EU Referendum


EU referendum: a train-wreck in the making


18/05/2015



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Where we lead, others follow, not that any of them have the balls to admit it. It's even got to the state where Booker has been instructed not to mention me in his column, and if he does put my name in, or mention EU Referendum, the references are removed.

We are, of course, used to this treatment. An earlier practitioner was Tim Montgomerie, who ruthlessly purged any reference to us from Conservative Home and banned me from the comments – even though he's been all over us when he wanted us to write for his news enterprise (for free), which he started up with Iain Dale (another one who has "unpersoned" me).

These people who now complain that we're so howwid to them, writing nasty things about them, forget their own history and their own actions. But, in boycotting us, they are making themselves look absurd to a growing number of people. All they are doing is excluding some of the best and most perceptive analysis on the EU and related matters.

Then we end up with Andrew Marr wittering in the New Statesman about how the pundits got it wrong – a man who would have benefited hugely from reading this blog. Then perhaps, he might have learned what questions to ask.

Courtesy of Scribblings from Seaham, though, we find that this overpaid pundit is now getting paid even more for telling us that he and the rest of his little claque got it wrong. He confides that he has been "sleeping and worrying" about how he does his job. But, despite that, he's still getting it wrong.

What the likes of Marr are going to have to do is be more discerning, and more challenging, instead of imbibing everything a politician says. There should be no place on the BBC website, for instance, for Farage's lies, as he asserts that: "I've put 20 years of my life into trying to get a referendum and now is not the time to walk away".

I sat across a desk from that man over a period of four years. He never then mentioned the possibility of a referendum, and has barely mentioned it in public until fairly recently, only agreeing to sign Nikki Sinclair's petition for a referendum when he was bounced into it.

Farage's game plan has always – since the very beginning – been the electoral route, initially trying to pressure the Conservatives into taking us out of the EU by damaging them in general elections. Then he had fantasies about holding the balance of power, and thus forcing a Conservative minority government into action, as a condition for his support.

Having recently spent most of his time and effort trying to prevent Mr Cameron getting a majority, and thereby honouring his referendum pledge, it ill-behoves Farage to claim he has been working for a referendum. He hasn't, he never has and, as a result, he and his party are totally unprepared to fight one.

For that reason, as well as others, Carswell is right. Farage is putting the anti-EU campaign at risk. And not only would he would alienate voters and condemn Eurosceptics to defeat, as Carswell avers, the man is a loose cannon who has even less idea of how to run a referendum campaign than he does a successful general election fight.

But just because Farage is the wrong man for the job, doesn't mean that Carswell's other ideas are any better. He argues that it would be better for the referendum "out" campaign to be run by a prominent business leader – which is precisely what we don't want. This is a very bad idea, at several levels.

First, we don't want a "leader" at all – whether a business person, a politician or even a sleb. We should not personalise this campaign – otherwise it becomes a biff-bam contest between our man and Cameron, the newly-successful Prime Minister. When it comes to reassuring the public, Mr Cameron will have enormous weight and authority – and "prestige". Our man (or woman) won't stand a chance.

Carswell himself talks about the campaign requiring, inter alia a "more collegiate style", and he needs to think this through, and get his brain properly wired. The term "collegiate" means what it says, and implies that we break away from the personality politics that the media so loves, and have multiple heads. Not least, this neutralises any decapitation tactics that might be tried.

But then the idea of a business leader is especially bad. This locks the campaign into an economic framework, which is the very last thing we want to do. That is partly why the 1975 campaign failed, as it got bogged down in discussions about the price of butter, and other petty details.

Blitzkrieg-style, we need to by-pass and neutralise the economic arguments, and take the high ground. Leaving the EU is about correcting a historic mistake, where we have vested power in a supranational authority, which is incompatible with our status as a democratic status. It is about how - and by whom  - we are governed. That is not the business of business.

This apart, there is a significant lacuna in the Carswell rhetoric – a failure to acknowledge that the designation of the "out" campaign does not rest with him or anyone else, but rests with the Electoral Commission, which will select the lead campaigner from the applications submitted.

In what is most likely to be a competition, with a number of bids for the lead, all Carswell (or anyone else, for that matter) can do is seek to form a coalition (or umbrella group), in the hope of winning the bid. Incidentally, I would most certainly seek to oppose an application that fronted a business leader at its head, on the grounds that it did not adequately represent those campaigning for the "out" proposition.

This, though, points to a greater flaw. All sorts – Carswell included – are coming out of the woodwork with their views of who is to lead the "out" campaign, yet I'm hearing very little discussion on how we should win it.

Watching all this happen the pundits are allowing themselves to be sidetracked by the biff-bam theatre, and thus falling into yet another trap of their own making. They also are failing to think about what it takes to win, and who has the best ideas in that department. As always, they go for the cheap and easy story.

But there is also a generic failure, here, one which afflicts the eurosceptic movement as a whole. Devoted mainly to talking to each other, and telling themselves how awful the EU is, not a fraction of the effort is being directed at the main task which, as Boiling Frog points out, is fighting the FUD.

Instead, we're getting another episode of "The Egos have Landed", as Farage slurps up the love from his cult, and gears up to lose us the referendum.

We're already in a position to declare "we told you so", when what looks like being a train-wreck campaign fails to deliver. But, at this stage, that is a cop-out. We'll have to fight this battle through to the bitter end, before we can set out exactly why the campaign failed, in the hope that we don't repeat the same mistakes, yet again, next time round.

I am, though, getting sick to the teeth of the Kasserine Pass syndrome, where we have to fight through our "friends" to get at the enemy. Overall, I am reminded of the tugboat captain who, on the fall of France in 1940, was heard to remark: "Thank god for that - no more allies. Now, we only have to fight the enemy."

If it was only the enemy we had to fight, we could be sure of winning.