Why does this government get away with murder?

In the government’s final press conference Chris Whitty, the Government's chief medical officer, said ““I would be surprised and delighted if we weren’t in this current situation through the winter and into next spring.” The significance of that statement cannot be overstated. Deaths in the UK from the virus are currently running 100 every day. (The true total may be higher.) The chief medical officer is saying don’t expect to see deaths running at an order of magnitude lower before the Spring of next year.

I fear we have become desensitized over coronavirus deaths. We keep being told by the government that they are at a much lower level than they used to be, every graph shows deaths are much lower than they were at the peak, resulting in a danger that we regard daily deaths around a hundred as somehow inevitable. But they are not inevitable. They are an order of magnitude higher than deaths in other European countries. Here is a chart of a three day moving average of deaths per day in the UK and some of our nearest neighbours over the past month.

With the possible exception of Sweden, which chose not to lockdown, daily deaths in the UK are an order of magnitude higher compared to our neighbours. If you think this has anything to do with the UK’s population size, there is the same chart per capita.

The only change is that Sweden now leapfrogs over us. From all those who write for The Telegraph and other right wing outlets saying we shouldn’t have locked down I look forward to their profuse apologies.

This comparison shows there is nothing inevitable about a hundred or more people dying from coronavirus every day. Other countries have got numbers much lower, so why can’t we? The answer is that our government has chosen not to cut numbers further. Our numbers are higher because our lockdown was less severe than in other countries, and we started reducing an already weaker lockdown while deaths were still high. The government didn’t protect care homes, and it didn’t protect medical staff. And the government decided to farm out test, trace and isolate (TTI) to their private sector friends rather than expand experienced local authorities. In other words there are a host of government failures that have led to deaths going down more slowly than our neighbours.

What is equally scandalous, but largely unnoticed by the media, is the government intends to do little to rectify the situation. That was the gist of Chris Whitty’s remarks. Let’s put 100 deaths a day in context. On average 5 people die a day from road traffic accidents. Far fewer die on average from deaths as a result of terrorism. But just think of the media publicity each terrorist incident gets in the UK. Coronavirus deaths can be just as accidental, perhaps being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being infected by a complete stranger.

One reason the government gets away with it is by playing off the majority against a minority. People are desperate to get back to normal. Businesses fear for their existence if lockdown continues. It seems churlish to spoil the day by saying we need to wait for numbers to come down further. Another reason is that the media seems obsessed about a ‘second wave’, and fails to notice the first wave is still killing more than a hundred a day. But there is no getting away from the fact that the government by its actions appear rather indifferent to people dying.

Their excuse is that they are saving the economy. This is nonsense. If daily infection numbers remain high, people will be reluctant to resume social consumption. This in turn will threaten the viability of some businesses, and lead to a lot of unemployment as other firms slim down. The government, by ending lockdown too early, is creating an economic crisis that will hit the UK in the second half of this year.

The root causes of this failure are two basic flaws in the government’s thinking. The first is penny-pinching by the Chancellor and the Treasury. I hate the word, but the fiscal space is there to save around 500 lives a week by giving support to individuals and businesses. It was the Chancellor who initiated the first relaxation of lockdown by insisting those who couldn’t work from home went back to work. The second is the Prime Minister’s dislike of lockdown which allowed the UK to flirt with herd immunity at the beginning of the pandemic and is now ending the lockdown with too many people dying.

Yet the government remains ahead in the polls. They have allowed tens of thousands of excess deaths, and continue to allow people to die who needn’t have done so, yet more people would still vote for them than the only alternative, an alternative government that does not suffer from the same flaws as this one. Incredibly 44% approve of the government’s handling of the pandemic. Trump famously boasted that if he shot someone in Times Square his popularity would be undented. This government through their incompetence and ideological blinkers have killed tens of thousands and still voters would put them back into government. If tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths cannot do it, just what will it take to diminish the popularity of this government?

The economic cost of the Brexit decision that Leaver voters do not get to see

Those promoting Brexit are fond of saying that it’s not about economics. Gary Younge in the Guardian tells us that there is nothing wrong with poorer people voting to be worse off, and of course he is right if that is what they knowingly do. But polling evidence suggests that only a small proportion of Leavers think the economy will be worse because of Brexit. Here are the results from three consecutive ORB polls (via here) where the respondents are only Leave voters.

As a result of leaving the EU, the UK’s economy will be
Date of poll	Better	Same	Worse
May 2018	42%	41%	16%
Nov 2018	39%	43%	18%
Jan 2019	26%	47%	27%

In May of last year, only 16% of Leave voters thought the economy would be worse off after Brexit, and incredibly 42% thought it would be better. As the table shows this view has only begun to shift in the last few months, and as John Curtice points out this has coincided for the first time with more Leavers than Remainers changing their minds about Brexit.

This tells us two important things. First, the Project Fear mantra worked. The Leave campaign, with the essential help of the Brexit press, managed to convince people that all this talk that the economy would be worse off after Brexit was false. Second, when the small percentage who think Brexit will damage the economy increases, support for Leave falls. Correlation does not prove causation, but this evidence suggests we should be sceptical about claims that Brexit is all about values and not about the economy.

So why are some Leave voters only now realising that Brexit will have a negative impact on the economy, and three quarters still think otherwise? After all, everyone was made worse off as inflation increased following the collapse in sterling immediately after the vote. According to one study, by the third quarter of 2017 the average consumer was worse off by £400 as a direct result of paying higher prices for imported goods following that depreciation.

The problem of course is that those price rises didn’t have a ‘made by Brexit’ tag attached to them. If you read the Financial Times of course you understood the connection, but if you read a Brexit newspaper and watched the 10 o’clock news those connections will not have been made, or if they were they would be muddled by Brexiters claiming the depreciation would be great for exports. It wasn’t great for exports, for straightforward reasons. I suspect some Leavers are only now changing their mind about Project Fear because they are seeing on the news iconic UK companies either cancelling investment projects or threatening to leave because of Brexit.

The problem is that there is no mirror image of the UK economy that didn’t vote for Brexit that voters can easily look at and see how much they are currently worse off. People cannot easily see that they are already paying a price for Brexit because firms and markets are anticipating what will happen after we leave. But it is possible to do the next best thing, and try to create a synthetic UK economy that didn’t vote for Brexit by looking at how other similar economies are doing. We know the UK has moved from around the top to around the bottom of the international growth league, but what does that actually mean for individual households?

That is the exercise that John Springfield at the Centre for European Reform is regularly doing, and he calculates that GDP was 2.3% lower in September 2018 as a result of the Brexit vote. That roughly translates into the average household losing almost £2000 worth of resources (mainly lower private consumption, but also lost public spending and investment). This number is broadly consistent with estimates the Governor of the Bank of England gave in May, using a different method.

To get a handle on how much public resources we are currently losing as a result of Brexit, Springfield calculates that GDP loss would amount to taxes being lower by £17 billion a year. Given the way this government runs its fiscal policy, that means we could have had tens of thousands more police officers and nurses if Brexit had not happened. This isn’t a forecast, but an estimate of what Brexit has already cost us.

Why has Brexit slowed the economy by enough to lose the average household resources worth almost £2,000 before we have even left? The answer is down to anticipation and uncertainty over what Brexit will mean. The foreign exchange markets had to anticipate the impact Brexit would have on future UK trade, and that was a major reason why there was an immediate collapse in sterling after the vote. Uncertainty about which kind of Brexit the UK would choose has mainly affected investment. In the chart below the Bank of England show how business investment has flatlined since the referendum, when the evidence from previous recoveries suggest it should have shown strong growth.

In addition the number of foreign direct investment projects coming to the UK, which was on a rising trend until 2015, has been falling since the 2015 election when it became clear there would be a referendum.

Will investment bounce back once Brexit uncertainty has been resolved? Certainly not if we leave with no deal, because industry's worst fears will have been realised. Even if we leave on the terms of the current Withdrawal Agreement there are two reasons to think the investment bounce back will be small. First uncertainty does not disappear. Will the government manage to agree a new trade relationship before the transition period runs out, or will we go over another No Deal cliff edge? Second, the decline in investment involves some anticipation as well as uncertainty, with a lot of service sector investment diverted towards investment in the remaining EU economies. All the time investment in the UK remains depressed this eats away at our ability to produce, at our productivity and therefore future living standards. As austerity showed, prolonged periods where the economy is depressed will have permanent negative effects.

Imagine if someone came to every Leavers door demanding nearly £2,000 for their household’s current contribution to Brexit. The evidence suggests that Brexit would quite quickly become about the economics. One of the reasons Brexit can happen is that its economic costs are not immediately visible. It is experienced but not isolated as a Brexit effect. It can be estimated to a reasonable degree of accuracy by experts, but the Brexit press keeps going on about the pre-referendum Treasury forecast and the broadcast media prefers a quiet life to routinely quoting these expert assessments. Brexit is not about the economy only because Leave voters are being kept in the dark about the impact Brexit is already having.

Brexit: it’s the economics, stupid.

The Global Future report published about a week ago, and particularly the polls it contained, received some attention, but in my view not nearly as much as they deserved. Respondents were shown four possible Brexit scenarios, together with an estimate of what each would do to the amount of money available to spend on public services. One of these options was the government’s preferred bespoke deal. All the options were overwhelming rejected, by Leave voters.

The Jack of Kent blog had a take on something similar that could also be applied to this poll result, after a well known children’s book: ‘That’s not my Brexit!’. It is very apt for this poll because it makes clear that none of the four types of Brexit offered are remotely like the Brexit people voted for. What is wrong with EEA, FTA, WTO or Bespoke in the mind of these voters? They all imply substantially less money for public services. The Brexit people voted for involved more money for public services.

This fits with the finding that most Leave voters continue to believe that they will be better off in economic terms as a result of Brexit. Many voted for Brexit because they were told more money would go to the NHS. The Remain side said that would not happen because of adverse macroeconomic consequences, but many voters believed the Leave side when they said these claims were just Project Fear. They were told that the EU would not decrease the ability of UK firms to trade with the EU because it was not in the EU's interests to do so. 

This is why polls that ask “In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the European Union?” only show a narrow majority for staying in the EU. In answering that question most Leave voters still believe they will be better off after Brexit. When presented with specific options that show we will not be (i.e. when presented with likely reality), you get quite different answers.

Forget those who say that the Brexit vote was all about sovereignty and not about economics. Economics matters, and the poll shows that in this case it matters a lot more than sovereignty or immigration. What Project Fear achieved, with considerable help from the media, was to take the economic factors that mattered off the table, or even replace them with mythical economic gains. [1] Voters went for what they saw as certain: £350 million a week, plus less immigration reducing pressure on public services. Both were lies, but Leave voters did not know that. Which is why most Leave voters continue to believe they will be better off, and why none of the four options they were presented with in the Global Future poll was the Brexit they voted for.

In short, half of the voting public bought snake-oil believing the claims made for it. Most continue to believe the claims, and put down the fact that the government appears not to be delivering what they were promised to something other than that they were sold a pig in a poke. If you think that is implausibly foolish, your main source of news is probably not a pro-Brexit newspaper or even the BBC.

The implications of this are huge. The Global Future poll shows that most Leave voters, and certainly most voters, do not want any Brexit deal that is actually possible. They only want the impossible deal they were promised by Brexiters. That means that any referendum on the final deal that included the government’s own realistic assessment of its economic consequences would result in a massive majority to Remain in the EU.

This is why Brexiter claims that everyone (and for the maths to work it has to be almost everyone) who voted Leave knew that meant leaving the Customs Union are beside the point, as well as being as economical with the truth as most Brexiter claims. Most Leave voters probably had only a hazy idea of what the Customs Union and Single Market were, but most clearly wanted a Brexit that delivered more money for public services. As it is now quite clear that the Brexiters cannot deliver that, then there is no mandate for Brexit. That is what these polls show.

I do not normally disagree with Martin Wolf, but I do when he says another referendum would tear the country apart. Instead, it would be the opportunity for most of those that voted Leave to realise that what they voted for is not on the table because it is not possible, and for them to gracefully retreat by changing their minds in the privacy of the voting booth. On the other hand to continue with Brexit would do far more harm to the UK’s body politic. We would have allowed politicians to put forward a fantasy and get away with it, which means every election from now on will involve claims more and more divorced from reality. The government, desperate to avoid the disappointed expectations of Leave voters, will resort to ever more populist tactics. The lurch towards an anti-pluralist democracy that we have seen since the referendum result could become entrenched in the UK.

Governments have been elected making impossible claims before, but when it turns out that they cannot deliver they can get voted out after 5 or less years. We have to think of the referendum in the same terms. We will have had two years to see if the government can produce the Brexit people voted for, and what these polls show is that they have failed to do so. That may be no surprise to many, but it is news for Leave voters. These polls show that Leave voters do not want the Brexit that is likely to be delivered. To deny people the chance of recognising that the Brexit they voted for is not possible in a referendum on the final deal is deeply undemocratic.

[1] I argue Trump did something very similar.

How do you access unbiased expertise: follow the money?

Anyone can claim to be an expert nowadays. How do we tell real experts from fake experts, and what does that even mean? And even with real experts, how do we tell which are the ones we can trust and which are telling you what they are paid to tell you? These are big questions, but I want to look at what seems like an increasingly popular method of judging whether expertise is biased, and that is to look at who funds the experts.

There are clearly occasions when this method makes sense. A medic who promotes a drug who receives income from the company that produces the drug, for example. You would also be right to be suspicious about any think tank that is not transparent about the sources of its funding, such as Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Centre for Social Justice, Civitas, Institute of Economic Affairs, Policy Exchange or the TaxPayers’ Alliance. It is not clear to me why the broadcast media gives a platform to think tanks that do not disclose who funds them.

However when various academics and research institutions produced analysis suggesting negative long term effects from Brexit, some suggested that we should treat this finding with suspicion because they received EU research funds. I have also seen the IFS described as tainted by the fact that it receives some corporate income. In fact the IFS can be accused of being in hoc to all kinds of vested interests. When it published a report estimating that Brexit could lead to a increased budget deficit of £20-40bn, Vote Leave dismissed the IFS as a “paid-up propaganda arm of the European commission” because it received funding from the European Research Council (ERC). But it actually receives more funds from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which is funded by the UK government, so by the same logic it is a ‘paid up propaganda arm’ of the UK government.

The IFS example shows the danger of taking a naive approach to linking funding to positions taken. The idea that funding from the ERC or ESRC should influence the position taken by the IFS is absurd. Government research funding is dispersed through organisations like the ESRC in part to ensure that money is given to researchers on their merits (as judged by other academics) rather than because researchers might please the current government. Because the IFS is essentially an academic research institute there is no way that who funds any research (directly or indirectly) would influence the outcome of that research. If that started happening, the IFS would begin to lose its academic reputation and therefore its core funding from the ESRC.

This point is also true of academia as a whole. However being part of academia or a professional body does not preclude a pecuniary influence on any particular academic or groups of academic’s opinions, as our example of a medic funded by a drug company illustrates. When it comes to economics an even greater problem than money may be ideological or political bias. That means, unfortunately, that you cannot rely on every academic economist to give you a reasonable idea of where the consensus or plurality of opinion lies. And you cannot rely on finding some monetary link to indicate how much you can trust a particular academic economist.

So how do the public tell when views from economists can be trusted as genuine results of expertise and research untainted by bias due to money or ideology? It is a question that is increasingly asked, but I remain surprised that more people do not point to an obvious answer.

The solution to this problem is to use polls of experts to find out if a consensus on an issue exists. There are already some regular polls of selected academic economists (interest declaration: I am part of the CFM surveys of macroeconomists). Here is the latest IGM poll showing that not a single one of the 40+ panel members think imposing new US tariffs on steel and aluminum will improve Americans’ welfare. These polls are one reason I can claim that most economists do not support austerity. (Guess who was the only IGM panel member that did not think the Obama stimulus reduced unemployment.)

Invaluable though these polls are, they are selective, and a journalist or member of the public cannot be sure that the selection method did not bias the result. I have argued in the past that it would be in the profession’s interest for professional national bodies like the Royal Economics Society (RES) or AEA (American Economics Association) to conduct polls of its own members themselves. The pre-referendum Brexit poll is an excellent example of what could be done, but it was commissioned by the Observer newspaper and not the RES. I remain unclear whether this thought has occurred to either institution, and if it has why it has not led to action. Until it is done, the absence of such polls as a resource means academics cannot really complain when individual overworked journalists take insufficient account of true expertise. [1]

[1] An important caveat here. The existence of such polls is a necessary but not sufficient condition for journalists to acknowledge expertise: see the BBC's treatment of Patrick Minford's Brexit analysis, and ignoring the polls that already exist on issues like austerity and Brexit.  

Labour, the polls and the Customs Union

If you think from the title that this post will argue that the poor showing of Labour in the polls means it must change course on Brexit I’m afraid I will disappoint you. Unfortunately I am not at all surprised that Labour’s lead in the polls that it achieved after the election has now all but disappeared. It is certainly true that for anyone who takes an active interest in politics the performance of this government has been as bad as you can get, but most people do not take an active interest. Instead their view is guided by a media environment which aims (actively or passively) to show a very different picture. This is increasingly true as the BBC becomes little more than a mouthpiece for the press.

I am sure Labour could do better at handling this naturally antagonistic environment, but to put this all at the door of Corbyn or Brexit misses the bigger picture. The lesson of the Labour surge during the 2017 election is that once the party gets direct access to voters they like what they see. Once the media filter goes back on, voters see a very different picture. This is the lesson of 2017 that hardly anyone in the media wants to admit.

Having said all that, it remains the case that the one issue in the news all the time is Brexit, and Labour are failing to capitalise on the current divisions within the Conservative party, and the consequent damage the government is creating. Watching the Labour leadership trying not to talk about Brexit is looking more and more like Labour under Miliband trying not to talk about austerity. In both cases we may be seeing triangulation (moving to the middle ground), as I set out in detail here and here. As I was always careful to say, we do not know for sure that this is what Labour are trying to do right now. They may instead by divided over policy. This uncertainty is important, because it means that Labour supporters who might be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt over Brexit are also uncertain whether they should

For that reason, as I have also emphasised, a party that triangulates has to be very careful to always appear to lean away from their opponents side in the direction of their supporters. In the case of Brexit, that means appearing significantly less pro-Brexit than the government. Polls suggest that was achieved during the 2017 election, but that was still in a period where the parties talked in generalities. Since then things have inevitably become more concrete, with the issue of the moment being the Customs Union. The position of the two parties after transition remains different: May is committed to leaving the Customs Union, whereas Labour say everything is on the table. However sometimes Labour’s position looks as much cake and eat it as their opponents.

Sometime this month Labour will discuss its strategy over Brexit. The danger of its current position is clear. Theresa May is going at some point be forced to admit that we will stay in some form of customs union with the EU because of the Irish border issue. The only alternative is to leave with no deal, or dump the DUP. Whichever occurs, Labour’s non-position on the Customs Union will look bad. If she goes for a deal Labour will be the wrong side of the government in terms of triangulation, which will be fatal to its support. If she goes for No Deal because of the Customs Union Labour will be immediately asked what it would do. Deciding to stay in the Customs Union just at the point when the issue becomes critical will look like the political opportunism that it is.

Given that, there is a clear advantage from coming off the fence sooner rather than later. The benefit of declaring to be in favour of staying in the customs union is that they will, once more, create clear distance between their own position and the government. The Conservatives will of course claim that in doing so Labour are no longer supporting the ‘will of the people’, but I doubt that will resonate. People did not vote Leave in the referendum in order to make separate trade deals with other countries. Any voters that do desert Labour on this issue will come back pretty quickly as May is forced to face reality. The government’s own analysis, which Labour should use, suggests deals with non-EU countries cannot make up for the impact of leaving the Customs Union. Above all else, it is very difficult to see why Labour would ever want to leave the Customs Union, given that doing so would do so much harm to its traditional electoral base.

Problems with triangulating over immigration

I have talked before about why triangulation over austerity did not work for Labour, but why triangulation over Brexit seems to be more successful. Tony Blair’s latest intervention suggests it is worth asking the same question about immigration. (The report that he launched is well worth reading.) It is a question that lies at the heart of many Labour MPs views on the politics of Brexit.

One of the lessons from austerity is that it is very dangerous to triangulate on an issue where you appear, as a result, to admit fault or blame. If the deficit is a problem (in 2011, say), why did you let it get so large on your watch? This was why ‘too far, too fast’ failed: you acknowledge a problem, and therefore implicitly admit guilt. Getting over the idea that there is a delicate balancing act between reducing the deficit and protecting the recovery is difficult, particularly as it is also an incorrect idea.

It is an obvious point, but exactly the same was true for immigration. Just look at the headlines. The parallels with immigration and the deficit are clear. In office, Labour did the right thing in ignoring the deficit in 2009, and they also did the right thing in allowing substantial EU immigration before then. In both cases the instincts of many voters is to do the opposite: the government should tighten its belt in a recession just like the rest of us, and the country should be able to control and limit who comes in. In both cases, the moment a government that in the past appeared to ignore these voter instincts starts to appear to suggest the instincts are valid, they trash their own record.

You could argue that while this is clearly right for Miliband and 2015, it has less salience for Corbyn rather than Blair today. You could go further and say that what works for Brexit will work with immigration. Just as triangulation gets you the votes of those who sort of want Brexit but worry about the economic consequences, so too could triangulation over immigration get you the votes of those who want to control immigration but are worried about the economic consequences of May’s obsession with hitting targets.

Here I think we need to look at a second problem with triangulation, which is that the nature of the political debate is influenced by it (is endogenous to it). With Brexit it means that neither of the two main political parties is making the case against Brexit, so the (non-partisan) mainstream political debate tends to ignore the anti-Brexit case. One of the unfortunate consequences of the way the BBC and others interpret impartiality is to see it in terms of the two main political parties, rather than (in this case) the population as a whole, so the views of half the population get largely ignored.

You could argue that this may be of secondary importance for an issue like Brexit, because the anti-Brexit case is still fresh in the mind from the referendum campaign. But that is much less true of immigration. Immigration is now well and truly defined in the media as a ‘problem’, and it is very rare to hear a politician (or anyone else) sing its praises. (Jonathan Portes does his best, but when a well known BBC commentator says his views will not win many votes, you get a clear idea of what is going on. [1]) May is quite safe from the media when she says immigration reduces wages and access to public services. The implication of all this together with a large partisan print media is politicians fear talking about the benefits of immigration because that may ruin a carefully triangulated position.

The reality is of course very different. Study after study after study (from academics, not partisan think tanks) shows how much we benefit from EU migration, and how it has virtually no impact on wages. Immigration increases the resources available to provide public services by more than it uses those services. Yet this knowledge is not reflected in the media discourse. The reason is straightforward: the political right wants to use immigration as both an excuse (for the impact of austerity) and a weapon (to achieve Brexit, for example), and the left by and large keeps quiet because it is triangulating.

People in the media may object by quoting polls that suggest the public overwhelming wants to control immigration: they are just reflecting that opinion. (But see footnote [1].) But polls also say people want less taxes. If you dig deeper public attitudes are far more nuanced than the public debate suggests. Here is some data, from an international study, by IPSOS-MORI:

“British people have become more positive about the impact of immigration over recent years. Forty-five per cent say immigration has been good the economy, up from 38% a year ago and from 27% in 2011, and 38% say immigration has made it harder for native Britons to get a job, down from 48% a year ago and 62% in 2011. However, Britain is one of the countries most worried about the pressure placed on public services by immigration, with 59% concerned – although this too is down from 68% a year ago and from 76% in 2011, when Britain was the most worried of all the countries surveyed.”

In other words, as I have emphasised before, the thing that most worries people in the UK about immigration is a myth. Yet triangulation, together with the way the media creates what I call ‘politicised truths’, means that voters are unlikely to find out what the facts are. [2]

The way this ambivalence is often articulated is through the issue of skill. 75% of people want skilled migration to stay the same or increase, while the consensus is that we should have less low or semi-skilled migrants. Yet if you name some categories of semi-skilled migrants, it turns out a majority want the same or more care worker, waiters, construction workers [3] and fruit pickers. As Rick says “apart from the care workers, construction workers, waiters and fruit pickers, what have low skilled* EU migrants ever done for us?” Skill has just become a way of people reconciling their wish for lower immigration in abstract with a recognition that immigration is good for the economy. It is like wanting lower taxes achieved through improving the efficiency of public services.

So how can something that people are ambivalent about become a major political issue that helped push us out of the EU? One answer is the sheer weight of numbers, and for some particular regions not previously experiencing inward migration that seems to be true. (It also reflects the inertia in public service provision.) But the rise of anti-immigration sentiment elsewhere in Europe where recent flows are not exceptional suggests other forces are at work. In part it is far-right parties exploiting fears about terrorism. But much more importantly in the UK, it reflects the deliberate exploitation of immigration as an issue by the Conservative party.

This predates the increase in immigration from Eastern Europe. In 2001 William Hague talked about Tony Blair wanting to turn the UK into a ‘foreign land’. The political temptation on the right to play the immigration card is strong, but until Brexit it has always been duplicitous. The wiser heads in the Cameron/Osborne government never wanted to hit their own targets because of the economic damage it would cause, and as a result they did not even bother to use all the controls that were available with free movement. As Chris Dillow says, immigration was the only scapegoat left to deflect concern about austerity and stagnant productivity. Immigration scapegoating became part of what I have called neoliberal overreach. [4]

This is I think the main reason why triangulation over immigration is not an effective strategy. By trying to appeal to those who are moderately concerned about immigration, Labour falls into a right wing trap, which is to implicitly validate their scapegoating. You can only convincingly argue that scarce public services are due to austerity rather than immigration if you can argue at the same time that immigration brings more resources to the public sector than it uses. You can only argue that economic policy is responsible for stagnant wages if you also say that it is not the fault of immigrants. Labour should go with its members and argue for the benefits of immigration, and in particular free movement with the EU. [5]

[1] This simple exchange illustrated so clearly to me why the BBC’s so called mission to inform and explain is often no more than a joke. Rather than regard popular beliefs that are incorrect as something the BBC has a duty to try and reverse, they are instead used to dismiss expertise.

[2] This is not just a UK phenomenon: around the world politicians use immigrants as scapegoats.

[3] I’m often told that economic studies of the benefits of immigration ignore ‘existing capital like housing’. Yet we need migrants to help build more houses for natives as well as migrants. The only thing that migrants cannot bring to the UK is more land, but with an effective regional policy which we desperately need anyway we have plenty of land.

[4] Some have asked why I called it overreach, when most just talk about the collapse of neoliberalism? For a start, using immigration as a political weapon is not a natural consequence of neoliberalism, and instead comes more from the social conservative part of right wing parties. Also while I think neoliberalism encouraged austerity, I can quite imagine those with neoliberal views forsaking it.

[5] There is an argument that free movement should be opposed because it is unfair to non-EU migrants. Yet you could make the same point about any trade agreement between two countries: it is unfair on all other countries. Arguments about equity that make some people worse off and no one better off give equity a bad name.

One vote to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

Forgive me for once again adapting a line from Tolkien’s ring-verse, but it does so naturally follow on from the post where I first used it. Then (before Theresa May announced her election) I noted that by March 2017 many more people had accepted that they would be worse off because of Brexit than immediately after the vote. However the proportions of people who say we were wrong to leave the EU has stayed pretty stable. (In the latest poll yesterday, there was, for the first time, the smallest majority possible believing it was wrong to leave.)

I wrote

“Here is a possible reason for this paradox. Voters feel that once a democratic decision has been made, it should be respected, even if they personally now feel less comfortable with the reasons behind the decision. It is important to respect the ‘will of the people’ for its own sake, just as it is important to keep to a contract even though you may now regret signing it.”

That was why I called that post ‘one vote to bind them all’.

These thoughts were, as I said at the time, largely speculation, but the extraordinary poll bounce May has received since she announced another vote makes me think I was right. When announcing the election, she talked about the country uniting behind Brexit. She also said

“Every vote for the Conservatives will make it harder for opposition politicians who want to stop me from getting the job done.
Every vote for the Conservatives will make me stronger when I negotiate for Britain with the prime ministers, presidents and chancellors of the European Union.”

The second sentence is just nonsense, while the first is ominous for any democrat. But as both polls and focus groups suggest, the spin that she needs ‘a strong mandate to get the best Brexit for Britain’ chimes with many voters. It is a vote to 'bring them all' into the darkness of an endeavour the aims of which remain hidden by platitudes.  

In this rather odd sense, there are similarities with what the Falklands did for Thatcher. The negotiations have been portrayed in the UK media as a battle between the UK and the EU. It is only natural for this to inspire nationalism among many voters: May needs strong backing (a large vote) so she can get the best deal for Britain in her battle with the EU. (And, of course, anyone arguing for the EU is therefore a ‘saboteur’.) May’s election announcement bounce therefore has similarities to Thatcher’s Falklands poll bounce.

As ever, reality is very different. What happens in the negotiations is largely down to the EU, with the occasional choice for the UK. These choices should be made by democratic means, and not by one person who has the interests of her party to worry about. My impression is that as far as the media outside the UK is concerned they just cannot understand why we have embarked on this crazy path.

If May and her team realised this when they called an election they were clever. There are plenty of other reasons why she called an election: potential prosecutions associated with election expenses, as Bill Keegan’s notes the negative impact of brexit is about to become visible, and of course the unpopularity of JC. [1] The latter was, I’m afraid, inevitable from the moment he was re-elected, and the responsibility for that vote lies as much with the PLP as with Corbyn and Labour party members.

It is almost as if May’s line is ‘who do you want to lead us into battle, me or JC’? With the referendum still regarded as the most important issue in UK politics, it is a line that could make the UK into virtually a one party state. [2] Of course many die-hard Remainers (like me) will never vote for her, but they comprise at best only around half of the 48%. Labour’s core support will remain loyal. But even if you could form some kind of ‘progressive anti-May alliance’ (which will not happen), Chaminda Jayanetti is right that there just are not enough progressives around to defeat the Conservatives, particularly if the UKIP vote collapses.

So is a Conservative landslide which decimates Labour assured? Heroic talk of defeating May and trying to shift the debate on to something else besides Brexit will not work. This is not because the Tories are not vulnerable. Quite the opposite in fact: I have never known a government that has such a poor record on health, education (this, and grammar schools for pity’s sake) and even prisons. The ‘we now have a strong economy’ line is a lie just waiting to be busted. All that means the Conservatives will focus relentlessly on Brexit and leadership. In 2015 the broadcast media followed the press in focusing on the issues where the Conservatives were strong, and they will do so again with (unlike 2015) justification from the polls.

Perhaps predictably, the wisest words I’ve seen written on this have come from Tony Blair. He suggests the slogan ‘no blank cheque’. It concedes defeat, which is realistic and has the advantage of shifting attention away from JC’s leadership qualities. It encourages voters not to ask who would be best battling for Britain against the EU27, and instead to think about choices to be made which may not be in the country’s interests but instead are in Conservative party’s interests. I do not think the leadership will ever adopt this line, because it requires them to admit they are going to lose and I do not think they are brave enough to do that. But on the doorstep it might help.

[1] When I tweeted Bill’s column with this point about Corbyn, someone replied that I couldn’t help making a dig at Corbyn when the price was a Tory Brexit. This is the other side of those on the right who accuse me of being politically biased when I’m critical of the government. Both misunderstand what I do and don’t do. I don’t do propaganda as defined here.

[2] The culture war analogy that Chakrabortty uses is interesting, as is the comparison with Nixon. But in many ways it is the spin doctors, well versed in what happened in the US, who are calling the shots, and May just has to agree to what they advise.

One vote that rules them all

As Justin Lewis recalls, an Ipsos Mori poll just before the EU referendum “found that while most people (70% to 17%) did not believe a claim that British people would be significantly poorer outside the EU, they were more likely to accept (by 47% to 39%) the £350m a week figure.” Such beliefs indicate both that Leave ran a much better campaign, and also that the broadcast media totally failed to inform its viewers.

Those beliefs about the economic impact of Brexit are now beginning to change, as this series of results from a different poll show:

One obvious reason for this shift is the increase in inflation that the Brexit vote has generated. This shift is important, because polls before and after the vote also suggested that a large proportion of voters only wanted to reduce immigration (as a motive for voting Leave) as long as it did not cost them any money.

But put these things together and we get something of a paradox. If being worse off was more important than reducing immigration, and more people are now convinced they will be worse off, why has popular opinion about the vote itself hardly changed. The YouGov tracker poll, which asks “In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the European Union?”, has hardly moved since the vote, with currently as many people saying Yes as No.

It is not just the economic data that is going the wrong way. Matthew d’Ancona quotes a senior government source as saying “the three main Brexiteers are suddenly becoming more and more vocal about the need to keep the [immigration] numbers sufficiently high for the needs of the economy.” They are right of course, but it suggests another key area in which the expectations of Leave voters will be disappointed. Not to mention the £350 million a week coming to us turning into a £50 billion bill going to the EU.

Here is a possible reason for this paradox. (I admit I have little evidence for it, and it is not the only possible explanation.) Voters feel that once a democratic decision has been made, it should be respected, even if they personally now feel less comfortable with the reasons behind the decision. It is important to respect the ‘will of the people’ for its own sake, just as it is important to keep to a contract even though you may now regret signing it. I do not think this view is sensible in this context, but that is a different issue.

You could use a similar rationalisation for Labour’s evolving attitudes to Brexit. Their latest position is that Labour will hold May to 6 tests, one of which is to “deliver the "exact same benefits" as we currently have as members of the single market and customs union”. It is of course an impossible test for May, despite what David Davis may have said. It makes no sense coming from a party that voted for triggering Article 50, unless there was some compelling reason for supporting the will of the people for its own sake.

The big question, for those like me who would much rather we stayed in the EU, is whether the same logic applies to Conservative MPs who personally favour remaining in the EU. Is there some point at which their duty to respect the vote is fulfilled, and does that point come before or after they have to ratify whatever deal May delivers? I suspect (again with not much evidence) that this depends on whether there will be a deal or not.

The logic of this suggests there will be a deal. (I wrote this before reading today’s Guardian.) Any poor poll performances from the May council elections onwards will be described as the public sending a message that there should be a deal, rather than as the public changing their mind about leaving. The tabloids will huff and puff, but May will just for once ignore them. Conservative MPs who are also Remainers will console themselves that at least disaster has been avoided. In the end, that one vote will bind us all.