Talk me off the edge: UK democracy

Great Debates
61

I will always be emotionally invested in the truth against lies. Or do you think I should shrug my shoulders the next time some climate change deniers win power?

Sorry, but you’ve got me wrong. There’s some Brexiters who agree No-Deal would be a disaster, sure, but the only Brexiters that think as you describe, that Brexit will resolve itself but in a messy and sub-optimal way, have generally regretted their original Leave vote from what I’ve seen. The pro-Brexit-but-anti-no-deal Brexiters seem to insist we’ll do fine.

Which ignores the central problem: Brexit was sold on a ‘no downsides’ prospectus. Brexiters continue to insist despite all evidence that it there will be no downsides, or at least if there are any it’ll be the fault of Remainers and the EU.

But you’re still not addressing the main point I’ve asking which is wider than Brexit. This election was won with a mass deception and lawbreaking campaign unseen before in the UK. I cannot see how the genie can be put back in the bottle.

62

I’m out on the same ledge as the OP. I’ll try to talk us both back but first —you missed some Reasons to be Fearful. Here are a few more.

The Tories have learned that playing hardball with the law and the truth works. Dominic Cummings must be walking on rose petals right now.

The Tories have purged their party of all the moderates. The people running the show now are hardcore.

The Tories, even at the height of Thatcherism, never went full Ayn Rand. The next cabinet will be full of them. “Sajid Javid is a big Ayn Rand fan: twice a year, he reads the courtroom scene in ‘The Fountainhead’.” Dominic Raab is a fan too. These people aren’t conservatives any more. They are Objectivists and Nationalists and are way out on the fringe of free-market economics.

The Labour Party will get worse before it gets better. It won’t be electable again for a long, long time. If ever.

So what can we possibly be hopeful about? Here are a few reasons why I think things aren’t as bleak as they might be.

I don’t think Johnson is even slightly ideological and he has a deep-seated need to be popular. He’s not going to allow the crazies to drag his party over to the right because he will want to be elected again. Yes, they’ll double down on Theresa May’s hostile environment and the Hang 'em and Flog 'em brigade will have a champion in Priti Patel but on economics, government spending in general and the NHS in particular, they’ll stay moderate.

The Tories have just made huge gains in working class areas of the country. The MPs from those districts will have to deliver something or they’ll lose them again in the very next election.

The old political lines have been erased for ever. I’ve been reading some history and was surprised to learn how recently class conflict became a thing in UK politics. The working class are no longer a force in British politics and some other organizing principle will take its place.

Brexit will eventually be behind us. There’ll be a lingering resentment for a while but if those miners in Cumbria and Nottinghamshire can forgive what the Tories did to their communities, maybe there will come a time when we no longer divide ourselves into Leavers and Remainers. We’ll find a way to redraw the lines and the lines will go right through the middle of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

I think we have a rocky few years ahead of us. The economy will suffer and the folks who thought that Brexit was the answer will realize that it wasn’t and there will be a backlash against the people who lied to them. Let’s hope that there will be a new party ready to speak the truth.

63

Nitpick: Wales is a P, not a K.

64

No there won’t, because many of the people who lied to them own the media outlets they consume - the Sun, Daily Mail and Telegraph for the print media, and Sky and the BBC (yes, sadly) for television. And those sources will merely continue to lie and either minimise the effects of what is going on or find yet another scapegoat.

65

That seems to be fair enough, the balance is provided by the shrill and siren left wing ratings and memes on social media.

Labour activists convinced themselves on the rightness of their cause, and strength of their support largely on facebook and twitter- anyone who raised any concern or heaven forbid a contrary view was comprehensively screamed down on social media.

So we have biased print media and biased social media on either side of the - I won’t use the word debate - political divide

66

Did you make your vote in the Leave/Remain referendum based on the slogans of the side you initially liked, or did you think about the issue? Did you occasionally read or listen to the staggeringly huge amount of information and opinions available? Do you feel you made a reasoned decision? If so, then what’s so special about you? Why do think the basis and process of how you made your decision are fundamentally different than how the decisions were made by the rest of your countrymen? Sure, people have initial biases and instinctively follow those biases. They also react positively to information that reinforces their current way-of-thinking. Here’s the thing - I do that and so do you. But the vast majority of people are able to think about an issue, consider the information they’ve received, and then make a reasonable choice based on their values and desired outcomes. That’s what happened with the Leave/Remain referendum. That’s what happened with the 12 December general election. I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that people were gullible simpletons who were conned into making a bad decision. Social media maybe? Try having more confidence in your fellow Brits. Just because you disagree with their decisions doesn’t mean they were duped by some evil cabal of nefarious masterminds. It just means they made a different decision to you.

67

Part of the massive pro Remain propaganda was the overwhelming message that if the Brexit vote went ahead and the electorate voted to leave, there would be a massive and fundamental currency crisis - medical supplies and fresh produce would immediately dry up and sterling would completely collapse.

Part of the claimed planning was supposed to be a huge intervention by the Bank of England, interest rates would suddenly jump up and this was all backed up by no less than the Chair of the Bank of England Mark Carney.

In the event the hyperbole turned out to be complete fiction - this is not to say that Brexit will not have any negative effect - this is to refute the horrendous projections based solely upon the outcome of the vote itself.

It is hard to appreciate just how disastrous and extensively promoted these dire predictions were - in the event the Leave vote won and absolutely nothing whatsoever happened. The warnings over the vote turned out to be a complete sham, and this message would not have been lost on those voters who were wavering.

So we continue to get dire warnings, from pretty much the same sources that proved to be such rubbish. That had to have an impact on credibility yet nothing that has happened with the ups and downs since then of the bill trying to progress has transpired.

The so-called elites and ‘sensible and moderates’ still continue to make dire forecasts but on the election of the Tories shares rose and sterling increased in value - which is quite the opposite that you would expect given that the first true part of the Brexit process will now definitely happen.

Our so-called ‘clevers’ have not got it right once in any of this process, not even close and on this evidence Leavers have got to be thinking the wolf has been cried far too often.

In order to regain his credibility Mark Carney issued the following statement

The message has now changed from disaster for merely voting for leave to one of disaster over a no deal Brexit, if one so-called truth doesn’t get you then the next one will, how many times do the Remainers have to keep stepping back from falsehood warnings to a the next set of warnings over different parts of the process?

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/today-is-the-day-that-project-fear-died/

All we have had from Remainers is Project Fear, with no substance whatsoever to back it up, and one has to imagine that those promoting this fear package at the policy end of it are aware - or maybe utterly incompetent forecasters who need to be ignored - at any rate it comes as no surprise that a public that has suffered three years of fabrications from Remain. Fabrications of fiscal disaster have demonstrated that the bias comes not from Leave, no wonder Johnson with his ‘Get Brexit done’ message came away with such a majority.

Somehow, and amazingly those who turfed Labour out of some of its strongholds are still portrayed as ill-educated, credulous, simplistic morons whilst the Remainers still try to occupy the high ground of knowledge, well balanced reason, independence of thought and critical thinking - despite all their predictions being wrong each and every time.

Given the immense sums of money, exports, imports jobs services that are at stake here I find it impossible to believe that the EU or UK will put themselves into a position that would collapse all these economies - it isn’t going to happen. You have to be incredibly naive to believe that we will no longer be seeing those £billions of European made cars coming in to the UK, and the same goes for every other product, all of which have very viable competitors around the world - would the EU actually leave the whole UK car market to Japan?

Oh get real

Personally I would prefer to Remain in the EU - that surprise you?

Equally I am also not so dumb to believe in the doom scenarios that so many Remainers paint - but it does no service to the idea of remaining in Europe by unrealistic faslehood propaganda by Europhiles and undermines their credibility.

So why did I vote against Labour - because the current lot are self entitled idiots with a dodgy leader and fairy tale economics who I would not entrust to negotiating a full trade arrangement with the EU.

The greatest danger that could have emerged would have been for the Leave vote to be set aside because of the damage it would have done to the democratic process, which is amply demonstrated by all the parliamentary skullduggery that has taken place to try get the current deal through parliament through. Had the Leave vote been accepted as the wish of the population right from the start none of this skullduggery would have taken place.

Remain have been by far the most dangerous aspect to this affair as far as our constitution goes and indeed might well take the credit for breaking up the union, that refusal has been extraordinarily damaging to the UK - it is inevitable that if this happens then the blame will be put squarely on the shoulders of the Leave voters, instead of where it should lie, with the Remainers who are incapable of accepting democratic processes.

68

…you can’t just pretend that these predictions and concerns havegoneaway. This isn’t propaganda and its a disservices and an insult to portray it as such. These are real people who are at the front lines that are saying this.

You are citing something that happened in 2017 and completely ignoring everything else that has happened since then to “prove your point.” That isn’t how it works.

You want to talk about propaganda?

The name “Project Fear” and everything that it stands for is propaganda. It recontextualizes genuine concern, genuine supply chain analysis, genuine financial forecasting, concerns from genuine medical professionals, it recontextualizes all of that under a single Talking Point that doesn’t reflect reality.

These are your words, your strawmen.

Given the immense sums of money, exports, imports jobs services that are at stake I’m absolutely flabbergasted that you choose to ignore evidence like Operation Yellowhammer in favour ofargument from incredibility.

Why don’t you believe the people in the supply chain who are telling you that there will be massive interruption to the chain in the case of Brexit? What do you know that they don’t know? Why should we trust you over them?

You aren’t gonna get a full trade arrangement with the EU. Not without extensive negotiation.

The damage to the democratic process has already been done. The UK is fucked. Scotland are gonna leave, the Troubles are on the brink of returning.

I’ll put the blame on Boris & Farage and Co. They don’t give a fuck about your country.

69

That report was a worst case scenario, a no deal Brexit with no mitigation and planning. The whole point of producing it was not to say this is what will happen, it was what could happen, in the worst possible scenario, if we do nothing about it. Considering such risks is standard in business contingency planning. It is where you start from when considering a majr change.

Now it is perfectly legitimate to question whether the current government is competent enough to act and plan intelligently to mitigate all the possible effects but I’d say it is not legitimate to point to the report as if it were an inevitable result of Brexit and that is what some on the remain side do.

70

duplicate post

71

…it was merely one example of many that I could have cited to make that very same point. You need to read what you are responding to in context.

I never claimed the report showed the “inevitable result of Brexit.” If you want to argue with those that you claim make that claim then go argue with them: that has nothing to do with anything that I said.

72

I note Banquet Bear That you have blithely and completely chosen not to respond to the failed disaster predictions in events that have happened - the disaster that was supposed to take place merely on voting to leave, nor have you responded to the fact that Sterling has risen since the election and shares are up.

If your frightened disaster scenario was realistic then it is reasonable to expect sterling to fall and shares to decline - the folks who deal in these commodities are not sentimental, they tend to take painfully realistic views of the economies’ prospects.

I’d be interested in how you can square up the disaster of Brexit with market performance.

Another example of a shrill left wing social media warrior, no wonder you simply cannot believe that the Tories were re-elected - your view just does not match that of the market makers or the electorate.

This is exactly why Labour lost, and if you are at the moderate end of their outlook then it seems to me that Labour will continue to lose.

Who ever said anything different, however 3 years of persistent blocking of the democratic will by Remainers resulting in 2 general elections and all sorts of parliamentary skullduggery (largely by BJ in response to parliamentary anti-democratic blocking) is the reason why we are no further along the road than we were days after the Brexit vote.

Now we have got rid of the Remain anti-democrats in what was effectively a second Brexit vote we can actually get on with those negotiations. What has Remain gained out of all this nonsense and obstructionism – nothing, we have lost one Prime Minister, its likely that most of the opposition leadership is toast, the Lib-Dems have lost their leader and lots of their MPs and Scotland is ever closer to leaving the UK.

This is the price of being an anti-democrat, trying to overturn a legitimate authority given by the electorate, I am glad that democracy has won out - it really would have set back our nation if the Remain supporters had won out, it would have undermined our system of government.

I have not yet come across one Remainer who is able to defend their anti-democracy position with any credibility, Remain needs to be put back in the box where it belongs, when Remain grows up into adulthood instead of teenage sulk then perhaps it will be able to use democratic processes to campaign to return into the EU single market, and if this is achieved in a democratic manner then that is to the good of all democratic institutions, not just ours.

73

I think I was replying in context, unless I’ve severely misunderstood your post I took it as you saying that leave wasn’t scaremongering or indulging in propaganda. I think it is clear that they did (and both sides did) “yellowhammer” is merely one example amongst many for incidences of remain misrepresenting what has actually been presented or the scenarios that are likely (as opposed to “possible”).
It is a problem because every time we predict catastrophe and it fails to come to pass, a little bit of credibility gets chipped away and that is hard to recover. It bothers me more that remain do it because that is my side.

If I thought you’d flat-out made that claim I’d challenge you directly. I very carefully said (bolding mine)

“it is not legitimate to point to the report as if it were an inevitable result of Brexit and that is what some on the remain side do”

Hyperbole, scaremongering and misrepresentation was a feature of both sides and I don’t think it does the quality of debate any good to be blind to the faults of your own side. It is as wrong to assert a post-Brexit hellhole or utopia as it would be to assert a remain with zero downsides or a jackbooted euro super-state.

74

…which particular failed disaster predictions are you talking about? I can’t respond to something you haven’t demonstrated exists.

Which “frightened disaster scenario” are you talking about? Which one are you claiming I presented?

Why is it reasonable? What are you even talking about?

You do realize that Brexit hasn’t happened yet?

Yet another strawman. When did I claim that I “simply couldn’t believe that the Tories were re-elected?” I absolutely believed the Tories were going to win again. Why are you saying these random things?

You think yelling random things at me and attributing positions to me that I have never held were the reason why Labour lost? How bizarre.

The Remainers aren’t the people responsible for the failure of any trade negotiations. They aren’t the people in power. The responsibility for that falls squarely on the Tories.

LOL.

Good luck with that.

Well Scotland leaving the UK isn’t the fault of Remain. And the opposition lost the election: of course there are going to be changes. That’s just how democracy works.

Yeah, that isn’t how democracy works. It was a fucking referendum. The UK have only ever had three referendums, one in 1975, one in 2011 and Brexit in 2016, and prior to that they weren’t even generally regarded as constitutional. It wasn’t even a binding referendum. Calling for another referendum is not anti-democratic. Its entirely part of the process.

Perhaps that’s because you don’t understand what the word democracy means?

Nope. Campaigning for remain is entirely democratic and entirely within the domain of adulthood. It is is a teenage sulk to deny people a voice in a free and open society which appears to be what you are trying to do.

75

“Shrill leftist sirens just want to shut down opposing views! Besides, both sides do it!” Did that sound more coherent in your head?

The fact remains - and yes, it is a fact - that the right-wing have been engaging in a massive disinformation campaign against Labour, Jeremy Corbyn and the left in general for years. The Telegraph has been blatantly misrepresenting everything Jeremy Corbyn has been saying and doing since the moment he took the leadership. And the rest of the right-wing media hasn’t exactly been evenhanded, banging the “Corbyn loves terrorists!” drum loud and long.

Meanwhile, outside the media organs the Conservatives were quite busy all on their own:

The Conservative campaign advertising was characterised by gross misrepresentations of Labour’s position and overall falsehoods. The Labour campaign - much less so.

When Jeremy Corbyn was speaking during one of the televised debates, the Conservatives set up a fake fact-checking serviceto support Johnson and attack Corbyn (and then revived it despite it being revealed to be a partisan disinformation site).

When Labour launched its manifesto website, the Conservatives launched a fake Labour manifesto website.

The Conservatives openly doctored a video of Keir Starmer being interviewed.

And that’s not even touching on the Russia report, whatever’s in that.

To claim that this is somehow politics as usual, that “both sides do it” and that this is about Left v Right rather than about the extent to which we the public are willing to tolerate such dirty tricks is inherently ludicrous. But go on then: if both sides do it, show us the same falsehood-driven activities on the left. Show us the dissemination of lies about Boris Johnson, repeated over and over again in the major media outlets. Show us the Labour dirty tricks and smear campaigns. Surely they must be out there, no?

You may believe that your frothing little rants are in defence of a “fair and balanced” landscape but what you’re really defending is the ascendancy of lying on a whole new scale, something which has already done marked damage to our democracy. Obviously, this is your prerogative to do so. But if you wish to continue in this vein then by all means please proceed, casdave. And I’m sure we will all read your views in the appropriate light going forward.

76

…that wasn’t the context. To examine the context you don’t need to just read my post, but the post I was replying too.

Brexit hasn’t happened yet. We can’t talk about “catastrophe failing to come to pass” when the thing that might cause the catastrophe simply hasn’t happened yet.

Please don’t use my posts as a springboard to lecture someone else. I know what you said. It had nothing to do with anything in my post.

Once again: if you want to moan about what “both sides” are doing, then find those people that are doing what you are complaining about and moan to them. But this has nothing to do with the post you initially quoted.

77

That’s wrong.

Operation Yellowhammer *was *the mitigation and planning for no-deal Brexit. And it was not the worst-case scenario. It was the base case.

The document leaked to the Times at the beginning of August was described as a “base case”. The Scottish Government confirmed that the official document presented to them by the Treasury also described itself as a base case [12:27 PM int .

In September, an “updated” version of the Yellowhammer plan was published. It was almost identical to the leaked August versions. The one notable difference was that it now described itself as a “reasonable worst case scenario”. Where is the current base case? Do we not have one? What changes were made between August and September to shift the Yellowhammer doc from base case to reasonable worse case? What are the differences between these cases?

These good and obvious questions were put to then-Minister for Brexit Michael Gove by Hilary Benn, then Chair of the Committee for Brexit. Answer came there fucking none.

To me, it seems pretty obvious that what happened was:

The Treasury did their job and prepared plans for how to mitigate the downsides of No Deal Brexit. The first step was to create a base case for what this might mean. They did that, built a plan round it and called it Operation Yellowhammer.

That doc was leaked. As the downsides of No Deal Brexit are quite large, the doc made some waves. The government decided that rather than acknowledge that sober analysis did imply that No Deal Brexit had large downsides, they would try to spin their way out of it. They did this by the simple expedient of re-labelling the base case as the “reasonable worst case”.

This appears to have worked. As the thread is about whether and how the media is in a fit state to combat obvious bullshit from politicians, this is probably a good example to use. Why could the media not prevent Gove from spinning his bullshit successfully? Yellowhammer wasn’t a worst case. It was a base case with the words “reasonable worst case” slapped over the top. We knew this; we had the original documents to compare with. And yet Novelty Bobble, who is no fool, didn’t get this information from the media. He got the pure government spin, unchallenged and unchecked.

How does this happen?

78

People got very wrapped up in terminology and I’m not even sure what “base case” really means so the best thing I can suggest is that people read the document itself (warning pdf) and judge for themselves as to whether it represents the worst-case or a “base” case. The initial bullet points, to me at least, clearly suggest that the UK was taking the most pessimistic view possible.

That’s where I got my impression of it being a “worst case”, by reading it. I’ve written similar documents before and it reads just as I’d expect. *Here *are the worst case assumptions that we can reasonably expect and *here’s *what would happen if that played out, *here’s *what we can do to mitigate some of it. To present it as though *everything *in there was likely to actually play out is not reasonable, just as unreasonable as if the Brexit side said *none *of it was likely to play out.

79

pretty sure I did

Catastrophe was predicted just for the aftermath of the vote. This very much was in the post that you were responding to, I think you may have forgotten the context yourself.

It was on the subject on the misuse of predictions, of course it was relevant. And lecture? it was lamenting the misuse of facts and kept purposefully impersonal.
Imagine, people taking something you’ve said and using it to make a wider point whilst being very careful to make it clear that I’m not putting words in your mouth? outrageous.

How about, instead of trying to micromanage the discussion, you respond how you want to, make the points you want to and I’ll do the same?

I’m not a fan of big-thread, multi-point rebuttals, it is the “gish-gallop” of message boards and the factual points get lost. I can see that this how this is travelling. I find it exhausting and not particularly productive so I’m bowing out.

80

Given that it’s a no-deal scenario:

Bullet point 1: All rights and reciprocal agreements with EU end.

That’s not a pessimistic view. That’s just what No Deal means. There isn’t another, more optimistic view to take of what No Deal means.

Bullet point 2: The UK reverts fully to third-country status. The EU/UK relationship is unsympathetic. Many MS unwilling to engage bilaterally.

Again, the first sentence is a literal description of what No Deal is. The second is hardly pessimistic - if we’d hit No Deal our relationship wtih the EU would have taken a pretty major hit and it would be silly to pretend we’d be getting along swimmingly. The third is a basic statement of what the EU is - it’s members states don’t make bilateral deals, they act in union. What would a realistically optimistic view be? That Germany would cut a separate deal from Italy? Not gonna happen.

Bullet point 3: Public and business readiness will remain at a low level, due to lack of clarity and people not believing A50 won’t be extended until the last minute, as it was twice before.

It’s a matter of recordthat businesses weren’t ready, that the government wasn’t being clear about what was required by when, and that no one knew whether A50 would be extended again. This is not pessimism, it’s a description of the facts on the ground. They may be unpleasant facts, but facts they were.

Bullet point 4: Business readiness will not be uniform, and will be affected by seasonal factors.

Well…yeah? Of course readiness won’t be uniform; of course the timing is going to matter.

Bullet point 5: Seasonal risks such as severe weather, flooding, flu will affect preparedness.

Again, of course other things are going to be going on. You could assume we wouldn’t have floods (already wrong) or flu, or ice in winter, but that’s optimism bias not avoidance of pessimism.

Bullet point 6: Private companies behaviour will be governed by commercial considerations.

No pessimism here.

Bullet point 7: HMG will act in accordance with the law

See, now that’s optimistic.
Pessimism is looking for the worst in things. Realism is seeing things as they are. If things are actually pretty bad, a realistic assessment will be that things are bad. That is not the same thing as being pessimistic.

You say you thought this doc was taking the most pessimistic view possible. Which bullet points do you think could be both less bleak but also realistic?