Author: Keith Stuart

There is a supposition in democracy that a democratic citizen is expected to know what the issues are, what the relevant facts are, what the alternatives are, and what the likely consequences are of any decision that a citizen may make. This expectation of a well-informed democratic citizen is unrealistic. The current state in western democracies can be more accurately described as widespread apathy if not downright ignorance. This is why representative democracy is needed and parliament exists.

Despite the rather depressing scenario in many western democracies, what is a sine qua non is that citizens should in fact be informed. Factual information is data that we collect in one way or another. The value of this data is in the context in which we find it, or in the context where we use it. Sometimes, data used in the right place at the right time can create new added value.

My nephew has diabetes. If he is misinformed about diabetes, this can lead to poor health, early death, and loss of productivity from wasted time dealing with what is a controllable disease. Many citizens in democracies are simply not well-informed and are unable to make informed choices, unlike my nephew who is and will live a long, healthy and productive life because he has the necessary skills, strategies and knows how to determine if new information on diabetes is valid, and if he should refine his dietary practices.

The information diet of comics for adults in the form of The Sun and other similar tabloids is well-established in Britain (The Sun is now 52 years old). The Sun is a brash, unashamedly downmarket tabloid, running pictures of topless girls on its Page 3. It has become a social institution, which offers its readers the “brave, bold and bawdy” according to its ex-editor, David Dinsmore[i]. Furthermore, he states that The Sun “makes life simpler, richer and more sensational” and “is an instigator, an entertainer, a cultural reference point, a finger on the pulse, a daily relationship”. It is a relationship with approximately 10 million readers a week. Its mixture of salaciousness and entertainment, barely disguised as news, is not the kind of information that helps readers in making decisions about public policy. Despite its predominantly frivolous content, the Sun has also acquired significant political influence. The notorious headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” when the Conservatives unexpectedly won the 1992 general election has become synonymous with tabloids that shamelessly whip up public emotion for their own ends, basically to sell more papers. It could be argued that The Sun has created a positive culture around encouraging ignorance and a lack of respect for other people. Stylistically and linguistically, it is a barrage of corny puns. Whether The Sun sets out to misinform is difficult to know, but there is certainly a strong element of escapism.

However, The Sun seems to pale into insignificance compared with social media. Online social media and the information they distribute are part of a far larger and far more complex ecology than that of the world of traditional newspapers. It is very difficult to fully map the processes involved in the rapid spread of misinformation or to identify where a fake story, a rumour, a hoax originates. It seems massive digital misinformation is becoming pervasive in online social media to the extent that it has been listed by the World Economic Forum (WEF)[ii] as one of the main threats to our society.

According to a group of scientists[iii] , the wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. They suggest that the internet is a fruitful environment for the massive diffusion of unverified rumours.  The authors show that online social media information generates homogeneous and polarized communities having similar information consumption patterns. In other words, people like to retreat to the comfort of their echo chambers; a metaphorical echo chamber is a description of a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system. Sources of information often go unquestioned and different or competing views are censored, disallowed, or otherwise underrepresented. People stay in their caves and don’t engage with those who have a different perspective. Information claims can be made, which many like-minded people then repeat and repeat again (sometimes in an exaggerated or distorted form) until most people assume that some extreme variation of the story is true[iv].

Within the din of social media, it seems only the loudest and brashest get heard. Any story becomes a true story for undiscriminating consumers of information and liars become Presidents.

[i] https://newscommercial.co.uk/brands/the-sun

[ii] Howell L (2013) Digital wildfires in a hyperconnected world. WEF Report 2013. Available at reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/risk-case-1/digital-wildfires-in-ahyperconnected-world . Accessed December 7, 2016.

[iii] http://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.full.pdf

[iv] See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)

Political matters related to divorce from Europe have been going on for five hundred years at least. When Henry and Catherine married in 1509, both were Roman Catholics. Everybody in England was. The penalty for heresy was death; a clear statement of the power of the Roman Catholic faith in Tudor England and the strength of the tie to Rome. The annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon led to disagreements with the Pope, causing Henry to separate the Church of England from papal authority. This resulted in making himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He used the proceeds from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and acts of the Reformation Parliament to convert into royal revenue money that was formerly paid to Rome. Vote Leave’s battle bus said: “We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead”.

In fact, we don’t have to look so far back into history to find reasons for the British being reluctant Europeans. The Second World War still vivid in some people’s memories was a strong reminder that anything on the other side of the Channel was bad news, especially in the form of the German Luftwaffe. More recently, Lady Thatcher participated in an acrimonious marriage with Europe. She initiated a very British perception (fuelled by the media) of a European super-state wanting to exercise a new dominance over Britain from Brussels. Has anyone really asked what Britain does not control? Housing, welfare, health, defence and foreign policy are all in British hands. The British have always had that great pleasure of holidaying in Europe knowing that the pound buys more euros; something that is being rapidly lost ever since the Leave campaign won the referendum.

In the early 1950s, when the original six countries (France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux) formed the European club, it was deemed the best way to put behind the memory of a war that had damaged their economies and societies. The British, however, emerged from the war as winners and still considered their country to be a world power with a large empire, not just a medium-sized European country (albeit one punching above its political and economic weight). There was and there still is a British belief that Britain has a global role and responsibility, which has meant that, in Britain’s eyes, there is no need for any retreat to a position built around Europe alone. There is also a belief that the British are somehow more honest, more democratic, more upstanding than their European counterparts. For decades, the British media have revelled in cases of corruption around Europe (only if to sell newspapers). British media and social media have a lot to answer for when it comes to Brexit. When voters do not have the facts, and are regularly targeted with misinformation and propaganda — and when they lack the critical-thinking skills and media literacy required to determine what is legitimate and what is not — democracy is indeed in trouble. Brexit is far from a populist movement as the media would like us to believe. It is the result of history, true, but also the manipulation of the English and Welsh people (the Scottish didn’t fall for it). The Scottish, of course, may have wanted to take a swipe at Westminster.

In the early 1970s, Britain was the “sick man of Europe”. The EEC in the 70s very much reflected French interests in its spending programmes and protectionist instincts. After joining the EEC in 1973, Britain has helped to transform Europe, in ways that suit Britain and other members very well. Britain has kept out of Schengen and the Eurozone, grown faster than most of the others, created more jobs than them, and have up to now faced the prospect in the next 20 years of becoming the most successful economy in the EU. All that has happened despite the nonsense about being held back by Brussels bureaucracy and red tape. Britain is in fact one of the least regulated economies in Europe; in our labour market, we are on a par with Australia, Canada and the US.

So why would we want to turn our back on an economic success story and on our biggest market, the European Union? There is hardly a reputable economist or economic institution in Britain or anywhere else who thinks of this as other than crazy. The British people seem to have ignored or never had any notion of proportionality in this matter: 44% of our exports go to them; 7% of theirs come to us. Who are you going to sign a trade agreement with or want to favour in trade terms? A country with 65 million consumers or the European Union with 508 million potential customers making up a GDP on par with the USA and China. I bet many British people don’t know that Britain’s GDP is less than Indonesia’s and represents only 14% of the EU’s total GDP. That doesn’t mean Britain doesn’t do things well.

The UK has historically recorded a significant deficit as regards trade in goods  with the EU. Its trade in services balance with the EU is much more favourable, running a surplus in each year since 2005, which reached £15.4 billion in 2014. This is in no small measure due to the financial and banking sector and, more particularly, the City. But the Brexiteers apparently have no fears of undermining the City’s position as Europe’s dominant financial hub. Again, we don’t seem to have any sense of proportionality. London dominates across multiple niche areas of finance. It does 78 per cent of the EU’s foreign exchange business and 74 per cent of over-the-counter interest rate derivatives; 59 per cent of international insurance premiums are written in London; and 85 per cent of the EU’s hedge fund assets and 64 per cent of private equity assets are managed in the City. Furthermore, the City employs over 1 million workers (not all admittedly British). However, they all pay taxes as do the institutions they work for. What follows is the Total Tax Contribution (TTC) of the UK banking and financial sectors. In 2015, the UK banking and financial industry paid £71.4 billion in tax which overall accounted for 11.5% of government receipts. You may ask why other countries deposit their money with us or use our financial services. A few cynics would say that perhaps we turn a blind eye to proceeds. However, the historic reason is trust. British institutions and people are trustworthy.

The margin of majority was minimal and would have been overturned if British citizens living and working in Europe had been allowed to vote (there are 1.2 million of them). The referendum appears to have been thoughtlessly planned, no parameters such as an established margin of majority needed (a 10% victory) or a 75% turnout for the vote to be valid. Something so complex and with such large consequences should not have been decided by a simple in/out vote. A mockery has been made of representative democracy. Theresa May seems to be following in David Cameron’s footsteps. She neither has a plan nor seems to want to concede the huge economic cost to the UK of Brexit. It looks as if Britain is destined to tear down bridges to Europe, only to unnecessarily have to rebuild them at great cost and effort.

And don’t be fooled. Brexit is not that popular. Brexit was rejected by Britons in cities such as Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Exeter, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Oxford and Reading as well as London, plus Scotland and Northern Ireland, who have clearly stated that they want to remain in the European Union (see BBC referendum results). Note particularly the results in Cambridge and Oxford (Leave 26.2% and 29.7%; Remain 73.8% and 70.3%, respectively).

What is popular is not always best and what is best is not always popular.