01/04/2016
Continuing the theme introduced a
couple of days ago, I'm again going to look at the upside of the coming campaign, which officially starts in two week's time, but also some of the less happy aspects â which are as much part of the terrain as the good stuff.
Firstly, on the
ROSL Meeting booked for 23 April, we've had a steady trickle of people specifically asking to reserve seats. Although booking is not required, I'm happy to do that, so if anyone wants to contact me, I'll make the necessary arrangements.
As to the line-up, this is not going to be the normal (and frankly tedious) series of talking heads. We'll be doing things in a very different way. Firstly, after the official welcome, Booker will introduce the session and then I will deliver a
TED-style talk on Flexcit, with the audience very much part of the package.
Then we have the audience asking questions
and making comments from the floor, in an extended Q&A, where anything goes and everything is filmed. We then plan to edit these sessions, to provide a series of crisp, video clips to post on YouTube and keep the interest going, right up to the date of the referendum.
Separately, we're hiring an ante-room where we can do quiet, one-to-one interviews of our blogger team and individual guests, on a wide range of topics, again to provide clips for posting on YouTube. And we'll also do a short piece on
The Great Deception, which is now back in print.
That's very much the positive end of our campaigning, with Robert Oulds of the Bruges Group also reporting that the
short version of Flexcit is turning out to be their all-time best seller, with the free
electronic copy also available from their site.
As to what might be considered the "negative" side, however, even this is essentially positive in effect. What we're doing is applying the dictum "fight to win but prepare to lose", something you might have thought was quite popular as mottos go.
Strangely, the only reference I can find on the net, though, is from an old copy of the
New Straits Times from 1998. Nevertheless, the auguries are good as it defines a court strategy adopted by Microsoft in protecting its intellectual property.
The dictum is worth mentioning here as it is very much part of this blog's activities as we move towards the final phase of this referendum campaign. We will very much be fighting to win, but in the particular battle there is always the possibility that we will lose - and for that we must be prepared.
On the basis that this is but one battle, and the war goes on, it is a useful exercise to record errors and failures in the campaign, better to instruct those who follow, in the event that they have to pick up the baton and fight another referendum campaign.
If we win, of course, the exercise won't matter, but there's no harm in an insurance policy. After all, the first thing we did once we knew there was a referendum in the offing was re-read the seminal book
The 1975 Referendum by David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger, to remind us of the mistakes made.
Since the book is now out of print, and copies are extremely expensive,
The Boiling Frog scanned the whole book and we uploaded it on this site, where it is still available as a
free download.
Through an oversight, there are two pages missing. On one (p.287) there is a passage I used in a piece written on this blog nearly
eleven years ago on the experiences of one Conservative campaigner. He had been in the thick of the battle, and observed:
What was notable was the extent to which the Referendum, certainly in its latter stages, was not really about Europe at all. It became a straight left versus right battle with the normal dividing line shifting further over than in general elections â hence the Labour Party split and their discomforture. In all the speeches I made to Conservative audiences the trump card was always â "beware Benn, Foot, Castle". It was this, more than anything else, which solidified the Conservative vote and increasingly negated the efforts of anti-EEC Conservatives.
Just over a week ago,
we were writing of the need to record as many examples of errors as possible, to ensure that there are warnings for future generations in the event of us losing. At the end of that process there is a book that must be written, fulfilling the same role as Butler and Kitzinger's efforts all those years ago.
The passage we have used already illustrates how history is, to an extent, repeating itself. The contest is becoming a foil for the leadership ambitions of Alexander (aka Boris) Johnson, distracting people from the core issues, and is already a proxy war for the soul of the Conservative Party.
Yesterday, perhaps, we saw another highly public example of where the campaign is going so badly wrong, and where "leave" campaigners have been completely misled. This came in the form of "GO" movement campaigners lining up for a very public photo-shoot, delivering their application papers to the Electoral Commission in pursuit of designation as the lead campaigner (pictured).
To bring home how much things have changed. we
need to recall that their role as the alternative to Vote Leave was originally Leave.eu (once it had changed its name from TheKnow.eu). Founded by businessman and Ukip donor Arron Banks, the key figures were very keen to stress that it was a "people's campaign", looking for figures from all walks of life, from businesspeople to UK border guards, to put its messages forward, rather than just politicians.
When millionaire Toby Blackwell joined the group
last October, he attacked the "Westminster elite" for undermining the campaign and called on squabbling politicians to step back in order to allow a people's movement to grow.
Characterising the campaign as a new "Battle of Britain", Blackwell declared that it was "not owned by any political party or any politicians but all of us". This should, he said, "be a people's campaign".
Now, effectively, we've seen the "bait and switch" as Leave.eu â its job done - has stood back and handed the reins to the "GO" movement. And while Nigel Farage was originally kept in the background, this new outfit is very visibly led by him, surrounded by smiling politicians. The people are mere "extras", drafted in for the crowd scenes and to provide the applause.
This is not what many people signed up to, and it creates exactly the dynamic we wished to avoid. Really, the very last thing we wanted was the referendum degenerating into a personality contest between rival politicians. But as the situation has developed, either - as we
pointed out yesterday - we end up with Nigel Farage as the lead protagonist or, possibly even worse, we are overtaken by the "Boris and Dave" show.
Potentially, the campaign would be at its most effective when cast as the people
versus the establishment, the latter being represented by "Dodgy Dave" and his equally "dodgy deal". That framing, however, has been swept aside in order to sate the ambitions of grandstanding politicians, who have basically hijacked our campaign.
Whether it is even possible to have a people's campaign, or realistic to expect the politicians to confine themselves to the margins, is moot. But yesterday's activities saw the demolition of any chances of that happening in this campaign.
Ironically, yesterday also saw the death reported of Ronnie Corbett, famous for the comedy sketch on the roles of the British classes â a sketch that has the "working class" Corbett come up with the immortal line: "I know my place". And in the machinations of the "GO" charade, the relevance of the line has been brutally reinforced.
A referendum may be the people's contest, but we have yet to learn how to prise the politicians' grubby fingers from it.
