How the Brexiters have controlled the narrative around Brexit

“Senior allies of Boris Johnson have warned that Britain will face civil unrest on the scale of the gilets jaunes protests in France or the riots in Los Angeles if Brexit is frustrated.” So reports the Times. A well known far right activist says on TV that he is amazed that there have not been riots yet, and also says there should be. In truth the absence of riots is not amazing at all.

Let us leave aside the implication that when Leavers protest it will be a riot rather than a peaceful protest. If you are talking about people protesting or worse on the streets you are not talking about Vox Pops where people tell an interviewer that they are angry parliament has failed to get on with it. You are not talking about responses to opinion polls. Instead we are talking about evidence that people are prepared to protest on the streets.

We have evidence here. When we failed to leave in March, despite repeated promises we would, you might have expect a very angry reaction. Farage addressed a demonstration in which he called the Houses of Parliament ‘enemy territory’. The demonstration was news because anything Farage does seems to be news and also some right wing thugs got aggressive. But in terms of people, we are talking about a few thousand people. A petition for a No Deal Brexit gained a bit more than 600,000 signatures.

If those numbers seem large, compare it to around 6 million signatures for a petition to revoke Article 50 and stay in the EU. Or regular large marches all around the country for a People’s Vote, with the biggest in London involving hundreds of thousands of people, all entirely peaceful. It terms of anger and passion, it seems Remainers outnumber Leavers by between 10 and 100 to 1.

If you think about it, this is hardly surprising. If we are honest Leavers have little or nothing to gain after Brexit, and probably a lot to lose. In contrast Remainers have a great deal to lose. Everyone will lose the right to work in the EU. Brexit takes away a European identity. EU citizens in the UK, and UK citizens in the EU, have a great deal to lose.

Will the media ever talk about this asymmetry between gains and losses. Of course most of it won’t, because in truth the number of people who are passionate about delivering Brexit are heavily concentrated in the press, and our media is too dominated by that press. The number of people passionate about Brexit is limited to a few thousand people who have convinced themselves it matters to them, politicians in the ERG and Brexit party, the Brexit press, right wing thugs, and those frightened of no longer being able to avoid tax in the EU.

Despite all the evidence, the idea of riots if we fail to Brexit is firmly implanted in the media. But this is just one aspect of how the Brexiters have dominated the narrative around Brexit. It started of course with the referendum. Cameron no doubt talked about the economics of Brexit during the referendum because he thought the talk of rights would not cut through to those who didn’t feel it. But with two words the Brexiters managed to throw all the expertise involved in Cameron’s warnings into question. The broadcast media obliged by repeating the question ‘isn’t this just Project Fear’ endlessly, and the BBC balanced the expertise of every single academic whose subject was international trade and institution with knowledge of international trade with Patrick Minford.

After the referendum, talking about the emerging impact on the economy of the result to Leave became impossible. The recession predicted by the Treasury did not happen because consumers dipped into their savings, and this forecasting failure became the reason why few talked about the expected depreciation reducing real wages, or the steady divergence between UK GDP and its comparators, and the collapse in investment. If they did try, Leavers would just start talking about the Treasury forecast.

The myth of the need to threaten No Deal as part of the negotiations soon became another piece of the entrenched narrative. I am sure some Brexiters believed it, because they never bothered to understand how the Single Market worked. It was forced upon other Brexiters when the cavalry in the form of the German auto-manufacturers who were going to force the German government into concessions never turned up. But it soon began to have a much more sinister purpose. It was not long before many in the ERG realised the only form of Brexit they would be happy with was No Deal, and from then on their aim was to try and achieve No Deal by default. What better ruse was there for this group than to spread the idea that we could not rule out No Deal for negotiation reasons.

I will end with two narratives at the moment that are the opposite of the truth. The first is that we must leave by October 31st because parliament has already had three years to get Brexit done and has failed. The reality is that the reason a deal has not been done is because of the actions of our current Prime Minister, his predecessor, and those in the ERG who are pushing this narrative. May made getting a deal through parliament difficult by choosing a form of hard Brexit the opposition could not sign up to. However the people who ensured it could not get a majority were the ERG, whose aim was No Deal. The current Prime Minister voted against May’s deal twice. Parliament has failed to agree a deal because the ERG do not want a deal.

It is therefore ludicrous that the people who prevented May getting a deal should pretend they represent the frustrated public against a prevaricating parliament, when they themselves did the prevaricating. Yet this nonsense is repeated time and again and is largely unchallenged. Also ludicrous is the idea that a No Deal Brexit fulfills the wishes of the 52% who voted in the referendum, when those campaigning to leave in the referendum said a deal was certain to be done. Only the Brexiters can get away with using the warnings of the side that lost as proof voters in 2016 knew that No Deal was a possibility, a possibility Brexiters called Project Fear at the time.

The second incredible narrative is that we need to end Brexit with a clean break, and then we can get back to doing other things. A clean break Brexit inevitably leads to 10 years at least of negotiation with the EU, negotiations in which the UK side will eventually be forced to accept the terms the ERG now despise. The longer our government holds out in those negotiations the longer it takes. In reality the so called clean break Brexit is a promise to continue Brexit negotiations but from an even weaker position.

Why have the Brexiters dominated the Brexit narrative over the last three years? One reason I have talked about before is while Remainers tend to focus on facts, most Brexiters are largely uninterested in the details of Brexit and instead concern themselves with generating spin. But the more fundamental reason is that most of the press (by readership) are deeply involved in pushing the Brexit project, and the BBC is too timid to question the narrative pushed by the Brexiters. .

When people warning about incipient fascism are criticised rather than laughed at is the time to worry about incipient fascism

I’m old enough to remember left wing demonstrations in the UK when ‘fascist!’ was a standard chant. On most occasions back then it was a ridiculous accusation, and as such it was rightly laughed away. But times have unfortunately changed. With authoritarian regimes in some East European countries, Trump’s election and subsequent behaviour, and far right parties gaining ground in other countries, fears of a return of something like fascism are no longer a laughing matter.

When Andrew Marr interviewed David Lammy a week ago, he suggested Lammy talking about appeasement of the ERG in the same terms of Hitler or apartheid was “unacceptable”. Not ludicrous but unacceptable, and by implication something Lammy should apologise for. Quite rightly, and so refreshingly for a Labour MP in the glare of TV lights, Lammy was having none of this. He said his comments were not strong enough. When Marr protested that these were elected MPs he was talking about, Lammy reminded him that the National Socialists had elected MPs. In 1932 they were the largest party in the Reichstag.

Nigel Farage is not an MP, but the BBC seem happy not just to give the launch of his new party considerable airtime, but also to do so in an uncritical manner. After the BBC had chosen the soundbite from his speech about putting the fear of god into MPs for what they had done to us, no one was given airtime to warn about how dangerous that kind of speech was, and that one MP had been murdered by the far right, another plot foiled and about many other serious threats to MPs. I think it is fair to say that the launch of the Brexit party was news and had to be covered, but to provide no kind of critical balance whatsoever was a strange decision.

Discussions of incipient fascism go in the wrong direction when direct comparisons are made to fascism in the 1930s. Equally ticking off check lists of signs of fascism just beg the question of how many ticks mean we should be worried. There is no generally accepted definition of fascism. We need to be more analytical, but also to update the analysis to the circumstances of today.

Much of the academic discussion of this issue takes place under the umbrella of studying populism. I think this is a little unfortunate, because the populism umbrella can be spread very wide to include any political party that challenges an existing party political structure. If you are interested in incipient fascism a better conceptualisation of populism is expressed by Jan-Werner Müller. You can tell a populist by whether they claim to represent ‘the people’, which is certainly not all the people, but instead just the ‘real people’. The real people quickly becomes those that support the populist leader. The others, especially immigrants or minority religions or races, just do not count, or worse still are ‘saboteurs’ trying to thwart the ‘will of the people’. Populists of the Müller type will be strong on nationalism, as well as threats from within and without. Intimidation and violence against opponents is never far away. Populists will talk about the elite that has been leading the country astray, and how they as leader has to constantly battle against this elite, even though they themselves are often part of that elite.

I think a critical aspect of Müller’s account is that populists are prepared to overturn the institutions of pluralist democracy if they believe they are frustrating what the populist leader perceives as the will of the people. Authoritarian populist leaders deny the necessity of democratic pluralism, such as an independent judiciary or an independent media. The people, as expressed through the populist leadership, takes precedence over all other elements of pluralist democracy, and these elements must be made to bow before that will or be replaced by those who embody that will.

A clear example of what Müller is talking about is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. He has pledged to create an illiberal state like Russia or China. Perhaps as a result, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at a 2015 EU summit dispensed with diplomatic protocol to greet Orbán with a "Hello, dictator." To further this aim he has gone about controlling the media and courts either directly or through placement of allies, with complete success. This together with a lethal combination of extreme nationalism, scaremongering about migrants and antagonism against Muslims and Jews keeps him popular. NGOs have been attacked, which has led to legal proceedings by the European Commission. A host of public bodies like its fiscal council, the central bank, and the national elections commission, have been abolished or their independence limited. An international university in Budapest has been forced to close down.

Yet Hungary is still a democracy in the sense of having reasonably genuine elections. When occasionally the opposition does win a local election, Orbán unleashes the full might of his nationalist, enemies at the door, enemies within narrative at them. With almost total control of the media and civil institutions, he can make life very difficult for the opposition. He won his last election with ease.

I would argue that this is the incipient fascism of today. It is possible that Orbán’s nationalism and control of the media and other parts of the state will allow him to maintain total control for many years. If at some point in the future a unified and effective opposition does arise, we will see if Hungary moves back to democracy or to something worse than the elected dictatorship it now is.

It is also easy to see many of the traits of a Müller populist in Donald Trump. He is impatient with the constraints of the judiciary, and is more than happy to fill vacancies with barely qualified or unqualified individuals who will do what he wants. He plays up threats from within and without. He has a penchant for dictators in other countries. He endlessly criticises the ‘fake news’ that comes from an independent press, and instead favours the Republican/Trump propaganda that comes from Fox News. When asked whether he was concerned about death threats that followed his disgraceful attack on one of only two Muslims in Congress he basically said no. His own Republican party provides no check on his actions.

But in what sense can any of this be applied to the single political project called Brexit? The ERG are a disparate group of MPs, whose common cause is to push for the most extreme form of Brexit. There is no single authoritarian leader among them. So can Müller’s concept of populism still apply to this project and some of those who push it?

Let’s begin with what happened shortly after the 2016 vote. That referendum did not specify how we left or under what circumstances Article 50 should be triggered, but May decided that she uniquely understood what the referendum meant and parliament did not need to be involved. The Prime Minister wanted to start the Article 50 process without consulting parliament. The issue went to court, and when three judges decided parliament did have to approve the decision, the Daily Mail described them on its front page as enemies of the people.

The Brexit press and those promoting Brexit frequently talk about the will of the people, thereby excluding the 48% who did not vote for it. Indeed Remainers are often accused of sabotaging Brexit, and being the elite that those carrying out the will of the people have to defeat. EU citizens living here are effectively ignored, and were not even allowed to vote in the referendum. When the costs of Brexit are mentioned, we will often be reminded of how the British stood alone in WWII and came through the hardship of war. This is nationalist imagery at its most potent and dangerous. At one point the Daily Telegraph managed to find common cause with the authoritarian regime in Hungary and the far right in the US by scapegoating the same wealthy Jew for his ‘plot’ to stop Brexit.

To sum up, Brexit and those that push it have displayed almost every element of Müller style populism. I have not even needed to refer to links between various Brexit politicians and the German AfD, Steve Bannon and various far right groups. Or about law breaking in order to win the vote, and the lack of enthusiasm shown by the police in investigating this. Brexit displays the same populist characteristics that you see in Victor Orban or Donald Trump. Add the violence that Brexit has inspired and the pro-Brexit right encourage with their talk of treason and we have every reason to warn about incipient fascism, as Michael Heseltine pointed out.

It is also naive to imagine that all this will stop if we end up leaving the EU. Steve Bannon is creating a network of far right parties that will use immigration and islamophobia to undermine existing parties and then pluralist democracy. Islamophobia has already been employed by the Conservatives in trying to stop Sadiq Khan becoming mayor of London. Brexit of the kind proposed by May will undermine living standards for working people that have hardly grown for a decade. This stagnation, coupled by unfettered and growing inequality, is the kindling that Bannon and his network hope to set alight.

In my view this has become so dangerous partly because the political centre fails to see it. The Brexiters are appeased by May rather than isolated as John Major did. Those termed political moderates fret about the leader of the Labour party as much if not more than incipient fascism. I cannot quite decide whether the BBC is just blind to all this or elements within actively promote it. A lesson of history is that the far right is at its most dangerous when it is appeased by a centre that is more concerned about the threat from the left.