Wrong side of history

Image result for farage  immigration poster

 

Historian Niall Ferguson has already seen the light with Trump and after lambasting him for months now recognises he may just be the man for the job…but there’s more….Niall has had a double-double-take you might say and is now a fan of Brexit after similarly having spent months attacking it.

Let’s get down to brass tacks and the essence of his message…one that the BBC needs to read and understand….

‘This is not about GDP, it is principally about the complete loss of control of the EU’s external border and what that implies for our country’s future.’

Not about GDP.  The BBC ‘fought’ the Brexit campaign, and continues to do so, purely on the basis of the economics…as they saw it…showing it in the worst possible light.  The BBC refused to engage in debate on the actual issues that concerned the Leave voters, immigration and sovereignty, and it still does.  The BBC continues to pump out endless reports of economic doom and gloom ‘because of Brexit’ and limits the debate to that subject.  The idea of course is to portray Brexit as hugely damaging and a failure in the hope that there will be another vote and it will be influenced by all the ‘bad news’ that the BBC has been flooding the airwaves with for so long.

You may also recognise that Ferguson is saying Farage was right when he used a photograph of massed immigrants heading into Europe to illustrate his point about the failure of the EU to control EU external borders and that this would also threaten us in Britain.

It is curious that the BBC don’t report what Ferguson says…he is after all an influential and famous historian that if he’d said Brexit was a disaster would have been headline news and the subject of a Nicky Campbell phone-in.

Also consider that the BBC is desperately trawling around to get Leave voters to say they now regret voting leave and using that to suggest we should have a second vote…why no interest in those who regret voting for Remain?

What does Ferguson say?  The EU is a complete and dangerous failure…..and Cameron’s ‘reforms’ were a fraud [that the BBC loved]…..

With hindsight, he said, David Cameron should have rejected the ‘absolutely risible’ offer from the EU on migration and backed Brexit as well.

Professor Ferguson then listed the EU’s failures over the past decade including the euro, which he said had been a ‘disaster for all the reasons we said it would be in the 1990s’.

‘It has been a disaster for southern Europe and has only worked for Germany and northern Europe,’ he said.

‘European security policy, especially with respect to North Africa and the Middle East, has been a disaster.

‘On the migration issue the European leadership got it disastrously wrong. On the question of radical Islam the European leadership has fundamentally got it wrong. One has to recognise that the European elite’s performance over the last decade entirely justified the revolt of provincial England that was what we saw in Brexit.

‘If those of us who were part of the elite spent more time in pubs in provincial England and provincial Wales we would have heard what I just said.

‘This is not about GDP, it is principally about the complete loss of control of the EU’s external border and what that implies for our country’s future.

‘I have had a kind of awakening. Brexit woke me up and reminded me I needed to pay much more attention to what the non-elite majority of voters were thinking.

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61 Responses to Wrong side of history

  1. Dave S says:

    An interesting post. Ferguson may have understood the reality but our elites never will until they are forced from power. Ferguson is an intellectual and does not need the Eu and PC to validate his existence. The BBC drones do and so does the great majority of our MSM/politicians.
    Take the EU and the liberal PC dreams away from them and they cannot survive. Nearly all are useless at providing for themselves and their sense of entitlement and the 100,000 pound salaries that go with the whole charade have made them determind to grip tight and hold fast to what they know.
    They will try to prevent Brexit and I still think May is plan B . These people have spent 50 years trying to destroy our culture and the West and will not stop now .Brexit is the pivot point in the battle.
    Speculating about the why and so on is pointless. Stopping them is our task and it is going to be hard and unpleasant for many of us.

       89 likes

    • Number 7 says:

      As a “great friend” of The Moron & Gideon, he claims he was influenced by them!

      And he claims to be a historian?

      Give me Starkey any day.

         45 likes

    • Alan says:

      Yep…just listening to 5Live report Cameron is in the US telling them the voters are wrong and that he lost because of ‘populism’….no he lost because the voters were against very specific issues that they’d been lied to about for years or forced to accept previously without any say in the matter and they voted to put that right…not an irrational, emotional or uninformed decision at all.
      The BBC report it as if Cameron’s interpetation was all true….as well as going on to examine the alleged spread of hate crimes in the wake of Brexit across the country….the BBC really is poisonous and dangerous.

         104 likes

      • quisquose says:

        I am reminded of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s excellent speech from the other day in which he spoke of language now being used of which Lewis Carroll would be proud, when people claim to respect the vote.

        “The word respect has been changed by the lexicographers … it used to mean held in high esteem, high regard … now it means condescend to”

        Ditto for the use of the word “populism” to explain away the Brexit result. It is a condescension of popular, it is anti-democratic.

           77 likes

        • Doublethinker says:

          Qui,
          The same is true of ‘post truth’ and fake news , both of which the BBC now use to smear anything it doesn’t like. But the BBC has been a world leader in peddling lies and suppressing the truth for years . They just are upset when the other side allegedly uses the same tactics.

             44 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Dave was unpopulist with one segment of the population ever since he became a MP and more so after taking leadership of the Tories. The BBC told me so. Tony Blair told me so. Gordon Brown told me so. Harriet Harman told me so. Yvette Cooper told me so. Ed Balls told me so. Ed Mili … etc, etc, etc.

        After Dave threatened old-age pensioners on the last weekend or last but one weekend before the EU Referendum, Dave became unpopulist with a whole more people.

        Had he worked a bit more assiduously at courting EU Officials and European leaders over a longer period and obtained some really substantial EU reforms, he might have been everyone’s hero.

           13 likes

        • NCBBC says:

          EU leaders and Merkel, like Hillary, thought that, given the propaganda, Britain could be scared into “Remaining”. Therefore there was no need in giving anything to Cameron to take away.

          Now the EU elite are doing the same thing. They want Britain to “pay” to access the single market, and allow unfettered immigration – you know all those bearded Muslim women and children that Merkel allowed in, but have since become a millstone round her miserable neck, as the election approaches.

             11 likes

      • evad666 says:

        I assume the BBC Motto Nations shall speak Truth unto Nations shall now be rewritten as Nations shall speak Fake Truth unto Nations.

           6 likes

    • Dogger Bank says:

      I recently read “The Old Front Line” by John Masefield which is an account of his visit to the Somme a year after the battle and counter to the now fashionable decrying of the event, he saw it as a great stepping point to future victories. One sentence I think of note is where he states that “It first gave the enemy the knowledge that he was beaten.” Brexit may not be the complete victory we would like but no doubt it does have the same effect on the enemy.

         29 likes

      • NCBBC says:

        Brexit followed by Trumpit, is having a demoralising effect on the treasonous cultural marxists of the BBC. They are getting so desperate that they are doing a “charge of the Light Brigade” on every issue.

        And getting mowed down.

        They even got a Green candidate to attempt to “re-run” the US election. There are also rumours that the Chicago Mafia, aka as the Democrats, are planning to scare the Electoral College to vote for “the Hillary”, as the “Russians are coming”.

           11 likes

  2. Richard Pinder says:

    I calculated that the economic question was in favour of Brexit, using a correlation with predominantly White English speaking territories not in the EU, showing that Brexit would produce a GDP per-Capita boost of between 10 to 20 percent. Presumably due to less taxation, less regulation, a less expensive governance due to both less Government and a more efficient Government more in tune with the democratic will, and therefore more beneficial for what the people want. Also they don’t have to pay an authoritarian international body for the privilege of trading internally and externally.

       53 likes

    • NCBBC says:

      If we had remained in the EU, we would have lost

      1. Habeus Corpus – A writ of habeas corpus is known as “the great and efficacious writ in all manner of illegal confinement”, being a remedy available to the meanest against the mightiest.

      2. Presumption of innocence – Innocent till proven guilty, beyond reasonable doubt.

      3. Trial by your peers – jury. A jury trial or trial by jury is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact, which then direct the actions of a judge. It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions.

      These three fundamental principles, is what makes for a free citizenry, free of the menace of the an over reaching, and over powerful state. The EU definitely is headed that way.

      These three great principles, Britain bequeathed to America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, where the people have recourse to a court, against the arbitrary power of the state. All the above nations are grateful for that gift.

      And we, in a fit of carelessness, were going to throw it all away. For some dubious money, and access to a market.

      Whew! That was a close run thing.

      An EU army would inevitably lead to our forces, sworn to defend the realm of Her majesty, to swear allegiance to defend the EU and its unelected bureaucrats. What utter tripe.

      Mathew 4:4 – ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”

      Mark 8:36 – For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

      They apply to individuals and nations.

         63 likes

      • Expat John says:

        Great points, NCBBC.
        Regarding your point no. 3, my daily trudge through French news has turned up a case in the Gard area where a judge, sitting on her own, decided to hear a case in the absence of the accused, without a jury, calling no witnesses, and without hearing any expert evidence.
        She then sentenced him to twelve years and issued an arrest warrant.

        No jury, no witnesses, no experts, one judge.

        Welcome to the future we just avoided.

           44 likes

        • Grant says:

          Expat,

          But in the Supreme Court on the Brexit case we have an amazing 11 Judges, but still all Left-wing and Europhiliacs. Why no jury ?

             28 likes

          • Expat John says:

            Hi Grant.
            There’s no “defendant” because there’s no criminal act to be answered, it’s a hearing for legal arguments, not a trial.
            Still a good chance that their politics will show through in the judgement, though.

               21 likes

            • Grant says:

              Expat,

              Yes, I know ! But there should be a defendant ! And the result should be decided by a jury, selected at random. Not by politically appointed judges. With a jury , the outcome is uncertain. With bunch of highly paid stooges, the outcome is a foregone conclusion !

                 19 likes

        • NCBBC says:

          Thats EU/ French justice.

          The horror is that if the accused was a Briton, the judge could have taken an arrest warrant out for the individual, and it would be executed. Its still the case.

          We need to get out of this madhouse. Even not having access to the EU market, worst case, is a small price to pay for freedom.

             17 likes

          • Up2snuff says:

            NCBBC, the cost of food and a possible increase due to Brexit has been a HYS on the BBC w/s today.

            Had we remained in the EU it is highly likely that more tax harmonisation would have been demanded by Brussels/Strasbourg which would have meant the UK charging VAT on more of our food sales.

            It has dawned on the dimmos in Brussels and Strasbourg that having narrow VAT parameters across the EU to fund its activities is a) economically damaging to some members, especially the ones with weaker economies, and b) allowing some countries ie. Ireland and Luxembourg, to get away with murder as far as low corporate tax rates are concerned. Unfortunately, the plan I heard was not to allow member States total freedom with their VAT rates and targets for the charge in exchange for an EU take from standard basic level of Corporate tax across the EU, but to just loosen the VAT parameters a little while continuing to gather in VAT money as well as a chunk of Corporate tax across the EU into the Brussels/Strasbourg coffers.

            Brussels/Strasbourg, in other words, wanting to have its cake and eat it!

            This is pure rumour, so needs treating with caution, but I’ve seen some bits from different sources to convince me that it is at least being considered.

               11 likes

            • NCBBC says:

              Up2snuff
              It wont surprise me one whit. The EU was in a state apoplexy with Ireland, and its corporate tax regime.

              At the end of the day, the EU cultural marxists, like the “red in claw” marxists of the USSR, are after unearned money, and pensions.

              For the attempt to bring instate a totalitarian marxist regime to enslave the recently freed citizens of Europe, EU leaders and commissioners, should be tried in a war crimes court.

              But they will never learn. They will continue to prod the Russian bear. For what gain, I know not.

                 7 likes

      • imaynotalwaysloveyou says:

        Well this is the thing I try to get across to my lefty friends while they enthuse about the ‘enlightened’ EU. The countries on the continent have never had our (or other anglophone nations who copied it) common law built up over centuries.

        All they’ve had is the Napoleonic Code imposed on their (mostly) johnny-come-lately countries, or otherwise had bouts as monarchical/totalitarian tyrannies.

        Even though our laws are hopelessly diluted in terms of punishments, there is still some idea of individual freedom and civil liberty at the core of it.

           25 likes

  3. Deborahanother says:

    He’s still detached from reality.

    He actually believes there’s a pub on every corner where you can go and chat to the locals.
    Not in my area ,they are closing down at an alarming rate. Muslim incomers aren’t into alcohol or meeting with the community in the pub ……..Thats just a fantasy as portrayed in Eastenders by the BBC.
    But its all part of the reasons people voted Leave.

    However I’m pleased Mr Ferguson has seen the writing on the wall and done an about turn. Wants to be on the right side of history I expect.

    Now if only the BEEB would have such a light bulb going on moment.

       73 likes

    • NCBBC says:

      The only “light bulb moment” for the BBC will be when the government switches OFF the license fee racket.

         18 likes

  4. EnglandExpects says:

    All the failures of the EU were evident before the EU referendum vote . Ferguson didn’t need to be chatting in a pub to see the obvious . The fact is that Ferguson may be right wing in many instances but he’s a celebrity academic who moves seamlessly across the atlantic to occupy high level jobs and to publicise his books . He is part of the elite who wanted us to remain. Full marks to Ferguson for his conversion but zero marks to him for analytic ability. Like left wing historians such as Sharma, these people’s views reflect their biases from their cultural milieu, not their ability to see what is really happening .

       40 likes

  5. johnnythefish says:

    It is curious that the BBC don’t report what Ferguson says…he is after all an influential and famous historian that if he’d said Brexit was a disaster would have been headline news and the subject of a Nicky Campbell phone-in.

    Which typically is how the BBC seeks to control the mood of the nation, just as they deploy their own Memory Hole to dispense a leftist, self-loathing version of history to a gullible and trusting public.

       47 likes

    • honestus says:

      Mr Fish, you are correct.
      Mr Ferguson may now see the light but the BBC are fatally infected. They use all the subversive tools (and fools) at their disposal to constantly harangue and criticize what they see as a mistaken decision. Much of their output presents the vote in this way – as a mistake – requiring correction by the enlightened and wise BBC.
      Unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of MSM are made up of such people – convinced of their righteousness and, conversely, of our error and that their underhandedness of propagandized content and bias reporting is therefore considered an acceptable means to an end, as it has been for the progressive theologians for decades.

         25 likes

  6. Jerry Owen says:

    We have had David Attenborough suggesting that Trump ‘should be shot’. My sky homepage today has an article by a global warming fascist saying that his advice to Trump ( because Trump is apparently a science denier ) ‘is to shoot himself’.
    This is very nasty stuff indeed, forget the bias but these sentiments are indeed hate speech if ever there was such a thing.
    This agenda is of course being propagated in the hope that some crazed fanatic will indeed take the bait they are laying out across the media. We now have the EU wanting to roll out a ‘youth corps’ ( isn’t the EU becoming a corpse? ) truly nasty times at present.

       44 likes

    • Jerry Owen says:

      Ooops I put this under the wrong article!

         2 likes

    • Demon says:

      I hope that if anything happens to Trump (and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t) that Attenbrough is arrested, tried and imprisoned for inciting murder. I used to like and respect him but now I regard him as a privileged low-life.

         43 likes

      • Grant says:

        Demon,

        Yes, Attenborough should be put on trial for that comment. It was criminal.

           29 likes

      • Jerry Owen says:

        Demon
        I used to admire his programmes but have not watched his latest series out of principle.
        He really is too old now as without sounding nasty his speech is less than perfect. But he is of course a BBC hero.. unlike David Bellamy!

           27 likes

        • Demon says:

          Jerry, the same as me. In fact I ignored the last two or three series, but he just seems to get worse.

             17 likes

          • Grant says:

            Jerry and Demon,

            The other thing is that his voice is getting quiet now and the BBC ruin all wildlife documentaries with loud , mindless music. It is like being in a disco. Attenborough should have editorial control over that crap.

               12 likes

            • NCBBC says:

              The BBC has been playing mind numbing music in even Horizon programs for at least a decade.

              This is the sort of science fit for global warming junkies of the BBC.

                 10 likes

      • NCBBC says:

        I was under the impression that America takes a very dim view of anyone threatening the life of the POTUS, or soon to be one.

        If anyone is under the impression that the British government will protect them from America, is dead wrong.

           10 likes

      • NCBBC says:

        Jerry Owen
        I thought you were making this up.

        Attenborough, or his minders, now say that it was a joke.

        Even suggesting the assassination of the soon to be POTUS, is not a joke. Just like it is not a joke to tell security at an airport that you have a bomb.

        The US Secret service, FBI, Homeland Security, police and the like, dont appreciate such jokes.

           14 likes

        • imaynotalwaysloveyou says:

          The Donald just needs to utter ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent Priest of Gaia’ then maybe the whole BBC cabal will finally sit up and recognise reality. It doesn’t matter anyway, neither we nor our European neighbours are going to figure much in his foreign policy plans, I feel.

          I only hope our government will try to keep at least a decent military force properly equipped, instead of wasting it on the bloated international aid budget. But no government ever seems able to do the ‘right’ thing, at least since Thatcher’s era. And that was only an outlier blip in the downwards trend to dreary national degradation.

             9 likes

    • Grant says:

      Jerry,

      Quite agree. OK, Attenborough is a died-in-the-wool Leftie and and maybe getting a bit senile these days but imagine the outcry if he had said that Obama “should be shot “. Attenborough is just another elitist luvvie who thinks his political opinions , including on climate change, are any more relevant than the opinions of the rest of us. He should stick to making wildlife documentaries.

         38 likes

      • G.W.F. says:

        He might be persuaded to resign from Population Matters – an outfit dedicated to reducing the world’s population. They never advocated assassination to achieve their ends.

        Perhaps he should stick to faking snow scenes with animals but cut out his predation porn.

           19 likes

        • Grant says:

          GWF,

          Good points. I give him the benefit of the doubt of old age. I mean, his not mine. No fool like an old fool.

             8 likes

        • Jerry Owen says:

          Perhaps dear old David seeing as he is now very old should consider Euthanasia to help reduce the worlds population by… well, one!

             10 likes

          • Grant says:

            Jerry,

            Elitists like Attenborough never consider that they are the oxygen-wasters !

               13 likes

      • NCBBC says:

        On Climate Change, his only credentials are that he has a degree in Botany.

           10 likes

  7. Grant says:

    Not being an historian, I cannot comment on Ferguson’s expertise. But when he got his post at Harvard he did seen to move to the Left which is necessary to get a post there. If he is switching sides , it may be because he has new job lined up and/or has secured his pension. I have always felt that his main preoccupation is, well, Niall Ferguson. Not a very likeable person, I don’t think .

       18 likes

    • Rob in Cheshire says:

      These days I think he has more in common with Boston, Mass, than Boston, Lincs, otherwise the result of the referendum would not have come as such a shock to him.

         15 likes

      • Grant says:

        Rob,

        LOL ! An academic , social and political butterfly. However, enough about you, Rob. Let’s talk about Niall !

           8 likes

  8. Philip_2 says:

    I was rather shocked to learn from another blogsite (and find out that its true) that Edward Heath abolished the term ‘Treason’ in the UK (I thought it was Blair but that’s not the case). He repealed the ‘Treason act’ so he could swear alegeance to a foreign power (and that power was Brussles). I voted for it (and the BBC has a nice link to that date 1974) Britain joins the EEC (1974).

    This date is important to me personally as Heath gave ‘us young plebs’ the opportunity to vote for or against the EEC (as it was or Common market before that). Heath also stated publically that the EEC Referendum vote did not mean that he would EVER sign-away our UK soveriegnty or democracy (or the Queen as head of state). but that is precislely what he did do in fact*. If not him then whoever followed him. The Common Market was a front for the EEC regulations that involved a slow ebb of all legislation power from the UK to Brussles (covered up my using EU laws challenging our existing consitution). *It was in fact a direct lie and cover up.

    It has been noted in the Broadsheets (TELEGRAPH) that the same voters who voted ‘IN” back in Edward Heaths day, voted ‘OUT’ on Brexit referndum day. For GOOD REASON, when we now realise that we were all lied too (and the covered up by the BBC staring how we would all ‘benefit’from being invaded (with what they now call refugees).

    At that time (pre Blair era) Labour were only ‘luke warm’ over Europe. I also voted for Tony Blair which i am still ashamed to say, was the next disaster only to be followes by Gordon Brown (who sold all the gold in the Bank of England amongst other talents). But it was Blair that actually received the Charlemagne prize with other notables such as Coudenhove-Kalergi, Merkel, Tusk, Schauble, Van Rompuy and Shultz. Names you may recall as being very anti-British and pro fascist (in its real sense), there will be no democracy, no race, no higher science education (BBC), no biology, no money (other than Euro), no folklore, no customs, no passports, no religon (Catholics will be prosecuted and banned), Children indoctrinated against race, family, parents by order, Childen removed from parents on grounds of sex, nobody allwed to state their sex on a birth certficate. All sexes are considered equal including those that don’t exist (yet). Its a ploy to destablse the native polulation. Efectively ban the concepot of ‘family’ and (its hoped) ancestory.

    And if that’s not bad enough, your politicans (and BBC) calling you a racist (for being mildly patriotic or sceptical about the EU) then you will be entirely shocked when you learn what the ‘Coudenhove-Kalergi actually is. It’s never been on the BBC and has never been voted for and was never debated in parliament – and yet (like Agenda 21 ) it’s not a secret -its a UN commitment. It is ‘paraded’ (by elites) as the ‘final solution’ to all ailments, the ‘elixir’ of eternal youth, and compatible with Socialist orthodoxy. The BBC will of course claim to be impartial (whilst George Orwell has his statue erected outside BBC HQ). How many ‘remainers’ are aware of what Tony Blair was ‘awarded’ for destruction of his country? (read on and perhaps be as shocked as I was)…. And yet we are not OUT yet, if we stay (in EU) we may never live to see our country intact, we will all be a footnote in history… I don’t want this to be our countries epitaph. Read this and be wary, it’ll scare the pants off remainers…

    http://www.theeuroprobe.org/2013-044-couden/

       28 likes

    • Doublethinker says:

      P2 ,
      A very good post . I too as a young man voted Yes in 75 and it took me many years to realise we had been lied to and that slowly but surely our country was being subsumed by the EU. However I can claim that I never voted for Blair. I knew all along he was a phoney who wanted to wreck our country not just by forcing us ever deeper into the EU but also by imposing mass immigration and multiculturalism on us . He did this in secret , with the connivance of the BBC , because he knew the British people would never vote for it. Then he went further and started to brainwash children at school and on TV ,again with full support of the BBC, into despising their own country, filling their heads with lies .Then he used the law to stifle any protest or even debate relating to immigration. He has done great hArm to this country and he deserves our greatest contempt. If we ever do get a right of centre government they should certainly have impeached and brought to justice.

         32 likes

    • Demon says:

      Britain joined in 1973 and the referendum was in 1975. I was one yesr too young to vote in it, but I would have gladly voted Yes at that time for the promises made that our sovereignty would be intact. We didn’t know that behind the scenes our sovereignty was actually going to be salami-sliced, one treaty at a time and the British would be lied to and be unable to do anything to stop it.

         22 likes

      • Grant says:

        Demon,

        I voted yes because I believed the lies. There are many Europhiliacs that I would like to “salami-slice ” now !

           8 likes

        • TruthSeeker says:

          G
          salami-slice?
          OK, if you must slice all the Bremoaniacs into untramicrotonically thin wafers, carry on.
          Do make sure do not hurt yourself, perhaps some training with Allah’s little helpers before you turn professional?

             7 likes

        • Scroblene says:

          During the campaign for the EEC, I regularly passed a poster in a deserted garage window, which stated ‘Yes to Europe, No to Communism’. It was still there for years afterwards.

          These were the sort of scaring techniques going around, and of course, being very young back then, they struck a chord, and we voted to join.

          Heath never mentioned his federalist ideals back then, we were more concerned about reds under the beds…

             10 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Also, Demon, there was some sense in the argument in ’75 that with the UK as one of nine, we could have some influence in shaping the EU into a very effective co-operative model organisation. That, for one reason or another, never came to pass. Instead we had endless conflict, especially with Jacques Delors.

        Once our own leaders had enthusiastically started calling for ever more enlargement, especially with the Single Currency in sight, it was obvious that there was no hope for the EU without substantial and serious reforms.

        A Leave vote then becomes a much more logical choice for someone who voted Yes to the EC/EEC/EU in 1975. Especially so when David Cameron’s efforts at reform were so feeble as to be almost non-existent.

           12 likes

        • Demon says:

          Up2snuff, I agree with everything you say there.

          The other thing that made me think being a member of the Common Market was good is that our economy was in an unbelievable mess after successive Wilson, Heath, Wilson governments who had no idea how to control the unions who were attempting to destroy our democracy as well as our economy – and almost succeeded.

          I looked to Germany which was the strongest economy in Europe and they were members. I drew the wrong conclusion that being members would help us to prosper like Germany. Of course, it didn’t! Only later with the firm but decisive leadership of Thatcher were we able to both turn the economy around (something I had believed I would never see in my lifetime) and beat the unions by making them stick to their only real purpose of looking after their members and stop launching political strikes.

          Then our economy was outstripping all, even Germany at one time, but the CM became the EEC then the EU and the noose of the bureaucrats got ever tighter and I knew we had to leave ASAP. It’s taken many years but we have to force May to honour the British People’s democratic demand.

             14 likes

          • Up2snuff says:

            Demon, I was shocked to be reminded by a posted link on here, B-BBC, in the weeks leading up to 23rd June of an address, if I remember correctly, by Peter Shore to an Oxford Union Debate. He outlined how our Balance of Payments and gone from dim and dismal prior to 1 January 1973 to awful by the time of the June 1975 Referendum. Just two and a half years of membership.

            I am sure I had seen it in 1975 and was planning to vote NO then but for some reason that I cannot now recall, I think I changed my mind at the last moment.

            Definitely got it right for Leave in 2016!

            It wasn’t just the Trade Unions, btw, who had wrecked our economy but Heath appointing Tony Barber as Chancellor, who was unfit for the post. They then engaged in a dash for growth. It created a commercial property crash and tertiary banking crisis that should have been a warning to Mervyn King in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 as well as Eddie George before him.

            On the BBC Economics Editor’s Blog you will come across Remain campaigners who claim it was the EC/EEC/EU membership that saved Britain from being ‘the sick man of Europe’.

            The dates and their claim do not tie up with reality. That phrase was not used of Britain until after five or six years of membership. The EU made us ‘the sick man of Europe’; it was the Thatcher administration who, after a disastrous start in her first term, really got down to things in the mid-1980s that started the reform that removed that epithet.

            There’s still a long way to go. The PM’s Christmas post this year ought to be interesting. Lots of encouraging cards, I hope, from Brexiteers wishing her and her administration well and urging her to be strong and get us out and away from the EU. We must be clear before that ship goes down: we must not get dragged under by the undertow.

               3 likes

    • NCBBC says:

      Thank p2. Very informative.

         4 likes

    • Up2snuff says:

      Philip, think we joined the EC in 1972, the ECA 1972 became effective from midnight 31 December/1 January 1973. The EC became EEC, then the EU. We should really have had a say before each Treaty amendment or change but our PMs always refused.

      Agree last para: I feel certain that had UK voted Remain on 23rd June, it would not have been long before there was a call for the UK to join the Eurozone, possibly with a manufactured crisis for Sterling that helped to make people scared enough and willing to give up total Sovereignty to Brussels.

         15 likes

    • Number 7 says:

      “the EEC Referendum vote did not mean that he would EVER sign-away our UK soveriegnty or democracy (or the Queen as head of state).”

      Speaking as an old git.

      Heath never held a referendum before selling out the country. Having seen the problems that could arise from such a didactic decision, it was Wilson (another slimeball) who SOLD us plebs the referendum in 1975, I give you the “I’m Backing Britain” campaign as an example.

         12 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Speaking as a nearly old git, No.7, my little grey cells are nudging me to ask was not the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign a 1960s thing? Late-1960s, Carnaby Street era – possibly an early attempt to divert attention away from the first Wilson Labour Government’s TSR2 disaster that happened then?

        I post from memory and am becoming aware that even in my trainee status as a NOG, that memory is not as reliable as it used to be.

        I’m still chuffed at posting on here a few months back, that Kevin Pietersen opened the batting for England. And I’m even more chuffed that right now I can remember that and someone cross-checking it on CricInfo or whatever it is called.

           2 likes

        • Scroblene says:

          Your memory serves you absolutely right, Up2!

          It was about 1967, and we had Union Flags all over the place! I also had one which said ‘I’m backing Arkle’, as that particular horse was all the rage!

          I seem to remember that Prince Philip was mightily pleased with a group of workers, who agreed to work an extra hour for nothing. This also was a result of the population still being fed up with Alf Wilson and his dreadful handling of the economy!

             4 likes

  9. StrumPattern says:

    It is impossible to get someone to understand something if their position or income depends upon them NOT understanding it.

    Nick Clegg’s continued verbal diarrhoea comes to mind. He’s a EU shill, and will never admit he was and still is wrong, because his EU pension will vanish if he does, or says anything negative against the EU.

       30 likes