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Saturday 14 September 2019

Cameron and the Referendum

"I remember exactly how I decided to call the Referendum. Giles and Penny were coming up for a kitchen supper, and Sam had a spag bol on the go. I had cued-up a whole box set of the West Wing, fluffed the sofa cushions and had ordered up three bottles of Rioja, which were nicely chambré.

Then the internal phone went, It was Oliver from the private office. I had sneaked away early (as I often used to do) using my usual trick of leaving an old suit coat on the back of my chair - a trick I learned at Eton to make me appear a girly swot when I was really listening to the Smiths on my Walkman behind Wankies. Oliver had discovered I hadn't done my red boxes again. Boring! In fact I had been looking at brochures for houses to rent for the Summer in Rock. I couldn't wait for the annual hols in Cornwall - miles better than all this politics and government and stuff!

Oliver said I had to make a decision on the EEC thing. Well, if there's one thing I learned from Mrs T it was never to get serious about anything to do with that Brussels lot. Just leave them be, sign anything they sent and pay the money - that way the hols wouldn't be interrupted by pesky phone calls from blokes with funny foreign accents! So I told Oliver to bring the file up and I'd break off my evening to give it full consideration.

It was HUGE. I couldn't read all that! I had a rule that if anything took more than three minutes to read I'd just pretend I'd read it. Well, this was no different. I turned straight to the signature and decision sheet. There were two options, one of which had to be crossed out. I reached into my pocket and called out to the kitchen

'Sam! Heads or tails?'

'Tails' she said - brave girl!

'Right then! Referendum it is!'

'What?'

'Nothing'.

I gave the file back to Oliver in the morning looking a bit haggard, as though I'd been up all night reading. In fact we watched an entire series of the West Wing and drank all three bottles of wine and Giles and Penny didn't leave until 1am!"  

18 comments:

Span Ows said...

surely "not quite whimsy"? :-)

Poor DC has a book to flog, a book that will tank. What agent/publisher in their right mind would advise poor David C to release now?

David and George lied. And lied and lied and lied. If anyone here was a BBC message board dweller you may have seen I praised David and George as the new 'great white hope', long before DC was a leadership challenger. I believed they - the new, young hopefuls - would restore what was, take back the party from liberal wets and become the heir to Saint Margaret. How wrong I was.

Cameron, Clegg, May and most of the current mob are not even centre left: they are further left than Callaghan in the late 70s. Roderick James Nugent Stewart new BBC luvvie says he won't stand against Boris but wants to bring the party back to the centre...he means of course from the right but it is still so far to the left and that's where they all want to keep it, even Boris.

Fuck em.Massive MASSIVE realignment needed.

Stephen J said...

Raedwald, if you are channelling Wodehouse here, stoppit!

Better to channel Frank Richards, if anyone.

Cameron as Harry Wharton, Gove as Herbert Vernon-Smith etc.etc.

JPM said...

His referendum was just a silly General Election gimmick, aimed at the same people as Johnson's prorogation stunt is.

Even he's giving up on this idea of the pretty disembowelment, the neat plane crash, the tidy chemical works explosion and the clean brexit though.

DeeDee99 said...

The funny thing is, by calling the Referendum he thought he'd get rid of Nigel Farage and UKIP and keep us in the EU.

Instead he got 17.4 million voters effectively supporting them and who will now destroy the CON Party if they don't take us out.



DiscoveredJoys said...

I'm interested in Cameron's book. Not for the content which will be as self serving as any other political memoir - but for the softness of the paper and number of the pages.

A few copies from the 99p bin in the bookshop could be cheaper than toilet paper.

Stephen J said...

@DeeDee99:

Aye, in that, he is being emulated by Johnson.

and Nigel hasn't even started yet.

John Brown said...

The fact that Mr. Cameron feels he “lost” the “your chance to decide” referendum and then telephoned President Obama and the EU to say “sorry”, clearly shows that neither Mr. Cameron, nor Mr. Obama, nor the EU are democrats.

BTW, we can thank the BBC for their years of pro EU bias for giving Mr. Cameron and the rest of the establishment the false belief that they would win the referendum easily for if it were not for this bias Mr. Cameron would not have dared call a referendum.

As DeeDee99 reminded us yesterday :

“The old saying is correct "if voting changed anything, they'd ban it."

Anonymous said...

Having read the piece in the Telegraph this morning it seems that Cameron is totally lacking self-awareness and he still doesn't understand the electorate probably because he is part of the establishment who have never in their lives experienced either directly or indirectly anxiety over paying a large bill.

JPM said...

The BBC, for decades, has scrupulously avoided publicising any developments in European Union laws which enhance the rights, freedoms, and protections for ordinary people. It has also presented endless platforms for cynics to lie repeatedly, and completely unchallenged about it.

It also fails to report the biggest news story in the UK, that is, that there is an eleven-billion-a-year industry, the right wing, US/landed-owned press, which has for decades been shoving falsehoods and distortions down the throats of the second most manipulated electorate in the developed world after the US.

But then, the morally degenerate are easily conned. "You can't fool an honest man".

Dave_G said...


Yet more utter bollocks from the much despised JPM.

The BBC, like the rest of the media, are shills for the EU and, far from promoting the 'good things' about the EU (but nothing that I can recount) similarly managed to avoid the BAD things about it - notably their corruption and lack of democracy, their ability to overthrow elected representatives of other Governments (Italy, Greece etc), their betrayal of the voting principle (if you vote the 'wrong way' then vote again (until you vote OUR way)) etc etc.

The BAD about the EU is precisely why the people voted OUT. If there was any 'good' to outweigh the bad then the people would be aware of it.

The bottom line remains the same. We pay far too much for too little and will be offer even less if we remain.

Or perhaps you can explain the CAP for me.......

Unknown said...

Rather interestingly, there are two questions that the Remainers cannot answer:

1.

Anonymous said...

1. What benefits accrue from membership?

and

2. If there are any, are they worth what we have paid for them.

Incidentally, you can't press after the number in a list, can you?

Sackerson said...

It' not silly to decide what country you belong to. It's a stretch of the Royal Prerogative to make us citizens of Europe without asking us - by the same token we might have been forcibly absorbed into Tuvalu or Uzbekistan.

okjoe58 said...

If he wasn't already he is now a pariah, a loser, a fraud, a coward, a poor little rich boy, an example to no-one and a man bullied by his wife. Pathetic, sad man

Anonymous said...

Just a silly old fart, Communut, always had his principles, digging the sprouts, hated the eu, hated his own party but hell he stuck with it, it was better than going out to work innit.

Full of pent up misanthropy, got his kid through unbog standard skool and off up to the place of Cambridge privilege - collectivist one size fits all. NO! stuff that for a game of soldiers this is my boy we're talking about and howz that brothers!
He's hated the common market, hated the eec, hated even more the eu but then, a chance to get out.........nope, shafting the tories is a higher principal it sez in das Kapital.

dave or steptoe, the same stunning stupidity mixed with vaulting arrogance and do as I say not as I do, the same old smelly wellies.

John M said...

Of course the real revelation of this self serving arse's book is how much of a remainer Cameron was all along despite what he said at the time.

It makes you wonder exactly how hard Cameron pressed for changes in the EU back in Feb 2016 despite what he said at the time. Just another EU fanboi as it turned out... another part of the establishment...

Suff said...

Wow JPM we agree on something. The BBC is no longer fit for purpose. So let’s remove it’s (ability to extort ) unique funding and see how it works in a free market. I’m sure like the Guardian, it will find some offshore hedge fund to pay for its losses so it can carry on peddling its bollocks while not paying any UK tax

Anonymous said...

"It makes you wonder exactly how hard Cameron pressed for changes in the EU back in Feb 2016 despite what he said at the time. Just another EU fanboi as it turned out... another part of the establishment..."

about as hard as maybot?