It’s always interesting to see how groups regard
themselves. It is not unusual for any
sort of group to take a rather positive view of itself and, by contrast, demean
other groups. Nowhere is this more
likely than in the tribal bear-pit of politics.
Political parties have long had a rather favourable view of themselves
which doesn’t seem to have been readily passed on to anyone outside their
nicely insular organisations, and now the two sides of the European referendum
campaign are at it too.
The loudest bleaters seem to be the Out campaign. Barely a week of the campaign goes by without
a slew of Outers complaining about the tone and attitude of everyone else. There was a particularly concerted campaign
today to claim that they themselves were all lovely, decent people while the
mean old Remainers are unpleasantly attacking them. In particular, various Leave partisans
professed to be wounded and upset by the terrible attacks launched against
their de facto leader, Boris Johnson.
We should certainly take these with a hefty shovelful of
salt. Firstly, Mr. Johnson’s incendiary
comments are deliberately aimed to provoke mass outrage and they succeed
wonderfully. His most recent invocation
of Hitler as a sort of pre-cursor to the EU is precisely the sort of ludicrous,
over-the-top assertion that Mr. Johnson has made his stock in trade for
years. As a historical observation, it
is panders to the outer fringes of myopic lunacy. Whatever Mr. Johnson’s intelligence, it is
certainly great enough to understand that there is no comparison between the
dictators and monarchs of history trying to subjugate Europe, and the rather
more collegiate endeavour – no matter how flawed – of the European Union. Also,
barely a week after his mayoral predecessor, Ken Livingstone caused such
outrage with his own Hitler comments, it is inconceivable that Boris didn’t
know that using the H word would do the same for him.
Boris wanted us to talk about him, and about Europe,
probably in that order, and he succeeded admirably. He is also perfectly capable of throwing
brick-bats towards the Remain campaign, and especially the Prime Minister, who
he accused of deviously planning to sell Britain to the corporate backers of
the EU campaign during his battlebus tour.
It was Boris, also, who described David Cameron as “demented” for
suggesting that leaving the EU would lead to “bubonic plague and world war
three”, neither of which Cameron had in fact specifically mentioned in his
speech. (The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland penned an interesting piece associating Boris with Trump as one of what he called the "post-truth politicians".)
As for the Leave campaigners themselves, they have emerged
from one of the most vicious training schools of fratricidal politics that
Britain has ever seen – the Euro-sceptic wing of the Tory party. Nothing has ever been too extreme for the
sceptics, and we saw some of their parliamentary ilk seek yesterday to try and sabotage their own government’s Queen’s Speech as they apparently plotted to
defeat it in an unholy alliance with Jeremy Corbyn. Last week they unloaded shed-loads of venom on the governor of the Bank of England for having the temerity to suggest that there might be economic consequences if we leave. Before that, Barack Obama was their target - an unprincipled president who had dared to remove a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. And ITV, of course, has been threatened with reprisals for not doing the Leave campaign's bidding, with a sinister reminder that the present lot in No. 10 won't be there for very long. Not exactly a litany of loveliness and politeness I'd say.
Euro-sceptics, and now the Leave campaign at large, have
always portrayed themselves as plucky little mavericks fighting against the
fascistic vested interests of the state and the EU. If you want to stick with misbegotten
historical analogies, that’s about as accurate as suggesting Hitler was simply a
brave German freedom fighter.
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