‘Recollections may vary’, said our late and much-lamented Queen when bombarded by her grandson Prince Harry’s petulant potshots from California. As Harry’s smears and allegations against the Royal Family, the British people and even the tabloid press unravel in one of the longest media car crashes of recent times, he is now trying to wriggle out of some of his lies – particularly the inflammatory allegations of institutional racism against his own family and Britain as a whole – by claiming he deals in his own version of the truth which trumps ‘so-called objective facts’.
“My memory… gathers and curates as it sees fit, and there’s just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as there is in so-called objective facts.”
This PR woke-speak is designed both to absolve a perpetrator of monstrous falsehoods from taking responsibility for the consequences of his lies, and to enable the continual peddling of entirely subjective opinion or propaganda as gospel truth.
Such casuistry is unlikely to withstand even the gentlest probing by a competent barrister, but of course ‘curated truth’ has long been a feature of the political lobbyist’s toolbox. Until now we called it spin. But ‘curated truth’ is so deliciously ironic and full of potential for satire that it is likely to send ‘spin’ spinning to its doom. Younger readers please note: satire has not been banned – yet.
Bang on cue, those political spinners par excellence, irreconcilable Rejoiners, have issued one of their own ‘curated truths’ straight out of Prince Harry’s playbook. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who has no national political remit whatsoever, has decided to make a statement about Brexit. Presumably the sudden decision of arch-Rejoiner Lord Adonis to quit the fray has left an opening which Khan has decided to fill, doubtless with a view to challenging Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership at some point. One would question the Rejoiners use of such a deeply unpopular politician to speak on their behalf (any London taxi or Uber driver of any nationality or political persuasion will give you chapter and verse on his failings), but needs must. The anti-Brexit narrative has to be fed and constantly reinforced. And foreign observers who report the speech probably don’t realise how insignificant Khan is in the grand scheme of things. They will think that a speech by the Mayor of London (note, not the Lord Mayor, who actually has more to say in the matter) in the Mansion House means that the City is suffering real Bremorse.
Khan’s speechwriter seems to have drunk deep at Prince Harry’s fount of ‘truth’.
“After two years of denial and avoidance, we must now confront the hard truth: Brexit isn’t working.
It’s weakened our economy, fractured our union and diminished our reputation. But, crucially, not beyond repair. We need greater alignment with our European neighbours – a shift from this extreme, hard Brexit we have now to a workable version that serves our economy and people. That includes having a pragmatic debate about the benefits of being a part of the customs union and the single market.”
Here endeth the lesson, you Brexiteer sinners. Repent while ye may.
‘Extreme hard Brexit’? Really? ‘Hard Brexit’ was a term coined by Remainers for Project Fear, and meant leaving the EU ‘without a deal’. The UK left the EU not only with a ‘deal’ – the hugely expensive and completely unnecessary Withdrawal Agreement – but also negotiated a comprehensive free trade agreement. And after two years of lockdown-induced inactivity and an energy crisis due to self-harming Net Zero targets and the Ukraine War, it is a wonder that anything is working at all in Britain. Yet things are quite busy, for all the doomsters and gloomsters and depressives who like to regale us with failure on a daily basis. None of our recent travails has anything to do with Brexit, which has yet to be fully implemented because the Rejoiner establishment is hell-bent on overturning it.
To counter the propaganda which has been pouring out of Rejoiner central recently, my colleagues at Briefings for Britain have published detailed analysis on the economic impacts of Brexit which completely refutes Khan’s claims.
However, we need to look at the long-term political strategy behind all this anti-Brexit propaganda. Why now? Hasn’t Brexit been done? Is the United Kingdom not now a third country like any other with regard to the European Union? Not if you are a committed Rejoiner, funded by billionaires, lobbyists and foreign governments and institutions who would like Britain firmly and perpetually contained under EU jurisdiction and policies. In many respects, Rejoiners resemble 18th century Jacobites, who never gave up hope of restoring the Stuarts to the throne until bloody defeat on the battlefield of Culloden. Constant plots and insurrections in favour of ‘the King over the water’ were of course fuelled by French gold and arms, with a view to clipping Britain’s wings until such time as a French puppet could be crowned at Westminster Abbey. Plus ça change.
One would like politics to return to normal. But Rejoiners will never give up so long as there is a chance of undoing Brexit. Their allegiance is not to this country or its citizens, nor to democracy, nor to the common law. It now seems fairly clear that removing Boris Johnson from office was just the first (and absolutely essential) prerequisite for the launch of the Rejoiners’ plan to get the UK back into the European Union without a referendum.
This plan could very well go something like this:
- Get rid of the most readily identifiable Brexiteer figurehead, Boris Johnson, the bête noire of the Remain campaign.
- Get rejected Tory leadership candidates in – staunch Remainer Jeremy Hunt and the ambiguous Rishi Sunak – to soften Britain up for re-entry into the EU’s orbit. Liz Truss with her Thatcherite policies was a most unwelcome democratic blip, but Rejoiners must be emboldened by her successful defenestration, because the Eurosceptic Conservative grass roots has now been removed from all decision-making.
- Sideline key Brexiteer ministers.
- Attack, slow down or pause legislation which enables the UK diverge from EU law, thus making it much easier to re-adopt all EU rules and regulations. The media, unions and Rejoiner peers and MPs are now all campaigning against the Retained EU Law Bill, helped by a civil service which claims the task of sunsetting EU law is too difficult (it isn’t – all the legislation was reviewed for the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018).
- Fail to bin the NI Protocol, for the same reason as 4 (it keeps the UK aligned with EU law).
- Allow the EU to take credit for support for Ukraine, although without Britain’s early and vigorous lead, EU politicians would still be sitting down with Putin while Kiev was flattened. Recent newspaper puff pieces show that recollections definitely vary on the Ukraine War.
- Fail to divert trade from EU supply chains through unambitious trade agreements which stick closely to the EU’s protectionist trade policy.
- Squeeze the economy with unnecessary and excessively high taxation and strangle business with even more regulation.
- Stir continuously with liberal additions of ‘curated truth’ and ‘opinion polls’ claiming that Brexit is an unmitigated disaster. The steady flow of pro-EU/anti-Brexit media pieces in recent weeks is going to increase.
- When the cauldron is piping hot and the recipe cooked to full toxicity, claim that because of an ‘unprecedented economic crisis’ we have to rejoin the Single Market ‘to save Britain’. The chorus from the big banks, the media, decrepit politicians, think tanks and every Twitter activist who hates Brexit will stoke the frenzy, much as they did against Liz Truss. They must have been disappointed by the GDP statistics issued this month, which showed that the economy actually grew last autumn instead of contracting.
It would be a sine qua non that no public vote would be allowed because it would be ‘an emergency’, and anyway, the plebs simply don’t know what’s good for them.
Too far-fetched? Given previous Remainer tactics both in and outside Parliament, no. And so, to paraphrase Mr Spare himself, the chess pieces are on the board. Several Rejoiner moves have already been played, quite ruthlessly. It is up to those who believe in safeguarding our democracy and independence to counter-attack, upend the board and take out all the pieces on it. We are all battle scarred and weary, but so long as they continue to fight, then so must we.
