“In 1931, eleven years after jailing Charles Ponzi for defrauding millions of dollars from ordinary people, the state of Massachusetts set about reimbursing his victims. In order to be compensated, all investors had to do was hand over proof of assets, for which they would be repaid 30 cents on the dollar. This meant a substantial loss for some but the alternative — was nothing. The state advertised the scheme widely and waited for injured parties to come forward.<\/p>\n
But very few did.<\/p>\n
Some were simply too embarrassed. Many more were determined to hold out, believing that somehow \u2013 despite facing multiple counts of larceny — Ponzi would come good on his promises.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The People’s Vote needs to offer something new<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n People were offered something that was too good to be true — and were reluctant to give up on the hope they had brought into.<\/p>\n
The parallels with Brexit are stark — a raft of promises which also turned out to be \u201ctoo good to be true\u201d fired people\u2019s hopes. As with Ponzi, it is hard for people to admit that those hopes were false.<\/p>\n
There were false stories which whipped up people\u2019s anxieties, so that Brexit could be presented as the answer. This is even more tricky to respond to. The fears never had much to do with what was likely to happen. The risk is that the message people hear is \u201cYour fears are daft\u201d rather than \u201cthe thing you fear is not going to happen\u201d. The fascist leader works by presenting an answer to people\u2019s fears, even if the fears are groundless. The un-nerving example of this is the way fascists in the early twentieth century manufactured a \u201cJewish conspiracy\u201d out of contemporary anti-semitism. There was no justification for this — though it had genocidal consequences. If something has no justification, it is hard to dispel — unless one can find another way to discharge the actual anxiety.<\/p>\n
Simple Brexit party messaging<\/h2>\n
For the European Elections, the Brexit party\u2019s messaging was very simple — messaging around \u201cprotecting democracy\u201d, \u201csave democracy, support Brexit\u201d or \u201cthis isn\u2019t about Right and Left, it\u2019s about Right and Wrong\u201d. Michael Savage, writing in The Guardian<\/em> reported that: \u201cNigel Farage\u2019s party accounted for 51% of all shared content on Facebook and Twitter during the campaign, despite only producing 13% of the content. The analysis, by the 89up digital agency<\/a>, said the \u2018scale of their success went beyond what we were expecting\u2019\u201d. Those messages appear to have been amplified by twitter bots — the bots themselves are another problem, but a message that whips up anxiety and presents answers gets susceptible people to react, and if it\u2019s that simple, it is easy for automated twitter bots to spread. <\/p>\n
The reality, of course, is that those Brexit Party messages are false, but their falseness doesn\u2019t stop people believing them, and, if anything, gets those who disagree with them to repeat the message (as I\u2019ve just done in the previous paragraph), which spreads the message — and tells people who dismiss me as a Remainer to vote for the Brexit Party\u2026 By not posting about policy, the Brexit Party kept things much more visceral — and away from what could be readily disproved (or verified).<\/p>\n
What\u2019s particularly interesting about these Brexit Party messages is that they seem to boil down to telling people their view is being ignored. It feels like messaging those who were reluctant to claim compensation for Ponzi\u2019s original fraud as if to say that, though in prison, he would come good on his promises (so they would be shown to be right after all).<\/p>\n
That same article from Michael Savage points out that ChangeUK\u2019s social media messaging received very little sharing because it was too complex — calling for a referendum to get out of Brexit, rather than just \u201cget out of Brexit\u201d. The LibDems #BollocksToBrexit cut through this, was widely shared on social media, and fits with a leap in the Liberal Democrat vote.<\/p>\n
Implications for a People\u2019s Vote<\/h2>\n
Simply having a second referendum invites people to vote as they did in 2016. Changing demographics probably changes the result this year<\/a> but counting on that is a high-risk strategy (and a narrow result the other way wouldn’t help bring people together). <\/p>\n
The Ponzi example shows how hard it is for people to admit they were conned (which might also explain why the capacity of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to say contradictory things hasn\u2019t destroyed their support, so people must be believing them rather than what they say). The Brexit Party messaging in the European Elections shows that telling people to stick to their guns got through. <\/p>\n
This seems to mean that whatever the question is for another referendum, it cannot be \u201cRemain in the EU\u201d against \u201cLeave the EU\u201d, because that invites people to vote as they did in 2016 (and blame politicians for failure to deliver).<\/p>\n
Caroline Lucas is credited with coming up with the phrase \u201cPeople\u2019s Vote\u201d. It\u2019s a brilliant answer. It begins to make a new referendum different. At very least, it starts to turn the question into \u201cWhat do you think now?\u201d which is subtly different from \u201cHave you changed your mind?\u201d<\/p>\n
But this simple Brexit Party messaging highlights the need People\u2019s Vote to be different. There\u2019s a widespread narrative that \u201cthe elite\u201d is ignoring people, which is being taken up, even though it comes from figures including Jacob Rees Mogg and Nigel Farage — arguably among \u201cthe elite\u201d rather than standing up against it. My instinct is that we need enough of a serious listening process first to kill off the idea that \u201csupport for Brexit\u201d is \u201cstanding up against the elite\u201d. Maybe that could come from citizens\u2019 assemblies, but unless they get enough television coverage to take people on their journey of discovery, the problem is that Brexit supporters who take part are cast as \u201cselling out\u201d.<\/p>\n
After a listening process, then it\u2019s possible to frame a question, which might well need to be along the lines of \u201cremaining in the EU on the present terms\u201d against \u201cleaving on the terms which have been negotiated\u201d — but those only work if people understand what these \u201cterms\u201d are.<\/p>\n
A possible game-changer: electing a Liberal Democrat government<\/h2>\n
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