Douglas Murray

A specific nightmare keeps occurring to me.  It is an episode of Prime Minister’s Questions in which Jeremy Corbyn and Andrea Leadsom face each other across the dispatch boxes. Unlike most of the world, including most of the Conservative party, I had heard of Andrea Leadsom before a week last Friday – indeed had spent some time with her – and already knew her to be that type of incurious matron to whom the Tory party is liable to be attracted.  Back then it never occurred to me that she could make it further than MP.

Well I might as well say publicly what I’ve been saying to everyone who will listen privately for the last week. It seems to me that our country will regret the distraction and levity we have shown this past week. For those who campaigned to leave the EU, June 24th was not an opportunity to take a break but the start of the real work. Of course it remains astonishing that having lost the vote the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer chose to go into hiding and abandon the country they were in place to serve. But it is also unforgiveable that having won the campaign those who campaigned to leave have not dedicated themselves solely to putting the country right.

It is now almost three days since David Cameron announced his resignation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been in hiding ever since. And the Parliamentary Labour party is revolting against its own leader and members. It is one thing for the whole political class to be in disarray. It is quite another for the government to be missing in action. Obviously we are waiting for the Conservative party leadership contest to get going and swiftly resolve itself. But that will take months. In the meantime the country is still here. And a number of things need to happen fast. Since Mark Carney’s intervention early on Friday there has been no appearance by any public figure to assure the country on what happens next. I trust that this will start to happen tomorrow.

A few thoughts on today’s events. First – it wasn’t working. With each year it was becoming more and more obvious that Britain and the EU wanted different things. Many (though not all) continental countries seem happy with a political union which pools their national sovereignty. There may be virtues in that, problems in it or both.  But it was never a desire of the British people. Last night demonstrated that. So it is best not just for Britain but for the EU that we part ways. If we had not then we would have continued to be a hindrance and drag on our partners during the next stages of their political development. Secondly – I hope that there can be a widespread, indeed unanimous, agreement that we wish the rest of the EU exceptionally well.

So the great day is here. Those of us who wish to vote ‘Leave’ will be heading to the polls in the hope that this is the eve of our nation’s independence. Those voting ‘Remain’ will obviously be heading to the polls hoping that the current status quo in Europe will continue. Throughout the campaign I have been repeatedly struck by how many undecided (as well as Remain voters) have told me that the EU is anything ranging from a ‘disaster zone’ to ‘a body badly in need of reform’. I would like to make a point to these people. As I pointed out in Foreign Affairs yesterday, if you believe that the EU badly needs reform the worst thing you can do today is to vote ‘Remain’.

Despite the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns rightly halting as soon as the news of the savage murder of Jo Cox MP came through, some people could not pass up the opportunity to press what they saw as a political advantage.  The campaign for Britain to leave the EU may have been silent, but EU officials were not.  A day after the murder the German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a call for all sides in the referendum to respect the opinions of others: ‘Otherwise, the radicalisation will become unstoppable.  Exaggerations, and radicalisation of part of the language, do not help foster an atmosphere of respect.

After last week’s featherweight entrants, we were onto some seriously heavyweight fibs this week. In truth there were only two contenders in this week’s EU dishonesty stakes. The first was Jeremy Corbyn’s lacklustre attempt to explain why after a lifetime’s Euroscepticism he is backing ‘Remain’. Here is how the BBC captured the excitement of Corbyn’s speech: ‘The Labour leader said the EU could "deliver positive change" on issues ranging from mobile phone charges to clean beaches and protecting bees.’ Gosh. Well sign me up. Of course all the brightest and most honourable members of the Labour party – Frank Field, Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey – are campaigning for ‘Leave’.

This has been another fine week for EU deceits, lies and misrepresentations. The chutzpah of the week award must go to Nicky Morgan who earlier this week ‘slammed’ Boris Johnson. Last month the former Mayor of London had urged gay people to vote to Leave the EU and specifically not to believe the lie that gay rights only exist in Britain because of the EU. As Boris pointed out, such rights come from ‘our courts and Parliament’ and not from Europe. Although this is a sectional argument, Boris was responding to an argument that can be heard across wider society. That argument claims that if Britain left the EU all human rights could be stripped away by a future Tory / Labour / SNP government who will then be allowed to crucify us all Isis-style.

The USA has a new CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) strategy. It is a typically curious document. I wonder in fact if the key to it does not lie in the foreword by John Kerry, which is accompanied by a photograph of the Secretary of State looking strangely stoned. Although in that foreword Secretary Kerry claims that ‘our challenge is dynamic’, he seems to have got that all the wrong way around. Certainly America’s enemies are dynamic. But on the evidence of this document the US government is quite supremely blissed-out. For instance, readers will be unsurprised to learn that in this 12-page document purporting to deal with one of the great security issues of our time, the word ‘Islam’, let alone ‘Muslim’, does not appear once.

I’m pleased to announce that we have a winner of The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition, and here it is: There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn’t even stop to thankera. The author of this winning entry is former Mayor of London and chief Brexiteer, Boris Johnson MP. The Spectator Podcast: Douglas Murray discusses Boris Johnson's poem   I am sure there will be those who claim this is a stitch-up. I am aware that Boris’s entry - which came via an interview by the Spectator's Rome correspondent Nick Farrell and the Swiss journalist Urs Gehriger for Die Weltwoche - commits two solecisms.

According to David Cameron this morning, if Britain votes to ‘Leave’ the EU on 23 June, the Germans will invade Belgium, the Russians will invade Crimea (again), and we’ll all have to spend the coming years re-learning the finer details of the Schleswig-Holstein question. The Prime Minister’s latest attempt to warn of apocalypse in the case of Brexit has one huge flaw.  In his latest scare-speech this morning he said: ‘Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking? I would never be so rash as to make that assumption.’ Well nothing is ever assured.  But how could anybody still think that peace and stability in Europe are remotely assured by the EU?