Saturday 8 July 2023

Freeing your mind

An article in CapX has appeared in response to a tweet by the scientist Brian Cox about Brexit, which you may have seen. Cox basically argues that voters now perceive Brexit as a failure and link Britain’s exit from the EU with “high interest rates, trade friction, travel friction and general incompetence” while he acknowledges that the “reality may be more complex.” This may be obvious to me and you but the article's authors, Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan, argue that it represents confirmation bias or the tendency to interpret evidence as confirmation of your own existing beliefs or theories.

Fagan is a behavioural scientist himself and the pair have written a book, Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist it,  and I suspect the article is an attempt to promote sales.  She's a journalist and author, with another book:  A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, to her name. I think we can see where she's coming from.

This is Cox’s original tweet:

Personally, I would consider this a statement of the blindingly obvious.

The article compares this to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's belief in fairies (which is true) and Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple, thinking he could cure his own cancer with fruit juice. But Cox, who has 3 million followers on Twitter, was commenting on observable reality as far as I can see.

I’m really not sure what they think is wrong with his reasoning. Brexit itself was a result of voters being convinced that all our problems were all down to the EU, whether or not it was true. Johnson himself stoked the idea with his stupid stories about bent bananas and non-recyclable tea bags, none of them containing a scintilla of truth. 

Now the tables have turned. Of course, there are plenty of pro-EU accounts on Twitter that are always ready to blame Brexit for anything and everything, but this is what happens in political questions. Labour was blamed for the 2008 financial crisis and Thatcher was blamed for deindustrialising the UK - both vastly more complex issues than appear on the surface. 

I get the impression Mr. Fagan is a Brexiteer because his final comment, which is the real giveaway, is this: 

“Ultimately, the lesson for us all is that intellectual thought should be balanced with intuition, wisdom and humility; that we should all accept our beliefs are flawed in some way, with value to be found in the perspectives of others. And that, maybe, Brexit isn’t really that bad.”

And there is the nail hit squarely on the head. Brexit wasn’t sold as being ‘not that bad’ was it? Things were supposed to get better, palpably better, and not only have they not gotten better, they are measurably worse in almost every way.

There is a Latin phrase: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It means after this, therefore because of this and is a recognised fallacy in logical thinking. It doesn’t behoove Brexit supporters now to claim this is working against them when they were happy, not only to benefit from it in the run-up to the referendum but, to actively encourage the idea that Brussels was at the bottom of all our difficulties.

I honestly don’t think Cox was even saying anything controversial although Fagan seems to think he is.

Brexit is now, in a majority of voters' minds, linked with 'high interest rates, trade friction, travel friction and general incompetence' and much more. Inflation, division, shortages, decline and international isolation can also be blamed partly on Brexit. The reality may well be more complex, but that's true of everything. Cox is right, the 'perception' is that Brexit is not only a failure but a liability. 

It looks like the authors have a touch of confirmation bias themselves.

Lord Frost

I worry about Lord Frost. I noted the other day there are rumours he is looking for a safe seat and is being touted as the next Tory leader, God help us. He would be even worse than Truss. Some of his thinking is borderline insane. 

He has an article in The Telegraph written as if we’ve suddenly been whisked five years into the future. It’s 2028 and "the Tory revolution has triumphed" - according to him or more accurately his 'dream'. Here's an extract:

“When the 2024 election came, Labour were still in front, but their lead was falling. Sunak’s expulsion of Tobias Ellwood for persistently urging a return to the EU and for one too many demands for Nato airstrikes on Russia reassured disaffected Tory voters that next time things really would be different. The Reform Party helped by standing only against what it called “socialist Conservatives”. Yes this may have cost the Tories a few seats, but it wiped out the grumpy serial protesters in the parliamentary party. The 25-seat victory confounded Sunak’s critics.

“Then we all remember how he seized the moment with his new personal authority – those radical changes to the government machine, putting elected ministers back in charge of their budgets, staff, and appointments.

“All tariffs were abolished. So was most of the bureaucracy holding back British food production. Trade took off. Green subsidies were gradually wound down and modern gas-fired power stations built. Then came the deferral of net zero till 2100. You’ll remember the storm at the time, Gary, but since then other countries have followed, and with energy prices falling and manufacturing investment and jobs booming, no-one wants to go back."

But while Frost muses on a fictional (and frankly ludicrous) future for Sunak, others are moving to gather enough letters of no confidence to oust him and trigger another leadership challenge.

Note the all-women list of front runners. Who exactly is Gillian Keegan and Claire Couthino? Does anybody know? And the prospect of the others becoming PM is a sign that DCB has finally flipped.

And this must also be seen against a backdrop of Tobias Elwood, the Tory MP for Bournemouth East, once touted as a potential leader himself, calling for the UK to rejoin the single market and the customs union. 

Anybody who thinks the Conservative Party as we have known it for decades can survive the next election is deluded. It must, can, and will split. We need a moderate centre right and the UKIP/Brexit/Reform party (they’re all of a piece aren’t they?) need to go off on their own.

Labels

I have written several posts about the issue of labeling of goods as required by the Windsor Framework (WF) for products intended for sale in Northern Ireland which need to be labeled ‘Not for EU.’ 

It has always seemed astonishing to me that any government minister thought this was an acceptable part of the WF or a price worth paying for Brexit and a regulatory border inside our own UK internal market.

"Retailers and food suppliers, including the meat and dairy trade associations and Marks & Spencer, have ruled out fully using the fast-track 'green lane' customs system when it comes into force in October because of the complexity and cost involved."

And this is down to labeling:

"However, insiders said that this requires a change in the packaging of thousands of items, meaning alterations to production lines. As a result, many products will not be ready in time for October, when the rules come in for meat and dairy.

"Although changes are likely to be made to the packaging of more products in the future, in some cases the expense involved means this will not happen at all."

The Telegraph focuses on the costs and potential delays before manufacturers and retailers are ready for the changes but even this misses the point. Lots of things on supermarket shelves are soon going to start appearing with prominent "NOT FOR EU" labels on them. What is the ordinary shopper browsing the aisles of their local supermarket to think?

The EU is known for high standards, indeed for many Brexiteers, men like Shanker Singham and JRM, this is the main objection because those high standards usually cost money. Anything labeled "NOT FOR EU" is going to look like seconds, rejects, or carry connotations of being generally lower quality.  

This will be a daily subliminal reminder of what Brexit has done to Britain and will go on for years. Think about it. Hardly anyone will think it's because of some technical and legalistic issues, it screams SUB-STANDARD.

It is, as Cox suggests, all about perception, not reality.

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