Writing in Church Times, The Rt Rev’d Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, has spoken of a crisis of “truth and trust” in UK politics caused in part by Prime Minister Boris Johnson who, alleges Baines, has “repeatedly lied, and misrepresented Brexit to the nation.” Bishop Baines says that Boris Johnson has “lied repeatedly” about the motivation behind his decision to prorogue parliament days after MPs returned from summer recess, until two weeks before the Brexit deadline of 31st October.
Baines is a fully-qualified and paid up ecclesiastical leftie: that is a member of the breed which consistently regards facts and the truth as things that are infinitely malleable. How otherwise could he remark that, on Brexit, “The will of the people is not immutably clear.” No use our reminding Baines that there really did take place a national referendum in 2016 in which the people stated their opinion – that they wish to leave the EU – with perfect clarity. That was an exercise in practical democracy. But “democracy” and “leftie” are words which struggle to occupy one and the same sentence uttered by men like Baines. Lefties, especially modern European lefties, have a history of ordering populations who vote for motions which they, the lefties, dislike to go back and vote again until they get it right. I’m not making this up: just ask the Danes.
Who else but a leftie so extreme could declare that, “The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph coverage of Brexit is like something from Nazi Germany”? Baines declared exactly that. I first began to doubt Baines’ grip on reality when I read that he had once delivered the annual Harold Wilson Lecture.
Baines’ leftism is of course thoroughly international and his abusive diatribes know no boundaries. Predictably, he disapproves of Donald Trump:
“His misogyny, amorality, financial track record, sexual behaviour, narcissism and nepotism – to name but a few of the obvious challenges – would have ruled out the candidacy of any other semi-reputable politician for the Presidency of the United States of America. His subsequent lying, shamelessness, vindictiveness and inhabiting of some alternative reality – in which things that happened didn’t happen and things that didn’t happen did happen; in which things he said he didn’t say, and things he didn’t say he did say – cannot have come as a disappointing revelation to anyone with half a brain or ears to hear.”
Everything I have written here about Baines’ likes and dislikes, attitudes and prejudices is standard fare among lefties. So far so unexceptional. But Baines is able to outdo them all. One example, out of a very many, will do. He wrote: “No one in their right mind would deny a link between Christianity and the IRA.”
One needs no emetic.
Sad not to be able to engage in any form of serious conversation without simply resorting to hurling insults at your opponents.
The reason we have not left is that the entitled, self-important middle classes have always refused to accept the democratic decision. They know best, they have the best degrees, the best jobs, the best lawyers, so it cannot be possible that the result has to stand. Its ok to overrule the people when you are genuinely sure its for their own good.
And having had their previous votes torn up, why would anyone bother to go out and do it all over again? Why would anyone ever take any public vote seriously? They have torn up our votes before, so they’ll probably do it again…
The only reason we haven’t left the EU already is because of the GE result in 2017. Although perhaps Johnson and JRM would still have been able to block it anyway, who knows. So no votes have been “torn up” at all.
And if some of the ignorant knuckle-draggers decided not to vote again because they don’t understand how our democracy works, excellent! I can wait until they come to their senses.
Wrong two cents. The reason we have not left the EU is because parliament does not want to by a large margin. Why would they (the already privileged with plenty of time on their hands) give up the chance of vastly paid non-jobs for selves and families free of any fuss about whether expenses claims have to be checked in a set-up where crime and fraud are endemic from top to bottom?
I assume by knuckle draggers that you mean people who disagree with you.
I assume
48% versus 52%. Overwhelming? I think not. A very close call. A general election does not commit us to the same government for ever. We are allowed to change our minds as circumstances change. What’s to fear in a second ‘confirmatory’ referendum?
C of E. I attend a church service most Sundays. Can’t ever remember a comment about Trump, perhaps the odd (neutral) aside re Bexit, and the occasional comment re global warming. Sermons are more often based on the Gospel for the day. Do the folk who are ranting against the C of E ever attend services?
Do you really not see that holding a 2nd ref means tearing up all the 30+ million votes cast in the first?
It is time the Cof E was disestablished it now represents every left wing movement and is an avowed enemy of this country
The sight of that bloody old fool prostrating himself at Amritsar 100 years after an event was enough to make one throw up.
It is time the Cof E was disestablished it now represents every left wing movement is an avowed enemy of this country
The sight of that bloody old fool prostrating himself at Amritsar 100 years after an event was enough to make one throw up .
Have a care! Robespierre summed up the totalitarian view by declaring: “There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies.”
The Jacobins worked on the principle that there had to be an avante-garde who would serve as the authentic, organic voice of the ‘general will’, the will of the people.
I’m wondering where this leaves Adam Smith’s notion that having an established church would minimise factionalism and bigotry by giving indolent priests a steady income and reasons for staying indolent and not rocking the boat.
When the Bishop of Leeds declares that there is a link between the IRA and Christianity perhaps he’s thinking of Martin McGuinness going to church on a Sunday and reciting the Lord’s Prayer about forgiving those who trespass against us and then gong to inspect a car bomb that had just been assembled.
In any case the Bishop should be aware that in our system in Britain a majority of one is enough to carry the day, as it did in the House of Commons when Speaker Bercow cast a deciding vote in a tie.
Of course the Bishop should know about the will of the people not being immutably clear since the Christian gospels relate how at one point the people welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as a populist hero and a matter of hours later were voting in a rigged referendum for a violent revolutionary.
In any case the Bishop is now outclassed in the idiocy stakes by Archbishop Welby who on his visit to India prostrated himself before a monument to the people killed at Amritsar by British troops. This sort of apology gains for the one who makes it all the kudos of making an apology while slyly heaping all the opprobrium onto the people of the past. There’s nothing Christian about that.
If Welby is into these sorts of demonstrations he should have approached the Indian government asking that they make a similar apology for the massacre of British women and children at Kanpore and Lucknow in 1857.
And a Franco-German stitch up with the emphasis on the Franco.
Stick to getting bums on seats, Bish – that’s why you are there. Or just resign and become a politician.
What seems to have been neglected when pressing the Brexit vote, is not so much that the vote was relatively close, though in a first past the post democracy that shouldn’t make any difference, but how the various constituencies voted:
406 constituencies voted to Leave, 242 voted to remain.
148 Labour constituencies voted to Leave, 84 voted to Remain
247 Tory constituencies voted to Leave, 80 voted to Remain.
9 regions voted to Leave, 3 voted to Remain.
160 MP’s voted to Leave 486 voted to Remain
To my mind that is an overwhelming vote to leave.
…not forgetting to add that the EU is a corrupt gravy train for the elite, undemocratic (democratic deficit doesn’t even begin to capture the anti-democratic instincts of its leaders), an anti-competitive cartel, and an economic basket case.
I think that’s what the Americans would call a slam dunk. Brilliant.
The referendum has been played like a classic bait and switch routine.
Before the referendum the question was about leave or remain. After the referendum the side that lost switched it to Deal or No Deal. And the strategy has worked brilliantly. The media took up the switch with delight and Deal or No Deal became the reason to deny leaving. Because no body voted for No Deal!
Simple trick really. And everyone fell for it
Shrewd observation. But has Boris changed the game to poker?
To continually assert that “the people” had their say in the 2016 EU referendum cuts no ice with the Remainers. They have already swerved their way around that argument by claiming that “nobody voted to crash out of the EU with a no deal Brexit” therefore a second referendum is the only fair just and democratic way forward. As far as they are concerned they have won the argument, they are on the side of democracy and allowing “the people” to make an informed choice. They see themselves heroically fighting a good fight against those populist demagogues who are currently appealing to the worst instincts of the masses.
Many MPs whose constituents voted with substantial majorities to leave the EU are prepared to ignore those votes. If they have so little respect for a major decision taken by the electorate what does democracy actually mean to them?
Remainer cheerleaders in the broadcast media continually repeat that “crashing out” message with additional judgement about “this catastrophic act of national self-harm” which must be prevented at all costs. With so little unbiased information being broadcast I wonder if many people now believe that leaving the EU with no deal means that the borders will be closed and we will be prevented from dealing with the EU after October 31st.
The well-known truncated comment by Karl Marx that ‘religion is the opiate of the people’ probably gave the lead for Antonio Gramsci’s acolytes to infiltrate and transform the Church of England into a propaganda arm of ‘social services’.
Religion might well be but nowhere nearly to the extent that socialism is.Remember, “to each according to his greed, from each according to his stupidity.” Marks Karl, 1875.
Edward heath stated in the Commons that by entering the EEC, the UK would not sacrifice “essential sovereignty”. This was a lie. A serious country would have impeached Heath. As for there being a link between Christianity and the IRA, perhaps the bishop should read Connor Cruise O’Brian about its foundation: Jacobin at the heart, and Catholic on the outside. In short, national socialists before their time. B own out by the way Sinn Fein backed abortion in the recent referendum. But then our bush will no doubt think that women’s “reproductive rights” trump the life of an unborn child.
You can’t blame the bish for the issue you raise in your final sentence. The human rights ideology – which HMG go along with – is responsible for quite a lot of mischief. It is useless in the case of abortion unless you accept that a zygote is not a person – but you don’t need rights talk for that. ‘Rights’ leaves us helpless when men-who-say-they-are-women invade female sports and spaces.
In the international sphere, the UNHRC is a bad joke when the UN is one third Muslim and a Saud has chaired the commission.
No one looks to the C of E for religious and moral principle.
This silly fellow seems unaware even of the 9th Commandment.
Go to an Anglican Church service and the sermon is very likely to follow the party line, unable to resist a dig at Trump,Brexit or global warming denial.