Where's the beef?

More guilt by association stuff in the Guardian. The lead story is headlined:

The Brexit-influencing game: how IEA got involved with a US rancher

This time, the spotlight is on the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a right -wing thinktank promoting market values while remaining as a charity. It's been talking to US business farmers (big farmers) who want to 'promote their cause'

We have the usual glamour and claimed authenticity of an undercover investigation of IEA activities, this time by Greenpeace who may have uncovered some indiscretions:

The thinktank boasted it had regular access, as often as every three or four days, to ministers. It mentioned the environment secretary, Michael Gove, and the trade secretary, Liam Fox, two people who could make a big difference to the meat eaten in post-Brexit Britain...Dominic Raab, the new Brexit secretary, is also one of the IEA’s most vocal supporters, crediting its founders with inspiring deregulations, union reforms and business tax cuts that “saved Britain”...
They are potentially important contacts for the Oklahoman farmers who already export about $400m (£350m) worth of beef and chicken a year, but mostly to Canada and Mexico...

So Tories are lobbied by agribusiness. Where's the beef? 'But at face value, all the soliciting and schmoozing by the IEA may seem at odds with its status as a registered educational charity, which should be apolitical.' There is of course a denial “It is spurious to suggest the IEA is engaging in any kind of ‘cash for access’ system,” a spokesman said. “All thinktanks have relationships with government officials and politicians ... We put people in touch when we feel there is a genuine interest on both sides.”, but Greenpeace wants to refer the issue to the Charity Commission,and 'Earlier this month, it [the CC]  was asked to review whether the thinktank repeatedly made “one-sided and controversial contributions aimed at reducing the role of the state”.

The Greenpeace tapes apparently show that “Our initial research and reporting indicated that secretly funded thinktanks have been working behind the scenes and alongside UK ministers to use Brexit to lower environmental standards.” Further down, we are told that US cattlemen are preparing to donate to campaign for Brexit, possibly anonymously

So, evidence is mounting then? We don't know the outcome yet of course.

But for the Graun, none of that matters because the IEA supports Brexit. Another outfit, the Legatum Institute (me neither) had already received a rebuke for producing a report on the benefits of Brexit that “failed to met the required standards of balance and neutrality”..And--get this!--the author of that report has since joined the IEA and he is the main link with US beef-raisers

So some nasty right-wingers are lobbying to take advantage of any free trade deals after Brexit. Has the Graun got enough to support the case that Brexit has therefore involved cheating?  Only if (a) you see this example of unsavoury lobbying as cheating; (b) it is enough to contaminate for ever the IEA and question its past activities; (c) the activities of the IEA adds to the view that the whole of Brexit is now null and void.

Back to the old tropes

The Observer shows a reversion to old 'black propaganda' techniques devoid of much subtlety or use of modern 'black arts'. The technique is guilt by association, smearing (sic)  allegations between parties and issues. Rather sad and neglected whistleblower SSanni is allowed tomake the case:

'"The Electoral Commission has already found that both Vote Leave and Darren Grimes broke electoral law. And of course if you don’t value the law, then it makes sense that you don’t value the morals and values that underpin those laws. The total lack of respect here for someone’s passing and for the agreement that they’d publicly made, it just shows you something very important about this campaign and who these people were.”'

The specific case was an accusation that Vote Leave did not respect an informal agreement not to campaign for 'around three days' after the murder of J Cox, a Labour MP, by a 'right-wing extremist'.

There is some dispute about whether VL ads were circulated the day after the murder or not. D Cummings says they were put in the pipeline but not circulated, but Sanni has leaked some emails suggesting they were placed online later on the day after the murder.

There is a smear that VL had broken the agreement because their posts  'came just a week before the referendum on 23 June, and with the Leave campaign desperately trying to make up ground on Remain.' The evidence for Remain hgaving been in the lead then must be based on some of the opinion polls that got the overall result so wrong? The implication is that this 'desperate' action snatched back the lead somehow.

For the Observer, 'The ads highlight many of the issues the [DCMS] committee is seeking to address: the use of “dark ads” by campaigns to target people in secret, based on unknown data using messages hidden from public view.' Quite how these ads were hidden, and how effective the targetting campaigns actually were is questioned by the Observer's very own sister the Guardian as in the blog below. 

However, having established the nasty immoral character of VL, which has offended two modern-day saints, J Cox and S Sanni, we can now believe the worst.


Meanwhile, and I am sorry I missed this frst time, the Guardian published an article by N Cohen attacking Cummings and noting that:

In February, the pro-Remain group Best for Britain conducted private polling on what would persuade the public to accept a second referendum. A fall in living standards (and they’ve already fallen) made no difference: a majority would still say we’d had one referendum and that was enough. The NHS suffering (and it is suffering) produced a tie. But when the pollsters asked: “What if there was confirmation of cheating during the referendum campaign?”, 49% wanted a second vote and only 30% opposed. If the trolled public should realise it’s been cheated, the future will be up for grabs.

Dark arts my arse

Substantial moral paniccontinues over the dark arts  of Facebooking that persuaded so many people to vote for Brexit against their will and by manipulation of their unconscious.

It is hard to reference this,but, as I recall, last night's BBC Newsnight had K Wark quoting from the Report's condemnation of FB allowing race hate stuff on the Rohingya minority, with a half-jhearted attempt to go from there to suggest something nasty about FB ads paid for by Vote Leave. From a quick scan, I can see that the FB ads were  'morally if not legally wrong' as I remember Wark saying, in not clearly attributing their ads to Vote Leave, and the DCMS Report does huff and puff about the need for clarity. It makes sense only if viewers of ads were somehow unlikely to perceive the link with voting for Brexit, which would then render them pointless.

C Wylie, who blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica was cut short in his attempt to say that FB had acted illegally in placing the Vote Leave ads because the Electoral Commission had found that VL had overspent and so FB was using illegal money -- even Wark saw the need to make clear that was an allegation. As usual, the whole thing only makes sense if you think that FB and/or Cambridge Analytica practice dark arts that manipulate people.

The FB ads that worried the DCMS seemed pretty standard fare to me, warning of immigration and demanding we not spend UK money on the EU. These themes might enrage Remainers but the case that putting them in little ads on FB make them sinisterly potent remains undemonstrated.

The Guradian today has a general blast about fake news and disinformation based on the DCMS Report and does its best to talk up the menace:

Democracy at risk due to fake news and data misuse, MPs conclude

The report is expected to say that the “relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans and their behaviour” posed a greater threat to democracy than more familiar forms of so-called fake news, raising particular concerns about the way online data could be manipulated to impact elections.

There is no attempt to define these terms of course, nor to consider how actual evidence might be obtained. The hilarious view that this is a threat to some pure and spotless 'democracy' is also asserted, depite the Guardian's past record in exposing corruption, inefficiency or malpractice. 
 
There is an attempty at further dark artery:

The MPs will raise concerns about foreign funding of Brexit campaign groups, saying they remained unconvinced about the source of some of the money spent by the leave side, especially the funding of Leave.EU.

D Cummings has his own views about the process and its findings, including saying that the Committee failed to see the attributions because they used only the actual images from FB's database, noting the Remainer membership of the Committee and challenging them to attend a hearing before Parliament at which all parties (incuding himslef) will be under oath.

Conspiratorial Guardiain readers ,having just selcted a suspicioulsy American and techy company to embody their deepest fears,might have been disappointed to read another Guardian article.It does its best to frighten readers with its data on the large number of 'impressions' ( showings) of Vote Leave's FB ads (165m) ,but then reveals that:

Vote Leave’s supposedly youth-focused sister group showed most of its Facebook advertising to older voters during the EU referendum campaign [about 2/5 of those shown the ad were over 35]...The data suggests Vote Leave largely used Facebook adverts as a blunt instrument to promote a relatively small number of core messages on immigration and NHS funding. It promoted these adverts to millions of people across all age groups, a tactic more in line with traditional advertising practices...The data also points to apparent incompetence in the way the official Brexit campaign placed some of its adverts. Vote Leave targeted hundreds of thousands of Facebook users in India, including with ads featuring the former cricketer Sir Ian Botham promoting a pro-Brexit football prediction competition, potentially wasting campaign funds....Some adverts touched on topics designed to appeal to niche demographics, such as opposing bullfighting in Spain or calling for money to be spent on flood defences in Yorkshire rather than being sent to Brussels...Despite the DUP being based in Northern Ireland, more than half of the Facebook adverts the party ran during the referendum period were not shown to anyone in the region, according to Facebook’s data [ I'm not sure if this is incompetence or something sinister again]

Reduce panic a few Times

I managed to get access to the Times report of the wit'n'wisdom of J Manzoni cited in the Toynbee article (blog below). If we take it as [dubious] raw material. we can see the extra negative spin put on it by P Toynbee.

The Government is to issue weekly ' bundles' of advice to small businesses. 

Up to 250,000 small businesses in Britain are about to be asked to start preparing to make customs declarations for the first time as part of the government’s summer campaign...Advice to British travellers to buy health insurance to replace reciprocal arrangements rendered invalid could be part of the campaign...Others have speculated that the advice will include warnings of huge disruption at ports and airports and advice on stockpiling food....5,800 extra civil servants had been recruited to cope with Brexit, with 1,000 more in the pipeline...

So far much of this echoes the solemn advice put out by the EC which is mostly about bureaucratic re-registration etc, a possibly naive reading would suggest.

John Manzoni, told MPs yesterday that ministers would have to balance causing unnecessary alarm with giving prudent advice. “There needs to be a narrative to say, ‘Actually we don’t want this to happen but we have to prepare just in case it does and here are all the things that we have to do’,” he said....Mr Manzoni said that Britain was doing what it could to prepare for a no-deal outcome. However, it was difficult to determine how “third parties” such as EU states, their local governments or private companies would act — and whether they would be “spiteful or ignorant” about the consequences. He added that a lack of co-operation could have “some horrendous consequences”....Mr Manzoni said: “There are supply chains for food and medicines; we have to put in place contingencies for those.”...The Department of Health had announced that it would stockpile medicines, he said. There were also “transport systems” that would have to be dealt with, and measures would be needed to care for Britons overseas.

What's all this about EU states, their local governments or private companies being 'spiteful or ignorant'? Surely the EC would prevent this and ensure that the binding rules etc were followed?

Let's all have tea

Poor P Toynbee of the Uardiang. It really is getting to her:

Take fright on Brexit: even the civil service head is telling us to panic 

Stockpiling food. Civil unrest. After the latest warnings on a no-deal with the EU we must hope to God this is a phoney war

The last time she mentioned God, by the way, it led to letters in teh Gruan -- she is a leading light in the National Secular Society. He is hoped at twice in this piece.

The 'civil service head' is one J Manzoni. Toynbee quotes a BBC account of what he told the Public Administration Committee. The 'factual' bit was that the Department of Health is stockpiling medicines [more than usual?]. The rest is worst-case stuff about shortages of food and queues of lorries, and, most absurd of all, no flying if there were no bilateral agreements. The context seems to have been the need to take 'no-deal' seriously. The BBC adds that 'There is an element of needing to look tough under pressure in negotiations - "Don't think we won't walk away," and all that.'

Toynbee's article is a marvellous concoction of doom and gloom, with everything woven together to increase the 'panic' (her word) about no-deal Brexit, or maybe just Brexit:

looming Brexit Armageddon....Shameful conduct by the chief whip and the party chairman...every graph shows the north-east hardest hit by all cabinet decisions since 2010...more universal credit chaos, as poverty rises... rail mayhem....At health, new boy Matt Hancock picks up the underfunding fallout, not resolved by next year’s bung, with social care a yawning gap. In education, the legacy left by Michael Gove has created scores of failed free schools and academies, and a brutal curriculum driving children to worsening anxiety levels. At the Home Office, violent crime rises, police numbers shrink, and Windrush reveals a broken immigration system – as the leadership hopeful Sajid Javid gives the green light to capital punishment....[the latter refers to Javid not asking the USA not to execute two formerly British jihadists if they are extradited to the US for trial -- not exactly a 'greenlight to capital punishment']

For now, the Brexit crisis distracts from all its other failures...when Doug Gurr, the head of Amazon UK – no political player [so this gives him some authority?]  – warns of “civil unrest” within two weeks of a no-deal guillotine, we should all sit up and pay attention [do Guardianistas do this often for Amazon pronouncements?] ...Everyone will take fright at the government’s own warnings to businesses and households....Already the government warns that the M26 in Kent will be a “holding area” for 1,400 trucks to ease gridlock as 10,000 lorries a day are potentially delayed by new EU customs checks...Stockpiling food – that’s an order to panic! And why not – half our food is imported, of which 80% comes from Europe via Dover.... it will frighten most of us to see what no-deal really means. The EU has issued its own warnings, especially to the 5 million EU and UK expat citizens...You can only hope to God this is a phoney war – but as the historian Margaret Macmillan pointed out in her Reith lectures, in the runup to wars and trade wars, leaders misstep, and disasters happen [really ingenious link this -- even the current Reith lecturer opposes Brexit].

And the piece concludes:

 Conspiracy theorists claim a “deep state” really controls this country, a civil service and a dark establishment that prevent any radical change. That theory is now being tested to destruction. This has been the worst session of parliament in recent memory: the next may be worse. There is no deep state – nothing out there to save us from self-inflicted disaster. Only we can save us from ourselves.

I think the deep state conspiracy would show, if anything, the power of the Remainer lobby to protect finance capital, with Toynbee as a 'useful idiot', but let's not match paranoias. The intriguing thing is what 'we' are supposed to do to 'save us from ourselves' -- form a new party again as Toynbee did once? It helped the Tories under M Thatcher stay in power for 13 years.

 

 

Politics observed

I don't take the Observer any more,but yesterday's web version makes good reading. C Cadwalladr has been investigating the methods and financing of Leave groups for some time. In her latest,she summarises the results so far:

On 24 March, one week after we published Christopher Wylie’s explosive revelations about Cambridge Analytica – how the data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches – Sanni stepped into the limelight to tell another, connected part of the tale: how Vote Leave broke the law during the EU referendum by exceeding legal spending limits.

 The article clarifies:

the Electoral Commission ruled last week, that organisation had “exceeded its legal spending limit” and “returned an inaccurate report”; there had also been found to be “significant evidence” of it working together with the youth-oriented Brexit campaign group BeLeave...The watchdog said it had imposed punitive fines on Vote Leave because it said the group had refused to cooperate fully with its investigation and had declined to be interviewed.

 
Now she has done much to uncover some dirty tricks, but this para is a bit disingenuous in linking D Trump's campaign to Vote Leave's. Just because the absurd braggarts of Cambridge Analytica worked with both, it doesn't mean the same methods were used by both. I must check this, but as far as I know, no-one has accused Vote Leave of illicitly using Facebook data, if, indeed there is an illict use of FB data in the first place, except among the non-technical bourgeoisie. Vote Leave seems to have broken electoral law (although there may be an appeal) by overspending. Without denying the (limited) force of the charge of breaking electoral law by overspending, reporting becomes ideological comment when the two issues are linked as 'another,connected part of the tale'. The tale is the Cadwalladr view that nasty right-wing conspirators are out to screw nice people via Trump and Brexit, or, as she puts it:.

There’s a revolving door between the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Brexit Central, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Leave Means Leave. For example, Elliott founded the Alliance, was chief executive of Vote Leave, and is the editor-in-chief of Brexit Central. Grimes has gone from Vote Leave to Brexit Central to the Institute of Economic Affairs. 

Not only that, sceptics like me are thwarted. For one thing: “It’s absurd to think that didn’t have an impact,” says Sanni'. In the lead article ( below): 'An Opinium poll shows that 66% of the public believe Vote Leave’s behaviour in breaking electoral law is a “serious matter” – as opposed to 17% who do not. Some 40% think the behaviour affected the result of the referendum while 41% do not'  No criticisms of THIS opinion poll of course.


The two whistleblowers were apparently treated quite differently, and Cadwalldr's account here gets close to grasping the dynamics of moral panics,while restoring her own unifying account:

It wasn’t like Christopher Wylie’s story [about Cambridge Analytica and its boasts about using FB data] , where everyone was united in kicking Facebook. It was trickier, because Brexit is trickier. Although it’s part of the same story: it was about tech giants, technology outpacing the law, and a Canadian company through which Vote Leave funnelled money and data, and which is intimately tied to Cambridge Analytica, as the Information Commissioner’s Office has now confirmed.

Blowing the whistle on Vote Leave was apparently different: 'Sanni had no idea any of this was illegal at the time: he was fresh out of university.' Having entered the grubby world of politics, however, he was open to attack.

Stephen Parkinson, the national organiser for Vote Leave, and now Theresa May’s top political adviser – issued a statement that Dominic Cummings, the campaign director for Vote Leave, published on his blog. The blog revealed that Parkinson had been in a personal relationship with Sanni and that Parkinson could understand “if the lines became blurred for him”...a press officer for 10 Downing Street sent him Parkinson’s statement as an official comment from Theresa May.

So where's the beef? '[Sanni]  wasn’t out to his family and he said he couldn’t be. He had family in Pakistan, including his sister, where people are killed for being homosexual.' Not only that, he had been prematurely outed and this broke sexual etiquette: “What you don’t understand,” [Wylie] told me, “is that this only happens once. You only come out to your family once. To rob someone of that moment, it’s … such an assault.”

This could well stand on its own as a story about how badly whistleblowers are treated, or possibly about how the government of Pakistan still persecutes gays, but it has added legs because it is about Brexit (nearly what Cadwalladr says herself). Would there be such support for Sunni otherwise? The journalist has to supply inferences that are not supported in the judicial findings -- that all this made a difference to the referendum result, that overspending is serious enough an offence to declare the whole thing null and void. And in the Observer this week is a further leg -- it all shows contempt for Parliament and this is a serious challenge to democracy.

The lead article cites a number of MPs (mentioned as powerful heads of Parliamentary Committees but not as Remainers, curiously enough) demanding increased powers to call Cummings to appear before Parliament, with a link to the Cadwalladr material: 'Anger at Cummings’s refusal to come before MPs has intensified since Vote Leave was fined £61,000 and referred to the police after the Electoral Commission found last week that it had broken electoral law'.Sanni is quoted as some sort of authority on the UK constitution (but remains silent about the constitution in Pakistan): in the journalistia, victims of persecution always become persons of great insight '“This debate is no longer about Brexit. It is simply about the law and how democracy was perverted by the breaking of it. None of the directors of Vote Leave or the ministers on its board and committees have been held to account. There are people who oversaw this illegal activity still working in government, deciding the future of this country ".'

The editorial continues the hectoring, weaving elements together in the classic manner: 

our political system has perhaps never felt less up to the gargantuan task of paving a way out of the Brexit-related stalemate the country finds itself in. Just months before the article 50 deadline, the government’s negotiating position remains utterly opaque [even after the Chequers statement that has caused such controversy] . And revelations of recent months – many first reported in the Observer – have shed light on how the conduct of the Brexit referendum campaign calls into question the robustness of our democratic norms.

Extraordinarily, although it’s unclear what they knew, it seems they [senior Leave ministers]  will face absolutely no consequences for overseeing a campaign that broke the law. Meanwhile, the whistleblower Shahmir Sanni was outed to his family in a Number 10 press release with the effect of discrediting Sanni’s now-vindicated account. Stephen Parkinson, one of Theresa May’s senior advisers and the former national organiser for Vote Leave, who was responsible for this, also looks unlikely to face any consequences for his actions [like what? Is it illegal to out people?].

There are other signs that the political honour code is being eroded. Last week, it emerged that the government’s chief whip instructed MPs to break their pairing arrangements...Esther McVey was recently forced to apologise for breaking the ministerial code by misleading parliament after completely misrepresenting the National Audit Office’s damning verdict on her department’s implementation of universal credit. We should fear the consequences: the expenses scandal at Westminster shows the extent to which rotten cultures can seep into institutions containing mainly well-intentioned people once rule-breaking becomes normalised.

On new technology (always a source of panic):

And it risks moving us further away from the democracy of the public forum, towards a more fractured democracy in which swing voters are targeted on narrow issues, using false claims that are not subjected to the scrutiny of a public manifesto.

Honestly, where do you start with that para? 'Democracy of the public forum' yet! False claims 'beyond the scrutiny of the manifesto' -- in British politics? Never! 'A more fractured democracy' --don't the Liberal Party welcome that too?

Because it is about Brexit, the liberal press has to go all out. Hectoring the public like this must lead to partisan absurdity but it is worth it. Anything is worth it as long as we Remain, or, even sadder, as long as we continue to think we are right we should remain.

Brown trousers through the post

First it was cheap British starwberries that were going to be unavailable (we have had a glut of them this year) then au pairs.Now Guradian readers are struck by the latest  blow -- Amazon may be disrupted. The horror!.Not only that, a Brit exec of Amazon (one D Gurr) has forecast 'civil unrest' if there is no deal:

Amazon declined to confirm whether Gurr had made the remarks, reported in the Times, but admitted it was planning for a wide range of outcomes.

Amazon will now sell cheap machine guns  and security equipment?

Another panic was possibly averted, however, with the new UK Brexit negotator accusing the EU of irresponsibility in  'flagging up the risks to EU nationals living in Britain from a no-deal Brexit' as “obviously an attempt to try and ramp up the pressure”.. Normally,  el Grun would just have reported this 'flagging up' as news, of course, so we must be grateful for small mercies.

NB The actual text from the EU publication reads:

Citizens.There would be no specific arrangement in place for EU citiziens in the United Kingdom or for UK citizens in the European Union 

Perhaps there is some additional material in this otherwise rather tedious document that I missed, but  it all seems threatening only if you practice the hermeneutics of suspicion at all times (maybe you should). The rest of the document similarly seems to imply mostly bureaucratic changes of transferring certification and licensing details from UK to EU bodies, which might indeed seem tedious and time-consuming, but hardly the stuff of civil unrest.

The Graun turns to another issue to maintain the atmosphere of possible riots in the streets when Martha Gill, a 'freelance political journalist and former lobby correspondent' [the website has a wrong link] warns of  the dangers of new right-wing political groups emerging. A new party has been one of the optionsbeing debated by liberals, with one or two suggestions that all Remainers from both parties might form one, as a kind of GNU. The leaders of the Liberals was accused of being in talks about one.

 M Gill is worried though:

according to a You Gov/Times poll, the appetite in this country is not for a Lib Dem-friendly, centrist party, but a hard-right party of Brexit – something that appealed to 38% of those asked. Even more striking, perhaps, was the 24% who would like to see a far-right, explicitly anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party....There are more signs for those who have been watching. Reports that Arron Banks and Nigel Farage are planning a new rightwing movement, and then reports that former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is involved in a similar-sounding venture in Europe, for which he may be planning to raise millions. Last weekend, a rally in Whitehall summoned a vast crowd of rightwingers from a hodgepodge of groups – online provocateurs, British Trump supporters and Free Tommy Robinson activists – all converging under a single ideology.

The signs are only there for those experts [a freelance journalist!] who have been watching, of course. 'Reports' are uncited. The demo in Whitehall was hardly a 'vast crowd', it seemed from C4's coverage, and nor did there seem to be much of  a 'single ideology' . Gill wants mostly to rubbish UKIP, it seems [support is growing rapidly again]  and she warns 'A smart successor would be in the sleek European mould'.

N Farage is then quoted:

“If the trust the people put in the democratic process … is betrayed then prepare for the backlash.” “If Brexit is seen to be betrayed”, he said on his LBC show on Sunday, “there will be a backlash the likes of which the political classes in this country simply can not understand.” 

Gill fears 'It is likely to work. All indications suggest that whatever kind of Brexit we get, it won’t make life better for those who voted for it.' 

Here she seems to converge with the chaps who run the Full Brexit that right-wing movements will grow in the UK as they have in other European countries -- but they argue that years of uncritical compliance with the EU has been the ground on which this danger has grown. Liberals have said too little and too late and their 'moderation' and 'objectivity' have been sacrificed by their partisan stands.

The liberal consensus will almsost certainly focus around the one Remainer hope -- a new referendum. Bringing down May's premiership will not lead to us Remaining, and a new General Election is too risky, with Labour also split. New parties now seem risky too. Only a new referendum will deliver a 'democratic' result, as it did in Ireland and Denmark, but of course only if the result is to Remain, and only if the earlier hostility towards referenda as somehow usurping the role of goverment is forgotten  A tricky ideological project! 

There must also be hope that some enormous event will occur to provide for exceptional circumstances. More enormous than expensive strawberries.

Activism and objectivity redux

J Freedland in the Gruaniad today deplores the ways in which our noble institutions have been dragged into ideological battles -- naturally with Brexit as the main example.  Recalling his own earlier days as a critic of the obvious limits of the judiciary because of their limited social backgrounds,he now wants to repent -- because Brexiteers are saying the same things when judicial decisions go against them. Freedland is especially cross about the way in which the findings of the Electoral Commision about overspending by the Leave Campaign has not been acknowledged by Brexiteer MPs. For him the findings cannot be criticised: 'It is not an allegation that Vote Leave broke the law. It is now a fact'. To be a tiny bit finicky, however, it is possible that Vote Leave will appeal against the findings, and, in the remote possibility that they win, the findings will cease to be fact, one of the  paradoxes of judicial findings, of course.

“These people are human beings like any other,” I wrote [in his earlier guise as a critic of the Hutton Report]. “It seems worth remembering that, before he was a law lord, the judge was plain Brian Hutton.” I thought I was bravely shattering the mystique of the priesthood we call the judiciary – he’s just a man called Brian! – but afterwards a few people I respected , people no less hostile to the Iraq war, took me to task. They warned that I had taken a small step down a slippery slope, disparaging the system that upholds the rule of law.

To admit the general case would be to allow Brexiteers to score a point. So instead of pushing on into an analysis of ideology and how it works, a massive backpedal is required.
However, all this shows his critique was only partisan all along? Judges now do not suffer from social biases and implement (unconscisous?) ideologies? They are not 'just men' but have become an institution. The 'rule of law' really is above ideology, and/or a judiciary dominated by upper class white men is the only safeguard 'we' have. No need for any consideration, however preliminary, of the issues of 'social background' and 'bias' when it comes to Brexit. 

Freedland is exposing his own earlier claims to objectivity, in the name of a higher good, claiming the authority of the repentant -- as in 'I once believed this myself  but I was wrong and now I see the light'. He sees lots of examples all around him, especially in Trump's America, and thus a whole moral panic is up and running. Running these all together with Brexit strengthens his own beliefs and smears his opponents in the classic double role of ideology.

The whole episode shows how partisan Freedland's stuff has been all along. It wasn't really a critique of ideology he wanted but just judges that agreed with him. Brexit has flushed him out as it has so many in the quality press or on the BBC. Criticism may be directed 'upwards' against elite judges or 'downwards' at the unspeakables, but it is still partisan, representing another class view just as surely, even if it is the class view this time of the restless cultural petit bourgeoisie. They have been increasingly strident in their assertion of this class view in the 'coverage' of Brexit and must therefore take their share of blame if the blinkers of 'objectivity'  have fallen off for their enemies.

GNUSnight

Some signs of panic and despair on the BBC tonight as Brexiteers seem to be winning some crucial Parliamentary votes on amendments to  the Chequers deal. I suggested to my partner that this would bring about a military coup led by Brussels if we were not careful...

Talk about many a true word!! Ancient Tory Sir N Soames appeared on TV suggesting that perhaps the time was ripe for a National Government (a Government of National Unity, or GNU, or a Government of All the Talents, a GOAT). And blow me down if strange little tantrum-thrower E Davis didn't say something similar on BBC Newsnight. The Queen could ask someone to form a National Government if there was no confidence in any of the usual potential leaders, he told the audience. He also told one of his interviewees (he does tell interviewees quite a lot), that 'everyone was reading' a book about the last occasion when theUK had a National Government.

So -- stockpiling and preparation for a National Government throughout the whole of Islington. We would need military backing to control any popular protest, and perhaps that nice kind M Juncker could suggest a technocrat to sort us out in the interim, just like he did with Italy.

Banging the kettle drum for the national interest

The Graudina journalist M Kettle is the son of a certain A Kettle, one of those curious British upper middle-class marxists we used to find in academia. A Kettle is long dead, which must have saved him much grief on seeing his son develop into a conventional ideologist.

M Kettle argues today that the sad Brexit White Paper will not convince anyone, but en route trots (sic) out some classic ideological themes:

The 98-page document does capture the moment when the government finally and formally admitted to the British public that our future relationship with the EU is supremely vital to the nation’s economy, prosperity and security. So vital, in fact, that it must take priority over all the unilateralist fantasies about what Brexit might have involved....it’s the moment when it said that, whether you are a leaver or a remainer, you just have to accept that Britain’s national interests cannot be separated from close and strong relations with Europe.

Haven't heard that old stuff about the obvious 'national interests' for a while from the Gradinau,nor how it all boils down to  some entirely abstract 'economy, prosperity and security'. Could be Churchill ! Kettle Senior would have demolished that in a trice. It is quite likely  that so would many Brexit voters -- WHOSE bleedin' propserity and security, they might ask.

Obviously, many critics at home will disagree and so they must be ignorant or traitorous. But the EC will also disagree:

There [sic -- beloved Graun misprint? Three?  There are? ] enormous gaps between the UK and EU positions on most of the issues in the document and every attempt to bridge those gaps may also trigger fresh revolts and accusations... the reality is that these ideas will not fly with the EU.

So let's follow it through here too.The EU in refusing is also opposing  the 'national interest' of the UK? This not entirely unreasonable conclusion will also dawn on many, I suspect

M Kettle seems to be left with hoping it will all go away and the UK will Remain, or that a People's Vote will reject the White Paper deal . But if so,what then? P Toynbee, sadly suffering a mild relapse but mercifully still not displaying Full Rant Mode, raised some of the obvious problems with a second referendum:

Don’t imagine deciding on a people’s vote is a simple matter either. Parliament will choose the crucial wording of the question – and what will a gridlocked Commons choose? Question one – should the UK accept the deal or remain in the EU? The Brexiters would scream betrayal and demand instead question two – accept the deal or crash out without one?...Others suggest a three-way question, with all three options, which sounds fair. Except that offers the lethal likelihood that the moderate vote splits between remainers and deal-accepters, letting a minority of crash-outers win.

There remains only schadenfreude, as Remainers smugly consume stockpiled olive oil and raise two fingers to the starving masses pressing at their windows. If only we had all listened to them!

Sad metaphor bites luvvie in arse

A limp metaphor has creaked home to roost with the defeat of the England team last night at the World Cup. As the blog before this one shows, luvvies in the Gurdina were just developing the idea that the 'multiracial' young, urban and pro-European team embodied virtues shared with Remainers. Last night's BBC Newsnight programme had a curious panel of commentators -- 'authors' of course -- standing by to flesh out the latest signs from the zeitgeist to confirm this, but when the team lost they were left faffing around suddenly unwilling to develop any shared virtues. There was a half-hearted attempt at consolation in the usual ways -- the team was still young, they had achieved beyond expectations and so we were really right even though we were wrong -- but of sly, knowing triumphalism was there none.

Croatia's win invoked quite different metaphors with their national and political cultiure (equally unsound, no doubt, I hasten to add). The Guadrina headline was: :

Zagreb rocks: ‘We have heart, we are proud and we have been forged in war’ 

The story goers on to note that: 'This small, horseshoe-shaped country [with a population a fourteenth the size of England's]  is gradually emerging from economic crisis but is mired in political problems and has a small under-resourced league.' Not really Remainerish then?

There is also a lesson for liberal critics who just bang on and on about their own beliefs:

Croatia motivated by English pundits’ lack of respect, says Luka Modric

• Real Madrid midfielder says media underestimated his side
• ‘They should be more humble and respect their opponents’
 

Remainers seem quite demoralized now their metaphorical nation has ben defeated, and in an emergency, luvvie housewives only do one thing -- stockpile

A no-deal Brexit survival guide: what food to stockpile

With news that the government is planning to stock up on processed foods in case we crash out, what should ordinary shoppers be looking to bulk buy?

 

Ingerland is Europe

To coin a cliche, I am indebted to today's Private Eye for drawing my attention to the wonderful piece on Brexit and the FIFA World Cup by S Bloomfield. I had noticed the strange sudden support for the football team, with S Moore saying she now felt easier about displaying the flag of St George, but this one is a beauty:

If this England team represents anyone, it’s the 48%: the remainers

Some people in Britain seem to have forgotten – these young players are the sort of people they don’t usually like very much

So already a casual link between Brexit and racism on the one hand, and Remain, youth and sporting success on the other.. There is a strangely dated terminology in the view that 'This is the most multiracial England squad to represent its country at a major tournament, with 11 players of colour' --  shades of the same schtik that greeted the victory of the French team in 1998 when the media still used terms like that.

Then:

Every last one of them works with immigrants and appreciates that they have become better at their jobs because of the influx of foreigners into the British game. Most of them live in big cities. If this England team represents anyone, it’s the 48% who voted to remain.

So 'working with immigrants' means supporting immigration as a general policy,and it is only those who do not work with immigrants that voted Brexit? 

Southgate was a figure of fun before this run of success but now:

England’s head coach, Gareth Southgate, has made no secret of his willingness to learn from other European teams...[unlike his predecessor S Allardyce who] bemoaned the number of foreign coaches in English football, and has scoffed at young players who seek to play their football elsewhere in Europe.

Holding these views is not necessarily the result of anti-EU/racism, though.The relative absence of foreign coaches and players and the strong domestic game that can produce is often held to be the main reason for German success internationally. Germany's failure to qualify this time,despite years of success, is no real reason to dismiss the argument just yet.

There’s a hypocrisy to the warm embrace that has been granted to this England team by parts of the media and the population. These are not people they normally like. [That is very true of Guardian writers who typically 'scoff' at working class football players and fans -- S Moore is a johnny-come-lately, for example] It is only a month since the government was illegally deporting people who could have been the grandparents of Raheem Sterling or Jesse Lingard.

Illegal deportations because the Government does not watch or play football? If they did, this would stop discrimination of this kind? It has been some years since racism was a simple matter of initial hostility towards unfamiliar new arrivals, 'dark strangers' as one classic piece put it. Even then, there were differences between personal hostility and general policy.

Then some trite stuff about football as 'a true meritocracy',where 'race' ( that strange term again) 'is also far less of a factor than it is in any other sphere of life (on the pitch, that is – off it, football is still as racist as British society, whether in the stands or the boardroom)'. There is no recognition that seeing ethnic minorities predominantly in sport (or music or crime) is also likely to support racism, albeit of a 'softer' kind -- black people are 'closer to nature', and so black kids should be 'sidetracked' into those careers

  

The parenthesis actually introduces some problems with the metaphor -- so Remainers support a vision of England in Europe with a rather limited kind of soft racist meritocracy confined to 90 minutes on the pitch, while the usual inequalities remain in the rest of life as ever?

Pre-ideological dithering

Ideologies do not come ready-formed, and emergent raw material has to be worked on before it can be fitted into ideological categories. The events in the early stages of moral panics, show outrages being reported but the press and others are not yet clear about how exactly to describe them --isolated scares, or symptoims of underlying malaises. The press and others have to work to connect them into main narratives.

Such seems to be the early stage of reporting on May's proposals for Brexit. Remainer presspeople don't like May, but dislike even more Leaves like Rees-Mogg or Johnson who must never be encouraged, even if they must sometimes be reported. Remainers don't like the proposals and EC rejection would only prove them right all along about the fantasy elements of Brexit, but they fear a move to even more dislike of EC highhandedness and a push for no deal if proposals are contemptuously rejected. 

A similar dilemma confronted liberals over Trump's summit with Kim, said a Private Eye piece  -- liberals wanted Trumpt to fail but they also wanted peace: in the end, hatred of Trump was postponedand the apparent deal was met with only faint praise

Thus we find the Observer dithering. The headline seems to emphasise what might be the main threat:

Theresa May’s EU deal under fire from hardline Brexiters 

But the subheading offers a kind of balance to the hardliners' threat...

Anti-EU MPs warn blueprint could be worse than no deal, while entrepreneurs say plans are unworkable

The 'entrepreneurs' ( always a good word) in question are those wanting full integration with the EU customs' union, instead of the May offer to collect EU tariffs if incoming goods are destined to go to EU countries -- 'May’s customs proposal would be costly and bureaucratic for UK firms.'

Meanwhile:

In Brussels, which is giving little formal reaction before it has studied the white paper, sources warned that May’s customs compromise looked very similar to the “new customs partnership” that the EU rejected as “magical thinking” 11 months ago.
One senior diplomat said that the Chequers meeting had resulted in a “melange of earlier proposals that were not really feasible”. Stressing that his government needed to see the white paper before taking a position, he said: “A goulash gets better the more it is recooked. I am not sure about whether the customs proposals share the same quality.”

Rounds of drinks, gentlemen's clubs, divorces and  now cooking -- the EC is a rich source [geddit?] of homely metaphors. Normally, what 'Brussels' says would be good enough for the Graun/Observer but they are obviously holding back this time until matters clarify a bit,not least in Brussels. It's a bit of a dilemma for them -- the Leavers' might have something after all in the charge that the EC is just arrogant, unwilling to concede anything at all, and clearly the party of cheap migrant labour and 'just-in-time' globalized business. Full integration back into the EU now looks unrealistic, even to Remainerati. An obvious option -- to make May out to be the soul of reason and compromise doing her best amidst the clamour -- would also look like supporting her. Media folk support themselves and each other with that one, and sometimes the police, but party politicians never.

Meanwhile -- quelle ironie! -- balanced reporting of the positions of all sides seems to have broken out, at least until the ideological horses have been trotted round the paddock.

 

 

Soft-boiled eggs with pink lines

News of the meeting of the Cabinet to discuss a Brexit deal in all the news media today, with predictable variations in what it all means.

The main coverage in the Gudrian offers a section which just reports the main proposals in the 'Explainer' ( the Graun is so infantile these days), with comment confined to a brief para at the end. Of course, this is preceded by a classic 'textual shifter' to claim authority:

What it will really mean

Beyond whatever objections and modifications the EU might present, the statement is broad enough to be open to significant interpretation by ministers of various Brexit hues, not to mention backbench Conservative MPs.
While the plan states it has not breached any of May’s stated red lines, it is a distinctly soft variant of the proposed Brexits on offer and, even if it is not amended or ditched, outside pressure could place different interpretations on the terms stated. This is version one.

And the subheading for the whole 'explainer' is:

PM secures approval from cabinet to negotiate soft Brexit

The main article at the top of the website is slightly more curious. Under the same headline:

Theresa May secures approval from cabinet to negotiate soft Brexit 

the report concentrates on the reaction of various factions in the Tory party -- hard and soft brexiteers, but also a 'hardline MP' and a 'hardline Brexiter' (there are never any hardline Remainers, as we know). If anything, Brexiteers are quoted at more length, especially Rees-Mogg and Grayling, both of whom express reservations. However, there is some contexting or shifting material which helps to discredit them as having plotted before the meeting (there are never any plotter remainers either). May is reported as insisting on collective cabinet reponsibility and threatening 'discipline' against any backsliders.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, appeared to react warmly to the proposals....The CBI and the Institute of Directors (IoD) business groups also voiced relief.

Their director general said:

“News that an agreement has been reached is very welcome. Our members have wanted cabinet to come together and put the interest of the country first [sic!], so firms across the UK will see this as a positive step forward.”

The usual Guardian shouting on Brexit has been softened itself --  perhaps they think they have won.

 

A psychiatrist speaks (so listen with your fingers crossed against evil)

I have not been able to summarise much in the way of television coverage of Brexit because it is often hard to demonstrate briefly the play of ideology in it. I am aware I once critcised none other than S Hall, famed media analyst, for ignoring TV news in his (with others)  lauded discussion of the 'moral panic' of mugging in 1970s UK.

However,my attention was drawn to a famous TV debate on the work of the controversialist J. Peterson who has made a name for upholding right-wing opinions and bating liberals with them. The interview in question was the one on Channel 4 with C Newman (mostly on his views on gender) .

I am not taking sides on the specific issues, but the structure of the interview was familiar to anyone watching the BBC interview spokespersons for Brexit (and for Trump, but that is another matter). Of course,everyone accuses the BBC of 'bias', and the BBC often points to rival views of the same programme in its defence,or reverts to its classic policies of 'balance' (also easily criticised though). Brexit coverage is no exception -- I think the coverage follows a Remain agenda, but others argue there are exceptions --  the Express newspaper, which supports Brexit, liked a Newsnight interview and said it was a useful critcal examination of an EU spoksperson's  standard taunt about theUK not having a detailed plan.

What caught my attention with Peterson's reflection on the C4 interview was his attempt to use his experience in clinical psychiatry to discuss the tactics of the interviewer (tactics implies full conscious control though?) in doing things like switching personae from amiable to hostile when the cameras start to roll, setting an agenda by persistently setting up a straw man position for the intereviewee and then interviewing that, playing little games of dominance --and so on. I think Newman clearly shows these tendencies, not least when she attempts to constantly paraphrase what Peterson says in order to make it conform to her straw man which she can then rebuke. I have experienced this myself, of course, having opponents argue that despite what I might have actually said or written, what I REALLY meant was something both nasty and more familiar, There is a lot of other stuff too, ranging from analysing career motives ( C Newman as a social justice warrior out to build a reputation), to applying a Jungian process apparently called 'capturing the animus').

Of course, Peterson is also open to reciprocal objections -- his own careerism, the way he uses clinical psychiatry to show what people REALLY think and so on. He remained cool and courteous, and more open relatively than Newman, but even that could be seen as a power play, not a disinterested pursuit of truth as he claims

If I had more time and interest, it would be worth trying to winnow out any analytical bits from Peterson's performance and 'apply' then to BBC interviews of Brexiteers. This might update my intellectual capital for media analysis,which still relies on the good old 1980s days of the Glasgow University Media Group or the CCCS/OU Popular Culture Group. 

One immediate similarity is the frequent anger (verbal and non-verbal) directed at dissenting interviewees, and open frustration when they do not answer questions which presuppose a straw man, or offer a nice choice between two items on  the interviewer's agenda. There is frequent heckling and shouting down. There is even 'populist ventriloquism' when, in desperation, interviews will insist that theirs are the questions that  'people' are asking, that it is not just them (although sometimes nasty right-wingers have been very effective in arguing back that it is indeed just them, or that they have no way of knowing what 'people' think, stuck in their privileged bubbles)

I don't think this shows that the BBC has some open propagandist interest in promoting Remain, more that the effrontery of any interviewee daring to expose or question locally-supported ideological assumptions is what produces unease followed by anger. This ideological commitment extends to upholding the precious professional ideologies (including 'balance') and is surprisingly easily rattled by any challenges. When it comes to arguments criticising the 'malicious egalitarianism'  of the EC's version of freedom and discrimination, explained so carefully the Full Brexit Staggers piece (see several blogs below), for example, BBC journalists really do not get it -- and their reactions indicate anxiety at being publicly exposed by unfamiliar argument as much as by direct lack of sympathy with the actual sentiments expressed.

It strikes me that the same approach might well be used eventually to account for the similar mixture of panic and hostility that gripped EC spokespersons on realising that Brexit was serious and led to their own sad and familiar repertoire of responses -- Brexit supporters must be ignorant, racist, easily fooled etc.