23/03/2016
Although it is a tad premature, amongst friends and acquaintances, we've been having a fair bit of discussion on the role of this blog once the referendum is over.
Fairly obviously, that depends to a great deal on the result. Should we be fortunate enough to win, we expect to be highly active in offering views on how the exit negotiations should be managed, and what the various targets should be.
If we lose, there will be a need to set out the reasons why we think we lost, in particular highlighting the mistakes made. Then, at least, future generations will know the pitfalls when we get a re-run, as we surely must.
But if this is a potential function of the blog, post-referendum, then the best way of doing it is to come prepared, monitoring and assessing the campaign as we go and offering a running commentary. That makes for what is grandly known as multi-functionality.
Primarily, the main function should be campaigning. And if we were having a material effect on the campaign then that's where all our energies should be focused. Sadly, though, it is very clear that in the main campaigns â Vote Leave, and the GO/Leave.eu nexus â views have polarised and ossified.
We thus see the likes of
Richard Tice, co-founder of Leave.eu, coming up with exactly the same dire boilerplate that he was churning out months ago, without the slightest evidence of a shift in position.
Vote Leave, meanwhile, have left their
bizarre views on their website â oblivious to reason or counter-argument, demonstrating their absolute determination to stand above anything that might approximate debate. At the same time, they endorse Mr Johnson's increasingly incoherent position.
Against these noise-makers, and without the resource or time fully to develop our cascade system, our role becomes more of an attempt to illustrate what an effective campaign should look like. We also provide an outlet for those who do not want to tarnish their own reputations by association with these groups.
As to the mistakes, as an old hand at campaigning I'm entirely at one with Gene Sharp who long ago
declared that: "Claims and reporting should always be strictly factual. Exaggerations and unfounded claims will undermine the credibility of the resistance".
To avoid giving the opposition a free hit, I've spent a lot of time and energy behind the scenes, directly and indirectly. But when we find advice privately given is consistently ignored or rejected â and mostly for no good reason â then we have to consider other ways of getting the message though.
Here, we have to think of the balance of advantage: whether the downside of going public outweighs the need to ensure that campaigners have access to good, accurate information.
Then, there are different kinds and levels of mistake. We have the strategic errors but then we have the tactical errors such as yesterday when, with the smoke still hanging in the air over Zaventem and Maalbeek,
Ukip was already in action. Its defence spokesman declared: "This horrific act of terrorism shows that Schengen free movement and lax border controls are a threat to our security".
This can be seen as a mistake in being too quick off the mark, and thereby insensitive, especially as we currently have so few details about these attacks. Any offence, though, is partly mitigated by
Hugo Dixon having been equally opportunistic in arguing that the bombings are a reason for staying in the EU.
But there is a greater error than opportunism â or being associated with
comments such as this. That, as
Pete North points out, is in enlisting this barbarity as material to serve the argument on either side of the EU debate.
Simply, it is not an issue. In or out of the EU, the UK will continue to work with its continental neighbours, as indeed it works with most other countries in the world, in order to combat the menace of terrorism. We were doing so long before we joined the EEC, and will be doing so long after we have left the EU.
From a purely human point of view, therefore, the correct response would be to express sympathy for those affected by tragedies which could have been so much closer to home, and to pledge continued assistance and cooperation, regardless of the result of the EU referendum.
There we shall leave this matter, otherwise we too stand at risk of being accused of opportunism, and look at other types of error.
As it happened, on Monday we had an extraordinary example of
Mark Ellery writing on the EU's legislative procedure, making the rookie error of confusing the European Council and the Council of the European Union (formerly the council of Ministers).
Having crossed swords with this gentleman before, we did not expect anything but a hostile reaction to any attempts to post a correction, so no great care was taken to avoid bruising egos. But
the response more than adequately illustrated the nature of the problem we have with many eurosceptics â this one representing himself as the research "executive" at Get Britain Out.
Nevertheless, simple technical errors â although potentially serious if allowed to spread unchecked â pale into insignificance against this
strategic blunder which has had businessman Peter Hargreaves, on behalf of Leave.eu, writing to around 15 million homes at the cost of millions of pounds, "beseeching" them to vote to leave.
The text of the letter,
reporoduced here, relies for its effect on telling us how awful the EU is, right down to asserting that: "It certainly adds a huge amount to your grocery bill".
This is more or less the line taken in the failed 1975 referendum, and at every opportunity by some eurosceptics ever since. And you would have thought â as I wrote recently â that if forty years of telling people how badly off we are was going to work, we would by now be a million light years ahead in the polls.
The problem with being rich though, is that there will be very few people around you prepared to tell you how wrong you are and, with plenty of money, you don't have to listen to them even if they do.
On twitter from 1st March until the referendum, Hargreaves is undertaking to give 115 reasons why we should leave the EU, many of them so tendentious as to achieve nothing but to lower the tone of the campaign and reduce our credibility.
Even he, however, is unable to match the noise level of Boris Johnson in promoting CETA as a model for the alternative to EU membership, and this is another mistake to add to the list.
After the 1975 referendum, David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger published a book called
The 1975 Referendum, which recounted many of the mistakes made by the then "no" campaign. The book should have been essential reading for today's campaigners. But, with the current batch of campaigners replicating many of the past errors, and adding a huge bundle of new ones, it's actually hard to imagine how they can all be fitted into one book.
It rather makes sense, therefore, to get in early with the blog, and collect as many examples as early as possible, to ensure the record is complete. It's a bit like taking time lapse photographs of the train wreck. With luck, we won't need it, but if there is another referendum we wouldn't want to deprive future generations of the chance of making the same mistakes.
