25/07/2016
Those with memories that go back to the IEA Brexit competition in 2013-14
will recall that not one of the six finalists advocated the Efta/EEA option. All of these finalists "coincidentally" went for a then little-discussed Efta-bilateral option, the only six to have done so. And they all got a prize.
All those who advocated the Efta/EAA option were excluded from the final list â
my submission included - even though a number of us had been originally shortlisted. Then the rules were changed, and a new shortlist of the shortlist was prepared. We found ourselves ousted from the competition.
That the head of the judging panel was Lord Lawson is no coincidence. This is a man who has
consistently opposed the EEA option. And it is quite obvious that the IEA Brexit competition was rigged, unfairly to discriminate against those who offered the EEA option as a solution.
However, unlike most of the other discarded competitors, I did not take the rejection as final. I continued work on my draft, which is now in its eighth edition as
Flexcit. But merely to have been so persistent has provoked the enmity of the eurosceptic "aristocracy" who, almost to a man (and woman), oppose the Efta/EEA option.
Amongst those are the group of "eurosceptic" Tory back-benchers, including Bill Cash, John Redwood and now the rising star, Steve Baker - all considered to be on the "right" of the party. They detest the idea of the Single Market, with an ideological fervour which defies any rationality. And because they have no rational base for their beliefs, they treat disagreement as tantamount to heresy.
These people
don't fight fair. They attack the messenger, in my case briefing against me personally in a most disgusting fashion, all with the view of discrediting my arguments without ever having to deal with them.
Sadly, they've been aided and abetted by people whom I should have been able to rely upon as allies. But, since early days, just to exist and try and do one's work conscientiously, is to attract enemies.
In Ukip, in an attempt to neutralise the growing claims that our Party was racist, I recruited two Kashmiri Muslims to stand for Ukip in the
2001 General Election, only to attract the rabid hostility of a fundamentalist Christian group who effectively ran the Yorkshire region.
Writing
The Great Deception, one might have thought, would have gained an amount of support, but it attracted a huge number of enemies in Ukip, as we failed to support the Rodney Atkinson theory that the EU was born of a Nazi plot.
My hostility to Nigel Farage, of course, has built up an extra cadre of enemies â his loyal fans who will hear no ill against their leader. I am supposed to give my unconditional backing to a man who had seriously damaged me financially and politically and who, to this day, briefs against me with a collection of well-worn lies.
Then, as we began to focus on leaving the EU, we looked seriously at Article 50, only to meet the sub-group who we have come to call the "trappists", who insist that the Article is a "trap" and that we should immediately repeal the ECA.
My subsequent support for a phased withdrawal from the EU has then built its own band of detractors, to add to the others, to which we must add the Cummings-Elliott nexus who, for their own thoroughly dishonest reasons, excluded me from the official leave campaign.
It may occur to the dispassionate observer, however, that my enemies have in common things which would lead them to be hostile to me, entirely unrelated to my own personality. After all, with the idea spread about that I am "difficult to work with", can anybody say that with a straight face after seeing Dominic Cummings in action?
As to my critics, one only has to observe the discourtesy with which
Steve Baker treated me (along with the rest of the Treasury Committee). He doesn't say so, but he completely disagrees with my position. But instead of having an open debate, he abused his position on the Committee to shut me out. The other witnesses were given twice the time I was allowed, drowning out my input.
But if that is the way these people work, there are others who have been taken in by the hostile propaganda. Some have argued that the Flexcit message would do better if it was detached from its primary author, and promoted separately as a concept by different people.
I've not entirely agreed with that view â not least because it is based on the false premise that I am the problem rather than the message. But I tolerated some independent initiatives before the referendum, simply to avoid any public display of disharmony.
This has been particularly the case with
Roland Smith. But he has stretched tolerance to breaking point and beyond. With Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute, he has produced a
progression of posts, through which he has gradually sought to take ownership of the Flexcit agenda.
In work which
quite evidently relies on Flexcit and the EUReferendum blog, Smith has only ever once
admitted that
his writing "borrows from the North plan". But in his latest evolution, published on Friday last, he offers a "
collaborative effort" which once again "borrows from the North plan". Yet it is attributed to a group of authors led by himself, with no attribution to myself, the blog or Flexcit, or any recognition of the origins.
Sadly, in an (unsuccessful) attempt to make this "interim option" just sufficiently different from Flexcit to avoid a charge of outright plagiarism, Smith has introduced a number of errors, while also failing to keep up to speed with the EEA/Liechtenstein solution on freedom of movement.
He thus makes space for the
predators to move in and damn his work with faint praise. That is the problem generally with cheap rip-offs. Superficially, they may look the same as the originals, but they are not as well-built and easily fall apart with only gentle use. This is why, of course, counterfeits should be avoided.
Significantly, one of Smith's co-authors is Dr Kristian Niemietz, who recently
wrote an article for the IEA, headed, "Saving Brexit from the Brexiteers: why free-market liberals should support the EFTA/EEA option".
Dr Kristian Niemietz is the IEA's Head of Health and Welfare. He is seemingly obviously oblivious to the irony of his own Institute's rejection of the very same option when it was handed to them on a plate during its Brexit competition. But at least Niemitz in his own writing links to Flexcit â even though he doesn't mention it by name â an indirect and grudging acknowledgement of the source of the idea.
No such acknowledgement comes from Smith's other co-authors, Prof Steven Peers, George Peretz QC and Prof Simon Hix. Interestingly, the only time we seem to have heard about the EEA from Peers at such length is in a blogpost published on
24 June, the day after the referendum. So similar is this to the first stage of Flexcit â first published over two years ago â that it would be for him to show that he managed to dream up an almost exact replica all on his own, divorced from any external influence.
At least the other two, Peretz and Hix, come to the subject anew, with nothing more to contribute to Smith's effort than their names. Hix in a
YouTube presentation published on 30 June, effectively dismissed the option. His favourite response to it was: "please could I have a unicorn". Tellingly, he then went on to have a quick sneer at Flexcit, lumped in with fictional options.
All that aside, though, Smith's plagiarism presents me with a problem. Whatever justification he might have had before the referendum no longer applies. But when I have ignored it, he treats my silence as assent, and becomes more and more brazen in his theft.
At the other extreme, I do not want to waste money on formal action â that would serve little but to make a small band of lawyers even richer than they are already. And since I have offered the Flexcit free of charge to those who were prepared responsibly to promote it, I have suffered no financial loss.
In this case, though, Macmillan's "events, dear boy, events", are providing an answer. While Smith and his friends are so anxious to establish their ownership of a sub-standard version of Flexcit, the events of the past few days are rapidly making their efforts redundant.
When you look at the posturing of the Tory backbencher dinosaurs, and the actions of the Government in seeking to secure a Brexit settlement, even their rip-off version of Flexcit is so massively sophisticated in relation to what our protagonists are able to deal with, that it is totally beyond their comprehension.
On the one side, we have government agencies dealing with the mechanics of Brexit at an almost childishly superficial level, and on the other we have dinosaur Tories unable to see beyond their simplistic mantra of repeal the ECA", played to the repetitive counterpoint of "free-trade, free-trade, free-trade".
To such simple souls, the idea of an interim solution â presupposing a future end game which encompasses dimensions not already on the table â is so far beyond their comprehension that we all might just as well be speaking in tongues.
In context, Flexcit was intended as a referendum tool, designed to provide reassurance to wavering voters that there was a post-exit plan, and that leaving could be safe and largely cost-free. It was not intended for these people and doesn't speak to them.
Now the referendum is over, Flexcit as originally drafted has largely done its job. I am already having to rewrite it to deal with the new political realities as they emerge. That a group of plagiarists now want to copy the old version is, in its way, very flattering. But it is largely a waste of time. The situation is changing faster then they can copy my work.
The important point, however, is that the work produced by Smith and his friends should not be confused with Flexcit. Although based on our work, they have introduced too many errors and are too far behind the curve for it to be taken seriously. If they want to market their sub-standard rip-off, they may as well get on with it, as long as they don't pretend it is Flexcit.
And while they play their games, we have to deal with the far greater threat, where the Tory dinosaurs, led by the likes of Steve Baker, are locking horns in a battle that has the potential to do far greater harm that Smith's petty theft.
