What a difference a day makes!

If there were a Novel Prize for double standards I think "Leave.EU" would have won it this week ...

On March 24th  "Leave.EU" which is of course one the rival "Leave" campaigns for the EU referendum, tweeted their approval for an intervention in the EU debate by the head of government of one of our long-standing allies.

The exact words of the tweet were

"#LEAVE.EU welcome Australian PM's "sober and sensible" intervention in the EU terror debate"

with a link and with this graphic


Then today, March 25th, they tweeted asking people to sign a petition - against the head of government of another long-standing British ally expressing his opinion on the EU referendum debate!



Now, believe it or not, I welcome both Barack Obama and Malcolm Turnbull expressing their opinion. What on earth are we coming to if our allies can't tell us what they think in a respectful manner without upsetting us?

But what kind of organisation positively welcomes interventions from allied nations one day, and actively supports a petition to gag such interventions the following day?

Obviously they agree with Malcom Turnbull's comments and disagree with what they assume Barack Obama is going to say, but that hardly justifies welcoming on intervention and trying to block the other one.

To a rational and fair-minded person, either you welcome honest expression of advice and opinions from our allies whether you agree with them or not, or alternatively you ask all our allies, whichever side they might support, to "keep their nose out."

I am still trying to make my mind up how to vote in the referendum and, to be quote honest, have been deeply unimpressed by much of what passes for argument on both sides. A significant part of the output of "Britain Stronger in Europe" makes me want to vote to Leave and much of the output of the "Vote Leave" campaign makes me want to vote "Remain."

But "Leave.EU" are in a class by themselves for utterly counterproductive material. Their output may go down well with committed Brexit supporters but to me as a floater most of what they produce  is undiluted nonsense and completely infuriates me. The blatant double standard I have tried to point out in this post is a classic example.

As a believer in democracy I still think calling this referendum to let the British people settle the issue was the right thing to do. But thank God we only have another three months of it.

Whichever side wins, I expect the decision of the British people to be honoured, even if the winning margin is small. And whichever side wins, anyone who then tries to re-open the decision within a generation and put us all through this again can expect a hostile response from me.

Comments

Jim said…
You are disappointed?

Here is an example of the "leave" campaign getting it so wrong, even the "remain" campaign have noticed it.

you may be disappointed, personally at this stage, watching everything I have been warning about for months come to be. I now have my underpants on my head two pencils in my nose can currently only say the word "Wibble".
Chris Whiteside said…
You're right about Boris. And a lot of people on both sides agree with you - in fact I tweeted what you had said and it received quite a few likes and retweets from both sides!

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