One of the lies that didn’t survive a day after the referendum result was that there would be £350m a week to spend on the NHS. My suspicion is that this number was widely understood to be untrue but was still highly effective.
Now it would have been quite easy for Leave to say that there would be £136m a week to spend on the NHS, and although it is a lesser number, do we really think the political impact of £136m is going to be all that different to £350m (were it true)? Or to £250m? (The amount sent of which some comes back.) All are large numbers beyond our normal experience, and, in principle, if we had that money, we could spend it on a great deal of something good.
“Accuracy is for snake-oil pussies,” says Dominic Cummings, showing his contempt for any facts that might not fit comfortably into his little world view. But while this attitude displays a happiness to deceive, surely this is not enough reason to do it. There must be some calculation of advantage.
Voters took figures on both sides, rightly and wrongly, with a pinch of salt. If it’s not £350 million, it is some other large number, and the point still holds. The advantage of saying “£350 million” is that you get the opposition to talk about it – you get the opposition to talk about net contributions to the EU budget, while disputing the actual figure which is of little significance. And as the press love the “he said the world is flat, she said the world is round” schtick, and broadcasters are terrified of going beyond it, the point will dominate the campaign in a way it wouldn’t if supported by an accurate number.
Probing by the media will do the same. How do you get media probing to set you up to repeat the point you want to hammer home? Just use a dishonest number.
This is not a guaranteed strategy, it doesn’t work on everyone. Many will be offended by the lies and turned away – Sarah Wollaston for example – but it is a calculated strategy that clearly paid off this time. Angry as we are about being lied at we shouldn’t kid ourselves that this particular lie, even as now admitted, wouldn’t still work were there to be a revote.
That’s not to say we should give up – there are sounder calls for more voting – a general election to endorse a new government’s negotiating position (because the leave campaign had no plan) – or a referendum to endorse the results of negotiations or revert to membership (a ‘reality v reality’ vote in contrast to the ‘reality v fantasy’). All I’m saying is that the argument is very far from won by the admission of leave lies. The economic costs, when they hit us, will do more. A better response to the problems of places like Page Hall would do more still.
I wish I had an effective counter to this false number strategy. Perhaps it is to treat it as if the correct number had been used. “The figure is £136m and that is a fair price to encourage less competitive European countries to open their markets to us. And regional development will reduce migration pressure imbalance in the long term. And to have a single market in food you do kind of need a single farm subsidy regime. Now can we talk about the advantages of EU membership?” The payment is a consequence of things that are in our interests, and that’s the only reason the UK ever signed up to it.
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
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14 Comments
To be honest you’d hope that there was a consequence regarding the lying and inaccurate figures, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen.
I’m very much afraid that the only one who will have serious problems with the numbers used in the campaign could be Mr. Gove, in the (I think) unlikely case that he wins both the TPP (Tory Parliamentary Party) and Tory members vote to become party leader and prime minister.
Both Farage and Johnson have bowed out, some involuntarily; and most British don’t believe Farages exact numbers anyway, they just like the sound of them.
But if Gove wins both races, his numbers problem will be chronic.
Any prime minister in explaining important, complex policies and decisions will have to quote experts, and their numbers.
A former Eductation secretary who for two months of his life disparaged the value of experts (some of whom he helped getting educated), has an uphill battle rebuilding public trust in the experts he trusts enough to quote them as prime minister.
Gove will never fully live down his two months disparaging folly; and if the British press and people start to accept his experts and data, he still has to convince foreign audiences (journalists, statesmen, politicians, foreign publics) he isn’t fibbing. In such cases a statesman-like appearance and/or charisma could help, but in Mr. Gove’s case he already admitted he doesn’t have charisma.
I haven’t followed the Brexit campaign close enough to Judge in what degree Mrs. Leadsome has compromised herself by assertively using whacky figures; but Mr. Kenneth Clarks overheard comments in the ITV studio about her are reassuring on that point.
I think these numbers are just not able to be processed unless you work on them. 100million 4billion, it is almost abstract to me and I like to think I am some what average.
To me for it to make sense you need to put the figures against other figures. Ie how much of the total NHS budget is that 350 million for example or what % of my tax is it. I read the figure that EU contributions for the average wage were like £100 which is reasonable to me.
I remember getting a letter from the tax man showing me a break down of what my tax is spent on and the smallest 2 categories were foreign aid and EU, which is curious as they are the two people make a fuss about.
My point is desplaying figures in a way which a normal person can understand like that is more effective way of countering the 350 million lie.
Interesting article this. Good points.
Isn’t this though really the crux of the matter:
‘Angry as we are about being lied at we shouldn’t kid ourselves that this particular lie, even as now admitted, wouldn’t still work were there to be a revote.’
Put that another way, REMAIN didn’t really like confronting voters with the sentence, ‘the UK is and will be a significant net contributor to the EU, domestic austerity and deficit notwithstanding.’
We can argue the toss about whether being a contributor is a good thing. But surely Mr Otten you can understand if some people are unconvinced that being a contributor is important because it might (or might not):
‘encourage less competitive European countries to open their markets to us. And regional development will reduce migration pressure imbalance in the long term. And to have a single market in food you do kind of need a single farm subsidy regime.’
I just worry that there are too many people being far too glib about, ‘lies.’ A lot of voters were uncomfortable about money (however much is involved), uneasy about open-ended immigration and found many parts of the political construct distasteful. I don’t think that REMAIN ever really answered those points. Plenty of people voted LEAVE not because they were lied to but because the wanted to leave the EU having made a good-faith value judgment to that effect.
Right, Jackie. The benefits far far outweigh the costs, but who has been talking about the benefits? The economic benefits may be quite technical to understand in detail, but the experts were agreed. The geopolitics hardly figured; the interests of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Gibraltar were ignored. The extra string to our bows that EU citizenship offered us over and above UK citizenship is only really understood by those who make use of it. Leave told lies big enough that they dominated the campaign to the exclusion of any possibility of a balanced view.
Having just been through the London mayoral election with a promise of a freeze on fares,we now find that it doesn’t apply to travel cards or monthly oyster cards.
Unfortunately all parties / politicians are economical with the truth.
“The benefits far far outweigh the costs”
Whilst the vote was black or white, in or out, the options within out cover every shade of grey from barely noticeable to North Korean style isolationism. Only the North Korean option means the loss of all benefits with no balancing gains. Remain also told some significant porkies. The stock market is up substantially to its highest level in nearly a year. The pound is down not because of market forces but Bank of England interference, presumably to give some of their earlier forecasts some credence. No punishment budget but instead bigger tax cuts. In a time of housing crisis due to high prices and rents fueled by buy to let, the Bank is worried there might be an adjustment downwards – good, we desperately need affordable housing.
I was and still am an ardent Remainer but the disaster we were promised hasn’t materialised so far and probably won’t if May becomes PM. The experts were agreed cuts little ice. There is no such thing as an expert in referendums resulting in a vote to leave the EU, just a lot of guessing with nothing as a precedent to go on. Economic “experts” always wildly disagree and you pick those who support your own views to bolster those views.
The economic benefits of EU membership equate to £4,000 net per family but access to the free market and free movement is likely to generate a similar figure. The EU option guarantees the £4,000 where Leave takes away the certainty and it then depends on 150,000 Tory members. I’d rather not have my future determined by that group but that’s the way it is.
I thought I would be scared right now but I’m not. Not yet anyway. Leadsom or Gove as PM is where I start getting worried.
It’s a bit like promising to abolish tuition fees and then voting to treble them. As a cheerleader for that particular policy Joe Oaten has no credibility.
George Osborne (before the vote) : Interest Rates will rise after a Brexit
After the Vote: Interest Rates look set to fall.
George Osborne (before the vote) : There will have to be tax rises and spending cuts after a Brexit.
After the Vote: Did I really say that?
So it works both ways! It is regrettable, but the truth, as always, is whatever either side wants it to be at the time.
‘the UK is and will be a significant net contributor to the EU, domestic austerity and deficit notwithstanding.’
It was extraordinary that this was said when put togetther with the argument that the UK was the fifth(?) largest economy in the world.
Whatever happened to the idea that the economically strong should pay a little to help their weaker neighbours?
Several thoughts on the £350M a day (if it ever existed):
What do you think the Treasury would do with it if it gets into their hands? Pay it all out to the NHS? – you must be joking. Their first thought would be to pay off the deficit. If the NHS were to get any of it, it would be after the usual rounds of argument and cheeseparing.
Secondly, what is the daily financial requirement of the NHS? It has been said to be the second biggest organisation in the world, after the Chinese Army. Would £350M be big enough to be significant?
Ian Sanderson in a generous mood says :
“Whatever happened to the idea that the economically strong should pay a little to help their weaker [European], neighbours?”
Whilst you’re in a charitable mood, has it never occurred to you to help out weaker, but even closer neighbours, in Wales and Northern England.? How about increasing the per head public cash spent, to equal that spent on London and Scotland.?
I just don’t get this blind spot that liberals have, whereby they have an ever open heart for the European poor, and an ever closed heart for their fellow British poor.? The constant recurring (and bizarre!), liberal message,.. is, let’s give palliative words of sympathy for the British poor, but loads of cash for the European poor.
Some of you liberal EU fetishists, are just never ever, going to get this,.. are you.?
Actually, J Dunn, I do think recent British governments are pretty bad at taking tax of their better-off residents and those who benefit from our economy and redistributing it to the worse off and to improve the places where they live. We should have being doing more of that for the last 40 years. There is poverty and neglect in Greater London, but my connections in my working and personal life extend to Wales, Northern Ireland, the North-east and parts of Scotland.
Sometimes the EU has stepped in where the UK government has been wanting, to fund British projects.
I’m also pretty familiar with a former communist country in Central Europe, where the communists neglected infrastructure repair and maintenance for 40 years. It seems a worthy use of EU money, some of it from us, to put that country back level with its neighbours, as it was in 1938.
In a globalised world, we in the west all benefit from exploitation, past and present, of developing countries, so it is only right that some of our wealth goes to them, as aid.
£8.5 bn – UK taxpayers net contribution to EU budget in 2015
£10.8 bn – UK taxpayers loss on RBS and Lloyds shares since the Leave vote 2 weeks ago