Eyre Lines

This post has been hanging around for a while, as my access to the blog collapsed (due to a glitch in one of the WordPress add-ons, now fixed by disabling it…)

There is a very funny video by Jonathan Pie (well, he’s always very funny) with which I feel I need to take exception. His basic stance is that you don’t persuade anyone by calling them stupid – and I agree, it isn’t the best persuasive technique.

However, Brexiteers have, in effect, been conned. Those who voted Conservative in the most recent election have been conned. Lest you think “oh well, no-one believes electoral hype these days anyhow”, I have heard variations on the following from several people – “You can’t trust anything any of the politicians say these days, but I voted for Boris because he just seems trustworthy to me”. As the link shows, Boris and his cohorts were massively the least trustworthy of any of the leaders or parties. Those saying or thinking this are believing a group of people who, as represented by Michael Gove, say “the people have had enough of experts”.

How on earth do you manage to convince people that they have made the wrong decision when they have ignored all the actual evidence, discount anything which “the other side” says (including experts) and, against all reason, believe that someone who basically lies 88% of the time is the most trustworthy person to lead the country, without at least implicitly calling them stupid?

My really strong temptation is to respond to Jonathan Pie that I’m being charitable in thinking of Brexiteers as stupid, because if they aren’t stupid, they’re either (1) deliberately trying to damage the country (I know a couple of people who voted Leave specifically because, as one of them put it “I want to see the world burn” – my first draft of this option said “maliciously”, but actually, she thinks the only way to get a better world is to demolish what we’ve got now, which may be misguided but isn’t actually malicious) or (2) self-centeredly seeking power, prestige or money from it. The politicians who espouse Brexit are pretty obviously in the last category – they’re getting power and prestige, and a lot of them are probably expecting to make money as well. The big businessmen who are backing them are definitely going for the money.

But that leaves a lot of people, the vast majority of Brexiteers, who are not only not going to benefit this way, they’re going to be damaged by it. Those who voted Tory at the last election also have a history of the last two Conservative governments to look at, which made the majority of us poorer and more desperate, particularly the sick and the poor (I note that the promises of an end to austerity have just been u-turned on by the Chancellor). Why are the turkeys voting for Christmas?

I think the answer might be found partially in Festinger’s famous book “When Prophecy Fails”. This catalogues the behaviour of an apocalyptic group when the apocalypse they predicted fails to arrive. Far from resulting in the dissolution of the group, Festinger found that they doubled down on their beliefs (slightly modified) and, as the link states, Festinger identified a set of criteria:-

• A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves.
• The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual’s commitment to the belief.
• The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
• Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
• The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.

If all of those are present, the tendency is for the belief not only to persist, but to intensify.

In the case of Brexit, I might suggest that all the evidence already shows that Brexit will damage the country, but it seems that this has failed to persuade ardent Brexiteers that it is a false belief, rather thay have intensified their support for it. If this mechanism is at work, we can expect people to double down on the belief that Brexit is a good thing more rather than less when it proves to be even more disastrous than it has already.

There is more, however. In a recent episode of the Political Philosophy podcast, Toby Buckle discussed the ideas of domination and humiliation in politics. His thesis was, briefly, that the main thing which people desired was to be free from domination (and the resulting humiliation), building on a previous episode on Machiavelli. Remember my friend who said “I want to see the world burn”? The sentiment is, I think, that we are powerless against political forces and that our votes are irrelevant. This is something I have a lot of sympathy for; I have never voted for a candidate for the UK parliament who has won, and it is only in the most recent European election, when my area actually did elect a couple of Liberal Democrat MEPs, when my vote might have been seen as “winning” in a national level vote, though my area also elected three Brexit Party MEPs… not that that now matters much, as all of them are now unemployed.

My “world burn” friend was delighted when her vote was on the winning side; for a moment, she (and other Brexit-voting people) had WON! In her case, and, I think, for many others, it was an “in your face” revolt against the status quo. I think there are a lot of people in the country for whom things have got so bad, irrespective of who they voted for, that any change was seen as a good thing – it couldn’t get any worse, could it? (Personally I think yes, it can get a lot worse, but that hasn’t actually happened yet…) Suddenly, their vote had counted – and they were impatient to see it carried all the way into reality…

That, of course, also explains the lack of enthusiasm for a “people’s vote” – Leave voters have quite reasonably expected since shortly after the referendum that if it were re-run, the result would be “Remain” – and that would negate their “win”. Current polls seem to bear that out, though the option is now closed to us, as we have officially left (though for most purposes nothing will really change until the beginning of 2021 except, I expect, a continuing closure of businesses and an increasing set of job losses).

So, my Brexit-voting friends, you have now “won” beyond any possibility of us former Remainers reversing that decision. Yes, I will now be campaigning to rejoin, but that is not going to be something which can be achieved overnight (as, up to last night, a reversal of the Article 50 notice could have been). It is, for instance, totally unachievable until we have another general election and no longer have a thumping Conservative majority. Is that “win” enough for you? Apparently, for some 87% of Express readers who want to see it made illegal to fly the European flag, no, it isn’t. They want to fine or imprison me for the flag which now flies from the front of my house as well.

However, as the poll I linked earlier also shows, 86% of us want British and EU companies to be able to trade freely with each other, and that would require a “Norway” type deal (which argues that the Express readers are well under 14% of us). I was saying immediately after the referendum result that I’d reluctantly settle for that, even though I’m a completely committed pro-European, including supporting Schengen, the Euro (with some reservations in that case) and a closer political union, all of which put me towards the extreme end of the pro-European spectrum.

My question is, now you’ve actually won, would you settle for that as well? If you would, please let your local Tory MP know that, as a Brexit and Tory voter, you want free trade with no tariffs or regulatory barriers to trade – and that your future support is dependent on him or her voting for just that. And that that is one thing which might, just might, start to implement Boris’ post-election talk of “bringing the country together”.

My fear, though, is that the Boris government will head inexorably toward the hardest possible Brexit at the end of the year. For a start, if we are to believe his “no extension” talk, he has given himself an impossible task of negotiating a proper trade deal (which tend to take 5-10 years to negotiate), and the ERG proponents of “no deal” are still strong and without many pro-European Tories to balance them. And that isn’t the “we’ve struck a blow against domination” territory, it’s “when prophecy fails” territory. We could so easily slide into a government (and a significant slice of the electorate) in a delusional state similar to that explored by Festinger.

The only thing which might be negotiable within that period and not be a complete disaster for us is, indeed, something like the “Norway” option. I think it would need far less negotiation than a detailed trade deal – and that would probably appeal to Boris, as from schooldays onward, he’s been called lazy.

And yes, I can already hear the cries of “but that’s Brexit in name only”. Yes it is, but it’s still Brexit, it’s still a “win” for Brexiteers, and one in the eye for all us know-alls who said Brexit would be a catastrophe – because it’s possibly the only Brexit which wouldn’t be that bad (although we’ve already lost a significant amount of industry and FIRE sector organisations, and I doubt they’ll come back quickly). Rest assured, we’ll still think it’s a catastrophe, because what we wanted is a closer union with Europe, and we’ll have no part in that any more. Not for quite a few years, at any rate.