Here on Zelo Street, it’s not just about the serious business of the EU referendum - I’ve already posted on that - but the lighter side of what has been a singularly acrimonious contest. That acrimony could be reduced significantly, and in some cases, banished forever, if the electorate votes to Remain. How? Here’s how.
Nigel Farage would vanish from the TV screen. No more waking up on Sunday to see Mr Thirsty on The Andy Marr Show (tm) or Peston On Sunday. No more photo-ops with Nige on his third pint of the morning. No more watching the head Kipper swanning around in his most offensive pair of strides. Gone.
All the other UKIP talking heads going off air, too. Like Paul Nuttall doing his Pub-Landlord-Meets-Alexei-Sayle schtick. Like Douglas “Kamikaze” Carswell. Like Roger Helmer. All swept away and replaced by actual reasonable and less boring pundits.
Less TV appearances for Katie Hopkins, too. You don’t want to see paranoid bigots like Hatey Katey paraded across daytime TV? Vote Remain and see her credibility vanish before your eyes. Denied the oxygen of publicity, Mail Online would soon bin her too.
No more visits from Louise Mensch. Was there ever a more smug, loud-mouthed, dishonest, intolerant and soulless face of the Out campaign? Flying in, very expensively, just to let the little people know which way they should vote, before very expensively flying back to New York to continue her gilded existence. Vote Remain to keep her on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) - and not in the UK.
Tell Paul Dacre where to shove his orders. The Daily Mail’s legendarily foul mouthed editor still hasn’t learned the lesson of 1997, when he told his readers to vote Tory and they decided not to take any notice. Vote Remain to tell this intolerant bully-boy that he is officially yesterday’s man. Along with his roster of overpaid and talentless pundits.
Even less credibility for Guido Fawkes. The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his obedient rabble like to pretend that their propaganda wagon can drive the news and shape opinion. Vote Remain to leave him in peace with his lunchtime chorizo burger and bottle of Chablis. And no valid driver’s licence.
Tories’ lunatic fringe banished to the wilderness. All the opportunists, ideologues and sometimes seriously dodgy characters from the Tory right would see their own version of a currency collapse: Daniel Hannan, Liam Fox, Chris Grayling, Priti Patel, as well as Bozza and Michael “Oiky” Gove can become history by Voting Remain.
AND FINALLY Tell Rupert Murdoch to mind his own business and piss off. The Dirty Digger and his motley mafiosi have been coarsening political discourse for more than 40 years, smearing, hacking, bullying, strong-arming and effectively bribing their way to More And Bigger Paycheques For Themselves Personally Now. Well, Creepy Uncle Rupe doesn’t have a vote today. Vote Remain to tell him and his thugs what you think of them sticking their bugle into your politics.
Vote Remain and see all these unpleasant influences diminished - for good.
10 comments:
Whatever the result, I'd like to think that Cameron decides to take action against the supposed Press allies who have got increasingly personal with him, and implement Leveson in full as a final 'fuck you'.
A vote to Remain won't be the end of far right crackpots.
It might reduce their impact somewhat, but there'll always be that small knot of moronic Little Englanders waving flags, shouting "patriotic" bullshit, reading the Scum and Daily Heil and blaming everything on foreigners of any description. To say nothing of labelling any social spending as "A wysta pablic manny" - as long as it doesn't halt spending in London.
It's a cliche, but only because it's true, that freedom requires eternal vigilance.
If the vote is Leave it scarcely bears thinking what kind of a divided society we'll end up with. I think of this every time I have the misfortune to encounter a visage of, for instance, Boris Johnson or Michael Gove or Nigel Farage.
They're bad enough, but hovering in the background are utter nutjobs like Mathew Hancock, Soubry, McVey and Redwood. You think the others are bad? Just watch that lot......
That would be some payoff, I've got my fingers crossed. Somehow I suspect they'll all try and reinvent themselves as secret doubters or some such bullshit.
It would be great if you were right on this Tim, but given that some Tory MP's have already said they'll only abide by the vote if it's a 20 point margin, I don't think any of this will happen. It's going to be pretty close either way, and if as I hope Remain do win, then immediately all the usual suspects will start agitating for another go round, until they get the result they want.
Yes.
What about an emergency budget from Osbourne?
Interesting. Very.
They wouldn't though, they'd come back stronger than ever, blaming an establishment stitchup, etc. etc. I'm buying Matthew Goodwin's books about UKIP, sadly they'll be a force to be reckoned with whatever happens.
Dacre I don't care about, but a Remain vote would (hopefully) do for editor of Der Stuerm^D^D^D the Daily Express and pornographer in chief Dirty Dickie Desmond.
We can dream...
In some ways I would rather have Gove as Chancellor. For me, the last straw in voting for Remain was when Osborne issued his warnings of a 'punishment budget' in the event of a vote to leave the EU.
Incidentally, 1997's general election was one occasion when the Daily Mail, under the newly appointed Dacre, declined to support the Tories - although there was a tortuous editorial full of the barely repressed hatred for politicians that was to become the hallmark of his editorship.
I often agree with you, but not this time. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic. Farage will continue to peddle his bullshit, as will Hopkins et al because they sell papers and get page views and so on. A few minor players might sink back into obscurity but the big guns will never go quietly.
My only hope is that maybe, just maybe, more people will actually pay attention to what goes on in Europe and actually pay more attention to who they're voting for in the EU elections
Any chance the BBC will now cease featuring rent-an-opinion "experts" from the Taxpayers' Alliance on virtually other edition of QT/Newsnight? On the other hand, said group and its supporters seem aggressively anti-BBC, so if HMG lurches further to the right with potentially more policy influence from the TPA (I half expect to see a bit of "revolving door" door activity from Tufton Street in the Susie Squire mould under a Johnson administration) and similar Thatcherite think tanks, maybe the Beeb is keeping them sweet to avoid making too many enemies?
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