Charles Moore is one of the many self-appointed political Brexit commissars in the media, always watchful for any unbrexit thinking or signs that 'enemies of the people' are thwarting the will of the seventeen million rosy cheeked artisans who voted to leave the EU. In his mind Britain is like something out of a 1930s Soviet poster where a promised Utopia risks being snatched away by the devious bourgeoisie, a group of which he is a highly privileged member although he doesn't seem to realise it.
What he sees as horny handed sons and daughters of toil (something completely alien to Moore himself) yearning to be free, we see as a lot of innocent dupes who were conned by people like Moore into voting for Brexit when it is patently against there own best interests and will only benefit those able to influence government policy when we're out of the EU. In other words men like Moore.
His column on Saturday was a masterpiece of warped thinking (HERE no £).
In a parody of himself, he doesn't even think the ERG are on the extreme end of the Tories. I assume if it was 1934 he would be applauding Hitler, unable to see beyond a humble corporal rising to the Chancellorship of Germany by iron discipline and doing the odd water colour.
Moore writes:
" 'ERG=Momentum' is a baffling equation. Who are these Right-wing extremists? Iain Duncan-Smith, who put in a decade of work to make our welfare system more humane? Sir Bernard Jenkin, who supports every sort of LGBT modernisation? Does anyone seriously imagine that Jacob Rees-Mogg’s fondness for the Latin Mass is on a par with Jeremy Corbyn’s backing for a grossly anti-Semitic mural?"
IDS was the architect of Universal Credit still mired in controversy and blamed for a rise in food bank use.
And in a couple of paragraphs that will give rise to a face palming moment in many readers:
"Another attack by the fear campaign is to accuse the ERG of instransigence, of insisting on a crazy purity. In fact, the ERG has sacrificed a great deal that it holds dear to seek some consensus. Its members recently voted for the Brady amendment, which accepted Mrs May’s deal so long as she took the backstop out of it.
"In return, the ERG gets no thanks. Its concessions are pocketed, and then it is assailed once more. Within days of accepting Brady, Mrs May moved surreptitiously from promising to 'replace' the backstop, to 'changing” the backstop, to “making changes' in the backstop".
He thinks Cash, Baker, Rees-Mogg et al are actually the most reasonable of men. Elsewhere, Ken Clarke is ridiculed and Heidi Allen MP, was never heard to make 'a Tory remark'. To Moore a Tory remark is calling for a return of the birch and capital punishment for parking offences. Politically he makes Attilla the Hun look like Nelson Mandela.
Mr Moore is another one of those no-deal threateners:
"It cannot be said often enough that if MPs want a good deal for Britain they have to convince the EU that, if we don’t get one, we shall leave anyway. Mrs May, in her heart of hearts, cannot face this. Uncoincidentally, she has got a very bad deal so far.
"In the course of protracted negotiations, it is quite common almost to forget why you are doing what you are doing. Negotiating processes are rightly shaped towards achieving a result, but this can lull people into thinking that agreement must be reached".
The Telegraph and Moore during the referendum campaign were in the vanguard of those accusing experts of scaremongering but in what seems like a volte face, he has taken up listening to experts again, and not just ordinary experts but the 'best experts' - so now you know there is a range but of course only the best (aka those you agree with) deserved to be listened to:
"If it is true, as the best experts point out, that Mrs May’s deal will tie Britain into the power of the EU rather than free us from it, how could anyone argue that it respects the referendum choice? The fear campaign panics some MPs into forgetting this, but it is simple and true".
He finishes with the same sort of delusion that he began:
"As I write, there are only 35 days of this nonsense left. Let’s hold our nerve and stick it out".
We will not be out in 35 days mark my words. And what he calls nonsense is in fact democracy at work.
