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Last month a court in Switzerland – a country that knows a thing or two about referenda – ordered a rerun of a referendum on the grounds that the information provided to the public was “incomplete” and “violated the freedom of the vote”. The court’s judgement went on to say that “keeping in mind the close result and the severe nature of the irregularities, it is possible that the outcome of the ballot could have been different.”

It’s that bloody bus again

So, to Brexit, and I think you know where I’m going with this…350 million quid a week for the NHS, li’l Liam Fox claiming that our trade deal with the EU would be the easiest in history, Vote Leave stoking xenophobia with stories of an influx of millions of Turks, pretending that issues with the Anglo-Irish border could be easily overcome and so on (and on and on and on).

Quite simply, the British people were lied to, and those doing the lying did what political liars have always done: created a scapegoat. Struggling to make ends meet? It’s Brussels’ fault. Can’t get an appointment with your GP? Blame the Bulgarians. Sitting in a traffic jam? That’ll be all those bloody Europeans clogging up our roads.

All total nonsense, of course, but as Goebbels is reputed to have averred, “if you tell a lie big enough and continue to repeat it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Goebbels

There are those who claim that holding a second referendum would be a kick in the teeth for democracy because we’ve already had one vote. This is a simplistic argument made by the kind of people who think it’s still funny to refer to those who voted to remain in the EU as “remoaners”. Mildly amusing the first time, I can just about concede, but repeating a weak pun every day for three years demonstrates a quite startling lack of imagination. The same goes for the witless morons who refer to Tony Blair as Tony Bliar. NOT FUNNY ANY MORE!

Anyway, it is MORE democratic to allow a second vote when new facts come to light, especially when the old ‘facts’ have now been exposed as falsehoods. Not only that, with Trump in the White House and likely to win again in 2020, our most reliable and stalwart ally can’t really be trusted to deliver a trade deal that will work for us.

I can’t vote for the Tories. They’re committed to Brexit and have lurched to the right. Mrs May is as hapless as she is hopeless and humourless and she’s made a right pig’s ear of the EU negotiations.

Labour is also committed to Brexit if their 2017 manifesto is to be believed. Moreover, under the dim-witted Mr Corbyn, they’ve morphed into the Workers’ Revolutionary Party with added Jew hate. Not for me.

Hopeless

The SNP: not on the ballot paper in England, obvs, but they are Remainers. I must admit to having trouble reconciling the SNP’s policy of wanting to remain in one union of nations while being passionately committed to leaving another, but that’s for another day.

I had high hopes for Change UK but whatever momentum they may have had has spluttered and stalled leaving them floundering on the rocks of irrelevance. Shame really.

UKIP – don’t be silly, although when Mr Farage leaves a political party because he finds their views too extreme, I think they need to take a long hard look at themselves. And I’m obviously not going to vote for the Brexit Party either. I cannot see the attraction of Mr Farage. He’s not just a twat, he’s a dangerous twat.

On to The Green Party, bless them. Lovely cuddly eco-policies which are hard to disagree with, but a vote for them in the Euros only serves to split the Remain vote.

Dim

And that leaves the Liberal Democrats, a serious party with a decent base which has always been upfront about its Remain agenda. A vote for the Lib Dems sends a two powerful messages: first, that the British people reject the result of a vote based on a cynical campaign of lies and, most probably, electoral fraud and, secondly, that we will not lend our support to either of the two main parties while they continue move away from the centre ground, the political space where the pragmatic British have always felt most at home.

 

 

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Rob Harkavy

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