“You must not tell people that they have been conned” appears to be an assumption among many politicians. However buyer’s remorse is clearly settling in with regard to Brexit and it remains to be seen how long it takes before Republican voters begin to feel the pain that they never contemplated during November’s US election campaign.
It is worth remembering that none of us gets through life without being fooled by somebody. Our most recent experience was with the bunch of cowboys who moved house for us last year. It all happened because the people who did well for us in the previous move appear to have shunted us on to another outfit who were part of a series of mergers and franchise operations. We were far too trusting.
A long time ago when I lived behind a door that was often knocked on by low-level conmen asking for money, I steadily learned to suss out the frauds and my ultimate triumph was when I said to one “Let’s cut out the crap and I’ll take you round to the pub and buy you a pint.” He was so shocked that he beat a hasty retreat and was never seen again. Perhaps we need a bit more sideways thinking when dealing with political fraudsters!
Of course being had makes you feel stupid. What you need is not blame but sympathy and support. Being mealy mouthed about the perpetrators simply leaves them to take their conmanship to another level. In western democracies, if you want to fool a majority of voters you have to fool an allegedly serious political party first. Then you need a coalition of people who might vote for you for a whole variety of reasons. Appeals to some of the worst elements of human nature can seal the deal for some. Both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson did their bit towards making serial lying legitimate. Some people wished they could “get away with what he gets away with”. There is an element of envy here which is a bit like people living in poverty not having a problem with millionaires – a sentiment that is nurtured by large chunks of the gambling industry.
Taking on populist political leaders and showing them no quarter is not the same as attacking their voters, although the con merchants would love us to make that equation. Alongside strong political arguments and legitimate narratives with an appropriate emotional clout, we should not be squeamish about reminding people about the past baggage of these people, insofar as this has a bearing on political integrity. Trump, far from being a successful businessman, had a history of bankruptcies. Farage portrays himself as a cheeky chappy and the drinking man’s friend but he rarely reminds us that he is the privately educated son of a stockbroker and former city commodities trader.
Part of the playbook of the far right populists is using falsehoods to secure electoral victories that cow their opponents into silence about their policy areas. Labour’s craven refusal to acknowledge the fundamental harm done to the UK and the EU by a referendum vote that was sold on a false prospectus has limited its alternative aspiration to a “better Brexit deal”.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time” is (probably erroneously) often attributed to Abraham Lincoln. “A week is a long time in politics” may have been said by Harold Wilson but he could never recall when he said it! Alas, as we have discovered in the last couple of weeks a lot of damage can be done (or at least threatened) in a short space of time. It appears that exposing political fraudsters is an ongoing task, whatever the electoral cycle.
P.S. If any of the non-inclusive language above offends, I simply plead that confidence tricksters are overwhelmingly male!
* Geoff Reid is a retired Methodist minister and Bradford City Councillor 2010-2022 who now lives in Barnsley.
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7 Comments
Thank you for an important article.
Might “Politician Speak” be designed to make lies sound truthful, cruelty kindness and/or inevitable and pure wind solid truth?
Might the harms and chaos caused by ideologically blind and/or self seeking politicians rely upon perverted and sloppy language?
Might such be aided by the collusion of the Main Stream Media through using and not calling out such dangerous and deceptive language?
(From George Orwell)
There is a critical moment for persuading people that they have been conned. While they are still enthralled by the ideas and visions that conned them in the first place, the breakers of bad news are seen as, for instance, Remoaners. When they start to work out that the promises they relied on are unfulfillable, the conned will be more receptive to rethinking. The Conmen will retort that, of course, the policies they espouse were not properly implimented. In the case of Brexit, they haven’t much wriggle room for this, as it emerges that the Tories sought to impose a very Fundamentalist Brexit.
Politics has always been the art of conning people without them realising they have been conned. Lib Dems naively did not realise that when they backed Tuition Fees. Hopefully we are now more grown up.
Are the Xs, in the quotes below, the UK or the EU (or a EU country)?
1) “The X faces a number of economic challenges, including inflation, inequality, and slow growth. ”
2) “Why the X’s deportation plans risk ‘serious’ human rights violations”
3) “X: New government to implement ‘strictest migration policy ever’
4) “Investors want more urgency from X in tackling its economic problems…..”
5) “Get your house in order, X — or face ‘ongoing decline,’ economists warn..”
I could go on but, the answer for all 5 is the EU, “Europe”, or a major EU country.
Of course it could just as well be the UK in each case.
So perhaps a good argument for re-joining the EU is that, if we are genuinely incapable at running our own economy successfully, we may as well join a club of others who are also equally hopeless.
@ Ian Sanderson
You are right. While people believe the prospectus they were sold, you are not going to change their minds. Attacking populist leaders only adds to their support, as Nigel Farage and Donald Trump have experienced. It seems people express sympathy and support for ‘lovable rogues’ and are willing to take up any message they promote. What is needed is to challenge the right-wing elements to explain how their policies (if they have any) would make things better for ‘ordinary people’ if they got elected. Too late for the US. It should soon become apparent that Millionaires Assets Greatly Appreciate.
There is certainly a growing issue of people spreading falsehoods. And it’s not just politicians – a lot of it is, ordinary people on social media – both progressives and conservatives – spreading memes without bothering to fact-check them. Donald Trump and the many climate-change deniers on the right are perhaps the worst example of prominent politicians telling outright falsehoods.
But I think this article and some of the above comments spoil the argument by linking so much to Brexit. Seriously, no-one was conned over Brexit – at least, no more than always happens at elections where you get exaggerated claims on all sides. At the time of the referendum, the Remain campaign (unsurprisingly) was massively too pessimistic about Brexit, predicting an economic collapse, which has not happened. And similarly, the Brexit campaign (also, unsurprisingly) was too optimistic, predicting prosperity from deregulation. That reflects that people of all political hues tend to be too optimistic about their favoured policies. The Brexit reality has turned out to be in between: An inevitable period of disruption that probably knocked a few % off our GDP; and after that period, the UK has resumed growth comparable to much of the EU.
There is a serious point here about falsehoods and truth in politics, but we do ourselves no favours by constantly trying to blame everything on Brexit. That battle was lost 8 years ago. Can’t we do a bit more looking to the future, and trying to solve the problems the UK faces *today* (most of which have nothing to do with Brexit)?
@ Simon R,
I have to agree. The EU probably don’t want us back anyway. The EU countries need to get on and sort out their own economic problems just as we do in the UK.
We should give it at least another 5 years before we think of applying to rejoin. If the EU does manage to turn things around, the case for rejoining will be self evident. However, if the things remain as they are, with little or no difference in economic performance, what will be the point?
For most of us, it has to be about economics. However, it’s not about that for everyone. On both sides of the divide, for the most hardline elements, it is more about an emotional attachment to the cause.