Questions for the future

There is always going to be a disconnect between what politicians do and what people want. Mainly because people want some pretty dumb stuff. If you doubt me just look at the petitions floating around at the moment. And sometimes, even very popular ideas are still dumb. Not least this Article 50 nonsense. So it looks like we are always going to have a conflict between the public and the political class.

Populists pander to what the people want because they know they will never be tasked with implementing it. And that's dangerous because they popularise bad ideas - not least this ridiculous mantra about an "Australian points based system". This is why I am going to miss David Cameron who rightly dismissed such notions as complete nonsense. It is also why I think Theresa May is the right choice for PM because she has a solid grasp of the basics where immigration is concerned. She won't put up with any nonsense.

But the real problem we have is how are politicians supposed to know the difference between a genuine demand and a fanciful notion? This is where I think direct democracy comes into play. Not because the public will necessarily make better decisions but rather because they will make some especially shitty decisions and have to live with the consequences.

We will then get in the abit of putting more thought into them and exploring the consequences more. The short of it is, Brits don't really get referendums and the media doesn't know how to do them either, as was made clear just recently. This is not an argument for not having them. This is an argument for having more of them, not least as a safety valve. Brits are not acclimatised to democracy having had so little of it, so we will have to go for more public consultations - especially when it comes to military interventions. The crowd tends to be wiser in such eventualities.

But then there is the matter of who asks the question and who phrases them and who funds the campaigns. We are told this is why deliberative consensus of representative democracy is better, but this is prone to the bubble effect which leads to persistently distorted decisions which in no way reflect the will of the people.

And then we must ask how much we want to leave to the technocrats and what we want control over. We do not need to be having lengthy debates over the minimum sugar levels in jam for export. But then sometimes these decisions do have a profound impact. Where is the safety mechanism?

As government grows ever more complex people want ever more simplistic and less confusing solutions. They want things to be simple but things are not simple and never will be again. We demand our politicians do right by us but at the same time demand they do what we want which is not always sane. Sometimes when they contradict the people we call it leadership, at other times we call it a betrayal by our political class.

So do we need to reappraise our own cynical attitudes to politics? I don't know. I am certainly not innocent of using florid language in regard to MPs whose uniform stupidity I despise, but that is actually representative stupidity. They are as dumb as the rest of us. So do we want smart and clever people as MPs or do we want very ordinary fuckwits?

They keep saying we need a new politics but one never materialises because we are not asking the right questions. What do we want politics to look like? How much involvement do we really want in decision making. As it happens there is another disconnect between what people say they want and what they actually want. There is a huge gulf between what people say and what people do. They say they want to be better informed but uniformly still go for prestige titles to be spoonfed what they already think. Almost all of you are guilty of that.

Could it be that the messy muddle we have is about as good as we can realistically expect or is there a better way? Is it that we need more honest politicians or do we need to be more honest with ourselves? How can we expect honest politicians if we are not honest with them? Do we even need politicians?

And what do we get instead of debate about real reform? The same tired questions about proportional representation, boundary changes and MP recall. This is a system completely out of ideas so it's really down to citizens to start presenting these ideas and asking those questions of themselves.

How much democracy is too much democracy? How much of our lives are we willing to give over to making decisions? We know that the Eu is the price we pay for tuning out completely but nothing at all will get done if we have to be consulted on everything - and what worse way of concluding matters can you get than to have matters decided by a self-selecting minority?

Fucked if I know to be honest. The Swiss model looks superficially appealing but it seems they have a constitutional crisis more often than not because of the complex contradictions in modern governance. I can't see that lasting forever.

And what role is there for experts now. I grant you many have squandered their reputations during the referendum and our academic institutions will rightly never be trusted again but we are now entering a time of complex negotiations where we will need those same experts. How do we hold them to account?

You can really see why poliicians have been so keen on a technocratic dictatorship all these years can't you. Many questions with no satisfactory answers, with populists lambasting them while at the same time providing no answers of their own.

Now that we are leaving the EU we are going to be free sooner or later to address these questions. We cannot expect fresh ideas from the think tanks or from our political class, so it is we who shall have provide them. That starts today. It starts with you.

Leavers are losers

I am now leaning toward the view that the leave camp is going to get exactly what it deserves. Having failed to put a credible plan on the table they are going to be played for fools.

Instead of engaging in the detail they indulge in paranoid histrionics about Theresa May not invoking article 50. Consequently they are either putting all their faith in a shrill god bothering lunatic or indulging in other weak fantasies. Rightly, saner people will run a mile and give May the mandate as the least dreadful candidate. I don't blame them. Leadsom would be a catastrophe.

May will then wait until it is safe to invoke article 50, isolating the lunatics, and will negotiate an "EEA plus" deal with an agreement with the EU to amend the EEA agreement to make it more akin with an association agreement - which basically sees us remain in the EU on almost exactly the same terms, but we will have no commissioners or MEPs in order to maintain the illusion that we have left the EU.

This could be prevented if adults are prepared to step up to the plate, learn what the distinct avenues and issues are and watch the select committees closely - but they are not going to do that. They are going to retreat to their comfort zone and whinge instead of presenting worthwhile alternatives. They will run silly fringe campaigns that make them look like morons and everyone will ignore them. Again, I don't blame them.

This is why I was making all that fuss long before the designation process. The lack of any coherent policy or plan is why no leavers will have a say in the process, except for a token voice kept at arms length.

This is ultimately why Ukip was a failure of a party. At the end of this, not only will the establishment still be in control, we will be back to business as usual without really having progressed out of the EU, with most of the leave morons actually believing we have left, burying the issue for more than a generation. It will be a political masterstroke.

Given that leavers have clung on to their idiotic "invoke Article 50 now" mantras, and that they have stubbornly clung on to unrealistic ideas of how we leave the EU (and what it can achieve) they will have brought it entirely on themselves. They will have been politically outclassed in every way. It will have been a complete waste of everyone's time save to get rid of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage - which I suppose in the end is no bad thing.

I am not known for my optimism so this may be overly bleak but when you look at the way leavers are behaving, you can see it happening and it has a depressing air of inevitability about it. Throughout leavers have spurned the need for credible ideas and have rejected the need for detail. Even now they don't even believe credibility is a campaigning necessity. Because of them this will go down as the revolution that never was. But don't cry. Dry those tears. You were given every opportunity and every warning. Now suck up the consequences.

The decision is made. Now embrace the change.

I would like to think I have been as forthright as humanly possible throughout this political event. That does not mean I have not been free of bias, conscious or otherwise. I have been very keen to accentuate the positives. What I hope I conveyed is that they were in the main long term benefits - and I believe I was forthcoming about the risks.

In fact, a lot of what serious remainers were saying in response to the entirely unserious leave campaign was absolutely right. The Tory right and Ukip have an infantile idea of what is at stake and what is involved which is why we deserved to lose and why I thoroughly expected we would.

The main difference between me and the remain camp is that I think all this hassle and risk is necessary. They don't. But they are right. It's a lot of hassle and a lot of risk.

To date though they claim that Brexit was unnecessary and things were certainly not bad enough to warrant a rejection of our entire system of government and the European post-war settlement. And I suppose in a way they were right. It wasn't bad enough in terms of the day to day but it wasn't good enough to keep either.

We have heard more or less the same boilerplate political rhetoric from just about every political campaign about more jobs, more security and a better NHS but we are all wise to that. What we also know is that the system doesn't deliver and it tends to abandon the losers except for a privileged class who think and act the right way.

The inherent problem with the status quo is that it is predictable. That's great for business but not so great if you were born into a class where social mobility is zero. What we get from political change is a radical shake up of certainties and a break with habits and reflexes. It puts us all on our toes. And boy do we need it.

In science and engineering we are way behind our global competitors and a bit of a kick in the complacency won't do us any harm at all. And if you look inside a busy city NHS hospital, the medical profession is from India, Brits are the admin staff. We have luxuriated into obsolescence and now the world is wondering what it owes us.

That is also clear in patterns of trade too. China is establishing its own rule book and we are seeing regional regulators popping up all over the shop wondering by Brussels gets to set the agenda. Consequently Fortress Europe is being gradually bypassed.

So this isn't change for its own sake. This is rattling the cage of a political class who have become insular, inward looking and remote. This is a wake up call. Those conspiring to overturn the result are those who were happy with the status quo, and happy with the glorious slumber of European politics.

This is a rude awakening for them, but they should think of this as a smoke alarm. Everybody hates smoke alarms. They constantly go off when there isn't a fire, and very often just because the toast is burning. But it's always better to have that warning than to die of smoke inhalation or worse still to wake up to discover the house is on fire and all the exit routes are blocked.

The remainers repeatedly assert that there are no positives to leaving the EU. From a pure transactional perspective, they are probably right. I see major disruptions on the horizon, tense negotiations and a probable recession along with restructured markets. I also imagine there will be a degree of divestment until the dust is settled. If I had money I would certainly think twice before making any long term UK investments and would choose stocks carefully.

And this has remain inclined economists puzzled. They have been telling us this from the outset yet we still ignored them. It baffles them. But in the end it comes down to pure instinct that it very much is time for political change and we accept the consequences of that with open eyes.

And what of those "selfish" old people we hear so much about? Those who have done so well form the political settlement? Well the thing about old people is that they know things. Also old people sooner rather than later will die. And they will pass on their assets to the next generation. And so the next generation to a point is more secure than they deserve to be. That makes us well insulated against turmoil. They have done us a favour.

In the end society thrives on change and reinvention. The EU is the antithesis of that. It is a regulation machine to regulate and to keep things orderly and running like clockwork. And when you look at logistics chains it works pretty well. Except when it doesn't.

When it doesn't we find that markets must respond by changing, but can only change within the scope of the law. And law that does not respond to change can only deaden innovation and reinvention.

And so we must part ways with the old order. It has served us reasonably well but in order for it to survive it must mutate. That is what Brexit is about. The EU entity is dying. It no longer enjoys the consent of Europe's peoples. It has been made obsolete by globalisation and it has become subordinate to higher institutions. It is no longer at the heart of commerce and trade. It is just as much a passenger as its members.

This is of course lost on our political leadership and it remains an enigma to our media who still haven't grasped what goes on outside the confines of the EU - but necessity will expose the reality of what goes on over and above the EU. It will be a mass political awakening for our governing class.

This is an important and necessary step for Britain and Europe. We have heard the smoke alarm and now we must act. And if your politicians wish to go back to sleep then we must keep hitting the test button to continue making shrill noises.

We are saying now is the time to change things and now is the ideal time since the conditions for change are about as safe and secure as they are ever going to be. We are witnessing a global reordering of power and we are seeing precisely the same dynamic in the USA. We want and need government to happen a different way.

In truth the immediate effects of this change will be largely unmeasurable and intangible. And while the basic economic metrics won't look very healthy for a while, I can only see it as a positive that the public and their politicians are shaken out of their habits and exposed to different ideas.

With that in mind it is time for the remain side and the left to stop whining. This is a major opportunity for anyone with fresh ideas. Make the most of it. We have an ideas vacuum from our political class so now is the time to be organising, talking and thinking. Rather than trying to put the genie back in the bottle, why not ask it to grant your three wishes?

Invoking Article 50 now would be moronic

"Invoke Article 50 now" nonsense should be called out for what it is. Abject stupidity.

If there is one thing I hope I have managed to convey to you in all of this time it is that Brexit is complex. This seems to have utterly escaped the Leadsomites but for the most part, adults seem to have comprehended this basic fact of life.

Now I want to make life even more difficult for you by saying however complex you think Brexit is, well, it's more complicated than that. The best case scenario is that we move into Efta or adopt the EEA agreement as the basis of our relationship with the EU. That leaves much of the single market and various cooperation programmes in tact. What it doesn't deal with is agriculture and fishing. Nor does it deal with our revised membership of the WTO.

I have already alluded to how complex the fishing industry is. Because of the politically charged nature of it, it is awash with disinformation and political narratives, many of which may have been true at some point but are no longer relevant or truthful.

In international law any contracts made inside a particular legal framework has to be honoured unless there is a transitional phase out and a compensation scheme. We have to decide if we are going to let quota contracts expire or buy them out. So when you get docile twats like Andrea Leadsom promising we will cut loose and spend all the money on the NHS, you know they are speaking from their moist flaps.

As to the technical regulation of it, there are zoning licences, pollutions control, net sizes, boat classifications, you name it. As much as we lack the capacity to enforce the rules we lack the expertise to replace them. So we are looking at a very long phase out.

And while we are already members of the WTO, it is not as simple as voting independently of the EU. We must establish the Vienna Convention as a basis on which to resume existing trade deals and we will have to renegotiate agricultural subsidy quotas which will take several months, if not years and could be the factor which sees the whole process collapse.

There is also the possibility that some states will not agree to continuity agreements with the UK and so we will have to negotiate agreements on standards and inspections along with tariffs from scratch. Nobody has the first idea how that pans out because this is absolutely unprecedented.

The short of it is, it is going to take a series of long debates just to decide what is and isn't up for debate and what we are willing to compromise on to get the concessions we want. Thanks to bellends like Farage insisting on cuts to freedom of movement there is a strong chance we will lose some of our agricultural subsidy quota or make a grievous concession on something that may even wreck an emerging industry. We have some difficult choices to make.

In this, everything is on the table for discussion and yes that does include visas for foreign workers if needs be. If the EU plays hardball then we must in kind. So we cannot bind ourselves to any promises we cannot keep. The only assurances we can make is that international law will be respected.

As for agriculture - this includes CAP subsidies, export rules, disease control, disease surveillance, animal health, GMO rules, habitats and waterways and a whole plethora of areas barely even considered by the general public. Or farmers as it happens.

And this is best case scenario should we elect to retain single market membership. Worst case scenario we are looking at falling back n international trade rules alone which sees decades of talks and possibly a complete breakdown in UK-EU relations.

So yes, this could very easily go wrong, nothing is going to happen quickly and we most definitely should not make any moves until we have had a comprehensive hearing of sector experts and consultations with stakeholders. Only when we have has scoping talks with Member States will we have an idea on how to proceed and only then will we get an idea of time scales.

Even if you think it is imperative to keep up the political pressure to ensure that we do leave, what we don't need is pillocks demanding the politically impossible for expediency. We are looking at unpicking forty years of regulatory integration. It's massive. It simply does not lend itself to a cavalier botch it and scarper agreement. Nothing is served by discrediting the leave case by revealing how clueless leavers are about what this entails.

I am not sure how many times I have to say this but it really is time people stopped the idle chatter and engaged in what is going on. If you see someone claiming that we do not need an agreement with the EU or that we should invoke Article 50 now, just freeze them out. These are not people with anything of value to add. They are noise makers and their ignorance is something we all need less of.

Also we need lot see a lot less confirmation seeking. Just because the markets recovered it doesn't mean we are out of the woods. Like I say, talks could go either way. Many are hedging their bests and delaying investment. Growth will suffer as a result of this and there could be other market panics along the way, especially when it comes down to the WTO level negotiations over subsidy quotas.

Be under no illusions, there will be more tense moments to come and there will be more volleys coming from the Commission seemingly in defiance of the member states. We will see a war of words and nothing will be taken off the table, including the long term rights of EU citizens. Much of it will be bluff but this is how serious negotiation works.

Much of this will be news to Brits because we have never seen anything of its type. We have delegated trade discussions to the EU for the last forty years. That is why Australian and New Zealander citizens have a better grounding in the subject than we do and its why that kind of news still makes it to their media. We are not acclimatised to this kind of politics. But this is the very serious business which will replace the frivolity we are used to.

I have said before that this marks a return to adult politics and I was not exaggerating. And with that comes some pretty hefty responsibility to keep up to date with political reality. Retreating to the comfort zone of culture war crap is simply unacceptable. This now turns on detail, and details like the Article 50 process absolutely do matter. Those who pretend otherwise are engaging in exactly the sort of childish politics they have spent all these years denouncing. So please, for the love of Christ, either grow up or shut up. It's decision time.

Gesture politics

Theresa May is right not to guarantee the rights of EU citizens in the UK. Mainly because she can't. She can guarantee those rights already acquired rights as defined by national and international law but it is not within her gift to go further. There are complications to hammer out. 

Moreover she is sending a signal to EU member states that they have something to lose by not being cooperative. Poland for instance receives £1.2bn in remittances alone. That's real money and not numbers on a screen. It sets a tone that Britain does have leverage and could use it, even though it probably won't. That is the kind of shrewdness we want in a PM - not gesture politicking from a naive mouthbreather like Leadsom.

This notion that "people are not bargaining chips" should be dispensed with also. People are not, but visas are. I would prefer to leave freedom of movement pretty much as it is, but if the Commission can't keep a muzzle on idiots like Cecilia Malmstrom then nothing is off the table. Harsh? Yes, but we are not paddling in the shallow end anymore. This is what serious politics looks like.

And is it fucking with people's lives? Yes, yes it is. But we have had forty years of the EU fucking with people's lives, wiping out whole industries at the stroke of a pen - to the advantage of low paid EU workers and to the disadvantage of British working class kids, who thanks to Blair, spent their formative years on the dole. Why the double standard?

So, no, I am not overly sympathetic nor will I subscribe to gesture politics. This is not to say I have suddenly become illiberal. Like I say would rather keep visa arrangements as they are, but with so much at stake we will have to stare down the EU, showing that we won't flinch from using whatever leverage we have. This is pure hardball politics. This is how it's going to be now.

The whole point of Brexit was to draw a line in the sand and accept no further rule from Brussels. This, kids, is what it looks like. Get used to it.

But what of Ukip?

I suppose I should say something about the Farage resignation. Nobody made it harder to argue a measured and credible case for leaving the EU. As it happens nobody tried harder to prevent an EU referendum. It was only the ineptitude of the party machine he created that stopped Ukip from preventing a Tory majority. And he alone managed to put up several barriers to swing voters who would otherwise have given the Brexit case a fair hearing.

His ignorance throughout has created a number of problems for post-Brexit politics, not least with his moronic conflation of freedom of movement with open borders - which now puts our EU trade at risk. This man did nothing to broaden the appeal of the Brexit case and in the end probably cost Leave a larger majority.

His input will not be missed and we should be thankful that he is nowhere near the Brexit negotiations. Without a second thought I say good riddance to bad rubbish and I look forward to having absolutely nothing to do with his followers or that grubby, shitty little party. I hope it crawls back under the rock it came from and should Farage suffer an untimely demise in his retirement, I shall very much enjoy pissing on his grave.

I strongly suspect that Theresa May will win parliamentary backing to such a degree that there will be no polling of the membership. And that is what ultimately makes Farage a failed politician. The goal was never to simply leave the EU and let it rest there.

A referendum victory should have given revolutionary momentum to an entity like Ukip. If it had gravitas with a series of demands and a credible Brexit plan, it would now be setting the agenda. It isn't. The closest thing Ukip has to a voice in this contest is Andrea Leadsom who is widely and correctly viewed as risible.

Consequently, Ukip is a discredited party and a spent movement and has no means of leveraging further involvement except to become a challenger to Labour. The minority opposition.

This referendum could have been an opportunity to push for much broader reforms and to reshape European politics. Instead it is now going to be a transactional act by the establishment on behalf of the people, most likely shunting us into a backwater treaty mechanism of the EU. That means we now have another twenty year battle ahead of us to get us out of what that gets us into.

For that you can thank Nigel Farage. A man who spurned the very idea of having policies and a Brexit plan. A man who has ensured by surrounding himself with halfwits and yes men has ensured a continuity of the establishment parties.

It was he who debased what was once a semi functioning party which cultivated talent and acquired knowledge. Now it does the precise opposite. It offers no alternative to the politics on offer and has no means of influencing politics now that the referendum is out of the way. It has turned its back on Skedite liberalism to become a dismal nativist party with no natural successor to Farage, save for Steven Wolfe who is as allergic to detail as Farage.

And though history will record that Farage was the man who took us out of the EU, it will be a history written by an inept and facile media who have largely missed the fact that Ukip has been nowhere near this campaign and was skilfully robbed of its place in the campaign by a couple of plants from the Tory party. In every respect Ukip have been politically outclassed with their own ground efforts being in complete disarray. That makes Farage a fool and a wastrel.

Moreover it should be noted that we are not yet out of the EU and the claims made by Farage et al seriously undermine the legitimacy of the campaign which has given certain anti democratic forces the foothold they need to overturn the result - which again is no-ones fault but Ukip.

As it happens I believe it is more through luck than by judgement that the Tories will take us out of the EU - but that is the end of Ukip's worthwhile influence. For what that was worth. We now face a long road to steer the Brexit settlement so that we don't end up in a worse position than before. In that regard, the only thing to celebrate about today is that we may well be witnessing the death of Ukip so the adults can get on with governing.

The tale of Farage is a sorry one. A man who turned a promising upstart party into a dead end cult of personality - one which all of the founders now disavow. And so ends a chapter in British political history that could have been so much more. And in light of what that man has made of it, that is no bad thing.

A Labour of love?

Were I was a Labourist I would be sitting back to take stock. The majority of working class people have voted to leave the EU. It would actually have been by a bigger majority had Vote Leave not been a bunch of zealots. Why they chased the xenophobia vote beats the hell out of me since they were always going to vote leave.

I would think on that. I would not be looking to subvert the referendum result. I would be looking to facilitate a pain free Brexit. And then I would look at the party leader; a man who, for the sake of a fragile unity, defied his own conscience to support the EU. His position demanded that of him. A man largely elected by the party membership - who also voted to leave.

So if I was a Labourist conniving to subvert the referendum I would be defying not only the substance of the leader but also the people I supposedly work for. And so it is not Corbyn who should step down and stay silent. It is those Blairites who connived to take us deeper into the EU without popular consent.

As it happens I could not be further from a Labourist and I do not appreciate Corbyn's politics. But I do believe that of all the leaders of the left there have been in my adult lifetime, he is one who best represents the ideas upon which the party is based in the tradition of the best social reformers the left have ever offered.

That said, I am not praising the man as I believe him to be a dinosaur bereft of ideas and still stuck in the 1980's. But that at least is grounded in some kind of philosophy unlike the mainstream Labour party who evidently stand for nothing except for their own tribal advancement. If I had to pick a side it would be Corbyn. And though he is an inept spokesman, he connects with at least some of the people unlike the rest of Labour who connect with no-one.

But in the end I believe the modern left will turn on Corbyn because those qualities I begrudgingly admire him for are what they detest the most. What they seek is control for the clan rather than the service of those they represent. They have their fixed ideas that we should be in the EU and will do anything to make sure it stays that way whether the people want it or not.

Exemplifying this is Hilary Benn, a man who salivated at the prospect of bombing Syria and staying in the EU - not out of any principle but out of a sad compulsion to define himself as different from his great father. I have never suffered from that affliction. Many people told me my father is a great man. They are right. Why would I not want to aspire to be the same, standing up for democracy and good governance, as indeed did Tony Benn? It's time to call Labour out for what they are. Politically and morally bankrupt.

Brexit racism?

As to the outbreak of post-referendum racism, I think it is to an extent overstated. Much of what we are told reaches us through Twitter which is hardly the most reliable source and people have been known to lie about such things, not least Stella Creasy.

But I don't doubt some of it is true. There are some rotten people with some rotten ideas about what Brexit entails. But then I think it is only to be expected. We are seeing the end of a political order where such thoughts have been suppressed rather than challenged.

Yesterday I took a rare day off to take time to smell the roses. It was a happy day. Just me, the car and and open road. I stopped in a village pub for a bite to eat and a pint only to be told I couldn't use my vape stick in the pub. But the landlady piped up "that won't last long now we're out the EU". I laughed in sceptical agreement.

And that to me really says something. It's the little micro-oppressions people associate the EU with. Along with that goes political correctness and those things you can think but not say. So I rather suspect folks rather felt the same way I did yesterday. That we are going to be free of this invisible pettifogging harassment.

So as I defiantly continued to suck on my vape stick I imagine there will be little acts of defiance happening all up and down the country. I don't see it lasting but it pleases me to think that we could become a more relaxed society less bound by the ever present threat of fines and forfeitures. And I can also see how that might mean more overt expressions of racism. But I'm ok with that too.

You see, we have never really overcome our fear of words as the Americans have. In the US it is commonplace for Americans to call eachother po-lock, spic, nigger or whatever. It is not said with racist intent and in some regards is viewed as a sign of friendship that one can venture such a taunt without offence being taken. It is a bond of trust. Britain was quite like that in the eighties. We didn't have these hang ups and nobody saw it as racist. Though we did call out genuine racism when we saw it and it was just as hated then.

The truth is we haven't become a more tolerant country. We have always been tolerant. But we have become intolerant of free expression. We did not tackle racism or racist ideas. We simply repressed them. And how could we tackle them if we couldn't even openly discuss it? We have drifted into a state where we cannot separate word from intent and word from deed.

And so if Brexit has lifted the lid on those micro-oppressions then we should consider that as an opportunity. Brexit has opened up a Pandora's box of questions that have yet to be resolved and this is one of them. The left wing approach was always to challenge the language and not the thought behind the language. Little wonder that people now feel enabled to act in defiance after two decades of conditioning. We can change that.

As I said earlier, now we have lanced the boil a lot of puss will seep out before we start to heal. Oh and one other thing. That little anecdote about the vape stick? That didn't happen. I just made it up to make a political point. A lot like those tweets claiming racist incidents.

Jo Cox is a reminder of why we must leave the EU

Although the source of these words is not one I would recommend, and the author one I have no time for, each and every word of this searing condemnation should be absorbed and heeded, and I make no apology for republishing them. Jo Cox was a symptom of a deep running cancer throughout the establishment and a good reason why our well intentioned foreign policy is as blood soaked and incompetent as it is.

"In the immediate aftermath of Jo Cox’s death politicians from all sides promised not to make the killing part of the referendum debate. And then proceeded to do just that. The killing got the full Charlie Hebdo treatment, with even the Prime Minister doing a passable imitation of a man beside himself with grief. Even Hilary Clinton, got into the act, and saw the opportunity to frame herself as a fighter against “extremism.”

The connection was immediately made to links to the right wing. The media in full-throated pursuit, were not going to let small details such as contempt of court rules or an ongoing investigation stop them.

Tribute after tribute bore witness to Jo Cox’s uniqueness. But in reality, nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, women like Jo Cox are ten a penny across the West these days — bland, compliant functionaries who have been marinated in political correctness and are happy to regurgitate the platitudes and attitudes of their political masters. And are well-rewarded for doing so.

She was that toxic combination of self-righteousness and entitlement which believed itself possessed of a special moral insight into the moral shortcomings of their own people. Never slow to parade her compassion, she was also calculating enough to help more dubious causes, as when she lent her name to a government minister who was lobbying for Britain to begin bombing in Syria. Bombing and babies; it was all business for Jo Cox.

Hers was the typical smooth career path of the modern political cog. From her grammar school, where she was the Head Girl, she seamlessly moved onto an extended period at two universities before emerging as professional aid worker for Oxfam and Save the Children. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was another fashionable international development outfit in which she managed to wangle a position as “advisor.”

She certainly travelled extensively, but to what extent did she get her hands dirty? Rather than mopping sweat-covered brows, her role as a policy consultant seemed to revolve swanning around seminars, conferences and committee rooms in Brussels and London. Networking, rather than counselling, seems the main skill in this field.

The safe Labour seat seems to have been a reward for acting as a bag-carrier for prominent political wives such as that of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a former Labour leader and Euro aristocrat Neil Kinnock. Her constituency seat had been represented by local white men for decades so an all-female shortlist had to be imposed on the local party to ensure an acceptable candidate could be given this plum.

It was a gilded lifestyle with a houseboat on the Thames beside Tower Bridge at which she hosted networking events for important left-wing women. There was a second house in her constituency which was a venue for a huge Solstice party each year.

The role of international aid worker is highly valued among a section of shrewd university-educated females. It offers a particularly attractive combination of a good salary in an expanding sector, frequent foreign travel and high status among the do-gooding circles."

Ends.

This is the system-wide ambitious narcissism that infects every strata of UK governance. It is greedy, deeply corrupt, massively hypocritical, shallow, malign and lacking in any self-awareness. They are not good or decent people. They are climbers of an especially greasy pole where there is plenty money sloshing around for vanity projects with zero accountability or checks and balances. It is these people who exemplify everything that is wrong with the EU and why we need to leave it.

And if this pricks your sensibilities, if you feel outraged or shocked - do not chastise me. Examine the source of your outrage and shock. You have always thought such institutions and people to be wholesome and good because of their intentions. This tramples all over some careless assumptions you've been labouring under. And it's not me you're angry at. It's that this truth has rattled you.

And if it seems untimely or insensitive, forgive me, but at any time these words may seem shocking, perhaps even disrespectful, but if I say these things next week, next week is too late. This week is your chance to interrupt their grubby little circle-jerk.

These people are not kind and caring and they certainly don't care what you think just so long as you keep paying. They do not believe in free speech, they do not believe in democracy and they neither like nor trust you.

On Thursday you can send them a message. You can either take their power away or you can give them more. If your choice is the latter, don't forget that it's irreversible and you won't get another say. 

The Daily Telegraph deserves to fail

As much as the Telegraph is lying to its advertisers by faking sales figures of its hard copy, it is now lying to its online advertisers. The reason Telegraph articles are peppered with pointless and intrusive pictures and vids is to increase the visit duration because advertisers are now starting to ask more sophisticated questions about page hits.

What their digital strategists haven't clocked is that it's actually pissing a lot of readers off and making them less inclined to read anything. I don't know how they manage to be this incompetent.

Though it's easy to see why it is tanking from the journalism on offer. They have lawyers and sub editors interfering with submissions, cross linking to corporate approved sources only and imposing pointless word limits on people which prohibit the necessary level of detail that may retain readership.

The fact is, they have forgotten how to add value. They are followers, not leaders. They see bloggers as competition to be frozen out rather than part of an ecosystem to be nurtured as a talent pool. But who is going to give them the time of day when they pay £275k a year to Boris Johnson for his flatulence but only £50 to a blogger who does actually know their subject?

They have just sacked most of their best writers and instead rely on junior hacks without any depth or experience. The follow the media herd in reporting the dismal and shallow slanging matches from the bubble assuming that the public are more interested in that than being informed.

As it happens, you have to nurture interest in something so you need columnists who work as bloggers do, hunting in packs and developing a knowledge base. Instead they select from a narrow pool of interchangeable egos from the conservative circle jerk whose opinions I wouldn't give tuppence ha'penny for. Self-satisfied lazy people who have no inherent curiosity.

You're never going to get genuine journalistic enquiry with such a proscribed doctrinaire approach and certainly not without editorial independence. It naturally stifles good writing - not least asking people to write about things they know nothing about.

But since you can't retain a talent pool of expertise anymore because of financial constraints, you need to know where the expertise is in order to call upon it. That's where bloggers come in Bloggers tend to be monomaniacs and sponges for information. They know where all the facts and figures are. Moreover they are not entirely motivated by money. They are genuinely curious people who tend to thrive on hits and exposure. If you link out to them so they thrive then you build up a lot of good will and backlinking from them.

But the Telegraph does not link out to bloggers so it is not reciprocated. If it references bloggers at all it steals the work without attribution. Daniel Hannan and Alistair Heath do this. Let's call it what it is. Theft. And Telegraph policy is to link only to itself or sources the editors go to lunch with. If you're not in the club, you don't exist.

That is why journalism is withering on the vine and these rags are now treated with contempt by people who do actually know what's going on. The joke of it is, the model I propose would actually see writers paid properly, produce a better product and could be done cheaper.

As much as TLA bloggers are second to none on EU issues, there are specialists and contributors to global forums who could uncover an entire universe of interesting politics which gets no exposure at all. People like Justin Stares of Maritime Watch - a fascinating and vital field in its own right, and David Cenciotti of The Aviationist. Not to mention communications officers within the NGOcracy (Sandy Starr for instance) who tend to be expert in their field.

The fact is, if you are producing the goods that people can't get anywhere else and adding value, you will have a loyal and appreciative audience. Not so if all you're producing is exactly the same tat you can get anywhere. That is why the Telegraph is regarded as a joke and that is why it has to lie to advertisers. That is why it's a second rate clickbait rag dying on its arse getting by on (rapidly diminishing) brand prestige alone.

To some extent the Guardian has the right format with a slightly better attitude to the outside world, but their problem is that they think self-satisfied leftwing smugness qualifies as expertise. That cannot be corrected as it is endemic to the creed.

In a crowded market with all the rags chasing the same shrinking pond your strategy should be to nurture a new audience. You can do that by borrowing the readers of your contributors. But you only retain them if your purpose is to add value and increase understanding - and to acknowledge your critics rather than ignoring them.

For as long as our media remains a inbred, self-referential circle jerk, full of worn out preening egotists like Iain Martin, Dan Hodges and Con Coughlin it will continue to wither on the vine. But since it has such a lame attitude to the world of writing and a contempt for intellectual property I actually look forward to the day when the Daily Telegraph closes its doors for the last time. Journalism cannot thrive until these bed blockers are put out of their misery.

A slumbering dragon is still a dragon.

One political meme travelling around academia at the moment is that the vision of the EUs founding fathers has stalled and will never become a reality so it's ok to remain in the EU because there is a different destination of concentric circles bound under a loose alliance. It's actually a convincing argument when you look at the reality on the ground, but it's a piece of creative writing which ultimately ignores the nature of the beast.

The founding fathers were savvy in their design of le grande project. They always knew it could never be done all at once because the central vision would never secure a mandate. Integration by deception has always been the modus operandi. It salami slices powers little by little, so gradually that few ever notice. And you'd never see it unless you know what the game plan is. They were long term thinkers. They knew it would take a generation or so to advance their agenda and they had a roadmap to do it.

It has always used funding of local projects to manufacture consent. It's why you'll find EU logos emblazoned on any nature reserve or community hall or obscure museum out in the shires, to convince the plebs that their benevolent EU guardians cared more for them than the London government. It is why it funds universities too. Every strata of civil society has an injection of EU cash. Education, NGOs, you name it. And it works.

I recently debated Jay Risbridger at Bath Spa University when he made the assertion "our universities are completely dependent on EU funding". It's actually closer to 6% - and UK research wins the grant money because it is good - It is not good because it is funded by the EU. I stopped short of calling him a liar because you're not lying if you actually believe this tosh. This is why europhiles are useful idiots on any given subject.

Whenever you hear a europhile talking about the EU being responsible for our workers rights you are actually listening to a useful idiot. Not only is this notion demonstrably false (and the few tacked on extras are actually damaging to labour rights), you are listening to a messenger of the founding fathers of the EU - who, in their attempts to manufacture a common consent, set about abusing the institutions of civic society to implant a social narrative. What you are actually hearing is a pernicious historical revisionism. And if that smells like a form of creeping fascism to you, then give yourself a gold star and come sit at the front of the class.

The founding fathers always knew a day would come where the legitimacy of the EU would be questioned. And now you see how well their pernicious scheme worked, with the entirely of the civic establishment coming out in favour of remain. They have made idle supplicants of our institutions, robbing them of their vitality, curiosity and dynamism.

And those who speak up about this are often labelled cranks or conspiracy theorists. Except it is a conspiracy and one they published in full. They even founded an academic institution to promote it: "The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies is an inter-disciplinary research centre at the heart of the European University Institute". The hellmouth of europhile academics and functionaries.

The modus operandi is encoded into all of the treaties and articles of the EU. It is worked into the philosophy of the institutions and it is designed to resist any kind of reform - especially anything which may introduce democracy. There it lies, dormant in the system, but sufficiently restraining in order to prevent deviation from the path.

It may stall, it may go quiet, but the agenda is always there with the noose ever tightening - engineering for irreversibility. That is why the remains make such an issue of how we leave the EU. It was never meant to be easy. It was always a quicksand trap for democracies. The harder you pull away the more it sucks you in.

And so when we hear the ignorant prattle of cosseted and sinecured LSE academics telling us it's safe to stay because the dream is dead, they are speaking from a position of naivety and ignorance. The Ghost of Monnet lives on. The ghoulish servants of the ideal still roam the corridors of Brussels and an infest social media spreading their poison, sewing doubts and rewriting history.

And that's why the EU is not an alliance. It is a power cult. One which believes in the ideal that nations robbed of their resources and democracy lack the ability to go to war - and by this logic the absence of war de facto means peaceful coexistence. It's why they are the enemies of peace and consequently liberty. They are extremists zealots for home no lie is too big and any lie will do so long as you keep believing.

I am not a religious man at all but if I were I would hold the belief that the EU is the work of Satan. It is an evil empire built on a foundation of lies, sustained by ignorance and deception. And to quote that great revolutionary leader, Kyle Reece, "it can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with, It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever". Do not believe the deceivers. A slumbering dragon is still a dragon.

Let's be done with these awful people.

A few polls have put Leave in the lead. I am cautious. My view is to always fight like you're losing. What's interesting though is the reaction on the remain side. They see this as the great unwashed being taken in by the snake oil salesmen like Farage and Johnson - that we are under the hypnotic spell of the tabloid press, and that we have rejected the wisdom of the experts - that populism is on the rise.

This is how deeply they hold the average voter in contempt. It doesn't actually occur to them that we all find the lead leave campaign a total irrelevance and this is our chance to express many of our views on a subject which has largely been buried for decades. No, we're all just feeble-minded xenophobes incapable of independent thought!

And that is in part what I am voting against. A snobbish, aloof political elite who believe that they are the progressives and the enlightened, and guardians of a sacred wisdom which must never be challenged by something as tawdry as democracy.

But it's not just them. Plenty of ordinary people think the same way. Useful idiots who wish to be seen to be progressive and enlightened and that somehow the EU is the embodiment of those values - despite decades of evidence to the contrary.

It is a wholly shallow, narcissistic and lazy attitude, being taken in by an institution that uses all the vocabulary of progressivism but is in reality nothing approaching what it pretends to be.

And this is why this is as much a culture war as anything else. I don't know about you but I'm tired of identikit clean cut politicians sneering at us from upon high. Not least the likes of Emma Reynolds and Rachel Reeves who in truth know fuck all about nine tenths of anything.

They are vacuous, empty, shallow, profoundly ignorant people with neither curiosity or self-awareness. I am voting to leave because these people want to remain. I want to sabotage their political agenda and I want adults back on control. We cannot afford to be run by these people anymore.

Leading not leaving? Puhlease!!

I can think of no more astonishingly ignorant statement that we should be leading, not leaving the EU. So much so it sends me into an eye-popping rage. It is the bovine thoughtlessness of it that sends me round the fucking corner.

The EU has a massive obligation and that is not to let the Euro collapse and drag us all back into the dark ages. To that end it needs near total influence of economic policy within the Eurozone. It has a mountain to climb to bring about the economic convergence it should have had before it set off. For starters it will have to effectively assume control of Spain and Italy the way it has Greece because they're not getting their act together in cleaning up their grubby economies.

That means Britain is not on the agenda. At all. And because we are not in the Euro we'll have precisely zero influence of economic and monetary policy. Our needs will be way down the list of concerns. Though we will be presented with the bill - you can count on that much.

Meanwhile we're being gradually stripped of our voting rights at all the global regulatory bodies with the EU tightly controlling who can speak on our behalf. It's bad now and it's only going to get worse because when global bodies like the IMO tell the EU to go fuck itself they never take no for an answer and will keep trying.

Not only will be be marginalised inside the EU we will be completely without a voice at the global level and then europhiles have the nerve to suggest we would be isolated if we left the EU. I genuinely can't think of a more asinine thing to say than that. It's cretinous. These people haven't the first fucking idea what they are talking about and when you have some insight as to what is actually going on you start to realise that these people are actually fucking dangerous and shouldn't be allowed out without adult supervision.

The other crass assertion is that we should stay in because all the other world leaders thinks we should. Excuse me? Really? Leaders of competing economies don't want Britain to have a full presence of the global trade and regulatory bodies? Well fuck me sideways!! I'd never have guessed that. Exactly why should we vacate the room for India, China and America? Fuck off.

And then look at who is actually making the rules. Global trade alliances are made up of minnow states, large corporate unions and philanthropic institutes. That's a mixed blessing but as the global rules based trading system evolves we see far less participation from anybody we actually elected. Some of them are way more powerful than even the EU. In any dispute between the US and the EU they hold the deciding vote. That's real leverage yet we have to do as we are instructed if we're even allowed to sit at the table.

And while you might think this doesn't actually matter, where do you think all these regulatory instructions come from? Not Brussels. More likely Geneva. Go and have a look at the new proposed cigarette packets courtesy of the WHO. Charming stuff.

I'm not one to rail about any and all regulation and I think the kipperish complaining about it is ridiculous. lt's a hangover from the 1990's but to say that because we allow MEPs a lookie-loo after everything has been decided that the process is democratic is one of the biggest lies ever told. We have Microsoft and Maersk Line making policy for over a hundred countries. Of course they don't want the process democratised.

Worse still is the UN's injection of sustainable development goals and climate objectives into every area of regulatory activities. Now I don't give a shit whether you think global warming is happening or not. I personally think the whole edifice of climate Science is a fucking joke that fails to satisfy even the most basic scientific principles and it is 100% politically driven by people with some very disturbing ideas. But let's suppose they are absolutely right. Don't you think it's a good idea that we have a say?

It's all very laudable to want Lesser Developed Countries to enjoy the benefits of modernity, but they are imposing a the eco agenda on LDCs to ensure they develop in the "right" way - ie renewable energy etc. All the stuff that europhiles adore. But these people are a fucking menace. As much as they are holding back development by impressing the most expensive energy and technology upon them, they have zero self awareness and can't see the connection between their policies and the unwanted unintended consequences. They just carry on without ever pausing for thought or ever taking responsibility for what they do.

Meanwhile the EU finances it with out money, often just handing it over wholesale to NGOs who are accountable to nobody. There is no democracy in this system and that's why europhiles adore it. The eco-left orthodoxy has near complete control of the agenda and they know full well the biggest existential threat to that order is democracy. That is why all the dignitaries right up to the very top do not want Britain to leave the EU. They do not want the people having a say on any level.

And that's why I will fight these people to the death. I will not accept a defeat at the referendum because they are rigging it. I will not submit to their rule and if we have to have a war to sort this out then so be it. Europhiles tell us that the EU keeps the peace but all it's doing is storing up ill will across the continent and necessarily it has seen a revival of popular movements springing up which they libellous brand "far right". If you label something you negate it.

And I don't deny that the leaders of these grubby little populist parties are pretty shabby human beings but they are saints next to the shitstains like Blair, Cameron, Legarde and Juncker. I wouldn't be surprised if these people were satanists. When it comes down to it I will side with the grubby little upstart parties every single time - and when the great and the good have to start checking under their cars before setting off to work I won't shed a tear. They are the enemies of democracy and when democracy is stifled for long enough people will resort to extraordinary measures. This is what you are inviting if you vote to remain because you are voting to give the global elites all of the power forever. Let that sink in.

We will learn the hard way what democracy is

I've always said that Britain will stay in the EU for as long as it has a puerile understanding of what constitutes democracy, and will not fully comprehend that they have lost it and they need it. They will then discover that returning power to the people is not nearly as easy as it is to give away.

As present, we are only superficially aware that we don't have democracy because we are missing an essential component of a healthy democracy - a free and inquisitive press. It is not that the state censors our media, rather it censors itself largely to appease advertisers and corporate cronies. In that regard the government does not need to censor the British press.

But as much as anything it has lost its essential inquisitiveness. It is concerned only with the entertainment aspect of politics rather than the dreary business of policy. It is for that reason I look forward to the day when our newspapers go the way of the dinosaur. A fate well deserved.

But in having such a dismally inept media, decisions that affect our lives go unnoticed. We are often taken by the idea that government takes sweeping decisions behind closed doors but the ultimate joke is that they are held in the open, transcribed and published on the web. These days the best way to ensure nobody will read something is to put it on the EU website.

The diminishing few of us who actually watch regulatory affairs see sweeping changes to industries all the time, with the public being only barely aware of the more egregious examples such as the recent rules regarding vaping. As much as anything the public have similarly lost their inquisitiveness for what is done in their name. Probably through habit, having established there is little that can be done to stop them.

With surprising regularity we see rules made at the very top of global governance approved and rubber stamped with little or no scrutiny and then waved through by a toy parliament with no authority to make amendments. The authority exists in theory only. That which is agreed at the global level cannot be undone.

In this we see laws made which at the stroke of a pen can wipe out entire sectors or prevent innovations and not a peep is heard. And so while we have voting rituals to appoint ineffectual apologists, we have no real control over what is done in our name.

Moreover, what makes the EU different from any other body is that the unelected commission has right of proposal and right to refuse proposals from member states. It is therefore a body with extraordinary powers yet it has no mandate of any kind.

Between the commission and the European Court of Justice, officials and judges can rule on what is and is not a an exclusive competence of the EU - and routinely abuses legal definitions in order to afford itself more powers over member states and more power to revoke our rights at the global top tables where regulations are now made.

Such has been the case for so long that we now passively accept impositions and intrusions and few ever ask where they came from or why. We just assume that the presence of MEPs means that at some point there is some loosely defined democratic activity going on. There isn't. The rules are made at the global level, very often made by corporates and NGOs and global trade coalitions with no mandate from anybody. The only unions present are those there on licence from the EU.

And this is why the EU is all the more worrying. The WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade says "Where technical regulations are required and relevant international standards exist or their completion is imminent, members shall use them, or the relevant parts of them, as a basis for their technical regulations"

Not the use of the word "shall". As much as we have handed power to our MPs, they have handed it to Brussels and they in turn have handed over the power to global regulators, completely removing any public scrutiny from the law making process. Member states have their right of reservation removed, they have no independent vote and must vote the way they are told.

The excuse we are given is that the Council of Ministers is made up of people who are elected and they have a vote therefor this is a democracy. Britain can be entirely overruled by politicians they did not elect who are not acting in the interests of Britain (or even the EU) and though you can point to the empty voting rituals and say there was a vote, in a system where the sixty five million inhabitants of this island can be ignored, without right of refusal then by definition we do not live in a democracy.

And this is why I call the EU a silent assassin of democracy. A Potemkin Village designed to deceive. And by depriving us of the choice to refuse our government we are deprived of the ability and opportunity to innovate and so by the same measure it is also an assassin of prosperity.

In so doing it is eroding the unity and stability of Europe - and as people become increasingly aware that they are passengers in their own lives, without power, they become increasingly resigned but quietly resentful. This is why each wave of populist protest parties gets stronger each time.

For sure the elites can use the might of the institutions and the media to win their referendum and keep hold of the power, but in so doing are adding further fuel to the fire. They may well have discredited the utterly useless Ukips of this world but they have done nothing to quell the sentiment behind them. And that is why the future of British and European politics is set only to become more toxic.

You have heard me in the past define democracy as people power, from its literal Greek translation. The key part is the "demos" aspect - the people. You cannot, as we discovered in Iraq, define a demos by the lines you draw on a map or by the institutions you impose on them. A demos is self defining.

In that regard, it comes to one estimation. What would you, if push came to shove, be willing to die in muddy ditch for. And that is why the EU can never be a democracy. Nobody when exposed to the truth about the EU would lay down their lives to protect this artificial construct which represents nobody but itself. It is that which is the true test of whether the EU has a soul to speak of. It doesn't. There is no demos - and the peoples of Europe have no control over the EU entity. They have only protest - and protest without power is impotent.

And that is why Europe will tear itself apart under EU rule. Sooner or later we will discover that we are wholly impotent, and will discover that we do not have the means to institute new Government. We are already there in fact. It is only a matter of time for this temporary peace and stability comes under threat, not from external forces, but from those forces internally for whom the ends justify the means.

And it can only end in fire. Because it always does. We have been given one chance and one chance only to pull the lever to send the process of power transfer into reverse. We will not pull it because we live in fear, denial and self-deception. We would rather tell ourselves the lie that things can go on as they are without rocking the boat. And that is why we will have to learn the hard way what democracy really is and endure the misery of being without it.

There are consequences for squandering democracy

As the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union approaches I find myself feeling ever more resigned. The polls suggest Britain will stay in the EU. It’s depressing on two counts. Firstly I see enormous economic opportunities in being free of the EU and secondly because democracy is not on the cards unless we leave.

There is, however, something a little more depressing than that. Virtually nobody believes the EU is a democracy yet bizarrely they will vote to remain in it. Consequently I have arrived at the conclusion that people have only a thin grasp of what democracy is and those who do don’t actually want it.

As far as most are concerned, democracy is the empty voting ritual every five years whereby we appoint people to make decisions on our behalf. The power that flows from the people is loaned to individuals who only ever have to account for the decisions they make come election time. The rest of the time they do as they please and seem to enjoy the fact there is nothing we can do about it.

In that regard the model of representative democracy we have is more an extrapolation. A sample of the public, who in theory will make decisions roughly representing those the broader public would make. This is a wholly flawed idea.

For starters British political life consists of constant shouting and complaining about our politicians, often for their vanity, corruption and incompetence. Most Brits do not want to participate in politics. They want to be entertained and outraged by it but take none of the responsibilities for it. They are interested in the people and their personal affairs but not the real business of policy.

Because of this, it takes a particularly sterile sort of person with a knack for avoiding controversy to become a Member of Parliament. We have our freaks like George Galloway but these are wholly licenced dissidents who don’t achieve much and never last long. This instantly distorts the representative sample.

Further to these anyone who even seeks this kind of power is of a certain ilk. By the time you put them all in one room, subject to its own groupthink and you have nothing even close to a representative sample. That is why something like EU membership must be put to a broader public vote. There is no way that MPs could produce a result representative of public sentiment.

But the rest of the time the public are happy with the arrangement; to have no actual power themselves and take none of the responsibility. That way, whatever goes wrong in government is someone else’s fault. Just like children. The children are free to play while the parents make the hard calls. Unpopular decisions will result in tantrums but the child is powerless to reverse the decision.

But governing is unlike parenting. A child does not get to select new parents every five years. If they did, we would find parents caving into tantrums. Politics however results in exactly that. Politicians afraid of losing their pampered positions will not take hard or unpopular choices. Consequently we are a nation of infants ruled by infants and the results are there for all to see.

And therein lies the inherent hypocrisy of representative democracy. We complain that we want better choices made on our behalf but are prepared to do none of the necessary things to ensure that happens. We say we want honest politicians but their dishonesty is a reflection of our own. We duck our responsibilities as voters and our obligation to participate. When every decision results in a childish tantrum it's little wonder politicians stop caring what we think.

The natural consequence of this is a system incapable of making adult decisions - where politicians are only too happy to surrender their powers to bureaucrats. It means our politicians can outsource the business of governing and regulating, absolving themselves of blame, while being free to pretend they are the ones in control.

They can enjoy the trappings of office for as long as they can keep making excuses. Consequently at elections we do not vote for a government. We are simply electing a management team whose purpose is to oversee the implementation of foreign rule. In that regard we are an occupied country with a collaborative administration.

The problem for those of us who do want real democracy is that the bureaucrats are not actually doing a bad job as far as the average voter is concerned. They might complain but the roads are maintained, the bins get emptied, and all the layers of invisible government go on without interfering in our lives in any way that we might notice. Why rock the boat?

As a political settlement, everybody gets what they want. The politicians get to pretend they are in control, the public have somebody to scapegoat and the corporates like the fact that nobody is paying attention to what the bureaucrats do. The public are content to be managed like cattle so long as nothing disturbs their self-indulgent lives where their only responsibilities are to themselves. They do not want to take on the responsibility for managing their own political affairs nor do they want the blame for the consequences.

This is why I will be less interested in politics after the referendum. The result will call the bluff of the hypocrite voters. They say they want change, they say they want democracy but when it comes to the crunch, they prefer not to behave like adults. They cannot then complain that their politicians are suboptimal.

If democracy means anything at all it means the power resides with the people at all times. If people relinquish that power to politicians they cannot be surprised if they in turn surrender it to a foreign power. 

This is why a vote to remain in the EU is such a landmark. It marks not only the death of adult politics. It kills any hope of democracy stone dead.

This is because the public do not understand democracy, why it’s worth having or the consequences for giving up on it. But there are consequences. The system will eventually run everything for the convenience of the system rather than those who live within it. Government will become the master and not the servant. Little by little we become economic units to be coerced into behaviours that fit a grand design - where the ideas of accountants take precedence over the needs of people. The EU is a manifestation of that exact dynamic.

Meanwhile we have the theatricals of Westminster politics to keep us distracted and outraged. The illusion of democracy. From this we get our daily dose of gratification – to pretend that what happens to us is the fault of the politicians and not a consequence of our own slovenliness. We can pretend that we are the good, decent and honest lead by the corrupt and the self-interested.

But the fault is our own. We could choose to take control and take responsibility. We could demand that the power be returned to the people and we could take an interest in the policy rather than the politics. But we don’t want to. We don’t want to be disturbed. We are happy to walk away from our obligations so that we can disown the choices made in our name. It is the ultimate in hypocrisy and the hypocrisy is all ours.

We are told that soon after the EU referendum we will see the Chilcott report on the Iraq war. Watch it closely. Watch the reaction. Outrage at what our politicians conspired to do. We will wail and complain and make scapegoats of our politicians and then we will go back to our insulated little lives secure in the knowledge that we take no blame.

But let’s be honest just for a moment. We are only interested in politics as far as seeking out somebody to take the rap. We are only interested in participation so far as seeking someone else to blame. We don’t like to be troubled with detail. We don’t want to seek out the facts for ourselves. We want the decisions made for us and we want to be spoon-fed with sanitised information. That is why we maintain a state broadcaster.

That is why I have no hope that we will choose democracy. We have become infantilised and we like it that way. Only when we encounter the very real consequences for surrendering democracy in exchange for certainty will we realise what we have lost. And by then we will have to fight to reclaim what we have so carelessly squandered. Those who hold the power will not surrender it willingly. They never do. And then we will ask why. Who is to blame? The answer is whoever still stands among the ashes and the rubble.

The Matrix is here

Just about everyone I talk to recently remarks on how intellectually, socially and spiritually bereft the UK is becoming. It seems I am not the only one gripped by a certain cultural ennui. You have to be a singularly two dimensional creature to derive any kind of satisfaction from a life that gives you everything without having to really try.

My wonderful Polish friend remarks that she knows a number of high flying Poles in the UK and the reason for that is not because there is anything special about Poles coming here. It's just that they are the only ones inclined to do anything at all. It doesn't take all that much to get somewhere but Brits are just disinclined to lift a finger if someone else is willing to do it for them.

But even as immigrants settle in they become uniquely British they start to notice how hollow the British definition of success is. It doesn't matter if you earn £20k or £200k. You are still just a passenger. Perhaps if you have a few extra quid you can afford a few more baubles and trinkets to distract yourself with but you will still be acutely aware that Britain is turning into a giant retail park punctuated by filing cabinets that we now classify as homes.

And while the dream of owning a yuppie shoebox with a view over the river is now available to all, it is spoiled by way of looking across the river to see an identical building with an equally depressed version of yourself staring back at you.

We've dismantled all those dirty and dangerous jobs and outsourced them to China. We've even outsourced the boring IT stuff to India. Each of us who has a job are now in some way just an administrator of varying sophistication and responsibility. Even starting a business is just looking for a demographic who will set up a direct debit with you in perpetuity for a service they don't really need and could do without.

And even good jobs have become deskilled. We're seeing a digital Taylorism whereby no one person is ever permitted to work beyond the boundaries of their job and the recruitment process rules out the possibility that an individual could be good at two or more things.

On every level, the sum total of what we do now can be reduced to putting things in the appropriate boxes. That is what software system analysis is all about, creating the spaces, identifying the inputs, classifying them and boxing them up. Now we do the exact same thing with people.

It's why I wouldn't actually mind a boring warehouse job moving boxes. It amounts to the same thing and employs roughly same skills only you might actually break a sweat and get to drive a forklift. At least then any energy I have for cerebral activity can be devoted to something worthwhile rather than advancing the margins of an insurance or asset management company.

But it's not just our jobs that suck either. We spend eye watering sums on technology. Web enabled smart devices. Not for the creation of media but for the receiving of it. We end up watching twenty year old movies on high resolution televisions because none of the media designed for the modern technology is nearly edifying enough.

And while smartphones were supposed to create an apps revolution, who actually buys apps? Children and people who think like children.

Meanwhile our technology addled brains give us all the attention span of hamsters. It seems like nobody is capable of forging and maintaining relationships anymore. Everybody is searching for that missing piece of the puzzle that will make them feel whole, grasping for either a quick fix or a momentary distraction. Course the game is rigged because the human condition is that we are never sated. The void is forever there which makes us all such whining, greedy mindless consumers of shit. Our houses are full of it. DVD box sets of shit we never watch. Flat pack furniture that we hate. Clothes that we never wear. Food that we never eat. Things from Ikea.

We've abolished most of the "social constructs" that brought any kind structure to our lives and social media now means that nearly all the people we value might as well live in Narnia - or we haven't even met them at all. And because we are now so utterly without a moral compass we are now attacking even basic concepts like gender. It's the self-absorbed "cult of me". You are that which you define yourself and nobody is entitled to challenge that, however divorced from reality it may be. I have a fin, therefore I am a shark.

And for us conservative types it's hilarious. Some people are actually worried about it all. I'm not. I'm a misanthrope. I am bored and depressed but at least I know why. You people lack the first clue and I enjoy your lack of comprehension and your misery makes me smile.

For years the left rammed it down our throats that all these social constructs were oppressive and elitist and exclusive. And maybe they were. But they were there for a reason and now we're learning that if you are going to chuck it all out the window then it might be a good idea if you have something to replace it with - lest everybody be cast adrift to eke out a living in a spiritual and cultural wasteland. Depressed? Good. This is what you wanted.

But then who am I to complain? It's only intelligent people who suffer. And they are in the minority. Intelligence is an evolutionary dead end. We have designed the perfect machine for the perpetually asleep. And it works. The Matrix is here and now only we didn't need virtual reality. It IS reality - and it's only we few who see anything inherently wrong with it. The people who want a participatory democracy are in the minority.

Between technology and globalisation we have made ourselves wholly redundant. We've all read those editorials about how automation will ultimately improve our jobs and that we are not threatened by robots. But we all know that's bullshit. We're not all going to be robot engineers or software designers. We are in very serious danger of creating a post scarcity world where capitalism just doesn't work because there is no real purpose in accumulating wealth. We are free to roam the earth like cattle and be managed as such. Hence why the anti democratic, managerialist EU is the perfect form of government for it. It doesn't require particpation. All it requires is the power to remain in the hands of the few and for people to vote for the status quo. Life will be good so long as we do not question our existence.

And why should we? Why would we want dirty back breaking work and the possibility of having something more than what is allocated? Why would we want the uncertainty and unpredictability of democracy? Why would we want the diversity of an unplanned economy? Why would we want the hassle of things being different if you go somewhere else? Why would we want dirty ships polluting our "urban marinas"? Why would we want to drive our own cars or grow our own food? Why would we want anything other than our smartphones and our remote working desk jobs? Why wouldn't we want auto-enrollment and direct debits? Why would we want to be masters of our own lives? Why wouldn't we want the state to raise our offspring? Why would we want to be anything other than bovine? Why would we want to build lasting and beautiful things?

Why would we want family and community when we can all be individuals, accountable to nobody and responsible for nothing? Life can be great. Just conform, obey, consume and keep your credit rating clean. All this can be yours. All you have to do is vote to stay in the European Union. Take the blue pill.