BORIS AND BREXIT - THE EMOTIONAL OVER THE RATIONAL

I've always believed that logic and rational thinking will eventually prevail on Brexit. The certain knowledge that one day the obvious truth will out is what keeps me going. The referendum in 2016 was won on emotion, something the leave campaign immediately understood and pursued ruthlessly. They also had better slogans. But this is always more effective when you are not the incumbent. Selling a dream is much easier compared to convincing someone the status quo is best of all.

This article on the Politics means Politics website talks about the 'death of reason' in respect of Boris Johnson's almost certain election as prime minister. It concedes Johnson is a good orator. He can 'sell' a story to people who prefer a narrative to logical argument. It is the difference between the emotional and the purely rational.

"Emotional appeals not only influence what people pay attention to but also channel their thoughts and encourage associations, which in turn guide judgements and simplify decision making. They manage to do this because they require only System 1 thinking: an automatic and often unconscious way of thinking that is effortless and demands little or no attention".

"In brand communication, the emotional appeal is a fairly recent development emerging during the 1980s. The strengths of this approach lie in the fact that it is focused on the audience rather than the ‘product’. First and foremost, it considers the wants and needs of the target audience, how they actually think, and the way they prefer to receive information".

Johnson’s contention is that we can actually ‘have our cake and eat it’. It doesn't matter if the proposition is totally impossible (as Donald Tusk once said, buy a cake and try a simple test) Bojo simply shrugs, says he thinks that we can, which according to the polls, is a notion that has great emotional appeal to Conservative Party members. You have to suspend reason to even half believe any of it.

This is all well and good as a strategy for getting elected or winning a referendum. The article talks about 'the product' and mentions Persil washpowder washing whiter. And this is the point isn't it? Whichever method you use to sell it, there comes a point sooner or later when you have to deliver. Your wash powder actually does have to wash whiter. The narrative builds an expectation and I do not believe either Boris or Brexit will ever be able to live up to the billing or even get close to it.

I am not even sure it is part of any clever strategy as the article implies. More often than not it is the result of forcing a liar into a corner.  If your entire life has been one long lie and people still believe you where is the downside?  Under questioning he just comes up with another lie. By the time you've disproved one he has already told three more.

Yesterday's hustings in York produced this morning's headline for Johnson and we can now see not only that reason is dead but Johnson cut up the body on stage at The Barbican. His pitch has gone from mad borrowing and spending pledges coupled with tax cuts for the wealthiest, to nothing less than using Brexit to unite the country and make it 'the greatest place on earth'.  He is not underselling himself is he? He says Brexit will not be a plague of boils, something we can all be grateful for.

As time has gone on virtually every one of the claims and promises of both the leave campaigns have been proved to be wrong. The trade deal with the EU hasn't proved to be the easiest in the world, Turkey isn't joining the bloc, forty trade deals weren't ready to sign seconds after the 29th of March. None of it was true and yet here we are three years on and still 40-45% of the electorate do not seem bothered and are still queuing to buy the snake oil in ever larger bottles.

It's not impossible that we do get a no-deal Brexit, followed by a lot of hardship and suffering and Johnson manages to persuade people to hold on for a few month, then a year, then a couple of years or longer.  On Radio 4 this morning some lady member of the Tory party was dismissive of any no-deal Brexit difficulties saying we've been through two world wars!  Of course, she hadn't personally, but crikey if we can live on powdered egg for six years while having bombs dropped on us, Brexit is bound to be better.  Really?  It's not a very high bar is it?

Some UKIP/Brexit Party members would probably be happy to don tin helmets and sit in an Anderson shelter all night every night to get Brexit done but I don't believe seventeen million people would.

Peter Kellner has written a piece for Carnegie Europe about what happens when apparently  'unstoppable' Boris meets 'impassable' Brexit. He calls Boris a 'proven liar with no principles' and calculates that offering us a second referendum might be his only way out. Certainly he has said he wouldn't do it but let's face it, he's said an awful lot of things that weren't true. In fact, in an amazing reversal of Holmesian logic, Johnson has ruled out everything, including the obvious and the advisable, and is left with just the impossible - a no deal Brexit.  You know he will only ever disappoint his followers.

As Kellner points out:

"True, Johnson currently opposes this course of action; but breaking his word has become a theme of his career. Changing his mind would be an addition to an already impressive list, not a break with any personal tradition of principled consistency".

I still do not believe however that he will go through with a no deal Brexit, regardless of what parliament and MPs can or cannot do to stop it.