Bill Carmichael: Brexit '“ why should we believe Remainers now?

WE'VE been treated to another hilarious classic by the comedic geniuses behind Project Fear this week.
David Cameron was the architect of Project Fear.David Cameron was the architect of Project Fear.
David Cameron was the architect of Project Fear.

You would think that after David Cameron’s preposterous prediction that leaving the EU would result in genocide and the outbreak of World War Three, that the Remoaners couldn’t make themselves look any more ridiculous – but somehow they manage it.

The latest episode of shroud-waving comes courtesy of Professor Michael Arthur, vice chancellor of University College in London and the Brexit spokesman for the elite Russell Group of British universities.

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He issued a dark warning that leaving the EU could see the UK drop from second to 20th in international research rankings.

This would indeed be a serious blow – if true. British universities are widely seen as world-beaters and are far ahead of any other EU country. Such a calamitous decline would be a disaster.

Given such an incendiary claim, you would no doubt expect the finest minds of academe had been beavering away to come up with the hard facts to justify it.

Well, not exactly.

Instead, when challenged by MPs to produce evidence to back up his prediction, Professor Arthur displayed all the intellectual rigour of a wet lettuce leaf.

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“I will confess I plucked the number 20th out of the air,” he said.

So is there any evidence that British universities would plunge down the league table after we reclaim our independence? Er…no, not a single shred.

“Out of the air!” And these people demand to be taken seriously!

I suppose we should be accustomed to this by now. In addition to Cameron’s wild prophesies we had the then Chancellor George Osborne, backed by the finest economists in the Treasury, who predicted a vote to leave would plunge the UK into an immediate recession costing every British family £4,300.

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Of course it didn’t happen, and the UK has enjoyed positive growth in every quarter since the 2016 referendum.

What about Osborne’s other prediction that 820,000 people would be thrown out of work because of the Leave vote? Surely Project Fear has got something right?

Er, no. Official figures released this week show employment at the highest level since records began in 1971. It now stands at 32.34 million employed, with an average of 2,000 people finding work every day.

What about claims that a Leave vote would result in a “Brexodus” with terrified EU workers leaving the racist 
UK in droves? Well, guess what? That didn’t happen either – in fact official statistics show the number of EU workers in the UK has rocketed since the referendum.

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It really is a quite remarkable record by the Remainers to get every single prediction they have made 100 per cent wrong.

And yet these same people ask us to take them seriously when they now forecast leaving the customs union and the single market would cost jobs and damage the economy.

They have been proved wrong, wrong, and wrong again – so why on earth should we believe them now?

An end to violence

SO, it turns out that 50 of the 62 people killed in recent clashes between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza were not “innocent, unarmed protesters” at all – but active members of the Hamas terror group.

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Just imagine for a moment that these violent jihadis had managed to infiltrate Israel and occupy a hospital, a shopping mall or a nursery school. One thing is for sure – they wouldn’t be handing out sweets.

But if you are waiting for those who condemned Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the terror attacks to apologise, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

An irrational and vicious hatred of Israel, driven by a toxic anti-Semitism, is too deeply ingrained on both the far left and far right in the UK and many other western countries for the Middle East’s only democracy to be treated fairly.

Of course some civilians were killed and injured during the recent clashes – but that is only because Hamas uses them as human shields to cover their murderous intentions. The simple fact is that Israel, just like any other country, has an absolute right to defend itself from attack. And if Hamas and the other assorted terror groups stopped trying to murder Jewish civilians, all the violence would stop immediately.

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