How convenient

This morning I was wondering why the Remainiacs have not come up with the great theory that it was really Mr Putin wot won the Brexit vote through some nefarious intervention. Right on cue, we have Ben Bradshaw MP coming up with that particular theory for which he admits having no evidence at all but it stands to reason, innit.

Mr Bradshaw seems to think that it has somehow been proven that Donald Trump won the election (through the electoral college, let it be noted, not the popular vote) because of some complicated behaviour on the part of the Russians in revealing e-mails that had probably been leaked. Nothing much has been proved yet though it might be in future. Incidentally, I can recall a time when journalists would have been asking why the CIA or, at least, some unknown and unnamed operatives of it were intervening in the electoral process and, apparently, trying to force a re-run. As to Brexit, this is what Mr Bradshaw said [scroll down in Hansard as the Huffpo quotations are wrong and semi-literate];

We have not even begun to wake up to Russia’s cyber-warfare. Its interference in the American presidential elections is now proven. It probably interfered in our own referendum—we do not have the evidence for that yet, but it is highly probable. It will certainly be involved in the French presidential election. There are already serious concerns in the German secret service that Russia is already interfering in the upcoming elections. We have to wake up to this, but when?

Hmm. Convenient. Even the American intervention is not actually fully proven and it is not clear what was achieved by any of the Russian actions, assuming they had taken place and the information had not simply been leaked. To say that it is highly probable that Russia interfered in the referendum though there is no evidence is, to put it mildly, irresponsible. And it will "certainly be involved in the French presidential election"? How does Mr Bradshaw know? Has Mr Putin consulted him?

Still, now we have a great story: when the people decide that they do not want to vote the way they are told by their betters, such as Labour MPs, they are not simply displaying signs of populism (my smelling salts, please); it is all arranged by the Russians because people would never act this way themselves. What it really echoes is Putin's own accusations against all the coloured revolutions on the Russian borders: none of them could have been carried out by the people, they were all organized, funded and carried out by the evil Americans. Mr Bradshaw and his ilk are merely echoing Vlad and his propagandists. Should we be listening to them?

So it can be done

Now that the great Marmite row has been settled, at least temporarily, with Tesco emerging as the unlikely champion of the ordinary shopper, we can all turn our attention to other matters related to Brexit, however distantly. This story must annoy the Remain campaign a lot as David Cameron's inability to secure a five year moratorium on welfare for EU migrants was one of the Leavers' best arguments. You see, we all said, nothing can be done, nothing can be achieved. Apparently, this is not so or belatedly not so.

On October 12, the German government approved a law

to curb social benefits for EU citizens who arrive in the country without a job, as it responds to pressure to get tough on migrants.

Under the draft legislation, which still needs to go through parliament, EU nationals who have never worked in Germany will have to wait five years before they can claim benefits.

One of the mysterious aspects of the whole process that eventually led to that vote on June 23 was Cameron's lack of success in his negotiations with his EU colleagues. We all knew or, at least, suspected that he would come back with a fudge but he came back with nothing. This would have been a popular agreement and would have been very useful to the Remain camp. Given what has just happened in Germany, it could have been pushed through Parliament but HMG, as usual, decided not to antagonize the EU.

Why exactly could the colleagues give Cameron more help? Did they not care what would happen in the UK or, more likely, could they really not believe that the people of this country would vote against the European project? One wonders what kind of regrets may have been voiced privately on June 24 about those negotiations.

Of course, there is a history to the problem in Germany as well.

The strict new measure comes after a federal court ruled last year that every EU citizen had the right to claim benefits once he or she had resided in Germany for six months.

The ruling sparked fears of “welfare tourism” from countries with a lower standard of living, and angered German municipalities who were already struggling with the financial burden of caring for last year’s record influx of migrants and refugees.

“It’s clear that anyone who lives here, works here and pays their contributions is also entitled to the benefits of our social system,” said Labour Minister Andrea Nahles after the cabinet adopted the legislation.

But for those “who have never worked here and rely on state financial aid to survive, the principle applies that they should claim livelihood benefits from their home country.”

Interestingly and annoyingly for the Remain camp,

A European Court of Justice legal adviser said on Tuesday that Germany may refuse nationals of other Member States ‘social security benefits for jobseekers who are in need of assistance, on the basis of a general criterion that demonstrates the absence of a genuine link with the host Member State,

So there we are. I can be done or that is what it looks like at the moment. But it is all too late for the Remainers. Perhaps they should turn their attention to matters such as this instead of trying to overturn the results of the referendum.

Dear Remainers,

I shall not ask  you to stop whining because it is clearly impossible. As before, I am not talking about the majority of those who voted Remain but the very vocal minority. Let me just deal with two points  in this open letter, which I hope will be my last posting on the hysteria of the losers.

First, the Celtic fringe, about which an e-mail came my way from Anthony Coughlan, the leader for many years of the eurosceptic movement in Ireland. (Oh yes, there is one and it is not powerless. But Ireland is a small country and was twice bullied into second referendums after voting the "wrong" way.) Anthony is a good friend of many years' standing but even if he were not I would point out that he can hardly be described as a know-nothing troglodyte by anyone who looks at his career.

This is what he wrote among other matters:

An important point to note is that it is the ‘Leave’ vote in Scotland and Northern Ireland that is going to bring the UK as a whole out of the EU. This is because the combined ‘Leave’ vote in these two regions – namely 1,367,764 – is greater than the majority for ‘Brexit’ in the UK as a whole, which was 1,269,501, by 98,263 votes. So democrats in the UK as a whole should be grateful to the ‘Celtic Fringe’ for voting them out of the EU!

Let me add that in London 1,513,232 votes were cast to Leave, which was also not inconsiderable, on a 69.8% turn-out.

A more important point is the one about level or not level playing field. We hear a great deal of whining about the playing field not being level because some of the information given out by the Leave campaign was misleading. Not half as misleading as information given out as part of Project Fear by the BSE campaign but let us not worry about that for the moment. Let us look at two moments: the propaganda leaflet sent out by the government on the Remain side to every household, which was full of very misleading information and the Treasury report that was easily torn apart by a number of highly regarded economists.

Apart from what was in these documents, let us consider where they originated: the government and the Treasury, neither of whom should have been taking part in the campaign as they are not allowed to take part in elections and both using large amounts of taxpayers' money beyond what was allocated to the BSE organization. Indeed, yes, there was no level playing field but not quite in the way you mean, dear Remainers.

52 per cent is more than 48 per cent - get used to it

We Brexiteers or, as we used to be known, Eurosceptics are, according to a good many Remainers are stupid, ignorant and have a very low IQ. In fact, we are all bears of very little brain. Somehow we all seem to have grasped one elementary fact that not all Remainers have and that is that 52 per cent is more than 48 per cent. Or, in other words, if 52 per cent voted on the Leave side, that side won and that is the policy that will have to be put into effect.

This was certainly not understood by the marchers in London on Saturday who were shouting we are the 48% and other suchlike interesting facts. Yes, you are, and that makes you the minority in a referendum of fairly high turn-out. It's not quite clear whether the march really did have tens of thousands as the original story was just thousands but it seemed to improve with the telling of it.

“Un-Fuck My Future”, “No Brex Please, We’re British”, they read. Pictures of Whitney Houston with “I Will Always Love EU”, “Europe Innit” and “I wanna be deep inside EU”. “All EU Need Is Love”, “Fromage not Farage”, “Eton Mess” and, more seriously, “Science Needs EU”. “Hell no, we won’t go!” they shouted, rounding Piccadilly Circus.

At the end of the march, in Parliament Square, protesters listened to speakers including Bob Geldof and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker as well as politicians such as the Labour MP David Lammy, and Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron.

Geldof urged Remain campaigners to take to the streets, speak to their neighbours and work to stop the UK’s exit from the EU. “Let’s get real,” he said. “Going online and tweeting your indignation is only venting into the ether. It achieves nothing. Come out. Take action among your friends, work colleagues and in your neighbourhoods. We need to individually organise ourselves. Organise those around us and do everything possible within our individual power to stop this country being totally destroyed.” .

Cocker, in a recorded a video message for the rally, held up a world map saying: “You cannot deny geography. The UK is in Europe.”

The co-organiser Mark Thomas said the march was to address the “anger, frustration and need to do something”. “We would accept the result of the referendum if it was fought on a level playing field. But it was full of misinformation and people need to do something with their frustration.”

The list of speakers and their comments tells you all you need to know about this bunch of sore losers. Jarvis Cocker? Bob Geldof? These are the political geniuses of the movement? Do they even understand what they are saying, what they are advocating? Going on the streets to stop the democratic process is something Europe has seen before and it was not a healthy time. And, yes, as a matter of fact, I would say the same if, as expected, the Remain side had won. I expect the other side would not have been all that interested about the misinformation given out by both campaigns or about the percentage if that had happened.

A fine mess we would be in if elections were annulled because politicians, winning or losing, had misinformed he electorate. We would do nothing but have elections, elections, elections.

Take Hizonner the Mayor, for instance, who has done little except make meaningless statements about matters outside his control (no, Mr Mayor, you cannot detach London from the UK) and participate in selfies like a demented teenagers. His campaign was run mostly on the unarguable facts that his father had been a bus driver and he had grown up on a council estate. Unarguable but, I should have thought, irrelevant. Occasionally he made statements about making London a world city and a hub for just about everything as well as a centre for tolerance blah-blah-blah. London already is most of those things and is not going to change because Hizonner the Mayor. The one definite promise he made was to freeze TfL fares. Within a couple of weeks of his election he admitted that he could not do that fully and tried to weasel out by specious arguments. A good many people were annoyed. But did this invalidate his election? Well, speaking as someone who would never, in a million years, vote for that numpty I have to point out that no, it did not. Nobody even suggested it.

Social networks are full of people who have been posting links of varying importance to prove that the Brexit vote was wrong and should be annulled. In fact, it ought not to have happened because, obviously people who voted Leave are all stupid, ignorant etc etc. See above.

In a way, it is understandable why so many Remainers are demanding the annulment of a perfectly valid referendum vote, which had been called because of a promise in the Conservative manifesto that helped them to win the election. This does not apply to the majority of Remain voters but those who are getting hysterical now are clearly supporters of the anti-democratic nature of that organization. It is hardly surprising that their attitude should be anti-democratic as well.

Some opinion poll now tells us that 7 per cent of those who voted Leave would now vote Remain and 3 per cent of those who voted Remain would now vote Leave. I have no doubt the same opinion poll had predicted a Remain victory and a Coalition as the likely outcome of last year's General Election.

The young people are particularly upset, apparently, because 70 per cent of them voted Remain and now they do not know what to do except that Germany might offer them special EU passports so they can go on working across the EU. Since we do not as yet know what kind of arrangements will be made about labour rights this seems rather premature. Even sillier is the comment made by German vice chancellor and economy minister Sigmar Gabriel:

It’s a good sign that the youth of Great Britain are more clever than their bizarre political elite.

As it happens, most of the political elite were on the Remain side. As to the young voting on that side, that, too, is questionable. There has been a great deal of debate about turn-out according to age but even the estimates most anxious to prove that the "young" did turn out in large numbers to vote Remain have had to admit that the number of those voting tended to be considerably lower than average in areas where the population age is lower. That makes the famous 70 per cent who voted to remain a somewhat misleading figure.

In an earlier post I expressed the view that our side missed a great opportunity by not concentrating on the fact that the young are or should be looking out beyond the EU to the rest of the world. I still think that but I am also rather amused by the closed-minded lack of imagination of those young who are weeping about their "future having been taken away from them by the old" because there is, apparently, nothing beyond the EU. Are these really the people we ought to be listening to?

So where are we? Lots of Remainers still screaming about the need to overcome democratic decisions if they do not go the way the right-thinking people want them; various discussions about whether Article 50 should be activated or whether it would be better to start negotiations around that; no Armageddon and most economic indicators moving in a positive direction; a number of countries expressing interest in trade agreements with post-Brexit UK and chaos in the political parties.

Nigel Farage's resignation (presumably for longer than three days this time) has simply added extra spice to the brew - after all UKIP was important only during the Brexit campaign. Astonishingly, the party that has succumbed to a civil war, between the parliamentary party and the membership, was not the Conservative but the Labour Party and we are being provided with a great deal of entertainment. The Conservatives are indulging in their favourite pastime of ferocious fighting for the top job not to be resolved till September. To be fair, it would not be possible to start negotiations with the rest of the EU till then, anyway, because slowly but surely Brussels and the rest of Europe will close down for summer.

Meanwhile, in between watching the entertainment we, bears of little brain, must start putting together ideas for the negotiators. They might listen.

Well I was wrong ....

... but for once I am very pleased and feel that many years of work have not been wasted. Brexit has been voted for by just over 51% of the electorate with a nearly 72% turn-out. Some anomalies, of course. London voted to Remain, as did Northern Ireland and Scotland. All that will have to be sorted out though I am quite happy to start campaigning for independence for London. No, not to rejoin the EU but to begin the formation of the Anglosphere.

I shall be spending most of today broadcasting to Russia about the result on various channels so will not have time to blog again till much later or tomorrow morning. I see my job now as a continuation of the past: providing information and analysis as we move towards and into negotiations.

Yesterday I was thinking about my first meeting with Alan Sked in 1991 at the house of Eva Taylor, widow of A. J. P. Taylor, our common supervisor and what came out of that. What a long way we have come. I claim some credit.

My last rant

Not my last rant in general, of course, but the last one before the vote. After this I intend to say nothing on the blog until the results come through. As before, I have a bad feeling about it all and not just because of the many problems with Remainiacs, the government and the completely irregular use of the civil service to provide propaganda, not to mention the dreadful murder of Jo Cox MP, but because, as I have pointed out once or twice, our campaign was badly run and focused on the wrong issues.

I fully intend to rant about other subjects and, in due course, about the result and future plans.

Before I begin, I should like to link to Lord Ashcroft's explanation as to why he is voting Brexit and to Sam Bowman's (of the Adam Smith Institute) as to why he is voting Remain.

First of all, let me explain that I do not have a particularly high view of Lord Ashcroft's or anybody else's opinion polls but his own view point was interesting to read as I agreed with a great deal of it.

Forget the hysteria. Leaving the European Union would not put a bomb under the British economy or end western political civilization as we know it. But nor would it mean another £350 million a week being spent on the NHS, and staying does not mean that 80 million Turks will arrive at Dover. For voters struggling to make sense of the referendum campaign, this sort of thing has hardly helped.

Indeed not. While I see nothing wrong with the fact that the campaign on both sides was heated (though more light would have been welcome) I do think the hyperbole, to put it at its most polite, has been appalling. I am not impressed by politicians, who know that nothing they say can every excite the sort of fervour that remaining or leaving the EU has done, whingeing away about the coarsening of political discourse. Coarsening? Have a look at the discourse of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now, that was coarse. But one look at both campaigns makes one despair of human reason.

Lord Ashcroft makes the point that to remain in the EU is not to choose stability as developments will happen and they will not be of our making. Therefore, the choice is between two kinds of instability and which one would you prefer?

Of course leaving would create uncertainty; any worthwhile venture carries some risk. There will be new deals to negotiate and new relationships to form, and it may be rocky to start with. But when it comes to trade with EU partners, and other areas where cooperation is vital, pragmatism will surely win the day – and as I know from my own business career, there are plenty of opportunities outside Europe.

But most importantly of all, this is a decision for the long term future of the country. The question is not whether the world’s fifth largest economy could prosper outside the EU – of course it could – but whether we should tie ourselves to a union whose ambitions are so very different from our own. Maybe our future governments will be able to protect Britain from the worst of them. But why take the risk?

Sam Bowman takes a different view though not in everything. He, too, dislikes many of the arguments used by the Leave campaign about immigration and about the economy. Then he tackles the main issue:

I like and respect many Leavers, but I’ve never shared their enthusiasm for democracy – I want liberty and prosperity, and I don’t want to trade that in just to give my stupid next-door neighbours more power over my life. To the extent that the EU does restrict democracy it is often for the best, preventing governments from doing nasty, illiberal things (like restricting immigration or subsidising domestic firms). There’s a small chance that a Jeremy Corbyn could be elected – if he is, under the British political system he would have basically unlimited power to do whatever he wants. The EU limits that power, and in my view that’s a good thing.

Why limiting the power of the people, often expressed in a remarkably stupid way, should be a plus in an organization where other bodies have no limits is not something I can understand. But I think that people should be able to read the liberal/libertarian argument for Remain. Mind you, I have no desire to hear complaints from Mr Bowman either when he finds that what he gets is not what he voted for.

I have written before about a number of things I have found wrong with the Leave campaign but did not mention that I disliked the focus on immigration and the endless chanting about Turkey coming in. What started as a perfectly sensible point about controlling our own borders, part of democracy and accountability and on being able to decide who can get welfare and social housing became a distasteful attack on immigrants, not really softened by the occasional comment about a points system or rational immigration. The issue became central to the campaign to the exclusion of almost all other matters. As it happens, I do not think that has won any votes apart from people who were already going to vote Leave. Oh, and Turkey is not coming into the EU any time soon. What David Cameron does or does not say about it is irrelevant - he will not be Prime Minister by then.

What of the event that was supposed to change everything and give Remain a great advantage, the dreadful murder of Jo Cox MP. Any words one uses about the actual event will be trite and inadequate but, moving on to the political significance of it, I do think that my first instinct that it will make no real difference was correct. The swing back to Remain would have happened, was going to happen and was predicted by many of us: it is the natural move towards the status quo that we all expected. It was obvious that the 6 to 10 points' lead was not enough to counter that. On the other hand, the swing was no bigger than expected either. Despite a number of efforts on the part of the Remain campaigners, the electorate, so far as we can tell, did not fall for the narrative that this was all caused by the nasty Leave campaigners. Can any of them be really as nasty as Alistair Campbell in this tweet sent two days after the murder?

Once again, we can be grateful that we live in a country where such an event is so rare as to be unthinkable (until it happens, of course). Curiously, though over the last few months I have overheard many discussions on the referendum and Brexit, as well as taking part in many such, often with casual acquaintances from a non-political world, I have heard nothing around me about the killing. It is as if people cannot quite believe it has happened. What one did hear was strange sentimentality from the media, politicians and political geeks. The idea that an MP is honoured by the people of her constituency being deprived of the right to vote for a candidate from the other main party is bizarre and yet there were people tearfully asserting that David Cameron made the right decision in denying that democratic right.

The number of sitting British MPs assassinated since 1812 is eight: Spencer Perceval, who was also the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated, by the somewhat unhinged John Bellingham because of private debt; six from Lord Frederick Cavendish, killed in Phoenix Park, Dublin in 1882 to Ian Gow in 1990 by Irish terrorists of various organizations; and now Jo Cox, whose murder is still being investigated. That, thankfully, is a very low number.

That the Remain campaign tried to cash in on the event has been well documented here, here and here  Will Straw (son of Jack), who is apparently campaign chief for Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE) was particularly obnoxious in his instructions to his troops as reported by Guido and, surprisingly, the Evening Standard. Of course, we shall not know until tomorrow (and really not even then) whether the secular canonization of a fairly average left-wing MP of whom most of us had never heard before will succeed. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, they say, but surely that does not apply to politicians. Therefore, I have great pleasure in linking to a somewhat tart but entirely accurate account of the real Jo Cox and her husband here. I do not suppose it will affect anybody's voting intentions but do read it if you can. I do not necessarily agree with everything the article says but it is true that Jo Cox was not among those politicians who had tried to unravel the deeply unpleasant saga of the gangs who were grooming children and teenagers and she, together with her husband, were there on Bob Geldof's boat, shouting abuse at the fishermen. Yes, I know they thought it was a UKIP stunt and I was outraged by Niger Farage hi-jacking the flotilla for his own purpose (it had been agreed that he would not be seen to be leading it but the only way to ensure that would have been not to allow him on it) but the boats were full of fishermen who, we all agree, suffered mightily from the EU. In the case of the Coxes', people of the Labour and NGO elite, sympathy begins a long way from home.

And that, I think, is enough about that. I have also said enough about the campaign to make it clear why I have not been happy with it and why, I suspect, it will not be successful. I may be wrong but would it really matter if we lost this referendum. I have never been a great fan of plebiscites and the dire level of the campaigning justifies my wariness. It looks like the result will be close and that will mean the the winners will not be seen as enjoying legitimacy. If we win, we shall need to make sure that the victory will have some kind of meaning and is not frittered away by unhelpful politicians and civil servants; and if we lose we shall have to start thinking of the next stage: prepare for intellectual guerrilla warfare.

Just a couple of links that might interest readers

On my agenda is the next Tuesday Night Blog about murder in education (and who wouldn't) as well as one final pre-referendum rant that should include some comments about Jo Cox, about the horrible murder and about the way it is being used by the Remainiacs. But first a couple of links from different parts of the Leave spectrum.

All sorts of people are now stating in public whether they will be voting Leave and Remain, often giving reasons, some of which are interesting while some less so. Some kind of a report produced the result that people with better education and better jobs and generally more hip and outward looking are more likely to vote Remain. Leave is for the uneducated oiks and people who are grubbing around in their memories. I am afraid I am finding it a little difficult to find the exact report, having seen merely references to it on social media (oooh, hark at her - she uses the social media at her age!) but I find this sort of argument a waste of time. Having a degree does not mean you are particularly intelligent of politically savvy and that is before you even start looking at what kind of degrees and well paid jobs we are talking about.

Indeed, bearing that in mind, what are we to make of the news in today's Evening Standard that David Beckham is passionately in favour of Remain? And that Victoria Beckham is so proud of hubby for backing the Remain campaign? Yesterday we were told that Premier League bosses are in favour of Remain as well as some business leaders and an assorted number of Nobel Prize winners in economics. A random collection, one must admit and not one to inspire one particularly, especially when one recalls the luvvies.

Meanwhile, here are two links to pieces some readers might like to have a look at. The first is by a young man, aged 30. He was, according to his mother, from whom I have the link, undecided but thought that instead of listening to Benedict Cumberbatch or David Beckham he would find out more about the EU before making up his mind. I have already written about the stupidity of simply accepting that "young people are going to be pro-Remain because they look outwards". Well, here is what happens when they or members of other age groups find out the truth. Read Costas's piece about his research. As it happens, I do not agree with all that stuff about the Bilderbergers and share one friend's view that life would have been much easier if Prince Berhardt had held the first meeting at the Palm Court Hotel but I do agree with his point about the left. There is still some left-wing opposition to the EU but it tends to be on the edges and the far left. What happened to it?

My second link is to a piece from one of those uneducated oiks, the well known historian, journalist and author, Tim Stanley. As a sort of historian myself I entirely agree with all his points, especially when he says that Brexit is about the future not the past, let alone nostalgia. When people mutter about uncertainty, I point out that there is always uncertainty and why is that so bad?

Tim Stanley destroys both Leave and Remain myths, and how right he is.

Let’s not talk about the past but the future: the EU is planning to create a unitary state. Its leaders have said as much – higher taxes, an army, greater authority for the bank are all on the table. The EU has decided that only faster integration will see it through the present crisis. They might be correct: what the EU wants to be it can only be if it is effectively one country. But that is not in Britain’s national interest, something we’ve signalled by remaining outside the Eurozone.

So we can either ride this train as far as the driver wants to go or we can jump off now. A so-called leap in the dark actually gives us back control of our policy making. It's a vote for democracy, a vote to say: "We govern, we are in charge." We can make the choice of whether to take more or less migrants; we can write new trade agreements and we can reaffirm our strategic interests in the developing world.

For Schama is right: I am a European by historical chance. But my great-grandfather also worked for an Indian nobleman and my mother was raised in the Caribbean. When I was at university my first specialism was Kenyan history; then I switched to the study of the USA, a country I regard as my second home. I am not a little Englander. But I am also not a little European. We are shaped by history but need not be imprisoned by it. And one thing I find most exciting about Brexit is it gives us the chance to start over again, to write a new chapter in our country’s history. Brexit isn’t nostalgia. It’s ambition.

Enjoy both pieces and spread them widely. We still have a very little time.

Because Putin is terrified of the EU

Are you one of those people who has been accused of playing President Putin's game by supporting Brexit? If you support it then probably. There have even been attempts to accuse me of promoting Putin's interests. A curious notion, considering my writings on the subject but there we are.

The argument goes: Vlad and his chekists are so afraid of the EU (reasons unspecified) that he will do anything to break it up and Brexit is a wonderful first step in that direction. Oddly, enough, I have heard an alternative version of this theory, which says that the one thing Vlad desperately wants is to keep Britain embroiled in the hopeless EU, which among other things is undermining NATO, the organization he is really afraid of that he will do anything to prevent Brexit. To that purpose the Kremlin has started a false flag operation or as it is known in certain circles, maskirovka, which pretends that he wants Brexit in order to get people to vote Remain. Well, there you are, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Whichever of the two alternative theories one favours, it is hard to explain what it is about the EU that Putin might be afraid of. The closest to a suggestion I have seen is somebody explaining that the EU by its very existence presents a democratic alternative to the beleaguered people of Russia. Yes, dear readers, I did laugh. I also asked whether they seriously thought that outside the EU Britain would somehow be less democratic but even Remainiacs are finding that one a little hard to argue.

Meanwhile, there is news of the French showing us all how much they wish to keep Putin and his camarilla on the straight and narrow.

The French government is trying to pass a law that would help Russia to protect its assets from being frozen in business conflicts.


A government amendment to a bill on transparency and the fight against corruption says that assets could be frozen only if the state that owned them "has expressly agreed to the implementation of such a measure".

The amendment also says that assets can be frozen only when they are "specifically used by the state for other purposes than non-commercial public service".


The bill comes after former shareholders of Yukos, the giant Russian oil firm broken up by Russia more than 10 yes ago, won $50 billion in damages from Russia in an arbitration tribunal in The Hague last year.

Judges said Russia had violated the Energy Charter Treaty, an investor protection pact, when they dismantled the oil company, which had been run by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Naturally, stories of the Russian government threatening France with various retaliatory actions are circulating. That is all Putin has to do, threaten people and they will jump to attention. Or he could bribe them and that applies to high up politicians as much as less important groups that the Remainiacs so love talking about.

We face serious problems - 2

There is no getting away from it: one has to look at the Brexit campaign and what is wrong with it and I suppose the fact that it has taken me this long to get to my second rant is indicative of some of the problems. We cannot just go on blaming everything on the fact that the other side has more money and is dishonest in using hyperbole as well as taxpayers' money. Which brings me to my first point: why exactly are we so surprised and so angry by the fact that from the Prime Minister down (or the Governor of the Bank of England down or the egregious Director of the IMF down) anyone who has a political vested interest in not rocking the EU boat too much and anyone who can be put under political pressure has been taking part in a somewhat dishonest campaign against Brexit? Did we not expect this? Why are so many of the Leave campaigners unprepared for the nastiness and do nothing but wring their hands or get furious with the other side doing exactly what they were expected to do?

There has been some criticism of my first posting on the subject, the first of which was a reminder that one complaint about the Brexit or Leave campaign is people spending more time attacking each other than attacking the enemy. Am I not doing the same thing?

My response to that is I do not propose to mount personal attacks. Nobody is going to be named and shamed (not now, anyway) but if things are going so badly wrong that we all have a duty to try to correct them as there are still four weeks to go till the Referendum, which we must win.

There are two tactical problems that I have been complaining about since before the campaign began to those who were organizing meetings to discuss the campaigns and to anyone else who would listen (as well as many who preferred not to). I am still complaining about them but to no avail and it is my opinion that these problems will lose us votes.

Firstly, the grave shortage of women speakers at events and women anywhere near the top of the campaign as a whole. Yes, yes, there are pretty girls handing out leaflets but almost every meeting one looks at has an all-male line-up some of whom ask plaintively how they might gain the female vote.

At a pre-campaign meeting I raised this subject (I was in the audience and the panel was all-male) and received no real answer. The chairman (no names, no pack drill) had already pronounced that it would be important to gain the female vote and "we" must thing how to do this but the simple solution of having at least one woman speaker and preferably two as this was quite a large panel had not occurred to him. To add insult to injury he subsequently smiled patronizingly at me and said "oh there is a lady who comes to all the meetings". Yes, dear readers, he escaped unharmed, which just shows that I can control myself.

I have raised this subject a few times since and my comments were either greeted with stony silence or with grumblings about how "we do not have positive discrimination". Two points need to be made in response to that: is it really impossible to find women who are knowledgeable and articulate without positive discrimination and are all the men who keep appearing on these platforms or are quoted on YouTube so wonderfully knowledgeable and articulate? To those questions I get no response at all.

Not only is it ridiculous to be fighting those battles in the twenty-first century but we must also remember that half the electorate are female. Naturally, women do not vote simply because there is a female speaker or not but appearances are important in politics. Consistently, Brexit line-ups look like pictures from 1950s political metings and not that many people want to go back to that decade. (I am prepared to argue that one in another posting if any reader is interested.)

My second tactical complaint is about that particular demographic group that is referred to as "the young" or "young people" who, according to both sides, are much too sophisticated and forward looking to vote for Brexit and are unhappy because a lot of old people might spoil their lives by doing just that.

What sort of ages are we talking about? There are the 18 to circa 23 year olds, many of whom are at college or university and are notoriously bad at registering or turning out to vote. Get Britain Out has been doing sterling work there as well as (indirectly) the various free market organizations but one must admit that most students, if they bother to think about it, tend to stay well within the safety zones.

Then again, neither they nor the next age group of, say, 23 to 30 enjoy being taken for granted or pontificated to. So, the Prime Minister's assumptions may not be all that popular.

My problem is with our campaign: why exactly do we accept without too much arguing the strange idea that "young people" are too outward looking for Brexit? Why do we not turn it round and say that "young people" are too outward looking to want to Remain? For them, unlike the generations of the fifties, sixties and seventies, Europe is not the most exciting place in the world. Europe is where you go for the week-end if you cannot think of anything better to do. Their gap years, working ambitions, ideas for studying or just holidays are spread all over the world: the Commonwealth, the Americas, the Far East. What's the EU to them?

Yes, dear readers, I did raise the point with those in charge of campaigning (once again, no names, no pack drill) and my point was comprehensively dismissed. Mind you, when I said this during a debate to Sir Simon Hughes, in response to him making just that point, he mumbled that "young people" are interested in both the EU and the non-EU. Well, fine, but how does that translate itself into votes?

[I was going to go on and tackle some of the arguments - well, one particular one - that seems to me to be a huge mistake but then I shall have to produce some ideas of my own. Therefore, I shall leave that for a third part.]

We face serious problems - 1

The Leave campaign has been depressingly bad: lacklustre, limited, too reliant on not very attractive and badly argued slogans and incompetent in its arrangements. On the other hand, the Remain campaign with its outstanding hyperbole (if we leave there will be another world war is not particularly rational) and reliance on such things as letters from ridiculous luvvies has been even worse so that cheers me up. Not for long. The accepted opinion on all sides is that we shall probably lose and I have to admit to having had a bad feeling about this referendum for some time.

It is, therefore, a great pleasure to read a rational and well-informed article on our side by Allister Heath (who else?) in the Telegraph. He attacks the outrageous, dishonest and hysterical pro-Remain reports, such as the one produced, quite against the rules by the Treasury and says:

As it happens, such studies are a farrago of nonsense, based on question-begging, unrealistic assumptions designed to lead to a pro-Remain conclusion. In some cases, especially the Treasury’s analysis of the short-term consequences of leaving, they are a scandalously unethical concoction of a kind eerily reminiscent of Tony Blair’s dodgy dossier prior to the Iraq War.

But the fact that they are flawed doesn’t mean that their arguments can be ignored. It is desperately important that the economic case for Brexit be made much more vigorously. It needs to be divided into two components: a takedown of the EU as an ultimately doomed, job-destroying, declining and mismanaged behemoth which stands no chance in an increasingly agile, globalised world; and the mapping out of a clear exit strategy, compatible with Leave’s objectives, that shows how we would maintain and enhance our openness to the world. The message must be clear: we would be better off out – in terms of jobs, wages and growth. The costs of leaving will be smaller than the benefits, and this would become evident within a few years of leaving.

The core assumption of the anti-Brexit economists is that leaving would erect damaging barriers to trade; the pro-Brexit side must take on and demolish these arguments. The good news is that it’s quite easy to do so. The Leave campaign’s long-term aim is to break away completely from the EU. But there is no doubt that, were we to vote Leave on June 23, the UK would seek to adopt, as an interim solution, a Norwegian-style relationship with the EU which ensures that we remain in the single market, giving us plenty of time to work out new arrangements with the rest of the world.

That is both the only realistic way we would quit the EU – the only model, that, plausibly, MPs would support as a cross-party compromise deal – and the best possible way for us to do it. The Norwegians would welcome us with open arms, as their own influence would be enhanced, and other EU nations would seek to join us. Such a deal would eliminate most of the costs of leaving, while delivering a hefty dose of benefits as a down payment.

The Adam Smith Institute has looked at the Treasury "report" from another angle.

The Treasury are playing a key role in the referendum campaign. They have published two reports which explicitly campaign for remain. The first looked at the long term impact. The second report published yesterday, looks at the immediate impact. Both reports are all doom and gloom. They claim our economy will quickly be pushed into a recession and we will be £4,300 poorer in the long term.

Like the Government’s referendum leaflet (which cost £9m to publish), this analysis isn’t balanced. It is openly designed to promote Project Fear. It also cost taxpayers’ money to produce. Civil service staff are being diverted to fight the remain campaign. These are vast resources which aren’t at the disposal of the other side, essentially circumventing the funding limits. A team of 20 treasury wonks would cost around £1m a year.

So how much did the Treasury spend on the exercise?

As a concerned taxpayer, I submitted an FOI request to the Treasury. We have a right to know how much this all costs. I asked them how much they are spending on the EU referendum and in particular for staffing numbers. Their (late) reply speaks for itself.

“It is not possible to identify full time equivalent staff numbers involved in the production of HM Treasury’s analysis because of the range of staff who contributed on an ad-hoc basis from across the Department. We have not yet received the publication invoice.” Information Rights Unit, HM Treasury.

It is not possible to count up the team involved. But it is possible to predict the next 30 years to the nearest pounds and pence, complete multivariate macroeconomic modelling, and work together as a pan department team to quickly turn this around into 290 pages of reports. Either they can't do basic arithmetic or they are hiding the amount they are throwing at the campaign.

This is not really surprising to many of us but is not as convincing to the electorate as one would like it. Sir Alan Sugar says we must stay in. Oh my gosh! He is a businessman, he must know whereof he speaks. Well, other businessmen say otherwise and, in any case, Sir Alan has just been appointed by David Cameron's "Enterprise Tsar", whatever that might be. In parenthesis let me say that I have never quite understood this obsession with naming people as tsars of something or other. Do they not know what happened to many if not most tsars, particularly the last one? The job will end badly - they all do. But in the meantime does this make Sir Alan an independent businessman to whom we must listen? I think not.

[As ever, I find that what was going to be a shortish posting has acquired a longish preface. So, I am making this part 1. To be continued. Part 2 is here.] 

Circling round the subject

There seems to be far too much ink (metaphorically speaking) spilled on matters to do with the Brexit referendum but occasionally there might be something to add even by this blog. For example, there is the question of what is to be done (as both Chernyshevsky and Lenin asked in their day) with the leaflet so thoughtfully sent out by HMG to every household in which the said households were being chided to do the right thing and vote to remain in the European Union.

It so happens that I was discussing that very point with a friend on the phone when the postman hove into view and delivered my copy of it. I suppose before I do anything I ought to have a look at it but, somehow, the mood is not upon me. 

Is this actually legal I ask. After all, MPs and Councillors are not allowed to use official facilities to conduct election campaigns and HMG is not allowed to send out leaflets telling the benighted voters to vote for them because they are so wonderful though, clearly, a government in place has certain advantages over the opposition in matters electoral. Why are they allowed to use official facilities and, thus, taxpayers' money to tell us which way to vote in a referendum? 

Anyway, everything has been said on that subject as well so the only question that remains is what is one to do with this document. I am afraid the paper is a little too shiny for my cats' litter tray (they don't like it); Nigel Farage's advice, as usual, is of no use as it is not in an envelope and, therefore, cannot simply be returned to sender; I have no desire to spend money on the postage. 

I could put it in an envelope, address it the Rt Hon. David Cameron, 10, Downing Street etc and put no stamps on it or stamps that add up to some minimal tiny amount, thus forcing the flunkeys to pay for the postage. If a few hundred thousand of us did it, there would be a great deal of dissatisfaction in Number 10. Or, perhaps, one of the organizations, say Vote Leave or Grassroots Out (GO), could issue a call to collect as many of these leaflets as possible and then deliver them to the gates of Downing Street in a van or lorry. I have not heard of such an initiative so I have to make some kind of a decision myself. 

Meanwhile, we have had a great deal of excitement about the Dutch Referendum that rejected the Ukraine-European Union treaty and the highly predictable fact that the EU is going to ignore it. To be fair, it is hard to see what the EU can do about this. Even as far as the Dutch government is concerned a referendum in that country is advisory but it would be a foolish Dutch politician who ignored it. As far as the EU is concerned 32 per cent of the Dutch electorate is not of any real importance. Nor is it of importance from a democratic point of view. They are a tiny minority of the EU's population and even 64 per cent of that tiny minority does not amount to much. Exactly whom do they represent? Slightly more people than the Eurocrats do but not by much. One cannot have a referendum about something those who are asked are not in control of.

All this shows the dangers of direct as opposed to representative democracy. Those who whine about "not being represented" by our elected representatives had better consider the possibilities of major decisions being taken in the wake of completely unrepresentative direct plebiscites. 

Of course, it is unpleasant to have any section of the people saying NO to whatever they are told is good for them. Does this show growing euroscepticism in Holland or a general fed-upness with yet more migrants from Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the figures tell you nothing. But it is worth noting that 68 per cent may not have turned out to vote against the agreement but neither did they turn out to vote for it. So, perhaps, dissatisfaction is genuinely growing. 

The Bill awaits Royal Assent

It's all over bar the shouting. Well, bar the Royal Assent. I am glad to say that the House of Lords insisted on debating the reasons for the Commons' rejection of Amendment 1 and even raised the question of the need for greater "transparency and the minimum thresholds for when financial privilege, which can and will severely curtail the power of this Chamber". I know it was Baroness Morgan of Ely who used those words but they are ones this blog agrees with. Matters of this kind cannot simply be decided by the Speaker's off-hand comment. Not any Speaker's. There are no personal allegations here.

Baroness Morgan then proceeded to put the extension of the vote to 16 and 17 year olds to the vote and, this time, it lost 263 to 246 (Cols 1865 to 1868).

So, the Bill now awaits Royal Assent and will then become a law of the land. And it is then that the fun (loosely speaking) will start.

Meanwhile, back on the home front

The EU Referendum Bill is still making its way through Parliament. As expected the House of Commons reversed the Amendment that would have given 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote in it (unlike the right to buy tobacco or alcohol or decide whether they want to stop being part of the education system) and agreed to all the government Amendments. (See columns 881 to 885 for the vote.)

So the Bill returns to the Lords in what has become known as "ping-pong" and from 3 pm on the proceedings can be watched here. It will be interesting to see how the Lords will deal with a problem that seems to have been added to the procedure quite gratuitously.

At the beginning of that debate in the Commons on December 8, the Speaker said:

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that Lords amendment 1 engages financial privilege. Lords amendment 1 is the first amendment to be taken, and to move the Government motion to disagree I call the Minister, eager and expectant.

Financial privilege attached to the amendment implies that the Lords will not be able to reinstate it. It is hard to see why this amendment should have financial privilege attached to it while other matters should not.

Naturally, an extension of the electorate even temporarily carries a price but then all legislation carries a price. Is the Speaker saying that the Lords will now not be able to amend any legislation, in case that amendment might have some financial implication. If so, it introduces an important constitutional change, which should be discussed widely and not simply announced in a somewhat off-hand fashion by the Speaker.

This is all part and parcel of the government's intention to do away with any kind of check on its power. Given our system that check is not going to come from the House of Commons, though its members might be elected; it can come only from the courts (another theme altogether) or the Lords. Readers of this blog know that it is greatly in favour of the Lords providing that check even when the blog disagrees with their decision, as it does in this case.

Interestingly, support for that point of view has come from the Adam Smith Institute. Dr Eamonn Butler writes on their blot that An unelected check is better than no check on the House of Commons.

Who says politicians are useless and inefficient? They are superbly efficient at one thing, at least – curbing any restraints on their own power.

Thus Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative grandee charged by Prime Minister David Cameron with reviewing the role of peers in the governance of the United Kingdom, is set to propose that the Lords lose their veto over delegated or ‘secondary’ legislation. It all stems from the Prime Minister’s (and the Chancellor’s) agitation at the House of Lords blocking plans to cut tax credits. And that was not the first time that the Lords has irritated the House of Commons by questioning its legislative plans.

The argument is that the Commons is elected and the Lords (mostly) isn’t. So the Lords have no right to block Commons legislation. But even the most slavering MP these days would not suggest simply abolishing the Lords and giving the House of Commons absolute power. That would lead to riots. But they figure they can get rid of the ‘problem’ a bit at a time. The Lords have already lost their powers to block financial legislation; they can delay but not veto other measures; and the Parliament Act, designed to be used in dire emergencies, is now deployed with dazzling frequency, to push through measures that the Lords feel queasy about.

Lord Strathclyde’s proposals are just the latest sortie in these one-sided air-strikes. Secondary legislation is the detailed regulatory stuff that MPs can’t be bothered with, and delegate to officials: so (runs the argument) why do we need the Lords to worry about that?

Well, we should all worry about it, as we can at least get rid of MPs and even overturn laws, but we can’t vote out regulators. Scrapping regulations ain’t so easy, either. So it is good that such proposals are properly scrutinised before they get going. Give it a year or three, though, and there will be some other issue, and the Lords’ powers will be trimmed again. And again.

I find this obsession with elections completely baffling, especially as so often the people who insist on it also complain about the electoral system and about the people who get elected. Surely, having another House that is chosen in a different way is a good idea.

There are many problems with the House of Lords as it stands. Lord Pearson's repeated complaint that the Lib-Dims are over-represented in it while UKIP is under-represented is fair; the packing of the House by the previous Labour and Coalition as well as the present Conservative governments is part and parcel of their intention to control its activity and ought to be stopped. A moratorium on any further peerages should be introduced immediately until we sort out the mess that has been created by the packing.

But let us not forget that the argument for nobody being appointed and everybody being elected leads to the next one, which is the one about elected politicians not being elected by all that large a proportion of the electorate. A discussion of whom MPs represent and what their position is or ought to be in the political world is something for another blog in which Edmund Burke will be quoted correctly but let us quickly look at the logical conclusion of that argument: it is surely that unless about 90 per cent or more vote for the government it has no legitimacy. Well there are and have been for many years political systems based on that. Do the critics of our system really want to live like that?

Hansard links

For those readers who want to know what was actually said in those debates yesterday here are the links to the Commons and the Lords.

While we are on the subject, here is the link to the Third Reading of the EU Referendum Bill, which is now through the House of Lords and has gone back, in an amended form, to the Commons where it will be debated on December 8. As I have mentioned earlier, most of the amendments are government ones (another one or two have been passed in the Third Reading) and will be passed in the Commons. The one amendment that will cause problems is Baroness Morgan's that extends the electorate for the referendum to those who will be 16 and 17 by the time it is taking place. Presumably, the Commons will hold out on that and repeal the amendment, sending the Bill back to the Lords again. There is a strong possibility that there will be no Royal Assent before Christmas.

Another update

Third Reading of the EU Referendum Bill in the House of Lords will take place this afternoon. It is described as a "final chance" to tidy up the Bill and there has been a good deal of tidying up already. However, it has also been amended on the question of voting rights and will, therefore, have to go back to the Commons. We are likely to see a bit of toing and froing. Here is the Bill as it is now.

Baroness Morgan gets her Amendment through

Yesterday was the first day of Report on the EU Referendum Bill in the House of Lords. I have not yet read the Hansard record right through but anyone who wishes to get ahead of me, it is to be seen here. However, I do know that Baroness Morgan, whom I already described as being quite exceptionally stupid did put her Amendment to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote to the House and carried it (Col. 180), 293 to 211. It is absolutely necessary to give those children the vote, according to her,"[t]hey will have to live with the consequences of the result for longer than anyone". Well, not anyone, surely. If we assume that they will all live longer than anyone who is old enough to be in Parliament now and anyone who votes in the General Election now (something of a stretch) then we have to assume that 14 and 15 year olds will live even longer with the results and 12 and 13 year olds even longer than that. Why not give them the vote?

Just to recap, if this Amendment is accepted by the House of Commons, which seems unlikely, we shall be giving the vote in this referendum and no other election to people whom we do not consider to be old enough to buy alcohol or tobacco, old enough to decide whether to continue with their education or old enough to be interviewed by the police without a responsible adult present. In fact, apart from having sexual relations we do not consider them to be old enough to make any decisions on their own since even joining the army can be done only with their parents' or guardians' agreement.

Possibly that is why Baroness Morgan and her cohorts are so anxious to give them the vote - they are not old enough to make a decision for themselves so are more likely to be influenced by the pro-EU garbage they hear at school. That may be a miscalculation but in the meantime we are left with a constitutional mess thanks to the Labour and Lib-Dem parties' anxiety to increase what they perceive to be the pro-EU electorate.

But it's Brexit that pitches us into the unknown

The world goes on despite the horrors in it and, to  be fair, this decision was taken by the members of the Toy Parliament on the 12th that is a day before les événements in Paris. One of the biggest arguments of the europhiliacs is fear of the unknown - Brexit will plunge us into outer darkness and bring back the ten plagues that had been  inflicted on Egypt ... oh sorry, I seem to have been carried away. Well, anyway, if not the ten plagues then many other bad things and, above all, UNCERTAINTY. Life is full of uncertainty and so is politics as long as it is more or less free and democratic. (Actually there was not that much certainty under Stalin either but that's another story.)

What we say in return is that there is absolutely no certainty about staying in the EU. The recent crises, first the eurozone then the migrants, have been described as  being more or less existential for the European project but they happened. Could they have been predicted? To some extent yes; in detail no. That's just the way it is.

More to the point, the EU is always on the move - it is not a stationary project but an evolutionary one and, should the people of Britain vote to stay in, they will speedily find that once again they were in something they did not vote for.

That brings me back to the Toy Parliament.

MEPs endorsed a proposal on electoral reform Wednesday (11 November) that would have citizens vote for the EU Commission president and Europe-wide party lists in 2019. If member states sign up to the idea, the reforms to the 1976 EU electoral law would mean the EU-wide "top candidates" for the Commission presidency would have to stand in the European Parliament election.

MEPs voted by 315 votes to 234 in favour, with 55 abstentions, on a proposal designed to strengthen the European character of the EP elections.

“The European Union today, and the European Community back in 1976, are two different worlds. Europe has changed. The world has changed. The European Parliament has changed dramatically. We needed to change this law,” Danuta Huebner, a Polish centre-right MEP who co-wrote the report, told press Thursday.

The idea is for citizens to have two votes, one for national lists of candidates and one for an EU-wide list of European parties. Leading the European lists would be the candidates for the presidency of the Commission.

The chances this will not go through or not this time. But it is there, on the agenda, and it will not be mentioned by those who assure us that staying in the EU is knowing exactly what we sign up for. EU-wide party lists? Hmmm.

Renegotiations and the House of Lords

First things first: the EU Referendum Bill has gone through Committee, with the third day of it having taken place on November 4. First day of Report is scheduled for November 18 and several Amendments (mostly the ones that were not moved in Committee) have been put down already. So far, the only Amendments added to the Bill are ones moved by HMG in the person of Baroness Anelay of St John's, which raises the rather perplexing question of why have those Amendments been left to this late stage. Could it be that some of these matters did not occur to HMG until the Lords started going through the Bill with some attention to detail? Just a thought.

Yesterday was taken up with David Cameron's letter Donald Tusk, a.k.a. President of the European Council (only one of several Presidents the EU has, which shows how superior it is to the USA that has only one President). There were also statements in both Houses and the one in the Lords together with the short debate can be read here.

No, I don't know either why it is headed Europe: Renegotiation when the statement, quite correctly referred to "the Government's EU renegotiation". Baroness Morgan of Ely, former member of the Toy Parliament and present Opposition Whip and Labour Spokesperson on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs as well as Wales (she can say a few words in the language) tends to talk about "Europe" rather than the EU. Then again, one of the interesting aspects of the debates on the subject (and there will be many more) is just how stupid the woman is. Having once debated with her in Cardiff, I knew that but it is good to have it confirmed. To be fair, even I underestimated her stupidity. Just read her reply to the Minister and you will see what I mean.

There are, as we know, problems with the PM's proposals, particularly this one:

We propose that people coming to Britain should live here and contribute for four years before qualifying for in-work benefits or social housing, and that we should end the practice of sending child benefit overseas. The Government are open to different ways of dealing with these issues, but we need to secure arrangements that deliver on these commitments.

A number of people have commented on it, mostly pointing out that it will need a treaty change and a major one at that.

On the whole, we can ignore statements by Baroness Morgan for the Labour Party (who is still proposing to add 16 and 17 year olds to the voters' list but not, apparently, 14 and 15 year olds) and Baroness Smith of Newnham for the Lib-Dims, who are seriously over-represented in the House of Lords. Effectively they are saying that their parties will campaign for staying in, no matter what the outcome of the negotiations might be. That is not a rational attitude.

Let us turn to someone who can actually punch hard in debates, Lord Lawson of Blaby (Col. 1949):

My Lords, the Statement we have heard runs the full gamut from the inadequate through the vague to the completely meaningless. I ask my noble friend two quick questions of elucidation. Under economic governance, the Statement concludes that any issues that affect all member states must be discussed and decided by all member states. Does it mean that legislation in this area must be agreed by all member states? If not, what on earth does it mean?

Secondly, under sovereignty, the Prime Minister’s letter to President Tusk states that he would seek a formal, legally binding and irreversible way to exempt the United Kingdom from the commitment to ever-closer union. But since the rest of the European Union is committed to ever-closer union, and since the European Union will continue to legislate to this end, what on earth does that achieve?

Indeed, the ever-closer union is written into every treaty's preamble since the one of Rome all those decades ago.

The Minister's response was so disappointingly vague and woolly that I see not point in putting it up here but it is there in Hansard for all who want to read it.

The question of how many EU citizens claim benefits here and what those are, in-work or out of work remains unanswered despite attempts by Baroness Ludford to obfuscate an already foggy issue. Of course, the benefit system needs to be reformed for everybody but I doubt if the noble lady would agree with that, being of the Lib-Dim persuasion and another former member of the Toy Parliament.

Nor were as Lord Garel-Jones's incomprehensible comments about red card, yellow card and subsidiarity particularly impressive. The whole shebang is pointless, really. You can have any amount of coloured cards, they will not restore legislation to the national parliaments. But I do have to report one victory. After many years of campaigning by Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Willoughby de Broke (who had asked a Question about Basic Farm Payments earlier in the day) to make former European Commissioners declare their interests there seems to be some movement in the right direction. At any rate Lord Clinton-Davis said (Col. 1952):

I speak as a former commissioner in Europe. This debate is outrageous. We ought to be discussing not how we are going to withdraw from Europe but how we can play a part in ensuring that our voice is heard. At the moment, it is not, because the Prime Minister is being ambiguous—we do not know where he stands. He will not say whether he is for or against. What is vital is how we make our views heard, not how we can withdraw. We should not have this attenuated debate, but a real one about the all-important issues. At the moment, that is being denied to Parliament, and that is wrong.

Without making it a declaration of interest, which it is, he does point out that he is a former Commissioner in Europe though, of course, it was the European Union. I suspect the noble lord finding the debate outrageous is quite useful from our point of view.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch raised a couple of important points (Col. 1453):

My Lords, I ask the Minister how seriously the Prime Minister takes his belief, according to the Statement, that if powers do not need to reside in Brussels, they should be returned to Westminster? Does the Minister think the Prime Minister understands that this requires the breaking of the acquis communautaire, the one-way ratchet to complete union? Surely that will require unanimity. It will require treaty change. I suppose the real question is that if the others do not agree this revolutionary concept in the project of European integration, does that mean that the Prime Minister will campaign to leave?

The Minister has promised to write to Lord Pearson on the subject and that is something to look forward to. Interestingly, the Statement left open the question of which side the PM is likely to campaign on. We all assume that he will proclaim whatever he gets a great victory and campaign to stay in but by suggesting that he might not do so he has presented himself as a man of political flexibility and also of real principle. (Stop laughing at the back.) With the Opposition shouting that they will campaign to stay in, no matter what, this is a useful image to project.

Update

Student demonstrators today, masked marchers tomorrow (though I doubt that prediction of 1 million very much) but life goes on and the EU Referendum Bill is making its way through the House of Lords. Today is the third day of Committee and the debate is going on as I write this and it can be watched here.

Second day of Committee was on Monday and the debate can be read in Hansard here and here. So far, none of the Amendments have even gone to the vote, let alone passed. There are still two days of Report to come and then the Third Reading. So far as I can remember, Amendments can be presented at the Third Reading (unlike the Second) but it seems a little unlikely. It is possible that the Bill will be passed without any alteration, as it came from the Commons. In that case it might receive the Royal Assent before Christmas. If there are Amendments and it has to go back to the Commons then it is unlikely to be law before next year.

Either way, an April referendum, which is what some people are predicting (probably the same ones who were predicting a referendum for 2014) is unlikely and that is just as well from our point of view. I cannot understand why any Brexit supporter should be calling for an early referendum. We are not nearly ready, no matter what these people say and the opinion polls may be moving in our favour but not particularly fast and not particularly evenly. Relying on the migrant crisis is not particularly sensible as, by itself, it will not turn the electorate or not enough of it. So, let us hope that the referendum is not till 2017 and let us use the time sensibly.

Here is one suggestion: the House of Lords Select Committees produce excellent, well-argued Reports. (One of my most entertaining sessions on the BBC Russian Service was explaining that Parliamentary Reports from either House can be and often are critical of the government. I have never managed to find out how that went down in Russia.) The European Union Committee and its various Sub-Committees are well worth following. This July, the Select Committee produced a Report entitled: The referendum on UK membership of the EU: assessing the reform process. The intention is to produce a number of reports on the subject as matters progress.

At the end of the introductory chapter we find this:

6. Given the range of views within the House and across the country that will be expressed in the referendum campaign itself, this report does not recommend whether or not the UK should remain a member of the EU. Nor, although we have borne it in mind in our deliberations, do we address the European Union Referendum Bill, introduced to the House of Commons on 28 May 2015. It is not part of our remit to scrutinise domestic UK legislation.

7. Rather, this report is designed to inform members of the House, and the wider political audience in the UK and the EU as a whole, of our views and concerns at this early stage in the renegotiation process. It sets out our assessment of the mechanics of the process. It also sets out our intended approach as negotiations continue. Although Chapter 3 of the report touches on the policy issues pertaining to the renegotiation, it is not intended to express the Committee's considered view on these issues. The Select Committee, together with its six Sub-Committees, is likely to analyse the proposed reforms in greater detail in the coming months.

The emphasis is mine. Let me recommend those words "and the wider political audience". Let me also recommend this and future Reports on the subject to that audience.

First day of Committee

For anyone interested who has not yet switched on the Parliamentlive.tv, the first day of the Committee stage of the EU Referendum Bills is going on right now. Here is all the information you might need about the state of the Bill now, including the various Amendments, mostly to do with extending the franchise and with demanding that HMG produce a detailed analysis of what they expect the renegotiations to achieve and, more to the point, how do they view Britain's existence outside the EU.

Curiously enough, there are no demands for HMG to produce a detailed analysis of what they think the EU will look like in five years' time and what Britain's role in it will be if we stay in. I seem to recall that many of the people who are now demanding the above report or analysis were horrified at the thought of a cost/benefit study of Britain's membership all the times it was asked for.