We Won Brexit but the Same Dreary Losers Are Still in Charge

There is still much dispute as to precisely what it was that persuaded 17.4 million Britons to vote for Brexit last year. Some may have done it to regain Britain’s sovereignty, some to curb immigration, some because they realised correctly that everyone on the Remain side of the argument from one-hit-wonder gobshite Bob Geldof to that preening renter of overpriced desert islands Richard Branson was a weapons-grade, copper-bottomed tick.

But here’s one thing of which we can be pretty sure: nobody voted Brexit – the biggest public vote in favour of anything in UK history – in order to get more of the same old, same old.

Brexit was, perhaps more than anything, a cri de coeur from the silent majority who had been ignored for too long. It sprung from the same impulse that saw Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency – what political economist (and friend to the Donald) Ted Malloch has argued is a paradigm shift in global politics.

If you had to sum up that impulse in a phrase, it would go something like “Enough of this shit, already.”

Sure we might differ on our preferred solutions, but we’re all agreed what the general problem is. For too long a remote, democratically unaccountable, smug, corrupt, self-serving liberal elite has been making all the rules and all the running, while the rest of us just feel poorer, less fairly treated and more constrained by stupid, politically correct rules, regulations, and taxes in a failing system which wastes lots of our money yet gives us little in return.

The good news is that, against the odds, we won Brexit.

The bad news is that in Britain we’ve still ended up with the same old, same old bunch of tossers at the top.

In the immediate aftermath of the extraordinary palace coup in July last year, where the losing faction of the Conservative party who’d voted Remain somehow managed to slime their way into all the key positions of government – Remainer Theresa May as Prime Minister, Remainer Philip Hammond as Chancellor, Remainer Amber Rudd as Home Secretary – I dashed off a despairing piece called “Brexit won the battle: But now we’ve lost the war.”

Later I wondered whether I’d gone slightly over the top. (Something, as you know, I’m always careful to avoid.) After all, Theresa May seemed to be making all the right noises – “Brexit means Brexit” and so on.

But after yesterday’s budget, I’m disappointed to learn that I was right all along…

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Sir Bob Geldof: Vote Remain If You’ve Got a Big Yacht and Hate Proles

BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

Nigel Farage’s pro-Brexit flotilla down the Thames has run into opposition from Vote Remain boats under the command of multi-millionaire pop star and SFJW (Social Focking Justice Warrior) Sir Bob Geldof.

Harsh words have been exchanged; collisions only narrowly averted; one fishing boat has drenched Geldof’s with a hose.

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Gosh: I wonder which group is more likely to enlist the sympathy of ordinary people still unsure which way to vote.

Will it be

a) the former – comprising boatloads of fishermen whose livelihoods have been all but eradicated by Britain’s EU membership?

b) the latter – a gin palace commandeered by a multi-millionaire pillar of the global elite (who isn’t even a British subject and therefore not entitled to vote in this referendum) and packed to the gills with pro-EU reporters and members of the wankerati, blaring out noise from its extravagant sound system and pouring scorn on the smelly fisher proles nearby?

My personal guess is that it won’t be b).

In fact, if the Brexiteers do win this referendum, I suspect it will have less to do with anything they have said or done themselves than it has with the extraordinary arrogance of the Remainers.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

The Problem with God Is He Thinks He’s Bob Geldof

Legitimate questions

Bob has a nasty case of Bono syndrome (Photo: PA)

Bob Geldof is a rich man. According to the Sunday Times rich list he is worth £32 million and like most rich people he is understandably keen to hang on to his fortune. That’s why, very sensibly, he gives no more of his money away to the Government than he has to. As a registered non-dom he is legally entitled to avoid income and capital gains tax on international earnings. Those of us without non-dom status may envy him the privilege, but we can hardly blame him for it: after all we most of us know that we’d do a much better job of spending (and saving) our money than ever the poltroons in the various agencies of government do.

Where we can – and should – criticise the saintly “Sir” Bob (his KBE is honorary) is over the position he takes on aid to the third world. Geldof believes that our government should give more of it. But since our government has no money of its own – only what it borrows, takes through taxation, or prints – what he’s actually saying is that he thinks that we poor bloody taxpayers should give more of our money to the third world. Those of us unfortunate enough not to have non-dom status, that would be.

In today’s Times a very courageous interviewer takes Geldof to task on this issue. Here’s the relevant bit:

So how much is he worth? “I’m not telling you. But I am rich, let’s be clear.”

Anyway, he says, that is irrelevant. Is it? He wants governments to give more aid. But aid comes from tax. Wealthy people want to be as tax efficient as legally possible, restricting the amount of aid governments can afford to give.

Can he understand why some might get annoyed when rich rock stars campaign about poverty?

He explodes with rage. “I pay all my taxes. My time? Is that not a tax? I employ 500 people [through his production companies]. I have created business for the UK government. I have given my ideas. I have given half my life to this.”

People are beginning to look. His advisers suggest we take it somewhere more private. He is now yelling, jabbing his finger at me, as he demands to know how many irrigation channels I’ve built with my salary. Having been so candid throughout our trip, he seems offended that I have raised the issue. “How dare you lecture me about morals.”

But isn’t there an inherent contradiction there?

After much swearing, hissing and spitting, it’s clear the conversation is over. It is a shame. I like him. He has done so much more than many others. Without Geldof, let’s face it, I wouldn’t be writing about Ethiopian farming policy. For four days, Ethiopians have rushed to greet him and have their photograph taken. The previous night, staff at his hotel surprised him with a cake, saying “Thank you”.

But the aid debate is messy, complex and contradictory. They are legitimate questions.

Indeed they are. Geldof seems to have fallen victim here to Bono syndrome: the delusion that his saintly outreach work among the world’s poor and oppressed somehow renders him beyond the realm of ordinary mortals.

So, for example, when you or I slave away at our jobs, the time we spend at work is just time.

But when Geldof expends his own time it’s so valuable it magically transubstantiates into a form of taxation.

Give us a break, Bob.

You’ve earned your money and you’re welcome to spend it on as many irrigation ditches as you like – satin-lined ones with special little juke boxes attached which play I Don’t Like Mondays, if that’s what takes your fancy. It is, as you would no doubt say, your ****ing money, and what you do with it is – or ought to be – your own ****ing affair.

But here’s the thing: when it comes to the issue of our money, that is not your affair, but our affair. It is not for rock stars to urge our government to squander it on schemes to help struggling Indians to buy more fighter jets or African dictators to buy more ebony and platinum statues of themselves modelled on Julius Caesar because most of us who have read anything about the subject happen to be aware that it is a complete ****ing waste of time.

Trade, good. Free markets, good.

Aid, bad. Tax, bad.

Economics 101 over. Now shut up and leave us alone.

She’s a Fox, She Can Sing, She Can Draw (-ish): What’s Not to Like about Carla Bruni?

When I mentioned a few months ago that if held at gunpoint and tied up to a bed I really could think of worse fates than being forced to have sex with Carla Bruni, my wife was utterly appalled. “She’s not pretty. Her eyes are too close together,” my wife said. “Only a man could possibly think Carla Bruni was pretty.”

Having seen her new website, I mind the idea of Carla forcing her toned, bronzed, pneumatic yet tender and yielding body on me even less. I especially like the doodles of all the famous people she gets to meet now that she has hitched herself to some well-connected French bloke whose name eludes me.

Sarah Brown – the soon-to-be-ex-prime-minister’s wife – complained on a Tweet that Carla Bruni’s Sarah Brown wasn’t at all realistic. But I think we can all agree, it’s a total ruddy Leonardo compared to Carla’s Bob Geldof. When I saw her Bob – which I only knew was Bob because there’s a pop up thing on her site that tells you so – I was reminded a bit of a crappy pavement portraitist I saw the other day. You know the type: they advertise their skills using fabulously awful pictures they’ve done of famous people. But just in case you can’t recognise these people – which you can’t because the likenesses are crap – they’ve added helpful clues. The Queen will have a big crown on her head and a corgi at her feet; Arsene Wenger will have an Arsenal sign in the background; Lewis Hamilton will be standing by a racing car (with Lewis Hamilton written on the side) in case you mistake the picture for Jenson Button.

Anyway, I think it’s charming. Charmant, even.

Carla, never you mind what my wife says about your close-together eyes. I still think you’re a fox.

Tag: Bob Geldof