My letter to Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore...
Andy, Arron...
I have have said from the beginning that if our campaign cannot win the intellectual argument in the public domain then it will fail. As much as we wish it were otherwise, public opinion is still formed on the basis of a trickle down effect, on the basis of what happens between key opinion formers online.
There are influential columnists, but then there is a second tier of think tank functionaries such as DemSoc, IEA, Progress etc. They in turn have their own constituencies, and among their followers are a a handful of people with several thousand followers, and then there are key node individuals with just a few thousand followers, sometimes even less, who are frequently retweeted by people with major influence.
In this, the likes of Jonathan Portes and Sundat Katawala are serious players. Moreover, so are SLATUKIP and the likes. These are the people who can do our cause damage, not out of innate hostility or malevolence, but because the holes in our campaign are many and obvious.
Lord Lawson's contributions are damaging in the extreme and the less Hannan says the better. But this also applies to Lea and Bannerman, both of whom serve on Grassroots Out, which is grassroots in the same way that Tibet is free and Microsoft code is open source.
Uniformly they advocate the WTO option either by name or by inference. In basic terms they do not know what they are talking about. The more they speak, the more damage they do. Today marks something of a landmark in proving that dynamic.
From that you will see that the lack of a coherent and credible Brexit plan is the Leave campaign's Achilles heel. The short of it is, a non-EEA based solution opens up too many questions to which we do not have good answers. Or at least you don't. Flexcit does. But you disowned Flexcit, publicly, on the basis of a protest executed by a minority of Ukip mouth-breathers and known racists.
It should be noted that such individuals would have been expelled from the Ukip of which I was once a member. In this you have shown grotesque cowardice and duplicity. The fact of the matter is that a message that reaches new ears is one that should necessarily upset the Ukip base. Rather than embracing reality, you bottled it and pandered to the base.
In this, you may have cost us the referendum. The lack of a credible and coherent plan is why the Leave side will end up looking like it doesn't know what it wants or why.
It will be widely ridiculed because of this, and as you know, we are held to a higher level of accountability than the other side who can lie and scaremonger without so much as a batted eyelid in the media. You have learned nothing from the general election. That puts the onus on us to go the extra mile for credibility. You two bozos are the primary reason this is not happening.
And so to the purpose of this email. This is not to implore you to up your game because I know that isn't going to happen. You take our best advice and do the precise opposite. This is not even a request for funding to help bolster our own efforts. I know your offers are not genuine.
It is not even an impassioned plea for you to reconsider your position on Flexcit, because I know that is equally implausible. Neither of you have the integrity or moral courage. Instead you continue to take us for stupid. You continue to abuse the trust and faith placed in you, and you frequently demonstrate we were foolish to ever trust you in the first place. You're liars.
Though you must understand, we had to take the gamble in case there was an outside chance of you being sincere. You always had the upper hand in these proceedings. More fool us.
That said, such serpentine behaviour has not gone unnoticed. In this, you make an assumption that a bunch of bloggers cannot harm you or touch you. You might even be right. But given the mistakes you have made, I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Not least when you two have cost us the referendum.
Perhaps I cannot damage you directly, but as an individual, nobody can ever question my devotion, sincerity and integrity. Those are qualities you do not have. And so when I speak of you and speak from experience, it is your reputation tarnished, and not mine. You string people along with false promises and bogus intent. I will make that known.
You are right that money talks, but you are banking up a lot of ill will, and every email exchange you have made sits in my inbox waiting for release on the day of our inevitable defeat, where it will be made public just how duplicitous and deceitful you have been.
In so doing you will be known as the men who betrayed and ignored the most dedicated and pioneering thinker in the field. That is not just the opinion of a devoted son. It is the opinion of a small army of supporters who have worked exceptionally hard to challenge their preconceptions and attempted to understand him and his work. That is to their credit and your loss.
Between our respective blogs we speak to thirty thousand people daily (at least). We are certainly not to be underestimated, especially not if our trickle down theory is correct. The opposition is watching us. We are certainly not alone in expressing our dismay at the shallowness and crassness of the campaign over which you have supreme influence.
By ignoring Richard North and treating him appallingly, you have disregarded the engine of contemporary euroscepticism. And in that, the defeat you lead us to is entirely deserved.
The great pity of this is that the pair of you dislike the same people we do for roughly the same reasons. You are both hard men not to like on a personal basis, but it is ultimately your actions by which you shall be judged, and on that score I find you both to be duplicitous conmen, liars and cowards.
And that is the only purpose of this email; to say that I hold you both in contempt and you are the principal reason we are going to lose - and that the issue will be buried because of your short-sightedness and cowardice.
It should be abundantly clear by now that the absence of a credible Brexit plan is our downfall. It should also be clear by now that we are most likely not to going to see a 2016 referendum. That means there is still time to demonstrate that you want to win. If that be the case, I suggest that you make a gesture than cannot be ignored. Your words have proven cheap. You must act to prove yourselves.
In this, your bogus reassurances are meaningless. There is no basis on which to trust you or give you the benefit of the doubt, and so in the absence of a goodwill gesture, it will be my published view that Leave.eu and Grassroots Out are wholly parasitical and damaging to the cause.
I do not have the power to immediately make that known, but I can gradually erode your credibility - largely because I have something you do not. Integrity. I believe that to be a more powerful asset than all the money in the world. Care to take bets on that?
Pete North.
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