Image credit: nbcnews.com
When British voters chose to leave the European Union Thursday night, they weren’t just voting against Brussels’ immigration policies, they were also voting against Europe’s growing list of green mandates.
It’s half past four, and I’m about to get ready for the ‘dawn raid’ – a last minute leaflet drop to our pledged supporters reminding them it’s polling day today. Tom Banks and I have organised this across the 54 parliamentary constituencies of the Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire region.
Working on the ground campaign over the last three months, I’ve met thousands of people willing the Leave campaign on to victory. It has been an honour and a pleasure to work with so many dedicated people who all want to make Britain a better country. We share a vision of a free, fair, globally trading nation which lives in peace, at ease with itself, under its own laws.
The BBC and Sky aren’t very interested in the ground campaign, probably because the Remainiacs don’t seem to have much of one. But Dutch TV presenter Eva Wiessing contacted me through twitter on Sunday (before Twitter locked me out of my account earlier today), and asked to come and film us in action.
I met the film crew on the ring road where we we knocking in some signs. Then they met up with me at the North Yorks County Show, where I ran a guerrilla operation for 90 minutes until told to pack up by the landowner.
Owen Paterson was supposed to be there, but I never saw him. Maybe he saw me first and knew I’d take him to task for nicking UKIP’s energy policy and then saying we didn’t have any ideas.
Highlights from Boris Johnson’s final pre-referendum Telegraph column.
When you pick up your ballot paper this Thursday, you have it in your hands to transform Britain’s current democratic arrangements for the better. You can change the whole course of European history – and if you vote Leave, I believe that change will be overwhelmingly positive.
What is the Remain camp offering? Nothing. No change, no improvement, no reform; nothing but the steady and miserable erosion of parliamentary democracy in this country.
The first UK newspaper to commit to a position on the EU referendum, The Sun, backs Brexit. With the opinion polls moving in that direction, and the odds shortening by the day, the mood of the country is palpably changing. I’m working long days to help make this happen. I want my country back.
I’m appearing in my capacity as the Deputy Regional Director for Vote Leave alongside Andrea Jenkyns MP to argue the case for Brexit against Richard Corbett MEP and Leila Taleb, a campaigner for social justice, regional devolution and equality.
It’s a one hour show, with 30 second intros followed by in depth discussion of four main topics which I guess will be:- The economy, migration, democracy and security.
Two political posts in a row from me, apologies to science lovers who have no dog in the EU referendum fight or the American presidency race.
For the first time in the EU referendum campaign, the ‘Leave’ camp has been ahead for more than a day. It is an incredibly tight race, with barely a couple of points splitting the rivals. There is a handy widget for monitoring the ‘poll of polls’, which averages the results of all the companies which test public opinion. Here’s the latest snapshot:
As you can see, the ‘leave’ camp have been the underdogs most of the way. But the mood seems to be changing, and in the final 16 days, the momentum seems to be on the side of those who wish to take back control of UK affairs from the unelected commissars in Brussels.
Andrea Leadsom MP
From the Daily mail:
In March Energy Minister Amber Fudd claimed energy bills would soar by £500 million a year if we left the EU, adding: ‘The thing about the gas market is you don’t know what shocks and what changes there can be to it.’
But in a remarkable rebuttal to her boss’s claims, Ms Leadsom said today that Brexit would threaten ‘absolutely none’ of the three ‘critical considerations’ at the forefront of Britain’s energy policy.
‘Leaving the EU will give us freedom to keep bills down, to meet our climate change targets in the cheapest way possible, and of course, keep the lights on,’ she said in a speech in central London.
Under the European Commission’s ‘Winter Package’ proposals all 28 EU member states would ‘take on legal responsibility for each other’s gas security’.
This would ensure that EU member states that face having their gas supplies cut – due to political disputes with countries such as Russia or contracts expiring, for example, – would see its gas supplies guaranteed by fellow member states.
Setting out the ‘real threat out continued membership of the EU will have on our energy security,’ Ms Leadsom said: ‘The European Commission’s ‘Winter Package’, contains a number of proposals which make painfully clear the direction of travel in EU energy policy.
‘Two of those suggestions pose a potential threat to our continued energy security.
CapX has a cogently argued piece from Matt Ridley on the reasons why Britains science endeavours would be benefited by #Brexit.
Britain – for its size – is probably the world’s leading scientific country. We have less than 1% of the world’s population, but 15% of the most highly cited scientific papers, and more Nobel prize winners than any other European country. We are world leaders in biotechnology and digital technology and our greatest potential collaborators and potential rivals in both fields are in Asia and America, not Europe.
So it is vital that we remain open to the world, not stuck in little Europe. A regional customs union protected by tariff walls and run from a central bureaucracy is a 1950s idea – an analogue project in a digital era, as Michael Gove puts it. In an age when container shipping has collapsed the cost of intercontinental trade; when the internet and budget airlines and Skype have made it as easy to collaborate with Asia and America and Africa as in Europe, regionalism makes less sense.
David Cameron’s #projectfear uses a well know psychological technique called loss aversion. Wiki:
In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.[1] Loss aversion was first demonstrated by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.[2]
This leads to risk aversion when people evaluate an outcome comprising similar gains and losses; since people prefer avoiding losses to making gains.
This is why politicians always say in advance they will “run a positive campaign” but then end up running a negative one – fear of downsides outsides potential benefits of upsides in the average person’s mind.
That’s also why entrepreneurs, inventors and explorers tend to be in the vanguard of the Leave campaign – they don’t allow irrational fear of small risks to keep them from trying for the big prize.
The full version of Brexit The Movie is now available on Vimeo. Google took it down from Youtube citing copyright infringement. Establishment forces are still trying to prevent the truth about the EU getting out there.
The premiere was a superb occasion. with many top Brexiteers in attendance. At the aftershow party I got the chance to chat with several including Nigel Farage MEP, Lord Matt Ridley, Dan Hannan MEP, David Davis MP, Steven Woolfe MEP, Suzanne Evans, James Delingpole and of course, Martin Durkin. Pics below the break.
You can still book! click here
Excitement is building for the premiere of Brexit The Movie tomorrow. The red-carpet event is taking place at Leicester Square Odeon in London – the most prestigious location in the country for such an event. I’d like to make a final big THANK YOU! to all talkshoppers who have contributed to getting the movie’s production off the ground with their generous donations. Yesterday, Martin Durkin was interviewed on Sky News, see the footage below the break.
The EU is a curious mix of Autocratically controlled crony capitalism (Google and McD’s love it), and socialist redistribution. The poorer countries are in the east (ex-soviet communist, now democracies); and south (Mediterranean siesta economies).
If the EU applied to join the EU, it would be refused on the grounds that it doesn’t respect basic democracy. It is controlled by unelected bureaucrats who dictate new legislation to a rubber stamp of a parliament. The member nation states are in the process of having their sovereignty dismantled, using the European Court of Justice, the borderless Schengen zone, the single currency and the (German dominated) central bank.
It’s a catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. The single currency has all but destroyed Greece’s economy, with 50% youth unemployment blighting the lives of the young. The rest of the mediterranean countries are economic basket cases too. France is headed the same way.
Here’s how the EU intends to deal with the massive structural problem it has created. You won’t believe this. The European Stability Mechanism is about to be injected with steroids. The UK can’t be forced into this, because we didn’t join the single currency, but it will have a huge impact on UK if we don’t get off the sinking ship.
Ed Hoskins writes:
I am an ex-pat in France. In spite of the mess its likely to cause me directly I am 100% for Brexit.
The EU has far exceeded the mandate I and many others throughout the UK and Europe gave it from 1975 onwards.
The crazy thing is that the “Common Market” that was sold to the unwitting people of Europe in 1975 was all that needed to maintain peace in Europe. The European peoples were duped because the real unifying intent of the EU project was never disclosed.
It is overweening and vain political ambition of “ever closer union” that has destroyed that the laudable aim of a real “Common Market”.
The FUD campaign by Cameron and the Remainians continues. By getting big cheeses from the international stage to talk down Britain’s prospects outside the EU, they hope to undermine the British people’s confidence in their own ability to succeed in the wider world.
The mainstream media operates a complimentary tactic. Ignore or belittle the efforts of ‘the little people’ to make a positive difference to the ‘public’ debate. Downplay their popular movements, disparage their spokesmen and women. Deny them the oxygen of publicity. We’ve seen it all before in the climate wars. Now we’re getting the same thing again in spades with the EU referendum.
Between them, the establishment politicians and the mainstream media are trying to make us believe we can’t succeed with a brexit plan they and their paymasters disapprove of as being against their lobbying interests. They don’t believe in Britain any more, but they do believe in protecting their own financial interests.
From Science Daily
From the Daily Express
By MARCO GIANNANGELI
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Apr 10, 2016
BRITISH taxpayers have been forced to subsidise the very Chinese steel companies that are threatening 40,000 UK jobs, critics say.
It comes after revelations that the European Investment Bank has given so-called “soft loans” to China of £80million as part of a climate policy intended to lower emissions.
The astonishing figures include a loan of £40million to one of the world’s worst “steel dumping” culprits, the Wuhan Iron & Steel Corporation.
To add insult to injury Wuhun, the world’s eighth largest steel producer, boasts the Chinese state as its main shareholder. Wuhun is such a prolific steel dumper that it has now been especially targeted by the European Commission, which wants to slap it with 36.6 per cent tariffs.
Others asked whether Wuhan would have been in a position to dump steel so aggressively if their energy costs had been higher.
Reposted from View To a Hill
Over the past few days we’ve seen the implosion of the ‘Remain’ campaign. That doesn’t mean Leave will definitely win the referendum, only that if ‘Remain’ do still win the price they pay for victory will be so high that the reputations of the politicians and institutions involved will be too damaged to recover. But before we look at ‘Remain’s’ disastrous week, let’s remind ourselves of the context in which the referendum campaign is taking place.
The referendum was promised in the Conservative manifesto of 2015. It was a potent weapon in persuading wavering UKIP voters to back the Conservatives. If a potential Kipper said, ‘I’m thinking of voting UKIP’ a Eurosceptic Tory canvasser could say to them, ‘look, no one loathes the EU more than me, but I’m working my socks off here to make sure we get our referendum, to get us out of the EU.’ In my opinion it worked more often than not. Slightly less Eurosceptic canvassers could say, ‘we’re going to have a referendum, but only after a full renegotiation and treaty change which will see powers flowing back from Brussels to the UK. So, even if you lose your referendum, the ratchet of EU integration will be broken.’ Once again it was an effective tactic and it was backed up by what was in the manifesto of 2015. What happened was very different, Cameron asked for nothing and received less. The ratchet of European integration has not been broken, Cameron did not take back control of Employment Law as he promised. We are still not in control of our borders and a case can be made that the renegotiation actually weakened some of the protections we previously enjoyed. Most important of all, there is no treaty change and there is absolutely no guarantee that even the pathetic changes Cameron achieved will be accepted by the EU commission and parliament.
Lord Andrew Adonis broke cover on BBC radio 4 this morning to tell us about the new National Infrastructure Commission’s plans for making our country vulnerable to massive power cuts. This will be achieved by making the UK dependent on undersea electrical extension leads plugged into Iceland, Denmark and other EU countries wind power systems, continuing to shut down our traditional power generation capacity and the installation of smart meters which talk to new white-goods everyone will have to buy. A lot of the plan is predicated on ‘demand reduction’ and ‘storage’ (although details of that were not forthcoming).
Enviro-campaigner Roger Harrabin takes up the story:
The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) envisages a smart energy revolution with more cables linking the National Grid to mainland Europe.
NIC also says the UK needs to store much more energy from intermittent renewable like wind and solar.
Fridges, freezers and washing machines could play a part, they say.
Yesterday, Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, had the civil service issue a letter to those ministers in his cabinet who are campaigning to leave the EU in the forthcoming referendum on June 23rd, which debars them from accessing “government material” to help their case.
Who does David Cameron think pays for the creation of that material? It is the people of the United Kingdom. Defending his action, Cameron said:
I’m very happy with the letter that was sent out for this reason and that is the Government has a position on this issue.
The Government’s position is that we will be better off in a reformed European Union.
Ministers are free to part from that position and campaign in a personal capacity, that is, I think, a very important statement, it’s right in terms of how we go about it, but it does not mean the Government is neutral, it doesn’t mean the civil service is neutral, the Government has a policy from which people can depart.
