Brexit Tories ‘cannot be trusted’
Joy Johnson, Friday, June 10th, 2016As soon as the EU Out campaign was dubbed BREXIT you could hear broadcast journalists salivating with unadulterated pleasure. It’s a word that demands emphasis.  The Remain campaign without an equivalent fizz didn’t stand a chance.
When the In/Out referendum was called journalists at first gave the impression that it was all so tedious. Ending stories with a stifled yawn: “Just another three months to go” they’d say in that world weary way of those that had seen it all before. Only of course they hadn’t. This was seismic and journalists were eventually shook up.
It was redolent of how some journalists approached the Scottish Independence Referendum until the polls began to suggest a possible SNP win, and then they raced out of their Westminster safe havens and rushed up to the Scottish borders.
There was a great deal of excitement on Scottish streets that became contagious with endless reporters on pieces to camera signing off with; â€it’s too close to call’.
Only they were wrong. The polls were wrong.  The excitement generated didn’t transfer to the polling booth. And while the â€Better Together’ won – how they won exacerbated Labour’s forthcoming destruction.
The Tories wiped out in Scotland meant Scottish Labour fronted the campaign. Despite defeating Scottish independence, by sidling with the Conservatives in support of the Union, Labour who were already losing its core working class vote have subsequently been annihilated.
No wonder the Labour leadership don’t want to appear on the same platform with Tories on the EU referendum. It’s not just about base politics. It’s about a Europe where workers have rights enshrined in law.
The referendum called by a Prime Minister who calculated that he had to appease his Tory Eurosceptics and win back voters who were attracted by UKIP, has proved to be a massive miscalculation.
Presumably Cameron must have thought winning a Tory majority government for the first time since 1997 meant his persuasive style would save the day. Maybe come June 24th it will but right now a win is looking flimsy.
So flimsy that the former Prime Minister, John Major, has come to Cameron and Remains’ rescue by letting rip with accusations that are astonishing in their ferocity.  He was angry he told Andrew Marr that the British people are being â€misled and deceived’. Vote Leave, he said, had lost the economic argument and were now â€veering’ towards immigration, where; “their campaign is verging on the squalid”.
He spat out venom on those senior Tories who are claiming that they would put money saved by not being in the EU into the NHS: “These promises of expenditure on the National Health Service and elsewhere are frankly fatuous. They are a deceit”. He mocked them when he said that the NHS would be â€about as safe’ in the hands of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith as a “pet hamster would be with a hungry python”.
John Major while Prime Minister was given a torrid time by Eurosceptics over the Maastricht Treaty. He belied his â€grey image’ then when he called them bastards, and the spin will be that he is taking his revenge. So what? He’s saying what we’ve always known.
Watching the Tories’ civil war getting bloodier is tantalising but as journalists use up vast air time on the referendum as a â€blue on blue’ story, with the added spark of a future leadership contest, voices from the unions and Labour have been crowded out.
Trade unions representing six million people are clear that the social and cultural benefits of remaining far outweigh any advantages of leaving. They are right to want the EU to move away from the path of austerity, but as they point out by working in solidarity with European partners – hard fought workers’ rights have been achieved.
If Major is moved to condemn those Tories who don’t support a publicly funded NHS of misleading the British public then the general secretaries from major unions are correct to warn of the dangers a vote to leave would mean.
For years the right wing press have pursued an anti-European agenda. It’s in their business interests to have an untrammelled free market without having to worry about any regulations. No wonder people have moved to a more Eurosceptic position.
Osborne and Cameron, who are given the status of strategists, have got it repeatedly wrong.  They have, while in government sought to demonise immigration, and now the atmosphere over immigration is toxic. Their moves on voter registration among young people and students designed to damage Labour has also meant a swathe of supporters of the EU are disenfranchised.
I am not uncritical about EU membership but I know that the hard right Conservatives who would be negotiating our exit, should Brexit win, cannot be trusted. We see regulations as protection they see red tape to be put on a bonfire.
- This piece first appeared in Tribune on Friday, June 10.