31/05/2016
Courtesy of Jacob Rees-Mogg,
we learn that 23 June, Referendum Day, falls on the anniversary of the Battle of Plassey in 1757 when Clive of India's victory over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies ushered in over a century of unsurpassed greatness for this country.
But then, it will also be the 50th anniversary of an adjournment debate in the
House of Commons, initiated by Mr John Cordle, MP for Bournemouth East and Christchurch. His subject was "Synthetic Detergents (Import Duty)", and he was complaining about an increase in the import tariff from 10 to 20 percent on short-chain fatty acids used for the manufacture of household detergents.
The interest here was that the tariff was imposed to protect just one British manufacturer, owned by Albright & Wilson and employing a mere 35 people. This is something which, six years later, no British Government was able to do, or would be ever again â perhaps until after 23 June 2016 â because we had by then joined the Common Market.
On that same day, however, in 1966, journalist Nigel Lawson was writing in the
Spectator about how Harold Wilson's government, in maintaining a weak pound, would ensure that we are frustrated in our desire to become a member of the Common Market.
If the French object to our increasing economic, and therefore political, dependence on the United States, Lawson wrote, both they and the Germans were likely to share the view recently transmitted to Brussels by a German member of the Common Market delegation in London and leaked to
Le Monde.
According to this German diplomat, it appeared, were we to join the Community, the English sickness would merely contaminate the economies of the Six and drag them down too.
Perhaps now, this is the reason why the "colleagues" are apparently so unhappy to see us go, fearing that the loss of the UK's buoyant economy will do even more damage to the eurozone economies than the EU has already managed.
Whether or not we break the link, though, Rees-Mogg thinks the "verdict of the British people has to be respected". There can be no rerun of the contest just because one side does not like the outcome, he says. In "the unlikely event of a Remain victory", he adds, and the British people vote to stay, "then I will have to accept that, and shut up".
That, no doubt, will be the view the Prime Minister and the entire establishment will be keen to pursue â but it is not one that I could endorse or in any way will be bound by.
This referendum campaign has been so badly conducted by both sides that the outcome can hardly be representative of anything other than the confusion engendered by the warring tribes.
While the Government â and Mr Cameron in particular â has seen fit to lie openly (as indeed has Vote Leave), the nominal anti-EU factions have been more concerned to use the referendum (and the supposed freedoms gained by leaving the EU) as a platform to promote their favoured nostrum.
Thus we get the "fee traders" using the debate to push their ideas of a tariff-free, regulation-free nirvana, while the anti-immigration lobby â of which Ukip is a prominent part - see this as their opportunity to curtail the movement of people to this country. Others are using the campaign as a proxy leadership contest, and as a means of settling scores within the Conservative Party.
No one on the "leave" side seems to be addressing the issue of what it takes to win this referendum. Leaving the EU, rather than an end in itself, seems to have become a means to an end â actually, to many different ends and not all of them mutually compatible.
We have thus an absurd situation where the "remains" have not even attempted to make the case for continued membership while, on the other side, the case for leaving the EU is not being argued. To argue, for instance, that we want to see immigration reduced is to argue for reduced immigration. It is not primarily an argument for Brexit.
On this basis, we would have to conclude that, whatever the outcome of the referendum, there will be no informed consent â either for staying or leaving. The waters have been well and truly muddied.
What really emerges from this campaign, therefore, is that we don't really know how to fight referendums in this country. This has been more like a general election than anything, with political personalities to the fore. Quite frankly, I don't give a tinker's about Mr Cameron's succession, but that has become a dominant issue.
Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow
has said
he cannot remember a "worse-tempered or more abusive, more boring UK campaign" than that for the EU referendum.
He condemns the media's coverage as "no way to run a chip shop, let alone an interesting and informative campaign for a vote upon which all our futures hang". The campaign, in his view, compares unfavourably to the "coherent and comprehensible" precedent set by the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, saying it has been dominated by abuse and "intemperate challenging of facts by both sides".
To be absolutely fair, one could thus argue that we should discard the result, whatever it might be. That is not going to happen, but if the result goes against us, I have no problem is saying nothing will have been resolved. The fight will have to continue as if nothing had happened.
