At last the Leave politicians seem to be doing something about Brexit going a tad awry. Leave Means Leave has arranged a conference at the QE2 Centre in Westminster. (Details here). See you there I hope.
‘Who?’ I hear you ask. Good question, but I found out in an email I received today from John Longworth (who he?) Richard Tice (nope, no idea) and Nigel Farage (now him I have heard of). Now, the capacity of the QE2 is 2,500 and at £20 per ticket that’ll raise some money, but to do what? When?
Part of me rather admires the Britishness of this reaction. ‘The Maybot is trying to sell us into slavery, our spineless elected representatives might just let her do it and the entire legitimacy of British Parliamentary democracy is in jeopardy? Well indeed, but let’s not make a fuss. Let’s have a nice conference and a cup of tea.’ (Even in SW1 £20 gets you a decent cuppa, although I expect there’ll be none free).
And part of me despairs. Blair’s Remainiacs bussed in a few thousand people (including all three Lib Dem voters), told the Met to stop counting and lied to the BBC that hundreds of thousands turned up to a demonstration. Vulgar? Yes. Un-British? Of course (they want to live in Euroland). Effective, perhaps – but rather more so than a cuppa in a convention hall where the instigators preach to the choir.
I haven’t (yet) been invited to speak. But if I were (one can dream) here’s what I would say:
‘We’re all here because we voted to leave the EU. We foolishly believed Mrs May’s Lancaster House speech, which was a pretty fair embodiment of what we voted for. And now we see that the hapless, hopeless and helpless Mrs May has come back with a deal on offer that is not Brexit, nor anything like it. It is an act of complete submission to the EU which effectively ends the UK as a nation state.
Mrs May and her coterie of fools got into the mess by persuading themselves that the UK could not survive a no-deal Brexit. No one else on the planet believes that; we’re the fifth-largest economy in the world, our laws are the basis of most international trade, we’re a permanent member of the UN Security Council and we produce more patents per head of population per year than any other nation. We are the centre of global finance, the leading nation of the Commonwealth, pretty much invented the rule of law and human rights and are a founder member of most international organisations – including the WTO.
And yet the introverted self-appointing political elite think we need the EU to survive. Even after we, the electorate, the source of their power and their spending, told them to get us out of the EU they failed because they failed to persuade themselves or the EU that we could, should and would walk away smiling with no deal.
A ten-year-old child could have done a better job.
This ‘dog’s dinner’ deal lies before our elected representatives across the green in the House of Commons. Their choice is stark; reject the deal or submit the UK to vassalage.
Our job now is to help them find the backbone; to ignore the current Tory lie that voting down the deal brings Corbyn. Which is rubbish. Firstly opinion polls don’t seem to be working at the moment. Secondly, I would rather a few years of Corbyn than an eternity of Brussels.
Those in the government seeking to cling to power need to wake up and smell the coffee. You are there to do one simple thing. Get us out of the EU. Fail on that, as this deal would, then you forfeit the right to power. Vote it down.
For those seeking to protect the Tory party, frankly it ain’t worth saving. You have shamelessly put party before country and now you are trying to give my country to Brussels.’
At which point I might get a little carried away and start a riot.
Because, as the Brexit leadership (I use the term loosely) needs to understand, we’re beyond debate. We’re fighting for our democracy against a self-serving political establishment. We need to start slapping some writs around (how can there have been no preparation for the Out vote, or No Deal? That’s misadministration, unless it was intentional to the benefit to the elite when it becomes malfeasance). Detail schmetail – let’s get some injunctions à la Gina Miller.
We, the law-abiding majority, need to get angry and noisy. A meeting in the QE2 is simply not enough.
It’s time for the silent majority to shout.
