The Leave campaign – Nigel Farage included – called for more non-EU migration to Britain

You'd never know it from the debate on immigration today, but:

In 2016, the official Vote Leave campaign actively advocated for more immigration from non-European countries. This wasn’t a fringe message – it was a central pillar of the campaign. 

This is a quote from an excellent article by Sam Bright, who reminds us that "every element of the Brexit campaign advocated for more non-white immigration – including Nigel Farage".

He backs this with quotes from a contemporary Financial Times report on Leave strategy and from Saqib Bhatti (now a Conservative MP and shadow education minister), Gisela Stuart, Priti Patel, Daniel Hannan, Boris Johnson and Douglas Carswell.

And here's what Nigel Farage had to say during the referendum campaign:

A Daily Mail headline on 8 June 2016 stated:

"More black people will be allowed into Britain if we leave the EU and immigration will become a ‘non-issue’, says Nigel Farage."

Farage claimed that Britain had:

"been stupid to turn our backs on the Commonwealth in favour of EU membership."

He argued that EU freedom of movement had made it "very difficult" for "qualified and skilled migrants from India and Africa" to come to Britain.

According to The Mail, after the Brexit vote, Farage favoured implementing an Australian points-based immigration policy, which would lead to “more black people” qualifying to enter the UK.

Ironically, Boris Johnson’s government – now the whipping boy of the far-right – implemented a points-based immigration system that directly reflected Farage’s favoured position prior to the vote.

That none of this is ever mentioned is a condemnation of the British media and of our politicians.

Jacob Rees-Mogg was hidden from voters during the 2019 general election campaign

The prime minister's critics in the Conservative Party, reports the Telegraph, know what he needs to do:

Tory critics are urging Rishi Sunak to promote Right-wingers to an “election war Cabinet” after the local elections, which are predicted to deliver sizeable Tory defeats.

Two Tory MPs have endorsed the idea to The Telegraph, with Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Robert Jenrick put forward as possible names to be in contention.

One name jumps out here: that of Jacob Rees-Mogg. That's because he had to be hidden from the public during the last general election campaign.

On 11 December 2019, the eve of polling day, a Guardian article looked at the politicians who had been prominent during the campaign and those who had been absent from the fray.

This is what it said about Rees-Mogg:

From being a near-perennial fixture of political coverage in 2019, Rees-Mogg vanished from the airwaves following uproar over his comments about the Grenfell tragedy.

His presence among the top 20 most prominent campaigners in the press and TV in the campaign’s first week was largely a result of coverage of the Grenfell issue – and by the second week he had disappeared.

Instead, a series of pictures on the politician’s Twitter account suggests that he has been instructed to largely restrict himself to his safe seat of North East Somerset.

And it wasn't just the Guardian that notices. When Rees-Mogg took his mini-me son with him to the polling station the next day, the Express reported:

Mr Rees-Mogg has rarely been seen during the last few weeks of campaigning.

This may have been due to controversial comments about the people who died in the Grenfell Tower tragedy. 

The Tory MP told LBC host Nick Ferrari that the victims would have survived if they’d have just ignored what they were told by London Fire Brigade. 

He added that he would have left the building as “it just seems the common sense thing to do”.

Mr Rees-Mogg then did not attend the Tory manifesto launch at the Telford International Centre, despite other Cabinet ministers attending. 

If bringing back Rees-Mogg is the best card the Tories can play now, they're in even more trouble than we thought.

Five reasons the right should be ridiculed for its lack of patriotism

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The best decades I have lived through are the 1960s and the 1990s.

One thing they have in common is that the Union Jack did not belong to the far right or the establishment. It belonged to everyone and was often used playfully.

Can it happen again?

Well, here are five reasons the Conservatives and the wider right can be ridiculed for their lack of patriotism.

• On Tuesday Boris Johnson used the unveiling of a memorial to police officers who died on duty as the occasion for a comic turn with an umbrella
• Johnson and Priti Patel have made it clear they have no objection to people booing the England football team,
• The right has spent the five years since the Brexit referendum attacking the BBC, a British institution that is respected around the world.
• Now they have turned their fire on the Royal National Lifeboat Institution - volunteers who risk their lives to save people in danger at sea. The RNLI is about as good as Britain gets.
• Campaigners have taken the government to court in an attempt to stop them driving a tunnel under Stonehenge. Yesterday they won their case.

If the opposition parties cannot do something with this little catalogue, they may as well give up.

We needn't wrap ourselves in the flag, but we should rip it out of the hands of the right.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Lighting their bonfires in my covers

If Lord Bonkers is afraid of anyone it's the Elves of Rockingham Forest. After all, no one in the Labour or Conservatives Parties is likely to turn you into a toad.

Except Priti Patel, obviously.

Friday

The days when I could blithely start a diary entry with "To Cropwell Bishop" are long past. I have not visited even Bonkers House in Belgrave Square for a year, while the Hotel Splendide, Antibes, seems a distant dream. 

The Elves of Rockingham Forest still come go as they please, lighting their bonfires in my covers without a by your leave, but the rest of us hereabouts are Doing Our Bit. 

I spend the morning making arrangements for polling day, as by tradition voters in the Bonkers Hall ward come at six to collect their Good Morning leaflets and are treated to a slap up breakfast. 

I can now confirm that this year the queue will be rigorously stewarded and that each voter will receive a takeaway meal in a bag bearing the legend: "Remember, your rents fall due on Lady Day."

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Under the dining table with a bottle of my best cherry brandy
• 36, 24 and 3/6 a pound
• Make the Wise Woman of Wing a peeress
• Snatched from Grace Road

Ed Davey calls on Cressida Dick to resign

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Following the Metropolitan Police's use of force to break up a vigil for Sarah Everard this evening, the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has called on the Met's Commissioner Cressida Dick to resign.

In a letter also signed by Alistair Carmichael and Luisa Porritt he says:

This was a complete abject tactical and moral failure on the part of the Police.

Gossip on Twitter suggests that the police in Lambeth sought to engage with the organisers so the vigil could go ahead safely but received orders from on high to break it up.

And this when a serving Met office has just been charged with Sarah Everard's murder.

Cressida Dick should go, but the real problem is the government. You suspect she was seeking to please Priti Patel in allowing this evening's dreadfully misjudged operation to go ahead.

The uselessness of Boris Johnson's cabinet is a feature not a bug

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Ed Davey says Gavin Williamson is the worst education secretary in living memory. He's right, of course.

But then Williamson is not alone in not deserving a place around the cabinet table.

Priti Patel resigned as secretary of state for international development when it emerged she had been holding meetings with Israeli officials without informing anyone in London. Yet somehow today she is home secretary.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is such a liability that he had to be hidden from voters during the last general election, but he is still leader of the House of Commons.

But maybe their presence should not be such a surprise.

Many Conservatives with principles - David Gauke, Rory Stewart, Nicholas Soames - were effectively sacked from the Commons by Boris Johnson in September 2019. 

They were not the sort of people he wanted to surround himself with. Better to have malleable mediocrities who will do whatever they are told.

Better still to have people no other Conservative prime minister would dream of appointing to the cabinet. They will know that they owe their careers to Johnson and that any successful rebellion against him would inevitably lead to the end of those careers.

It's probably all in Machiavelli: surround yourself with people who should never have been put in a position of power and you will be much more secure.

Flashman demonstrates "unintentional bullying"

From the 1971 BBC adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays - Richard Morant as Flashman, Anthony Murphy as Tom Brown.

Former Tory MP for Harborough condemns attacks on lawyers by Boris Johnson and Priti Patel

Lord Garnier, who as Edward Garnier was Conservative MP for Harborough and Solicitor General in the Coalition government, has written an article for The House magazine condemning government attacks on lawyers:

The unlawful prorogation of Parliament in September 2019, long trailed in the media by his acolytes before he took office and executed shortly afterwards, (personal interest alert: acting for Sir John Major in the case, I must be one of the few in this land who have called the Prime Minister "the defendant"), is an example of Mr Johnson’s carelessness about the law and what it means.

Which goes to show that Lord Garnier is a proper philosophical Conservatve and Boris Johnson and Priti Patel are just chancers.

Photo by David Whelan at Morguefile.com

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The mint cake workers of Kendal

Whether this is news from the past, present or future, you have to admit the old boy made the most of his time away from the Hall.

Friday

I enjoyed Uxbridge, particularly the crowd of mothers and children I found hammering on the door of the Conservative campaign headquarters. Down in Devon I ran into the Attorney General and found his theatrical mien puzzlingly familiar. It was only this morning that I remembered where I had seen him before: he was playing the rear end of a cow in Aladdin at the Alhamba, Bideford.

Then I travelled to Witham in Essex, where the sitting Conservative offered me a lift in her sleigh and some Turkish delight. I insisted on being set down so I could catch the Green Line bus instead.

In Somerset I tipped the local urchins sixpence apiece to follow Jacob Rees-Mogg around, point at him and double up with laughter. Eventually his Nanny chased them off and I ran too – you know what Nannies are.

Passing through Leeds I bought Richard Burgon a colouring book, before spending a day with our own Tim Farron canvassing the mint cake workers of Kendal. I am pleased to report he has a considerable following amongst them.

Then it was Scotland for a night at my house Brig o'Dread, before I finished my tour delivering leaflets in Orkney for Alistair Carmichael. I was dispatched to the islands of Papa Westray and Papa Lazarou.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary:

• The Well-Behaved Orphans have been carefully measured
• Buckled inside the large wicker hamper
• From Whissendine to Essendine
• He had fashioned a rope from the bedclothes
• An amusing limerick told to me by Herbert Gladstone

Michael Gove signed letter promising to maintain all EU payments to farmers

Yesterday Michael Gove returned to the cabinet as environment secretary.

Which makes an article on the Why Vote Leave website dated 14 June 2016 particularly interesting.

It begins:

Thirteen Government ministers and senior Conservatives have today committed that every region, group and recipient of EU funding will continue to get that money after a ‘Leave’ vote in the EU referendum. 

In an open letter, the signatories - who include Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel - assure those people and organisations who currently receive money from the European Union that their funding is safe if we Vote Leave. 

In the letter they say:

"There is more than enough money to ensure that those who now get funding from the EU - including universities, scientists, family farmers, regional funds, cultural organisations and others - will continue to do so while also ensuring that we save money that can be spent on our priorities.

"If the public votes to leave on 23 June, we will continue to fund EU programmes in the UK until 2020, or up to the date when the EU is due to conclude individual programmes if that is earlier than 2020.

"We will also be able to spend the money much more effectively. For example, some of the bureaucracy around payments to farmers is very damaging and can be scrapped once we take back control."

The article goes on to reproduce the full letter.

An early general election looks the logical choice for Theresa May

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A major Whitehall reorganisation.

Accomplished plotters like George Osborne and Michael Gove sent to the backbenches.

Potential disasters like Boris Johnson and Liam Fox brought in.

Others  - Andrea Leadsom, Priti Patel - given cabinet positions they will hate.

You cannot accuse Theresa May of lacking ambition, with Brexit on the books and a likely economic downturn on the way, it all sounds too much for a prime minister with a majority of only 12.

The logic of that, I suppose, is that we should expect a general election in the autumn or the spring of next year.

Without it, Theresa May may find she has overestimated the strength of her position.