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It looks pretty bleak, doesn't it? The great Brexit lie deliverer, Boris Johnson, is prime minister. The great Brexit lie inventor, Dominic Cummings, is his right-hand man. The cabinet is packed with incompetents like disgraced former International Development Secretary Priti Patel, and Dominic 'I'm not up to the Brexit job' Raab, and the only qualification for membership appears to be having sworn that: 'I will never question anything Boris Johnson says or does.'
But....this surely represents the last throw of the dice for the Brexit-ers. If the UK does not leave the EU on October 31 as Johnson has now repeatedly promised, then surely the Brexit game is up, and we won't be leaving at all, or at the very least, we will be having a People's Vote.
The moment of truth should have come in 2016, and would have done
probably, if Johnson hadn't chickened out of the leadership race. Well now it's here. So are we downhearted? No.
Let's not leave the field to the gloomsters of the Brexit faction: who think Britain isn't up to the challenge of competing with other European countries and that we have to hide behind barriers, who think the contintentals are cleverer than us and will always outmanouevre us if we stay as EU members. That we have to accept being poorer and less influential in the world. Let's fight, fight and fight again to save the UK!
Nigel Farage is complaining the Leave campaign is being victimised over the murder of Jo Cox.
We do not know who killed Jo Cox or why. Quite properly, that can be decided only by a court of law.
We do know that the Brexit leadership has run a deceitful, inflammatory campaign that has unleashed forces that make violence more likely.
When you tell people: 'we want our country back', that can only mean their country has been stolen or taken from them by someone. (The man accused of Jo Cox's murder said: 'Freedom for Britain' when asked his name.)
When, like Michael Gove, you dismiss any informed voices who disagree with you with the words: 'people in this country have had enough of experts', when you denigrate the same people as 'elites', you paint a picture of a Britain where ordinary folk are being betrayed by a corrupt cabal holding power. (This 'elite', of course, does not include Gove, Boris Johnson, Grayling, Priti Patel, who are all themselves cabinet ministers.)
And when you studiously avoid offering any coherent policies on what you will do if Britain actually leaves the EU, but simply demonise immigration from Europe as the cause of anything anyone dislikes, you unleash what Polly Toynbee described (before Jo Cox's murder) as 'furies' which you cannot control.
Today Stephen Kinnock put it like this: 'There are those who say we must
“take our country back”, who castigate those on one side of an argument as an
“elite”, in the pay of an establishment, in it for themselves and detached from
the real world. Those people have to realise that their aggressive words and
dangerous rhetoric have consequences. If you try to light a fuse, you can’t be
surprised when it catches.'
