"Your opinion doesn't count because you're thick and you have a common accent": the story of Remain (and Boris Johnson's election)

It is pretty commonplace these days to read or hear an otherwise intelligent person explain how somebody holding an opposing view does so as a result of either being paid to do so or else being brainwashed by the media and advertising. This outlook is doubly common when the otherwise intelligent person considers that the person doing the 'wrongthink' is less well educated. Here's a excellent example from Peter Jukes in a tweet that garnered several hundred likes and retweets:

This is the point. I don’t blame Leave supporters: 30 years of lying by 90% of the press: hundreds millions spent on dark ads by Johnson, Cummings, Banks and Farage, boosted by Putin.

If you voted leave in 2016, you did so because you were brainwashed, lied to and conditioned by the media or by advertising. We see the same argument from public health professionals as they explain that the reason John smokes and Mark is obese is that sinister and manipulative marketing - John and Mary's choices were not real choices, these people (unlike Peter Jukes or the public health people, of course) had no real agency, no free will, they are leaves blown about by the storms of marketing and media.

On the evening of Britain's departure from the EU, somewhat reluctantly, the broadcast media ventured into Parliament Square where several thousand folk were enjoying the moment. There's a little clip that, for those who believe leave voters were hoodwinked, confirms the undoubted thickness and ignorance of leavers. Two women with strong, working class accents are asked by the reporter why they voted to leave. And the answer from both was, albeit not in fancy dan language, right on the money - the vote was about restoring decision-making to the UK parliament where, people felt, they had more chance of affecting those decisions. This, of course, wasn't enough for the reporter who wanted them to say what laws or rules the women would change (hoping, of course, that they'd say something bigoted about immigrants) but they didn't oblige and the reporter moved on.

For our otherwise intelligent person the womens' thick accents and their slightly inarticulate response was enough to confirm that the combination of a "right wing" media, dark money and a number on the side of a bus had led them to vote leave. The women are plainly not intelligent enough to listen to argument, consider the options and make a decision (unlike our otherwise intelligent person).

The idea that the environment in which we live affects the decisions we make isn't either new or wrong. Media and advertising are part of that environment but not the whole of it - if we say that free will is moderated by our social environment, we are not saying that people's decisions are made for them by advertisers or their opinions put in their heads by the media. What our friends and family say, the conversations we have at work or in the check out queue, a thousand interactions that are not controlled by media or advertisers, these things are at least as important - probably more so - than the ads or the news. Why do you buy that particular brand of soap powder? Chances are that it's the brand your Mum uses and the same will go for preferences across a host of products and services.

None of this denies people agency but rather explains how we go about choosing. It's something we don't do in isolation (this also applies to our otherwise intelligent person) but by processing all the information we have received. We place different emphases on these sources, trusting some more than others - I remember a tale told during the recent election where someone reported how their first time voter daughter returned from college saying how the teacher had told them they should vote for Corbyn but, as the tale concluded, that young voter said that she trusted her parent's opinion more than the teacher.

After their defeat in the referendum and, latterly, in December's election, our otherwise intelligent person has expressed the intention to listen to the voters. The problem is that, because those voters are going to say things about being respected, our otherwise intelligent person won't really be listening. After all, the reason they voted the wrong way is because they were manipulated by sinister forces, lied to and exploited by dark forces who don't share their interests. Either than or (and this is more commonly held by our otherwise intelligent person) those voters are just thick and stupid.

So, instead of hearing what those voters are saying ("yes we do want to leave the EU") our otherwise intelligent person listens instead to people like him who have written long analyses of why Labour and/or Remain lost. A two thousand word one in the London Review of Books or a piece by some sociologists at a London university - that'll provide all the evidence our otherwise intelligent person needs, no need to actually listen to what those fat working class women are saying. The BBC did a feature from "the North" by visiting university campuses and talking to people who shared the same outlook, background and worldview as the producers of the programme. It probably didn't help much to broaden anybody's understanding of those people who, in the view of our otherwise intelligent person, voted the wrong way because of dark ads and the right wing media.

The extent to which people who are less articulate (usually, but not always, a consequence of a lower level of formal education) get ignored but our otherwise intelligent person and his friends reveals a degree of intolerance for opinions that are not validated by the in-group. More credence is given to somebody sitting in a book-lined Islington flat who writes about why people in Bassetlaw deserted Labour than an older couple having a drink in a Worksop Wetherspoons. Despite only vaguely knowing the location of Bassetlaw and certainly not knowing anybody who is from Worksop or Retford, our Islington writer gets published in a widely read newspaper or journal while the old couple's opinion, at best, gets (a slightly sneering) fifteen seconds on the local evening news. But then we should remember, as our otherwise intelligent person knows, the writer's opinion is real while the old couple simply reflect the propaganda of that right wing press and those dark ads.

People ask what changed, how the Conservatives and Boris Johnson turned it round and won that victory. What was Dominic Cummings' magic formula? Why? Perhaps, in answering these questions, we should begin with understanding that the biggest change was the decision to ignore the media, to be positive and to offer something believable and tangible to ordinary voters. And because conservatives, and especially leave voting conservatives, had got used to being called thick, xenophobic racists, it was an easy job to make common cause with a load of largely Labour voting leavers who'd experienced the same attacks. If you don't respect people's opinion then you really don't deserve to get people's support.

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