Grumpy has no specific dislike of Polly Toynbee, although he doesn’t agree with any of her political opinions. She is 2 years younger than Grumpy, and the picture shows a wonderful, innocent looking, charming rose of the 60’s.

She is however, from the same hypocritical mould as the rest of the educated hard left. Villa in Tuscany, children at Private school, and with all the social privileges arising from being an integral part of the media and political clan, she nevertheless is an enemy of the concept of those who wish to acquire and retain assets though a lifetime of hard work and dedication to a personal goal. However, this commentary is about her approach to ‘Europe’.

In a recent article here she poses a question about the acceptance of Europe in the 1975 referendum, namely, “How was it done, that 1975 result of 67% to 33% in favour of staying in the EC? “. The reason Grumpy accuses her of sophistry is that she must know the answer to that question, which implies that somehow then the populace was accepting of the notion of the EU. It was not, because it was ignorant of it.

Firstly. the referendum was about an economic community – a trade arrangement, not the EU (which didn’t then exist) – as made clear on the referendum form; it was about staying in the ‘Common Market’. (Itself a ‘fait accompli’ rather than a decision.) There was no awareness generally about where that would lead (see below) and it was sold by the government of the day as being innocuous in the extreme.

Secondly – and more importantly – she is presumably quite aware of the foreign office analysis from 1971 (FCO30/1048), when the government of the day undertook obfuscation of Orwellian proportions in hiding the federal ambitions of he European vision. They were terrified that should the true nature of the loss of sovereignty be known, the referendum would be lost. Simply, they lied in print and verbally to the voters. Here is a link to an annotated version of this document, which is more KGB than Westminster.

So when the likes of the odious Soubry intones both that voters didn’t know what Brexit would entail (trashed by Grumpy here ) and that they were fed falsehoods, the simple fact is that the UK only got into the EU via propaganda that transcends anything in 2016. [Not forgetting the Lisbon Treaty falsehoods by Blair / Vaz.]

So the answer to Toynbee’s questions is that they voted that way out of ignorance of the true implications, engineered by duplicitous politicians. As this whole Brexit saga plays out, and being reminded of that time, it is hard for Grumpy to suppress a sickening heave when listening to the self-righteous, hubristic and nauseating words of the likes of Grieve and Benn et al, donning a transparently false mantle of integrity and public interest as they seek to yet again – 44 years on – to oppose the wish of the electorate.