It has been another extraordinary week in post-Brexit Britain. Due to the horrific war in Ukraine, many Brexit-related issues currently seem to be taking a backseat (most explicitly, Liz Truss is putting on hold the plan to trigger of Art. 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol). The war continues to dominate the news cycle, but this week the focus shifted to the UK government’s response to the people leaving Ukraine and seeking refuge in other European countries. In this context, the government has unleashed a whirlwind of lies, falsehoods, and untruths that makes one gasp for air! It seems like the government is exploiting the war to take to new levels its strategy of gaslighting the country into believing Brexit is working, the government is doing a great job with everything it does, and ultimately that Britain is the greatest place on earth. It becomes increasingly clear that Brexit never was an end in itself, but always only a steppingstone to something else, something more sinister. It now looks like Brexit was the training ground on which the UK population’s gullibility was tested. Once the people’s gullibility established, the government’s post-truth strategy is being rolled out across all policy fields with the goal of profoundly reshaping British society in the interest of those in power. The most striking sign of the continuing spread of post-truth politics was the literally unbelievable debates that took place around the existence or otherwise of a visa application centre (VAC) for Ukrainian refugees in Calais.
Is there a UK visa application centre in Calais?
The question whether or not the UK Home Office had set up a UK VAC in Calais seems to concern basic facts that one would have assumed should be easy enough to establish. It concerns the sort of ‘brute facts’ that do not require much interpretation and can be tested against a fairly incontestable and fairly objective reality. Any eyewitness could travel to Calais, take a look around, and see whether or not there is a visa application centre there allowing Ukrainian refugees to apply for visas to come to the UK. And yet, in post-Brexit Britain establishing whether that is indeed the case took three days!
On Sunday Home Secretary Priti Patel reportedly promised that she was ‘surging staff across all application centres across the entire European Union’ including to Calais. The trade union representing Home Office staff, however, pointed out the that ‘surge team’ consisted of just seven staff, and the BBC’s Mark Easton found that “the Home Office representation [in Calais] amounted to three men at a trestle table in a deserted departure hall at the port, with bags of ready salted crisps and Kit Kats.” On Monday, Patel claimed in the Commons that a VAC had been set up ‘en route to Calais.’ Her precise words were: “I confirm that we have set up a bespoke VAC en route to Calais but away from the port because we have to prevent that surge from taking place.” When Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper challenged that claim, Patel retracted by stating “I think the right hon. Lady did not hear what I said earlier. I said that I can confirm that we are setting up another VAC en route to Calais—I made that quite clear in my remarks earlier on.” (this is Lord Paddock’s account (col. 1335) of what was said according to Official Report, Commons, 7/3/22; cols. 27, 40.). The following day, on Tuesday the 8th of March, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss then revealed that a ‘pop up’ VAC would be set up in Lille – not in Calais, but even that claim was hard to verify; as were claims that new humanitarian routes for Ukrainian refugees coming to the UK were being established. The confusion led even conservative MPs like Roger Gale to criticise the Home Secretary for misleading Parliament.
The question of the VAC in Calais is just the most egregious example of patent lying by government ministers around the UK’s reaction to the Ukrainian war. Unpicking each one of them would take a great deal of time and more words than anyone would care to read, I’m sure. Indeed, as the Guardian’s Nick Cohen put it this week: The trouble with liars is they force you to waste everyone’s time by stating the obvious.
But the obvious needs to be stated. And that is that despite all the bluster about UK’s ‘world leading’ response to the refugee crisis, the reality is that while the EU is offering Ukrainian refugees a three year residency without visa, the UK is the only European country to impose a visa requirement and is mainly busy refusing people entry into the country.
Yet, in a further sign of just how far post-truth our government has gone, rather than keeping quiet about that shameful difference in approach with other European countries, the Home Office is trying to gaslight the UK population into believing that its visa scheme for Ukrainian refugees is somehow an achievement. It even tweeted about it being the first in the world since the invasion. The reality behind that claim to world leadership, of course, is that imposing a visa scheme in the first place is not a sign of support and openness, let alone of ‘world leadership’ in the handling of the refugee crisis, but one of pettifogging unkindness.
To justify its actions, the government was trying to construe a threat emanating from Ukrainian refugees. The apex of cynicism was reached when the PM, Priti Patel, and her under-secretary Kevin Foster all claimed that accepting Ukrainian refugees would risk letting Russian agents into the country. Foster stated in Parliament that “[w]ith incidents like Salisbury still in our minds, the Government will not take chances with the security of this country and our people.”
The cynicism of this line of ‘defence’ of an inhumane approach to Ukrainian refugees is genuinely gut-wrenching if one considers that the highest echelons of UK politics readily overrule any concerns about security risks emanating from Russian infiltration when it suits their personal and political agendas. Besides the fact that Russian spies clearly have much more effective ways of infiltrating UK politics than disguising as refugees, the reference to the Skripal poisoning is also utterly ludicrous given what we know about that incident. It is much more likely that the latter was the result of the UK political class – and especially the Tory party’s – cosy relationship with Russians ‘who saw the UK as lacking purpose and resolve’ rather than having anything to do with immigration.
Yet, the whirlwind of lies, false claims, challenges to these claims, and then new claims that then also turn out to be false sends one’s head spinning. And that – presumably – is the whole point.
Why? Incompetence, necessary xenophobia, and (self-)Zersetzung
The most charitable – probably naïve – explanation of why the government adopts this post-truth strategy is that rather than a deliberate strategy it is a result of the incompetence of individual members of government and of the well-establish chaotic way the PM runs the Downing Street operations. Could it be that the PM and his cabinet ministers are simply completely out of their depth and resort to lies and falsehoods, because they are ignorant and make things up as they go along? There is probably an element of truth to that. Truss – for instance – often looks like a deer in the headlights of a truck when she is put on the spot. Thus, her statement that she would support British citizens going to fight in Ukraine – which may very well be unlawful – seems like something she said without thinking too much and hoping it was a popular thing to say. Similarly, in Patel’s defence, news emerged on Saturday that partly her indecisive and mean-spirit response to the refugee situation may not have been of her own choosing, but the result of the PM shooting down different more generous refugee plans the Home Office came up with. Johnson’s shopping trolley approach to running government – and perhaps also the realisation that helping Ukrainian refugees is actually very popular – may also explain what seems like a surprising U-turn announced on Sunday that the government would now offer private individuals £350 a week for hosting Ukrainian refugees.
Another – less charitable – explanation, advanced by Nick Cohen, is that Tories genuinely believe that only nastiness will keep them in power, because supposedly that is what people vote for when they vote Tory. The government’s attitude towards Ukrainian refugees could reflect their perception that ‘mass immigration’ from the EU is what spurred the rise of UKIP and sunk the Labour party. Therefore, Tories may believe that ‘if they forget their base’s xenophobia for a moment, they will suffer the same fate.’ This does not seem like a rational strategy given that a vast majority of the UK’s population seems to be in favour of a more generous approach to Ukrainians. Yet, Cohen points out that Tories may be trapped in their own lies in the sense that liars simply cannot conceive of others not lying and therefore may not believe whatever the polls say about popular support for refugees.
A different explanation is provided by Chris Grey in this week’s Brexit & Beyond blog referring to the Stasi strategy of psychological warfare called Zersetzung. Here, a constant stream of lies is mixed in with truth so that it becomes all but impossible to tell what is and what is not real to the point where one has to be careful not to buy into the lies oneself. Worse still, there is a distinct possibility that – just like pathological liars – Johnson, Patel, and others in government are unable to tell the difference between truth and fiction and actually believe their own lies. Indeed, their lies are not just justifications of their actions or strategic tools, but they may be performative in the sense of creating an alternative reality that the liar believes actually exists. If you want something bad enough, the wish becomes reality – at least in your head. Hence the medical term ‘wish psychosis.’
Whichever explanation comes closest to the truth, the shocking fact is that whatever the Tories do seems to be working. While polls of the PMs popularity are pretty dire (but probably increasing since the beginning of the war in Ukraine), one third of people in the country still intend to vote Conservative at the next election. This seems to be supported by recent byelection results: While the Conservatives did not manage to unseat Labour in Erdington, they still received 36.3% of the votes, only 3.8% down from the 2019 GE (despite Brexit, Covid, cost of living crisis).
Why are people falling for it?
There are many reasons for the continuing strong support for the Conservatives. Importantly, two-party systems lead to identification with a given party that is quite robust to actual policy changes and government performance. Many people identify as “Tory” or “Labour” voters regardless of who runs the party at the moment and what their policies are. Conversely, in two-party systems ‘hating’ one party provides a strong incentive to vote for the only available alternative come what may. The only other solutions are to cast a ‘useless vote,’ i.e. for a party with no chance of winning, or to abstain – which many people did in Erdington for instance.
Yet the effect of the party system still leaves a puzzle unsolved, namely that people must be aware of the lies, but do not seem to object to that sort of behaviour in politics. That is an important puzzle, because it tells us something about post-Brexit politics which potentially has far-reaching consequences for British democracy.
Why are people seemingly so tolerant towards the government’s lies? One oft-mentioned reason is that the lying was ‘priced in’ when people were voting for Johnson. The promise of ‘getting Brexit done’ led people to give the PM a blank check to do whatever it takes to achieve this goal – including serial lying.
A deeper reason, however, is that lying is action and people want action. Lying means that you are altering reality – you are doing something to it: You are changing the world. Truth telling on the other hand is almost by definition conservative. You have to acknowledge the world ‘as it is’ and accept that some things are outside your control. Therefore, truth telling is at times a frustrating and almost impotent activity. There are facts that you cannot change – at least not in the short term and not with easy solutions. Therefore, truth requires patience.
After forty years of economic mismanagement that has led to deindustrialisation, finanicalisation, and then austerity and declining living standards for all but the most well-off, that sort of helplessness when faced with the realities of post-industrial Britain has become increasingly unbearable for those who suffered most. People wanted change – at any cost. That’s why ‘Get Brexit Done!’ was such a powerful slogan that led the Conservatives to a once in a generation majority. It was a promise to change the country – and given its current state (as of 2019) any change may have seemed better to people than doing nothing.
While those who try and stick to truth have to make promises that are bound by reality, the liar’s possibilities for making promises are unlimited. Pies in the sky, castles in the air, sunlit uplands – anything goes. If we unshackle ourselves from the EU, anything is possible.
That is not to say, of course, that the Thatcher’s catch phrase that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA) to the unbridled free-market model of capitalism is an undisputable truth. The TINA-style market fatalism, which consists of claiming that ‘our hands are tied’ and that there is no escaping the fact that in the era of globalisation market forces necessarily have to dictate how we live our lives, is an equally questionnable discourse. What we would need, instead, is finding back to that narrow path between the exaggerated fatalist determinism that market-fundamentalists created based on the new economic realities and the outright denial of any such realities that Brexit is based on. This week’s news suggest that we are heading in the other direction.
Brexit, it would seem, has demonstrated to politicians just how powerful lies in politics can be. If you are bold enough, if you lie about the right things, and discursively change reality in the right way, there seems to be no limit to what you can achieve with lies.
It is also much easier to just go on lying about things rather than putting in place public policies that deliver on your promises (which populists are notoriously bad at). An interesting example this week were lies about levelling up. Posters have started appearing at Liverpool bus stops, which claim that the construction of the new Royal Liverpool Hospital was a result of the government’s levelling up agenda. Yet, Rachel Clarke pointed out on Twitter that the hospital in question had been approved by the last labour government in 2009 and construction had started in 2013 and was supposed to be completed by 2017. From the government’s perspective, taking credit for an already existing project is of course much easier than giving its levelling up slogan any real substance.
Wither the mass wish psychosis
Telling the truth is acknowledging reality. That does not mean accepting reality, but it means starting from what really is. Of course, what exactly reality is is subject to processes of individual and social interpretation. Or in other words, ‘facts don’t speak’ they are made to talk by people’s narratives about them. But the fact is (pun not intended) that there is a factual basis for narratives in reality. That point may seem obvious, but the sad truth is that it is not just populist politicians, but even academics and experts of democracy who deny it.
Thus, Prof. John Kean sees it as part of an unjustified orthodoxy to consider that ‘brute facts’ exist independently of anyone’s attitude toward them. Instead, he seems to consider post-truth as a sign of a democratic mindset and democracy itself as “the best human weapon so far invented for guarding against the “illusions of certainty” and breaking up truth-camouflaged monopolies of power, wherever they operate.”
The problem with this view, of course, is that it confuses all sorts of concepts related to truth and reality and puts them all at the same level. There can be no doubt that many things we take for granted are the result of social conventions, culture, history and are hence contingent rather than objectively true. There can be no doubt that many things are a matter of opinion and therefore debatable.
Thus, in the case of the war in Ukraine: There is a legitimate debate to be had about whether or not the EU’s and NATO’s actions are to be blamed for Putin’s aggression of Ukraine. John Mearsheimer makes that argument forcefully, but other experts argue that it is largely wrong.
Yet, that insight does not mean, as Kean’s mistakenly suggests, that anything is up for debate. Here, Hannah Arendt’s famous essay Truth and Politics is helpful. She reminds us that there is a difference between philosophical truth – which is of the realm of humanly deviced ideas – and factual truths, which concern things that human intellect can interpret, but have a reality beyond that. For instance, various videos and posts have appeared online claiming that the war in Ukraine is a ’hoax.’ One post presents footage of an actor who has fake blood being applied to his face as proof that the war is a fabrication by the ‘mainstream media’ or Western governments. Yet, it is demonstrably true beyond any reasonable doubt that the footage dates from 2020 and stems from the shooting of a Ukrainian TV series. That is a ‘brute fact,’ which – contrary to the effect of NATO expansion – is not subject to opinion or interpretation. Of course, we could debate the truthfulness of the source who reassures us the video predates the invasion by two years. But unless we agree that the investigation of the sources truthfulness can itself be measured against a given reality, we risk drifting into the realm of fact-free conspiracy thinking and mass psychosis. Such conspiracy thinking is not a sign of healthy critical thinking conducive to democratic debate, but the beginning of the end of any reasoned discussion amongst people in a society. Or as Arendt puts it, the acknowledgement that the realm of facts independent of opinion or interpretation is probably more restricted than a naïve objectivist worldview suggests cannot “serve as a justification for blurring the dividing lines between fact, opinion, and interpretation, or as an excuse for the historian to manipulate facts as he pleases.”
Kean misquotes Arendt’s statement that “truth has a despotic character” as evidence that “democracy stands for a world beyond truth and post-truth.” Instead, what Arendt tells us is that truth cannot be swept away by politics – democratic or otherwise: “Truth, though powerless and always defeated in a head-on clash with the power that be, possesses a strength of its own: whatever those in power may contrive, they are unable to discover or invent a viable substitute for it.” Therefore, “[i]n their stubbornness, facts are superior to power; they are less transitory than power formations, which arise when men get together for a purpose but disappear as soon as the purpose is either achieved or lost.”
Yet, while truth will eventually prevail, that does not mean lying in politics can go unchallenged. Its impact on democratic culture is devastating. Indeed, to quote Arendt once more, “the surest long-term result of brainwashing is a peculiar kind of cynicism – an absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything, no matter how well this truth may be established.” The spread of this cynicism resulting from post-truth politics is becoming a real prospect in post-Brexit Britain with potentially devastating effects for democracy.
We are often told that we need to be careful with historical comparisons of our current situation to more extreme historical cases of authoritarianism. Comparing 21st century post-truth politics to what happened in Germany or Russia in the 1930s is seen as a sign of a lack of “understanding of the historical originality of the present drift towards government by gaslighting.”
Yet, while historical analogies and parallels are indeed always to be made carefully, the complacency about the gravity of the UK being governed by a gaslighting is equally – indeed much more – dangerous. Gaslighting, Zersetzung, post-truth may be used in new ways based on new information technologies, but their basic mechanisms are no different from when they were deployed by fascist and totalitarian forces in the 1930s. Therefore, there is no guarantee that they will not lead to the same outcome – namely, totalitarianism.
I have mentioned this many times before, for someone who studies the case of the post-socialist EU countries – in particular Hungary – present-day post-truth governments may very well – although not necessarily – be heading down the same path as historical authoritarian, fascist, and totalitarian movements did. Putin’s Russia – the model for current day’s post-truth populists in the west – arguably shows us what the worst is that can happen when this trend goes unchallenged. He has made Russia such a ‘hostile environment’ that not only no immigrant would want to move there, but more and more nationals do not want to live there anymore.
If the UK government’s pathological lying is allowed to spread further and to become a mass ‘wish psychosis’ it is hard to see how reasoned debate – the very basis of democracy – can survive. If that happens, the damage Johnson and the Tory party will do to British democracy will far outlast his premiership; re-establishing a democratic culture and undoing the hostile environment the Tories have created for everyone will be an enormous challenge.
Therefore, as Robert Saunders put it this week: “[…]when we demand that MPs punish political lying, it is not because we are embittered "Remoaners" who don't understand democracy. It is because we fear what happens when the defences against lying collapse; when leaders can generate so much fog and disinformation that the public can no longer plausibly hold them to account. We want to uphold the fortifications around the truth, because we have seen what pours in when they are breached.” The only thing we can do to prevent this from happening is to continue challenging the lies, even if it means wasting everyone’s time with way too long blog posts.