Stronger In
Lots of passion in today's newspapers about the EU referendum, but I especially like the following articles by Euan McColm in Scotland on Sunday and Nick Cohen in The Observer.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/euan-mccolm-i-want-my-country-back-from-nasty-nationalists-1-4158434
Euan McColm: I want my country back from nasty nationalists
Nigel Farage jokes with supporters aboard a Ukip tour bus near the Houses of Parliament. Picture: Daniel Leal-Olivas/Getty
By EUAN MCCOLM - Scotland on Sunday
It is, by any standards, despicable. It’s hateful, inflammatory and dishonest. It’s perfectly Ukip. A poster unveiled by the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, last week showed a long queue of refugees – non-white, of course – crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border in 2015. Printed in red across the image are the words “breaking point”.
Posing in front of the poster, Farage allows himself the flicker of a smile. He’s pleased. This, in Farage’s little world of little men, is smart political campaigning.
The message is clear: if you don’t want your communities swamped by brown people, vote to leave the EU. This is racism. And if you wish to argue it isn’t, then I’m going to believe you’re a racist.
Take your country back from those who seek to destroy it
By Nick Cohen - The Observer
Vote Leave has poisoned rational debate by endorsing paranoid populism, the spirit of our age
Vote Leave has poisoned rational debate by endorsing paranoid populism, the spirit of our age
Michael Gove dismisses every informed objection. Photograph by Jack Taylor/Getty Images Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
The English air is as foul as it has been at any point since my childhood. It is as if the sewers have burst. The Leave campaign has captured the worst of England and channelled it into a know-nothing movement of loud mouths and closed minds. It is easy to mock, but essential to fight, because the new right could win a victory that may never be reversed.
If you do not want to be saying: “I want my country back” for the rest of your life, my best advice is not sell it out on Thursday.
You get a measure of the unashamed charlatanry of the men who ask for your votes, if you remember that the leaders of the Leave faction once posed as compassionate conservatives. Not so long ago, Boris Johnson wanted an amnesty for illegal immigrants so that frightened people living beyond the rule of law were not “lost in the undergrowth”. That was when he was mayor of liberal London. Now Johnson is using fear of immigrants as a crowbar to force his way into Downing Street and Nigel Farage can ruffle his pupil’s hair with paternal pride and tell Channel 4 News he “couldn’t be happier” his boy is following “my strategy”.
The English air is as foul as it has been at any point since my childhood. It is as if the sewers have burst. The Leave campaign has captured the worst of England and channelled it into a know-nothing movement of loud mouths and closed minds. It is easy to mock, but essential to fight, because the new right could win a victory that may never be reversed.
If you do not want to be saying: “I want my country back” for the rest of your life, my best advice is not sell it out on Thursday.
You get a measure of the unashamed charlatanry of the men who ask for your votes, if you remember that the leaders of the Leave faction once posed as compassionate conservatives. Not so long ago, Boris Johnson wanted an amnesty for illegal immigrants so that frightened people living beyond the rule of law were not “lost in the undergrowth”. That was when he was mayor of liberal London. Now Johnson is using fear of immigrants as a crowbar to force his way into Downing Street and Nigel Farage can ruffle his pupil’s hair with paternal pride and tell Channel 4 News he “couldn’t be happier” his boy is following “my strategy”.
