I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Explaining Brexit, Referendum Conspiracy Theories and the Ongoing Realignment of Our Politics

Last month I was asked to talk to a group of visiting Danish media students about Brexit - given the field of academic campaigners for Leave is rather small, it may get to be a regular gig!

The piece below needs a little spit and polish. However, as the Prime Minister continues to kick the can down the road, and sections of elite opinion that refuse to accept we are leaving the European Union mobilise, it seems appropriate to publish it here, and to do so now.

Personal Introduction
My academic research is primarily into terrorism, security, Islamism and conspiracy theories, so I speak here more as an activist than a political scientist.

What happened on June 23 2016
It is important to grasp the scale of what happened, because it goes some way to explaining the difficulty political elites now find themselves in.

It was a staggeringly high turnout – 72.2% - higher than most general elections.

17.4 million voted to Leave, 16.1 million to Remain.

I think that 1.3 m majority has been taken as a mandate – it is 4%.

England and Wales voted to leave.

In every English region except London, the vote was to leave (8-1)

Wales by 52.5%

Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to Remain.

In London, 29 boroughs voted to Remain, 4 to Leave.

But the Leave vote was perhaps higher than expected – more people voted to Leave, for example, than elected the Mayor of London.

In terms of demographics, older people tended to vote Leave, younger, Remain. The poorer you were, the more likely you were to vote leave.

Leave did very well in many Labour towns – Stoke, Doncaster, Barnsley each have two Labour MPs, all voted to Leave by more than 60%. Whilst most Labour voters were for Remain, most Labour constituencies voted Leave.

This week a poll of the views of voters by the newspaper they read, suggested in a referendum tomorrow, readers of the main Labour supporting paper, the Daily Mirror, would be split 45/45.
Those with the greatest experience of the EU, were most likely to vote Leave. Older people were more likely to vote, perhaps reflecting the importance they placed in the first referendum on this subject in 41 years. Some of the ugliest comments since have centred on how this in some way discredits the vote, or will make it invalid in years to come.

Results were not compiled by parliamentary constituency but by local authority area. Here two thirds of the LAs voted to leave. An estimated 421 out of 574 English and Welsh constituencies voted to leave (see the work of academic Chris Hanretty)
All this gives very little wriggle room for politicians to openly reverse the decision taken.

As Leave Steps Away from the Stage, Part of Remain Keeps Fighting
Locally in Northamptonshire, we settled on sovereignty as the campaigning issue. All the other issues – economy, defence, immigration – follow from that. We trust the people to get it right, if they have the power and authority to do so.

What this meant in practice was that Leave campaigners broadly left the stage once the referendum result was announced – the dynamic group we had in Kettering had a farewell curry, and went its separate ways.
Membership and electoral support of UKIP, the main political party advocating for Brexit, collapsed.
In the 2017 general election, the two main parties stood on manifestos clearly supporting the referendum result, and took over 80% of the vote. The two UK wide parties opposing Brexit – the Lib Dems and the Greens, made no progress.

Paradoxically though, the prospects for Continuity Remain improved. The onus was now on the Conservative government to deliver Brexit. To draw together different positions and concerns. And to do so in a Parliament that had a further paradox – whilst most of those elected had stood on a platform of accepting Brexit, most of the MPs personally, had voted to Remain. That makes getting agreement on a deal through parliament very difficult. Or we take the position we voted to leave, parliament accepts we were giving notice – and we simply leave in March 2019 when the notice period ends.
It is hard to see where a majority for any other position emerges.
To have a second referendum on any deal, effectively passes a veto to the EU. Give a bad deal, and there is a chance the second biggest contributor to the budget stays.

In the referendum Remain’s position had been had been a defensive one. “We are stronger in a reformed EU”.
Ok, but what reforms do you want? What will you do if you don’t get those reforms? It is a strange negotiating position to say you will never walk out. How do you reform the Treaty of Rome? That is what you would have to amend the commitment to freedom of movement.
Post referendum, Continuity Remain could now continue campaigning, but with no one asking these tricky questions. We saw the emergence of some previously low profile establishment figures as prominent Continuity Remain campaigners, refusing to accept the result – Jolyon Maugham, a barrister who opposed secrecy around income tax, launched a series of legal challenges, a City figure, Gina Miller emerged as the front woman for Continuity Remain. Large sums of money seemed to flood into these campaigns. George Soros, who had taken over a billion pounds from the UK treasury in 1992 when Britain crashed out of the Exchange Rate mechanism, funded Best for Britain, the most organised of these groups.
The former PM, John Major, and former Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, have toured Europe’s capitals stressing the importance of blocking Brexit.

Conspiracy Theory and Remain

In Remain campaigning, we see the emergence of a comparatively new element in British politics, something found much more in the US, or Muslim majority countries – that is conspiracy theory. The belief that major political events are not what they pertain to be, but are controlled by hidden forces.
We see this nationally, and we see it locally. A leader of the Leave campaign, Arron Banks, is accused on social media of working for the Russians. The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson, has called for a Mueller style investigation into Russian interference in the Brexit vote. Yet in the unitary authority where his constituency of West Bromwich sits, Leave won by 98,250 votes to 49,004.
That is a two to one majority. There are not that many Russians in the country!

Conspiracy theories about terrorism have become staples – there is no Muslim majority country in the world where a majority believe Al-Qaeda carried out 9/11. One opinion poll found only 6% of British Muslims believe Bin Laden did 9/11. People respond to deeply traumatic events like a terrorist attack carried out in the names of one of the world’s major faiths, by refusing to come to terms with what has happened. Those responsible, in some cases prominent figures within Muslim communities and societies, cannot really by to blame.

It is fascinating how a similarly traumatised response seems to have emerged, where people of the liberal centre (by the centre I mean not just the Lib Dems, but the centre of the Labour, Tory, SNP, PC and Greens) have seen not one but two unimaginable explosions detonate in their lives – the election of Trump in the United States, and Brexit here in the UK. Instead of Israel or the Neo-Conservatives though, the blame for Brexit is put on Russia, ‘dark money’, manipulation of the Internet, a small amount of overspending by Leave (even though we spent less overall!) and perhaps most ugly of all attacks on the old, or claims of the manipulation of the uneducated by the very wealthy.

These are traumatised people, struggling to explain a world they don’t understand any more.
John Gray, the British writer has written perhaps the best piece on this, which he situates within the crisis of centrism, and its ongoing political failure. In a brilliant piece on the Politico website in August, Tom McTeague talked of Britain’s ‘Middle Class Brexit Anxiety Disorder’. It is overwhelmingly middle class professionals – for example academics – who seem to have taken the Brexit vote worst. Interestingly it is those who are often told what to do by middle class professionals who were most likely to vote leave – the elderly, the working class, those who rent their home, the unemployed. McTeague cites academic argument from psychologists Phillip Corr and Simon Stuart, who see Remain campaigners creating ‘In’ and ‘Out’ groups in their world view – ironically this demonises ‘Out’ groups in the same way racists have historically sought to demonise those they place beyond the pale.

What do Leave supporters now want

There is no such thing as a Hard Brexit, or a Tory Brexit. Both are terms invented, post referendum, by those who oppose leaving at all. They think that by coining such terms, they can colour and develop their campaign to take us backwards.
Either we leave the EU, or we do not. And the country has voted to leave and the job of government is to enact that decision. A clear commitment was given to every household in the country that this would happen.

Leaving the European Union means leaving three things:

1. The Customs Union
2. The single market
3. The jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice

All of this was stated, by both sides, during the referendum. Remain thought saying so would sway voters, especially when the then Prime Minister and the then Chancellor said so. It did not.

The problem with the Chequers proposal put forward by Theresa May is that, before negotiation, she seems to have accepted that we will align our rules of trade with the single market. Even though most British businesses do not trade with the EU. As changes are made in Brussels, we would no doubt have to follow. Without of course having a say in those rules.
This leaves a back door open, back into the EU. It is not hard to imagine a future PM arguing we should rejoin, perhaps in a decade’s time, to address this anomaly. That worries Leave voters immensely.

There are two other important issues for Brexit supporters, and I think the country generally. One, is that we stop paying the EU £13 billion per year. The UK has been a net contributor to the EU every year bar one. We provide 13% of its current budget, and the PM is offering to pay an astounding £40 billion as a divorce bill when we leave. The PM has also said further ad-hoc payments may continue.
The UK and the EU will be changed irrevocably once that money stops being paid. Either the EU has to do less, or its members have to pay a lot more. A British civil servant in the EU Commission, Chris Kendall, was quoted as saying he longs for the day UKIP MEPs are replaced in Brussels by Muslims from Bosnia and Albania. That may happen. But Albania is not going to pay 13% of the EU’s budget.

The second issue is to maintain the territorial integrity of the UK. In the referendum campaign, the argument at times from Remain was you must vote to stay in the EU, or Scotland will leave Britain, and the UK will break up. That provided to be a classic example of Project Fear – that constitutional issue was settled by the 2014 referendum, when Scotland voted by 54% to stay in the United Kingdom. With the SNP struggling in government, there has been no appetite to revisit the issue, and opinion polls strongly oppose a second referendum.

What Leave supporters had not expected was that an issue with a much lower profile, Northern Ireland, would be weaponised by a curious alliance of the EU, the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar (who seeks to lead the European Commission when he finishes in Irish politics) and continuity Remain.
That they will attempt to use the question of peace in N Ireland to try to make leaving the EU impossible, or to in some way separate N Ireland from the rest of the UK, shows, not their integrity, but the lack of it.
Peace was established in N Ireland by the people of N Ireland. They did so with the support of the governments of Britain and Ireland, and to an extent the various churches in Ireland, and outside supporters such as US diplomats, and the then US President, Bill Clinton.

The EU played no role in establishing peace in N Ireland.

To suggest peace in N Ireland is therefore dependent on the EU is a con-trick. Theresa May and her Cabinet have done us an enormous dis-service by not shouting this from the roof tops.
The terms of peace were established in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. You will sometimes see it referred to also as the Belfast Agreement. I urge you to download it – it is an easily readable pdf.
The EU was NOT a signatory to the agreement. It is mentioned only a handful of times in the text, largely in terms of facilitating cross border initiatives.
Those initiatives are free to continue, and can just as easily become inter-governmental programmes.
There is only going to be a hard border, if the EU puts one there.

The left has become the right, the right has become the left

The things the political centre, and indeed the centre left loved most, have been rejected by voters.
This has led to what may become a more long term re-alignment in our politics.
The EU, open borders, Globalisation have proved to be its undoing. Oscar Wilde wrote that “each man kills the thing he loves” and when we see politicians like Tony Blair wrestling with the referendum result, we see Wilde’s words enacted.

Curiously it is the political right, that today seems most concerned that globalisation may drive down workers wages. It is the right that worries about the impact of Islam on liberal democracy. It is the right that wants to preserve the sovereignty of the people, against lobbying from big business, who want to keep the single market. In the words of Boris Johnson ‘Fuck Business’.

It is the centre, and increasingly the centre left, which argues you can’t do what voters want, because it would be bad for business. That if we don’t do what the boss of Jaguar Land Rover wants, we will be ruined. It is the centre which worries about people being disrespectful to the second biggest religion in the world. It is the centre and parts of the left that appears unconcerned that workers wages may be affected by migration of unskilled labour from 27 countries. The trades unions, increasingly centred around middle class professionals, seem unaware of the positions the Labour movement historically adopted on market forces.

The left is becoming the right, and the right is becoming the left.

Brexit is a symptom of profound changes that have occurred, but is not the cause of those changes. Those trying to stop it would do well to recognise that, and to be careful what they wish for.

Questions please!

PAUL STOTT
20 September 2018

Critiquing The UN: On Terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan's Strategic Interests

On September 18 I spoke at a side meeting at the 39th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva, for the think tank European Foundation for South Asian Studies.

The title of the event "Preventing and Combating Growing Terrorism in South Asia" reflects ongoing concerns, but also critiqued thoroughly the 2018 UN OHCHR report on Kashmir by Prince Hussain of Jordan, and the curious language it uses towards jihadist groups.

The gist of my argument was that Pakistan has long utilised jihadist actors in Kashmir, and to fail to recognise this, and to categorise this as a proxy war, is a significant oversight. Equally a difference between India and those who also claim territory in Kashmir - the Chinese and Pakistanis - is that it is far easier to collect and develop critical information in India, than it is from its neighbours. Neither will ever be victims of lawfare.

On the panel I was joined by Junaid Qureshi of EFSAS and Mr Jason Wiseman, Special Advisor to the Committee on Terrorism in the EU Parliament. Joining us remotely was Dr Dorothee Vandamme of the University of Louvain. Links to their presentations are here and here. You can hear my talk on Soundcloud, and see a video of my presentation on the EFSAS video channel. Finally Indian media coverage of the panel can be seen here:

For the slides I used, download the file below.

Download Stott presentation 18 09 2018

Too Good To Be True?

I suspect this American story is one of those that is simply too good to be true, but reproduce it anyway:

"One day this week the collector of assessed taxes in Chesterton had occasion to leave a tax-paper with a gentleman who has a small white bulldog; the paper being in fact a notice to tax that animal. No one was at home, but the collector thrust the paper under the door. Glancing at the window, he saw the dog looking steadfastly at him. The dog then deliberately took the paper in his mouth, placed his feet upon the fender, and thrust the objectionable paper into a low fire, and perseveringly held it between the bars of the grate. The collector rattled meanwhile at the window, and made a noise, to induce the dog to bark and drop the paper, but utterly in vain; it was held in the fire till it was consumed."

This seems to be a C19th story by a Rev Williams, cited in "The Book of the Bulldog" by Joan McDonald Brearley, pp.24-5 (TFH Publications: New Jersey, 1985).

A Review of Al-Qaeda 2.0: A Critical Reader by Donald Holbrook (ed.)

Critical Studies on Terrorism has published my review of Al-Qaeda 2.0, which is largely a compilation of Ayman al-Zawahiri's writings in the post Bin Laden era. It shows the religosity of al-Zawahiri's world view, and the depth of the historical sweep from which he, and indeed Al-Qaeda, view the world.

The first 50 people to do so, can download a free pdf copy here. I think after that, you will need access to an academic library.

On The Death of Harold Covington

Yesterday the death was announced of US Nazi Harold Covington, best known in recent years for his attempts to establish a 'white homeland' in the pacific north west of the United States. Here in the UK, Covington had a degree of public recognition for a brief period in the early 1990s, where he lived here in Britain, and helped to establish the Combat 18 group.

To see some initial reaction to his death, his Northwest Front group's initial comment can be seen here, and the Southern Poverty Law Center's obituary here. One issue with Covington was the belief in sections of the far-right that he was not what he claimed to be, and was working for the FBI or some other intelligence or law enforcement agency. This view was perhaps helped by a media tendency to link Covington to the 1979 Greensboro massacre, where five members of the Communist Workers Party were killed at an anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration. Covington was never charged with any offence in relation to that incident, but gave provocative media interviews stating he did not give a "happy damn" about the demonstrators, and they got what they deserved. If Covington was a spook or asset it would make his time in England, and role in establishing a neo-Nazi group which flirted with terrorism, all the more significant.

Way back in 1995, Larry O'Hara attempted to analyse some of the conflicting threads around C18, Covington and the security services. That article was published in issue 30 of Lobster magazine, and you can also read it on the Notes from the Borderland magazine website here.

It is always useful to go back to articles, even after twenty years, see how they stand the test of time, and how we might examine events anew today. Whether fresh information emerges about Covington, now he is safely out of the way in Valhalla, remains to be seen.

A Conservative Intellectual and Brexit

Jesse Norman is talked by some as a future leader of the Conservative Party. Bryan Appleyard's Sunday Times piece of 01/07/18 certainly tried to portray him as the leading Conservative intellectual, offering a puff piece for Norman's new book on Adam Smith.

There is not much point in being an intellectual if you can't translate complicated ideas into simple formats, or struggle with basic concepts. Lets listen to the great sage on Brexit:

"As I thought about the Brexit situation I found myself thinking that there are just so many questions embedded in this.... that the idea that there is some right answer actually does violence to the problem and it also removes (people) from the need to think it through for themselves."

That is as clear as mud.

Norman's position on the EU though, may be influenced by simple self-interest, or nervousness

"I once asked someone whether they knew anyone.... who's maintained their reputation after taking a position on either side."

There a lots of things Mr Norman's Eton education could have given him. It does not seem to have given him any balls?

On England, and Englishness

Last year I had an article on Englishness and Brexit published in the British Politics Review, where I argued that Englishness was less important in our vote to leave the EU, than many people like to think. You can read it for free on my academia page here, but you will need to register.

The World Cup has got people thinking about Englishness again, and Tim Stanley's "To be English is to be guilty of the Original Sin" was a useful it not particularly revelatory contribution to this debate. Stanley beautifully picks up Orwell's view of the disdain the English may have for their fellows when he writes:

"There are Englishmen who have built their whole identity around rejecting Englishness, and they're often the most painfully English people of all. What other country could produce The Guardian, which dedicates columns to arguing that its English readers either don't exist or are inherently racist"?

The further England go in the World Cup, the more the pressure on that fault line, and the more we will be discussing Englishness. Imagine, if the only country in Europe without a Parliament, won the World Cup!

What Terrorism Costs France

Tucked away in the 'In Brief' section of the Daily Telegraph's sports pages, you could easily miss one of the saddest items of the day:

"The threat of terrorist attacks in France means no World Cup matches will be broadcast on big screens in public spaces, the government said yesterday."

When the barbarians are inside the gates, we lose the freedom to even socialise together. A desperately sad decision to see.

Brendan Cox, Survivors Against Terror and the Manchester Bombing

The 22nd May was a year to the day since the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22, mostly young people and children, were killed.

To coincide with events held in Manchester, the Survivors Against Terror group (SAT) issued an open letter in the Observer of 20th May (scroll down here), calling for five distinct positions to be adopted against terrorism. This received considerable media coverage, see for example that from the BBC. The main figure in SAT is Brendan Cox. Whilst he resigned from positions in two charities linked to continuing his wife’s work in February, his work on countering terrorism was not mentioned at the time. Even when he has been publicly labelled a sex pest, it is perhaps rather difficult to condemn him when he is standing with fellow victims of terrorism. That of course is precisely the type of thing he will have calculated into his thinking, as he seeks to return to public life.

The SAT intervention has a five point programme it seeks support for:

• Please keep your focus on honouring the memory of those who have been killed. Terrorists often attack partly to gain notoriety. We should deny them it; their names don't deserve to be remembered.

• Give to appeals to help the victims of attacks and demand government provide the high quality services that survivors need.

• Ask media and social media organisations to do far more to take on and shut down those driving hate.

• Support our emergency and security services to do their job. If you know something or suspect something, tell them.

• Take on hatred wherever you find it. Very few of us will ever meet a terrorist, but lots of us will experience those driving hatred. Hatred is the sea that terrorists need to swim in, if we take on that hatred, we dry up that sea.

It would be interesting to know who wrote this, or developed the draft. Points 1, 2 and 4 are so anodyne as to be agreeable by virtually anyone, not least those who have suffered bereavement in terrorist incidents. Points 3 and 5 are more contentious, and open up a potential agenda – restricting social media, and acting against ‘hate’ that is more debateable, and entirely in keeping with political agendas from global elites and their little helpers.

Social Media and Terrorism?

Terrorism long predates social media – the IRA campaign, or that of the various loyalist groups from 1969-98, hardly needed it, even if the technology had existed. Historically, explanations for terrorism have considered concepts such as injustice, poverty, bad foreign policy, or the nature of, and trends within, ideologies and belief systems, serving to radicalise individuals and groups. Social networks are also important – you are more likely to join a terrorist group, if friends are doing so. That is why some towns, like Portsmouth, appear to have had Islamic versions of First World War ‘Pals Regiments’ going off to Syria. Cox and co ignore all of this. Instead the problem is the media and social media, and the wide, perhaps all too wide concept of ‘hate’.

There is little evidence social media played any role in the Manchester bombing.

The bomber, Salman Abedi, was a supporter of Islamic State, and a Mancunian of Libyan heritage. His father, Ramadan Abedi, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organisation the British government helped to overthrow Gadaffi. Salman Abedi had long moved in Islamist circles in Greater Manchester, and fought in Libya in 2011 in its Civil War. His brother Ismail Abedi is currently in custody in Libya, fighting extradition to the UK.

But - there is nothing here from SAT or Brendan Cox on foreign policy, immigration or religion. Is it a good idea to be allowing members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to settle in Manchester? Why did the British government seemingly support the overthrow of Colonel Gadaffi, then work with him against the Islamists, then change course again, to support regime change? What does Theresa May, either the Home Secretary or Prime Minister in much of this period, have to say? There is nothing from SAT on breaking up friendship groups of extremists - in the months before the attack, Abedi twice visited a convicted terrorist in prison. Should we be allowing young men convicted of supporting terrorism to hang out in jail with impressionable young men from the streets?

Taking on 'hatred', requires a definition of hatred that is agreed upon by a majority of the populace. How likely is that? Whilst elite level groups and government departments can readily agree (debating terminology is one of the things they do) such a consensus is unlikely to emerge from where it is needed - the bottom up. And where does any definition of ‘hate’ sit with the concept of free speech?

What Next?

The deployment of victims of terrorism to promote the idea that social media is in some way a ‘cause’ of terrorism is now underway. At the same time, there seems to have been a low level purge on Twitter of ‘extremist’ voices, most prominently of Tommy Robinson. In due course, that is likely to be extended to You Tube, and Nigel Farage has made the accusation that algorithms are being used to censor conservative comment on Facebook.
That, combined with loose accusations of ‘extremism’ or ‘hate’ is likely to be at the centre of the work of groups like Hope not Hate, and it seems, Survivors Against Terrorism, going forward. It avoids asking hard questions about foreign policy, immigration policy and (almost certainly) it avoids asking hard questions about trends within contemporary Sunni Islam. Consider all those politicians and news readers talking about ‘Daesh’ or ‘so-called Islamic State’ to see how readily euphemism can predominate. It risks conflating those involved with violence, with those who are not. And it will almost certainly serve as one of the fronts in the conflicts over politics we will see over the next 18 months.

Do you trust Brendan Cox to define what constitutes ‘hate’?

Anti-Semitism: Where the Labour Left and Right Agree?

One of the things the Labour right and Corbynistas agree on, is a sort of non-aggression pact concerning Islamic anti-Semitism.

Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters can hardly turn round and say "actually left anti-Semitism exists, but it is probably less directly threatening to Jews across Europe than Islamist violence, which has killed 11 Jews in France in 12 years." Those on the right of the Labour party, just as likely to be dependent on Islamic votes for office, are equally unlikely to spend too much time correcting debates. Consider little Jim McMahon in Oldham West and Royton, pictured fourth from right, below:

The Commons debate on anti-Semitism in the Labour party mentioned Islamophobia almost as many times (3) as any reference to Islamist anti-Semitism (4). On the Labour benches only John Mann seemed capable of grasping the nettle, despite cases such as Aysegul Gurbuz, and a series of similar scandals up and down the country in the past few years. More will break in the coming weeks.

In the long run, this pact is unsustainable. The truth will always out. It may take a shattering event, perhaps the mass murder of British Jews aspired to by some jihadists coming to fruition, but it will end. Across the channel in France, where those murders are already happening, there is also the drip, drip, drip of low level, continuous intimidation. Tucked away in Monday's press coverage of a manifesto condemning the intimidation of French Jews by Islamists, was this line:

"Ten per cent of the Jewish citizens of the Paris region.... have recently been forced to move because they were no longer secure in certain council estates. This is a quiet ethnic cleansing." (Adam Sage, The Times, 23/04/18).

What is remarkable about the British response to this ethnic cleaning, is that senior figures in the British Jewish community, apparently wish to cover it up. Last Friday, Rabbi Lord Sacks, on Thought for the Day, insisted that contemporary anti-Semitism can be explained by the global rise of the far left and far right. He did not mention Islamism, Islamists or jihadists. In an ending that would be comic if it were not so serious, he even managed to drag out the line that for evil triumph, all that is neccesary is for good men to do nothing.

Precisely the charge that can be levelled against himself, and for that matter, much of the Labour party....

Northamptonshire Is Out.....

From todays Sunday Times 'Best Places to Live, 2018'

"There is no room for Northamptonshire on the list. It has attractive countryside, handsome houses and a plausible commute to the capital - but please tell us where we should make ourselves at home."

The Fortean Fall

Mark E Smith completists have some job to do securing every single Fall album - there are reportedly 38.

One thing you can get though is the current Fortean Times, which has a small pic of the great man in the top left hand corner of its cover, and the heading "Legends of The Fall: The Weird World of Mark E Smith". The subsequent article perhaps does not quite live up to its billing - it is a mere one page piece by a New Zealand academic, Dean Ballinger, entitled perhaps predictably "There's a Ghost in My House".

Ballinger is clearly a fan, although I have never been able to summon up much personal enthusiasm for the stories about Mark E Smith and tarot cards, or that he somehow predicted the 1996 Manchester IRA bombing. Better though is the analysis of Smith's use of Lovecraft, Machen and James, and he locates one of the Fall's classics, Wings, in the work of Phillip K Dick. There is clearly a lot more to be said about Smith's general interest in fortean matters - check out the homage to the Cottingley Fairies in the video to Ghost in My House - and I suspect his work, now he is safely dead, is due a whole series of reappreciations.

Let us hope therefore Dean Ballinger is revving up for a longer article. And I can get my hands on the approximately 19 Fall albums I am currently short of.....

The Greatness of Cyrille Regis

To get an indication of how great a footballer Cyrille Regis was, and what players of his era overcame, watch these six minutes of highlights from West Brom's 5-3 win at Old Trafford in 1979.

Make sure you watch to the end for the description manager Ron Atkinson gives of Regis 'one of the coloured front people'. He went on to be much more than that.

The Perils of Media Fact Checking

One journalistic tool that is now used frequently is to 'fact-check' particular claims or statements by politicians and campaign groups. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, quite a bit actually. This is Mollie Ziegler's take:

"The 'fact-checking trend' meant that journalists would gain more power. They wouldn't just get to determine which stories saw the light of day and which were killed or downplayed; they would pick the angle and framing for the stories and determine who was quoted and how. And through fact-checking, they would tell people what to think about claims made in these stories."

Mollie Ziegler, "Trump vs the Media" (Encounter Broadside No:51, Encounter Books: New York) p. 40 - 41.

Fear For Our Democracy In 2018? It Has Never Looked Healthier

On the Left Foot Forward website, the Green MEP Molly Scott Cato, has written an article saying that, after, the events of recent years, she fears for our democracy. It seems a few people shooting boo at High Court judges or Tory Remainers represents an existential crisis.

Below is my reply. I have no idea if Left Foot Forward welcomes, or censures, critical comment, so I have posted it here just in case.

It seems strange to be lectured on democracy, by an MEP who cannot accept the largest mass vote in our people's history. Every vote counts for Molly, except when those votes reject membership of the European Union.

Brexit was a revolt of the little man against the European project. It was also a firm rejection of the EU's pseudo-democratic model - consider technocrats had already taken charge in Italy and Greece when those countries dared to step outside the rules of the troika.

Brexit knocked David Cameron and George Osborne off their perch, and may yet lead to the abolition of the House of Lords if Lord Adonis and his chums use their ermine to thwart the will of the people.

Leaving the European Union offers us the chance to revitalise our democracy from the local level upwards, moving away from the top down process beloved in Brussels. It ends at a stroke the excuses of our own politicians, who can no longer blame their own failings to deliver x or y, on the EU.

How the Green Party, who once believed in localism, came to be the most rabidly pro-Brussels of our political parties, desperate to stay in the single market, is perhaps an issue for those writing histories of political 'capture'.

But let 2019 be the year we remind ourselves that democracy, if it means anything, means delivering for the people. And that means a full, clean Brexit where the soverignty of the British people is restored.

Brexit Resisted? The Remain Activists Trying to Link Brexit to Neo-Nazis

On 9th November, ITV showed a documentary, Undercover: Inside Britain's New Far-Right. It no longer seems to be on ITV's website, but is available at various points online, for example here.

Documentaries of this type were the staple of an earlier era - remember World In Action in the 1990s? The attempts to convince a sceptical public that a far-right terrorist machine was being established in Britain, via the group Combat 18? The security services, under pressure from cuts in an era that was post Soviet but pre 9/11, were needed to save us from this terrible menace. Similar programmes appeared on animal rights activists, and even the far-left. They did not age well.

Politically, this documentary was much more ambitious. It was about resisting Brexit and seeking to garner support for further controls on social media. My colleague Larry O'Hara explains this fully in his article here (17,000 words long so not suitable for people who can only deal with Tweets/sound-bites/You-tube videos)

Larry summarises his case thus:

The coverage of groups like Britain First, the National Front and Generation Identity (GI) was hardly convincing. For example, there was a lot of focus on GI “military style camps” which are a joke. What wasn’t mentioned were actual military-style camps that have taken place in the UK recently: the Siggurd camps (later rebranded as Legion camps).

1) the rather sad and isolated figure of failed UKIP leadership contender Anne Marie Waters is shown as having poor political judgement by consorting with fascists and, er, saying in private about Islam what she says in public

2) long term Searchlight/Hope Not Hate infiltrator Peter Rushton (whose card I marked back in 1994) is shown twice saying Brexit was about ‘Rights for Whites’. Not only do I disagree, I take strong exception to viewers being manipulated by a prepared script in this way. So strong was my exception I have taken the unprecedented step of quoting from one of many intelligence reports in our possession concerning various assets: in this instance one written about Rushton by his handlers in 2002 when he was under fire for being an infiltrator, though supported by the rather naive John Tyndall.

3) I reveal for the first time the amounts paid to Hope Not Hate personnel by pro-EU group Better for Britain, especially interesting given HNHs charitable status and feigned neutrality during the EU referendum and since. HNH are far from neutral commentators on Brexit - they are players central to preventing its implementation.

The second strand of the show was about whipping up hysteria concerning social media. Which explains why an irrelevant group like Britain First had their strength and support exaggerated, and a group like Generation Identity, who barely exist in the UK, were given such prominence. What a coincidence (Not) that since the article was written it has transpired that both Britain First and Generation Identity have had their Twitter accounts suspended.

All this overlaps with the pro-Remainer conspiracy theories peddled by especially Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian/Observer regarding Russian influence on the EU Referendum. I merely dip my toes into the seething whirlpool that is this debate, which I will return to elsewhere.

In any event, I trust the above has whetted the appetite of those of you interested in referenced argument on the important matters to alluded to above. I did raise many of these issues with the documentary-makers prior to publication, in emails to David Henshaw of Hardcash Productions, but they declined to reply.

They can dish it out, but can’t take it.

December Will Be Magic Again

From 2008 - 2015 I did a lot of security work in order to finance my PhD. Some of the best times were working as a doorman at Epsom Downs racecourse at the Christmas parties, where an enormous effort went into preparing the Queens and Duchess stands for dinner dances.

There are two great pluses to door work. Attractive women speak to you, and you meet some real characters, good and bad. After one party, a man who must have been well into his late 60s, but still had a military bearing, talked at length about his security work in the Gulf, and showed me the scar he got brawling with the late London gangster John Bindon. Before I could ask my new friend if he felt John Bindon and Princess Margaret really had been an item, he was gone, very politely trying to get the phone number of a lady in her early 60s I had seen sitting at an adjoining table. On a loop, reception in the Queens Stand played a variety of Christmas songs, of which "December Will Be Magic Again" by Kate Bush was easily my favourite. It was playing as Bindon's former adversary and his lady friend swapped numbers.

Hafiz Saeed: A Series of Curious Developments

Yesterday I had a short article published about the developments surrounding Hafiz Saeed, a prominent Pakistani jihadist, currently trying to enter politics in the Islamic Republic.

You can view the piece, on the European Foundation for South Asian studies website, here.

A Brief History of Jihadism: The British South Asian Nexus

A few weeks ago I was asked to write a short piece by SOAS University of London, for the section of the Guardian website they use to promote the university's work and some of its ideas and thinkers.

This is my contribution, A Brief History of Jihadism: The British South Asian Nexus.

Updated: 30 May 2018

I believe the Guardian take down sponsored content after a set period, and have done so in this case. Below is what they did publish.
Download A brief history of jihadism_ the British south Asian nexus _ SOAS Roots _ The Guardian 25 10 2017

Duties and Responsibilities in Counter-Terrorism

Several newspapers and news sites have covered the release, in Pakistan, of a US-Canadian couple, Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle. They had been kidnapped in Afghanistan in October 2012, and had three children whilst being held by the Haqqani Network.

Significant in this is the tone of the US government statement. This certainly seems to refer to other Americans (and other westerners?) in a similar predicament, but also that the US government has pretty clearly expectations of Pakistan to address this.

It may be too early to talk of a 'Trump Doctrine' but at least part of what we see forming is a desire for other countries to take on duties and responsibilities, with no doubt some behind the scenes encouragment from either carrot or stick. There is little doubt here, that Pakistan was held responsible either for the kidnapping itself, or its continuation.

The times they are a changing?