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To: scion who wrote (11915)	1/18/2019 9:35:11 AM
From: scion	Respond to of 12881

“I didn’t make any remarks about Turkey, mate,” Johnson said when asked about his stance on immigration after the speech in Staffordshire. When asked if he would apologise, he said: “Since I made no remarks, I can’t disown them.” But the assertions were almost immediately undermined when a letter he wrote with Michael Gove to David Cameron seven days before the referendum was reproduced on social media. theguardian.com Letter to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary - Getting the facts clear on Turkey voteleavetakecontrol.org June 16, 2016 Dear Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, We all agree that it is vital that everyone is clear about the facts in the European Union referendum. With a week to go before the public cast their votes on 23rd June, it is essential that voters are fully informed about Turkish accession to the EU. The IN campaign maintains that there is no prospect of Turkey joining the EU. Some IN campaigners have claimed that Turkish accession will not happen ‘until the year 3000’. Others have asserted that Turkish accession is not ‘on the cards’. These claims are in conflict with official Government policy and that of the European Union. It is Government policy that Turkey should join the European Union and ‘to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels.’ It is Government policy that the United Kingdom is the ‘strongest possible advocate of Turkish accession’ and that Turkish accession will make the UK ‘more secure’ and ‘richer’, the same argument the Government makes for why the UK must remain in the European Union. That Government policy on Turkey remains the same was confirmed by the Minister for Europe to the House of Commons during the referendum campaign. It is also the policy of the European Union that Turkey should join the EU. In March, the Heads of Government unanimously agreed that the EU should ‘re-energise the accession process’ and that Turkish acceleration should be ‘accelerated’. The European Commission has confirmed that this is its policy on several occasions since, most recently on 15 June. The new building in which the European Council will sit is specifically designed to accommodate more members of the European Union. There are enough translation booths to accommodate the five current candidate countries, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. Official designs show that the European Council table itself will have a seat for the President of Turkey. It is also a fact that both the European Union and the United Kingdom are paying billions to Turkey in order to facilitate its accession. The EU is paying €17.7 billion to Albania, Serbia, Turkey, Macedonia and Montenegro to join the EU. The UK is paying almost £1.8 billion to these five countries to join. On Sunday it was revealed that the Government is actively considering granting approximately 1 million Turkish citizens visa-free travel to the UK. The Government admitted this was ‘a risk’. The Government also described the possibility of visa-free access for ‘1.8 million Kosovars’ to be ‘a drop in that larger ocean’ and noted the Commission was planning to ‘slipstream’ Kosovo ‘behind Turkey’. Just this week, the United Kingdom Government dropped its objections to the opening of another chapter, on financial and budgetary issues. It is expected that formal talks could begin as early as 24 June 2016, the day after the public will vote on whether to remain in the European Union or to take back control. On 15 June, the Commission confirmed the accuracy of this report, stating talks could begin ‘by end of June’. Despite the rapidly accelerating pace of accession negotiations, IN campaigners maintain that Turkey ‘is not an issue in this referendum and it shouldn’t be.’ Others assert that the UK has ‘a veto’ on Turkish accession. This claim is obviously artificial given the Government’s commitment to Turkish accession at the earliest possible opportunity. They also insist that this is the public’s last opportunity to have a say on Europe in our lifetimes. In light of the above, voters will want to know the answer to two questions: Is it Government policy 1) to veto the accession of Turkey to the European Union and the continuation of accession talks, and 2) to stop the extension of visa-free travel to Turkey, planned for this year? If the Government cannot give this guarantee, the public will draw the reasonable conclusion that the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to Vote Leave and take back control on 23 June. Finally can you confirm whether it is Government policy not to seek any further reforms of EU ‘free movement’ laws and regulations? Yours sincerely, Michael Gove MP Boris Johnson MP Gisela Stuart MP voteleavetakecontrol.org

To: scion who wrote (11915)	1/18/2019 10:01:46 AM
From: scion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12881

To Boris Johnson, the truth really is an alien concept Bobby McDonagh Tue 9 Oct 2018 13.06 BST theguardian.com Brexit will have real-world implications for millions of people, yet Johnson can’t even grant them basic honesty and respect • Bobby McDonagh is a former Irish ambassador to the UK I have a confession to make. Boris Johnson and I have a quite a bit in common. We attended the same Oxford College (Balliol). We studied the same subject (classics). We were presidents of the same debating society (the Oxford Union). However, a crucial difference is that I gave up being an undergraduate when I left university four decades ago. As Johnson is considerably younger than me we were not contemporaries at university. However, when later I was the Irish ambassador in London and he was the mayor, we met a few times. As might be expected he was charming and ebullient. There was a touch of mischief in the Johnson eye. The trademark awareness that he was an actor in his own play, a charisma looking for an identity. He once accepted an invitation to dinner at the embassy. His attendance was confirmed by his office on the morning of the event, but he pulled out at the last minute. People, of course, often have to cancel appointments, so this was entirely insignificant in the scheme of things. However, it is just possible that Johnson’s cancellation may have had a slightly deeper significance. I was subsequently informed that he often used to accept two clashing invitations and only decide at short notice which event to attend. I can’t be certain that this is true, but it seems plausible. A similarly whimsical approach to entering commitments found an echo in the famous manner of Johnson’s announcement of support for the leave campaign. It now seems accepted that, having prepared one article in support of Brexit and another against, he only decided which line to commit to at the last minute. Johnson’s discourse and his writing suggest some appreciation of Latin and Greek. But classics, like every academic discipline, has at its heart the idea that there is something called the truth which we are striving to find. In studying Thucydides, for example, we might disagree about the reasons for the Peloponnesian war, but we study it because we believe there are truths worth exploring. Virgil, like any poet, is open to different interpretations, but we read him because he is grappling with important verities. The reason for reading Homer and Horace goes much deeper than memorising classical tags to provide a veneer of culture in later life. To be fair, I don’t believe that Johnson’s fatuous claim about extra Brexit money for the NHS or his glib dismissal of the profoundly important Irish border issue should be understood as lies. To tell a lie, one must first understand that there is such a thing as truth. Mere frivolousness about matters that will impact on ordinary people, especially in the UK itself, seems to me to be a greater threat. Although, of course, I’m not British, I find it hard to believe that anyone lacking in seriousness of purpose could purport to regard Winston Churchill as a hero. The flip-flop about whether the UK would effectively have full trade access to the EU after Brexit has been at the heart of the Johnson nonsense about having his cake and eating it. It is now increasingly clear that, far from British business retaining untrammelled access to the internal market, as claimed during the referendum campaign, the metaphorical cake mysteriously disappeared over tiffin at Johnson’s London club. Having your cake and eating it is prevented by the laws of physics, not by the laws of Brussels. Oxford has a reputation for tolerance. Personally I encountered nothing but respect and friendship when I arrived there at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Among the many who are saddened by Johnson’s willingness to ride the populist wave can, I think be counted, most people associated with the university. I make these points reluctantly. I do so because, after a difficult history, Ireland and the UK have developed a deep and respectful friendship largely in the context of our shared membership of the EU. Honesty is an essential ingredient of friendship. So is a seriousness about things that matter to one’s friends. Personally, I disagree with a great deal of what is said in the Brexit debate in the UK, but I recognise a willingness across much of the political spectrum to treat the issues seriously. Thucydides wrote that most people will not take the trouble of finding out the truth but are more inclined to accept the first story they hear. Watching Johnson hold forth to his faithful when he dropped into the Tory party conference last week, it struck me that he may have picked up something at university after all. • Bobby McDonagh was Ireland’s ambassador to the UK from 2009 to 2013 theguardian.com