Thursday 23 November 2023

The Brexit half wits

I was all prepared to post this morning about the Chancellor's Autumn Statement and how it was all smoke and mirrors but I decided to abandon that because I spotted something far more interesting.  I've always maintained - and I say this to any remainers that I discuss Brexit with - that Brexit supporters are all half-wits. I know this is probably a bit of an exaggeration but in my experience, it's generally true. You can never get anything rational from them, can you?  But now that's been confirmed by an academic study and reported in The Times no less.

The online article is euphemistically headlined: People with lower cognitive ability ‘were more likely to vote for Brexit’

But I see the print edition had a slightly different title as you can see:

I assume the original might have caused offence to the many columnists at The Times who support Brexit and the editor decided to tone it down a bit. The actual work was done by the University of Bath’s School of Management and it reveals that "higher cognitive ability was strongly linked to voting to Remain in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union Membership."

The lead author, Dr Chris Dawson, said: “This study adds to existing academic evidence showing that low cognitive ability makes people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation. People with lower cognitive ability and analytical thinking skills find it harder to detect and discount this type of information.

“We know that evidence has been put forward that information provided to the public in the months leading up to the referendum was contradictory, false, and often fraudulent, especially regarding the pro-Leave campaign, and that this information proliferated on social media platforms.”

Well, well, well, eh?  I was right all along.

The results come from a study involving 6,366 people (3,183 couples) and were published in a peer-reviewed paper so the results can hardly be challenged. The differences are stark. Of the people with the lowest cognitive ability, only 40% voted Remain, whereas 73% of those with the highest cognitive ability voted Remain.  Not far off two to one.

To avoid upsetting sensitive leavers Dr Dawson does say:

“It is important to understand that our findings are based on average differences: there exists a huge amount of overlap between the distributions of Remain and Leave cognitive abilities. Indeed, we calculated that approximately 36% of Leave voters had higher cognitive ability than the average (mean) Remain voter.” 

But let's not quibble. If you voted to leave you are far more likely to be a half-wit. And this of course accords pretty well with my own common experience on street stalls where you couldn't get a leaver to focus on anything factual at all.

To further my case I would also add that the COVID-19 inquiry which is grinding on at Dorland House, a Grade II listed building on Regents Street in London, has heard how Boris Johnson, Brexit's leading man, was regularly 'bamboozled' and easily foxed by charts, had to have everything explained in very simple terms and even then promptly forgot it. Anything much more challenging than the five times table or a few coloured shapes and he struggled.

I think I'm safe in saying this was the universal opinion of those around him. Brexit was clearly a case of the cognitively impaired leading the cognitively impaired.

Among the Brexiteers who really ought to look at themselves is Mr Tim Stanley, columnist, sketch, and leader writer for the Telegraph whose Twitter profile says he's appeared on Radio 4's The Moral Maze, Thought for the Day, and who also writes for The Spectator (no surprise there). 

On Monday, as Sir Patrick Vallance sat in the chair at the Covid inquiry basically demolishing Johnson's claim to have managed the pandemic well, Stanley sat in the audience and listened. After the morning session, he tweeted:

Really? It beggars belief that anyone listening to Vallance's damning evidence could ever think Boris Johnson was the "sanest voice in the room" at any time in his whole life.

I think Baroness Hallett should be given a wider remit because the inquiry is revealing the problem not just with the handling of the pandemic but the problem in so many other areas of our national life. People with zero ability rise to positions of influence and power who are simply unable to think and act rationally or do even the simplest tasks

She may be on to something.

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