is why May is instead seeking a bilateral free trade agreement with Brussels, akin to that negotiated between the EU and Canada.
Even a majority of those who voted Remain seem to sympathise with this approach. A poll published last week by the National Centre for Social Research found that not only did 86 per cent of Leave voters think that ‘prospective EU migrants should have to go through the same hoops as non-EU migrants’, but 54 per cent of Remain voters agreed with this proposition, too.
No wonder the turnout at last weekend’s anti-Brexit rally was a fraction of what its organisers had hoped or claimed.
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