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Category: Leadership

The Brexit Psyche

Changing Minds on Brexit

This article in The Guardian is being shared widely by Rejoiners at the moment. It is a good piece of academic analysis. Yet I have some problems with a couple of the points it makes (I guess that’s unsurprising!!). It’s a long piece, so buckle yourself in for a long ride. Here’s what I really like about the piece:

Consonance

The article correctly states that the Brexit mindset is a complex interwoven set of beliefs (coalitions within coalitions) that keep getting reinforced by our populist media. I articulated this via my ‘Brexit Brain’ model below. Quite why I coined the phrase ‘Brexorcism‘ to describe the complex quasi-religious mindset change process in the book Reboot Britain.

“It’s really hard. We see tremendous stability over very long periods of time. A choice like Brexit provides endless stimuli to feed that brain activity. It’s coalitions within coalitions within coalitions…”   Darren Schreiber.

The Brexit Brain
The Brexit Brain – Read more by clicking the brain.

Thus, normal approaches to change management are not valid: ‘Carrots and sticks; are often used to change simple levels of behaviour and performance at work. For example, if you pay people more, they might work harder for a while. Put them under threat, they may also work harder, go on strike, work less or leave the company etc. But changing Kwasi-religious beliefs such as Brexit is a whole different ball game. It’s not a rational choice as the Guardian article rightly explains.

Whole brained change

I advocate a blend of so-called left (more analytical) and right brained (more emotional) thinking to reach deep into the Brexit psyche of my ‘clients’, what is known as a ‘hearts and minds’ approach in business consulting circles. Using hard hitting emotional headlines to grab people by the heart and longer more analytical approaches to ensure that their heads fall in line with their hearts. The dual approach is epitomised in the book Private Eyelines, a book targeted at leave voters to help them understand how they were lied to. p.s. DO NOT buy the book on Amazon. I get a £2.00 royalty on a sale of £32.99 for six months work, as Amazon keep all the profits!  Whilst I don’t write books as an income source, I also don’t write them to boost Amazon’s profits. If you wish to buy a copy direct at an author’s discount, talk to me direct via reboot@brexitrage.com. By the way the left-right brain divide has been questioned but the idea of whole brain thinking (analytical and emotional) is a handy notion to help us think about the need to reach head and heart.

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” Leon Festinger.

Another truism in the article is the belief that all leave voters are unresponsive to dialogue, thick or closed. This reveals itself in oft quoted statements by some Remainers, who say things like “You can’t educate pork”, “I’ve tried everything” and “They are thick as mince”. Truth be told, some Remainers lack the skills, patience and time to conduct effective Brexorcisms. Also it really matters who you choose as your ‘client’. There really is no point working on a ‘Nigel Farage type hardcore Brexiters’ but many leave voters are not hard leavers. Selection of your targets is key, both in terms of where they sit on the Remain – Leave continuum and to what extent they are key opinion formers for others who follow their views.

“When you pathologise the other side, there’s no point in reaching out to them” Brian Hughes.

Relationship and rapport is key

The article goes on to say something terribly important. “If there is a way through this, he suggests, it is to break down the myths of us and them.”  A successful Brexorcism only operates on the basis of a strong relationship and a basic bond of trust. If you are going to challenge beliefs, you need a massive ‘bank balance’ of relationship power to succeed. This is why Steve Bray and his cult have changed very few minds by ‘shouting at people’ in Parliament, upsetting sympathetic media people into the process. In case of doubt, I started on the street with Steve at No 10 Vigil. He quickly spotted that the real action was at Parliament instead of Downing Street and set up a splinter group. Later on, I tried to gain him a permanent platform with other figures at Channel 4 News which he rejected. Of course, Steve’s activities outside the House of Commons have other functions. However, his finest moments were when he quietly but firmly ask politicians difficult questions using a Socratic style and a ‘servant leadership’ approach. But everything counts. We need to use all the therapeutic communication styles as discussed by John Heron in Reboot Britain. Social settings such as cafes, pubs etc. are often more helpful than formal settings, hence my comments about the sauna below, although the sauna is not the only environment in which you can change someone’s mind about Brexit!

In the article, Carol Tavris confirms the view that ‘consonance’ or rapport is vital as a starting point for a successful Brexorcism. The conversation is a healthy mixture of what Comms people call ‘pull’ and ‘push’ strategies or what musicians and psychologists call consonance and dissonance. Finding some common ground is extremely important or giving away trivial wins in order to build a connection. One of the difficulties I notice in some activists is their fundamentalist need to ‘win’ all the arguments with leave voters. It’s better to let them have some small wins in the dance of Brexorcism.

“When we argue with somebody about their beliefs, the absolute crucial thing to avoid is making them feel foolish. If you say something like, ‘How could you be so stupid?’, that will almost always make your listener become even more committed to their belief. If you say instead, ‘Well, many of my own expectations turned out not to be the case too’, that might be a place to start.”

Dissonance

The Guardian article suggests that we must fully convert people to become Rejoiners. This is akin to a religious conversion or what I call a 360-degree Brexorcism. This is fundamentally incorrect. All we need to deliver as a ‘MVP‘ (Minimum Viable Product” is to move people from the idea that Brexit is a good idea towards ambivalence or doubt about the value of Brexit, a 180-degree Brexorcism. This is a much easier task. This converts in behavioural terms to people not voting in another referendum / General Election to support a Brexit party or possibly voting for a pro-Rejoin party to balance out their previous vote. Obviously a full conversion to the cause would be a much stronger position but, as the article points out, it is much more difficult. This is like trying convert a moderate Christian to Islamic fundamentalism when we only need to go as far as agnosticism, not even atheism.

Our approach to Brexorcism has validation from low-profile approaches to change which were reported on by the BBC some while back. A Brexorcism blends ideas from psychology, sociology, anthropology and therapeutic interventions. People who tell me that you cannot change the minds of Brexit voters simply have not understood the fundamentals of Brexorcism which requires large doses of skill, patience and time. I’m offering a free masterclass on the topic for North Hertfordshire for Europe on Sunday November 19th at 5.00 pm via ZOOM. Contact me to reserve your place. I am also willing to give keynotes and masterclasses on our UK tour to develop a cadre of Brexorcists. This is vital if we are to move the dial faster on Brexit regret by a General Election.

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Brexorcism unplgged
Brexorcism

The will of the people has changed

My other major beef with the article is that it suggests that “though there is some anecdotal and polling evidence that there has been a shift in sentiment, and that remain might now prevail, the same polls show very little appetite to reopen the question.”  This is incorrect on two levels:

There has been a seismic shift from 4% to 24% of people that believe that Brexit has failed. By 2024 it is quite feasible that 70% of people will believe that Brexit has failed. At that point politicians will no longer be able to look the other way.

Brexit has failed

Whilst it’s true that there is currently no appetite to reopen the Brexit question, this is merely a feature of where we have got to in the cycle. Also, of course, a sense of foreboding that another referendum would re-open all the family feeds / social angst and so on. However, another bloody referendum is not the only way to settle the matter. It is also quite certain that not opening up the difficult question will mean that the wounds of Brexit will remain with us for generations to come. Some kind of healing could actually take place with a grown-up recognition that Brexit has failed and that rejoining the EU is both possible and desirable. There is an embedded assumption that we MUST do this via a referendum. It ain’t necessarily so. See this article for London for Europe and Reboot Britain on the choices we face.

Myths and Riffs of Brexit

I note that the last remaining Brexiters are putting forward a number of myths to silence debate. Sadly some remainers also buy into these myths due to learned helplessness. For example:

We’ll have to have the Euro

We’ll have to have Schengen

The EU will reject our application

And so on.

See our article for Bylines Myths and Riffs of Brexit for a fuller exposition on these myths.

‘Learned helplessness’ on the part of Remainers plays into a passive acceptance of the idea that Brexit is done and it cannot be undone. This is the belief that we don’t deserve to join anew as it might be considered anti-democratic etc. However, a referendum won through fraud, fake social media ads and which was judged illegal by the Supreme Court had it been mandatory is not the high-water mark of democracy. Leavers were not satisfied by a super majority (67.2% on a 64% turnout) in the initial referendum to join the EU in 1975. Nor should we.

Learned Helplessness
Learned Helplessness summed up. We must not subscribe to it.

Indonesia – our structural deficit

Learned helplessness prevails in a vacuum of leadership and a lack of coherent strategy. Whilst the Remain movement was relatively united in the summer of 2019 after a number of victories, the 2019 election fragmented people again along political party lines. There are now as many proposals on how we rejoin as there are pundits. I describe the organisational structure of the Remain movement as being like Indonesia i.e. 17 000 islands and a few bigger ones. But all operating independently. The bigger beasts such as the European Movement compete with other actors such as Best for Britain. Others prefer to plough their own furrow. Some have been asleep at the wheel, calling for Remainers to make the most of Brexit. Yet, the only good Brexit is a dead Brexit. The consequence of being ‘Indonesia’ is that we find it hard to do things at scale. Fragmentation of strategy / structure and poor leadership also mean that we spend as much time arguing internally about strategy as we do in acting on Brexit and Rejoin. I set out five goals which we coalesce around on a monthly basis. It ain’t perfect but we do our best to provide clarity and collaborative leadership across a group of people from Europe. Join us on the first Wednesday of each month at 8 pm UK time via ZOOM. See also our article on Strategies to Join EU anew.

Indonesia
17 000 islands. A few bigger ones.

Five Goals
Five goals to join anew.

Not fade away

One specific point in the article which is not quite correct is the mention of BBC Question Time’s Brexit special event in Clacton. The journalist stated that the audience was made up entirely of those who voted leave. He went on to suggest that this was presumably to ensure the debate would not simply descend into an all-too familiar slanging match. We actually attended the event and talked with people on the street in Clacton. Levels of ‘Bregret’ were widespread in Brexity Clacton outside the event. They were also quite easy to get from people who realised that they had been taken for fools. The Brexit voting audience were also happy to speak with us after the event and many were of the view that Brexit had failed and that they were lied to. It is therefore a mistake to assume that all Brexiters attending BBC QT are now fully committed to Brexit.

This was mirrored in Brexit voting Deal the other week and on BBC Any Questions in Tory voting Southend on 17 August 2023, where the audience failed to applaud any of the statements made by the Tory panel member. Having been at the centre of some extreme nastiness by Brexiters, including the ex Met Policeman who issued threats of violence, spray painted my house and attended with a knife, I observe from Brexit voting Kent that the slanging matches have largely subsided. However, the article is correct when it infers that the products of Brexit won’t go away by not talking about it. See our Brexit iceberg below. Like it or loathe it, Brexit is the smelly dump and stain in the toilet bowel of life that won’t flush.

The Brexit Iceberg
The Brexit Iceberg.

Brexit will continue to traumatise a generation if we do not burst the boil of Brexit one way or another. I believe in facing problems rather than sweeping them under political carpets. Labour in particular will be culpable for assisting the tragedy of Brexit if they continue to look away. Much in the way that the vast majority of good German people were silenced through fear during Hitler’s populist uprising. Fence sitting on Brexit is assent.

“The Tories will crow about Brexit being done. The Labour frontbench will solemnly observe that past tense, and avoid the B-word, as if it is a triggering trauma for the party and the country, best left undisturbed.”

Brexit is the smelly dump and stain in the toilet bowl of life that won’t flush

Lost consonance

As an aside, I found the opening paragraph about ‘Brexit hard man’ Steve Baker an unusual lead into the Guardian piece. I saw Mr Baker’s attempt to draw sympathy from the public to be a calculated attempt to humanise him as a piece of electioneering and not a window on his tortured Brexit soul. No decent Christian would agree with the human principles on which Brexit is founded. Like everything else with Brexit, it’s just another set of illusions. For example, The European Research Group (ERG) does no research. The weaponisation of asylum seekers to appeal to racists and people with feeble minds is not what Jesus would have done. and so on. Baker uses his faux Christianity as a shield and has now turned into a snowflake to gain sympathy from his constituents using the Brexit confessional box. Baker’s so called mental illness, beard growth and acne were mobilised as excuses. Krishnan Guru-Murphy’s analysis was correct when he pointed out that Baker was a C…nt.

Baker explained “I felt repugnant, hateful, to blame for all of the troubles that we had, absolutely without any joy, constantly worried about everything to the point of mental torment. A constant state of panic attacks and anxiety”. So he should, for all the pain he has inflicted on our children and those having anxiety, depression and lost careers / jobs / livelihoods due to Brexit. In fact, Baker should be in jail alongside Rees-Mogg who promised us cheap training shoes, Farage who promised a boom in fish and chips and Johnson who said that Brexit would make my wife’s breasts bigger. I’ve checked several times. They haven’t.

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Brexit bunker

Brexit Blights Blighty

Don Adamson reports the news that the media does not wish to print. Here he speaks from his Brexit Bunker in Barnsley.

This week’s homework

One – Alec Salmond has a spot on GB News. Has always been a Brexit believer or has he gone over to the dark side? 

Check our page on Scotland

Two – If there was a Nobel Prize for Jackanory, PG would have won it every year. I had the misfortune to work with him long ago and far away. After work he would stand at the bar and entertain his friends with blood curdling accounts of his adventures in faraway places with strange sounding names. By a strange coincidence these adventures would bear an astonishing resemblance to the story lines of movies recently screened at the local cinema. My personal favourite Jackanory was his involvement in the 1953 Everest expedition. He was supposed to make the final assault but that was cancelled at the last minute. One of the climbers broke a leg and PG had to say with the casualty because PG was the only paramedic on the expedition. PG turned to Edmund Hilary and said: ‘You will have to go with Tensing tomorrow. You are the next best man after me.” That claim should be written in gold letters on the wall of a museum dedicated to Bull***t. PG very quickly stopped being funny. Within weeks of his arrival he grandly announced that he was on the verge of major breakthroughs that had baffled us lesser mortals. We would have thanked him for it if he had succeeded where the rest of us had failed. Alas 18 Months later (when I was posted away to another assignment) he was still claiming (without a hint of irony) to be on the verge of these same major breakthroughs.

I chanced to meet him again years later. I asked what he was doing with his retirement. He claimed to have gone into politics and was both a local councillor and a school governor. I asked which party. He replied “Conservative.” Why does that not surprise me? 

This week’s quotes

Georgia has the goal of EU and NATO membership 

60% of Georgians want to join NATO …80% want to join EU

Brexit Hack watch Daily Mail says Brexit is having an effect on advertising revenue

… It is rough out there… Mail big Leave Supporter … Mail leader May 2023 said ‘too early to say if Brexit was working’ … An Wilson permitted to suggest ‘Brexit was a mistake’ … Andrew Neil wrote fatalistically ‘Brexit could transform Britain but neither Richy Scumbag nor Keith Starmer is a true believer’ … Daily Express in 2016 more anti EU than the Mail now runs stories of the downside of Brexit. Torygraph says ‘Brexit has been botched’ …  Spectator Brexit means more immigration than ever … to a degree that New Labour would never have dared attempt …  Brexit benefits utterly non existent … newspapers distancing themselves from something they helped create …  is Labour’s Keith Starmer the only committed Brexiter left in Britain …

Check our gutterpress pages

Pandemic Britain had half the intensive care beds compared to Europe average and quarter of Germany’s

… failure to enhance health and safety law … dearth of guidance … grossly inadequate health provisions …  healthcare workers exposed to harm … some dying … 2012 Health and Social Care Act shrunk and splintered public health teams … Austerity starved essential services of cash … worsened public health … double whammy made worse during pandemic … no NHS hospital  had plans for a sustained pandemic … lacked skill set to plan … buildings old and poorly maintained … 

Ultra Low Emission Zone 

… Johnson condemned the scheme despite him bringing in ULEZ as Khan’s predecessor … surprises nobody given Johnson’s depths of dishonesty and opportunism … across Europe only Turkey has a higher respiratory death rate than UK … world beaters at last …

Check our article on ULEZ

Short Termism in Tory Party 

… Somebody is sitting in the shade because somebody else planted a tree long ago … perennial problem: balancing the long term good with short term expediency … that is why the National Health Service was in such a precarious state when Covid Struck … intensive care beds run down to dangerously low levels … World Health Organisation said NHS was way out of line with other countries … Germany had 33.9 beds per 100,000 population … England had 10.5 …  dreadful long term vulnerability … delaying criticism of how government handled pandemic takes priority over preparing for the next one … Top British scientists unanimous that every day we spend outside Horizon damages our science base. Amount of EU money going into British science since 2019 decimated … people doing groundbreaking research have deserted because UK excluded from Horizon … Eminent scientists despair … no confidence in Pioneer; the government’s half baked proposal for a go it alone version of Horizon … Private Finance Initiative hospitals are being crippled … just one of many problems … indications are that Tories will concentrate on immigration and culture wars. It will take a brave optimist to see Starmer rising above this…

Check Pay as EU go Rejoin

Liberal Democrat Autumn conference embarrassing diary clash

… same day as the National Rejoin March takes place in London … last thing we want is a desultory turn out …membership numbers have dwindled since Ed Davey repudiated the Rejoin policy … Editor’s note : NRM might also have checked the date as I imagine that the Lib Dems will have had this fixed in the diary for some time – one of the first principles of event management. I am banned from attending by a cabal of self-annointed European Movement / Grassroots for Europe people anyway.

Nigel Garbage in penury 

… lately bought a new £575,000 beachfront house … all cash transaction brings his property holdings to around £2M… 

Farage v Cats
Farage v Cats

Lloyds Bank understandable desire to be rid of the Telegraph and Spectator ASAP  

… a valuation near the  touted £600M is wishful thinking … print side of the Telegraph operation is a liability … ensuring the titles end up owned by a very right wing owners clearly in the best interests of the faction that now controls the Tory Party … 

For years we have not had a serious government 

… a grisly soap opera in which talentless characters have starring roles and prime ministers change almost as often as Chelsea managers …Downing St 5 – Stamford Bridge 9 … we have not had a serious media but dumbed down commercial interests masquerading as purveyors of news … taking what used to be serious parts of the media in their wake … unserious government and unserious media are locked in a dumbed down political embrace … Huw Edwards spasm, a dubious story in dumbed down dubious newspapers … allegations against Dan Wootton the GBNews presenter are far more serious than anything thrown against Huw Edwards … if you write down the top thousand grievances that should command the attention of the PM Nigel Garbage’s banking arrangements should not make the list … Richy Scumbag bleating about the need for professionalism and integrity … this from the man who sat alongside Johnson … Covid partied with Johnson … tolerated the lies … Cabinet queued to fuel the Nigel Garbage as victim narrative … he and the right wing media ARE the establishment … pushed a referendum on Cameron … moaning about their victory ever since because the Brexit they get is never the one they wanted … rest of the country knows Tories will never find it because it does not exist … 

Don Adamson Pip Pip             Medway Delta (Retired)                       Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class 

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Brexit Betrayal

Were you played?

I write this piece directly to leave voters. I ask you the Johnny Rotten question: Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? This piece of investigative journalism deserves your full attention. I’ve set out some of the main points below, but watch the entire film. You were played by Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, their shady backers and their poster boy Boris Johnson. They took you for fools with well executed lies about fish, the NHS, laws, borders, sovereignty et al. How does it feel to be treated like pawns in a game that you were never part of? You will be paying for Brexit for decades in your pay packets, your freedoms, your health, wealth and happiness. It is time to demand your money back for the illusions of Brexit. Watch and learn how you were played:

The Brexit illusion of sovereignty was just that – an illusion – we could not have had fox hunting, pints, three pin plugs etc. if we were enslaved to a European superstate

The Farage illusion of taking back control of our fish was also an illusion. Many fishing businesses are suffering under Brexit

The Brexit illusion of funding our NHS failed. The £350 million every week never arrived

The Brexit illusion of a United Kingdom failed. Northern Ireland will eventually unite with the Republic of Ireland. Scotland and probably Wales will also leave Brexit Albion

The Brexit illusion of growth failed. Liz Truss’ experiment with Brexonomics took £100 BILLION off the UK balance sheet. You will be paying for this long into the future.

The Brexit illusion of frictionless trade never happened. With food inflation of 15% and a Government fear of implementing border checks lest it leads to food shortages

We can rejoin The EU at any time

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Five Goals
Join us first Wed 8 pm UK time on ZOOM to Reboot Britain.
48 52 Brexit
The will of the people has changed. Support our UK education tour.

Daily Excess

Nigella Legionnaris Brexitosis-23

Whilst the Tories continue to gaslight the nation about small boats, prison ships and so on, the truth will out. Here is our mash up of the Daily Excess for the week of bullshit in politics. If you like this, you will love our book Private Eyelines. DO NOT BUY on Amazon. Buy direct for best prices via reboot@brexitrage.com. Please see below for the real Tory stories they are trying to cover up.

For more of this, please get your copy of Private Eyelines by mailing us at reboot@brexitrage.com

Sugar Sugar

Brexit Secretary and sugar magnate David Davis went on BBC Radio 4 to explain that Brexit was not a cause of our problems. Instead he blamed the Civil Service. When pressed he admits that the Tory Government were responsible. Even the BBC’s Brexit loving Martha Kearney was astonished. Hear a slice of the interview on our Bandcamp radio interviews album. To correct the Daily Maul front page, Brexit is the cause of Brexit and not lefty doctors, cat owners, scientists, benefit claimants, woke metropolitan elitists yada yada.

Sick of being sick

Therese Coffey, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick and others are in denial of the significant outbreak of sewage related illness at the recent triathlon in Sunderland. Instead they continue the blame game whilst water companies turn in record profits. Lib Dem MP Munira Wilson did not even get an answer to her question about a related problem with Thames Water. Are you still prepared to vote for these shape-shifters? SARS in their eyes?

The contempt of Sunak’s so called ‘answer’ and the nodding Tory dogs are the hallmarks of fascism …
Sick of being Jenrick ….

The Pippy Longstocking

The wonderful Jonathan Pie sums up all that is wrong with this Brexitory government in his latest rant. Attempting to put asylum seekers with tuberculosis onto a boat which would act as an incubator for the disease is a significant public health risk. It is an echo of Boris Johnson’s wilful act of killing 40 000 people by putting infected COVID patients into care homes. Meanwhile Rishi Sunak took his kids to a restaurant in the USA where meals can cost £12 000 whilst Lee Anderson is knocking them up in the kitchen for 30p a serving, even undercutting Jamie Oliver.

Legion-Ella

It has emerged that Suella Braverman knew of the Legion-ella infestation the day BEFORE they started putting asylum seekers on the prison ship !!! This is a government sponsored death camp. Read our article in Spanish and English on the subject of racism at The Prisma.

The Prisma
From the moment that Nigel Farage adopted a Nazi inspired poster to stir up latent racism in Britain, he then won the Brexit referendum by the narrowest of margins.

Follow the money

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the real reason for the Stop the Boats campaign, is of course, once again money. UKIP donated £70 000 to Langham Industries. John Langham the owner was a long term supporter of UKIP and clearly the Tories are frightened of UKIP and the far right so they have become them. In time, I would not be surprised to learn that the Tories themselves have financial interests in the boats, hotels and other aspects of the criminal fraud that sits below the ‘fury’ in the Express, Mail and Sun. Crispin Blunt already receives a salary as an adviser to one of the asylum hotel groups.

Aside from all the above, one boat to house 220 people is quite literally a drop in the ocean when compared with the backlog at the Home Office. This is deliberate managed decline by the Tory Government. The ceremonial nature of the Bibby Stockholm hides something else that they do not want us to talk about. Look deeper.

“Fuck off back to France” – Lee Anderson.
Watch and share our two minute explainer on how to deal with immigration properly.

FASCISM FACT AND FICTION CHECKER

ULEZ is the Ultra Low Emission Zone and not the Uber Lesbian Empowerment Zone as Boris Johnson probably thinks it is. Doubtless Bojo would be willing to lend his ‘Johnson seed’ for the purposes of ‘lesbianic correction’ though !! How many kids has he got now? 12? It was in FACT Boris Johnson who introduced ULEZ and NOT Sadiq Khan. It is yet another manufactured piece of ‘gaslighting’ done by the Tories as a desperate piece of electioneering.

The Sunday gutterpress papers are trying to blame the French for the deaths in the channel. NO, this is fully the responsibility of Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman and the Brexit cabinet. I’m quite surprised that the Sunday Express et al have not tried to blame French Legionnaires, Emmanuel Macron, Sophia Loren, Camembert, Cotes du Rhone or Sacha Distel for the deaths as yet.

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We can and must Rejoin the EU to save Britain from Brexit oblivion. There is now a whopping gap of 24% in favour of Rejoining the EU.Click the image to support us via PayPal, Patreon or Go Fund Me.
The week that was

The week that was

By Don Adamson, Brexorcist, 1st class honours, reporting on the week that was from his grim Northern Powerhouse Brexit Bunker in Barnsley.

This week’s homework

One – Harold Wilson got into trouble when he awarded MBEs all round to the Beatles. At the time the Beatles were the most successful popular music band in the world and bringing in vast amounts of export earnings to this country. That was not the point. You cannot have a Labour PM awarding decorations to scruffy characters from the rough end of Liverpool.  Johnson awarded controversial decorations (up to and including peerages) to some very nasty people who, by rights, ought to be in the Nonce wing of some very nasty prison. That is perfectly in order and the newspapers do not mind a bit. Why the different treatment? 

Uncanny.

Two – Discuss the following statement: Nigel Garbage (of all people) has stated that Brexit has failed. Express, Mail and Telegraph newspapers (notorious Brexit cheerleaders of the worst description) are saying (grudgingly) that Brexit has not turned out to be the earthly paradise they promised. Tories got us into this mess by making extravagant promises. Keith Starmer has promised to get us out of this mess by repeating the same extravagant and now discredited promises. Einstein defined insanity as repeating a mistake in the expectation of a different result. What would Einstein have said about Brexit? 

Serial loser Farage.

Three – Discuss the following statement. We now know the truth behind scandal concerning Nigel Garbage and the NatWest Bank. Garbage stirred up trouble so that his nasty friends could speculate on shares in the NatWest Bank. There are two kinds of Gammon. On the one hand you have blithering idiots who are stupid enough to believe what they read in trashy newspapers. On the other hand you have some very clever and calculating people who get rich by dubious means. If they would put as much effort and ingenuity into doing something useful we would all benefit. Instead they got us into this Brexit mess. 

Join Gina Miller’s True and Fair Party

Gina Miller
Join the True and Fair Party for much better politics.

Four – Discuss the following statement. The Economist of 29 July has an interesting article about US universities and sometime controversial entry criteria for students. The article must be read carefully because it contains a lot of facts, figures and sometimes complex reasoning. The last two sentences summarise the situation – “These universities are channelling comparatively under qualified legacies, athletes and private school graduates into positions of unusual influence. A greater emphasis on academic merit would yield not only a fairer society but also a brighter elite.” Meanwhile in Britain we have brain-dead Cabinet Ministers who attended Oxbridge universities. They would be unemployable if they had attended less prestigious institutes of learning (if that is the right word). 

Five – When the Tories were making extravagant promises about Brexit they had a lot to say about ‘Singapore on Thames.’ To anybody with more than three brain cells this was conclusive proof that Brexit was only ever for the benefit of tax dodgers and dubious financiers (and not many of either). Singapore used to have a commendable reputation for efficiency and clean government. Singapore is nowadays developing a reputation for mismanagement and corruption. Which ‘Singapore on Thames’ do the Tories have in mind for Booming Brexit Britain: a) the Singapore with a commendable reputation for efficiency and clean government or b) the Singapore that is groaning under the weight of incompetence and corruption? 

Brexit was not for voters. It was for Jacob Rees-Mogg et al.

This week’s quotes: 

Schools and education

Each chart looks the same … gradual improvement from the early 1990s until 2010. Then things become worse … rule that runs for everything from rough sleeping to real wages to hospital waiting lists … housing policy chaotic … From 2010 to 2016 Tories  offered a small state country within the EU. After 2016 Tories offered a flabby big state vision outside the EU … political chaos … a bureaucratic mess … one in ten children attends a school that is falling down … Teachers did not sign up to be auxiliary social workers … often must be due to government failure … experienced teachers leave profession … for more than two years the government has failed to  negotiate Britain’s re-entry to Horizon, a European research collaboration programme it left because of Brexit … many scientists say it is essential to Rejoin … my worry is we are going back to the 1990s  where you got a system that was running into the sand …

Read our page on Scotland

Sunak ‘rip-off degree war’ deserves a diploma for missing the point … the whole higher education system is a mess …we are staring down the barrel of a mid century skills crisis … unless British universities produce tens of thousands of engineers the green transition is stuffed … unless universities produce tens of thousands  more doctors and nurses  the NHS workforce plan cannot be delivered … incentives for Britain’s most talented graduates seem misaligned … how much greater would our problems look if somebody actually calibrated them against the problems we face … tens of thousands of teachers leaving the profession exhausted …  we need a more skilled and educated workforce …  any politician who refuses to answer is in the business of fantasy economics …

Tory hate mob licking its lips as … Richy Scumbag’s reign falls apart 

… the electorate in very large numbers has had enough of this government … the whiff of a dying administration … the only thing growing in the economy is the scale of the debt … a corrupt incompetent government deserves to be sacked but one presiding over a bombed-out economy will be … The Right of the Tory Party is preparing for that. Thick Lizzie … who has no sense of shame has gathered an unsavoury collection of free trade extremists and wealthy US climate change deniers to build on her policies that failed so spectacularly just months ago … Sue Ellen Braverman and Lee Anderson … gathering New Conservatives to espouse ideals that are to the right of the right … constituency organisers have welcomed former UKIP members and ushered out the moderates … the appalling misjudgement of Brexit. The problem for Starmer is that these problems would take years to settle even against the backdrop of a strong economy. The risk is that after one term of Labour the country feels no better off, and potentially worse, it will turn to the pedlars of false hopes and real hatred. That is the game plan of the New Conservatives…. 

Labour are a Brexit party

Rothermere 

Dominic Williams, chief revenue officer … was asked if he could see the irony of a news business that pushed Brexit so far being damaged by it … … insiders say Williams is the consummate office politician … would not have dreamed of speaking out unless he felt Rothermere had come round to that way of thinking … dismayed to see how much the company has suffered from Brexit… Daily Mail editor in Chief has not been seen in the office for a while … Brextremist Bible now seems willing to think the unthinkable: what will happen if Brexit fails? … Tories will be blamed if it flops… 

Brexit Bible
The Brexit Bible. Click to read more.

James Cleverly, Foreign Secretary 

is doing as much globetrotting as possible in the Tories remaining months in office … took 91 officials with him, set the taxpayer back £700,500 … unwilling to slum it on commercial flights … £178,761 for a 3 day visit to Washington … trip to Belfast cost £4,142 for an RAF aircraft … 

Lib Dem omerta on Brexit 

Our membership and polling were at their highest when we were most outspoken against Brexit…. 

Tory MP second jobs 

average wage of  £233 per hour … Nadine Dorries job at GB News … rumoured six figure salary … £20,500 advance for Johnson hagiography … nobody can remember when she last appeared in Parliament …

Funding the National Health Service 

… Labour, with their child benefit caps and promise to continue with Tory tax and spending plans … show no sign of recognising … that Tory plans are not producing growth now and are not likely to produce growth in the future … 

Dignified exit of the week 

… ever expanding list of Tory MPs announcing they will not stand at the next election … Ben Wallace  … may yet go down as the first instance of a ship running out of rats before it even starts to sink … Wallace denies rumours of affair with Thick Lizzie …. Wallace might be applying for appointment to a juicy quango under Starmer… 

Liz Truss
Liz Truss chased the economy and escaped with a lifetime salary.

Queues at Ports 

… This is the curse of Brexit die hards: they cannot believe that EU does not realise that we are special … that the queues are caused by Brexit … what Brexiters voted for … checks that Faragists wanted to impose on visitors to Britain. Ironic that Faragists get annoyed when they are imposed on us … emergency planning for queues at Dover has now entered the English language … Operation Brock … miles of the M20 turned in a huge car park … Dover is also the port through which 35% of UK trade passes through … UK government allocated £45 from the levelling up fund to fix the problem … that could have been spent on actually  helping rundown parts of the country … will be spent on the chaos Brexit is causing at Dover ….

Nigel is now at the confessional box stage of Brexit. Nothing left to offer anyone apart from boats, banks and stale beer.

Easter was a disaster … coaches turned around and abandoned foreign trips after 24 hours queuing … Eurotunnel Terminal was built on the assumption that UK would be in the EU … Last summer queues of 18 hours … Eurostar stations were build on the assumption that UK would be in EU … some Eurostar trains travel with empty seats that could have been sold … because company could not get passengers on board in time … Easyjet has cancelled hundreds of trips … travel sector is facing significant disruption … It might help if the government had spent the last seven years preparing for what the industry saw coming … Brexiters dismissed all the predictions of chaos as a Remoaner lie … government has built its strategy on the same crazy belief … 

Don Adamson Pip Pip             Medway Delta (Retired)                       Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class

Private Eyelines

Don Adamson’s Brexit Blog

Don Adamson writes his weekly roundup from the Bungled Brexit Bunker in Barnsley.

This week’s homework

One – The Whigs, later Liberals, were a major force in British politics from about 1690 to about 1920. Several factors brought about the decline of the Liberal Party. One was the rise of the Labour Party and extending the franchise to working people. Another was a major scandal about granting knighthoods and peerages to very dubious people, usually this was a financial arrangement. A third factor was financial misconduct by Cabinet Ministers; notably the Marconi shares scandal where Cabinet Ministers awarded lucrative government contracts to Marconi on the basis of Ministers having inside knowledge. Do you see a resemblance to recent events? Is it time for another radical change in British politics? 

Two – In 2010 we got a hung parliament. Labour had been in office for a number of years. They were exhausted and accident prone. It is interesting that the Tories did not win outright but had to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. In 2015 the Tories won an election with a small majority. In 2017 we got another hung parliament in an election that Labour should have won outright. The Tories entered into a very dubious arrangement with Ulster Unionists. In 2019 the Tories won a huge majority in an election that Labour should have won. Last week there were three by-elections where Labour should have romped home. Labour got one seat, Lib Dems got another and the Tories got a tiny minority in what usually one of the safest Tory seats in the country. What is happening? Tories have proved themselves unfit to govern. Labour has been Absent Without Leave since 2010 and flatly refuses to return to work. How are we going to get out of this mess? 

Three – Discuss the following statement – Keith Starmer talks about there being no case for Rejoin and that Britain’s best hope for the future is outside the EU (despite all the evidence to contrary). Starmer is, in fact preparing for Rejoin. It is all part of a cunning plan to deceive Gammons and Flagshaggers. We are in this mess because Tories told (and continue to tell) an infinity of shameless lies. What useful purpose will it serve for Labour leaders to repeat the same discredited Tory lies?  

Read Post-election analysis

Four – Discuss the following statement – Rumours circulate to the effect that a person named in Johnson’s controversial honours and awards has only one qualification for a peerage: This person is Johnson’s illegitimate firstborn. The flaw in this argument is that Johnson cannot count up to one. 

Five – Discuss the following statement: I spent many years being irritated by Irish, Scottish and Welsh Nationalists (alphabetical order) moaning about the English. Then Brexit came along and I began to understand what they were moaning about.

Six – Nigel Garbage claims to have been victimised by the NatWest Bank. Did this victimisation happen because (uniquely among Gammons and Flagshaggers) Nigel Garbage noticed that Brexit has failed? 

Read Brexit has Failed

This week’s quotes 

Theresa May at least had some sense of propriety

… Richy Scumbag travels in private jets and helicopters … outdoing even Johnson … spent £100,000 on travel in April … taken £54,418 from private donors over two month period … 

Environment 

Keith Starmer told Times Radio “I hate tree huggers”… 

Download our song written for COP26 on Bandcamp. Link on You Tube.

Rupert Murdoch’s summer party Starmer attended

… Whatever Starmer is thinking, his appearance at the party seemed as forlorn an exercise as his ‘We are not reversing Brexit’ article for the Daily Express … Brexiters say ‘You cannot trust him’ … Party leaders seem to believe in the power of the press … When Blair travelled to Australia at Murdoch’s behest the Sun was selling nearly 4M copies a day. The News International titles had a combined sale of 10M copies. Today many news organisations have stopped publishing audited figures … Press Gazette concluded that our national and daily papers now barely sell 6M between them … estimates the Sun sells about 770,000 against the Mail’s 780,000 … when Blair won his landslide the Times was selling about 800,000, is now about 216,000 ‘’’ the Telegraph has gone from just over 1M to 188,000 … Newspaper circulations have been in decline for a long time, but the rate of collapse is accelerating. In 2010 the Sun was selling 3M copies daily, the Mail 2M … Mail stuck with May to the end and was messianic in defence of Johnson … it hectored the Tories into electing Thick Lizzie and perpetuated the fantasy of her competence … It seems that no PM can take office without making early contact with Murdoch, Rothermere or the Telegraph … it is hard to escape the impression that the meetings are about taking orders: cut taxes, emasculate the BBC … nowadays people get their news elsewhere  … notably social media … and publications that are increasingly seen as more reliable sources. Private Eye sales are growing fast as newspapers are sinking … sells around 250,000 a fortnight … more than Telegraph, Times, Express FT, i, or Guardian can manage on an average day …  Eye breaks important stories and exposes corruption … Fleet Street is slow to follow up … Symbiotic relationship between the Tories and the right wing press will face biggest test in the coming year. Their futures depend on it. If they fail Tory Party could face oblivion, newspaper proprietors could lose billions … Starmer should not have attended Murdoch’s party … 

Private Eyelines
Private Eyelines parodies the populist media. Click to read.

World renowned economist Adam Posen 

… described Brexit as the only time a country declared a trade war on itself … it is getting worse … expanding it to an immigration war on itself … these mistakes are going to have longer lasting effects … Five Prime Ministers and five governments in seven years … That is Italy like territory, perhaps not quite Argentina (COMMENT: You might not think it now but pre 1920 Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world).  … we have had volatile and irresponsible economic policies … excessive austerity … Brexit  … productivity problem … undermined credibility … less faith in the government’s ability to deliver … costs of Brexit worse than the optimists predicted … made inflation worse … red tape …admin costs and supply chains … the UK has become a small economy and must start acting like one … UK is sailing in the wrong direction … NHS is crumbling … education and training are underfunded … it is getting worse … start talking about rejoining … that might seem like common sense but we live in a country where the government thinks such talk is treason … we need to Rejoin, and, most importantly to stop the government’s war on its own country … Britain’s stock market is drifting into irrelevance Bribing the Tories Mantrac selling industrial equipment to Russia long after the Ukraine invasion … Tories accepted £5M earlier this year from  Mantrac’s owner, Egyptian Mohamed Mansour … 

Read Hard Brexit Facts

Sexual harassment 

Tory lawmaker faces ejection from Parliament for groping strangers at a London club …Ex SPAD Daniel Korski … Tory Candidate for London Mayor … groping allegation by TV writer Daisy Goodwin…. she has been contacted by other women with ‘some interesting stories’ … Mayoral selectors suggest that anybody associated with this government would lose to Labour … 6 Weeks is the time it took BBC to respond to allegations of presenter paying teenager for explicit photos … 5 years is the time it took Tory party to  respond to allegations of MP Chris Pincher making unwanted sexual advances … Russell Tillotson, former Tory councillor … was, on 29 June  convicted of four sex offences .. 1984 – 2001 while a teacher at Tonbridge school… The lurid affair of Hew Edwards has raised more questions about the state of British journalism … the young person’s lawyers, published in the Sun, were nonsense and the police ruled out criminal charges… 

Tabloids one month after launch of US websites for Mirror, Express, Irish Daily News … not going to plan … US audiences not flocking to the news brands … New York office engulfed in  a sexism storm reminiscent of 1990s lad mags … absolute shit show … Express online .. Resulted in a potentially expensive shitshow… 

Mutiny in Metroland 

Conservatives despatched Tory MPs from Parliament … Tories’ old heartlands not yet lost but they are becoming contested battlegrounds … in 2021 a Lib Dem was elected MP for Chesham and Amersham … earlier this year Lib Dems took control of councils in commuter towns around London … current polling suggests they could surge from 14 Parliamentary seats to 40 or 50 … a majority in Metroland voted against Brexit, which left a widespread impression that banking and the professions were a low priority for the Tories … rage has subsided but has left dismay … Johnson and his cronies mocked …the drinking, bullying, and sleaze of his administration seemed divorced from modern corporate culture … sewage spills … Lib Dems have used them to signal that politics is now fetid … voters feel overlooked and taken for granted by governments … a sentiment normally associated with poorer constituencies … Richy Scumbag is struggling to reverse Tory fortunes … estrangement may be too far gone to prevent a Tory rout …  the earth is shifting … 

Don Adamson Pip Pip             Medway Delta (Retired)           Saboteur and Brexorcist First Class

Editor’s note : Somewhat spookily, Vera Lynn died on the day I released this song and I got hate mail from the Brexiteers as if I had caused her demise …. oh well ‘Alo Vera charts the story of the Brexiteer with Brexit Buyer’s remorse but who cannot tell his mates down the pub …

Don Adamson is a true patriot – not befuddled by British Brexit mythology.
50 Shades of Sue Grey

50 Shades of Gray

I had a curious encounter with Kevin Gray on Linkedin the other day. Kevin is CEO of Bath Building Society and, as such, I expected a degree of skill not available to the average soul. Kevin was responding to a post about Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership skills and the SNP in general. It transpired that Kevin does not like the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon or Scottish Independence although he is a Scot in England. Not unsurprisingly, Kevin also likes Brexit. But quite surprisingly, given his position as CEO, he had swallowed some of Boris Johnson’s lies. The transcript of the dialogue that follows illustrates just how pervasive the Dunning-Kruger effect is and especially so when one tries to change someone’s mind using online media. This BBC post was the initial trigger for Kevin’s outburst at Nicola. She rightly pointed out that Boris Johnson’s preoccupations with getting Brexit done, childbirth, ovens, fridges etc. had made a considerable impact on Britain’s ability to focus on the pandemic. I have left Kevin’s remarks unchecked in purple. My replies are in red. The entire conversation is exactly as it emerged on Linkedin. No editing etc. Simply reportage.

Kevin’s initial reaction was : “Hhhmmmm. Not so sure about that. If there was one example of where Brexit did actually help anyone it was in allowing the uk goverment to move quickly with the vaccine taskforce and deliver mass vacination ahead of EU states. I suspect Devolution did not help however. Having x4 parliaments/assemblies to deal with in the UK must surely have slowed up the response? Much as Nicola was a great politician, I would personally not give too much air time to any nationalist whose aim is only to deliver further and much more serious division in the UK.”

Given Kevin’s senior position, I felt no need to hold back and I replied thus:

“I’m afraid this is incorrect Kevin. We could always have done this as an EU member. The truth will come out in the COVID inquiry. Do remember that the vaccine was developed by foreign scientists. In desperation, Johnson used buying power to snaffle up the supplies. Speaking as a scientist, I must remind you of the short-sightedness of stockpiling medicines in a GLOBAL pandemic. This strategy sprang from Johnson’s desire to mask Brexit carnage with the COVID cover up. The result was a “Britastrophe”. Please check with scientific facts if you don’t believe me.” 

To cheer him up and keep it a bit lighter I sent him a copy of the song I wrote in 2020 to epitomise the word Britastrophe:

Kevin was undeterred :

“Don’t get me wrong… we were ill prepared for the pandemic and the preps and early actions were inadequate. I’m pretty sure the enquiry will recognise that. Nevertheless, I’m pretty happy that early political action to stockpile and make early orders might have protected my friends, family, neighbours and their relations and friends in the UK. When it comes to avoiding death of my loved ones…I’m happy to jump the waiting list. We steal nurses from the third world ‘day in day out’ for the NHS so no new low standard applied there. I can’t see how being in the EU would have made a positive difference to the outcome for the UK quite frankly. I also think that SNP will find any cause to justify further separation, angst and years of pain in these islands that will be far worse than any political split from the EU. Some of us are Scots with families divided by politics on this matter. The SNP have hardly covered themselves in glory with their running of the NHS in Scotland for oh so many years after all. Now… an EU wide future plan including with the UK involved would make a lot of sense.”

I decided to challenge the basis of his competence. I am quite sure that Kevin is a competent CEO of a building society, but not so sure about this matter of science :

“Kevin, I imagine that you are NOT a biologist, epidemiologist or similar. As I said, your first statement was demonstrably wrong and the stockpiling of medicines is not a victimless crime. I’m quite disappointed that a CEO can have so little systemic thinking.”

Kevin defended himself again : “We sadly live in an imperfect world where states do not have equal resources or peoples have access to the same levels of health care. I agree that stockpiling vaccine was not victimless but the NHS holds drug stockpiles as part of their business as usual. British citizens benefit from the NHS hiring foreign health workers, often at the expense of others’ health care. It’s not right… but the primary duty of the UK government is to protect UK citizens. Same elsewhere. The UK government was following the preps for the wrong pandemic and clearly failed to implement lockdown as quickly as it should have. They failed to see what had worked in Asia to control SARS. That undoubtedly cost lives. I still cannot see what difference being in the EU would have made though. Happy to be put right on that point. The seeds of our slow initial response were sown decades ago. The next pandemic could be far worse so let’s hope the learning is swift.”

I decided at this point to put some external expert support from a Government source and offered him a way out of his fake news and an opportunity to ‘kiss and make up’ online :

“Kevin. Please read full fact : COVID and Brexit. Now you may correct the record on here. People believe fake news so please add a fact check to your original post.

‘Wrong pandemic’ – coughs … 🙂 I won’t embarrass you further on here but you are welcome to an online leaders’ debate.

Re your point ‘Some of us are Scots with families divided by politics on this matter.’ I can help you with the family healing issue. Read my book on Rebooting Britain.

You made two further points : ‘They failed to see what had worked in Asia to control SARS. That undoubtedly cost lives.’

This was not so much a failure, which implies accidental ignorance. This was wilful ignorance. Johnson and Hancock deliberately put infected patients into care homes due to the false narrative of herd immunity and a non-existent protective ring. This cost 40 000 unnecessary deaths. As regards Johnson’s level of attention and focus on the problem, this image sums up his leadership skills in this area :

Brexit Too Little, Too Late
Johnson’s dithering cost lives.

You also said ‘When it comes to avoiding death of my loved ones…I’m happy to jump the waiting list. We steal nurses from the third world ‘day in day out’ for the NHS so no new low standard applied there.’

This too is a false equivalence. I won’t bore you with the details but it is one of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s skills. To learn more read the book. Both situations are deplorable (poaching foreign nationals and stockpiling drugs in a pandemic), but they are NOT equivalent.”

By this time I thought Kevin was probably looking for an equitable way out of the matter, having perhaps wished he had never begun this encounter. He used the well-worn Brexiter phrase in an attempt to find something we could agree about:

Kevin : “Well everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I hope we can agree on that. The truth will out in the end and I’m sure that we may all be enlightened. I’m pretty sure that we can also agree that it won’t be 100 years before the next pandemic.”

I’m afraid I could not let this false equivalence pass for peace either :

“Kevin. Facts trump opinions I’m afraid. When they are put in the scales of truth, facts outweigh opinions.

But you are most welcome to join me on a leader’s debate on ZOOM at your convenience with an invited audience on “Brexit Futures”.

Human intervention has probably guaranteed that it will not be 100 years until another health crisis, possibly fungal and far more problematic, but nonetheless, Brexit will have a deeper impact on lives and livelihoods in the long term than COVID has, save for those killed by Johnson’s careless care home strategy, for which there is no way back for them.

The Brexit impact films are worth a look – all fact checked.”

At this point, Kevin ran away as they often do. I would draw some lessons out from this dialogue ….

Lessons learned

Brexiteers can come from anywhere. Even CEOs and intellectually bright are susceptible to illusions about Brexit. This merely confirms that Brexit is a religion / ideology and we must use strategies that address beliefs and identity change rather than the usual toolkit.

The lies put forward by Brexiteers have been installed like permafrost on some people’s minds. I very much doubt that Kevin is stupid. I imagine he can count money, but maybe not microbes or viruses.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is powerful when a figure of authority is challenged online where position power counts for nothing. I gave Kevin several levels of expertise to help him revise his view that Brexit had helped the COVID vaccine delivery programme but he stuck to his previously held beliefs.

Online Brexorcisms are always problematic. See the reasons why in this extract from Reboot Britain below.

That said, other people watch these online interactions and stay silent. They are sometimes more important than the other person in the conversation. Kevin made himself and his company look pretty daft in this interaction.

I doubt I will be getting a Christmas card from The Bath Building Society … oddly enough Bath voted to Remain. I wonder if some of the good people of Bath are reviewing their local building societies …

Online Brexorcisms
Read the book by clicking the extract.

Brexit bunker

Hunker in the bunker

Don Adamson hunkers down in his bunker in Barnsley for another edition of his insanely great ravings with the incisive edge of a bic razor blade.

This week’s homework

One: In the sunlit uplands of Brexit Tory MPs tell lies shamelessly and routinely. A Tory MP who speaks the truth is not only rare but the object of contempt and ridicule by his mates. Harold Macmillan was, reputedly, physically ill when he learned that John Profumo had lied to Parliament. Does this mean that there was a better class of Tory in the 1960s? 

Two: Are Johnson and Grease Bogg the best that Oxford University can do? If so what light does this shed on Bertie Wooster’s assertion that he was one of the finest minds of his generation? 

Mogg Lounger
Suffer little children.

Three: Discuss the following statement – Nigel Garbage has claimed that there is a lefty woke plot to prevent him from having an account with Barclay’s Bank. As a consequence Garbage may see fit to leave the country. We do not know the actual facts but we do know that anything Nigel Garbage says is suspect. Do we want Nigel Garbage to leave now that he is actually getting real about the failure of Brexit? Personally I would prefer it if the idiots who have not noticed the failure of Brexit left before Garbage. 

Four: Cecil Rhodes was part of the process whereby the British government could distance itself from nasty goings on in Africa. Rhodes worked for a private company and was not a British government official. (Yeah Right). Rhodes was part of the process that led to the outbreak of the Second Boer War. It was during that war that the British developed the concentration camp: an invention that caught on in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Some 20,000 Afrikaner women, children and old men died the concentration camps in South, Africa.

None of this excuses Apartheid but it may explain why Afrikaners bear grudges against the British. Cur Jacob Grease Bogg, recently nominated for a knighthood by Johnson for telling shameless lies to the late Queen, said that the concentration camps were a jolly good idea. The Afrikaners were sent there for their own protection. How many Afrikaner civilians might have been killed in that war if they had not been sent to concentration camps ‘for their own safety’? Does the idea of a government sending a private company to perform dirty deeds in Africa remind you of Putain’s government sending the Wagner Group to Africa to kill, rape and plunder? 

Footnote: The concentration camps in South Africa were under the control of the British Army. There was one camp where conditions more closely resembled decent humanitarian standards. The officer in charge was a Royal Marine. Turn blue Pongoes. 

Five: Discuss the following statement: The Ring of Five Cambridge Spies betrayed Britain for a Soviet Union that had some tattered shred of ideology. Oxford Brexiters have betrayed Britain for the Russian Mafia who are criminals of the worst description. Have the Oxford Brexiters done a FUBAR on Britain beyond the wildest dreams of Stalin; or, for that matter, the wildest dreams of Hitler, Kaiser Bill, Bonaparte and Philip II of Spain?

This week’s quotes: 

Prince Andrew 

Spitting Image show opened on the West End .. Has reached the ‘no reputation to defend stage’ in which he has been joined by Johnson… 

Britain is now an anti Brexit country 

polls confirm this … in the past seven years more than four million people have died … mostly older voters who backed Brexit by 2 to 1 …  almost 5 million have reached voting age and overwhelmingly want Britain in the EU … YouGov polls … for the first year polls were close to the referendumb result …. after that ‘Buyer’s Remorse’ set in … steadily more people say we were wrong to leave … moiré Leave voters give Brexit the thumbs up than the thumbs down … proportion of Leave voters who say Brexit has been a success is just one in five. The number who says they have benefitted from Brexit is even lower…. big public appetite for Britain returning to EU.

Read Strategies to Rejoin

Johnson’s poisonous legacy will continue to cost us 

… for decades … he may be gone but the ruin he has caused will continue … Johnson’s statements churn the stomach … pathetic posturing … bloviating blowhard … Brexit is costing us 5% of GCP every year … almost certainly an understatement … equally useless David Frost negotiated a terrible deal … gave Australia and NA everything they wanted without even bothering to read his brief … added farming to the long list of sectors betrayed by Brexit … these include fishing, manufacturing, food production, financial services education … not a single sector has been helped … built on lies that hurt real people … National Health Service is collapsing, defence cuts on the way, economy is anaemic … shameless charlatan … growth is pathetic, productivity terrible, living standards collapsing …

Johnson asks why have we abandoned the free trade deal with the USA? … USA has no interest in a trade deal with Britain … Johnson could not even get his best mate Trump to bother with one … US business confidence in UK has fallen for third consecutive year …. Brexit cited as the main reason for collapse … Johnson shredded his own reputation as well as that of the country … Johnson’s economically illiterate diatribes…. Department for Brexit opportunities failed to find any … this lying clown beggars belief … his poisonous legacy will continue … MPs voted to censure Johsnon … Most Tory MPs failed to appear … only 7 Tories voted against the report … a crushingly low level of support for Johnson … at the end of Johnson’s career we get the true measure of the man … self obsessed, economical with the truth (to put it mildly) and a coward … his name will not appear on the ballot paper in the by election. He has chosen instead to sulk off into a well paid sunset …

7 years of hurt 

Britain has changed for the worse but not forever … a better country can emerge … 7 years on the full ghastly impact of Brexit becomes clearer by the day … an elite project branded as a great day for the popular will … it was a stupid idea devised by clever people …, campaigned for and wrote into law a disastrous future for the nation ,,, Vanity, a lust for power … chose to conspire for in such a predictably terrible course of action … systematically reduce this country … not since Soviet communism lured middle class hearts and minds in the 1930s has such a delusion gripped a sizable clique within the nation’s elite …  only with the rise of Nigel Garbage, whose malevolent contribution was to switch from abstract polemic … did it become fully apparent how potent the toxic was becoming …  Cameron’s gamble went hideously wrong … more striking is the readiness of its earliest champions to admit that the great project has not worked …

From Don’s bunker to Nigel’s

Nigel Garbage himself has conceded failure … for him the fiasco is the consequence of betrayal not the intrinsic idiocy of the idea … a fiasco it most certainly is … £100B less GDP every year …. Red tape has more than tripled…. Business investment now 31% below pre referendumb trend … manufacturing sector contracted for 10th consecutive month … Larry Summers, US Treasury Secretary, says Brexit was ‘historic economic error … economic consequences of Brexit only one aspect of the damage … UK needs a muscular trade deal with the US and that is not even on the agenda … Gammons can bang on all they like about British exceptionalism … we are smaller, less influential, easier to ignore …. Britain’s representatives are no longer seen as serious people … poisonous culture of resentment, post truth that Gammons turbocharged in 2016 has not gone away … a malignancy that is still metastasising …

Read Join the EU anew

Tories blame not only the failure of Brexit but everything else on imagined conspiracies of ‘liberal elitists’, judges Whitehall officials. BBC, anti growth coalition … shrill betrayal narratives are the refuge of the political scoundrel …  profoundly dangerous … ‘stab in the back’ legend essential to the growth of virulent Nazism in 1930s Germany … matter for serious concern … growing contempt of Tories for core institutions, due process, rule of law … Johnson lied to the Queen … Supreme Court ruled Johnson’s request unlawful … has any modern government been more scornful of the rule of law? … Brexit culture profoundly hierarchical, some Gammons more equal than others … Richy Scumbag focussed on the despicable and futile ‘small boats strategy … 

Suella Braverman Priti Patel
Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and the ‘others’.

Braverman’s strategy is a direct descendant of Garbage’s ‘Breaking Point strategy … denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the United Nations Refugees Agency  … yet such criticism emboldens her to press ahead … believe they are speaking on behalf of the masses … the oldest delusion of the autocrat … Brexit was absolutely the wrong answer … Cumming’s pledge on the side of a bus £350M per week for the NHS was a lie … brutal irony of Brexit … raised expectations of dramatic improvements … in practice debased and diminished the ruling class … British soul has taken a beating … public services are on their knees … polls show two thirds of Brits believe Brexit is a failure … and more importantly open to another vote … Brexit vacuous slogans rather than meaningful government principles … any new government will have to work day and night to restore trust that Johnson trashed … long delayed overhaul of the second chamber and honours system and stricter rules on MPs second jobs and political lobbying ….Brexit experience has been a grim object lesson … loss on a global scale … wake up, get busy, it is later than you think, 7 years of this nonsense is long enough. It is time to win again…

Brexit Migration Algorithm
Brexit Migration Algorithm – sorted … except Richy Scumbag does not want to sort it out.

Labour and Brexit 

Keith Starmer will be challenged to rule out any attempt to rejoin … people around Starmer know that a closer relationship with the EU would be hugely beneficial … joining the euro (an idea that is as economically sensible as it is politically unpalatable) … 20% hit on imports and exports since Brexit … approximately £100B shorn from output …Starmer would have to change the way Britain conducts business … Since May’s tenure UK has tried to pretend that the EU does not exist … ministers refused to listen … arrogant and ignorant … failed spectacularly … they have had enough of humouring the Brits. There will be goodwill but Starmer will be made to work very hard… Labour has jettisoned the baggage of the Corbyn era … it is not just Johnson that helps Labour … Britain is suffering from economic pain that particularly hurts  mortgage holders … Scottish National Party support has collapsed … thanks to PC McPlod and erratic book keeping by the SNP … too much luck can be a bad thing …  Cameron gambled heavily and came across as one of the worst Prime Ministers on record … Labour comes across as a party that that expects to lose rather than one thinking on how best to lose … good luck may bring Labour to power but will not help them govern … growth prospects are lacking, public services are failing … it will be a horrible time to run the country …

Don Adamson Pip Pip             Medway Delta (Retired)                       Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class

The Brexit Iceberg

Promises, promises

To complement our article Hard Facts about Brexit, this article explores some softer facts about Brexit around Rishi Sunak’s five promises now relabelled five priorities, soon to be called five phantasmagorical illusions.  I’m defining hard facts as things having numerical values such as the recent revelation that only 18% of the British population think that Brexit was a good idea.  Still some cling on to the promise of cheaper training shoes the year by 2066. Soft facts are no less important but they inhabit the less quantifiable world.  Robert McNamara pointed out the value of things we cannot easily measure in his famous statement which came to be known as the McNamara Fallacy:

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Immigration can be fixed

Rishi Sunak has amped up the Stop the Boats campaign in order to keep BIR (Brexit Inspired Racism) alive in Britain. Undeterred by a decisive judgement that the Rwanda scheme is immoral, indecent and illegal, Rishi has no place to go other than to waste more of your money taking the decision to a higher court.

Rishi disagrees with the rule of law. Integrity in the dustbin.

Before Rishi’s Stop the Boats campaign, less than 10% of British people cared about immigration. Research from UK in a Changing Europe suggests that Ukraine changed attitudes to migration along with staff shortages due to the exodus of European migrant workers after Brexit. As with many things in public life, perception beats reality. People seem to believe that Brexit solved the problem of migrants, despite there being record numbers of migrants after Brexit.  It’s almost as though Brexit popped a festering boil called migration and now people think we are pimple free. Accordingly, the Tories moved into the tight corner of hardcore racism, by demonising people in boats who are forced to live in hotels by the Government, because the Government refuses to allow them to work. The problem with immigration is three-fold:

1. We have not provided safe routes for asylum seekers.

2. The Home office is hopelessly unable to process those arriving.

3. Our government insists on incarcerating all people seeking asylum in hotels and on boats when the vast majority could become productive members of society who pay taxes. Naturally this antagonises people with feeble minds who don’t understand that this is a deliberate choice by Rishi Sunak.

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God’s waiting room

Even Tory party majorette Laura Kuenssberg questioned the veracity of Rishi Sunak’s claims that NHS waiting lists are falling. Patently they are NOT. It is a dirty LIE. Granted that Sunak said that people waiting two years for treatment are not waiting now. Some of them are dead …

That’s quite a charge ….

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Halving inflation

Sunak may well be able to halve inflation. He needs to do this by early 2024 if there if to be a mini bounce prior to an election. Here is little Rishi’s strategy:

Sunak refuses to negotiate with nurses, doctors, train drivers, public servants yada yada even though public service pay rises do not contribute to inflation. But he manages the perception that he is being tough by doing this.

Little Rishi is instead loading the costs on first time buyers and people with mortgages who may have their houses repossessed. Of course, destitute people don’t contribute much to inflation. Dead people are even better, as they are a net tax input to the treasury.

Food inflation continues but people cannot afford to eat, so that problem is solved.

Fuel inflation is now largely baked into Rishi’s spreadsheet so he may get lucky here. But luck is not a strategy.

That said, inflation control is proving to be stubborn and reaching 5% may well prove impossible unless luck kicks in.

Five promises now five priorities, aka five lies.

Reducing debt

Rishi’s promise aka priority in this area is once again typically vague. When 0.1% came off inflation 10% Rishi claimed a victory. For someone skilled in counting (his own) money. this is a fatal maths error !!! Thanks to Brexit we have record levels of national debt so any decrease would also be hailed as a great success. Truss wiped an uncool £70 000 000 000 off of the value of UK plc thanks to her Kamikaze budget in her experiment in hard Brexit economics. The Tory Fiscal cliff is now unprecedented and the root cause is 13 years of Tory mismanagement and hobby projects such as Brexit which have lowered our resilience to other global effects such as the pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine.

The Golden Growth Goose

Rishi must, of course, be seen to have a go at growth, per his predecessor Liz Truss.  This is why he recently suggested that Britain would be an area of low or no regulation re AI.  He plans to fight America and Europe in the gold rush for jobs in AI … except that this is the war of the worlds scenario that leads to our extinction. See my articles and book on AI and humanity.

Apart from anything else, Britain does not have a workforce of highly skilled people, with many having left the country due to Brexit.  His desperate attempt to hire gardeners and OAPs to do dentistry is at the root of his problems.

Going for growth is also problematic at an ethical level.  Producing more stuff in a world that needs and wants less stuff is morally bankrupt.  We are seeing an end of days strategy from a weak Prime Minister, devoid of ideas, support and soft power in the world.

Learn the skills of Brexorcism here

Say Bollocks to Brexit

Alastair Campbell Mini Clacton

UK Rejoin tour 2023

To mark the 7th anniversary of the Brexit referendum with no visible signs of any Brexit benefits on the horizon, we are embarking on a UK Rejoin tour, to celebrate the benefits of joining the EU anew and to explain the pathways to ending Brexit.  Please support this tour and let us know where you want us to go in the UK.  It has cost us £1000 to put the show on the road and obviously we’ll need travel expenses and subsistence.  Find all the funding options for one-off small donations and more regular contributions at:

UK Rejoin tour

Brexit Central 22 June

We began the tour at Clacton for BBC Question Time on Thursday 22 June.  Despite the BBC’s attempt to fill the hall with a few remaining Brexiteers of Clacton, our experience on the street was quite different.  Hardly anyone said that Brexit was a success and most wanted a return to the EU, now that they realised that they were lied to.  On leaving the town hall, many of the participants at BBQ QT stayed on to listen to us, with some wanting selfies with the Bollocks to Brexit Mini, as they listened to our song of Brexit buyer’s remorse. “Alo Vera – Brexit’s Comin’ ‘Ome” is written through the eyes of a leave voter who now regrets being lied to – watch the whole film – the best part comes at the end !!

Wait for the end ….
One of the guests said that Brexit meant that builders no longer needed safety equipment to go on roofs. Well that’s sorted then !!

Learn the skills of Brexorcism here

We greeted John Redwood with Another Prick in the Mall.

City Hall 23 June

On hearing that Rishi Sunak plans to waste more of our taxes taking Sadiq Khan to court for flying EU flags on his building, we arranged at short notice to flag bomb City Hall in Docklands.  A great crew of insurgents showed up within just a few hours of announcing the event.  We delivered a keynote address around our ‘Brexit Iceberg’, a musical performance of our protest songs and engaged loads of young people.  Out of several hundred people we spoke with only two people insisted that Brexit was a good thing although they declined to explain why.

A marvellous team of people showed up to support Sadiq Khan.

Future dates

29 July The Cinque Ports Tour – From Sandwich to Hastings calling at all stops.

7 SeptemberThe Brighton Belle – From Seaford to Brighton where we will give a keynote event at The European Movement in the evening.

30 September – 04 October The Northern Powerhouse – from Barnsley to Manchester and Liverpool, taking in Norfolk and Lincolnshire.

Where next for the UK Rejoin tour?

We have had enquiries to go to Yorkshire, Dorset, Ireland, The West Midlands, Northumberland and the West Country so far. If you want us to visit your city, town, village, front room or bathroom, follow these steps:

Get in touch via reboot@brexitrage.com

Assemble a few people in your area who would be able to act as a reception committee and organise locally.

Raise some funds to help cover our costs by whatever means possible.

Support the Rejoin tour

Check our Britastophe tour out

Ever felt you have been taken for a fool? The wonderful work of Cold War Steve.