Will Straw, director of the Remain campaign, has been caught red-handed advising his team how to exploit Cox’s death by playing up the message that Leave represent “division and resentment” while only Remain represents “decent, tolerant Britain.”
This is what the left means by “dog-whistle” politics.
Only this time, it’s the left which is blowing that whistle.
Here, as Guido reports, is what Will Straw said in a highly embarrassing leaked audio file.
“We need to recognise that people have been pulled up short by Jo Cox’s death and it is now time to make a very positive case for why we want to be in the European Union… to call out the other side for what they have done to stir division and resentment in the UK.
That is something we must all do… This is what we think is the closing argument of the campaign, reflecting all the arguments that we have been setting out for many months but also the new context that we’re in. What we want to say is people should vote Remain on Thursday for more jobs, lower prices, workers’ rights, stronger public services and a decent, tolerant United Kingdom.”
The language is cautious, mealy-mouthed but the message is clear. To paraphrase: ‘Never mind the issues – just focus on Jo Cox. They didn’t buy Project Fear; they didn’t buy Project Lies; but they might just be sold on Project Grief.’
And Straw may have a point for, since the murder of Jo Cox, there has been a dramatic shift in Remain’s fortunes. Where before they were trailing in the polls, now they have pulled ahead.
Yes, there’s a story doing the rounds that this is because the public are becoming increasingly concerned about economic issues and that these favour Remain. But I suspect that this is just Remain spin to cover their own embarrassment at the unseemly way they’ve been using Jo Cox’s death to their advantage.
Here’s Katie Hopkins, telling it like it is:
Ask yourself what would have happened had it been Nigel Farage not Jo Cox slain on a pavement, whether they would have called for kinder Politics?
I suspect in some quarters they would declare he brought it on himself. How they laughed when his family were attacked whilst trying to enjoy a family lunch in a pub.
As we move into the final few days of the campaign, the ugly ambition of Remain will be to keep the Jo Cox story alive – at least in print – until June 23.
There is no end to the stunts set up to ensure this story has legs and keeps running – when most of us just want the family left in peace to grieve and find some sleep.
Regrettably for the state of British politics, she’s probably right.
First came the pilgrimage by the two main party leaders David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn – both pro-Remain – to lay wreaths in Cox’s constituency in Birstall, West Yorkshire and preach the virtues of “tolerance” and “democracy”. (More dogwhistling: if you don’t believe in these virtues than you must be Vote Leave).
Then yesterday, Parliament was recalled from its summer recess for a special sitting. Ostensibly to celebrate the life and the “kinder, gentler politics” apparently embodied by Jo Cox; but also, unfortunately, to allow campaigners like MP Stephen Kinnock – son of two of the EU’s more voracious apparatchiks Neil and Glenys – yet more dogwhistling opportunities by talking about “hope not fear, respect not hate, unity not division”. (Unity: you mean, like, in a “not leaving the EU” kind of way, Stephen?)
After that will come the funeral which – let us pray – will remain a private affair.
If you think this is normal procedure for when a parliamentarian is killed while in office, you’d be mistaken.
It didn’t happen after Conservative MP Ian Gow was assassinated with an IRA bomb in 1990.
Nor did it happen in 1979 when Airey Neave – a wartime hero (one of the few men to escape from Colditz) and also a personal friend of the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – was murdered in similar fashion by another Irish Republican terror group the INLA.
Read the rest at Breitbart.