We aren't engaged in a referendum, we are engaged in a civil war

It is fairly clear that this referendum has become less and less about the EU and more about a struggle between two ideas of what we want The United Kingdom to be. We are in fact engaged less in a democratic discussion about the merits or otherwise of Europe and more in a protracted, non-violent (until yesterday), civil war about the direction that we as a society wish to go. Whoever wins this gets to choose the direction of travel.

As with all tipping points, this "war" represents a fork in the road. If Boris, Farage and Brexit win we turn hard right and disappear down an un-charted track to pursue an agenda of isolationism, anti-immigration and possibly trade with the people who live in the woods - but only if we can find them. They say it's about engaging with the outside world but frankly, for the most part, they are lying. They are set on a course and a very dangerous one indeed. One that will get us entangled in the thicket while kidding ourselves that at least we have 'rid ourselves of that expensive and undemocratic tarmac' that gave us the chance to turn off it in the first place.

Brexiteers are like the adventurers who set out in the 16th Century in search of the mythical golden city of Eldorado. They have convinced their followers that there is a "better" place out there. One of fabulous riches, which will instantly solve all the problems of the modern Britain that they appear to hate so very much.

It's a reckless endeavour and one that anybody with an iota of sense could see is doomed from the start. Still, if they want to go on alone well fine. Perhaps we could loan them an island somewhere and let them create their thatched cottage and no foreigners idyll. We could give them Ascension perhaps and they could shout their angry platitudes at the fish.

If, on the other hand, Remain wins - we get to stay on the open road. The great highway drifting on. It has its dangers and its flaws yes - a little dull yes and we have to pay the toll every now and then - but it's broad and full of promise and rich with opportunity.

What do you want from life? I can tell you what I want. I want my kids to be happy and safe and grow up in a prosperous and progressive and contented world. There are other things I want sure - that book deal - a bigger car - the odd cigar and a cellar stuffed with fine wine - but the thing that matters to me most is that which I want for my children and all of our children's futures.  And for that to happen we need these spits of land on which we live to prosper and be contented and decent liberal places.

Buried just beneath the veneer of patriotism in the Brexiteer narrative is a deep and dangerous loathing of progress. Progress is what has made our very species thrive. It is what has made Britain such a great place to live. The UK of today, as I have said so many times, is far better than that of the past. There is not a single country in the history of this world that has improved itself by giving into the darkness of hate and prejudice and that, frankly, is the foe we are fighting. To win this civil war we must vote Remain.

Sun Tzu and the Art of Brexit - a Who's Who for the Undecided Voter

Dear Undecided Voter

I hate open letters don't you? They seem a little smug and a little patronising and if you're already feeling patronised by my opening sentence well that is nothing compared to the arguments being foisted on us all from both sides in the Brexit debate. We are told by the Brexit crowd that if we Remain we will have our NHS privatised or that we'll be overrun by billions of Muslamic jihadists intent on enslaving us under Sharia Law or even - a new one on me today - be dragged into a third world war. Conversely, Remainians have argued that if we Leave our economy will collapse, Scotland will quit the UK, that we will be eaten by giant jelly fish, that our babies will be privatised and that our farming industry will cease to exist and be over-run with wolves. 

I exaggerate of course. But not by that much. Project Fear works both ways.

Disclaimer: I'm for Remain and the reason for that is simple. I believe in Unions. I believe that we work better in common enterprise with our friends and neighbours. I believe in the Union of Great Britain and the European Union for exactly the same reasons. Both have given us peace, prosperity, security and far more opportunity than if we had stayed on the fringes of things staring at our navels. Unions work. We didn't win WW2 or WW1 alone - we won them in partnership with our allies. The United States is a Union. They haven't done badly, have they?

Anyway, those arguments are all for another day, because when it boils down to it, many undecided voters will probably make their judgements for good or bad based on nothing more than on who backs which side. So, shall we take a look?

The Remain camp is, I regret to say, a little worthy and dull. A man who used to run Marks and Spencer, The Bank of England, The Treasury, The IMF, OECD, David Cameron, the Labour party, the Lib Dems, Greens, all our key allies, NATO, The US President, The US State department, the British Military Top Brass, Peter Mandelson and Emma Thompson have all fairly unanimously argued that leaving the EU would damage our global reputation and economy. These guys might well be among the most important institutions (and Emma Thompson is undeniably a key UK institution) affecting our nation and its security but they're putting the case in fairly beige terms and what Stay lacks is sex appeal and colour.

Not an accusation that could be levelled at the so-called Brexiteers. Leave is like a psychedelic smorgasbord of talents. Sure, there is the fairly overwhelming support for it in the mainstream media. The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Times and The Express and Telegraph are all clearly Leave or Leave curious but for every dull Simon Heffer article it also offers some of the most colourful, eccentric and yes enigmatic folks in public life: Boris Johnson, Winston Mckenzie, potty Kate Hoey, Michael Gove (OK not Michael Gove), the disgraced former Defence Minister Liam Fox and serial idiot Gorgeous George Galloway. Oh yes and that nice Mr Farage.

If "The Brexiteers" was a 1970s British sex romp comedy, you might even pop along and watch it.  I don't particularly like those people and would question Johnson's motives in particular, but they are not wholly unsavoury characters and I can and do understand their appeal. But they're not all mad swivel eyed loons.

Oh yes, that brings me to the mad swivel eyed loons.

Both sides have them, but Leave has them in such abundance that there's practically a two for one offer going on. Where to start? The Neo-Nazi  Britain First that spends much of its time co-opting the memory of the murdered soldier Lee Rigby, despite his family pleading with them not to. Or the BNP. Remember them? Or that lovely Marine Le Pen and her Front National party. Or those delightful rape apologists at The Socialist Workers Party. Or the EDL. Or the sane and rational David Icke - who wants to quit the Illuminati Bilderberg led EU and have British lizards running our affairs instead. Or The English Nationalists. Or Greece's thuggish Golden Dawn. And then - most worryingly of all, in my opinion at least, Vladimir Putin and his considerable propaganda machine. Leave campaigner and part time cat George Galloway is in fact a paid employee of the Russian State and thus never criticises it. Why does Mr Putin want Brexit? Simple. Because a stable and successful EU is perceived as a threat to his muscle flexing and regional ambitions. He would like nothing more than the collapse of Europe.  Brexit would do Putin a favour.

And finally and most interestingly of all - there are the other Brexiteers - lurking in the shadows. The ones who you have probably never heard of. The rich boys and free marketeers - the real engines behind this referendum. Chief amongst these is the mysterious "Taxpayers Alliance".  An anti-NHS, anti government, anti minimum wage and workers rights, low tax super rich 'campaigning group' of right wing entrepreneurs funded by billionaire Monaco dwelling, Times Rich List bothering Peter Cruddas. Why would a super rich individual who spends most of his time in Monte Carlo and Antibes be concerned about "British sovereignty?" Curious.  Vote Leave's Director Matthew Elliott is the former head of this group and if you are a rich entrepreneur with off shore accounts and a palace on the Riviera, you might, quite rightly agree with their agenda. If you are not, then frankly these people are no more your friends than Vladimir Putin or Marine Le Pen - but worryingly - and it does genuinely worry me - most people who plan to vote Brexit are blissfully unaware of the people behind it. The agenda is far from transparent.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu writes that "if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in battle." I would add that as the 23rd of June approaches, it is equally important to "know your friends." 

We failed to get rid of Rhodes so let's pulverise Parliament Square instead.

Demands to remove the statue of racist Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes have fallen at the second hurdle, disappointing many of those who wish to whitewash, edit and censor our history - but don't worry! London alone is still dotted with statues of people who really don't deserve to be there in modern Britain. Let me take you by the wrecking ball and lead you around Parliament Square. 

Jan Smuts. Smuts by name, tosser by nature. PM of South Africa twice. A vocal supporter of apartheid in its earliest form with views on race and segregation that might make even Britain First blush. Smite Smuts now.

David Lloyd-George. WW1 Prime Minister and womaniser who helped draft the Versailles Treaty which led inexorably to the terrible sequel. When that war came he was chief among those wishing to appease that nice Mr Hitler, who he called "The George Washington of Germany." Clearly sulking when nobody asked him to save the nation a second time against his BFF, his general pessimism and unpatriotic beastliness in the early days of the Second War led to Churchill calling him The British Petain. Liquefy Lloyd-George!

Abraham Lincoln. Emancipator of slaves. Great American hero right? WRONG! Lincoln was more concerned with economic realities than the cruelties of slavery - his taking up of the black cause was more to do with self promotion, political expediency and a place in the history books than pretty much anything else. Also a rabidly pro-colonisation, segregationist who wanted to build an American Empire in South America. Atomise Abe!

Robert Peel. Created the Metropolitan Police to crush honest criminals going about their daily criminality. British PM during the Irish Potato Famine and thus indirectly responsible for many of Sinead O'Connor's post "nothing Compares 2 U" work. Murdering scum! Pulverise Peel.

George Canning. Prime Minister. First seat was a rotten borough and the bad start just kept getting worse. Didn't like the French. Or liberty. Attacked and destroyed Copenhagen. Robbed India of its wealth. And as for his views on the Scots ..... well put it this way - he wouldn't get a Christmas card from Nicola Sturgeon. Can Canning!

14th Earl Derby - Tory! Went to Eton! Tory SCUM! Dynamite Derby!

Gandhi - an absolute bastard to his son. Wrote nice letters to Hitler. Religious nut-case. Did nothing at all for the beef industry. Grind up Gandhi!

Nelson Mandela? Terrorist! Encouraged the Spice Girls. Sent Christmas cards to Gaddafi. Er..... NEXT!

Finally. The real villain of the piece. Responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in WW2. He gassed the Kurds and the Russians. In fact he was a long term and enthusiastic advocate of chemical warfare. He could be anti-semitic. He was at the helm and actively fought to maintain a huge and unethical Empire. He blew up the French navy. He said rude things about Muslims. Racist! He nearly converted to Islam. Quisling! He hated the idea of a European Union. Kipper! He longed for a European Union. Leftard! His son was an alcoholic. He ruined Simon Ward's nascent acting career, he kept changing sides politically and he had a macaw (animal abuser) which he taught to swear. He also oversaw the burning of a masterful painting by Graham Sutherland of one of our greatest Prime Ministers, so you can add vandalism to the list. 

Thing is. Apart from the odd monument honouring "War Animals" we don't put up many statues nowadays and I for one think there's a good reason for that. Statues are there to urge respect for state appointed paragons and as Brecht says in Galilleo "unhappy the land that is in need of heroes." Human beings who reach great office are not superheroes, they are people lost in time. As our democracy has matured we have come instinctively to realise that. Time moves on and judgement quite rightly alters with it, but if we seek to exorcise the past, or blow it up, or melt it down we end up with a sanitised and impoverished present. That Santayana epithet:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

is a bit of a cliche, but like many great cliches it is true.

Bowie and Me. A sort of love story.

In the late seventies my older sister bought the Bowie compilation album ChangesOne and played it until the grooves on the record ran shallow. My musical influences had not extended much beyond Ken Dodd and Pinky and Perky at this point, but I was immediately smitten. His voice seemed to come from a different planet and the picture of him radiated a sort of warm, handsome cool that had echoes of the Hollywood greats - while at the same time being slightly unsettling - a kind of menacing handsome. Those mismatched eyes, the too thin cheekbones, the faraway look. When my sister got tired of the record, as teenage girls are wont to do, I lifted it off her and have played it ever since. If you listen to those songs now, from the warm buzz of the title track to the crazyweird John I'm Only Dancing and the sublime rock and roll number Suffragette City, you get a seminar, not just in the otherworldliness of early Bowie but of his incredible eclectic range and famed unwillingness to get pegged down. The distance between Hunky Dory and Golden Years is just five years, but in musical terms it outstrips anything most pop artists achieve in a lifetime of writing.

As I grew up and the eighties broke, Bowie went mainstream. I didn't mind. I was fourteen when Let's Dance came out and suddenly David was cool and other boys views matter when you're fourteen. Alongside the contemporary releases I began to build up a collection of his back catalogue and sheltered in my boarding school bedsit received an education, courtesy of my record player, that I was most certainly not getting in the classroom. Those bizarre and brilliant Berlin records. Low. Heroes. Hard work at first - especially if everyone else is listening to Wham - but ultimately so much more rewarding. Then Lodger with its yaaaassssaaaasssin world music influences. The soul cool of Young Americans. And with Bowie you didn't just get the music. You got film, poetry, art - the man was a polymath. I learned about Andy Warhol from him. And Laurens Van der Post. And Nicolas Roeg. And Egon Schiele. And Eno. And Philip Glass. And that men could wear dresses. And that Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd were better than what came after. And that you didn't have to give the public what they wanted. And that working class popstars from Bromley could produce lines of poetry every bit as good as Byron or Edgar Allen Poe:

"We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when

Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend

Which came as some surprise

I spoke into his eyes

I thought you died, a long, long time ago."

Fashions came and fashions went and his stock grew with time and not everything he did was brilliant but you could never accuse Bowie of being dull or standing still. He was always interesting. Challenging. Changing. Other heroes faded, David never did. He was never irrelevant.

There's a great line in Kooks where Bowie, addressing his young son Zowie, now Duncan, sings:

"And if the homework brings you down, then we'll throw it on the fire and take the car downtown."

I remember my friend Andy Chappell and I listening to that in our cold Northamptonshire boarding school and him saying to me "If I ever have a son and everything gets too much, I'm going to sing that to him." I don't know if Andy ever did, but last week when my 11 year old found his homework too much I did - and we did - and as we did we listened to Blackstar on the CD player and my son said: "The thing with Bowie is - that the more you listen - the better he gets." 

So thank you David. Thank you for entertaining me and my family. Thank you for holding my hand through broken hearts and teenage angst and failed projects and new horizons. Thank you for educating me, for thrilling me, for teaching me about art and film and music and what it is to be young and what it is to grow old. Thank you for the wayward turns and the fashion tips.Thank you for Blackstar and Rock and Roll Suicide and Win and China Girl and Julie and V2 Schneider and yes - even the Laughing Gnome. You have been much more than the soundtrack to my life and - you have been an inspiration. 

LOL: Bizarre, Paranoid, Email from UKIP's Alan Bigwood to a Potential Christian Voter

In April a friend - tired of Nigel Farage and UKIP bollocking on about Christian values and beliefs wrote to UKIP seeking to find out whether Nigel himself actually went to church. It was a fairly straightforward request (see below). However, in typical style, the reply from UKIP's Alan Bigwood was anything but. His bizarre conspiracy laden ramble of half truth, no truth and downright lie reveals much about a party that claims to be progressive and liberal but is in fact anything but. Between the Marxist conspiracies and Urban myths,  perhaps the most telling thing of all is that Bigwood fails to actually answer the question at all. To UKIP Head Office Z** P*******
To: mail@ukip.org
Hi There It's been so refreshing to see UKIP actively seek the Christian vote and to try to put in place policies that will directly appeal to followers of Christ.  I am a former Conservative voter who became disenchanted with David Cameron after his comments in which he said his faith "came and went". I and my husband C****  are now both actively considering voting UKIP. Can you just confirm for me that Nigel himself is an active church goer and where does he go to church? Thank you and Gods Blessings Upon You Z** and C****

---

UKIP Head Office <mail@ukip.org>	Fri, May 1, 2015 at 7:25 PM
To: Z*** P********* *******@gmail.com>
Dear Z** & C****, Many thanks for getting in touch with us, and for your support. UKIP is firmly in favour of maintaining our culture and our heritage, and an integral part of that is of course the recognition of the huge impact that Christianity has had (sometimes with mixed results, it's true) upon our history for probably the last 1,200 years. UKIP was the only Party to oppose Gay Marriage and although that political battle has been lost in the House of Commons, we are the only Party that is still seriously concerned about the (inevitable) pressure regarding Gay Marriage that will be exerted onto schools and churches, if they don't "toe the line" and start teaching that traditional ideas of Marriage are outdated and "so Last Century". The trouble with "progressives" is that they are so far out in front that they lose contact with everyone else, and they even come to think that it is incumbent on everyone else to "catch up". But when they are leading the way over a cliff, "catching up" is not always a good plan. I must also make the point that UKIP is the only Party that wants to pull out of the EU, and yet the EU's Constitution made absolutely zero mention of Christianity. The architecture of the Parliament building in Strasbourg was deliberately designed to represent the Tower of Babel, signifying "unfinished business".  This isn't some zany conspiracy theory.  The EU is quite open about it and makes no concealment of that.   Man is in charge, not God. They even point out the scaffolding bars (part of the structure) winding around at the top, ready for the next level, should Man choose to go up another storey. The EU is secular, Marxist in origin, and a self-serving Customs Union.  One small  (actually large) example:  the West African (native) fishing industry in countries such as Mauretania, Senegal etc has pretty much been wrecked. Corrupt Governments all down the coast have sold off their Fishing Grounds to the EU Armada, which comes along, sweeps the seas clean, and disappears again, leaving a raped wasteland. The local fishermen are left standing open-mouthed on the seashore. Teach me to fish and I will live forever? I am not sure what church Nigel attends but he often confirms his Christian belief. Please see the attached 2015 manifesto.  The full 76-page version can be viewed at the UKIP website www.ukip.org Regards Alan Bigwood UKIP Head Office

VE Day: Time To Stop Remembrance Of War And Celebrate The Legacy of Peace Instead

In the drawer next to my bed I have a plastic bag with my father's WW2 campaign medals in it. Given that I'm only in my mid forties this makes me fairly unusual I suppose. Indeed, growing up I barely knew anyone my age whose Dad had fought in the war and this was both a great source of pride and fear. Invariably the fear triumphed over the pride. Throughout my childhood, I had a recurring nightmare in which he was taken away to war again and didn't come back. My Uncle Charles was still in the forces in those days and had lost an eye and his sense of taste and smell at Tobruk, so it didn't seem so idiotic to imagine my Dad re-enlisting in the event of what felt, at the time, like the inevitable coming WW3. 

All of his closest chums were army chums. There was Tod, a fellow Sapper who had lost both his legs to a land mine and would take his artificial ones off and merrily throw them aside to go swimming; there was my godfather, Richard, who had won an MC in Italy and there was the irrepressible Basil, who had gone out with the BEF in 1939 and been lifted off Dunkirk beach in 1940.

Get them all together and there would be curry (Indian army officers) a bath full of booze and a cacophony of laughter. They were the most closely bonded, glorious, individuals I have ever known. They had seen adventure and seen death, they had feared death and often been half bored to death but they had all come through it together - and most importantly survived. They were kind, worldly and very, very funny. The very best vintage Englishmen.

As a boy, I would dress up in bits of Dad's old uniform and put on his Sam Browne belt and wage wars in my bedroom with plastic soldiers in which we the British always won and the grey little Germans were inevitably annihilated with toy building bricks and pillows. I would interrogate him for stories and always be a bit disappointed with his response.

Most disappointing of all was his insistence that he had never actually killed anyone. My father, a Royal Engineer, had been a forward intelligence officer, tasked with going ahead of his division and literally seeing how the land lay. It was dangerous work, but the key was stealth. He had dozens of stories of hiding in ditches, or meeting members of the Italian resistance, or holding his breath just yards from German troops - but boys of ten raised on Where Eagles Dare don't want that. They want their Dad to have blazed a machine gun, blown up a castle and taken out half the SS. 

Just once did he come literally face to face with the enemy. While trying to find a good crossing point over a river he looked up and saw a Wehrmacht officer on the other side doing just the same thing. Dad confessed that his instinct was to sneak away, but just then the enemy soldier saw him and so he pulled his gun and took a quick pot shot before running frantically away. Unable to sleep that night, he tossed and turned in his canvas bed, half hoping and half fearing that he had killed another human being. That snapshot, I suspect, is what real war was and is like for most people in the thick of it.

My father was a Tory of the old school. Pin striped suit and military tie, he would often have a far away look in his one eye and despite his fairly decent war record would always insist that he had 'done nothing'. He only wore his campaign medals once and that was in 1995 when he and his old pals marched down the Mall. He didn't like show offs and was suspicious of 'men wearing gongs'. He loved Britain but confessed often that during the war itself he had little time for Churchill. 

He was also firmly pro-European. He had fought for it after all. Dad loved Italy and Italian cars and food and wine - and women. He believed passionately in the EEC and campaigned for it. In fact that was a fairly consistent theme among his group of friends. There are those who say we only entered for economic reasons but that wasn't how he saw it. He would often say how lucky I was to be the first member of the male line in three generations not to have fought in a war. I was. I am.

All of those men are dead now. My father went when I was still in my twenties and his dear buddies faded away within just a few short years of each other. Am I proud? You bet your socks I am. And that is why, increasingly, I feel it is time to call the official commemorations of it all a day. 

You see, these celebrations, whether VE Day, or D Day or even the Blitz no longer have much to do with the people who fought, or suffered, or came through - or didn't. It has been appropriated by the media, the politicians, the pundits, the near right and the far right. Take Farage, a man who to the best of my knowledge has no family at all who participated in either war. How did he spend the election day morning? Posing by a war memorial for photographs. What is the implication of that? That as a nationalist British party UKIP somehow owns a piece of those that saved us from Nazism. No. You don't own the war dead Farage. They were left and right, liberal and Tory, straight and gay, good and bad. They were, after all, not heroes or 'Britons' but human beings. But more than that, what they have left us an extraordinary legacy. The longest sustained period of peace and prosperity in our history. I have not had to go and fight in another pointless war and with any luck the same will be true of my children and grandchildren. 

So after this year celebrating the end of the worst conflict in history let us all move on. We should and must remember it, we should study it and learn from it, but we must remember most of all that its true legacy is not marble columns and fluttering flags - but peace. Time to stop remembrance of war and start celebrating that instead.

Royal baby BREAKING NEWS - your cut out and keep guide to the boring second by second coverage

Newsreader  

We now go live to our Royal Correspondent who is outside St Mary's Hospital. Nicholas/Sue/Dave what can you tell us?

Nicholas/Sue/ Dave  

Yes the Palace have confirmed that the Duchess of Cambridge is currently inside the hospital and given that she is nine months pregnant we can assume that she is probably going to have the baby in the next few hours, or days, or possibly a bit longer. This means that at some point, she will have a baby. The baby will almost certainly be a boy or a girl. If it is a boy there is an extremely high chance that he will be given the traditional title "Prince" whereas if it is a girl she will be known as "Princess". We don't know what the name of the baby will be at this point, but if it is a girl then we can reasonably assume that the baby will have a girl's name, while if the child is a boy he will be called something male. I can also confirm that even if he is a boy he will not be called George. He or she will be the fourth in line to the throne and remain so until something changes at which point he or she will become the third in line or even second or conversely the fifth or sixth. Or perhaps even the seventh. Or eighth - it really depends on how many other children members of the Royal Family have.

Newsreader

And do we have any suggestion as to what emotions the other members of the Royal Family have regarding this labour?

Nicholas/Sue/David

Yes at this point the Palace have confirmed that the Duchess of Cambridge is nine months pregnant and is inside the hospital. We know nothing more than that. In the past Prince William has said that he would love to have a little girl, but that he would be equally happy if he had another little boy. The Duchess herself has never commented openly on the topic, but one might reasonably assume that she will be happy with a boy or a girl. The couple have already had one child, Prince George, so we can say at this point that the new baby will almost certainly not be called George or even Georgina, although the latter still remains a possibility. If unlikely. The news was greeted around the world by other media outlets. Everybody is described as being "really delighted" by the news. Stephen Fry tweeted: "A baby will be coming soon that's nice" while Nigel Farage added - on twitter that it was "really important that everyone realised that we'd all be much better off under an Australian style points based system of labour." David Cameron, unusually perhaps, has backed Farage on this, while Ed Miliband  has added  that he was "very happy for the Royal Family but was trying to fight an election" and that maybe an airport could be named after the baby when it is born. Back to you in the studio Alistair.

Newsreader 

In other news thousands continue to die in ....

Roll Music and Credits.....