All Roads Lead To Armageddon
As a reserve officer in the Remain army I am experiencing Brexit warfare at first hand. Some of us worry about the war crimes tribunal that may await the victors and the firing squad the losers. Both sides have persuaded themselves that the consequences of losing are potentially catastrophic and this may even persuade a majority of voters to bother to turn out and vote.
Being a combatant I have a good vantage point to see the tactics and weapons being deployed:
Guilt by Association
There is a fierce competition to assemble the most odious, ridiculous and weird collection of villains on the other side. As a veteran of the first referendum war of the 1970’s I recall that the Outers never recovered from the association in the public mind of the nasty, nationalist right led by Enoch Powell, the woolly left led by Tony Benn and the anti-papist zealots of the Rev. Ian Paisley. Individually they were brilliant, if somewhat fanatical, but they advanced the same proposition for totally different and incompatible reasons. Their combined support was considerable but outweighed by their combined contribution of fear and loathing. The Ins by comparison were dull but sane. And they won.
This time round, David Cameron was quick to identify an unholy alliance of Nigel Farage and George Galloway. But George-that George- is no longer a serious force. And the Outers have assembled Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Gisela Stuart and David Owen who, whatever their failings, are not swivel-eyed obsessives; and Boris in particular gives the impression that he tossed a coin before deciding which side to support. And on our side we have a smell problem of our own with Sinn Fein and Goldman Sachs.
This contest was heading for stalemate until foreigners joined in. The Brexiteers have now fielded some serious baddies: Ms le Pen, Donald Trump, for sure, and (we are told) Putin and the ISIS high command. Trump alone should be enough to swing it for Remain. The Outers have retaliated with Hitler and Napoleon but most voters are aware that they are long dead. Moreover, a brigade of the global Great and Good has also been assembled to say that Britain is better In than Out: President Obama, Mrs Merkel, Christine Lagarde, the rest of the EU, heads of government of the Commonwealth, Old and New. Only the Dalai Lama is left and no doubt No 10 is working on him.
Can the Outers retrieve the situation? They need someone big. The Pope? Probably a Remain. The Queen? Undoubtedly a big prize. She was wheeled out, doubtless without her approval, to see off the Scot Nats. Brexiteers think she is a closet supporter. But it was surely a mistake to delegate the diplomacy of negotiating her tacit backing to that inveterate republican, Rupert Murdoch; the Sun’s crass and premature splash has probably blown it for them.
The Use of Terror
Both sides claim to be ‘making a positive case’ but all their polling and experience tells them that frightening the life out of voters is a more effective motivator than lofty speeches about sunny uplands.
The Remain campaign, led by Cameron and Osborne, has the professional touch when it comes to fear. It worked in Scotland; enough Scots bought the idea that independence would turn their social democratic haven into a cross between Venezuela and Nigeria. It worked again in the 2015 General Election with Cameron Or Chaos. I was one of the many Lib Dem victims of the warning that only the Conservatives could deliver Britain from the nightmare of a Milliband-Sturgeon coalition. The experience didn’t make me like the perpetrators. But I learned the hard way that brutal, negative , campaigning works.
This time main terror weapon is endless cluster bombing on the economy. This approach has the merit of being reasonably accurate even if the truth occasionally suffers collateral damage. Those very precise figures about loss of income and jobs resemble those American cruise missiles in Iraq which supposedly could go through key-holes. But it seems sensible to argue that the big uncertainties around Brexit will create an economic shock, switch off inward investment, and sacrifice a substantial number of jobs. The analysis of a phalanx of economic luminaries from the IMF, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the World Trade Organisation, the OECD, the LSE and many others gives strong support.
The Brexit campaign seems paralysed by its lack of anti-aircraft cover, reduced to shouting ‘It’s All Lies’ and invoking a Global Conspiracy of the Elite or implying that independent think-tanks are corrupted by any tenuous association with European institutions. More dangerously they toy with the argument that economic losses may be a ‘price worth paying’ (for ‘freedom’): not a good line with workers who think that their jobs could be part of the price. The bombing works.
But Brexit has its own weapon of mass destruction: immigration. A lot of people undoubtedly lie awake at night worrying about Romanian gypsies leeching the welfare system; Polish rapists running amok; and Muslim bombers getting into the country via ISIS strongholds like Belgium. They worry because the tabloids have told them for years that they ought to worry. Those worries have been, quite understandably, inflamed by David Cameron’s foolish policy of setting a target which is repeatedly, hopelessly, missed; giving substance to the argument that only Brexit can ‘take back control’. But the Brexiteers have ruined a strong case by trying to frighten us with the prospect of 80 million Turks coming to live in a place near you. Being darker, Muslim and authors of numerous atrocities through the ages the Turks are a tempting target; but since they are most unlikely to join the EU this century if at all the threat has little credibility.
Remain has, moreover, a threat even more potent than immigrants: falling house prices. In a country where wealth creation involves watching property prices go up, the investment, personal security and self-esteem of millions is at stake. In any sane and rational world falling prices would be welcomed as a way of restoring affordability and helping the younger generation of house purchasers. But George Osborne has a campaign to win and he knows his way to the hearts of Conservative voters. The rest of us hold our noses.
Factoids and other Weapons
The battle involves many of the other rhetorical weapons commonly used in political combat but there seem to be more of them and they are nastier. There is the ever-present Slippery Slope as in: we are on a slippery slope to a Superstate (usually run by Germans) or we are on a slippery slope to war in Europe….Fascism (whatever). There is the Hidden Counter-factual: what exactly does Out mean? There is the Leap of Faith as in the sudden explosion of entrepreneurial energy which will lead British companies to seize opportunities in new markets which they have inexplicably overlooked before.
Then there are the Factoids: things which look like facts and sound like facts but are actually fiction. The public crave facts. But there are, by definition, no facts about the future only projections, simulations, scenarios -and fantasies. But to satisfy the public craving, these have to be dressed up as facts. Hence the Treasury tells us not only-and plausibly- that we are better off staying In but that we will be precisely £4500 a year better off. House prices will be not 8% or 28% but 18% lower.
Brexiteers use a classic Factoid: the figure of £350 million a day paid to Brussels-is, indeed, a fact-but one that conveniently overlooks the money coming back. Lovers of fact like the official quango set up to decide on the accuracy of statistics has opined-twice- that this particular factoid is so outrageous that it should be banned. Even the less contentious facts are really factoids. “Britain is the fifth biggest economy in the world’ sounds like a pretty solid fact as well as creating Great Power illusions. But the figures on economic size used by the IMF and World Bank, which correct for exchange rate distortions, suggest we are the ninth and so diminished that we lag behind Indonesia.
Armageddon
The world is a pretty scary place at present with a variety of serious economic-and security- risks inside and outside Europe. Our Prime Minister has chosen to raise the risks to a higher level with a badly timed and self-indulgent referendum battle.
It is being portrayed as a war to end wars; the most important decision of a generation, with catastrophic consequences if the vote goes the wrong way.
What is not being sufficiently considered is the possibility that, like most wars, this one will end inconclusively with a narrow margin on a low turnout and the losers promising to keep fighting once they have regrouped and rearmed. Old soldiers can look forward to the next war on Europe.
