EU Referendum Special, the Remain camp sees support haemorrhage as multi-millionaire Sir Bob Geldof shouts obscenities to ordinary working class people who back Brexit, PR stunt goes badly wrong, the next PR disaster was attempting to use the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox to blacken Leave, 10 point Leave lead is set to grow in UK

Dear All

One of the most iconic images of the whole EU campaign took place two days ago on the River Thames; do you know what the image was?

It was Sir Bob Geldof making crude gestures and shouting insults at ordinary people who are fishermen and want to make a living, they staged an event for the Leave campaign which was attended by many Scottish boats.

If you think back 30 years ago, we had the song Band Aid, which was then followed by the huge concert Live Aid, the purpose was to help people in Africa. That made Bob Geldof into an international figure. Geldof was previously a singer in the pop band, The Boomtown Rats, I like the group; their music was really good.

Fast forward to 2016, we have a different Bob Geldof, multi millionaire who charges £100,000 to do a speech on poverty; he is backing Britain staying in the EU, which means he is now supporting poverty in Africa.

And supporting poverty in Britain!

A changed day is it not for Sir Bob Geldof.

The counter protest by Geldof was professional organised to support the EU, but it soon turned sour indeed and he became the bad pr story, in fact some of his supporters in the Labour Party left the boat in disgust afterwards. And took the time to apologise to the fishermen who have seen their industry destroyed and their coastal towns become ghost towns as jobs dried up. This is the price some ordinary people are paying for membership of the EU and why the campaign for Leave now commands a 10 point lead according to a latest opinion poll.

People of Britain, right across Britain want Brexit, the support for Leave is now becoming a flood.

Tonight I met a young girl who said she wanted to stay in the EU, so I asked her, could you tell me what the EU is? This young girl is a student with a first class honours degree, so plenty of brains kicking about the place.

Her answer was she couldn’t, she thought the EU was Europe, it isn’t, the EU is a political organisation, I put it to her in these terms; do you go to the gym? She said yes, she did, I said the Britain has a membership of the EU like you have a membership of the gym, this grants you certain rights of usage. What it is doesn’t grant you is the ability to change the way the gym is run. As she started to struggle, I simply dropped the conversation; there was no point in continuing it further, she had an emotional attachment without understanding.

When you look at the picture of Bob Geldof sticking two fingers up to the fishermen, you should look at all the people surrounding him, they aren’t ordinary people. I would suggest that they are all rich middle class university educated student types, what people in the past describe as the trendy left.

But these people aren’t the ‘trendy left’, they are the regressive left, today is a sad day in Britain, the Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered, she has a husband and two kids, she was stabbed and shot according to reports. It was a terrible tragic event which a person has been arrested, we will in due course learn details but everyone in this country is shocked, and for what it is worth, my sincere condolences to her family.

Not long after on twitter, a tweet appear to say that the man shouted ‘Britain First’ before he stabbed Jo, this story as far as I can make out isn’t true, the person who made the claim has since deleted the tweet. There is no way that this tweet should have been sent to make capital for the Remain camp; it is another political low for them among a series of lows.

At this time, the most important thing is that everything humanly possible is done for Jo Cox’s husband and her two kids, and I do mean everything.

I will not be campaigning today out of respect for Jo and her family, neither will anyone in the Leave campaign in Scotland. We have lost a dedicated hard working campaigning MP who was a credit to family, the House of Commons, her area and the Labour Party.

I would like to hope that no further stupid and crass remarks are made by either side, sadly that appears too much to hope for in this day and age.

RIP Jo Cox.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University