Our future is in the hands of these maniacs!

Our future as a nation is in the hands of a tiny unrepresentative clique of Tory party members who will chose our next Prime Minister for us.

This selectorate is made up of people who are so obsessed with Brexit that they'd be happy to see Scotland and Northern Ireland depart the United Kingdom to achieve it!

The official name of the Tory party is the Conservative and Unionist Party, yet an overwhelming majority of their members now see Unionism as such a low priority that they'd gladly trigger the break up of their beloved Union in order to achieve Brexit (a Brexit that still somehow remains undefined over three years after people voted for it!).

Aside from wilfully lobbing Centuries of Tory unionism into a skip and burning it, Tory party members have also entirely offered up the carefully crafted myth of Tory economic competence to the flames too.

An astounding 61% of Tory members would gladly cause severe economic damage to the UK economy in order to achieve a still-undefined Brexit, that's not economic competence, it's economic insanity!

If they're willing to destroy two of the fundamental pillars of Toryism (unyielding Unionism and the pretence that continually favouring the rich equates to economic competence) then it should come as no surprise that over half of Tory party members would gladly see the permanent destruction of the Tory party in order to achieve their still-undefined Brexit ambition.

But the craziest thing isn't what Tories would give up (Scotland, Northern Ireland, any pretence at being Unionists, any claims on economic competence) and destroy (the Union, the Economy, Britain's reputation, their own damned party) in order to achieve Brexit, it's what they say they'd give up Brexit to avoid.

The only option that makes them so afraid that they'd give up on their Brexit obsession is Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister!

These people would be satisfied with the permanent loss of Scotland and Northern Ireland from the Union, reducing the UK to a rump of just England and Wales!

These people would be satisfied with a severe economic meltdown that would destroy tens of thousands of British jobs, trash the value of the pound, cripple British businesses and institutions, and reduce us to a laughing stock on the world stage for having wilfully done this to ourselves!

They'd even gladly see the destruction of their own beloved political party in order to deliver this United Kingdom-busting, economy-tanking, reputation-trashing Brexit dream of theirs!

But when it comes to the idea of an old guy with traditional democratic socialist principles holding power for a few years, they'd willingly abandon all of their Brexit insanity to prevent it!

• What could it be about not-for-profit public ownership of the railways, National Grid, water supply, and Royal Mail that terrifies them so much?

• What could it be about commonplace social democratic style economic ideas like a National Investment Bank, and decentralisation of politics and the economy away from central government to the regions that drives so much fear into their hearts?

• Why are they so absolutely terrified of reversing economically illiterate austerity fanaticism in order to properly invest in our schools, hospitals, emergency services, local councils, and infrastructure in order to maximise the nation's future economic potential, rather than strangling it?

• Why are they reduced to gibbering with fear at the thought of sensible British foreign policy that avoids turning entire countries (Iraq, Libya ... Iran?) into lawless terrorism breeding grounds based on packs of lies and ridiculously dreamy "spreading democracy" propaganda?

• Why are they reduced to quivering fear by the concepts of full-time workers being paid sufficient that they don't end up relying on benefits and food banks just to survive, and disabled people being freed from persecution and abuse by the state?

The results of this poll paint a picture of a Tory party membership so frightened and confused that they'd wilfully give up the core elements of Toryism, and even the Tory party itself, in order to achieve an objective that they're still unwilling and unable to properly define.

These are people who are so brainwashed and bamboozled that they'd deliberately break up the United Kingdom and wilfully cause a humiliating self-inflicted national economic meltdown in order to achieve their Brexit pipe dream, but they'd give up the thing they'd sacrifice all of their principle for if Brexit meant temporarily having a democratic socialist as Prime Minister!

And the scariest thing about all of this is that the future of the nation is entirely in the hands of these frightened and brainwashed Brexit maniacs.

They get to pick the next Prime Minister between themselves, while the rest of us look on in horror at what they're going to choose to inflict on us.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

What the mainstream media don't want you to know about anti-Semitism

Nobody denies that there are problems with anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry within the Labour Party. Given that anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry are shockingly commonplace in wider society, any organisation of the size of the Labour Party is bound to have a few horrible people kicking around.

The problem is the way the mainstream media insist on presenting the anti-Semitism debate as if it's a Labour-specific problem that's getting worse under Jeremy Corbyn, when the actual evidence shows that anti-Semitic views are very much more common from Conservatives, and that rates of anti-Semitism have actually fallen dramatically amongst Labour supporters since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.

Falling Labour anti-Semitism

Comparison of two YouGov surveys in 2015 and 2017 shows that rates of anti-Semitism amongst Labour supporters has fallen dramatically, while the same polls show that anti-Semitism rates amongst Tory supporters is barely falling at all.

In 2015, 22% of Labour voters agreed with the statement that ‘Jews chase money more than other people’, whilst in 2017 the number of Labour voters agreeing with the statement had declined to 14%.

These results compare with 31% of Conservative voters who agreed with the statement that ‘Jews chase money more than other people’ in 2015, whilst in 2017 this had declined slightly to 27% who still agreed with the statement.

Tory supporters are almost twice as likely to agree with this anti-Semitic trope as Labour supporters, yet the mainstream press insist on portraying the anti-Semitism furore as if it's a Labour-specific problem.

The same pattern occurs across all of the other anti-Semitic statements in the two YouGov polls. The rate of agreement amongst Labour voters has fallen dramatically since Corbyn took over, while the rate of agreement amongst Tories is both much higher than the Labour rate, and falling much more slowly.

Comparative analysis

Then there's the research from the Campaign Against AntiSemitism that found that the prevalence of anti-Semitic views amongst Labour and Lib-Dem supporters is much lower than the general public, but that the prevalence of anti-Semitic views amongst Tories is higher than the public at large, and even actually higher than the average for Brexit voters!

Of course Labour needs to fight against anti-Semitic views amongst its members and supporters, but anyone who tries to make out that anti-Semitism is a Labour-specific problem when rates of anti-Semitism are loads higher, and falling much more slowly in the Tory ranks is clearly weaponising allegations of anti-Semitism for party political purposes.

Of course it's a still a problem that any Labour supporters agree with anti-Semitic tropes, but the reality of the situation is that they're significantly less likely to than the general public, while Tories are significantly more likely to.

Blue-kippers

Then there's the study from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research that found that rates of anti-Semitism are way higher on the right of politics than on the left (see image).

The fact is that the hard-right are the most anti-Semitic demographic of all, and the Tories have been openly and brazenly courting these hard-right ultranationalist blue-kippers ever since the Brexit vote and the collapse of Ukip.

It's absolutely astounding to see a political party that's intent on courting the most bigoted demographic of all suddenly pretending to be concerned about anti-Semitism. 

If the Tories were really bothered about anti-Semitism they'd clean their own house first, and they'd definitely stop welcoming so many bigoted blue-kippers with open arms.

Mainstream media lies

Given the evidence is clear that that rates of anti-Semitism are much higher amongst Tories and the political right, the effort to present anti-Semitism as if it's a Labour-specific problem is clearly dishonest journalism.

But plenty of mainstream media sources have gone much further than dishonesty, by wandering off into the realm of outright lies.

Take the Scotsman's claim that "rising anti-Semitism could bring Corbyn down". Not only is anti-Semitism actually falling, but it's falling much faster under Jeremy Corbyn than it is under Theresa May.

The problem of course is that the truth is largely irrelevant to a vast numbers of mainstream media hacks, who continually attack anyone who threatens the neoliberal orthodoxy because they're not really journalists at all, they're simply stenographers for the right-wing establishment.

Wedge strategy

The reason the anti-Semitism issue has arisen again, just before the local elections, is that it's a highly effective wedge strategy to attack the political left with.

The blind eye that's been turned to numerous Tory bigotry scandals over the same time frame as the anti-Semitism furore stands as proof that most Tories don't give the faintest damn about bigotry amongst their own ranks, but they know that people on the liberal-left do give a damn, which is why they're using the issue to attack Labour.

The effort to smear Labour as the party of anti-Semitism (when their own party is actually much worse) isn't really designed to pinch Labour voters and turn them into Tory voters. A person would have to be politically insane to abandon Labour over bigotry and defect to a party with the raving bigot Boris Johnson as their Foreign Secretary!

The anti-Semitism furore is all about causing disillusion amongst the liberal-left in the hope that they won't turn out to vote at the local elections.

Reality vs illusion

Just remember that a significant proportion of mainstream media hacks are Orwellian illusion-artists. 

They don't give the faintest damn about rampant bigotry in the Tory ranks, and they don't give a damn that anti-Semitism is actually much higher amongst Tories than it is amongst Labour supporters.

All they caren about is using anti-Semitism to attack Labour, because they've completely lost the political argument so weaponising the fight against racism is pretty much all they've got left.

• The whole illusion crumbles when you look at the actual facts on anti-Semitism.

• The whole illusion crumbles if you look at the way the mainstream press have completely ignored multiple outrageous Tory bigotry scandals over the same time frame as the anti-Semitism furore.

• The whole illusion crumbles when you witness non-Jews using this anti-Semitism furore as an excuse to attack and abuse left-wing Jewish people as "anti-Semites".

• The whole illusion crumbles if you look at the fact that the Labour anti-Semitism march was attended by a bunch of sectarian bigots from the DUP and the racist "Chingford skinhead" Norman Tebbit.

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OR

If you hate socialism, then you hate the NHS

Millions of people in Britain have allowed themselves to be conditioned into hating the concept of socialism by the toxic influence of the hard-right billionaire propaganda merchants.

The way they do this is by steadfastly ignoring the reality of what socialism actually means, and continually offering absurd caricature definitions of socialism like "spending other people's money" or "jealousy at other people's success" instead.

In reality socialism is about making sure public infrastructure and services (like schools, hospitals, public transport, the police and judicial system, libraries, roads, and energy infrastructure) are run for the public good, and kept out of the hands of private profiteers.

It's all about getting people to hate a ridiculous caricature of socialism, rather than explaining the political situation using accurate definitions.

The polling data shows that a clear majority of British people who express an opinion either way strongly support the fundamental socialist principle of public ownership when it comes to police services (96%), schools (93%), the NHS (89%), the Royal Mail (76%), the railways (71%), the water companies (70%), and the energy companies (63%). [source for statistics]

Given that the socialist policy of public ownership is so overwhelmingly popular with the British public, it seems incredible that so many British people have allowed themselves to be conditioned into hating "socialism" so much that they go out and vote for a radically right-wing political party that is hellbent on ignoring public opinion, scrapping public ownership, and continually transferring the operation of our police services, schools, NHS facilities, and Royal Mail into the hands of private sector profiteers.


Around nine in ten people support the socialist policy of running the NHS as a not-for-profit public service, so mainstream media propagandists have to use all kinds of deceptions to confuse people into hating "socialism".

One of the most important tricks they use to get people spewing bile like a pack of slavering Pavlov's dogs at the mere mention of "socialism" is to completely whitewash the positive aspects of socialist policy.

The political right hate the NHS with an undying passion because the concept of prioritising health care on the basis of need, rather than the ability to pay for it, is a fantastic demonstration of socialism in action.

Right-wingers are smart enough to realise that the British public love the concept of universal health care, so instead of attacking the NHS directly, they undermine it on the sly whilst pretending that they actually love it.

You'll never hear a Tory admit that the NHS has been a shining example of socialism in action ever since it was founded by the Labour Party in 1948. Neither will you see right-wing columnists and political commentators admit that the NHS that they pretend to support is actually an unmistakably socialist endeavour.

This refusal to define the NHS as an example of socialism in action is deception by omission.

Right-wingers want people to immediately think of stuff like bread queues in communist Russia or their ridiculous caricatures of socialism as "spending other people's money" whenever the subject of socialism comes up. 

They definitely don't want people thinking about the fantastic hard-working NHS staff who have helped them and/or their family members through accidents, illnesses, and/or child birth.

However it's vital to understand that even though the political right are unwilling to describe the NHS as the socialist enterprise that it is for fear of demonstrating that almost everyone in Britain has been a beneficiary of socialism in action at some point in their lives, they hate it with an unbridled ideological passion.

These elitist right-wing ideologues don't want to identify the NHS with socialism for fear of giving the "lower orders" the idea that socialism is actually a good idea. So they just quietly work to wreck it through massive funding cuts, service closures, deliberately manufactured staff shortages, and an ever accelerating privatisation agenda.
  

Then when their wrecking agenda comes to fruition, and the NHS is reduced to a hollowed out and under-funded wreck that is incapable of dealing with public demand, they'll suddenly reverse their embargo on describing the NHS as socialism, because once it's been reduced to ruins by the right-wingers who always hated it, they can use the wreckage they've created to support their deceptive argument that socialism doesn't work.

As long as the Tories and the right-wing press continue their strategy of obscuring the fact that the NHS is an example of socialism in action, we can be fairly sure that they fear that it's somehow still working well enough to actually give socialism a good name.

But when they suddenly start spewing propaganda about how the NHS is failing because socialism doesn't work (rather than as a result of their deliberate wrecking agenda), we'll know that they're on the brink of completing their project to run the NHS into the ground in order to justify their decades-long dream of privatising the remains and scrapping the "free at the point of need" principle.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

The Tories are the political extremists with unpopular attitudes and unwanted policies

Ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour Party leader in 2015 the mainstream media have worked tirelessly to create the narrative that Corbyn and Labour are scary political extremists, while the Tories are safe and sensible political moderates.

The problem of course is that this near constant mainstream media trope is a complete reversal of reality. 

When it comes to party policy it's Labour who promote policies with lots of public support like reversing the ongoing Tory privatisation of the NHS (84%), renationalisation of the railways (60%) and Royal Mail (65%), and public ownership of the water companies (59%). Meanwhile it's the Tories that have been enacting radical hard-right policies with practically no public support like the mass privatisation of state schools (6%), privatisation of police services (3%), and privatisation of NHS services and facilities (10%). [source for percentages]

When it comes to other Labour policies like free university education, running the National Grid as a not for profit public service, and the establishment of a National Investment Bank, these are not radical or extreme policies at all, in fact they're actually commonplace across the developed world.

When it comes to party policies it's clear that Labour have some very popular ideas that are considered completely normal across the rest of the developed world, while it's the Tories who are intent on pushing a radical and extreme political agenda that has very little public support.

Aside from the mainstream media campaign to smear the Labour leadership and Labour policies as scary and extreme, there's also a concerted and ongoing effort to portray ordinary Labour Party members as a bunch of dangerously radical nutters with extreme ideas that are miles away from the political centre ground.

The problem of course is that this is another deliberate reality reversal by the mainstream media.

An in-depth survey of political party members by Queen Mary University and YouGov has demonstrated beyond doubt that Labour Party members largely share the same political territory as the Lib-Dems and the SNP, while it's Tory party members who hold the radical and extreme beliefs. 

When it comes to attitudes on immigration Labour, Lib-Dem and SNP voters are clustered extremely closely together on the belief that immigration enriches British cultural life, while Tory members are the radical outliers who believe that immigration undermines Britain's cultural life.

When it comes to representation in parliament a clear majority of all of the other party members wanted to see more parliamentary representation for women, disabled people, the working class, ethnic minorities, young people, and the LGBT community. 

Tory members were the only group where the majority don't want to see more parliamentary representation for women, disabled people, the working class, ethnic minorities, young people, and the LGBT community. 

Presumably they don't want increased political representation for any of these groups because they're perfectly happy to be ruled over by an over-privileged elitist clique in which wealthy, white, able-bodied, older males are massively over-represented, and every other demographic is significantly under-represented.

When it comes to austerity dogma, Labour Party members have broadly similar views to the SNP and Lib-Dems that austerity has gone too far, while Tory party members are the fanatical extremists who still overwhelmingly support the demonstrably ruinous economic vandalism their beloved party has been inflicting on the nation for almost 8 years. Presumably they cling to their belief because to admit that it's been a failure now would be to admit their own role in damaging British society and the British economy, so it's easier for them to maintain their delusion than to just admit their mistake.

When it comes to a whole range of other subjects, from a second EU referendum once the actual terms of the deal are clear, through forcing school children to uncritically obey authority, to reintroduction of the death penalty, Labour members align closely with the views of SNP and Lib-Dem members, while it's the Tory members who hold the radical and extreme positions.

Whichever way we look at the situation, it's clear that the Tory party are actually the dangerous radicals.

Theresa May is a weak and directionless leader who threw away her majority and put herself at the mercy of some of the most extreme elements in British politics (the headbanger Tory hard-right, the ultra-nationalist blue-kip demographic who abandoned UKIP to prop up Theresa May's Tories, the DUP who she had to bribe into supporting her government, and the fanatically right-wing propaganda merchants like Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre, and the Barclay Brothers).

The Tory party have spent the last seven years imposing one radically right-wing and spectacularly unpopular policy after another. From trashing our local services to lavish huge tax breaks to corporations and the mega-rich, through their systematic abuse of sick and disabled people, to spectacularly unpopular privatisation scams. They're demonstrably a bunch of extremists with practically no regard for what the public actually want.

Then there's the actual Tory party members. What else can we say about this bunch of regressive, xenophobic, hard-right, anti-worker, elitist, homophobic, austerity-fetishists? Is it really any wonder the Tory party is so full of horrific politicians pushing grotesque policies given the absolute state of the Tory party membership?

So next time you see the mainstream media trying to portray Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party as the scary political extremists, just remember that they're deliberately reversing reality to confuse you, and that it's the Tories who rely on the bunch of regressive political deviants in the Tory party membership to help push their radically right-wing and highly unpopular policies.

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OR

61% of Brexiters would rather see the UK economy fail than give up Brexit

61% of Brexit supporters say that they consider significant economic damage to the UK economy to be "a price worth paying" for their beloved Brexit.

The YouGov poll on Brexit attitudes also revealed that amongst Brexiters over the age of 65 the proportion who are willing to see the British economy significantly damaged rises to 71%.

When asked whether they would see members of their own family thrown on the unemployment scrap heap as a price of Britain leaving the EU an astounding 50% of over-65s said yes!
 

This means that a clear majority of retirement age Leave supporters are Brexit Extremists who wish harm on the UK economy, meaning job losses for huge numbers of strangers. Half of them would also gladly see members of their own family lose their jobs and left at the mercy of the cruel, draconian and deeply discriminatory Tory benefits system!

Not only do these dreadful people want to strip the rest of us of our longstanding rights to live, work, travel and study in 31 other countries across Europe, they've also completely abandoned the pretence that Brexit was going to be great for the UK economy, and would actually like to see the UK economy slump into another recession, and hundreds of thousands of us lose our jobs. Just as long as they get their beloved Brexit.

Imagine what kind of person would be willing to see their own sons, daughters and grandchildren thrust into destitution in order to achieve some abstract political objective that they're unable to even explain the details of.

Just think about it. If government ministers are still bickering and squabbling over the details of Brexit, then how can some random pensioner possibly know enough about it to know it's worth condemning their younger family members and their dependent children into poverty to achieve it?

Just imagine being comfortably retired and wishing unemployment on your own family members in order to achieve some abstract political objective. 

Is it any wonder that younger generations consider the baby boomers to be the most selfish generation of all when so many of them would condemn their own family members to poverty for such intangible benefits to themselves?

These shocking poll results prove how difficult it is to change people's minds once they've been conned into believing in something.

Millions of Brexiters were sold the lie that Brexit would make us all better off to the tune of £350 million a week, and through wonderful quickfire trade deals with non-EU countries. They were told to dismiss any negative warnings as "project fear" propaganda and that Britain has had "enough of experts".

Now that the reality is starting to bite (the weak pound, soaring inflation, the worst GDP growth in the EU, the Brexit wage slump, recruitment crises in the NHS and agriculture, financial sector relocations back to the safety of the Single Market, the chaotic Tory approach to the Brexit negotiations ...) these people would rather pretend that they knew all along that they were voting to make us all poorer (including making their own relatives redundant) than to admit that they were gullible enough to fall for the Brexit con.

Aside from exposing the shockingly callous attitudes of millions of Brexit voters to the hardship and suffering of other people, including their own family members, these results prove that Mark Twain was absolutely right when he said that it's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

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OR

Why are so many people actually falling for Theresa May's extreme Brexit propaganda device?

A June 2017 YouGov poll found that an astounding 55% of people say they believe in Theresa May's "no deal is better than a bad deal" rhetoric.

It should be absolutely obvious to anyone who thinks about it for themselves that such rhetoric is obviously designed to prepare public opinion for a socially and economically ruinous Tory flounce away from the Brexit negotiating table.

"No deal is better than a bad deal" clearly just a rhetorical device to make a really bad idea look like a good idea.

It will be put into action when the Tories and their cheerleaders in the right-wing press begin presenting every single EU position in the negotiations as a "bad deal", then switching people back into the rote learned mantra that "no deal is better than a bad deal" in order to make their absolutely catastrophic "no deal" strop look like a good idea!

If you think this sounds to bonkers to be true, consider the fact that the Tories have been briefing the right-wing press since early May that they're planning a "no deal" hissy fit.

Their nickname for this "no deal" strategy: "The nuclear option"!

12 reasons "no deal" is a really bad idea

Here are 12 reasons a "no deal" strop away from the negotiating table would be a complete catastrophe for jobs and the economy.

• A no deal flounce would mean 40% import/export tariffs on food and agricultural produce (meaning a tax increase on 97% of UK food and drink exports).

• Manufacturing sector supply lines would be ruined (over 50% of our manufactured goods go to the EU).

• A "no deal" flounce would trigger an even bigger recession than the 2007-08 bankers' crisis (C.E.P. estimate).

• A "no deal" strop would cause hundreds of thousands of UK job losses as the manufacturing, export/import businesses, aviation, shipping, financial services, hospitality and tourism, agriculture, and public sector all face up to problems like tariffs and the "no deal" economic meltdown.

• The Tories have already set out a plan to turn the UK into a low-wage, low-skill corporate tax haven when they launch "the nuclear option".

• Walking away from the negotiations would mean abandonment of all UK-EU agreements on stuff like air travel, consumer protection, national security.

• A Tory "no deal" flounce would result in terrifying uncertainty for EU citizens in the UK, and UK citizens in Europe.

• Travel rights for all UK citizens would be affected by the chaotic abandonment of free movement (work visas, travel visas, immigration fees ...).

• Without a negotiated settlement the Irish border problem would flare up and risk the Good Friday Agreement.

• The UK border agency, airports and shipping industry would be totally screwed by the need for customs checks.

• The Scottish would be insane not to quit the UK under such chaotic circumstances.

• The UK would obviously become an international pariah for wilfully triggering a global recession. We know that Theresa May and the Tories are planning this. If we vote to allow her to crash the global economy, the rest of the world won't just blame her, they'll blame us for wilfully enabling her to do it.

So why are people falling for it?

Obviously some people are actually extreme Brexit enthusiasts who consider economic ruination a price worth paying in order to build as many social and economic barriers between the UK and the continent as possible, but the polls put this fanatically anti-European demographic at somewhere between 25% to 30%.

This means that around half of the 55% of people who say they believe in Theresa May's "no deal is better than a bad deal" propaganda device actually understand that a "no deal" strop is an appalling idea, but somehow they like the sound of the propaganda device that has been deliberately coined in order to make an extreme Tory "no deal" almost inevitable.

It's hard not to conclude that these people are just cognitively lazy political sleepwalkers who say they agree with the propaganda device simply because they've heard it so many times they're familiar with it, and they've never even bothered to submit the phrase to the remotest level of critical scrutiny that's required to see it for what it is.

Conclusion

Theresa May's "no deal is better than a bad deal" catchphrase is clearly and obviously a simple Eurosceptic propaganda device designed to switch people into thinking that a catastrophic "no deal" strop away from the negotiating table is a better option than any kind of negotiated settlement.

The consequences of failing to reach a Brexit deal would be terrible for the UK. And under a Tory government most of the terrible consequences would obviously fall most heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable, while the government concentrates all of their efforts on protecting the wealth of the super-rich elitists who totally bankroll their party.

The really alarming thing is that the constant repetition of this "no deal is better than a bad deal" propaganda trope has resulted in 55% of people thinking they actually agree with it, when anyone who actually thinks about it, just for a few moments, surely has to be able to see it as the simple rhetorical propaganda trick that it is?

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OR

The blue passport farce

The results of a recent YouGov poll about what people think the government should do in post-Brexit Britain creates a horrifying picture of the delusional post-Brexit fantasy land that huge numbers of Brexiters are anticipating.

A post-Brexit fantasy land where the colour of your passport cover is of more importance than the rights that your passport gives you!

What Brexiters want

The single most popular thing Brexiters want to bring back is the death penalty. It's been proven time and again that the death penalty doesn't act as a deterrent (life sentences are much more of a punishment, that's why mass murderers and the like so often try to commit suicide in jail). It's also well understood that the death penalty creates appalling miscarriages of justice (many of the people executed by the British state during the 20th Century have had their convictions posthumously overturned). Despite all of the evidence an astounding 53% of Brexiters want the death penalty brought back.

42% of Brexiters say they want corporal punishment in schools brought back too, meaning that one of their top priorities for Brexit Britain is to give teachers the right to physically assault our children!

48% of Brexiters want things to bring back pounds and ounces. Firstly they never went away, it's always been legal to sell stuff in pounds and ounces in the UK as long as you include the metric conversion too. Secondly imperial measures are a ridiculously over-complicated anachronism. If Brexiters think that grams and kilograms are foreign unpatriotic muck they can avoid using them, but forcing the rest of us to abandon the sensible and easy to use metric measuring system so that we can all start dividing stuff by 14 and 16 again is ridiculous nonsense.

Blue passports

After pining for the return of the death sentence, the second most popular thing on the Brexiter wishlist is for the return of blue passports. 52% of Brexiters see this as one of the main priorities for Brexit Britain!

The hard-right tabloids and Eurosceptic MPs have fed into this nostalgic delusion that the colour of our passports is of such significance whatever and millions of Brexiters have lapped it up.

The Tory MP Andrew Rossindell has gone as far as describing the current burgundy passport as a "humiliation" and claiming that once the blue passport returns the British people "can once again feel pride and self-confidence in their own nationality when travelling"!

The idiocy of this stance is astounding. The current UK passport gives us all the right to travel, and work, and study, and retire in any of 27 nations across Europe. If the Tories insist on scrapping freedom of movement then it's obvious that the post-Brexit passport will not provide all of these rights, no matter what colour the cover is.

Over half of Brexiters are more bothered about the colour of their passport cover than they are about the fact that Brexit is going to significantly diminish the value of it!

The reintroduction of blue passports won't be a source of "pride and self-confidence" at all, it will be a constant visual reminder of the fact that the British passport has been reduced in value and rendered inferior to the Irish one.

Perspective

• Since the Brexit vote the pound has collapsed in value and not recovered. Millions of Brits living abroad suffered an instant 15% devaluation of their money, but people in the UK are much more insulated from the fact they're 15% poorer than they were before because price inflation takes time to seep through. It only becomes glaringly obvious that we're all poorer when we go on holiday and notice the shockingly poor exchange rates.

• The EEF manufacturing organisation has warned that hundreds of thousands of jobs could be lost if Theresa May follows through on her ludicrous threat to flounce away from the Brexit negotiating table with "no deal". 

• The London School of Economics have calculated that a "no deal" scenario could damage the UK economy by 6.3% to 9.5% of GDP, that's an astonishing £4,200 - £6,400 per UK household.

• Dozens of major UK-based businesses (including swathes of the financial sector) have already announced that they're making plans to abandon Britain in order to keep themselves in the Single Market zone.

• Record numbers of EU nurses have been quitting the NHS which is already severely understaffed after years of ideologically driven Tory cuts.

• Various sectors of the UK economy are warning of severe Brexit-related recruitment crises. The services and agricultural sectors are particularly worried.

• Scotland is preparing to remove itself (and all of its oilfields and enormous renewable energy capacity) from the Brexit car crash.

• The Australian foreign minister has said that Brexit represents a great opportunity for them to improve their trade relationship with Ireland because they remain in the Single Market, and Donald Trump's trade adviser Wilbur Ross has described Brexit as a "God-given opportunity" for the United States to take business away from the UK.

But screw all that stuff eh chaps. Our passports are going to be blue again, and that's the fundamentally important thing. Hooray for the magnificent benefits of Brexit! 

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