'Both sides misleading voters' - what utter bullshit

I must say I find the current - and latest - round of abject lying from the Remain camp pretty hard to take. They have now begun to accuse the #Brexit campaigners of misleading voters with their 'outrageous' claims for what would happen post Brexit.

Well excuse me but what claims are those? Essentially what Brexit campaigners have been saying so far is: 'no it won't'. 'No it doesn't'. 'That has no basis in fact'.

So far the Brexit campaign has essentially been refuting the ridiculous claims being made by 'Remain' - most, if not all of which, have also been trashed by experts - including, even the BBC's own reality check referendum website.

MPs committee claims both sides are misleading the public and that, if anything, the £350million a week claim is the worst of the misinformation - it's worth taking a look at this claim.

The £350m claim does not mention the rebate. It is a weekly figure that is absolutely correct. The committee is not saying the £350m is wrong just that it does not take account of the rebate. That is a different issue. What's more this is real money, it is actually paid, it is not some estimate of what 'might happen' sometime in the future. What happens is that we do pay £350m a week but less than half of that money comes back to the UK where it is spent by the EU on 'projects' that it decides upon. So while the money does technically come back to be spent in the UK, it is not spent on stuff that we decide upon but on vanity projects for the EU - some of which are good and worthwhile, some of which aren't. The issue is that it's our money and we have no control over how it is spent and we could spend it differently if we chose to carry on allocating it to UK projects after Brexit. The other half of our EU weekly spend is actual money that we pay and which disappears - a total of around £10billion a year. This is money we could spend on UK infrastructure if we left the EU. There's no disputing that fact - and it could amount to a fully staffed hospital every two weeks as an example of how the money could be spent. This is not an outrageous claim but solid financial fact.

On the other hand the £4,300 a year that families would be worse off after Brexit is pure speculation. It has no basis in fact,  was trashed by the BBC's own website on the day it was made (but subsequently watered down in its condemnation due to pressure put on the BBC by the Remain side). It makes use of ridiculous equations and is pure guesswork. Compare the two claims. This government committee and (in today's Mail On Sunday) John Major, are conflating the two claims as being misleading and untrue. Only one of them fits into that category.

Since even before the start of the campaign, Remain has been suggesting that Brexit could cost 3 million UK jobs. Nick Clegg made the claim and it has been repeated by Mandelson and others since then. It is utter bullshit as the committee concludes - but the claim has been made, the media coverage secured and the message communicated. This is outrageous.

And, speaking of outrageous, this also fits the bill. What Andrew Tyrie is saying here is that the only claim that is actually true and fact-based is much worse than the others! Utter bollocks.

And this from John Major today. The only falsehood he mentions is the one being perpetuated by his own side - the £40 billion black hole in UK finances. Where has that figure come from? How credible is it? Has it come from a treasury that cannot hit 6-monthly targets and forecasts let alone those for a 6 year or 16 year period? If so it has zero credibility.

Major compares this with the Brexit scaremongering about immigration. Again, sorry but the figure of 330,000 migrants into the UK (when we were promised that Dave would get the figure down to the tens of thousands), is actually real and factual. Major says Brexit campaigners are scaremongering about Turkey joining the EU which would give its 77 million people free access to the UK. 

Well how accurate is this? Is Turkey trying to become a member? Yes. Is Merkel in favour of it? Yes. Has Dave gone on the record to say that he would support it? Yes. Is the population of Turkey 77 million? Yes. Would they get free access to all EU countries if Turkey joined the EU? Yes.

So what is your fucking issue then Mr Major? How is the Brexit claim that Turkey joining the EU would potentially put even more pressure on UK infrastructure if we stay in the EU a shameless falsehood?

They've all learned from Tony Blair. If you have an area of weakness target it, shout loudly, claim it is your opponents area of weakness and thereby cause confusion so that the advantage that the other side had has been lost in the confusion you have created.

And the media is still falling for this tactic, time after time.

Thanks for reading.