If you are like me, still unable to really figure out how the referendum was won when the result is likely to be totally against the interests of those who voted in large numbers for it, then the truth is beginning to emerge. The DCMS Select committee, in their investigation into fake news, is slowly uncovering how the Brexit campaign went about it.
A Researcher, Dr Emma Briant, at Essex University has written three essays to try and explain how Cambridge Analytica worked on the Trump campaign and Brexit (HERE). This has been released by the committee along with a number of audio recordings of interviews with personnel from CA, SCL (the parent company) and people who used CA in various campaigns (HERE). She says:
Following the US election, I used the substantial contacts I had developed to research an upcoming book. What I discovered was alarming. In this and two other linked explanatory essays, I discuss my findings concerning the involvement of these parties in Brexit (See Part 2) and Cambridge Analytica’s grossly unethical conduct enacted for profit (See Part 3).
And:
CA’s political campaigns hinged on lies, and Oakes [Nigel, CEO of SCL] recognized this and understood it was not without victims. Indeed Oakes knew the kind of false messaging they were deploying has had victims before. He told me, “sometimes to attack the 'other' group, and know that you're gonna lose them, is going to reinforce or resonate your group, which is why, Hitler... I've got to be very careful about saying so... you must never say this... off the record, but... of course, Hitler attacked the Jews because... he didn't have a problem with the Jews at all. But the people didn't like the Jews... so if the people thought... [...] He could just use them to say... so he just leveraged an artificial enemy, well it's exactly what Trump did. He leveraged a Muslim- I mean, you know, it's... it was a real enemy... ISIS or whatever... but how big a threat is ISIS really to America? I mean, really? I mean, we're still talking about 9-11, well 9-11 is a long time ago.'
It seems CA didn't actually have a contract with Leave.EU but the campaign used CA's techniques to get their message out. I suspect Aggregate IQ did something similar for Vote Leave.
Vote Leave had a huge database called VICS (Voter Intention Collection System) which they used to target people with carefully honed messages. Dominic Cummings, Campaign Director for Vote Leave said :
"The models honed by VICS [a database] also were used to produce dozens of different versions of the referendum address (46 million leaflets) and we tweaked the language and look according to the most reliable experiments done in the world (e.g. hence our very plain unbranded ‘The Facts’ leaflet which the other side tested, found very effective, and tried to copy).
There is more on VICS (HERE) on Cummings' own blog. The BBC did a reality check (HERE) on the leaflet "The Facts" which Cummings claims was very effective and you can see most of the "facts" were not facts at all but carefully crafted distortions. The £350 million a week for the NHS was another "fact" that turned out to be a lie. Most people now think Brexit will damage the NHS.
This is how you do it. You claim you're giving people the facts but really they're lies. Tweak the message to appeal to the target audience. Leverage an artificial enemy.
Dominic Cummings again: "Immigration was a baseball bat that just needed picking up at the right time and in the right way"
You develop simple messages with apparent solutions to complex issues and then you use focus groups to see which works best, never mind if it's true or not, until you hit on one that seems to influence the maximum number of gullible people. It is no coincidence that the lower socio-economic group, the C2DEs were far more likely to vote leave, against their own best interests. They were the target audience because they were far more likely to believe and accept the message. Even now most are reluctant to admit they were duped.
When historians look back on the temporary insanity that is Brexit, it will surely be apparent there were two sides. Not Leave or Remain but those who were looking at the facts in a deep and serious way, The Treasury, the IFS and various economists and large institutions and the other side who were using psycho-graphic targeting to create artificial enemies (the EU, immigrants), "hone models" and "tweak" simplistic messages.
Our friends in Europe may now begin to understand how a majority of the population voted for Brexit when it was so inimical to British interests.
