Paris and the reaction: A sick inducing 15 hours

My thoughts and prayers are with those men and women who lost their lives in the barbaric acts of mass murder in Paris last night, as well as the family and friends they leave behind who will struggle to come to terms with what happened.

The attacks were almost certainly carried out by Islamist terrorists, who are intolerant of anything that does not fit their narrow minded, absolutist and bigoted view of how life should be lived by everyone.

They despise freedom. They despise difference. They despise the idea of democracy. We should be uncompromising in our determination to not yield one inch to them. Because what they want is completely unacceptable, namely submit to their demands or die, there can be no negotiation with them, so we must be unflinching in efforts to root them out and destroy them.

What needs to be made clear though is that what happened in Paris is completely unrelated to the democratic imperative of leaving the EU.

Some people who variously possess racist, xenophobic or cultural superiority beliefs, are using the terrorism of a relatively small number of homicidal maniacs as an excuse to demonise all muslims. They think that if all muslims can be grouped together and painted as an enemy, then a new apartheid can eventually be realised. After all, fewer dark faces around the place makes Johnny Racist a happy boy.

These same narrow minded people are the ones whose main focus is stopping all immigration into Britain. Many are quasi-brainwashed devotees of the Cult of Farage. As such they seem to think it's a good idea to wrongly paint atrocities like Paris as somehow a consequence of EU membership and freedom of movement, and therefore seize upon such events as a convenient justification for demanding Brexit.

It is irresponsible, disgraceful and damaging behaviour that undermines the moderate and rational effort to leave the EU. Far from speaking for the majority in this country, these bile-filled people will repel the majority and risk undermining the prospects of a leave vote at the referendum.

The nausea felt at the terrible events that unfolded in Paris last night has been compounded today by the all-too-predictable reaction on social media of those on the extremist fringes of our society. It is sick inducing. If only they would shut up and slither back under their stones.

Cameron hides EU Associate Membership position in plain sight

The BBC is reporting today that David Cameron is to warn European leaders he will 'think again' about the UK staying in the EU if his demands for reform are 'met with a deaf ear'.

Cameron has been forced to send a letter to the European Council president, Donald Tusk, setting out the changes he wants for the UK, following repeated complaints that the EU has no clear knowledge of what Cameron's wishlist is.

The BBC quote a passage from a proposed speech Cameron is set to make on Tuesday, timed to coincide with the release of the details of what powers he wants to repatriate from the EU. Read the words carefully, (the emphasis in the text is mine):

"If we can't reach such an agreement [on reforms], and if Britain's concerns were to be met with a deaf ear, which I do not believe will happen, then we will have to think again about whether this European Union is right for us. As I have said before - I rule nothing out."

The language is meticulously precise. The use of the word 'this' is no accident. It is an essential component in the sentence. Cameron is making a distinction between the EU as it is today, and the EU as it may be in the not too distant future following an eventual treaty and distinction between the 19 Eurozone and nine non Eurozone EU member states.

Cameron wants people to form the impression from his speech that he would be willing to leave the EU if he doesn't get his way, but in truth he is giving himself cover to endorse a form of associate membership instead, which will keep Britain in the EU. Heads he wins, tails Brexiteers lose.

This shows there isn't a lot of difference between Cameron's position and that of Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings' business venture and phony Leave campaign, Vote Leave Ltd.

Elliott and Cummings want more reforms than Cameron is asking for, and their cynical campaign is about getting people only to vote to leave, but only so the result can be used to improve the bargaining position with the EU to secure more concessions. But both they and Cameron have the aim of Britain remaining in the EU at the end of the process.

In order to win a war it is vital to understand who your enemy is. Cameron, Elliott and Cummings are far bigger and more dangerous opponents of those who want Britain to leave the EU for good than even the Stronger In campaign. We know them and we can see their plan. Now we need to ensure genuine leave campaigners understand it and how to defeat it.

Vote Leave CEO was director of the Britain in Europe Campaign Ltd

This blog has consistently explained that all available evidence demonstrates that the Vote Leave campaign has no intention of Britain leaving the EU for good.

Instead it is clear that they are campaigning for a leave vote only to give leverage to David Cameron to help secure more EU reforms to remove the need for Brexit. This has been backed by mainstream media stories that explain what Dominic Cummings' game really is.

This has resulted in Cummings and Robert Oxley refusing to answer any points on Twitter. It has also resulted in Mark Wallace of Conservative Home claiming it is all a conspiracy theory, despite his inability to produce any evidence that defeats my argument.

Now we have information, publicly accessible on the Companies House website, showing that until 1st October 2015, the newly silent CEO of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliott, was a director of a limited company called The Britain in Europe Campaign Ltd.

We very quickly received a request sent via another blogger from a senior Tory politician and Vote Leave associate, to kindly please stop sharing this information on the internet. According to this person, The Britain in Europe Ltd name was purely a blocking move. There are a few problems with this person's assertion.

Firstly, why did Matthew Elliott only resign as one of its directors two weeks after Vote Leave was incorporated with Companies House? Second, why was he a director of it for four years when the company continues today with William Norton as sole director? Third. if the company was a blocking move, why has the 'britain-in-europe.com' internet domain, or variations of it, not been registered? Fourth, why are there not variations of the name in terms of limited companies?

Here we have a man...

• whose every public utterance has been about EU reform, never about leaving the EU
• who in June was declaring that if a two tier Europe (something akin to associate membership) was achieved he would support it
• who has gone on the record setting out his entrepreneurial ambitions to harvest voter intentions and touchpoint issues on a database that can be sold
• who has gone invisible since Vote Leave launched due to his position causing embarrassment to the position Vote Leave want people to think they hold

now shown to have been pushing a pro-EU membership reform line at Business for Britain, while also being a director of a company whose name, Britain in Europe Campaign Ltd, shows it advocates Britain remaining in the EU.

In any case, taking a company name doesn't block anything as the name of the limited liability entities rarely if ever is the same as the name of the campaign. There is no reason to have a company incorporated with that name unless the aim is to have it reserved for use.

Too much doesn't add up about Vote Leave. The more we scratch beneath the surface, the more we see reasons to believe it isn't about leaving the EU at all, rather it's a mere trojan horse for people with a pro-EU membership reform agenda. Vote Leave is not on the same side as those people who want Britain to leave the EU for good.

Is the penny dropping about Vote Leave's true intentions?

Against a backdrop of Dominic Cummings refusing to answer any questions or points made by this blog, and Matthew Elliott's protege, the Conservative Home editor Mark Wallace, dismissing the evidence presented as a 'conspiracy theory', the increasingly absurd Vote Leave campaign has released its first 'Monthly Big Picture Update'. You can read it here.

You can imagine our surprise to discover there is nothing in it about actually leaving the EU... Sarcasm aside, there is just the usual chuntering about 'voting to leave' and an undefined negotiation, followed by the now familiar vacuum where people should reasonably expect explicit details of Vote Leave's intended destination and a plan for getting there.

However, the language used by Vote Leave, in a section detailing the lessons for them, does tell us what their game is. The parts we have underlined in red particularly stand out and demand a response:

Looking at point 1 in the image above, we see the continuation of Vote Leave talking about 'voting to leave' but nothing beyond that. They want the support of people who want Brexit, but where is the commitment to Brexit at the end of this yellow brick road? The Dominic Cummings Grand Design continues.

NB: We have repeatedly asked Vote Leave's campaign director, Dominic Cummings and head of media, Robert Oxley, is the position of Vote Leave that Britain must leave the EU for good? They have refused to answer that question. They have never once argued that Britain must actually leave the EU.

So it comes as no surprise that their campaign material continues to exclude any reference to actually leaving the EU after a vote to leave. As you can see in point 4, Vote Leave talks about taking back powers over some issues. That isn't Brexit. That isn't taking full control of one's own country. It is the Business for Britain reform agenda. It means Britain would remain in the EU.

When we move on to point 7, we can see Vote Leave's true intentions. Why does the EU model matter if we are planning to leave? Why would new institutions be of any relevance if we are leaving the EU? Consideration for the EU model and new institutions only matters if you plan to be part of them by remaining in the EU. Again, this is all about reform and nothing about Brexit.

The reason why Vote Leave never talk about leaving the EU for good is that they have no intention of that happening. It is not part of their agenda.

They are making it clear their aim is to force David Cameron to negotiate for more crumbs from the EU table, using a vote to leave as nothing more than extra leverage to help Cameron secure new EU deal that goes further than he wants. The Financial Times has reported this recently:

As has the Telegraph which made the objective very clear:

When you add all of this together, we believe any reasonable person would conclude that Vote Leave's true intentions are in no way anything to do with leaving the EU.

Readers should draw their own conclusions. But if it is clear to you that Vote Leave is only masquerading as a Leave campaign to achieve ulterior EU reform aims, we hope you will agree that the responsible course of action is to bring it to the attention of as many people as possible, so they are not taken in.