This morning, the BBC and the rest of the liberal media cannot get enough of Lt General Ben Hodges who has warned we Brits that we must not vote for Brexit as it could damage NATO. What on earth is a US Soldier doing intervening in a British Election rather defies belief, how would Obama feel if a British General made the equally factually innaccurate claim that Mrs Clinton was a lying, deceitful old dyke and so urged folks to back the GOP this November?
Hodges, who is the top yankee soldier in Europe, seems to think that without Britain the EU could unravel. And if that happens NATO will unravel. Frankly it does not make much of a case for staying in the EU if we are told that if one of its 28 members quits it will fall apart.
Moreover do you need the EU for NATO? The latter was formed in 1949. A small common market did not get going until 1957 but the vast majority of NATO members were not part of that. The Evil Empire itself says that it only stopped being a Common Market and became a political union in 1993 by which time NATO had been getting along fine, winning the cold war and ensuring peace in Europe for 44 years. Yes it is NATO that has kept peace in Europe not the EU.
There are a stack of large NATO members who are happy to be involved despite not being in the EU: The USA, Canada, Turkey for example. Hodges - like Defence Secretary Fallon - is pushing this theme of NATO needing the EU as part of project fear. But the more outlandish and patently bogus the claims made by those opposing Brexit and the more interventions from those we in Britain really are bound to react against such as Americans, froggies, krauts and the war criminal Blair the more the Brexit camp will feel it has a chance.
With Ms Pixie Lott leading the charge for Brexit and making far more sense that General Hodges, President Obama, Blair et al, I note that polls today show we "outers" narrowly in the lead overall and well in the lead among those certain to vote.
Indeed, my hope is that the polls understate the outers in that just as at the General Election when "shy conservatives" failed to admit to pollsters how they would vote in a secret ballot, we will also see "shy outers". For folks such as my wife working in a bastion of the left, a liberal arts campus, admitting you are an outer to your colleagues will be tough for they will instantly associate her with Nigel Farage, racist Colonels from Surrey and folks who read the Daily Mail. And in campus Britain where the thiought police no platform anyone who is even slightly suspect, being branded a Daily Mail reader is career suicide.
Of course this is hugely unfair. There is a strong and proud tradition of Euroscepticism on the left with Tony Benn a leading figure in this movement. But that has all been forgotten in certain quarters and however much my wife were to mention Pixie Lott, Sigma, Sigala, Phats & Small, DJ Luck and MC Neat, that is to say the cool young pop artists who I have never heard of but are apparently all ardent Brexiters, she would still be viewed as odd. Given the intolerant nature of the University left today one imagines that any outer working in academia wiuld be well advised to be bloody shy.
Chuck in a few terrified public sector workers who are shy outers to the opinion poll mix and you can see why Project Fear may be even more on the back foot than we think. The silly claims from the folks with no business meddling in British affairs just are not working.
Next up? Tony Blair warns that voting to leave the EU will mean that Andy Murray is less likely to win Wimbledon while David Cameron claims that Brexit will cause a sharp increase in global warming with poor little polar bears floating down the thames on the last bits of Arctic ice. And it would all be the fault of Boris and Pixie.