In principle, there’s nothing at all wrong
with the idea that the government should launch an
advertising campaign to encourage people to prepare for Brexit. The plan
does suffer more than a little from the absence of any certainty about what we
should all be doing to prepare for an event when they can’t tell us what’s
going to happen, but that level of incompetence is only to be expected. What
struck me, however, was that they see a particular problem in getting Brexit
supporters to prepare.
On first thoughts, one might reasonably
expect that Brexiteers would be the most clued-up and enthusiastic about the
changes – it is, after all, something that they’ve long been yearning for. But
the problem, in a nutshell, is that those who thought they were going to have
the penny and the bun simply don’t see any need to prepare. As the tender
document puts it, Brexit voters are “less likely to prepare as they don’t
believe in any potential negative consequences of leaving”. They’re
deluded, of course; but what this means in practice is that the people who did
the deluding now want to spend large sums of money on persuading those who they
successfully deluded into believing that Brexit would be painless to start preparing
for the changes that they told them wouldn’t happen.
Those who lied, lied and lied again by
telling people that the UK was so special that the EU27 would give us all our
current benefits with no downside are now using public money to tell people to
prepare for an unspecified set of changes whilst continuing to assert that the
EU will back down and let us have whatever we want, and continuing to deny that
they ever misled anyone in the first place. If they had any sense of shame or
integrity, they’d be squirming. In the absence of that, they’ll just keep
lying.
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2 comments:
Brexit is no big deal because we are world beating,world class and infallible! Or something like that.
That's the kind of tone that also applied to our Covid debacle. Instead of admitting a great measure of uncertainty, that many factors remained unknown or unquantified, Boris and his ministers relied on a diet totally made up of spin and wishful thinking. Making it up as they go along and justifying changes as being "guided by the science". What science remains to be seen.
Now Brexit has not relied on any form of science, per se, although it was implied all along that there was a data rational, empirical validity to the decision. Relying on an outright emotional justification was not acceptable to a bunch of politicians who have monetised everything they ever touched, so there has to be a business case. Now that case looks a bit thin but it's a bit late to switch back to the bare naked jingoistic nonsense that really sustains these Little Englanders when you peel away the false skins and make-up.
I think you are right, those who voted for Brexit are in a “it will be all right on the night” mode, the same kind of affliction that the Remainers had before the pole result.
The Great Unwashed came out to vote or I now read they are to be termed as the “simple minded” which I assume colours your view of the fact they believe the EU 27 will roll over. This is problem is not new as a warning was made as far back as 1909-
“So, one may almost say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country. The facts contradict this assumption.”
—James Bryce (1909, 35)
I stated after the vote that the deal will be dependant on world trade at the time of closure, well the world economy has been trashed , the car has gone over the cliff, bounced twice and fallen down a mineshaft and supply chains have been fractured ,so with or without a deal ,both scenarios will not pass the “ Strawberries in January test”
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