27/09/2015
Front page wrappers, expensively bought by TheKnow.EU â now rebranded as
Leave.EU - demonstrated last week that Mr Banks was centring the early shots of his campaign on immigration â exactly the Ukip line and the one which we think will damage the cause.
On the other hand, the rival campaign, fronted by Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings, has been remarkably quiet, although Mr Elliott's business interests and associates are undergoing some scrutiny from
The Boiling Frog and by the newly-minted
Vote to Leave blog.
The revelations have Mr Banks remarking archly that he "didn't realise that it's a business and not a cause" for Mr Elliott's operation, indicative of the acrimony being directed at an operation which is clearly the favourite of the legacy media.
After assuming that Mr Elliott was a shoe-in to lead what was originally set up as the "no campaign", this has brought the editorial-writers and sundry other media pundits huffing and puffing into the fray, with
The Times sternly pronouncing about "sceptic schisms", telling us that: "The No campaign will not win public consent if it is dominated by Ukipâ.
Such pundits might themselves garner a little more credibility if they got to grips with the idea that there is no longer going to be a "no" campaign, it having been supplanted by "leave", reflecting the Electoral Commission's latest recommendations on the question.
However, it would be far too much to expect editorial-writers to be
au fait with such detail, especially this one who his keen to dazzle us with his erudition, as he expounds on what Sigmund Freud referred to "the narcissism of small differences".
This, we are told, is the tendency of closely allied people to engage in constant feuds, a characteristic which we are led to believe has been closely observable in Ukip's ranks since the general election, and "now threatens to spill over into the No campaign in the European referendum".
Such is the writer's grip of events, though, that he (or so we assume) mistakenly describes how "Nigel Farage heatedly argued in a corridor with Douglas Carswell, Ukip's sole MP, at the party's annual conference". But there was no such confrontation. It was actually between Carswell and Arron Banks, described in our
earlier piece.
In what I suppose we could call "the narcissism of small errors", we thus see another example of the legacy media building up to its usual cacophony of errors, in this case assuming that only "small differences" separate the two protagonists in the designation battle, represented by Banks (with Ukip) and Elliott â largely supported by Conservative Party interests.
That divide, in fact, is huge, and almost certainly unbridgeable â yet it is also the case that neither side actually represent anything the uncommitted voters will be interested in. With Banks and Ukip hitting the immigration button, and the Elliott caucus equally missing the point with sterile economic arguments, both declared sides are spiralling off into their own fantasy campaigns, which have long lost any grip on reality.
That leaves
The Times totally missing the point, as it pompously declares that what it insists on calling the "no campaign" will "fail to inform, let alone win public consent, if it sides with a sectarian campaign that is indifferent to policy seriousness and the face of modern Britain".
It took one of the comments on the piece to remark that it was the role of the legacy media to "fail to inform", a task it has taken on with apparent enthusiasm, joined by the likes of the
Economist. It too has just noticed that there are (at least) two games in town, coming up with the leaden headline, "The two worlds of Out" â another one who hasn't realised that we are about to be embroiled in a "leave" campaign.
Anyhow, to the
Economist, "Ukip's latest row illustrates the cultural rift in the anti-EU movement". On that basis, it informs us that:
Leave.eu represents the brassy populists who rant about immigration, political correctness and metropolitan elites. Europe, for them, is about identity, about an organisation that, as well as fleecing British taxpayers, forcing metric measures on honest British grocers and banning their straight bananas, is sapping the country's distinctiveness. For Britain, by contrast, is the calmer, more professional side of the movement: pin-striped types who, on measuring the economic advantages and disadvantages of EU membership (the organisation claims it will judge David Cameron's renegotiation on its merits), tend to the view that the country should quit and instead intensify its relationship with the emerging markets.
Once again, we have a pundit who does not understand that neither side adequately represent what will be the real debate, which will actually define the question that the electorate will answer â different, as is so often the case, from the actual question on the ballot paper.
Over the weekend, therefore, the general public is not very much the wiser on the issues, but instead sees an unedifying squabble that could so easily be equated to bald men fighting over a comb.
We are fortunate therefore that - unnoticed by the warring tribes and the self-obsessed media â there are other strands of the argument and independent thinkers and activists who have a better handle on the issues. When the time comes, they will be able to address the scenario presented by the Prime Minister.
For the moment, all the warring tribes have achieved is an increase in the noise level â with a great deal of time and money expended to absolutely no effect. Almost nothing of the last few days will reside in the public memory when voters go to the polls in two year's time, recent events thereby demonstrating the unending capacity of the anti-EU movement to fritter away its resources to absolutely no effect.
But, while we see the legacy media
catch up with what we've known for
many months, that Mr Cameron's renegotiations are going nowhere, the issues that will confront us in the referendum are becoming clearer by the day.
There thus remains the comforting thought that, while the rival factions play their games, we are better prepared for the fight than we have ever been. When the children have finished squabbling, the grown-ups will be able to move in and do what is needed.
