Falsehoods For Sale

On 23 June we are asked to vote in a Referendum to indicate if we want to leave the European Union or to stay as a paid up junior member.  In a real life world, there might be several types of association or membership to chose from, but we are simply asked yes or no, Remain or Leave.

Then hot, perhaps very hot, on the heels of this event will come the long awaited Chilcot Report on the Iraq War of 2003, an inquiry that began in 2009.  The date for this is 6 July, that is thirteen days after.  The obvious question in my mind is what items might be in the report that could relate to the Referendum vote, especially who done what.

By coincidence in the debate on Europe former main men of the Labour Party who led us into the Iraq War are at the forefront of the Remain campaign baring their souls or perhaps selling them for the Euro.  There is a lot of money in this, maybe mine and yours, but theirs if they can get it.

If Cameron and his Tory Remainers want to win and stay in the EU they need this New Labour Prominente on their side, in a way a marriage of convenience.  Another question, which Chilcot may or may not answer, is who in the Tory Party may have been among the warmongers of 2003 and what did they do in the far from great war?

In 2003, the spiel was that the UK was the buddy boy of the USA doing its Special Relationship bit for all those photo-opportunities in the White House with the next election in mind.  What we do not know is how far the USA saw us and how far we were with Brussels, in effect the EU troops.

Inevitably, this raises other questions about NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, our bulwark during the Cold War.  After 1990 it might have been redundant with the demise of the Soviet Union and had to find a new role.  So did it then become in effect a quasi defence ministry for the EU, but under the direction of the USA?

My thinking about this kind of thing is governed by the fact that a good deal of what was important, even critical, at times in the past is not known or may not emerge for many decades.

In the 50's I was involved in matters to do with the Suez Crisis and other things not all of which have yet emerged, if they ever will.  Not long after that during my degree course, I suggested to my tutor that the events of the early 1880's in relation to Egypt were a puzzle.  By luck, she had been given rare access then to the Royal Archive at Windsor and discovered that they told a different story to that in the usual sources.

We have little or no real idea of what has been going on between the UK government, the White House or Brussels and NATO, or what the effective working and liaison arrangements are and have been.  These could be critical to any open discussion about Remaining or Leaving.  The strange and almost manic way that Prime Minister Cameron is reacting to the Brexit debate may tell a tale.

But buried in the more obscure passages of text in Chilcot, or in the small print, or in clauses of weighty annexes there might be clues that all is not what it seems or has seemed to be.  If that is the case then the EU debate is being based on falsehoods.

If we do not know the truth about our present engagement with the EU and it, our government and supposed allies are not willing to tell us or what they intend the future to be then we are being sold a false deal to Remain.

Buyer beware.