I have been taking refuge from the low-grade arguments
of the referendum by reading Andrew Roberts’ book, ‘Napoleon the Great.’
Problem is, once you have the referendum on your mind, it turns up everywhere.
Try this, Napoleon speaking to a trusted confidant as
he positioned himself for the Brumaire coup against the Directory which brought
him to power in 1799:
‘The triumph of faction, parties, divisions, is the
fault of those in authority only…No people are bad under a good government,
just as no troops are bad under good generals…These men [the Directory] are bringing
down France to the level of their own blundering. They are degrading her, and
she is beginning to repudiate them.’
For the division of the Leave movement into faction,
parties and division, blame the personal and financial ambitions of the leaders
of the designated Leave campaign, Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings.
Mix
that in with their determination to keep the designated Leave campaign ‘pure’
of UKIP, a policy which has done nothing except turn UKIP into a faction doing
little except whining ‘that’s not fair.’
Add also their antagonism towards Arron Banks
(absolutely reciprocated by Banks, who anyway would rather fight with Elliott
and Cummings than draw up a Brexit plan), and you have a campaign with no
coherent message and no plan at all to assure voters that there is a way Britain
can move smoothly out of 40 years of entanglement with the European Project.
On the Remain side, this referendum on how Britain
will be governed, by her people and ancient Constitution or by the EU, has degenerated
into nothing but a proxy fight for the next Tory leadership.
For the blundering, start with Boris Johnson and
Michael Gove and continue right down through Nigel Lawson and every other
leader of the designated Leave campaign.
On the Banks-Farage side, the
blundering starts with imagining a campaign can be won on little more than ‘We
want our country back’ and ‘Points based immigration system.’
For degrading Britain, start with the Prime Minister
and work down through every Cabinet minister willing to lie that David Cameron
has delivered a ‘reformed’ EU which gives Britain a ‘special status’— that’s
what today’s Cameron five-point guarantee card claims, that Britain has a ‘special
status’ in the EU -- and that there is no way to leave the EU without national economic
collapse.
Which means under the rubric of degrading Britain, we
must also put the national news journalists who have reported that ‘guarantee’
today without noting – so we must assume they still haven’t figured it out –
that the ‘special status’ Cameron claims to have won in his negotiations
earlier this year has no legal standing at all.
That means the government can offer no such guarantee. The pledge is a fraud.
In the February conclusions of the European Council,
which presented the inter-governmental deal agreed with Britain, officially the ‘new
settlement for the United Kingdom within the European Union,’ does not yet
exist, it depends on a future treaty change.
Until then – and there may be no
treaty change for years -- it means nothing. Even then, any single member state
can veto any new treaty.
Factions, division, blundering, degrading: there you
have it, the leaders of both sides of the referendum.
On day, as France did, Britain will repudiate them
all.
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