Matthew Elliot was the CEO of the Vote Leave campaign, the official one that received government funding. Before that he ran another pro Brexit group Business for Britain, where in 2015, he produced a very long, comprehensive and professional looking tome called Change or Go, amounting to more than a thousand pages setting out what was wrong with the EU and why we should leave. It also painted a bright if rather misleading picture of Britain's post Brexit future.
It ought to have looked professional since he used £50,000 from a charity he set up himself to produce it, money he was forced to repay (HERE) because the work was deemed too political, which it was. I think it shows what a dishonest man he is.
However, it formed the basis of a lot of the thinking behind the leave campaign and I consider it as their bible. And as in the original, it contains a lot of contradictory stuff. The tome was written by a number of people, not just Mr Elliot and like the campaign itself uses a lot of highly misleading arguments. The list of contributors and the Editorial Board is like looking at a roll call of non entities. Each contributor argues their case from their own point of view so that on cursory reading it appears to answer every possible problem.
It is a case not only of having your cake and eating it but having an entire cake shop and eating the lot!
When it suits, Britain can be in the EEA and benefit from the single market and EU funded programmes like Erasmus or Horizon 2020. But on other occasions we are saving all our EU contributions as if we are a quite separate and independent nation. And at other points in the work we will be able modify our regulations in whatever way we like, as if we are not in any kind of free trade agreement limiting any divergence with the EU after Brexit. Our final settled status is never set out and the work slips effortlessly between every option without a hint of compromise.
Anything difficult or contentious like immigration is handled by saying parliament will be able to decide when sovereignty is returned. To appear moderate and balanced the EU's modest (as he sees it) successes are included
It is a case not only of having your cake and eating it but having an entire cake shop and eating the lot!
When it suits, Britain can be in the EEA and benefit from the single market and EU funded programmes like Erasmus or Horizon 2020. But on other occasions we are saving all our EU contributions as if we are a quite separate and independent nation. And at other points in the work we will be able modify our regulations in whatever way we like, as if we are not in any kind of free trade agreement limiting any divergence with the EU after Brexit. Our final settled status is never set out and the work slips effortlessly between every option without a hint of compromise.
Anything difficult or contentious like immigration is handled by saying parliament will be able to decide when sovereignty is returned. To appear moderate and balanced the EU's modest (as he sees it) successes are included
But mostly, the EU is painted as an ogre, forcing poor old Britain to follow laws we don't want, although which laws precisely are never spelled out, perhaps with the exception of the Working Time Directive, always a good standby even though no one has ever complained about it as far as I'm aware. Change or Go is a work of fiction. The negotiations are carried out smoothly with smiling European partners willing us to succeed and we depart the EU at the end of two years on our way to a prosperous and more influential future as if our manifest destiny had only been marginally disturbed by 40 years of EU membership.
But we should not let him get away that easily. I intend to show how misleading he was by posting items from Change or Go as the Brexit process gets underway. We can check out the claims against the reality. There is a lot to go on and I'll start tomorrow.
