‘The time has come to
talk about Project Hate. Three weeks ago we all woke to the following quote
from a pro-Brexit MP: 'I don't want to stab the Prime Minister in the back – I
want to stab him in the front so I can see the expression on his face.'
One week later Nigel
Farage said that British women risked being raped if we didn't vote for Brexit.
At the same time posters began to circulate from the Vote Leave campaign –
replete with shadowy footsteps – warning of 55 million migrants entering the UK
from Turkey. Last week, as immigration began to slip down the agenda, Boris
Johnson and Michael Gove again demanded Cameron 'veto' Turkish accession.
A day after the
Orlando terrorist attack, a poster was published by Leave.EU urging people to
'act now' before a similar attack occurred here in the UK.
This followed a
warning from Gove that if Turkey were granted access, 'extremists everywhere
will believe that the West is opening its borders to appease an Islamist
government'. They know what they are doing. Farage. Gove. Johnson. They have
always known. That they were opening a Pandora's Box. But it glistened before
them so brightly.
And now we know too.
The signs are everywhere. The plunging pound. The increasing panic on the stock
market, not to mention the ever more strident attacks on the governor of the
Bank of England, and any of the other despised 'experts' who dare to suggest
Brexit represents a leap into the darkness.
In some ways, this is
the most insidious element of all. The bonfire of reason that now underpins the
Leave campaign. Facts, logic, experience – the foundations upon which any
rational debate must rest – are systematically dynamited in pursuit of an
intellectual abstraction known as 'sovereignty'.
Project Hate has
brought us to the brink. Britain – the country we live in this morning – stands
on the edge. This time next week it could all be gone. Our economic security.
Our national security. Our international security. Imagine if it works. The overt
racism. The overt demonisation of refugees. The graphic threats to stab the
Prime Minister in the chest. Imagine if that is what constitutes a successful
British political campaign in 2016.’
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