These are places, you know, where the hip and cool and usually the younger generation that always has all of the answers, tend to live. They're on the cutting edge in so many ways: They're open minded to foreigners and foreign cultures, even if it means honor killings, female genital mutilation, and accepting rape. They're so hell bent to prove that they aren't racist, that they're willing to put up with uncivilized behavior for which they would prosecute a fellow countryman to the fullest extent of the law. And the common mantra (and I'll quote this directly from the Times of UK article by Bryan Appleyard) is as follows: "That link between low IQ and a Brexit vote is now an entrenched ideology among many, if not most, remainers. You hear it at dinner parties, you see it on television, you read it in frothing newspaper columns and you can detect it in the fear of professional or private exposure among many “leave” voters."
Well, what a difference a little "backbone" makes. In the February 18 edition of the Times of UK, there is an article describing that many of the Best and Brightest in Great Britain have come out to support Brexit and the first two, who stood up for Brexit were economist Graham Gudgin, of the Judge Business School at Cambridge and Robert Tombs, emeritus professor of French history at Cambridge.
Brexit supporters are
overeducated toffs who dream of ruling the waves and biffing Johnny
Foreigner. Or they are racist proles too dim to see through the lies
of the Brexit campaign. Either way, they have one thing in common —
they are all, every one of them, as thick as the slowest-witted plant
in your garden.
That link between low IQ and a
Brexit vote is now an entrenched ideology among many, if not most,
remainers. You hear it at dinner parties, you see it on television,
you read it in frothing newspaper columns and you can detect it in
the fear of professional or private exposure among many “leave”
voters.
But, from today, Brexiteers can
come out of the closet and hold their heads high. They will know
that they have the support of Nigel Biggar, professor of theology at
Oxford; Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6; David Abulafia,
professor of history at Cambridge; and Sir Noel Malcolm of All Souls,
Oxford. In fact, they will have the support of 37 of the brightest
people — both from the left and the right — in the land. And soon
there will be many more of them.
The list is due to appear
because a pair of Cambridge academics, one leftish, one rightish,
were sick of the vilification of Brexiteers, the distortions of the
remainers and of being “deluged with one-sided propaganda”. In a
calm, professional egghead sort of way, they’re mad as hell, and
they’re not going to take it any more. “I thought of it during
one of those terribly pessimistic weeks,” says the economist Graham
Gudgin, of the Judge Business School at Cambridge, “when Theresa
May wasn’t going to last until teatime and there was definitely
going to be a second referendum. Together we thought, ‘Gosh, we
ought to be better organised than at the last referendum.’”
“It was,” says Robert Tombs,
emeritus professor of French history at Cambridge, “the whole tide
of propaganda about how awful everything was, how awful everything
was going to be, and we didn’t believe this. We realised quite a
lot of other people didn’t believe it either.”
They are dismayed by the
contempt for Brexiteers shown by remainers. “Graham and I have
working-class or lower middle-class backgrounds,” says Tombs. “I
do feel you just can’t write off a large part of the population as
being unworthy of consideration.”
Together they have designed a
website — briefingsforbrexit.com — that will go live in the next
few days. The mission statement makes it clear this is an assault on
the too-thick-to-vote theory of Brexit. By word of mouth the news got
out and, without a word of publicity, they suddenly found they had a
pantheon of super-smart supporters. “I’ve been surprised by how
many people found out about it and came on board quickly,” says
Gudgin. “We would not have known about them unless we set this up.”
They are fully independent: the
website is the only cost, and Gudgin paid for that. The anti-Brexit
campaign is not independent; it has just received £400,000 from the
financier George Soros. “[His] support for the pro-remain campaign
shows there is a lot of big money behind hardline remainers, whose
interests have little to do with the interests of the country as a
whole,” says Tombs. “It shows that independent, self-funded
initiatives like ours are all the more important. The other important
news is the selective leaking of unsourced statistics; this shows
again how much expert scrutiny is needed.”
Sadly, some Brexiteer academics
were afraid to join Briefings for Brexit. “They said, ‘I’d love
to be part of your group but I haven’t got a proper job yet and I
probably won’t if I’m identified.’”
“One of our contributors said
he was told by a younger pro-Brexit colleague that his professor had
told him that people who voted Brexit were the sort of people who
sent his relatives to concentration camps,” says Gudgin.
For the same reason, some of the
authors of essays on the site will be anonymous. Tombs says he had
one pro-Brexit student who did not dare to say anything to her
supervisor because he claimed all Brexiteers were racists. “I
thought one thing we academics were paid to do was help explain
things to people, but universities have become so simple-minded about
this.”
Also self-interested. Tombs
points out that universities get a lot of money from the EU, adding:
“So many of our colleagues had wrongly taken a corporatist, selfish
and narrow view.”
Gudgin and Tombs are an odd
couple. Gudgin has the air of a former fast bowler, tall and lanky
with a loose suit and tie; Tombs looks like an opening batsman, more
buttoned-up, a continental intellectual. Gudgin votes Labour and has
some time for Jeremy Corbyn; Tombs voted Liberal Democrat last time
around and Tory before that. Gudgin is the economic technician, Tombs
the big-picture historical analyst. Both are old enough to have voted
remain in the 1975 referendum. Both did so on the basis they were
voting for a free trade area. What they got was a nascent superstate
hell-bent on absorbing all power into its own bureaucracy.
“To every crisis that comes
along, the answer is always more centralisation, never less,” says
Tombs.
Gudgin’s anger was driven
primarily by economic distortions. At the time of the referendum
there were two Treasury reports. The first was short term. It
forecast that a vote for Brexit would produce an instant recession;
in fact, the only thing that was instant was the refutation of the
thesis by reality; we continued to have comfortable growth. The
glaring flaw in the short-term report was a figure plucked out of the
air. The Treasury wonks simply assumed the loss of business
confidence would be 50% of the loss of confidence during the banking
crisis. This was ridiculously high.
“It looks like most of the
errors in the short-term report have been repeated in last week’s
report from Dexeu [Department for Exiting the European Union],”
says Gudgin. This was a leaked paper from the Brexit secretary David
Davis’s Dexeu showing massive falls in growth in most regions of
the UK. It did not show who had done the work or how it was done; it
is uncheckable and, therefore, irrelevant in academic terms. In any
case, Gudgin says, the figures are ludicrous.
The second report at the time of
the referendum made long-term forecasts, and it has proved more
enduring. It was very pessimistic. Gudgin says it is still the source
of most remainer claims by television pundits and Europhile
politicians. Tombs agrees: “The original paper has kind of coloured
the whole debate.”
The errors were important but,
perhaps, too technical to grasp. One showed the Treasury wonks had
failed to take account of the fact that Britain is almost the only EU
state that has more trade outside the EU than inside. This distorted
downwards the forecast on trade. “They calculated the amount of
extra exports to EU countries due to being an EU member, but took an
average across all EU members rather than measuring the specific
effect for the UK,” says Gudgin. “They then assumed all the gains
would be lost on leaving and that no replacement exports would occur
via new free-trade agreements. These are extreme assumptions and led
the Treasury to an exaggerated estimate of the impact of Brexit.”
The other assumed a close
correlation between growth and productivity, but the assumption was
based on just two papers that found a link in emerging economies.
There was no link in developed economies. Were these errors, I ask
Gudgin, or deliberate massaging of the numbers? He says there are
issues of civil service integrity and of scientific “sins”.
About the two reports at the
time of the referendum, he says: “I was told not to be naive. The
chancellor was George Osborne, and he was strongly anti-Brexit. The
civil servants were asked to do a major report. What other conclusion
could they come to?”
Gudgin, however, does not agree
with the strong, ideological Brexiteers on the free-market right when
they claim there will be an economic boom arising from our ability to
trade freely without EU restrictions. By 2030, he predicts a Brexit
fall in GDP growth of about a quarter of 1%, but no effect whatsoever
on the much more important GDP per capita — the effect on us
individually. But still the voices of Brexit disaster have the
microphone. “Nobody who appears on the BBC and says ‘This is
going to be a catastrophe’ is ever asked what their view is based
on,” says Gudgin.
Tombs’s analysis is more
political. A celebrated historian of France, in 2014 he published The
English and Their History. It was, among many other things, a
rejection of the postwar declinist narrative that has dominated the
lives of three generations. “By the standards of humanity as a
whole,” he wrote, “England over the centuries has been among the
richest, safest and best-governed places on earth, as periodical
influxes of people testify. Its living standards in the 14th century
were higher than much of the world in the 20th. We who have lived in
England since 1945 have been among the luckiest people in the
existence of Homo sapiens: rich, peaceful and healthy.”
The postwar, post-imperial
decline of Britain — one of the driving forces behind our decision
to join the EU — is an illusion. Yet in the 1960s and 1970s it was
treated as established fact. When we joined the EU (then the EEC) in
1973 it was in a state of panic. Britain, it was said, was the
Titanic and Europe our lifeboat.
“I think, speaking as a
historian and as a patriot, that we were taken into the EU on a
misunderstanding of our situation,” says Tombs. “It would have
been better in the 1960s and 1970s to continue to ask for a free
trade agreement. I don’t think most people understood the full
implications of what we were signing up to politically.”
Part of that illusion was
economic, the belief that growth in the EEC was outstripping ours. In
fact that growth rate ground to a halt soon after we joined because
it was based on a quarter-century of recovery from the Second World
War. We were actually doing rather better than Europe. “We looked
at the record of growth in per capita GDP since 1952,” says Gudgin,
“and growth was better before we joined the EU than after.”
Politically, Tombs now sees the
EU as imperilled by its own mania for centralisation. He had
hesitated to vote “leave” because he foresaw the chaos among
politicians and the civil servants that would ensue. “But the
reason I eventually voted to leave was because I think the EU is
either going to break up, and break up very badly, or at least
dissolve into a dysfunctional confederation of non-co-operative
members, or it will become — and France’s President Emmanuel
Macron has stated this very clearly, to his credit — much more
centralised, and not through conventional politics. The European
parliament is not the way in which it could work or, indeed, is being
envisaged to work. It will become a much more bureaucratic system in
which power is exercised through banks and government bureaucracies,
not through a normal process of political discussion.
“We’ve seen how that works
in Italy and Greece: a political choice is defeated by sheer weight
of economic pressure — if you do this, your currency or economy
will collapse. I don’t think that would last and I don’t see how
it could have a good end. I don’t think we either want to be, or
ought to be, a party to that.”
Gudgin adds — and the left
should pay attention — that a fully united Europe would have a
hopelessly poor social security system as the Germans and others
would not be willing to support welfare for the Greeks and southern
Italians.
Both despised the way each side
conducted the referendum campaign and how lies and manipulation
contributed to the current rancorous social and political divisions.
The dishonesty left a persistent residue of anger and mutual contempt
that poisons and obscures debate.
So there you have it. A Brexit
vote is not a symptom of low IQ any more than it is of racism.
Brexiteers should wave the list of names on briefingsforbrexit.com
the next time remainers sneer at them.
On a personal note, I voted to
remain, having been unsure to the last minute. I disbelieved the
economic arguments; I thought them rigged. I just believed that,
maybe, the EU could ensure peace in Europe for another generation.
Briefings for Brexit has knocked that one down. Tombs points out that
Nato and nuclear weapons have done more to keep the peace than the
EU, and a paper on the site will show that the EU has stirred up more
wars than it can ever have stopped.
“Instead of peaceful
integration,” writes Philip Cunliffe, a senior lecturer in
international conflict at Kent University, “the eastward expansion
of the EU has disproved its claim to reunify the Continent and
shattered its legitimacy as a peacemaker.”
In a new referendum I would vote
“leave”. It’s the smart option.
It’s right to leave: the great minds thinking alike
It’s right to leave: the great minds thinking alike
ECONOMISTS
Dr Graham Gudgin, Judge Business School, Cambridge
Paul Ormerod, visiting professor at University College London
Dr Graham Gudgin, Judge Business School, Cambridge
Paul Ormerod, visiting professor at University College London
PHILOSOPHERS/THEORISTS
Nigel Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology, Oxford
Paul Elbourne, professor of the philosophy of language, Oxford
Dr Tom Simpson, associate professor of philosophy and public policy, Blavatnik school of government, Oxford
Nigel Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology, Oxford
Paul Elbourne, professor of the philosophy of language, Oxford
Dr Tom Simpson, associate professor of philosophy and public policy, Blavatnik school of government, Oxford
LAWYERS
Sir Richard Aikens, QC,
former member of the Court
of Appeal
Baroness (Ruth) Deech, former chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
Dr Richard Ekins, associate professor in law, Oxford
Carol Harlow, QC, emeritus professor of law, London School of Economics (LSE)
John Tasioulas, professor of politics, philosophy and law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London
Guglielmo Verdirame, professor of international law, King’s College London
of Appeal
Baroness (Ruth) Deech, former chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
Dr Richard Ekins, associate professor in law, Oxford
Carol Harlow, QC, emeritus professor of law, London School of Economics (LSE)
John Tasioulas, professor of politics, philosophy and law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London
Guglielmo Verdirame, professor of international law, King’s College London
FOREIGN
POLICY/DIPLOMACY/DEFENCE
Dr Philip Cunliffe, senior lecturer in international conflict, University of Kent
Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6
John Forsyth, former member of the council of the Royal Institute for International Affairs
Dr Lee Jones, reader in international politics, Queen Mary University of London
Sir Peter Marshall, formerly deputy secretary-general of the Commonwealth
Gwythian Prins, emeritus research professor at the LSE
Dr Philip Towle, emeritus reader in international relations, Cambridge
Sir Andrew Wood, former ambassador to Russia and a fellow at Chatham House
Dr Philip Cunliffe, senior lecturer in international conflict, University of Kent
Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6
John Forsyth, former member of the council of the Royal Institute for International Affairs
Dr Lee Jones, reader in international politics, Queen Mary University of London
Sir Peter Marshall, formerly deputy secretary-general of the Commonwealth
Gwythian Prins, emeritus research professor at the LSE
Dr Philip Towle, emeritus reader in international relations, Cambridge
Sir Andrew Wood, former ambassador to Russia and a fellow at Chatham House
SOCIAL POLICY
David Coleman, emeritus professor of demography, Oxford
Jonathan Rutherford, emeritus professor of cultural studies, Middlesex University
Dr Joanna Williams, author/academic
David Coleman, emeritus professor of demography, Oxford
Jonathan Rutherford, emeritus professor of cultural studies, Middlesex University
Dr Joanna Williams, author/academic
PSYCHOLOGY
Dr Terri Apter, former senior tutor, Newnham College, Cambridge
Robin Dunbar, emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology, Oxford
Dr Terri Apter, former senior tutor, Newnham College, Cambridge
Robin Dunbar, emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology, Oxford
BUSINESS
Alexander Darwall, Jupiter Asset Management
Sir Paul Marshall, chairman of ARK Schools
Rory Maw, Bursar of Magdalen College, Oxford
Dame Helena Morrissey, Legal & General Investment Management
Edmund Truell, chairman Disruptive Capital Finance
David Abulafia, professor of Mediterranean history, Cambridge
Sir Noel Malcolm, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
Dr Daniel Robinson, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford
Dr Peter Sarris, reader in late Roman, medieval and Byzantine studies, Cambridge
Robert Tombs, emeritus professor of French history, Cambridge
Alexander Darwall, Jupiter Asset Management
Sir Paul Marshall, chairman of ARK Schools
Rory Maw, Bursar of Magdalen College, Oxford
Dame Helena Morrissey, Legal & General Investment Management
Edmund Truell, chairman Disruptive Capital Finance
David Abulafia, professor of Mediterranean history, Cambridge
Sir Noel Malcolm, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
Dr Daniel Robinson, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford
Dr Peter Sarris, reader in late Roman, medieval and Byzantine studies, Cambridge
Robert Tombs, emeritus professor of French history, Cambridge
NATURAL SCIENCES
Dr Ian Winter, senior lecturer in the department of physiology, development and neuroscience, Cambridge
Dr Ian Winter, senior lecturer in the department of physiology, development and neuroscience, Cambridge
POLITICAL SCIENCES AND
GOVERNMENT
Lord (Maurice) Glasman, Labour peer and director of the Common Good Foundation
Robert J Jackson, professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and emeritus professor at the University of Redlands, California
Richard Tuck, professor of government, Harvard University
Now that we've proven, by the list above, that the Brexiteers aren't "thick," knuckle dragging neanderthals (but wait: Neanderthal Man was discovered by a German and is from Germany!) And as Frau Merkel has been leading the EU (by being the Economic Powerhouse of the EU), through her surrogate Jean-Claude Juncker (and while Jean-Claude is from Belgium, Wikipedia states that the Junkers - note the slight spelling difference - were Prussian Aristocrats. This probably has nothing to do with that), we can't rule out the aristocracy argument that "our betters believe they know better how to run the country than the ordinary citizens do.
There's no doubt that there are hard feelings on the loosing "Remain" side of the Brexit Referendum. But there are winners and losers in every election. And those who travel, do business and have friends on the continent will LIKELY BE PRESSURED by their European Union contacts. They maybe even expect to be shunned. But, if your friends an/or business associates shun you, whether by Economic Means (tariffs, because you're no longer a member of the free trade zone) or just because they act nasty toward you, maybe they weren't friends after all. Maybe you just need a better set of friends or associates. And if they are getting pressured, shunned or excommunicated,, shouldn't the Brexiteers expect thee same from the resistance that are the "Remainers?"
For those who voted "Remain" the European Union is something of a religion, whose tenants and price of inclusion cannot be questioned. As such, those who leave must be "shunned,' or "Excommunicated" as they've committed the most grave "sin" against that religion. So if you've been shunned, have courage and use the traditional British approach of the "Stiff Upper Lip," knowing that they were never and can not ever be impressed with who you are and what are your core beliefs. They've got that case of the European Religion Cult, for which there is rarely a cure. Believe in yourself and the decision you made.
Lord (Maurice) Glasman, Labour peer and director of the Common Good Foundation
Robert J Jackson, professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and emeritus professor at the University of Redlands, California
Richard Tuck, professor of government, Harvard University
Now that we've proven, by the list above, that the Brexiteers aren't "thick," knuckle dragging neanderthals (but wait: Neanderthal Man was discovered by a German and is from Germany!) And as Frau Merkel has been leading the EU (by being the Economic Powerhouse of the EU), through her surrogate Jean-Claude Juncker (and while Jean-Claude is from Belgium, Wikipedia states that the Junkers - note the slight spelling difference - were Prussian Aristocrats. This probably has nothing to do with that), we can't rule out the aristocracy argument that "our betters believe they know better how to run the country than the ordinary citizens do.
There's no doubt that there are hard feelings on the loosing "Remain" side of the Brexit Referendum. But there are winners and losers in every election. And those who travel, do business and have friends on the continent will LIKELY BE PRESSURED by their European Union contacts. They maybe even expect to be shunned. But, if your friends an/or business associates shun you, whether by Economic Means (tariffs, because you're no longer a member of the free trade zone) or just because they act nasty toward you, maybe they weren't friends after all. Maybe you just need a better set of friends or associates. And if they are getting pressured, shunned or excommunicated,, shouldn't the Brexiteers expect thee same from the resistance that are the "Remainers?"
For those who voted "Remain" the European Union is something of a religion, whose tenants and price of inclusion cannot be questioned. As such, those who leave must be "shunned,' or "Excommunicated" as they've committed the most grave "sin" against that religion. So if you've been shunned, have courage and use the traditional British approach of the "Stiff Upper Lip," knowing that they were never and can not ever be impressed with who you are and what are your core beliefs. They've got that case of the European Religion Cult, for which there is rarely a cure. Believe in yourself and the decision you made.
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