People who vehemently oppose this ongoing Tory Brexit farce are perfectly understandable. After all it's been obvious from the beginning that the Brexiteers had no real plan for how to extricate the UK from the political union we've been integrating with for four decades, and that their Leave campaign was run by a bunch of opportunistic liars.
The problem of course is that there are liars on the Remain side too. People who have seen the effectiveness of the Leave lies, and instead of thinking 'we need to find more efficient and effective ways of countering these lies' they've gone for the 'if they won by lying, we need to lie through our teeth too' strategy.
One of the worst things about Brexit is the way it created such a tribalist division that ordinary Brexiters have felt compelled to defend the most extreme and egregious Brexiteer lies out of some weird tribal loyalty to people on the same side of the Brexit division.
Anyone with a social media account must have seen some desperate Brexiter performing absurd mental gymnastics to try and defend Boris Johnson's "£350 million for the NHS" lie, even after the Vote Leave director Dominic Cummings admitted that it was a lie, and that Leave probably wouldn't have won without it.
When Eddie Marsan publishes an 18 month old picture of Jeremy Corbyn doing an Eric Morcambe pose on Twitter in order to spit vitriol at Jeremy Corbyn for campaigning in one of Britain's poorest and most austerity-damaged communities, he's lying through his teeth.
And when the lawyer Jo Maugham amplifies Eddie Marsan's lie by Retweeting it with a sneering anti-Corbyn screed of his own, it's simply another outright lie.
Spreading political lies and dismissing the people of Morecambe (and their 26.4% child poverty rate) because Jeremy Corbyn decided to campaign there instead of attend an anti-Brexit march in London with the likes of Alistair Campbell (anti-Semite and the professional liar who helped create the Iraq disaster), Tom Watson (who announced that he actually wants to vote in favour of Theresa May's shambolic Brexit deal to a chorus of boos from the crowd), and Chuka Umunna and his band of parliamentary squatters (who are literally begging Theresa May to let them prop up her pro-Brexit pro-austerity government) is exactly the kind of elitist London-centrism that people often unfairly smear the entire anti-Brexit movement as being.
All these lies do is reinforce the idea that Remain is some kind of elitist project with absolutely no regard for the truth, or for left-behind communities like Morecambe that have been ravaged by issues like deindustrialisation, austerity dogma, collapsing wages, child poverty, exploitative employment practices, trashed public services, barren high streets, failing schools, food bank dependency, local government cuts ...
But instead of calling out these lies, loads of Remainers (especially the #FBPE cultists) have actively retweeted them, and used them to publish bitter and shockingly dishonest anti-Corbyn screeds of their own.
If people like Marsan and Maugham are willing to use outright lies in order to further their political agenda, then they're clearly just as politically toxic as the Brextremists who created this Tory Brexit farce in the first place.
And if you're willing to help amplify, or even just make excuses for these Remainer lies just because you feel like you have some tribal debt of allegiance to them because they're on the same side, then you're every bit as bad as the Brexiters who think that the Leave campaign were justified in lying their way to victory in 2016 because they ended up getting what they wanted as a result.
But in a way the people spreading these sneering Remainer lies are even worse, because at least the Leave lies had a clear sense of purpose (tricking and terrifying people into voting Leave) while sneering-at-Morecambe type lies just make Remainers look like a bunch of smug, lying, sneering, metropolitan elitists who don't give a shit about ordinary people or left-behind communities, which is clearly a staggeringly counter-productive way of portraying yourself and your movement.
In conclusion, political lies erode the standard of political discourse, and political liars should be called out, no matter whether these liars are on your side of any particular political divide or not.
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6 comments:
It's the paradox attack - Corbyn is a London-centric metropolitian figure out of touch with the working class we are told. Then when he is in working class areas speaking to working class and lower middle class people about genuine working class concerns, he is now out of touch for not being back in London, sharing a stage with pro austerity and pro corporate figures such as Chuka and Anna Soubry, addressing largely professional middle class and upper middle class people.
One thing is for sure. Out here (provincial working class city) - there is bugger all support for Chuka and his interlopers - regardless of views on Corbyn / Brexit / Remain / Rees-Mogg / Farage or anything else.
I'm a big AAV fan but not with you on this one. I happened to be shuffling past the very spot yesterday just as they suddenly announced that Tom Watson was about to speak. You could feel the frisson of coldness [which I shared]. I don't feel comfortable with him taking the limelight in a march for a People's Vote and I think it's a real shame Jeremy Corbyn couldn't show some solidarity with the Labour membership and actually be there. He was noticeable by his absense and it was such a wasted opportunity. Not sure what he's playing at over this, but I'm right with him on most issues.
Actually, it's doubly important to Weed out Liars and charlatans on the left, because, in the words of Jon Stewart, "Fox News only has to be right once".
They will take an ounce, an inch, a veritable pinch of dishonesty and disharmony from anything remotely left of centre, and use it as INCONTROVERTIBLE CONCRETE PROOF OH MY GOD that the Left is Crumbling and unstable and we should put our trust back in the "Good Old" Tories "Where it Belongs".
Which of course, as we all know, is Bullshit.
Leave? Remain? In truth, you could argue for both (with the right Leave Deal). But when people Lie and Smear and Sneer and Brief, and the average person can't tell day from night on the issue, The opportunists creep in, and the bad times roll.
Personally, whatever happens to Theresa May, whatever Happens to this, the worst, most objectionable Bunch of Tories in our lifetime, may the aftermath be better, it HAS to be better.
I'm also an AAV fan and agree that it's important to pay attention to places like Morecambe. But there's a time for that and Saturday wasn't the time.
Corbyn has ineffectually sat on the fence for too long. I'm one of those who joined Labour to support Corbyn, and now I'm sorry to the long-term Labour members who looked on aghast as their party was hijacked. After the Labour (lack of) response to brexit - an ongoing desperate push for another general election that doesn't seem any nearer and won't resolve brexit anyway - I'm really struggling to see Corbyn lead Labour to power.
Does anyone trust Corbyn anymore? He has sat on the fence using innuendo and weasal words for so long that I certainly don't.
Corbyn and the labour party need to distance themselves from the radical left who want brexit at all cost, and go all out campagning for remain...revoke art. 50 arguing it is disastrous for Britain and the working classes.
The radical left in the LP need to be shown the door, named and shamed. They are the minority in the Labour party but surely the loudest and making the most damage in the LP.
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