Bring me sunshine... BRING ME BREXIT
LAKeSIDe Country Club in Surrey is probably bestknown these days as the home of the World Darts Championship.
It was featured in that classic, knockabout episode of The Sweeney, starring Morecambe and Wise, and over the years has showcased everyone from Tommy Cooper to The Two Ronnies.
Lakeside is also said to be the model for Peter Kay’s brilliant Northern variety club spoof Phoenix Nights. If there’s a retro feel about the place, that’s no bad thing. As Michael Parkinson once said: ‘you meet a better class of person down Memory Lane.’
On Sunday night, Nigel Farage topped the bill at a sold-out Brexit Party rally at Lakeside. A full house of 1,600 people cheered Farage and his fellow candidates to the rafters. I only know about it because one of my friends, Robert Rowland, is standing for the Brexit Party alongside Farage in the South east, and was chosen to make the opening address.
you won’t have seen coverage of the rally on the BBC. Or anywhere else, for that matter. The mainstream broadcast media spend most of their time belittling the Brexit Party, when they are not ignoring it altogether. So do the arrogant, professional politicians from the traditional parties, who kid themselves that once Thursday’s ‘protest vote’ is out of the way, it will be back to business as usual.
But out in the country, something remarkable is happening. From the North-east of england to the South-West, people who have never taken much of an interest in politics are flocking to Brexit Party rallies.
They’ve had enough of being patronised, of being dismissed as thick racists who are too stupid to know what they are voting for.
They are throwing their support behind sincere men and women from all walks of life and backgrounds who have put their careers and families on hold to take on the political establishment.
My friend Robert Rowland is a 50-something father-of-four, ex-RAF, who made a few bob in finance. he has never played an active role in politics before. But he subscribes to the philosophy of edmund Burke: all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Robert decided it was time to stand up and be counted.
So have countless other good men and women, who put themselves forward as Brexit Party candidates — from former dyed-inthe-wool Tory businessmen to oldschool Lefties such as Claire Fox.
They have an extensive range of real-life experience, utterly divorced from the narrowly drawn ranks of the careerist mediocrities who inhabit the Westminster bubble.
Farage’s Brexit Party slate is far more diverse than any of the grim indentikit clones on offer from the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems.
They are free from the stench of institutionalised decay and entitlement, which clings to the other parties like a cheap suit — No Change UK, included.
As this column has consistently maintained, this is about much more than Britain’s relationship with the EU. If the political class gets away with stopping Brexit, or watering it down to the point where it is meaningless, we will have ceased to be a proper, functioning democracy.
The Conservatives, under May, and the duplicitous Labour Party, under Corbyn, have lied consistently about their true plans. They never had any intention of honouring the result of the 2016 referendum.
As for the risible Lib Dems, they are neither liberal nor democratic. They hold the electorate in
contempt. Do any of these creeps ever set foot outside their own little echo chamber?
If they did, some of them might begin to realise just how much they are loathed by a sizeable proportion of the population they purport to represent.
For instance, Lakeside sits slapdab in the middle of the South east super-constituency, which stretches from Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire to the South Coast, to the Channel Ports and the London/Kent border.
These are the so-called Tory shires, yet everywhere voters are deserting in droves. At the local elections, the Conservatives even lost control of true blue Guildford.
With opinion polls showing Tory support below 10 per cent nationally, the party faces a wipeout on Thursday. It will be a kicking they richly deserve. From Mother Theresa downwards, few outside the ranks of the Brexiteers seem to have any idea what is happening in the real world.
The Prime Minister’s delusional response to the rise of the Brexit Party and the Tories’ freefall in the polls is to bring back her utterly discredited ‘deal’ for a fourth time and offer still further concessions to Labour, in the hope that she can get it over the line in the Commons. Nurse!
Never mind the Men In Grey Suits, who keep putting off the
coup de grâce. It’s time to send for the Men In White Coats. They’re coming to take me away, ha-ha!
Meanwhile, Tory Remainiacs continue to sneer at those who want a proper Brexit. Amber Rudd and Bunter Soames accuse people of ‘clinging to a comfort blanket of populism’. Dear Pot, love Kettle.
If anyone is clinging to a comfort blanket, it’s those who are scared to let go of the suffocating embrace of the anti-democratic EU.
Meanwhile, that extinct, europhile volcano Michael heseltine complains that Brexiteers have been infected by the ‘virus of extremism’.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Grow up, Tarzan. What’s ‘extreme’ about wanting to live in a truly independent country, which Britain always was until patrician politicians like heseltine dragged us ever deeper into the EU?
Anyway, the ‘extremists’ throwing milkshakes at Nigel Farage aren’t drawn from the ranks of those who voted Leave. Nor are those who refuse to accept the legitimate result of the referendum. you can bet, too, that even if the Brexit Party polls 35 per cent plus on Thursday, as predicted, Remainers will still say it proves nothing. The result will be dismissed as an inchoate scream from ignorant xenophobes.
Some voters might be howling at the moon, but who can blame them? Look at the way millions of traditional Labour supporters in the North are being betrayed by Corbyn’s metropolitan Momentum crowd and full-on federasts like No Brexit spokesman Keir Stürmer and the preposterous Pixie Balls-Cooper.
Corbyn is even coming down in favour of freedom of movement and a second referendum. That should play well in Phoenix Nights country. We can only hope a Brexit Party landslide brings the political class to its senses. But don’t hold your breath.
having done all they can to stop Brexit, Tory Remainers are now moving heaven and earth to keep Boris, the People’s Choice, off the ballot to succeed May. They must be insane. Boris should have got the job after the referendum.
When they’re not polishing their own leadership credentials, Boris’s rivals claim to be worried that he might do a deal with Farage. But if the two most popular men in British politics could put their inter-planetary personalities aside, what would be wrong with that?
BOTh played pivotal roles in delivering the Leave vote in 2016. And both actually believe in Brexit. (Well, I think Boris does, but you never know.)
What’s more, they share an optimistic view of Britain’s future, confident we can thrive in the global economy once we have cast off the shackles of Brussels.
At least, like Morecambe and Wise, they might bring us some sunshine, unlike the remorseless, defeatist drivel we have been force-fed by May and the rest of the political class for the past few years.
But first, at the risk of sounding like Boris, we must cleanse the Augean stables. And that will only be achieved by casting millions of votes for the Brexit Party.
Sorry, but I don’t buy the argument that voting Brexit will let in Corbyn. Labour is thoroughly discredited, too, and has as much to lose at this election as the Tories.
And, anyway, what kind of a pitch is: vote for us because we’re not as rubbish as the other lot?
As Mrs Thatcher said in 1979, people should vote Conservative because they can do better than Labour — not because they couldn’t do any worse.
Maybe a Brexit Party landslide will lead to a long-overdue political realignment and usher in a new breed, like my mate Robert Rowland, who actually have confidence in Britain’s future outside the sclerotic, corrupt, crumbling EU edifice.
This election shouldn’t even be happening. It’s only taking place because of the abject, deliberate failure of the political class to respect the democratic will of the British people, in the biggest vote for anything, ever.
But it affords us a heaven-sent opportunity to tell the out-of-touch Westminster rabble and their hangers-on where to get off.
Don’t waste it.