Have you checked for the latest scourge – reds under your bed? It seems they are everywhere the Leftist elite do not want them to be. They are in the voting booths of the Rust Belt where all the ‘racists and misogynists’ voted for Trump. They are the reason why all the racists in the North of England voted for Brexit. They are even, according to the Insane on Sunday, lurking in ‘smart’ think-tanks such as the Legatum Institute. The hard-core Remainers have lost their minds.
According to the Mail on Sunday, if someone once made lots of money in Russia after the wall came down and then funded a think-tank that leaned toward Brexit years later, this means Putin interfered with the Brexit vote. Or something, I can’t quite make it out, it’s all barmy. I’ll let Tim Montgomerie explain why here.
It is funny though, is it not, that when Russia was the Communist USSR and Ronald Reagan denounced it as an ‘evil empire’ the Left went absolutely berserk – at Reagan. There were quite a few Leftist intellectuals such as Eric Hobsbawm (friend of the Miliband clan) who remained loyal to the USSR even when all Stalin’s purges, famines and millions of deaths emerged.
But now, when Putin is in charge, at the same time as the Leftist elite are no longer getting their way in the Western Europe that the USSR sought to destroy, why, the Russians meddle in everything! It’s odd.
I do not recall the Russians being involved when Ireland voted against the Nice Treaty in a referendum in 2001. They certainly were not said to be involved when Ireland supported it in a second vote the following year, after a number of reassurances including that it would not have to join a common defence policy.
I do not recall the Russians being involved when the ‘Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe’ or TCE, was rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Such loyal Europeans said No to a European federal state and ordered everyone back to the drawing board. What emerged was the Lisbon Treaty, which removed references to EU symbols such as the flag, anthem, motto, currency and ‘Europe Day’.
In 2008, when Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty, no one said the Russians were involved. And they certainly were not involved when the Irish were asked to vote again in 2009 and the referendum passed.
But all that was before the Trump and Brexit revolts. Such a huge rejection of the elite consensus that nation states are irritating impediments to governance by experts, is seriously rattling them. Handily enough, the ridiculous Russian narrative popped up at the exact same time as revolution by the ballot box.
Now the Remainers can wheel out this ludicrous idea that Russia had a real and significant impact on the Brexit vote in order to delegitimise it. Dear Leftist Davos elite, it wasn’t the Russians that the people rejected: it was you. A majority of the British electorate want Parliament to be supreme, they do not want to be ruled over by a Eurocratic elite, and they want to be able to hold those who make the rules to account. It’s called representative democracy. Look it up.
