Off Topic Political Debate

I doubt that...The French have a decent social security system that ensures you don't fall between the gaps...

I don't see how that relates to immigrants though? The UK laws are more stringent when it comes to granting benefits to immigrants.

The disparity in wealth in this country is also massive, especially in London. I don't recognise Hackney or Stoke Newington, the area I grew up in, it's all estate agents and gastropubs nowadays.

 

Up to 9% of voters are willing to change their minds on the strength of Boris Johnson’s arguments, according to pollsters. Should we be worried about the spiritual leader of the out campaign? Having seen the Johnson phenomenon in gestation, I think so.

By way of explanation, a little history. In the mid-1990s, soon after arriving in Brussels as a Europe correspondent, I was assigned to find the truth about a long-running Euro-myth: the claim that Brussels was to force Britain to call itschocolate “vegelate”. At that time learning about Euro-myths – smaller condoms, square strawberries, fishermen forced to wear hairnets – took up more time than explaining treaty changes.

The myths were usually funny, often absurd, sometimes traceable to a grain of truth, nearly always grossly distorted, or totally untrue. Very often they had first appeared in the Daily Telegraph.

Usually, their creator was Boris Johnson, who had for some years worked as the Telegraph’s EU correspondent, famous in the press room as a shuffling, shabbily dressed fellow, with a sharp intellect, huge ambition, and a talent for constructing myths. That mastery launched his career back then, and will be crucial to his relaunch, commenced this week, as a serious politician and Conservative party leader in waiting. He is older now and feted, but the modus operandi seems much the same.

Then, as now, he hit the ground running, for quickly he was churning out stories of plots being hatched and traps being laid for Britain. There were threats to our pink sausages and to cheese biscuits. So often the myths were about food; Johnson knew that a quick way to win readers and get a laugh was through their stomachs.

As his stories resonated, editors in London pressed their Brussels men (and a few women) to find their own myths. The Daily Star said double-decker buses were to be abolished. But Johnson’s myths were always best. The headquarters of the commission was to be blown up due to an asbestos scare.

Then came the biggest whopper of all: “Delors plan to rule Europe” ran a front-page headline in the Sunday Telegraph in May 1992, just ahead of the Danish referendum on the Maastricht treaty. Nobody could follow that except to say it was untrue, and based on thin ideas floated at a casual briefing, but denials came too late for Danish voters, who said “no”. Many attribute that to Johnson’s story.

Rebutting a Johnson myth was a thankless task and the commission itself was powerless to fight back “because what we said wasn’t funny”, as one spokesman put it at the time. Refuting the condoms story, one spokesman resorted to profanity, telling the Sun it was “bullshit”. “Otherwise,” he said, “I’d never have got my point of view in.”

Johnson’s half-truths created new reality, as I discovered while trying to untangle council directive 73,241, which set out rules on quantities of vegetable fat versus cocoa fat. Because Britain used more vegetable fat than other countries, a lowly official suggested Britain call its chocolate “vegelate”: hence the myth. There was no serious plan and no compulsion. It was what Johnson himself might describe as “piffle”.

Then, as now, he was a charmer. We knew he had been sacked by the Times for fabricating a quote, but he endeared himself by admitting that sometimes he “overegged” things. Then he’d deploy that knowing smile, as if to say, well, we all hype scoops from time to time.

The contradictions were glaring, for privately he seemed a man at ease with Europe; and knowledgable about its history. Denis MacShane, Labour’s former Europe minister, recalls crossing the central lobby of the Commons one day accompanied by the historian and Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash. Boris Johnson appeared: “Why! If it isn’t Metternich and Talleyrand,” he said. His father, Stanley, was a senior European commission official and an MEP. Boris himself attended the European school in Brussels before Eton. He even tried to become an MEP after leaving his job as a correspondent.

But that was then. Now it seems clear to Johnson that his safest route for moving towards No 10 involves a return to mythology. His exposition of the case for Brexit, published in last Monday’s Telegraph, showed all the traits. He even recycled his myths on “Euro-condoms and the great war against the British prawn cocktail flavour crisp”.

And there was new mythology: the suggestion that Brexit could lead to a second referendum, allowing Britain to negotiate a better settlement from Brussels. The prime minister himself moved to rebut it, but as European commission officials discovered long ago, a Johnson myth is not easily dismantled.

From adjacent desks in Brussels, correspondents witnessed Johnson shaping the narrative that morphed into our present-day populist Euroscepticism. His decision to back Brexit now may well turn out to be a miscalculation, and the idea that Britain is best out of the EU his most foolish Euro-myth of all, but do not doubt that it was ruthless calculation. Then as now, he shows imagination and precision. Remember that in the months to come. Great myths do not create themselves.



More evidence that the pathetic 'Project Fear' title attributed to the Stay camp is just bollocks...

 

I'm just about to build a £2M house so hopefully you are wrong as usual about the housing market.

 

Anyone else see "The Last Leg" on C4 last night that exploded some of the EU myths, although they are more recent ones.

 

Used to make me laugh - I was in meetings where the EU agreed things and certain elements of the media reported totally different outcomes! Mind, so did some of the more radical pressure groups so there was an element of "even handedness".

 

Blimey you were a European correspondent in Brussels in the mid 1990's - bit of a career change moving to iT then

 

You're an insult to the internet.

Go back to Hooters.

 

In your opinion - but I do not need to plagiarise the work of others. Perhaps you should try Hooters, it might stir your imagination into an original thought.

 

Come on guys there is no need to insult each other . We all have our own views . The one thing we have in common is our veins run Yellow .

 

Sorry Brian, but we have lost a lot of posters here because of insults, so I am going to stand up to them.

 

I do understand but as you say we have lost good Watford fans . And it just got silly over things that have nothing to do with football . Plus i dont think that half of the comments would be made if it was face to face . But if you think you are right go for it . I just hate of losing friends that i have never seen (most)

 

I think you are right Brian. The medium of communication we are using makes discussions like this difficult - where you cannot see facial expressions and do not always know how your comments have come over. In a pub somewhere it would be done in a different way. Our political opinions are nearly always the accumulated results of our own personal experiences and are mostly a matter of chance anyway - would I have had my present politics if I had had a different life to the one I have lead ? I doubt it.

 

I try and stay out of the heavy discussions . As most can tell my command of the written word is not as easy as the spoken word , so sometimes it dose not come across as i would like ,

 

It seems to me that us the general population are living different lives to many politicians. In France the socialists are tearing themselves apart. Hollande who has to be one of the worst Presidents the country has ever seen, blows with the wind. Merkel said he didn't know what he was doing and 80% of the population agree. No policies that he holds to, his only thought is staying in office. In Ireland because of their strange voting system, they could finish up with no government and a second election within months. The main people to profit are the Independents, which suggests that despite the rapid growth in the Irish economy, there are many who do not feel the benefit. In the UK we have Farage saying that that UKIP will just focus on immigration. Right, that has always been a one focus party. Howard jumped ship to join Boris and has been left out to dry when Boris changed his stance. IDS moaning about not getting his information from civil servants when he could do what I do and look up facts on the internet. Does he need to have a department tell him what the facts are? My plea would be for people to do some proper research, not take things as true when they see it in a newspaper which has already taken a stance, but look at how government decisions will impact on their lives and will it be for the good of the country as a whole. Before we get irate let's get some decent evidence, and not just listen to politicians, or back a song and dance about our gut feelings. In the end we can only look foolish as our friend did when he said that Scottish independence was a foregone conclusion.

 

Michael Howard put in a very assured performance on the Sunday Politics show today in support of Boris and the 'leave' camp. Cameron denying equal access to information for 'leave' ministers and his personal attacks will do the 'in' crowd no good. His clumsy actions will only secure the top job for Boris, win or lose the referendum.

 

The denial of information is nothing to do with Cameron. It is Cabinet Office convention which prevents the civil service from providing briefing and information for Ministers who oppose Government policy.

 

On the instructions of Cameron. The civil servants also organised the 'support letter' from the CBI which backfired. Yesterday Melvyn King stated many of the heads of business who supported the 'in' camp also lobbied to join the ill-fated Euro.

 

Government policy is to stay within the EU. The role of the Civil Service is to enact Government policy. Therefore it is perfectly acceptable for civil servants not to brief the other side. I daresay you'd be the first to object if we were briefing a Minister who opposed a policy you support - and you would be absolutely right to do so.

 

In the interest of fairness and to not be seen as desperate it would have been better for the civil servants to trust the integrity of their masters, the cabinet ministers. It would have also helped the love-in after the result.

The vast majority of Tory Party members happen to be eurosceptic, they will also decide on the next party leader......

If as I suspect, the remain camp prevail, it will not be the end of the eurosceptics, in fact as the EU is heading in a direction which is alien to the UK's interest it could be argued they are vital to give our government some backbone.

 

Tear up the rule book because you don't agree with the policy you mean? Sounds reasonable.