Chris Patten was wheeled out on Question Time last night and displayed all the lucidity to be expected from a 79 year-old Europhile. At the start of a diatribe on, you guessed it, Brexit, the Chancellor of Oxford University came up with some dubious claims. He first had this to say about Britain’s GDP per Capita:
“Our GDP per capita now… is lower for heaven’s sake than Lithuania”.
It sounds questionable… because it’s not true.
According to the IMF’s 2023 forecast, Britain’s GDP per Capita (at purchasing power parity) is $56,471, Lithuania’s sat on $49,266. Britain’s nominal GDP was forecast at $46,371; and Lithuania’s was $28,094. A mere 40% lower…
Chris’s confusion didn’t end there, as he then took a leaf out of the Keir Starmer playbook to talk down Britain’s prosperity relative to Poland:
“The poorest 20% in Britain are poorer than the poorest 20% in Poland”.
Guido isn’t quite sure where Chris found this figure, although data from the Financial Times, extending to 2021, showed this couldn’t be further from the truth. British households are better off than their Polish counterparts across every percentile.
You would expect a better grasp of facts from the Chancellor of Oxford University…
Speaking after yesterday afternoon’s unsuccessful ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ Rally in Oxford – insofar as the statue remains standing this morning – the university’s chancellor Lord Patten gave a strong performance on the Today programme, not only defending the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford – pointing out his scholarship pays in full for 20 African students to study a year – as well as defending so-called ‘offensive’ statues more broadly from his position as the last colonial governor of Hong Kong. He claims a statue of him is being erected in Beijing soon, though for how long it will stand is a different matter…
His assured defence of Britain’s history stood in stark contrast to other university leaders’ kowtowing of the radical, history-erasing movement seen this week; with Liverpool University last night agreeing to erase Gladstone’s name from one of its student halls after a small cohort of students demanded it apparently because his father owned slaves. Slave traders yesterday, Gladstone today, book burning tomorrow…
Second referendum and Rory Stewart Backer Chris Patten launched into an undignified attack on Boris Johnson this afternoon on Politics Live, attempting to present Boris as an enemy of LGBT rights all precariously based upon one 1998 column where Boris used the word “bumboys” once. Here’s how their records stack up…
- Boris voted to repeal the notoriously homophobic Section 28 legislation, against the tide of his party in 2003. Jeremy Corbyn abstained…
- Patten voted to introduce Section 28.
- Boris launched the campaign for equal marriage, when the majority of the country and Tory MPs opposed the idea.
- Patten didn’t bother to vote to defend equal marriage legislation in the House of Lords in 2013.
- Boris as Mayor of London supported the annual Pride celebration. Pink stetson and all…
- Patten, as far as Guido can see, has not yet attended a Pride parade. Nor has he worn a pink stetson…
Patten’s support for the European Union means he wins the liberal plaudits despite a deeply illiberal voting record. Meanwhile the chattering classes ignore Boris’ actual consistently liberal record because they’re still upset about Brexit…
UPDATE: An earlier version of this article said that Patten voted “to kill off equal marriage legislation in the House of Lords.” This was in fact Lord (John) Patten, not Lord (Chris) Patten of Barnes. Guido is happy to clarify that Lord Patten of Barnes simply failed to turn up to vote…
Yesterday’s EU Withdrawal Bill debate in the House of Lords saw Brexit-bashing peers at their ermine-clad, sneering worst. Lord Bilmoria said Brexit is “a train crash in slow motion” and compared leaving the EU to the outbreak of the First World War. The Dark Lord, Lord Mandleson, said it is not “axiomatic” that the result of the referendum should be upheld and suggested Brexit could be overturned. Lord Patten whacked the benches as he shouted “I hate referendums!” and denounced Brexit as an “sin against… democracy.” Baroness Wheatcroft used her speech to argue for a second referendum. Lord Adonis whimpered: “don’t let us throw it all away.” You pay each of them £300 a day to luxuriate in what Lord Ridley called “the gilded, crimson echo-chamber for Remain”…
Younger readers will not know that “Guilty Men” was a book written by Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard, published in 1940, attacking the leading establishment figures of the day for their appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. As denunciations go it is the classic and an equal to Émile Zola’s J’accuse. Peter Oborne and Francis Weaver have entitled their new pamphlet to be published by the CPS tomorrow “Guilty Men“ in a conscious echo of that great score settler. It is a coruscating attack on those who would have entangled Britain in the disastrous euro.
Their premise is that “Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons.” This is not a mere opus of a gloat, they name and shame the establishment figures who shamelessly exaggerated, lied and eulogised on behalf the euro and the European Project and have yet to apologise for the disaster they would have wrought. The institutions who are guilty include the CBI, BBC and of course the Financial Times. The guilty men include the shameless pundits who smeared their opponents, for example David Aaronovitch, who compared David Owen to Oswald Moseley and Enoch Powell because the founder of the SDP had become sceptical of the wisdom of the euro currency. Andrew Rawnsley, Chris Patten, Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Charles Kennedy, Danny Alexander and from business Niall FitzGerald, Adair Turner and David Simon figure among the guilty men. It is instructive and amusing to remind ourselves of the hysterical claims and wild accusations made by these europhiles. Though this isn’t referred to in the text, it occurs to Guido that many of the same guilty men are currently making the same kind of hysterical claims about global warming.
Oborne has employed his usual panache in delivering the charges. It is well worth reading if you enjoy the thought of europhiles squirming guiltily.
