"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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My Dad died last year. It seems some remainers are gleeful about this...

Your politics is very troubled if it takes you to a place where you wish your opponents - "the enemy" - dead. Yet this is precisely where we've got to with the Remain side of Brexit:

Enough old leavers will have died and enough young remainers will have come on to the electoral register to turn the dial on what the country thinks about Brexit.

This doesn't come from some little blog but from the UK's leading progressive news platform, The Guardian written by one of its star - and very well paid - columnists, Polly Toynbee. This position - we'll get what we want once all those unpleasant old people in provincial towns have pegged it - it a deeply unpleasant one. It sits alongside the idea - most recently from singer, Jamelia, that old people should have the franchise removed because, y'know, they'll be dead before the effects of their votes are truly felt.

Elsewhere:



Now the person who did this unthinkingly unpleasant site has taken it down claiming that he didn't mean to be nasty to people who are dying (they aren't, of course, all nasty old brexity people) or to the families of people who lost close relatives since the referendum. As far as I know, my Dad voted to leave and he died last year making him one of Polly and her pals gleeful statistics. I miss his wit and wisdom, things gained from a long life including 35 years as a local councillor - the idea that his views and opinions shouldn't have counted because he was at the end of his life is a truly unpleasant and undemocratic idea.

The people putting forward the idea that people dying is something to be celebrated because it suits their political positions demographics consider themselves to be intelligent, moderate, caring people. What these views show is that, in some respects, they are far more dangerous and damaging for our liberty and democracy than the UK's handful of right wing thugs - we sort of expect violent language from the latter but when establishment figures with columns in national newspapers start on the same line, unchallenged by editors or the wider media, alarm bells should ring. Old people are not an inconvenience but part of our society - wishing them dead because you think they might vote the wrong way is repulsive.

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No leadership, childishness and deception - how MPs are destroying the trust that's central to democracy

Trust. That's it, the central, essential requirement for democracy to work. People have to trust that their friends and neighbours will behave responsibly and that the people who we send to parliament as our representatives will do, more or less, what they said they'll do. I know, I know, I can hear you: "Simon, what are you drinking, people never trust politicians...": or words to that effect. I suspect, however, that this probably ain't so - there's always been a loud minority who thought politicians were selfish, on the take, charlatans but most people, if they ever gave the matter thought, saw politicians as grand but essentially decent folk.

Yesterday I concluded that we're pretty close to the point where this trust, always a fragile thing, collapses. Three things led me there - watching "Brexit: the uncivil war", seeing interviews with Harlow residents on Sky News and reading Dominic Grieves 2017 election statement. And before we start this isn't about Brexit right or wrong but about whether the people feel able to affect change in a democracy - can trust those they elect to respect how they vote.

I won't go into a whole review of "Brexit: the uncivil war" - suffice it to say that I enjoyed it but felt it was (other than a truly dire scene supposedly set in Jaywick - it's always Jaywick isn't it) too focused on the battle between teams of Westminster insiders rather than on an amazing campaign mostly conducted by regular voters without reference to politicians. It was also spoiled by a silly bit of text at the end suggesting the leave campaign did something evil and malign (it didn't).

Anyway, the important bit isn't the accuracy or otherwise of the drama but the final minutes set in a future inquiry where Dominic Cummings played by Benedict Cumberbatch rants about how nobody had the intelligence, initiative or aspiration to take hold of the 2016 vote and shape it into a real change for Britain. The Cummings character, close to camera, says that a vote to change how we did politics was seen as just something to be managed within the existing political culture. Politicians - leave and remain - were unable to grasp that voters, including scruffy ones in ramshackle shacks by the Essex seaside, were telling us the way we do politics needs to change and that maybe we'd get better government if we paid them some actual attention.

Meanwhile, Sky News had toddled off to Harlow - Essex again as it's not too inconvenient as they can get back to West London to take Jocasta to dance class - where they did vox pops with voters. Sophie Ridge, the presenter, shared clips on social media and these told the same tale as we heard from that end piece in "Brexit: the uncivil war". Politicians are useless buffoons, they need to get on with the job and stop behaving like children. And (trust me on this one) this sentiment is repeated everywhere by leave and remain voters alike. It's accompanied by a growing view that, not only will Brexit not happen but that people will have less power in future because they had the audacity to vote for something their lords and masters didn't want.

Yet despite this, MPs have, time and time again, voted (by slim majorities admittedly) to stop any resolution to Brexit that didn't conform to their view - incidentally, given they are mostly remain supporters, a view that is directly contradictory to the way the majority of the people voted. Every possible variant of legal and procedural sophistry has been employed, all with the intent of stopping the government from implementing the result of the 2016 referendum. And this brings me to the third thing from yesterday because it features Dominic Grieve, one of the leading confounders of that democratic vote in June 2016. There are plenty of others to choose from but I happened to read what Grieve had said to his electorate in the 2017 General Election - here's a chunk:

As someone who has always advocated a close relationship between the UK and the European Union, I accept the result of the 2016 Referendum. I therefore strongly support the Prime Minister’s determination to secure a negotiated arrangement for leaving the EU and for forging a new trading relationship for the future, providing certainty for trade and business whilst giving us control of migration and releasing us from the direct effect of EU Law. I also believe that the people of our country will benefit from a close continuing relationship with a strong EU and I will work to help build these important links for our future. I very much hope, therefore, that the Prime Minister will be able to achieve something close to the goals she set out in her speech at Lancaster House in February.

I challenge anyone to find in this, or indeed in the rest of Grieve's message, anything that justifies how he has behaved in parliament since that election. The address in question - especially given how clear the Conservative manifesto was on the matter - is a colossal act of deception because, as subsequent events have shown, Grieve had every intention of spending the forthcoming parliament manipulating rules and procedures to try and prevent Brexit.

These three examples all speak to the relationship between the electorate and their representatives with the public justifiably exasperated by what's gone on, irritated by the childishness of MPs (and their friends in the mainstream media) and desperate for somebody to grasp the opportunity of reframing the relationship between voter and politician in favour of the voter and away from the tribal elites in the Westminster bubble.

As I said at the start, trust is central to democracy. It seems that, unless something dramatic happens pretty soon, politicians in Westminster, by repeatedly ignoring voters concerns and interests, will finally have lost the last vestiges of respect as well as the public's trust. What will happen at this point isn't clear - I'm not expecting thousands to take to the streets as they have in France but I do expect a new sort of politician - blunt, cynical and populist - to arrive. And the first place they'll arrive is in local Conservative associations.

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Matthew d'Ancona is the bigot, not me

One time cameronista now born again as a righteous Guardian writer, Matthew d'Ancona has written one of those lazy journalist articles about how those people who voted to leave the EU back in 2016 are bigots and, anyway, were manipulated (one unpleasant chap on Twitter called it 'gaslighted') into that vote by a sinister elite. d'Ancona's contention is two-fold - firstly that wanting to control immigration is ipso facto bigoted and that marginal advances in economic prosperity are enough to justify the undermining of culture and community. It is the very essence of the Remainer case that economic advancement is everything and that "the most important metric was economic prosperity".

The problem, and in different guises this is repeated again and again across Europe, is that the public simply don't see it that way. Indeed, many people remain convinced (the evidence supports them poorly here) that immigration is economically damaging - they'll point to the lack of affordable homes, the waiting lists at hospitals, the over-subscribed primary schools and the persistent low pay in unskilled and semi-skilled manual jobs. It's not enough to exclaim how the NHS depend on immigrant labour or is needed for "...affordable decorators..." or "...your Tesco and Amazon deliveries arriving on time." Out there in the real world away from d'Ancona's wealthy internationalist bubble people do their own decorating and don't see a job delivering parcels as something requiring cheap imported labour but rather as a job their son, nephew or neighbour might be doing.

It is this outlook, a sort of sniffy dismissal of jobs like cleaning hospital loos, delivering parcels and mopping floors as things only foreigners can do because we're all doing much grander things, that defines d'Ancona and his fellow Guardian elite as bigots. It's one with the equally common - I call it "Naomi Kline Snobbery" - view that, while posh clever folk who support progressive causes are immune, those common sorts are manipulated by big business and advertising into the terrible "consumerist" world. And by consumption they don't mean uplifting (and over-priced) novels, avant garde theatre or lovely evenings with friends in that brilliant little restaurant just off the common. No we mean very big plastic toys, McDonalds, discounted boxes of Stella and multi-packs of own brand crisps. It means shopping at Aldi - not to ironically buy cheap wine because a review told you to - but because week-on-week the basket is cheaper.

This bigotry is the bigotry that likes minimum unit pricing for booze (it won't affect folk like d'Ancona of course just common people), vaping bans ('well it's a bit naff, isn't it') and sugar taxes ('we have to think of the children'). The argument is that people don't know any better or they're conned by "Big Booze" or "Big Sugar" or "Big Food" or it's for their own good. But in the core of this belief - and it's the same as dismissing concerns about immigration as bigotry - is the idea that the sort of working class, provincial, horny-handed people that voted to leave the EU cannot be trusted to make decisions without the guiding hand of Matthew d'Ancona and his friends - more intelligent, more worldly-wise, better informed. And, course, these Philosopher Kings won't make decisions in their own self-interest, they are above all that, they read the Guardian for heaven's sake!

Some leavers are bigots, just as some Guardian readers think about the lives of people outside the charmed circle of wealthy, London-based progressive life. But in both cases it's a minority. It seems to me - as a leaver who is largely pro-immigration, supports free trade and would just like the option, and a means, to kick the bastards running Europe out - that, far from Brexiteers being bigots, the real bigots here are those progressive, Remainer, pseudo-centrist, selfish, short-termist, judgemental, know-all people like Matthew d'Ancona.

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Age of Madness - prosecuting Boris and other tales from the Brexit front

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

So it is with, it seems, almost everything about our ongoing debate about leaving the EU. This madness appears to have spread throughout the land, a plague of conspiracy theory, offence, insult and obsession. Formerly cheery folk are become monomaniacal advocates of Remain or Brexit, prepared to cast friendships, work and community into the pit rather than admit they might just be over-egging the whole thing just a tad.

Over on the leave side there's a host of people casting those who think otherwise as traitors, quislings and paid lackeys of foreign billionaires. The attempt to find a way through the tangled mass of Brexit options is variously described as a betrayal or a sell out and any deal not conforming to the unwritten gospel of One True Brexit serves only to make us a vassal state, a colony trapped forever in the evil EU web. Some are even ready to countenance staying in the EU if the arrangements of our leaving do not meet the requirements of that One True Brexit.

Not to be outdone, indeed to maintain their lead in spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed lunacy, the Remain Ultras have found a new stupidity - they're going to sue Boris Johnson because the words on the side of a bus might not have been entirely accurate. And people - folk with good jobs and money to spare - have given these numpties the cash to take this action:

On Saturday 17th November, Boris Johnson MP was notified of private prosecutor Marcus J Ball’s intention to bring a private prosecution case against him. The case is in accordance with section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, for the alleged offence of misconduct in public office.

Mr Ball has instructed Bankside Commercial to bring on his behalf, the private prosecution against Mr Johnson MP.

Bankside Commercial has retained the services of three barristers from Church Court Chambers: Mr Lewis Power QC, Colin Witcher and Anthony Eskander.

The alleged offence of misconduct in public office arises from statements made and or endorsed by Boris Johnson MP in his capacity as an MP and Mayor of London prior to and following the EU Referendum concerning the cost of EU Membership. Mr Ball alleges that the claim that the UK ‘sends £350 million a week to the EU’ was knowingly false.

Also, that Mr Johnson made or endorsed these statements with the intention of persuading the British Public to vote Leave in the EU Referendum.

Over £100,000 has been raised to conduct this deranged plan with more than 3000 people contributing. The lead numpty, Marcus Ball, says that they'll need half a million quid. To achieve what exactly? Apparently the contested claim about how much goes to the EU (and if you hark back to the referendum campaign, you'll recall it was contested - vigorously) represents "misconduct in public office" because Boris knew it was wrong. How on earth a person, regardless of their day job, conducting a political campaign can be described as acting "in public office" defeats me but more importantly, even if these idiots win their case, there's no chance of this changing what the outcome or direction of the Brexit process (an increasing occult enterprise).

When this is set alongside Lord Adonis accusing the FT of selling out to Japanese corporate interests and The Observer's ever weirder conspiracy theories about "dark money" and "secret webs", it's clear that people have taken almost complete leave of their senses. Add in a different bunch who are now saying that the Prime Minister's (slightly sub-optimal) attempt to craft something from the fog of Brexit is BRINO - "Brexit in Name Only" - and proves it's a Remainer conspiracy to keep us trapped forever in the EU's web. We truly are in a time of madness - "quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat"


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Federalism is the positive case for EU membership - which is why no-one's making it

There's a positive case for the UK's membership of the European Union. Not the scattering of seemingly random words - cooperation, unity, stronger and so on and on - but a genuine case for us tying ourselves to 27 (and growing) other nations. But no-one - or at least no-one in the Remain campaign - is making that positive case.

There's a reason for this and its because of what that positive case is about. If we're better off as a member of the EU then we must also be better off if that union is stronger. And the way to make the EU stronger is to gradually diminish the nations that make up the union. This means a commitment to federalism as a future polity for Europe - something that the UK has always shied away from. It means, for all its problems, making the decision to join the Euro because being outsid8e that single currency undermines the operation of the union. And it means accepting that taxes paid by the English, Swedes, Dutch and Germans will be used to pay Greek pensioners, to invest in Romanian infrastructure and to support the Spanish welfare system.

Instead of this positive case, because it isn't likely to be popular, we have an entirely negative case for retaining our EU membership. A case based on short term issues, on the selfishness of now. We're told to vote Remain because there might be a recession after we leave. We're told taxes might have to rise in the short-term. We're given threats about public service cuts - again an issue about now not our future. Nothing in the case being made to remain in the EU talks of a future ten years hence let alone twenty or thirty years ahead. Yet that is the decision we're taking. A decision Remain want us to make on the basis of what it will be like in 2017 not what Britain might be in 2037.

I don't support the idea of a federal Europe because the inevitable remoteness of such a government plays into the hands of separatists, nationalists and the emerging nativist right. But I'm prepared to listen to someone who thinks differently and can set out a cogent case for a stronger, more united Europe. That no-one dares make this case gives the lie to Remain's arguments about Britain being 'stronger in' - so long as the federal direction of the EU is denied by its advocates, the UK will remain marginal to the central decision-making of the EU.

If we accept Remain's argument then the UK is left as a semi-detached member of the EU, paying a huge price for the limited benefit of access to the single market. Unless, of course, Remain aren't telling the truth about the EU's future and Britain will subsume its remaining independence in working for a federal Europe, will join the Euro and will see Ken Clarke's prediction of Westminster's place that little bit nearer.

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