I'll be posting later when my wits and thoughts are collected - at the moment I'm still reeling. I stayed up for the Newcastle / Sunderland results - and when it became clear the picture had changed, snatched a doze and stayed with it. Now I can only say the feeling of lightness as an ugly and enervating succubus has been taken from our backs is wonderful, but with it now comes a duty of responsibility. We must re-weld our people - all our people - back into one nation. We must do it without hate or rancour, and those brave enough to vote Leave are well placed to show their privileged 'Remain' brethren who have either suckled at the dugs of the beast or been its dags how it's done.
I remember the memorial service of Ralph Harris, Lord Harris, at the church in Smith Square just over the way from the EU Kommandantur. God, he would have loved this day. He wrote:
Liberty
carries with it individual responsibilities. Responsibility for
yourself, and hopefully your family and as far as possible your
neighbours. But it does throw responsibility onto our own shoulders.
Well, that's what living means; it doesn't mean shrugging off
responsibility and taking soft options.
I have confidence in my land and my people and that things have not quite yet gone so far that we cannot rescue the greater part. God bless you all.
On this penultimate day I'd like to offer a few reflections and pose a few questions, largely those arising from two events - last night's TV debate, and an unnoticed 10 minute broadcast by Roger Scruton.
I've long admired the work of Roger Scruton, particularly that which I perceived as acting against Totalitarianism and towards the growth of an effective and empowered citizenry. Roger has also long had a view that the purpose of our democratic structures is to homogenise and deradicalise populism; if legislation were enacted immediately on the back of public sentiment, we would have had capital punishment after the murder of Lee Rigby. Roger holds the abilities of MPs and of Parliament in high regard. What I think he's missed is that we no longer trust our MPs, for instance, not themselves to use say the murder of Jo Cox to introduce repressive and Totalitarian measures. MPs are sadly not so well informed or so altruistically disposed as Roger would have them - and we ordinary people not so radical nor so ill-informed that MPs are required to act on our behalf.
So Roger's 10 minute Sunday broadcast ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07flhwb ) against petitions is a diatribe (if one can call such gentle disapprobation) against direct democracy and in favour of representative democracy. People are not capable of making wise choices when given simple binary choices; things are more nuanced, more complex and only our informed and deliberative Parliamentary system is capable of dealing with such matters, including the Referendum, says Roger.
He's wrong, of course. And it pains me to say so. He once valued Burke, and I would direct him back to Burke's little platoons; the smaller the realm of decisions to be taken, the higher the quality of those decisions. The more local the associations, authorities and interests with which we interact, the better the knowledge and the choices. MPs are now a part of a global cabal, a political class that views the world internationally, alongside global corporatism and global finance. They are not therefore well placed to make decisions in the interests of our shires, our towns and metropolii.
And that was demonstrated last night in the BBC debate with a participative audience of 6,000 ordinary people to whom Roger would deny the vote. They were no less well-informed than the experts on the podia, and far better represented the interests of the British people.
Leave or Remain, whatever comes out of tomorrow, I'd always, always trust my future to the votes of all enfranchised Britons whatever their station in life than to a political class no longer wholly trusted or wanted by those voters.
Yesterday I was deeply depressed by two unexpected knockbacks - the murder of Jo Cox, and UKIP's poster. It was a real Churchillian 'black dog' down. So, I did the only thing that works in these circumstances - stayed off the sauce, drunk gallons of mineral water and sweated it all out in positive and productive labour, with an aspirin last thing and a good night's sleep.
Now today I'm growing angry at the exploitative and immoral use being made of this young woman's death by the Establishment - a grubby exploitation that will befoul the Commons today with deceit and emotional blackmail. But there's nothing we can do except note that the ordinary working people so despised by the Establishment are not so stupid not to see what's going on. My hope is they'll do their hedgehog trick - keep schtum, lie to the pollsters and vote 'Leave' in the privacy of the polling booth.
As for Nigel and that poster, I'm concerned. Concerned, as Mike Smithson suggests, that Thursday may become a national vote on Nigel and not on the EU. And the poster I think was a mistake. The message was we don't like foreigners, not that we put our nation and all its people before others.
Well, we must KBO. And if Friday doesn't bring the result this nation needs, we'll still KBO; if the corrupt cabal of unelected crooks in the Berlaymont think they have a monopoly in repeating referendums until they get the right result, they underestimate British tenacity.
God bless and speed all, and perhaps (given the nights before Crecy, Agincourt, Waterloo and D-day) a prayer for moderate rain on Wednesday night; the 1664 BOCP has "Send us, we beseech thee, in this our necessity, such moderate rain and showers, that we may receive the fruits of the earth to our comfort and to thine honour". Amen.
