Not England’s Rose

If I ever needed another reason to want to get out of the European Union the 'Britain Stronger in Europe' campaign just gave me a beauty – Stuart Rose. The Daily Telegraph spoiler headline read “People backing Brexit are 'quitters' says 'patriotic' campaign chief Stuart Rose” the now typical breaking-the-speech-before-the-speech paradigm effectively rendering pointless his actually uttering the words. But utter the words he did and he declaimed in near accentless Newspeak that black was white, up was down and two plus two equals five. A smart heel snap, a salute and hearty Hi-Ho Hitler and we’re away... with the fairies.

I’m guessing ennoblement was the price of his endorsement despite his former objections to the EU’s heavy-handed impositions. Everybody can be bought and Rose comes oven-ready, trussed, stuffed and with an apple in his mouth. It’s probably all David Cameron can do to keep his cock in his trousers. Cameron, Mandelson, Blair... one after another they troop across the square, goose-stepping in lock-step to the leaden beat of inevitability; the anti-democratic, ever closer union’s show of strength to the watching world.

Of course the entire IN campaign boils down to one thing – we’re too scared to up-sticks; “Leaving Europe is taking a leap into the dark. It’s just not worth the risk.” The very same tactics deployed to maintain the forced status quo forty years ago – We’re in now, don’t rock the boat, don’t be selfish, play the game, reform from within... shut up, you nasty, racist Little Englander. Think of the children. Ah yes the children, the Grosseuropa Jugendbewegung the Greater European Youth Movement, a coming army of unquestioning Euro-drones, schooled from birth in the project and ready to denounce dissenters to the party. Scared enough yet?

For forty years we have seen not one power wrested back from the EU; not one concession given to our unique place in history. Various leaders have claimed triumphs only to accede to demands some way down the line, trusting to short memories and the disengagement of the general public in matters politic. ‘Whoever you vote for the government still gets in’ we joke, but every succession takes us one step closer to Ein Volk under a single, unelected supreme leader, the bad taste disguised by an apparently benign socialism-lite, the death draft of choice for suicidal nations over the last century and a half.

But the real argument comes down not to what form of relationship we have with Europe but to what form of relationship we have with ourselves. Our national self-esteem has been progressively eroded by the constant nagging from within by fifth columnists. Elements of the press and the privileged classes chipping away at the pillars of Britishness, trying to supplant settled, confident resilience with reliance on the state in return for a quiet acceptance of the dogma: Britain can’t go it alone. Britain will have no influence outside of Europe. We are all immigrants anyway. How dare we adopt a them-and-us attitude? We can’t pick and choose what rules to follow. We’re all Europeans now. “British Influence believes that British membership of the EU makes us a stronger, more secure, more influential and richer country”. And on and on it goes... chip, chip, chip.

This message of doom and disaster will play right up until polling day and given that this is likely to be two years away there is a good chance that, just as in 1975, the cancer of the pro-EU propaganda will grow and eat away at our resolve until enough people say fuck it, I’ll swim the sodding Euro Channel to vote yes if you just stop going on about it. If Rose and his cronies are the kind of leaders that await us on the other side of that once English moat I’d rather, like Churchill, take my chances with the open sea.