Lies and bullshit

A number of books have been published lately on the 'post-truth' era, including one by  BBC Newsnight stalwart ( and piss-poor interviewer) Evan Davis. The Guardian offers precis of the books

Specifically, Davis addresses the famous'lie' about the £350m per week paid to the EU, as claimed by the Leave campaign.Liberals have been furious about this claim ever since, and it often features in debates about the evil manipulations that led to Brexit. Davis apparently clears some of it up, but still goes for the 'lie' in a big way.

It is not £350m a week, he tells us, but a mere £285 million per week.That is net. That is a lot of money that could indeed be spent on more urgent causes. Is this exaggeration devoid of truth altogether? Is it 'post-truth'?

It was wrong of the Leavers to guarantee that this money would be put into the NHS. But they didn't say that. They said it could go into the NHS. They obviously could not guarantee that it would becasue they were not inGoverbnment. It is a politician's claim but never a guarantee. If we're going to be picky about figures or words...

There is, to be fair,quite a good review of the post-truth books, including Davis's also in the Guardina. The reviewer is J Gary.  The piece begins by saying the most mendacious and consequential example of 'post-truth' cynicism was Blair's campaign to enter the Iraq War -- which is not discussed amid all the latest hoo-ha about Trump and Brexit. While he is there, Gray also points out that relativism did not begin with the dreaded postmodernists but was central to the Enlightenment and featured in writers like Marx and Mannheim (he's s bit determinist but on the right lines.You could argue it all began with the dethronement of God as first cause and all that -- so Spinoza? ).

Anyway, Gray says:

[Post-truth is] A catch-all term used by today’s liberals to describe upheavals that confounded their most basic beliefs, “post-truth” politics is like “populism” in implying that these unexpected shifts occurred because reason had been subverted. Duped by demagogues deploying new information technologies, voters disregarded argument and evidence in favour of manipulated emotion and fake news...It’s an appealingly simple tale, which many liberals are more than happy to believe

And

One of the implications of his [Davis's] analysis is that bullshit can be found across the political spectrum. He devotes remarkably little attention to the fact, but liberals engage in bullshit as much as populists. While leave campaigners may have exaggerated Britain’s financial contribution to the EU, as he shows at length, remainers launched “Project Fear” – a naked appeal to the emotions deploying unverifiable figures about the economic consequences of leaving the EU that were plucked from the air.

When [ the] leave [campaign]  prevailed, such liberals suffered something like a collective nervous breakdown. How could their obviously superior rationality have failed to persuade? Either much of the population was incurably ignorant, or the debate had somehow been rigged. Over the course of the last year, the latter view has gained the upper hand. There was a time, not so long ago, when no self-respecting liberal would go anywhere near conspiracy theory... 

Female Guardian journalist grows a pair

Stop looking for sexism! I refer to an article by Zoe Williams on her feelings  about Brexit.

Williams is entering the reconciliation phase of bereavement it seems:

[Schadenfreude] has to stop. It may be the Brexiters who shot us in the foot, but we’re all the same body politic and we’ll all feel the same pain.

And, with only the merest whiff of self-importance:

The lesson here is not that we all have to knuckle down and accept a new centrism, as defined by whatever photogenic hotshot the universe delivers [E Macron].  Rather, it’s that sometimes to think critically and creatively about a problem, whether it’s Greek debt or Britain’s place in the world, you need to forget which side you’re on. You need to turn away from entrenched differences and concentrate on common causes. You need to stop looking inwards to your opponents, and start looking outwards for allies.

But the thing that drew my attention most, in my endless search for the emotional hurt that Remainers feel, was this, looking back on that same schadenfreude that sustained her for a year:

Obvious negative consequences of Brexit – the weakling pound, the brain drain, the needless, gargantuan cost, the clumsy, gaffer-taped shanty town set to replace the EU’s architecture, the almighty ball ache of going on holiday with a pompous navy passport – fill me with grim delight.

God, the horror of a (possible) return to the old blue passport!


PS her balls are still aching  with this from the Guradina 26th June:
 

High office looks like an almighty ball-ache

Someone really ought to protest her gender cultural appropriation. Honestly, it gets on my tits!

Are you now, or have you ever been a (sneer) socialist?

Media luvvies have to focus on a new problem with the UK General Election dominating the news. Brexit is on a temporary backburner, and even the latest silly threats from the EU only crop up on the Brexit page (about p.8) of the Guardian.Maybe there is a bit of temporary relief too at the election of the French Blair, one Macron, as President instead of Le Pen the NF leader and anti-EU candidate.

The Labour Party draft manifesto was leaked to the joy of those like Kuenssberg on the BBC, who were able to trot out the Tory mantra of 'chaos'. Kuenssberg was especially cross because the Labour Leader (Corbyn) had the temerity to say in London to address the issue of the leak instead of taking advantage of the kindness of the BBC in offering the unveiling of a poster as  a' prime opportunity' for him to talk to them (and her). Such arrogance!

When the draft was revealed, though -- shock and horror! It promised considerable State intervention in rail, mail and energy, the latter through the sponsorship of local companies to rival the Big 6. It promised abolishing tuition fees, tax rises on the richest 5%, extensive borrowing to invest in FE and other policies. Quietly, these would only be possible post-Brexit, of course, since the EU forbids excessive State funding, and thank God the dreadful'free trade' TTIP with the USA was only signed too recently to affect us (I hope).

The BBC and others were shocked, especially after several pundits admitted these would be very popular policies! How best to counter this threat to everything they stood for? Why had Labour turned its back on their concerns - like the rights of transitioning llamas in Patagonia?

Some fascinating pre-hegemonic casting around ensued, desperate searching for ideological themes that would counter the threat. E. Maitlis on Newsnight offered the best set. Wasn't this going back to the 1970s? (the main Tory response so far) -- but then, the 1970s had good welfare and free education, and some might even remember them fondly as a last pre-Thatcher era. Wouldn't it run up a lot of debt -- but then even some economists were saying  that the domestic budget and its 'deficit' were no longer important, especially as years of austerity had not reduced public debt anyway. One even said --on Newsnight -- that the whole thing had only led to propping up a hugely bloated finance sector. 

She also pointed out that the banks had been nationalised ( some still were) after the 2008 crash, at the cost of hundreds of billions borrowed [so the Government has to be austere in state spending to keep the confidence of the financial markets -- this is one of my beefs with the EU and its disastrous Euro project]

Finally, E Maitlis plyed her trump (sic) card. Would the Labour politician in front of her not admit that this actually looked very much like -- socialism? Would he dare to call  himself a socialist? To her blank astonishment he said yes he would, with no apparent apology or anything that resembled even a slight blush of guilt or remorse.

It will be interesting to see which theme plays out over the next few days

Guardian world turned upside down

The Graun continujes its coverage of the May/Juncker row with a scary headline saying May declares war on the EU, reporting her rather truculent and aggressive [good as a negotiating stance?] claim that the EU was trying to interfere in the UK election.

The G2 piece also had quite a good piece by Varifakis reporting on EU tactics to defeat the Greek negotiations. They included sophistry about mandates, endless prevarication,simply ignoring proposals and leaking to the press the claimed inadequacies of the Greek contingent, reversing the truth. All very familiar to any student of modern management.

He drew two conclusions:

When Schäuble welcomed me with his “it is my mandate against yours” doctrine, he was honouring a long EU tradition of neglecting democratic mandates in the name of respecting them. Like all dangerous hypotheses, it is founded on an obvious truth: the voters of one country cannot give their representative a mandate to impose upon other governments conditions that the latter have no mandate, from their own electorate, to accept. But, while this is a truism, its incessant repetition by Brussels functionaries and political powerbrokers, such as Angela Merkel and Schäuble himself, is intended to convert it surreptitiously into a very different notion: no voters in any country can empower their government to oppose Brussels....For all their concerns with rules, treaties, processes, competitiveness, freedom of movement, terrorism etc, only one prospect truly terrifies the EU’s deep establishment: democracy.

and 

The only way May could secure a good deal for the UK would be by diffusing the EU’s spoiling tactics, while still respecting the Burkean Brexiteers’ strongest argument, the imperative of restoring sovereignty to the House of Commons. And the only way of doing this would be to avoid all negotiations by requesting from Brussels a Norway-style, off-the-shelf arrangement for a period of, say, seven years.

[Another option would have been to simply repeal the EU legislation unilaterally, and then negotiate,rather than going through Article 50 tedium]
  
The Graun flagged up the article on its front page thus:

The Six Brexit Traps that will defeat Teresa May

No word about the EU being opposed to democracy, of course

Gaudrian turns over a new leaf?

The Guardian has had a change of heart and style,and the early version today headlines the story of the row yesterday as it should have been written. It appears as a classic 'balanced' piece, a 'May hits back', but it mentions all the possibilities excluded from yesterday's hand-wringing

Juncker was possibly bluffing and/or bullying. He was personally offended and had a tantrum after being told the UK actually owed nothing in law (a claim disputed by H Kennedy's piece -- but that seems to depend on the UK being still subject to the European Court). It could probably back fire by enraging the Brits and helping May appear as a tough woman who needs a full support of ...etc

Maybe the Graun had complaints from the Government. Maybe it is trying to reclaim 'balance' and 'objectivity', like the BBC did for a while (until the mask slipped again via Evan Davis tantrums when guests would not reassure him). Maybe it is playing clever for a bit until all the partisan stuff is forgotten.

If the EU is a family --who's the daddy?

Much glee today in the Guardian because May and Juncker had an argument at a Downing Street dinner designed to establish the basis for the talks. Naturally, the Graun thinks this row indicates a fatal flaw in May's strategy or in her personality. Juncker announced he is even more sceptical about the outcome, is determined that Brexit will not be a success, and made the usual demands for guarantees for EU citizens (possibly meaning under continuing European Court control) and for the 'divorce bill' payment (could be £50bn). 'Major statesman has childish tantrum' would have been a better headline.

What interested me was the sequence when May told Juncker (apparently) that the UK had no obligation in law to pay anything. Juncker lost it at that point, got angry, and said the EU was not a golf club that you could leave when you wanted but a family. Emotions, not calculation, ran high at that point, maybe.

This sentimental image seems not to have been challenged by Remainers at all. But what a dodgy metaphor for a ruthless bunch of finance capitalists! A family that shits on its poorest members? A family with all the underlying Oedipal connotations of fathers waving their phalluses to sumbolize the Law, infantilizing everyone else? 

And there was me thinking it was not a marriage but basically a thoroughly secular  political and economic contract, based on mutual interests, not eternal love, we had signed in 1975. I certainly didn't know I had to love and respect Juncker as well.