Britain

Dominic Cummings: How the Brexit Referendum was Won

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Dominic Cummings explains how the Brexit referendum was won. Cummings was the Campaign Director of Vote Leave. He was in effect the executive director of the Brexit referendum campaign. This article explains how it happened. It is also long and rambling. But read it all anyway.

It is full of many interesting observations and various insightful, epigrammatic comments:

Most of the MPs we dealt with were not highly motivated to win and lacked extreme focus, even those who had been boring everybody about this for decades. They sort of wanted to win but they had other priorities. …
 
This lack of motivation is connected to another important psychology the willingness to fail conventionally. Most people in politics are, whether they know it or not, much more comfortable with failing conventionally than risking the social stigma of behaving unconventionally. They did not mind losing so much as being embarrassed, as standing out from the crowd. (The same phenomenon explains why the vast majority of active fund management destroys wealth and nobody learns from this fact repeated every year.)

This happens all the time, not just in politics.

Read more

Quote of the Day

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Nigel Farage, commenting on the election of Donald Trump:

“This is a big opportunity for all British business because once we’ve left that awful EU thing we can do our first trade deal with the United States of America. Isn’t that great?”

Seth Barrett Tillman: The Case of the Ship Money, R v Hampden 3 State Trials 381 (1640), and its relevance today

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In The Ship Money Case [R v Hampden 3 State Trials 825 (1637), superseded by Act Declaring the Illegality of Ship-Money, Aug. 7, 1641, 17 Charles I, chapter 14], a bare majority of the judges of the Court of Exchequer Chamber voted for the Crown and against Hampden, the tax payer, who objected to being forced to pay purported taxes absent parliamentary consent.

Seth asks:

100 years from now which will be recognized as the more odious decision? Hampden or Miller? Hampden merely opposed Parliament; Miller opposed a national popular referendum.

Read the whole, brief, thing.

(I’m guessing Hampden wasn’t one of the foreign laws our own Justice Ginsburg had in mind.)

Seth Barrett Tillman: Justice Thomas’ Worst Decision: Brexit

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Seth predicts reversal on appeal. Read his argument for yourself.

The “Social Justice Movement” Claims Another Victim

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A teenage girl in the UK has killed herself, apparently because of fears that she would be branded ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ after sending a joke photograph as an Instagram message.

Never forget that Hillary Clinton is closely aligned with the ‘politically correct’ instigators and leaders of the kind of attack mobs..on-line and off-line…that this girl apparently feared.

And given the current state of things in the UK, her fear was probably not irrational, though her action certainly was.   See this:  police are investigating social media critics of planned refugee center.

“Although you may believe your message is acceptable, other people may take offence, and you could face a large fine up to two years in prison if your message is deemed to have broken the law” said an assistant chief constable.

And in Manchester, a Police Chief Inspector for Greater Manchester, himself a Muslim,  indicated that, according to his understanding, “freedom of speech does not mean freedom of offending culture, religion or tradition”.

If you want people in the US to fear police visits as a result of ‘politically incorrect’ online communications or comments to friends, then you should do everything you can to help Hillary Clinton win the Presidency.