As I wrote this, in the background on the television was coverage of the commemorations marking the centenary of the battle of Amiens in France. How odd it seems that this is happening in the last year of our membership of the EU. Altiero Spinelli, often thought of as the founder of the EU, was nearly eleven years old in 1918 and living in Rome I assume. The Italians started the war as part of the triple alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire, but finished fighting for the allies, having switched sides in 1915. They also suffered big losses and perhaps it was this experience that pushed Spinelli into the arms of the Communist party.
Mussolini's fascists imprisoned Spinelli on the island of Ventetene, where he and Ernesto Rossi, in the early 1940s, wrote the Ventetene Manifesto for a Free and United Europe. This became the foundation of the European Union, in fact a trilateral meeting was held on the island in 2016 between Germany, France and Italy to mark the site where Spinelli is buried.
With this in mind, read this blog (HERE) about the thinking of leave voters. DeltaPoll did a survey recently asking Leave voters in Britain to choose between leaving the EU and peace in Northern Ireland. Nearly 6 out of 10 said the UK leaving the EU was more important. Stunning. It seems we are stumbling into the nationalist agenda of 1914, the very thing Spinelli battled against. A century of painful and often bloody progress is being put at risk.
A year ago a YouGov survey showed that 61% of Leave voters thought that significant damage to the British economy would be a price worth paying for bringing Britain out of the EU. Many thought that Brexit causing you or members of your family to lose their job to be a price worth paying for bringing Britain out of the EU. Hard to believe, eh?
Such is the level of hatred for the EU. One might think Jean Claude Juncker is Pol Pot and Barnier, Kim Jong Un. But why?
Look no further than this article (HERE) on Conservative Home by someone called James Frayne, a lobbyist and friend of the utterly egregious Dominic Cummings. Both of them used to work for Michael Gove at the department of education. Like Cummings he believes in the power of emotion in political campaigns (HERE) rather than dry facts, which is one of the main reasons feelings about the EU are so irrationally high.
He writes about the damage a second referendum would do if one was to be granted, as if the last one has been a totally unalloyed success. Simply asking voters if they're sure they want to leave the EU would lead to "betrayal", the kind of emotive word fellows like Frayne throw into every argument:
"This sense of betrayal would continue for many, many years to come. Remain politicians and commentators seem to have ludicrously convinced themselves that the real anger lies on their side. They’ve got no idea".
I assume he is stockpiling black shirts for the coming debate? I genuinely worry about where we are going in this country,
Men like Frayne are despicable. They have spent twenty years whipping up the mob with a lot of myths and outright lies about the EU, turning our friends into enemies that must be attacked and damaged whenever possible. They convinced a narrow majority in the referendum with completely unrealistic and unachievable expectations and then refuse to allow any reconsideration, even when the massive cost is rising by the week.
If I want to delete a file from my computer, there is usually some point in the process where a pop up message will ask: "Are you sure?". The file can be as trivial as you like, but you still get the chance to cancel the option if you've made a mistake. But vote in a referendum on the most profound decision the people have made in over 40 years and decide you made a mistake? No chance.
Professor Chris Grey writes (HERE) that the crisis is self-inflicted and we can do something about it:
Perhaps the most dangerous and dishonest of political slogans is ‛there is no alternative’. It is only true, if at all, when faced with some overwhelming external threat such as war or natural disaster. In other cases, there is always an alternative: that’s what politics means. That is the situation with Brexit. We are doing it to ourselves. We don’t have to. There is not much time left, but we can take back control.
