On the 08.10 interview slot on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this week, former Cabinet minister Amber Rudd spoke of “the extremism of the Brexit party“. For those who don’t know, the Brexit party gained the highest number of votes and seats in the UK’s EU parliamentary elections in May this year.
Amber Rudd became Home Secretary when Theresa May became Prime Minister in 2016 but resigned over the Windrush scandal in April 2018. She recently resigned from Boris Johnson’s government and from the Conservative parliamentary party because she disagrees with the Prime Minister’s policy on Brexit.
Amber Rudd voted for the UK to Remain in the EU. That is her view, and she is entitled to it.
But does it entitle her to label those who wish to Leave the EU come what may, Deal or No Deal on October 31st, as extreme ?
On an impartial view, surely not. The official ballot paper for the Referendum on 23rd June 2016 gave a straight option between remaining in the EU and leaving. It was an officially sanctioned choice.
But now the Amber Rudds of this world consider that there is only one morally legitimate, sensible and moderate view for any sane and reasonable person to take.
Any one who disagrees with Amber Rudd and her mindset can now be labelled extreme. Not because they are objectively extreme, but because Amber Rudd declares them to be extreme.
This psychology has characterised all the unconstitutional and immoral efforts to stop the UK actually leaving the EU – promised by the Remain voting Prime Minister Theresa May for 29th March 2019 and then postponed at her request and still being postponed by those who seek to overturn the Referendum result.
In the context of a democratic vote and a clear promise by a democratically elected government to leave the EU, let’s be very clear. If there is any extremism at work, it’s being displayed by high profile Remain campaigners who refuse to allow the outcome of the legitimate and democratic Referendum vote to be implemented.
And, to a democrat, such denial of democracy qualifies as extreme.
Please don’t insult our intellects with talk of hard and soft Brexit and the need for a Deal with the EU. We all know full well what is happening here. The people leading this constitutional coup certainly do.
The recent decision by the eleven EU oriented members of the Supreme Court amply demonstrates this [outlined in the last two posts on this site]. They have unconstitutionally declared Boris Johnson’s 5 week prorogation “unlawful”: the EU propagandists can now smear a Prime Minister who is obliged to fulfil the 2016 Referendum mandate or else risk the extinction of both his own party, and our traditional English conceptions of liberty and democracy.
But the full facts of the situation and the historic English constitutional understanding are irrelevant to the politically correct worldview. Contrary facts are discounted, not assimilated; facts like Hong Kong protestors frightened of losing the liberty they gained under British colonial rule …
In the Materialist, Internationalist tradition of the Marxist mindset, however, any means are legitimate in pursuing and imposing their self evidently right and just Ideal.
This is manifest in our universities today where so many academics and students have lost sight of the central truth that a university is a place where intellectual rigour should apply to evidence and arguments. Where we ought to be able to examine and assess our own epistemology and that of others in accordance with reason, not blind prejudice.
This point was made by a Dr Williams from Canterbury this week on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze.
This point was not made by the apologists for exclusion and no platforming – a practice self evidently illiberal politically, and anti intellectual academically. Instead we were told that giving a platform to unacceptable views [presumably like the outcome of the 2016 Referendum] gives authority and credibility to unacceptable views, therefore they must be banned. Students and voters cannot be trusted to hear the issues and exercise their own judgement responsibly for themselves.
Personally, I find it disturbing that people in such a position are pre-occupied by a political, not an academic paradigm, a paradigm to which they require everyone else to submit their will and intellect, too.
To avoid any misunderstanding, let me be clear: I too am disturbed by those who want to make another person’s race, or sexuality, or whatever an issue.
I believe that we are all made in the image of God; that all human life is sacrosanct and to be respected; that if we individually have an issue about another human being we should address that to our Maker who made us all and Who Alone has the right to judge us.
That God in Christ set us all an example of self sacrifice and love for others, even our enemies; that we should be quick to discern the evil in our own hearts, and very slow indeed to find wrong in others; and that this belief system has profoundly civilising effects.
I am disturbed, too, when people denigrate this example and teaching yet seek to instrumentalise the normal human sense of justice and fairness for a particular political end, such as Materialist Egalitarianism and Internationalism a.k.a. MARXISM [where an enlightened elite imposes its Materialist world view by capturing the State mechanism in order to systematically re-fashion society according to its Ideology].
I am disturbed by people who want to slander their fellow human beings as extreme because they don’t like their opinion or their worldview. Who use words like fascist and racist and extremist without first stopping to consider whether the mindset of militant disrespect and arrogance, or blind prejudice, or acting outside and contrary to civilised norms of behaviour, has any place in their own hearts and minds.
As Jesus Christ said,
Hypocrite – first take the plank of wood out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to remove the speck of dust from another’s eye …
Ray Catlin
The Moral Maze programme titled, Academic Freedom, can be accessed on BBC Sounds at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00094jx
Conservatism Institute 