Our wonderful new Government has clearly decided on a propaganda initiative to make the electorate a little less hostile to the idea of a No Deal Brexit - the kind which would see manufacturing industry decimated, farmers bankrupted, and the odd couple of hundred thousand workers thrown on the scrapheap, just for starters. Their problem is that much of the propaganda involves stretching facts beyond the limit of their elasticity.
Caught fibbing again, eh Dom?
Another problem is that those pushing the propaganda include Dominic Raab, for some inexplicable reason promoted to Foreign Secretary by Bozo The Clown. Raab has decided that the so-called “Irish Backstop” is now “Undemocratic”. His problem there is that the backstop was devised by his own Government. So he’s calling his own side “Undemocratic”. And that’s before we get to the No Deal Whopper.
Raab’s position is that the public voted for No Deal, and that he talked about it regularly when interviewed before the 2016 referendum. However, Channel 4 Fact Check is not convinced. “Dominic Raab insists he warned voters about the risks of a no-deal Brexit while fighting the EU referendum campaign. But [Fact Check] can't find any evidence of an interview where he talks about the dangers of no deal”. And there was more.
“In fact, Mr Raab said it would be ‘suicidal’ for Europe to raise tariffs and fears of trade barriers were ‘not remotely credible’ … If his advisers, or anyone else, find evidence that backs Mr Raab's account, please send it our way”. The Guardian has accepted that challenge - and has also found no evidence to support Raab’s claim.
Their article tells readers “Two months before the June 2016 referendum vote, Raab told Andrew Neil on BBC Sunday Politics: ‘We’re very well placed, and mutual self-interest suggests we’d cut a very good deal and it’s certainly not in the European’s interests to erect trade barriers’”. No mention of No Deal there.
Also, “During an appearance on the BBC’s Daily Politics in April 2016, Raab added: ‘The idea that Britain would be apocalyptically off the cliff edge if we left the EU is silly.’ However, post-referendum, Raab appeared to have changed his tune”. Does he now.
Hence the comment “When repeatedly challenged on Monday about the claim and asked to provide proof, he added: ‘I was questioned on it by the BBC almost every time I appeared and so was Michael Gove.’ … Raab’s comments provoked the People’s Vote campaign to accuse him of trying to rewrite history”. No surprise there.
Nor was it any surprise to see Ian Dunt observe “And shortly after insisting this, he suggested the BBC had some kind of institutional bias against him/Brexit and that's why the interviewer couldn't remember”. Worse, our alleged Prime Minister is on record saying there was no consideration being given to No Deal, as it wouldn’t happen.
As one observer noted, “Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, told the House of Commons in July 2017: ‘There is no plan for no deal because we are going to get a great deal.’” And that’s after the referendum. There was no talk of it, and no warning.
Perhaps Raab would like to show where he did mention No Deal. We’re waiting.
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5 comments:
"Dominic Raab insists he warned voters about the risks of a no-deal Brexit while fighting the EU referendum campaign."
Any mention of the risks was answered by "Project Fear".
"...the kind which would see manufacturing industry decimated..."
That happened a generation ago, Tim.
The latest moves will "only" eliminate rump UK manufacturing. Profits gougers will continue relocation of it to sweat shops and cheap labour in the East. It's what capitalism does.
Britain will be left as a money laundering centre, a sort of seedy, deluded Switzerland for a new rentier class concentrated in London. We are well down that road already. Other remaining essential parts of the economy - the NHS for instance - will be looted. Poverty and crime will expand and the victims will be blamed.
The main purpose of it all is to try to eliminate, or at the very least limit, any form of national or community organised and mutually funded economy. This is why building societies in this country were mostly turned into banking casinos, while over in the USA similar organisations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were, er, decimated. Clinton, of course, delivered the coup de grace when he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act - which action led directly to the 2008 Depression.
Johnson and his cabinet are mere tools in the overall far right scheme of US-led things. Raab is just a spiv-fart in a bottle.
The moral and economic corruption will intensify as Britain declines further within the capitalist system. But only if we let it. The next general election will be the last chance for a generation to halt it. If the Johnson gang are returned to power decimation will be the order of the day at every level It's been forty years in the making, but here it is.
We really are at the stage where people either want a decent and fair society or they don't. If they don't, they would do well to bear in mind the words of John Kennedy that, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable". But that was before he was murdered.
Watched him squirm on ITN's 6:30 bulletin last night; claimed that the government had been reasonable and open to compromise with the EU, when asked to name an example, he nearly shat himself with fear before blustering 'well the government's only a week old'. I think the thing that irritates me the most about this current crop of Tories is the sheer incompetence they have in performing their evil business.
@Mark,
They don't need to be competent, Tories always get to play politics on easy mode, this has been the situation for some considerable time, see the Islamophobia scandal as another recent example. This blog is pretty much dedicated to explaining why this is the case.
I mean, I listened this morning to the secretary of state for Wales saying this morning (R4 Today) that if the UK leaves without a deal it will be fine for all those Welsh sheep farmers because we have a trade deal with Japan, and at no point did N Robinson pick up the obvious point that the Japan trade deal we currently have with japan is via the EU and leaving without a deal means kissing goodbye to that FTA as well. Politics is easy when you’re a Tory, envisage if say a shadow minister got her numbers a bit mixed up? can you imagine a situation where an interviewer, and indeed the rest of the legacy media, just ignores it…..
At some point soon we may see just how bad things need to get before this situation changes.......but I'm not holding my breath.
Addendum, the Japanese aren’t all that keen on lamb anyway.
@Gulliver, I completely agree - though I do feel that ITV do at least try to challenge them sometimes, as opposed to crawling up their rectums like the BBC. The point I was making though is that at least some of their equally evil predecessors were competent at manipulating the media and telling lies
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