verses

Despite the Government’s constant attempts to rig the ‘In-Out’  EU Referendum outcome to be held this June in favour of staying, it will in the end come down to the embattered, if not embittered, voters to determine the long-term future of Britain. One has to feel sorry for them surely? They are inundated with false promises, big lies, small lies, scaremongering, misinformation, sham assurances, coercions, intimidations, threats, and everything else you can think of, to push them in one direction or the other – in the opinion of us with cynical views, usually by those with critical personal interests to serve, eh?

This game all started some four years ago when new PM David Cameron was faced with an influential rebellious group of fellow Tory MPs who had fallen out of love with the EU as they finally had had enough of Europe’s excesses and non-democratic control over our affairs. That saga was all undermining his leadership and potential future success as a Prime Minister and needed to be thwarted. Like all UK political leaders with a big insurmountable problem Cameron wanted to ‘kick it into the long grass’ as the saying goes (that is a cricketing analogy for those in the know). His way of doing that was to promise that he would organise a UK Referendum on the issue, so that the people could decide whether we stuck-out with our membership or ducked out (we had never ever been given the choice of going-in in the first place, had we?). That referendum offer was a grave mistake of his which he is living to regret, isn’t he? For reasons we needn’t go into now, he never really expected that event to come to fruition, did he?

He could not wriggle out of it though, so first he committed that he would renegotiate the way in which the EU operated so that the UK’s involvement would be ‘fundamentally changed’. He tried to pose the referendum question in a one-sided manner to increase the chances of staying in, but his game was sussed-out by the Electoral Commission, so late last year Parliament accepted the alternative more balanced wording they had proposed.

After some years of clear prevarication on renegotiation it must be said, Cameron then made a last ditch attempt to move an immovable object (the EU), and he failed abysmally on that one, as all who understood the EU knew that he would. Nevertheless, Cameron returned from a EU Summit in late February this year declaring “success”, when that was clearly a blatant lie. [Adolf Hitler was the source in Mein Kampf of idea of the ‘BIG lie’ technique (subsequently embellished by Joseph Goebbels), which works on the basis that the more colossal the lie, the more it is stuck too, the greater likelihood of it being believed by the masses].

Cameron immediately announced, from the steps of Number 10, with due authority as Prime minister, that he had choosing a 23 June date for the Referendum, and was recommending the British people to vote to ‘remain’.

Cameron thought he could outflank the ‘leave’ brigade by announcing his outcome decision in this way before telling Parliament, didn’t he? But he got his comeuppance and was then upstaged when Michael Gove, his long term friend, ministerial colleague and protégée, made an astounding public proclamation that he was supporting Britain heading for the EU exit, eh?

The Government have defied the Electoral Commission‘s recommendation for a six month gap between the formal date announcement and the Referendum itself – however, Cameron’s intent was to benefit from his renegotiation publicity momentum, to lessen the time the voters have to change their minds (the EU status quo was initially favoured), catch the leave organisations flat-footed and underfunded, and not least get the vote done and dusted before the immigrant crisis or the ISIS terrorists’ bloodbaths gets even worse. A further dirty trick outside the spirit of the debate followed last week when it transpired that the Government has spend nearly ten million pounds on promoting the ‘remain’ policy with a mailshot to all the households, when the ‘leave’ group will be restricted to much less than that in total (seven million).

One of Cameron’s newest biggest worries now is who is going to be the official ‘EU referendum Leave campaign’. There are two big players here – Vote Leave and Grassroots Out. Cameron probably most fears the former because it is run by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and has both Tory heavyweights plus major eurosceptic groups’ backing (Conservatives for Britain/Labour Leave/Business for Britain), furthermore he might definitely prefer the latter as it features Nigel Farrage who is seen as a campaign public turnoff. Well, we will see shortly this month who the Electoral Commission have selected. to get poll position, won’t we?

Both sides of the debate have spent nearly two months now well mudding the waters with and smoke & mirrors and all kinds of supposed facts, which are all subject to question of course. The consequence is that the people are more confused than ever, as one would expect, eh? Don’t expect any better clarity over the next couple of months though, will you?

The best advice for those people who are fretting about how to vote in the UK’s EU Referendum is to just have a punt like is done in choosing a possible winner in the Grand National horse race. This year’s race took place yesterday and probably some twenty million people watched it or saw it or listened to it on the radio. Many millions also had a flutter at the bookies or just chose a horse to support from the newspaper or even seeing it first on the television. Most of these people have never been anywhere near the races, or knew anything about horse racing as such, and certainly didn’t understand a word about horse breeding, form, past success and failure, age and gender, weights,  nor the jockey’s ability, nor the stable and the trainer, nor the owner and their background, nor about the Aintree course, the race distance, the going and the fences, nor any anything else for that matter which would be assessed by the true experienced gamblers. The most that your average grand National punter will know is the odds, which tells them what cash they will win if they put their fifty-bob on each-way – it is all done by ‘gut-feel’ isn’t it?. The thing about the race is that there is no right or wrong in selecting your choice, as even the so-called horse experts can’t actually predict the future, can they?

[Why not use your own ‘gut-feel’ when you decide on your Referendum ‘Remain’ or Leave’ vote, so then you don’t need to bother with trying to impossibly evaluated all their detailed analysis’s and misrepresentations, will you?]