General Rose should do a Colonel Pride

Unlike today’s spivs who stack parliamentary votes by knavish trickery, Colonel Thomas Pride was a straightforward man of action. When in 1648 it looked likely that the Long Parliament would vote the wrong way, the good colonel moved in with his troops and removed those MPs who hadn’t seen the light of the new dawn.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favour of a military coup d’état as a routine method of government. However, as Guy Fawkes once said, desperate times call for desperate measures, and our times are as desperate as they get.

Dave Cameron’s government is about to rig the national referendum and destroy Britain’s sovereignty forever by binding her to an evil, corrupt and incompetent Euro-contrivance.

One rigging method Dave favours is to drum up signatures under mendacious documents claiming that, should we be so foolhardy as to want to regain our independence, we’ll all starve in cold, unlit caves, our wives will leave us for Romanians, and said Romanians will descend upon our shores to claim our wives and enslave our children because our army and police will disband.

Finding a few captains, or even majors, of industry to blackmail into signing such disingenuous drivel isn’t a problem in our corporatist economy. For example, a promise to grant (or, if already granted, a threat to withdraw) a government contract could do the trick, or else loosening the regulations on the business while tightening them on its competitors.

Tory politicians are even easier, what with their advancement prospects securely held in Dave’s hands (you don’t seriously think they owe their careers to their constituencies, do you?). For the big fish, promising a cabinet post in the next reshuffle is almost guaranteed to add elasticity to conscience. For the smaller fry, threatening to withdraw party support at the next election could work a treat.

Military leaders are even a softer touch. You are subordinate to civilian authority, aren’t you, general? Well, I’m the civilian authority you’re subordinate to, and I’m ordering you to sign on the dotted line. Expedite!

The beauty of this rent-a-signature stratagem is that it works metonymically, by claiming that a small part describes the whole group. For example, it doesn’t matter that the British armed forces have almost 300 senior officers, of whom only 13 signed the deceitful letter claiming that Brexit would put us at grave risk.

As long as 13 signatures can be found, Dave is guaranteed front page headlines screaming ‘Military Leaders Warn …’, or words to that effect. Except that one of the 13 signatures wasn’t really found. It was stolen.

As a result, General Sir Michael Rose was enraged. He had never put his name to the document, he protested. On the contrary, he had requested its text only to take issue with it.

Dave instantly backtracked, and Downing Street issued a grovelling apology. In the process it turned out that even some of the genuine signatories didn’t feel ‘happy entirely’ with the letter, as General Sir Mike Jackson put it. Actually, though he didn’t say it in so many words, security is outside his immediate area of expertise: “There is a security dimension to the EU but… the military dimension is provided by Nato.”

Quite. And when ‘the military dimension’ shifts from Nato to the EU, as it inevitably will if we stay in, this wicked setup will handle matters martial with the same galactic ineptitude it handles everything else, from the economy to immigration, from policing to diplomacy. Anyone who thinks we’ll be safer as a result ought to get a frontal lobotomy before he harms innocent bystanders.

This gets us back to the Colonel Pride way of handling national emergencies. For Sir Michael shouldn’t let his anger seethe inside his breast. Instead he ought to put it, along with his SAS training, to productive use by marching on Westminster at the head of several crack units of special troops.

Then just follow the Colonel Pride methodology: “You, Dominic, can stay… You too, David … You, Jeremy, don’t ever show your mug here again … Liam, stick around and make sure Boris doesn’t change his mind again … Goodbye, Theresa, go and bake something – your ideas are half-baked …”

Then no referendum will be necessary, rigged or otherwise. The Rump Parliament, new style, with Gen. Rose as Speaker, will vote in favour of summary withdrawal from the EU and declare a state of national emergency until the dust settles. Then a new national election could be held – in parallel with a few treason trials, featuring some of our more illustrious politicians as defendants.

For what is treason if not an attempt to undermine, nay destroy, the constitution of the realm? The same realm that Sir Michael took an oath to defend?

Remember, General? “I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Her Heirs and Successors.”

To Her Majesty the Queen, sir. Not to Elizabeth Mountbatten, citizen of the EU. You know what you have to do.