Once upon a time

Once upon a time......

Once upon a time, back in the 1970's, a Referendum was held in the UK to confirm our joining of the EU. At that time, although many visions of a united Europe were being mooted, the EU was basically a trading organisation only, a "single market and customs union" designed for ease of trading between the many sovereign nations of Europe.

From the very start the result of this Referendum was deplored and resisted by those who became known as "euro-sceptics", these predominately within the folds of the Conservative Party (aka "Tories) As the UK press is also predominately supporters of the Tories, and largely euro-sceptic in orientation, the UK papers became a seedbed of anti-EU propaganda, where often failure of policy, political and social, was put down to the UK's membership of the EU. Closer inspection would, could and does reveal that much failure was purely the consequence of successive UK Governments, both Tory and Labour. Alas, the constant jeering at non-existent rules such as the need to produce straight bananas became a game played by  those who in effect were sceptical, even suspicious, of anything foreign, of anything at all originating across the channel. Having "beaten the Germans twice" such people were disinclined to "obey" rules and regulations not passed by a totally sovereign UK Government.

Enough of this, enough.......

Cutting a long story short, the disgruntlement of the euro-sceptics rumbled on, the press continued its assault upon the EU at every opportunity, more so at what they saw as more and more encroachment of the EU vision upon the UK's total self-determination, going now beyond mere trading, the Single Market and the tariff free zone.

Nevertheless, the UK, being relatively strong and sovereign, being more than capable of fighting its own corner (as were the Danes for instance) negotiated various "opt out" clauses and "vetos" of such rules and regulations as were deemed unacceptable. Such though would never be enough to satisfy the euro-sceptics.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, euro-sceptic, known for his family receiving £7.5 million of tax payers money to renovate his mother-in-laws ancestral home of 365 bedrooms, and also voting for the bedroom tax that penalises those with an unused second bedroom. Possible front-runner in any Tory leadership contest.

 Now we must enter muddier waters, the question of immigration, and the "freedom of movement" within the EU. Despite statistics that reveal that overall EU nationals in the UK contribute a net amount to the economy, reveal again that they are 13% less likely to be on benefits than a UK born citizen, despite the fact that they are predominately young, fit and healthy, sadly the ingrained suspicion of all things foreign in many born in the UK has created a situation where blaming the EU has become entangled with and even morphed into blaming immigrants for virtually all things, from the strain on our NHS to the lack of affordable housing.

The blame game

These issues, of course, are caused by a whole variety of things, most totally within the hands and decision making and the (non)equitable distribution of tax revenues across our entire society by successive UK Governments. They have failed, and over the past ten years, under Tory "austerity"  - a political and economic choice, never a necessity - such issues have been exacerbated by constant cuts in funding, as well as the out-sourcing of various tasks to private enterprise which would surely have been better left under state control.

Obviously the Tories were unwilling to allow any of this to be laid down at their door, while the euro-sceptic wing of the Party were growing ever greater in their agitation and disruption of the smooth running of the Party Machine. To put the divisions to rest, party leader and UK PM Dave Cameron offered a Referendum on UK membership of the EU to placate the euro-sceptic wing, believing that the result for Remain was "in the bag".

The rest, as they say, is history, with Leave achieving an unlikely and largely unexpected victory. During the referendum campaign it was often implied that "all things would be on the table" should Leave gain victory. A possible return to being just members of the Single Market/Customs Union (like Norway) or other options, all possibly to be part of any deal negotiated. 

However, once victory was gained the mantra of "Leave MEANS Leave" was given air for the very first time, driven by the Tory Right who now saw their chance to hijack the vote for their own vision of a sovereign UK, making its own rules, and regaining control of its borders. And, obviously, a UK of de-regulation, low wages and low taxes. All now "the will of the people" where those who opposed this were portrayed as "anti democratic", the Press even using words such as "traitors" and "enemies of the people" to those who in any way stood in its path.

Just 37% of the total electorate were now the entire People who could not be denied. UK democracy, a product of 800 years of organic growth,  of a great Constitution ( however "unwritten" ) now stood or fell according to whether or not a Referendum Result was upheld - a Referendum of proven lies, misinformation and of a Leave Campaign that has since been fined  for breaking electoral rules -  rules explicitly designed by our Parliament to "ensure fairness, confidence and legitimacy at an electoral event".

A brief pictorial representation of the "Greatest Democratic Exercise in UK History"

The astonishing thing about the Leave victory was that just after the result ( Dave "I will stay whatever the result" Cameron having resigned ) all the prominent  Leave campaigners never sought the top job -  in which they could have led the negotiations - but instead withdrew and allowed a Remain voter, Theresa May, to become the new PM.

 Soon after losing her overall majority in an ill-called General Election (against much advice), soon after Triggering Article 50 ( against much advice, as she then actually had no plan ) Mrs May began negotiations in earnest. Again she rejected the advice of many to seek a cross party consensus and chose instead to tread her own path, her eye apparently very much on the so called ERG (European Research Group ) wing of her party, the ardent euro-sceptics and Leave MEANS Leave advocates.

The ERG group outline their demands

After almost two years of negotiations "The Deal" surfaced, immediately called "a turd" and a "suicide vest wrapped around us to be detonated by Brussels" by prominent Brexiteers, and much else by others who recognised immediately, if for totally diverse reasons and purposes, that "The Deal" was in fact the worst of all worlds and for any pro-EU Remainer, far worse than the deal we already have as EU members and which has been enjoyed for over 40 years, supporting in the main prosperity and economic growth.

It has now failed for the third time to be passed by the UK parliament, the votes bringing in there wake what is now being seen as the greatest constitutional crisis for the past 300 years. And alas, I would judge, the UK becoming the laughing stock of the world.

Nigel Farage, "man of the people" who when addressing those in Parliament Square of the "Leave MEANS Leave" persuasion, told them that they were brave to come into "enemy territory".

As I write, protesters are in Parliament Square, led by Nigel Farage and other Brexiteers (plus Tommy Robinson, of whom I will say nothing) crying out that democracy has been betrayed, democracy is dead (a large cardboard coffin is being wheeled about) and other slogans and soundbites. Which seems, in our now divided land, par for the course. The divisions within one Party have now been spread, like a virulent disease, to all corners of our great country. I could genuinely weep.

Here is not the place to argue the Remain case. I will simply say that in my opinion, given all likely scenarios, prospects and possibilities, the actual deal and relationship we now have with the EU is the best possible in the real, practical world. Total national sovereignty and "control of our borders" are chimeras  - the first because of the realities of our inter-connected world where totally unilateral decisions are impossible (total "sovereignty" must always be prepared to yield to a vision of the unity of nations seeking communion with each other for the common good of all)  the second because for all intents and purposes, by explicit EU directives, we already have all the control we need (e.g we can refuse entry to any EU national posing a "threat to public policy", and we can also deport any EU National deemed to be any such threat - over 5000 being deported in 2017) 

There is now no ideal solution to the situation in the UK. Polarity and division are rife. On a broader stage, taking a wider view, this can be attributed to the realities of our "post truth world". Each of us is born into a particular culture and grow into a particular world view. Unless we seek deeply, we simply find ourselves with an instinctive view on many things, a view we have never explicitly chosen as such, but a view we nevertheless then  consolidate by shopping around for whatever facts support it, discarding all others. This is then our "self" which is so precious to us, a contingent shallow self with no grounding in any reality worth the name. Born into another culture at another time, our "self" would have been different. Such then is life, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Obviously, it need not be like that. I am considering full retirement into what I term the Pure Land (in my own rather whimsical way) To be honest, the ways of this world demand too high a price on me to contest for much longer. I am at heart a vulnerable person, in no way a revolutionary. At almost 70 years of age, a quieter and more contemplative life calls.

Related:- Satirist and political pundit Jonathan Pie has his say on Brexit seven days before the "leaving" date of 29/03/19

And from the "New Statesman" just after the Referendum result, under a headline that stated that Boris Johnson (arch brexiteer and yet another front runner for the next leader of the Tory Party and possibly PM of Great Britain ) "peddled absurd EU myths" and that then "our disgraceful press followed his lead", this article followed:-

Press coverage of the referendum was designed to inflame xenophobia and our worst “Little 

England” instincts. The pound plummeted, the Prime Minister resigned, stock markets plunged and the UK began to unravel, as did the post-1945 world order. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen and Isis were celebrating the Brexit vote but that didn’t stop our disgraceful national press from crowing. “Take a bow, Britain!” the Daily Mail declared. “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, ADIEU”, the Sun quipped in a headline. The Daily Telegraph proclaimed the “birth of a new Britain”.

They and others – the Express, the Morning Star, several of the Sunday papers – were claiming victory: a victory achieved after a relentless campaign of lies and Soviet-style propaganda about the European Union that long pre-dated the referendum. Indeed, it was a campaign that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Boris Johnson, who had been fired by the Times for making up a quotation, was the Telegraph’s correspondent in Brussels.

Johnson did not invent Euroscepticism but he took it to new levels. A brilliant caricaturist, he made his name by mocking, lampooning and ridiculing the EU. He wrote stories headlined “Brussels recruits sniffers to ensure that Euro-manure smells the same”, “Threat to British pink sausages” and “Snails are fish, says EU”. He wrote about plans to standardise condom sizes and ban prawn cocktail flavour crisps. He set up Jacques Delors, who was then the European Commission president, as a bogeyman and claimed credit for persuading Denmark to reject the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 with a Sunday Telegraph splash – “Delors plan to rule Europe” – that was seized on by the Nej campaign.

To Johnson, it was all a bit of a jape. “[I] was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive ­effect on the Tory party – and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power,” he told the BBC years later.

That many of Johnson’s stories bore scant relation to the truth did not matter. They were colourful and fun. The Telegraph and right-wing Tories loved them. So did other Fleet Street editors, who found the standard Brussels fare tedious and began to press their own correspondents to follow suit. I know this because I became the Brussels correspondent of the Times in 1999 and suffered the consequences.

Soon, a Europe of scheming bureaucrats plotting to rob Britain of its ancient liberties, or British prime ministers fighting gallant rearguard actions against an increasingly powerful superstate, or absurd directives on banana shapes, became the only narratives that many papers were interested in. They were narratives that exploited our innate nationalism, distrust of foreigners and sense of superiority. They were narratives so strong that our political leaders mostly chose to play along with them.

The EU is arrogant, bureaucratic, wasteful and meddlesome. It desperately needs reforming. But post-Boris, its great achievements – cementing peace, uniting the continent, creating the world’s largest single market, enabling its citizens to travel and live anywhere they choose, busting mono­polies, improving the environment – have gone largely unreported. Similarly ignored is that Britain has many natural allies in Europe and has enjoyed some significant successes: competition policy, free trade, eastward enlargement. The French now regard the EU as a plot to impose Anglo-Saxon economics on the continent. True, we lost the argument on the euro and the Schengen Agreement, but we won opt-outs.

With a few honourable exceptions – such as the Financial Times, the Timesand the Guardian – the referendum coverage was merely a supercharged version of what had gone before. It was led by the biggest broadsheet (the Telegraph), the biggest mid-­market paper (the Mail) and the biggest tabloid (the Sun). And it was based on myths: that we pay £350m a week to Brussels, that we can continue to enjoy access to the single market without freedom of movement, that millions of Turks are heading our way because their country is about to join the EU, that immigrants are destroying the NHS rather than keeping it going.

The coverage was designed to inflame xenophobia and our worst “Little England” instincts. Loughborough University found that 82 per cent of all referendum stories, adjusted for newspaper circulations, were negative. The conventional wisdom is that newspapers don’t matter any more but they do when just 635,000 votes for Remain ­instead of Leave would have averted this national catastrophe. They do when the press is a primary source of information for millions of Brits. They do when most of our papers have relentlessly portrayed the EU as the monster of Johnson’s fertile imagination, not just for a few months, but for more than two decades.

The referendum was a chance for our national press, particularly the tabloid press, to restore its standing after the phone-hacking scandal and to prove its continuing worth to the British people. Sadly, most newspapers chose wilfully to deceive, mislead and inflame. They decided to follow Johnson’s lead by peddling lies and phoney patriotism. They helped him to hoodwink the millions of poorer, less-educated Britons – those who will be the first to suffer from Brexit’s consequences – into voting against their own interests.

Johnson campaigned against a myth of his own creation, with the result that a mendacious pundit, one who achieved prominence by writing entertaining but dangerous nonsense, is the odds-on favourite to be our next prime minister.