We at TCW thought this referendum was about sovereignty, democracy, and accountability.
The Remain campaign, called out on their ‘Project Fear’, have rapidly turned the debate into a vote on one man’s personality – a man demonised from the very start in order to fracture the Brexit vote and to divert the public from the real issues.
David Cameron has made his position clear: the late Labour MP, Jo Cox, “embodies Britain at its best – a country that is decent and compassionate; one that reaches out to make the world a better place”. Nigel Farage, he depicts by contrast, as neither tolerant nor big hearted: “Are we going to choose Nigel Farage’s vision – one which divides rather than unites and questions the motives of anyone who takes a different view’?
And yet Remain say that we, those in favour of Brexit, are the narrow-minded ones.
We wonder what Mr Cameron and his Remain allies would do without their bubble of Farage-o-phobia? Imagine if they had to emerge from it, blinking into the light. Could they survive in an atmosphere of free thought? Or would they go scuttling off to the shadows again?
The Remain campaign falls mainly on the blame. Yesterday this was encouraged – and led – by The Mail on Sunday’s truly sickening coverage of the death of Jo Cox and her alleged killer.
The newspaper colluded with the left-wing view – wickedly prosecuted by Polly Toynbee and others – that the killing of Cox was ‘evil’ and was motivated by ‘hatred’ rooted in support of far-right causes linked with opposition to immigration and xenophobia. The reality is not so polarised or simple. The alleged killer had mental health issues and his actions seem to have been actually based on paranoia. Even the Victorians accepted that those with such an affliction see disproportionate and unjustified threats everywhere – it is part of their illness. The Left and their Cameroon fellow travellers have shamelessly ignored this in its headlong rush to discredit the ‘exit’ arguments.
Mrs Cox’s death has provided just the excuse nervous ‘centrists’ need to bottle voting Leave and still feel good about it – and indeed to display the ‘virtue’ demanded of us.
So we see the Remain side playing the “Unity” card for all it is worth – already embarked on by Cameron and Corbyn – and played to the hilt since Mrs Cox was killed. The idea they are successfully projecting, if the sudden resurgence of Remain in the polls is to be believed, is that “Leave” is about disunity, while the virtuous Remain promote unity. The smearing by Labour’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has already begun.
What Remain fear beyond anything else is the freedom to debate. Mrs Cox’s cruel death has provided the excuse they needed to shut it down.
This is a shameful reaction to the best, most publicly engaged in and open debate that as taken place in Britain for half a century – perhaps not since Suez – something that was grudgingly acknowledged by John Humphrys on the Today programme yesterday. That we have been having this debate is no thanks to the BBC. It is to Nigel Farage, the man the BBC have consistently marginalised and smeared but to whom our thanks must go for delivering this opportunity to the country.
The resurgence of the public’s engagement with politics, the resurgence of British common sense along with the public’s newly vocal demand for more information about Europe – information that the BBC has failed to report or explore and frankly has done its best to repress for the last thirty years – has clearly terrified the Remain camp.
We must not allow these attempts to skew the debate in its last few critical few days to terrorise us. We must continue to expose these shameful ‘shaming’ tactics and pray that the British public can see through them.
It will be a tragedy if one man’s madness and its exploitation has decided the course of our country for at least a generation.
(Image: Garry Knight)
