04/11/2015
You see beasts on a transporter arrive at a slaughterhouse. The ramp comes down and they are led off to the lairage. It doesn't then take much skill to deduce that, in a very short time they are going to turned into meat for human consumption.
The thing is, even as they are being led down the ramp, the animals don't know this. But you the observer, recognising the building as a slaughterhouse, know exactly what is going to happen.
So it is with the two noisy "leave" campaigners, Vote Leave Ltd and its doppelganger Leave.eu. They are being led down the ramps to their slaughter, without them even realising what's happening. There will, of course, be lots of mooing and bellowing, but the destination is pre-ordained. Once the deed is done, all that will be left to mark their passage will be a few dropping on the straw â and even those will soon be hosed away.
But it is not a knife that will be used to despatch our noisemakers. What is being used to cement their fate is a beguilingly simple two-step shuffle, transparent to the outside observer but unrecognised by campaigns that have no strategy and have allowed themselves to gorge on "
dead chicken" trivia.
The one part of this dance is the softening up of the British public for the outcome of the so-called "renegotiations". This will be an offer of associate membership, most probably in a heavily disguised form, which will allow David Cameron to claim a substantive victory.
Undoubtedly, the "leave" response will be to rubbish the associate membership and then offer an alternative, which will be claimed to be more attractive. The second part of the dance is designed to pre-empt this move, by closing down the best alternatives - such as the Norway (Interim) Option. What is left will be uncertain and largely undeliverable.
Implementing the first step of the shuffle has been left largely to George Osborne, who progressed the idea of associate membership that bit further, under the noses of the "high-noise" leavers, who have
failed to recognise what he was up to.
This followed on from Mr Cameron's successful execution of the second step, where he enjoyed the good fortune of recruiting unwitting leavers to the cause of demolishing the Norway (Interim) Option.
Not even the open goal of a Prime Minister lying to make his case would tempt them to oppose the Prime Minister. With their apparent support, and the willing complicity of a gullible media, Cameron was able to lie his way into the history books as the Prime Minister who continued using the deception arts in support of the European
projet.
Cameron's intervention now opens the way for further studies, of the type highlighted in the
Guardian yesterday. This one, from the
Policy Network capitalises on the disarray amongst the "high noise" leavers who are unable to agree amongst themselves as to best exit plan. They have identified the core weakeness in the Vote Leave Ltd and the Leave.eu campaigns. Both demand "unity" from their supporters yet, internally, they are riven with disagreement over their exit strategies.
Thus, when
Policy Network or any other body asks what Britain looks like outside the EU, all we get is the "fantasy politics" offering of some vague "free trade area", relying on the "
better deal fallacy". But when it comes down to detail, all the "high noise" leavers can agree on it what they don't want.
The more the actual options for leaving are examined, say the
Policy Network authors, Pat McFadden and Andy Tarrant, the less attractive they become. And, although this assertion can easily be disputed, this is not something either Vote Leave Ltd or Leave.eu can do. Neither have an exit plan, so - as
Lost Leonardo points out - they have absented themselves from the debate.
What we then end up with is lightweight fluff from the likes of
Boris Johnson, who blathers about an "attractive alternative future" for the UK outside the European Union - without being able to tell us how we get there - while preferring to remain a member of a reformed organisation.
There, taken with the the most extraordinary ignorance of pundits like Conservative Home's
Mark Wallace, we have the makings of our defeat. The referendum is turned into a binary choice between Mr Osborne's "reformed EU" and an alternative future which, on examination proves to be unattainable.
The tragedy is that the noisemakers don't even realise they are being beaten. So busy bellowing, and depositing their droppings over their new territory, they don't hear the knives being sharpened. Right to the moment when they drop, they will be applauding themselves on the "brilliant" jobs they are doing.
