A personal note

For the time being it's going to be necessary to highlight the failures of the two Leave campaigns. It's going to by quite dry, very detailed and yes, it's going to get nasty. Now I know that suggestion is going to raise some alarm with those readers of our who disapprove of such things. Well, hear me out.

The reason it's going to get nasty is because the people we are dealing with are nasty. Behind the public face of Leave.EU are all the same losers who delivered the Ukip election failure. They are known to us, they are extremely defensive, aggressive and a special kind of stupid.

For as long as is necessary, we will point out their manifest failings, and they will attack, often resorting to some very low grade taunts based on gossip regarding personal circumstances and information picked up by so-called friends from my own Facebook. I know their modus operandi because we went through this during the election and have experienced it for a long time preceding. The word "scum" has been used with some justification.

A favourite meme for the Ukippers was "sour grapes" regarding some or other ancient history, and not learning from their mistakes, they will deploy the same again as they are well aware both Richard North and I were hoping not to have to be pointing out their serial failures, and instead working with one of the campaigns in getting it right.

That was too much to hope for. To get your foot in the door requires playing the game and pandering to the egos of the incompetent and the dishonourable Neither is something Richard or I have the patience for and wouldn't do anyway. In fact, anybody who does make it into the inner circle of narcissistic wreckers is more likely dishonourable, obsequious and duplicitous and not types with whom we would want to work anyway.

So when we get the taunts of "bitterness" and "sour grapes", I certainly don't deny it. There is a good deal of bitterness that a lifetime of work requiring a great many sacrifices is casually overturned by arrogant and profoundly stupid people, and there is anger as every day we watch this race to the bottom plumb new depths. It leaves us with a sense of deflation and dismay.

I have found that dealing with such attacks is always neutralised by honesty, and where possible good humour - but sometimes the level such people take it to makes the latter difficult. Sometimes explainers are just fresh raw material for the people who take it upon themselves to make enemies of us. This is the nature of the game.

What makes it possible to continue is the loyalty and support and friendship of our readers, especially on the days when we wonder why the hell we're even bothering. Anybody sane would walk away and leave these losers to it. But that would mean conceding the ground and going away, which is precisely what these people want us to do - and so that is precisely what we shall not do. We shall stand here mirror-like, reflecting their every failure, personal and professional back at them, and if I get nasty then put it down to cause and effect.

For sure, I will have my momentary lapses of judgement as indeed anybody might when they put the hours in, but it must be said that these are deeply unpleasant, incompetent diminished human beings - and at the end of this, I will have no need of introspection. The faults are their own to realise.

As to when it stops, there will naturally be a cut off point when they must be ignored, but attacking is absolutely necessary for the time being because Leavers out on the wider internet need to know just how badly they have been betrayed by a bunch of self-serving, ignorant trash who have only ever been in this for selfish reasons.

It is the people who recognise that the main efforts are failing whom we have need of. We need those people to fill the ground the main campaigns have vacated. There is a huge gap in the market for an intelligent, progressive campaign. It's going to have to be entirely voluntary and we're going to have to do it the hard way.

We never had high hopes of the main campaigns, and we expected we would be here - pushed out onto the sidelines, and we always knew that the players involved would revert to type. So out here in the cold is not a place we are unfamiliar with.

Such a vantage point has distinct advantages though. While we do not have the reach that comes with money, our agility and skill allows us to shape the debate in ways that those on transmit mode only cannot. Coordination of efforts and skilful targeting can lodge arguments into the debating arena and we have some record of success in this. Sometimes that is achieved through careful and patient study. Other times that is achieved by other less honourable means. That is something I won't flinch from, and given what certain people deserve, I will do it gladly.

If you're clear on what we are setting out to achieve, we still need you to step forward and to make yourselves known on Twitter and get your blogs in operation. We have seen that pack hunting works and the more of you leap aboard the more powerful we are. Out there in the world of politics we do not exist and they will seek to keep it that way. But on the internet where the real battle is fought, we can dominate in the way that a scattergun internet meme based campaign cannot - and they won't even know why it is happening.

The strategy of the main campaigns is like carpet bombing the jungle just in the hope that there might be some enemy hiding in it. Ours is to run an intelligence lead campaign, finding the precise location of the enemy and deploying special forces to take them out. It will be a difficult and thankless task with few rewards - but it must be done, because nobody else will, and nobody else can.