Brexit: David Cameron Has Salted the Land, Poisoned the Wells for Boris

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Why wasn’t the British government better prepared for Brexit?

This is the question being asked right now by all the disgruntled Remainers who can’t quite get over the fact that they didn’t win.

And my answer is: are you deluded, mentally ill, a bunch of bitter, vexatious, reality-denying tossers or what?

Which is to say that the answer is so bleeding obvious I find it an insult that you should feign to ask.

Just cast your mind back to that distant and half-forgotten era all of five days ago when David Cameron still appeared to be a vaguely credible Prime Minister and Jean-Claude Juncker was so confident of a Remain victory that already he was boasting about how extravagantly the EU planned to shit all over us once we’d handed back the prison warders the keys.

Remember? Good. Then what you’ll also recall – now that it has all come flooding back to you – is that at the time the prospect of Brexit was literally unthinkable.

It was, I suggested, about as likely as me going to a bar and picking up a supermodel; then taking her home; then discovering that, no, she wasn’t in fact a ladyboy or Bruce Jenner or anything like that, but she was a really hot chick who actually wanted rampant sex. With me.

What made it unthinkable was that all the experts had lined up to tell us it was. First came President Obama warning us that we’d be banished like naughty boys to the back of something called “the queue”; then came all the other bigwigs from the IMF’s Christine Lagarde and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, all variously confirming with the expertise and authority of their office that no actually it would be worse than that: markets would crash, property prices would plummet, businesses would hurry to relocate, the pound would become as worthless as the Zimbabwean dollar, men would say openly that Christ and his saints slept etc. Oh, and also, of course, World War III would break out.

That last contribution came from David Cameron, whom you probably won’t remember now, but he’s the Prime Minister whose main career achievement – indeed possibly whose only career achievement – was to change Britain’s laws on gay marriage.

Look, I like gays as much as the next red-blooded heterosexual Dad. Some of my best friends are gay, one of them, unfortunately, being Milo. Plus, I was an enthusiastic instigator of homosexual acts at my prep school – I virtually invented it – so I know what it’s all about. I like gay clubs, gay music, gay culture. At Glastonbury just now, I queued up to join the Meat Market gay club where a handsome youth in drag at the entrance patted me down and affectionately squeezed my testicles while my wife looked on. In fact, if I didn’t prefer girls I would DEFINITELY be gay myself.

All that said, I think Gay Marriagewas an utterly silly thing for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to be wasting parliamentary time on – especially when it proved so divisive to the party Cameron professed to be so keen on uniting.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Better a Cocker Spaniel as Prime Minister than Theresa May…

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We’re all entitled to our opinions as to who’d make the better Prime Minister – Boris Johnson or Andrea Leadsom.

But there’s one thing on which must agree. Better either of the above – or, frankly, a Cocker Spaniel – than the (current Home Secretary and lead rival contender) Theresa ruddy May.

Let me give you two reasons why.

First, May is fundamentally unsound. Earlier this year she claimed, without blushing, that “Sharia courts benefit Britain.” But there was an earlier indication she was a wrong ‘un in 2014 when she had a public spat with Michael Gove (who at the time was Education Secretary), over the best way to deal with Islamic extremism in Britain.

It began, you may remember, as a result of the Trojan Horse scandal when it emerged that a number of state schools in Birmingham had been hijacked by Islamists promoting an extremist agenda, with non-Muslim teachers marginalised, boys and girls segregated, teenage males taught that rape is legal within marriage, Islamic terrorists glorified and non-Muslims described as kuffar.

May – perhaps to duck responsibility and save her skin: as Home Secretary she’s supposed to be in charge of law and order and social cohesion – tried to pin the blame on Gove.

Gove struck back, as well he might. No one in the British government has been more keenly aware of the problems of Islamism than Michael Gove. He was on to it a decade ago when he wrote Celsius 7/7 – a book excoriating the cultural dhimmitude that had led to problems like the London bus and tube bombings.

Part of Gove’s argument has always been that it is simply not enough to combat Islamist terrorism. You also have tackle the root causes of the problem: madrassas teaching young British Muslims to despise the values of their own country; Wahabi and Deobandi imams, parachuted in from Pakistan and Saudi, preaching the most extreme form of Islam; inequality before the law endorsed by Sharia courts; sucking up to extremist “community leaders” and ignoring the peaceful majority; and so on – as well as more positive stuff, like encouraging Muslims to become better assimilated and more loyal to their host culture.

It’s known colloquially as the “drain the swamp” strategy. That is, it’s no good just bashing the crocodiles’ heads as they attack your canoe. If you want to sort out the problem long term, you have to neutralise the environment from which all those crocs are coming in to attack you.

May, on the other hand, is of the “don’t let’s make a fuss, let’s just deal with the crocodiles as and when they appear” school of thought.

Which of the two approaches, do you think, is most likely to secure long-term social cohesion and reduce the number of future terrorist attacks?

The row between the two got so heated that Gove was ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron to apologise to May.

Gove, it should be noted, is now supporting Boris Johnson’s candidature in the elections to become new Conservative leader and Prime Minister.

The second reason why Theresa May doesn’t deserve to be Prime Minister is because she backed the wrong side in the referendum.

She didn’t need to do so. It has long been rumoured that she has Eurosceptic sympathies. But when push came to shove, she decided to put petty ambition before principle and take what she thought was going to be the easy option: back the Establishment position and reap the rewards.

Had Remain won, she would have benefited accordingly.

It would be a monstrous injustice – not to mention an insult to the electorate – if, having backed the wrong horse for the most cynical of reasons, May went on to be rewarded with the highest office in the land.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Brexit Debate: Polite, Honest Michael Gove Thrashes Devious, Shifty David Cameron

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Prime Minister David Cameron has long since refused to face his Lord Chancellor Michael Gove in a head-to-head televised debate on Britain’s membership of the European Union.

After last night’s stellar performance on Sky News by the Gover, it’s pretty obvious why. Gove would have Cameron’s testicles on toast for starters, his viscera for the main, and his eyeballs for pudding – all while consuming his opponent with such perfect charm and good manners that not even the Prime Minister himself would realise till the digestion stage just how comprehensively he’d been eaten.

No politician kills with kindness more viciously than Gove.

He did it again last night under intense grilling from Sky News interrogator Faisal Islam.

Islam’s assault was brutal and relentless – far more cavalier, disrespectful and insulting than his treatment of David Cameron the night before – but Gove emerged the undoubted victor by consistently maintaining grace under pressure. He more or less owned his cheerily impertinent interrogator, he won over an initially sceptical audience, and most importantly he sent out a clear signal to the Remain camp: “Don’t count your chickens. We Brexiteers have right and truth on our side. And we’re going to win this one, just you see.”

Don’t take my word for it. Watch for yourself:

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Britain MUST Leave The EU Says David Cameron’s Strategy Guru Steve Hilton

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The EU is “arrogant and unaccountable”; EU membership makes Britain “literally ungovernable”; the EU is “anti-market” and “stifles competition with its statism, corporatism and bureaucracy”; it’s “perfectly obvious to everyone” that the EU is incapable of reform; Britain will be much better off out of the EU.

Even from a known Brexiteer such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson or Michael Gove, these words would be pretty strong stuff. But coming from Steve Hilton, they are absolute dynamite: a devastating blow to the Remain campaign and – given that it was starting to look both unassailable and rather cocky – a perfectly timed one too.

It matters because Hilton, perhaps more than anyone, can lay claim to having “made” David Cameron, transforming him from an obscure backbench MP into Prime Minister material. Hilton has advised the Prime Minister on and off throughout his period in office and is still one of Dave’s closest friends. Well at least he was till the publication of this blistering broadside in the Daily Mail.

Here’s a taste:

It is anti-market, stifling innovation and competition with its statism, corporatism and bureaucracy.

It is anti-enterprise, acting in the interests of the big businesses that have corruptly captured the levers of power in Brussels through their shameless lobbying and insider deal-making, enabling a gradual corporate takeover of our country.

The European Union is anti-trade, locking developing countries out of world markets with its evil Common Agricultural Policy that feather-beds French farmers while keeping African farmers trapped in poverty — and despair.

and

Then we’re told that the EU is vital for our security. Really? I was pretty amazed when I first heard this point being made. The idea that a British Prime Minister can’t protect Britain properly without the EU is frankly astonishing and, if true, rather alarming.

But, of course, it’s not true. Yes, in a complex world of global threats, we need security co-operation with other countries — like what happens in NATO. Forgive me if I’ve missed something, but I wasn’t aware that this referendum is about leaving NATO.

and

But perhaps the most powerful argument for leaving the EU is to look at the people who are wheeled out to persuade us to stay: figures like the International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, advertising giant Sir Martin Sorrell, as well as the Confederation of British Industry and all the other Establishment stooges.

They want us to stay in the EU because their whole world depends upon it. Their lifestyle of summit meetings and first-class flights and five-star hotels; their flitting and floating from New York to Brussels to Beijing, serving the interests of the technocratic elite — the bankers, bureaucrats and accountants who run the modern world and who, regardless of which government is in power in which country, push the same old dogma of global-isation, privatisation and centralisation.

This represents by far the biggest blow to David Cameron personally and also to the credibility of his pro-EU argument since the official referendum campaign began.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

To Believe in Brexit, You Have to Be an Oik like Me or Michael Gove

Just as with Thatcherism, it’s the very posh who won’t stand firm.

If you need to know how properly posh you are there’s a very simple test: are you pro- or anti-Brexit?

Until the European referendum campaign got going, I thought it was a no–brainer which side all smart friends would take. They’d be for ‘out’, obviously, for a number of reasons: healthy suspicion of foreigners, ingrained national pride, unwillingness to be ruled by Germans having so recently won family DSOs defeating them, and so on.

What I also factored in is that these people aren’t stupid. I’m not talking about Tim Nice-But-Dims here. I mean distinguished parliamentarians, captains of industry, City whiz-kids, high-level professionals: the kind of people who read the small print, sift the evidence and take a considered view. I’ve yet to hear a single argument in favour of the EU that stands up to the most cursory scrutiny. Hence my confidence that these clever, talented, brilliant thinkers would know which way to go. The Gove way; the Boris way. How could they not?

So there I was at dinner the other evening with a delightful, erudite Old Etonian friend of mine. Let us call him ‘Kevin’ (not his real name). Kevin has an accent so deliciously plummy that if you could somehow tin it and sell it to the Chinese you’d become a billionaire. He is immensely cultured, civilised, wise and sensitive. I agree with him on everything, so naturally, when I asked him his views on Brexit and he launched into his eloquent diatribe on why he believed — and long had done — that the EU was the Abomination of Desolation, I listened in a state of near-ecstasy.

Kevin’s beautifully modulated speech went on for at least ten minutes. (There was hardly a shortage of material.) Then, suddenly, something weird happened. About 30 seconds before the end, Kevin shifted tack, and explained (or actually, hardly explained at all) that for all these reasons the only logical position was for Britain to remain in EU. Something to do with Europe being a lovely place and our having a moral duty to help it set the tone, I think.

Well I wish Kevin were the exception, but this has not been my experience. Most of my similarly rarefied friends turn out to be un-apologetic ‘remainers’. For further evidence of this, see also Sir Nicholas-Soames — who recently assured us that voting to remain is what his grandfather Winston Churchill would have done; Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, who promoted his Europhile views in the letters pages of the Financial Times via a high-minded personal attack on Boris Johnson; and those previously Eurosceptic Conservative MPs who have decided, on second thoughts, to vote with the Prime Minister: a significantly higher proportion of them were privately educated than among the Tories campaigning for ‘leave’, who tend to be of a more below-the-salt grammar, state or minor-minor independent school persuasion, such as Chris Grayling, Steve Baker and, of course, Michael ‘Oiky’ Gove.

Read the rest at the Spectator.

All the Worst Remainers Read PPE at Oxford

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Almost all the very worst MPs campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union studied the same subject at Oxford University – Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE).

By “worst”, I suppose I mean most especially those in government who have professed to flirt with Euroscepticism in the past to ingratiate themselves with their constituents – including, of course, Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as William Hague, Teresa May, Philip Hammond and Elizabeth Truss – but have then chosen to do the dirty. (See Guido for the full list of inners and outers). (If you wanted to add Sajid Javid to the list you almost could, except he didn’t get in to Oxford and had to go to Exeter instead)

Other Conservative “Remainers” who read PPE include Matthew Hancock, Damian Green, Nicholas Boles, Mark Harper, Jeremy Hunt, Philip Dunne, Sam Gyimah and Jane Ellison.

There are many Oxford PPE graduates among the Labour “Remainers” too, including Yvette Cooper, Angela Eagle, Maria Eagle, Geraint Davies, Paul Farrelly, Kevin Brennan, Meg Hillier, John Spellar, Rachel Reeves and Rushanara Ali.

It is also notable that pretty much every single one of the most noisome creeps from the previous parliamentary term were Oxford PPE graduates too. Step forward – boo hiss – Ed Balls; “Sir” Ed Davey; Chris Huhne. It goes without saying that had they not been booted out of office, every one of them would also have voted to Remain shackled to the European superstate.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Why Michael Gove and Boris Johnson Plumped for Brexit

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My friend Michael Gove is an honourable and intelligent man so when, a few weeks ago, I read reports that he was thinking of throwing in his lot with the “Remain” camp, I rang him up in horror.

“Is it true?” I asked.

“I’m still undecided. Torn between what I feel about the EU and loyalty to the PM.”

So I said: “Not many people get the chance in their lives to save Britain. Drake; Nelson; Churchill. Your call.”

“No pressure then,” said the Lord Chancellor.

I’d love to be able to claim that it was me wot swung it. But I honestly don’t believe that, for all his professed vacillations, Gove was ever capable of doing anything other than nailing his colours to the Brexit mast.

The same is true, for different reasons, of Boris Johnson.

Last week, when lots of other armchair experts didn’t, I correctly predicted that both men would inevitably vote out.

I’m very glad they did since I think it will make all the difference to the #Brexit campaign. Put it this way, had Gove and Johnson not come out for Brexit, the “Leave” camp would never have stood a chance of persuading wavering middle-ground voters to take the plunge. With Boris’s charisma and popularity and Gove’s intellectual heft to back it Brexit now stands a serious chance of becoming reality.

Let me explain – briefly, because I’m ill and mustn’t write too much – what I think made up their minds.

First Gove. Gove’s decision is the easiest to explain: integrity. Of all my Oxford contemporaries to go into politics Gove is the only one who has not been intellectually or morally corrupted by the process. I’m sure almost everyone who goes into politics (in Britain, at any rate; less so, perhaps, in, say Nigeria) does so for the noblest of reasons. But what they quickly realise is that if they are ever to enjoy career advancement, they must compromise their ideals for whatever is thought at the time to be the “greater good” of their party. In the Cameroon era this has meant squishy, ideology-free centrism.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

We Need to Talk about Wind Farms…

“Energy prices may rise by a third”

A wind farm near the village of Bothel, Cumbria (Photo: Alamy)

“Energy prices may rise by a third,” says our disastrous secretary of state of energy and climate change Chris Huhne. Rubbish. They’re going to rise by a hell of a lot more than that before he is finished. Alternative energy, let us never forget, is just that: an alternative to energy. Wind power and solar power are so risibly inefficient that the only way they can ever be economically viable is with lashings and lashings of taxpayer subsidy. Nuclear power would be much more effective but Huhne has effectively ruled it out. Why? Because in Huhne’s bizarre Weltanschauung, it’s OK for the taxpayer to subsidise low-carbon energy that doesn’t work (wind, solar) but not low-carbon energy that does work (nuclear).

But it’s not Huhne’s breathtaking hypocrisy, ignorance and eco-fanaticism I want to talk about today. Rather I want to focus on just one aspect of it: his plan to carpet Britain in wind farms. What I should like to know is how many of you are with me on this one. It seems to me that at the moment we are sleepwalking towards the greatest environmental disaster of our lifetimes: in the name of alleviating something distant and imaginary – “Climate Change” – our government is now committed to the destruction of the British landscape. And what I’m not sensing, yet, is any kind of serious, concerted resistance.

We need a figurehead. (Not me, unfortunately. I ain’t got the time or the fame or the diplomatic skills.) We need somebody who can galvanise ordinary British people into saving their countryside before it’s too late. Ideally that figurehead would have been the Prince of Wales. But as I explained in last week’s Spectator the Prince has rather ruled himself out of that one. Alan Titchmarsh? He’s the only name that immediately springs to mind, but perhaps you can suggest others.

Next we need money to counter all the propaganda which is spewed out, much of it at taxpayer’s expense of course, by quangos like the Carbon Trust, by schools, by organisations like Renewable UK (formerly the British Wind Energy Association) – each of them repeating the same fundamental lies: that CO2 is a pollutant (not a plant food); that Man-Made Climate Change is a serious, pressing threat; that wind farms are the solution.

Above all, though, we need to stop kidding ourselves that if only we concentrate on how thoroughly marvellous Michael Gove is or what a splendid idea elected police chiefs are, this nasty, scary energy policy our Coalition has decided to foist on us will somehow magically evaporate. At the moment, we seem to be allowing their spokesmen to get away with all manner of nonsense, such as:

1. Britain needs to set an example on CO2 reduction.

No it doesn’t. At least not unless you believe in futile, suicidal gestures. China’s burgeoning CO2 output alone is more than enough to wipe out any paltry emissions Britain makes by going “low carbon”.

2. It will create green jobs.

Only in places like China, where the wind turbines are manufactured. There will be no benefits to the British economy, just a disastrous replay of the Spanish experience where for every “green job” created by government subsidy, 2.2 jobs were lost in the real economy.

3. It will provide “energy security”.

No it won’t. Because wind power is so unreliable, it has to be backed up by conventional power such as coal or gas. If energy security is really what we want we should go for more coal-fired power. We are, after all, sitting on an island of coal.

4. It doesn’t destroy property values, ruin views, chop birds to pieces, or create a low subsonic hum which drives anyone unfortunate to live by a wind farm mad.

Yep. Sounds like you’ve been taking your daily dose of propaganda from the likes of Renewable UK and Polly Toynbee, who thinks wind farms are rather attractive.

5. The future is low carbon.

Says who? What we need, now more than ever, is cheap power to generate the economic growth the world needs to lift itself out of the looming double-dip recession. Low carbon energy is, by definition, not cheap.

6. But what about “climate change”?

What about it? If it’s “global warming” you’re worried about, it stopped in 1998. Global cooling is a much more imminent and serious problem. Recent changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation mean that we’re now set for a 30 year cooling period guaranteed to make a mockery of all our fears about “global warming.” Yet here we are, embarked on a policy guaranteed to raise our energy bills to unaffordable levels, as we enter a period of colder winters.

This nonsense has got to stop. People, are you with me?

Posted on 29th July 2010Author jamesCategories Blog

One thought on “We need to talk about wind farms…”

Caroline says:7th August 2010 at 10:33 pmTOTALLY 100% with you about wind farms. We shall look back at some future date and think, ‘What on earth possessed us?!’

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Why Would Anyone Want to Vote Tory? (Pt 1)

At dinner the other night with a leading conservative thinker, I asked the question many of us have been pondering more and more worriedly of late. “Can you give me one single positive reason why any true Tory should vote Conservative at the next election?”

My friend thought for a while and then said: “Michael Gove.”

“Yeah, yeah, apart from Michael Gove,” I said, reminding my conservative chum that this was almost as obvious and pat an answer as “Well they could hardly be any worse than Gordon Brown.”

At which point my friend was stumped. Like me, he’s a natural Tory, truly, madly desperate for a Conservative government to get into power and act according to true Conservative principles: limited government, low taxes, liberty, etc. Also like me, he sees no sign whatsoever that the current Opposition has any understanding of what true Conservative principles might possibly be.

Even the Gove point is moot, I fear. I have tremendous respect for the Tories’ shadow schools secretary. He’s super bright, indefatigably (and naturally) charming, sound on a lot of issues that matter (Islamism, for example, as you’ll see if you read his incisive Fahrenheit 7/7) and, unlike most of Dave Cameron’s inner circle, he was not born to the purple. As the adopted son of a decent, hard-working, but by no means wealthy Scots couple who made tremendous sacrifices to give him a good education, Gove understands far better than any wallpaper-heir or landed Old Etonian can the case against excessive taxation and intrusive government.

Despite my reservations, if the Tories were to come clean now and say: “Look, we might as well admit it. We’re a bunch of neo-Blairite water-treaders who won’t do anyting to undo any of the damage wreaked by New Labour, except in one area. Education. By the end of our term of office, you shall have schools and universities to which – for little or no money – you will not be at all embarrassed to send your children,” I still think I might just be persuaded to vote for them.

So why – given that Gove is the shadow secretary responsible for education, and given that he is always speaking up for higher standards and against dumbing down – do I remain unconvinced by his supposedly bold new plans for sweeping ’supply-side’ reform on the Swedish model?

Because even when they’re trying to be tough and radical, Cameroon’s Tories are so irrevocably craven and lightweight they just can’t help pulling their punches. No, I don’t necessarily believe the stories in one of the paper’s yesterday that the Tories education policy is “in disarray” – for the Ed Balls spin machine is a powerful and terrifying thing. But I do believe if you’re going to come up with a bold new plan, as Gove has, to encourage the creation round Britain of thousands of new schools, you’re shooting yourself in the foot right from the off if you announce that you don’t want any private operators making money out of it.

What, in the name of Margaret Thatcher (or Adam Smith if you prefer), is wrong with making a profit? How, pray, will anyone be persuaded to go to the hassle and expense and risk of establishing a new school if the only reward is their own virtue? Is there any more effective way to kill a policy before it has even begun than to hedge it with rules which, let’s face it, have absolutely nothing to do with giving our children a better quality of education, only with the Tories’ increasingly ridiculous terror of being seen in any way to come across like enthusiasts of the capitalist system.

You’ll notice the “Pt 1″ in the headline. That’s because I’ve a nasty feeling that for stories about the inexorable decline of ideological conservatism in Britain, Dave Cameron’s Tories are going to be the gift that goes on giving.

Tag: Michael Gove

Brexit: David Cameron Has Salted the Land, Poisoned the Wells for Boris

Better a Cocker Spaniel as Prime Minister than Theresa May…

Brexit Debate: Polite, Honest Michael Gove Thrashes Devious, Shifty David Cameron

Britain MUST Leave The EU Says David Cameron’s Strategy Guru Steve Hilton

To Believe in Brexit, You Have to Be an Oik like Me or Michael Gove

All the Worst Remainers Read PPE at Oxford

Why Michael Gove and Boris Johnson Plumped for Brexit

We Need to Talk about Wind Farms…

“Energy prices may rise by a third”

Related posts:

One thought on “We need to talk about wind farms…”

Why Would Anyone Want to Vote Tory? (Pt 1)

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