A curse on Branson and his plot to hijack Brexit with his cash and his Bremoaning chums, writes QUENTIN LETTS
Public figures — and, indeed, Supreme Court judges — are some- times accused of being 'remote from' and 'out of touch with' the electorate. Well, this time it is undeniable.
Business tycoon Sir Richard Branson is pushing his snout back into the Brexit debate and is bankrolling a campaign for a second EU referendum.
The alleged billionaire is doing so from 4,124 miles away: the as-the-crow-flies distance from Westminster to his palm-fringed island home in the Caribbean.
Richard Branson is trying to derail Brexit by bankrolling calls for a second EU referendum
He is making his calls from 4,100 miles away on his paradise island of Necker, pictured
This morning, back home, London's Supreme Court will announce its verdict in a case brought against the Government by wealthy Remain campaigner Gina Miller and others.
That finding will be followed closely by millions of British subjects who voted Leave in June's referendum.
They will be hoping that our lofty judges permit the Government to proceed unimpeded with plans for Brexit, as voted for by a majority in last summer's unprecedentedly large plebiscite.
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In the Caribbean, emotions will be coursing in the other direction.
Sir Richard and his sun-bleached coterie will be hoping that judges Neuberger, Hale, Mance and co — those gold-robed poohbahs of the Europhiliac judiciary — will toss a spanner into Theresa May's plans to obey the referendum vote and extract us swiftly from the claws of Brussels.
Necker, the private island where Sir Richard rests his worrying head of a night, is said to be an idyllic place. For those whose taste runs to such things, you can sit on its Turtle Beach and let the warm waters nibble your naked toes.
'Would sir and his popsy enjoy some scuba diving before today's succulent barbecue lunch of lobster and fresh mahi-mahi?' we may imagine a grass-skirted batman asking.
As the sun sets, Sir Richard can sip rum punch on verandas fringed by bougainvilleas and plumbago while he and his fellow Remainers rage and tut and moan and plot against the Euroscepticism of those voters back home in Britain.
What fools the Little Englanders have been! If only they hadlistened to Sir Richard's pro-EU friends such as Lord Mandelson and Nick Clegg, not to mention celebrities such as Jamie Oliver, Gary Lineker and actress Kate Beckinsale. If Sir Richard and his ilk have their way, Brexit will never happen.
To this end, as the Mail reported last week, the businessman has given office space and a donation of £25,000 (so far) to a campaign co-organised by former Blairite Cabinet minister Alan Milburn.
This outfit, currently called UK-EU Open Policy Limited, hopes to persuade the British people to change their mind over the EU.
They intend to make us see the goodness of the European Commission, to realise we have made a ghastly mistake in our referendum and they hope we will crawl back to Brussels pleading to be forgiven our rush of blood to the head.
The group's backers include a notoriously Europhile journalist, Anatole Kaletsky, and insurance millionaire Sir Clive Cowdery, who founded the Centre-Left think-tank, the Resolution Foundation.
Another backer is Stephen Peel, a former director of the controversial bank Goldman Sachs. Between them and others, they have raised funds reportedly not unadjacent to £1 million to push their agenda.
This set-up has a strongly Blairite flavour. Its cheerleaders include (almost inevitably) Sir Bob Geldof, former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, Labour's MP Chuka Umunna and PR agent Matthew Freud, an egregious little greaser who was once married to one of Rupert Murdoch's daughters and was never far from Downing Street's door in the Blair years.
Former New Labour ministers Lord (John) Hutton, Douglas Alexander, Lady (Sally) Morgan and a sometime No 10 speechwriter, Peter Hyman, have also been mentioned in connection with the Branson-backed front.
This group is not to be confused with a separate enterprise being mounted by former prime minister Tony Blair, or with Open Britain, a group set up after the referendum to fight, it says, for the best deal for this country.
Open Britain's chairman is the big cheese PR man Roland Rudd, who is very keen for the UK to remain part of the single market.
Gina Miller, pictured, will discover today whether the Supreme Court have upheld the High Court's decision on her case to determine the limits of the Government's Article 50 powers
'No one voted to be poorer,' he said. 'It would be an act of calamitous self-harm if any second-best trade arrangement with the EU damaged British growth, jobs and prosperity.' What are we to make of these people? After all, to immerse yourself in political debate is, it could be argued, an honourable pursuit — civic engagement by men and women who may simply be seeking to 'put something back into society'.
Or is there something more selfish and sinister here? Are they genuinely doing their best for the British population?
Are they are as detached from the true concerns of the British electorate as their champion and financial backer Sir Richard is, physically, from our island's fog-bound shores?
If my suspicions incline to the latter, it is for two reasons. The first is the narrow one of the personal career and business interests of those involved.
Sir Richard has already claimed that Brexit has cost his Virgin group dearly.
Less than a week after the referendum, he went on breakfast television to say in a somewhat petulant, told-you-so sort of tone that Virgin was cancelling a deal which might have created 3,000 jobs.
Since then there has been plenty of evidence the British economy is surging ahead, quite undented by looming Brexit, but we must take his word for it and accept that those alleged jobs were, indeed, lost.
The effect of the Leave vote on the personal fortunes of men like Sir Clive Cowdery and former Goldman Sachs man Stephen Peel is hard to calculate, though given the stock market has risen to new heights and those millionaires are likely to have substantial share holdings, it would be a surprise if they had lost money.
But the political careers of Sally Morgan, Alan Milburn and co have undoubtedly sagged as a result of the vote to quit Brussels.
Their party, Labour, is at sixes and sevens and Mr Milburn's quango job as social mobility czar — he was appointed by David Cameron's coalition government — looks distinctly vulnerable.
In the coming weeks we are going to see new pressures applied to Jeremy Corbyn (an instinctive Eurosceptic whom the Blairites loathe) and his leadership of the Labour party as it fights to retain its parliamentary seats in Stoke-on-Trent and the Cumbrian constituency of Copeland in two by-elections.
When Lord Mandelson is in the shadows, as he is said to be here, we must not rule out the possibility of ulterior political motives — namely, the destabilisation of Mr Corbyn's Labour, which at present does not intend to block Article 50 and the official triggering of Brexit.
But the bigger reason for being dubious about these rich and powerful anti-Brexiteers —indeed, to question their motives as they stamp their feet in opposition to the plain will of the majority in the biggest vote ever held in our history — is that their case is built on Britain failing.
Some wealthy anti-Brexit campaigners want to re-run last year's EU membership referendum
To quote the Left-leaning Independent and its report on the group: 'Backers hope that public support for a rethink [on the referendum] will grow if the economy deteriorates and the EU negotiations point to a bad deal for Britain.'
In other words, Branson and Co will get their way only if our rivals prosper at our expense, and if our economy goes belly-up.
What sort of British person actively banks on such circumstances? There is a word for this sort of behaviour and it is not patriotism.
The ostensibly hesitant Branson has for decades sold himself to the public as an easy-going, liberal sort of guy — even as a totem of Britishness.
Business journalists have watched with awe — and some of them with a rising, sceptical distaste — as Sir Richard has posed with pretty air stewardesses, wrapped himself in the Union flag, thrown himself into stunt adventures in balloons and so forth.
He has sucked up remorselessly to impressionable politicians as he has promoted the Branson brand.
His business record long suggested something infinitely more ruthless than the mild- mannered Leftist we were shown. He pocketed millions of pounds in subsidies from the taxpayer to run his heinously expensive railways, among other ventures.
As the Supreme Court judges hand down their verdict today, we will be told severely that we must not question their motivations.
But can the same be said of the hard-core Remainers, who are using the law to try to sow confusion and create inertia, thus defying the British people who surely have more right to see their political will enacted than a billionaire who chooses to live half a world away?
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