We�ve had a couple of days to think. This piece by Fraser Nelson interested me, both for the article itself and also for some of the below-the-line responses.
Apparently, before resigning, David Cameron had asked his aides: �Why should I have to do the hard shit for someone else, just to hand it to them on a plate?�
Fraser�s answer, and I suspect he speaks for many people, went something like: �you are the prime minister, and many people are counting on you to do so.�
Looking back over events, it seems that Cameron handled the whole affair quite badly, showing little evidence of foresight. He could have done with one of those flow-charts that help people make decisions. You know, diagrams that offer yes/no routes to an eventual crock of gold.
It now looks as if he hadn�t even properly considered the possible outcomes of the referendum - quite simple; yes or no. Not just yes. |
| Theory of change |
It looks also as though he hadn�t properly considered the outcome of his promise to support Brexit if he failed to secure significant reforms for the UK, and then refusing to admit the inadequacy of the crumbs he was fobbed off with, then pretending that the referendum was about leaving or remaining in a �reformed EU�.
Not forgetting a few other things he hadn�t properly thought through, such as prematurely announcing that he didn�t intend to stand as PM next time round.
Then, there�s Turkey.
Oh yes, and announcing that as well as not �seeing why he should do the hard shit�, he announced that he wouldn�t do anything at all till October, thus provoking threats from various shunned EU officials about the bad shit in store if we didn�t bloody well get a move on with article 50.
The one thing that underpins this dire situation is this business about immigration. It seems to me that the BBC has played a huge part in toxifying this topic. There are two parts to the public�s worries about immigration, one mentionable, the other unmentionable.
Mentionable - barely - is the numbers argument. We�re a small island with limits. We can�t fit everyone in. We can�t accommodate them all. We�re bursting at the seams.
Also in this category is the question of economic inequality, a conundrum that works two ways. The expats whose pensions stretch further in, say, Spain, and the Brits who abandon all principles and amass fortunes working in Arab states.
But the very real effect on the UK by migrant workers whose willingness to work harder for less, causing job losses for locals and driving down wages, has at last made this particular aspect of immigration, and the attendant fears thereof, mentionable.
Then there is the unmentionable. Something that only people like Paul Weston or Tommy Robinson dare to articulate. Outwardly it�s called �cultural�. It�s the way that some neighbourhoods have become alienating and frightening to the original residents and to outsiders.
Most of all the fear is of Islam and the Islamification that�s spreading through Europe. It is already causing deep division here. But we cannot mention it without being ostracized by the fools and the blind, who think tolerance, as well as wealth, should be redistributed - to the deserving and the undeserving, indiscriminately.
I have to generalise about the BBC. I know there are some exceptions, but broadly speaking the BBC has always taken Palestinian propaganda at face value and swallowed it whole. Lock, stock and barrel. People running the BBC have little or no knowledge of history, and no doubt most of them still believe, along with Ken Livingstone, the fictitious propaganda that more than 700,000 innocent Palestinians were driven out of their homes at gunpoint by Jewish terrorists in 1948 to create Israel. Let�s face it, if you believed that, you might see things the way they do, coupled with the inexplicably romanticised version of Islam that the BBC continually portrays.
That is the only explanation for, e.g., the BBC Trust�s inability to understand why Tim Willcox�s �clumsy� / �badly worded� remark to an Israeli-born witness after the Paris terrorist attack was inappropriate and offensive. They seemed to think he had made a valid point, and, after all, had apologised for unwisely blurting out �Jews� when he meant �Israelis�. Their faith in the righteousness of the Palestinian cause prevented them from understanding that the Paris attacks were part of something much more fundamental than �revenge� for what they erroneously believe to be a �Jewish-only� Israel, a country illegally and unjustifiably obtruded on stolen �Muslim land�. The fundamental reality that believers of such ahistorical fiction could never grasp is of course that the Paris attacks were fuelled by the same old same old. Antisemitism.
The BBC could easily show the public just a fraction of the hatred that is openly promulgated throughout the Arab world. Not difficult. It�s on the internet, on Arabic TV, in Arabic education. But they never, ever do.
That is why there�s still a taboo over criticising Islam. It�s branded racist. It makes you a bad person, a hater. The world turned upside down.
I don�t know if this is wishful thinking, but I�m beginning to think that underlying those fears about immigration is a deeper fear of creeping Islamisation. There is reason to worry. Evidence is gradually seeping through. But as of now, we have to euphemise it or be branded bigots.
Earlier today Jeremy Corbyn eventually came out to make a speech, but it was so boring that both the BBC and Sky cut to Nicola Sturgeon and then to some EU bigwigs pronouncing on how they were going to punish us for rejecting them.
Corbyn has announced an enquiry into immigration, and why so many Labour voters opted to Leave. That�s in addition to the enquiry about antisemitism, which has expanded to embrace Islamophobia, racism and bigotry. He ignored the more interesting topic, that of those dastardly mutinous plans to depose him.
It�s like, break open the popcorn, and be entertained by everyone opting out of the hard shit.
