While the LibDems rejected proposals for a cross-party, independent anti-sleaze candidate in the upcoming North Shropshire by-election, they’re clearly worried local voters might not see them as the halo-wearing paragons of virtue and democracy they’re trying to project. While local voters backed Brexit in 2016 with a whopping 60%, their attempts to overturn the result for four years arguably damaged trust in politics more than any of Owen Paterson’s actions. Their candidate, Helen Morgan, was previously found on the LibDem website boasting about her anti-Brexit credentials:
“Her broad commercial experience has convinced her that remaining in the European Union is best for British businesses, both small and large, and crucial for the future of Shropshire farmers. She has been an enthusiastic campaigner for Remain since 2016.”
Co-conspirators, however, won’t be able to find Helen’s ‘about’ page on the LibDem website anymore. Anyone attempting to learn about Helen is now automatically redirected to her new by-election campaign website, which is notably devoid of any information about the candidate. Guido could only find the previous information via Wayback Machine. While the LibDems are clearly trying to look shiny and virtuous for this Brexit-loving electorate, the internet never forgets…
There have been some eye-opening revelations from an American Europhile correspondent Dave Keating this afternoon, who claims that if you manipulate Europe’s vaccine data to ignore the UK’s rapid start – or incredibly rapid growth of daily vaccination doses recently – Britain’s lead isn’t as impressive as some “British Conservative politicians” would have you believe. Truly ground breaking analysis…
I went ahead and fixed that misleading red-green vaccination map being spread by British Conservative politicians.
— Dave Keating (@DaveKeating) January 18, 2021
This shows the number of doses per 100 people after the first 20 days of the vaccination campaign in each European country. A more logical way to compare. pic.twitter.com/FTHU3fMWm9
Unsurprisingly, Keating was one of the now-humiliated Remainers who back in March 2020 predicted Britain’s decision not to participate in the EU’s drug procurement programme would make it “difficult and expensive” for the UK to get vaccinated. Now he’s having to desperately back-peddle…
If a vaccine for #CoronaVirus is developed next year, it will be difficult and expensive for the UK to get it because it will have left the EU's drug procurement mechanism on 1 January.
— Dave Keating (@DaveKeating) March 10, 2020
That is, if Johnson chooses not to extend #Brexit transition period. https://t.co/rf6RVTEo8S
Dave’s laughably twisted statistics are manipulated, in reality proportionately twice as many Brits have been vaccinated as any other EU country. 
It is a bit like saying that “If you compare space programmes from when they started their moon programme, you’ll find that actually China reached the moon before America did.” It doesn’t make sense in reality.
Since the vaccine news came out on Wednesday morning, Remainers have spent their time arguing that Brexit point-scoring shouldn’t politicise the good vaccine news; as the Guardian published on Wednesday, the “UK’s triumph at approving Covid vaccine must not become a chest-thumping exercise”:
“The health secretary saw this as a triumph for Britannia. Matt Hancock even tried to spin it as a triumph for Brexit… But political posturing will not help the huge effort ahead to get the vaccine taken up by the elderly and vulnerable most at risk from Covid.”
The paper’s aversion to political posturing over the vaccine is clearly newly-found however, given that back March the Observer’s political editor Toby Helm gleefully told readers:
“Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK – and it will cost more here because of the UK pulling out of the European Medicines Agency on 30 December”
Yes, that’s the same EMA that is yet to approve a vaccine, holding back immunisation for EU citizens. Unsurprisingly, Toby has remained quiet on social media vaccine analysis this week…
The Guardian is far from the only outlet to have pronounced Brexit doom on Britain’s hopes of a vaccine. In July the Independent’s Rob Merrick told readers Boris Johnson had put “Brexit before health by rejecting an invitation to join an EU scheme to procure a coronavirus vaccine”, citing Layla Moran who said the decision was putting “Brexit over vaccines”. According to sources at the time, the EU made scrapping the Oxford vaccine trials a pre-condition of UK participation in their vaccine programme. Now we have more vaccine than the EU, faster than the EU. Will Remainers ever learn to stop predicting gloom and disaster?
The self-aggrandising by Remainers shows no sign of letting up as Britain approaches the end of the transition period. In an email sent out last Friday, the chairman of Cheltenham for Europe, Philip Cole, declared he is leaving the UK and “taking Luxembourg citizenship” because:
“I spent 25 years working for the European Parliament in what I consider a noble cause and it is hard to describe just how angry I feel at the rigged, bought referendum and the fact that 37% (not a majority, but even so) of my fellow-citizens are so pig-ignorant that they regard that contribution as worthless.”
Despite moving to the continent for the “unimpeded freedom of movement in the EU”, Cole will naturally be keeping their house in posh, leafy Cheltenham as a mostly-empty holiday home. Guido is also astounded that Philip’s career as a European Parliament technocrat wasn’t enough to win over the ungrateful pig-ignorant majority…
ITV’s new docu-drama ‘Quiz’ has taken lockdown Britain by storm, depicting the 2001 scandal of Charles and Diana Ingram cheating their way to the ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ Jackpot. The original cheat, Charles, described the hit show as “terrifyingly accurate” via his Twitter account, though by doing so also highlighted his new-found political beliefs as a #FBPE remainer, calling on Britain to #RejoinEU. Guido would have thought Deal or No Deal would be Charles’ preferred TV game show…
The cheat’s Twitter feed is awash with the usual cohort of remainers, including A.C. Grayling, Alastair Campbell and Carole Cadwalladr. Presumably for a remainer, the quiz contestant chose the ‘ask the audience’ lifeline, only to ask them again when they gave him the wrong answer…
Ingram’s social media bio now describes him as a Labour supporter, “proud remainer” and – oddly for someone who attempted to defraud a game show of £1 million – “wanting a fairer world.” Ingram may have hoped for a 50:50 lifeline, unfortunately the public delivered 52:48…
The taxpayer-funded ‘UK in a Changing Europe’ held a panel discussion on Friday on the subject of ‘Brexit and Comedy’. How the host, Professor Anand Menon, squares this with it being ‘an independent organisation created to make the findings of academic research easily available’ is beyond Guido. The panel was one of those all left, all remain, type of independent panels. It was in many ways no different to your average impartial BBC Radio 4 comedy panel…
On the panel were Nish Kumar – who made no bones about his left-wing comedy goals – Marina Hyde who at least cracks jokes about right-wingers that have other right-wingers laughing and Andy Zaltzman, whom Guido has never heard of before. Wikipedia says he’s your standard-issue Oxbridge-Edinburgh Fringe-Radio 4 cliche left-wing comedian. The most interesting thing he said was that the Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy called him up to ask him to write jokes for David Miliband. We have reached out to Krishnan to ask him if this is true and for some kind of explanation. We await the impartial news broadcaster’s explanation…
