It seems like only yesterday that half of this country was crying out for freedom.
Every night our tellies would show angry talking heads in Wetherspoons, on Question Time and in the Commons, telling us that if Britain was ever to be great again it had to throw off the shackles of the EU and forge its own independent path. Which it did. Although, the “being great again” bit has yet to come true.
But no worries. At least Britain is a separate entity from the EU, and, as all Leavers wished, it is now legally a third country. So how come many of the same people are now outraged that Brussels respects their democratic will?
From next year the EU is bringing in visas for travellers from all non-EU countries to check they don’t outstay their legally allotted residence slot, leading to pro-Brexit voices calling it “a vengeful, Big Brother” diktat, and a “draconian punishment” which will cause “holiday chaos”. Yet it’s the same type of visa Britons need to travel to the US or Australia.
It’s how, in this security-minded era, foreign travel works. And it was always going to happen when we left the EU. It’s just that none of the Take Back Control gang bothered to tell voters.
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Greg Walter from Winchester, who voted Leave, now feels “betrayed,” and this week appeared in newspapers saying: “We were told Brexit was not going to impact our life abroad, that it would be just a matter of formality. We were never given the correct information on the vote outcome.”
In other words, we were lied to. Just as we were by Boris Johnson over the £350million-a-week NHS boost, David Davis promising a “no-downsides” deal, and Jacob Rees-Mogg assuring us that food bills would plummet.
For Brits, June 23, 2016, will go down as the Day of The Big Lie. Over in America, that honour falls to January 6, 2021. The day when Donald Trump incited a mob to storm the White House on the grounds that the presidency had been stolen from him. This week Trump was charged with a criminal conspiracy to retain power by spreading false claims of voter fraud which caused the riot.
At the heart of the prosecution case is the charge that Trump knew he was lying, but did so regardless of the consequences. They are charges you could equally lay against the architects of Brexit, a cause that Trump was so supportive of. The parallels are many.
Trump demanded people took back control from the Deep State, Brexiteers from an EU superstate. Both wrapped themselves in the flag, claiming their vision, which harked back to the Founding Fathers or Churchill, was the only patriotic one. Both started with small lies about immigrants, trade deals, fake news and liberal elites which were called “The Swamp” over there and “The Blob” here. Small lies which then grew into a Big Lie. And as Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels told us: “If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Sadly, as the self-harming consequences of those Big Lies are realised and politics is debased for a generation, there are millions on either side of the Atlantic who still believe in them. Even sadder is the fact that many millions more, who weren’t so gullible, have to live with those wicked deceptions.
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