Brexit and Democracy
- Rich Pettitt
- Sep 11, 2019
- 7 min read
It’s hard to avoid the topic of Brexit in day to day life. The news consistently reports updates on the latest developments, colleagues at work and even your friends and family all talk heatedly on the matter.
There have been, and still are, some parts to this whole scenario which are, quite honestly, making me feel very uncomfortable. And I’m not talking about the “you voted leave because you’re a racist” or “you Remoaners want to be the EU’s lapdog” kind of discourses. In fact, whether Brexit was or was not all about immigration, £350million buses or the state of the economy is not my concern here.
What I am concerned about is that Brexit has shown how brittle and frail the idea of democracy really is. It’s an idea that has been on my mind for the last few years and each change only highlights this. In fact, if you do want to see how fragile democracies can be then you need look no further back in time than the 1940’s (see the BBC documentary Rise of the Nazis episode 2 as a good reference). And it doesn’t stop there, aspects of Brexit have also shown how easy it is to influence the general public and break electoral law without any severe consequences to the perpetrators.
Usually I hate to play the numbers game, but regarding Brexit a very telling story is revealed. When we look at the figures from the 2010 general election, we see a lower electorate engagement overall. In 2010 the registered electorate was 45.6million people, of which only 29.6million (54%) turned out to vote. The 2015 General Election, the year before the referendum vote, of the 46.3million electorate 30.6million (66.2%) people voted.
So, what could have prompted such a dramatic increase in voter turnout between those 5 years? Had people finally grown tired of the Coalotion or was there something the Conservative Party had concocted to re-ignite the flames of voter confidence in their own party?
Quite possibly it was the latter. David Cameron had highlighted how little the Lib Dem vote meant to him, he raised the price of student loans (which deputy PM and leader of the Lib Dems Nick Clegg held as primary campaign pledge against), and introduced instead policies on property ownership for the younger generation, the usual NHS lip-service policies of more funding and , wait for it, the manifesto pledge of a referendum vote on EU membership. Significantly this pledge was not on the 2010 manifesto, nor was it possibly ever even on the cards.
I’m not saying that the pledge to hold a referendum vote on EU membership was the sole reason why the turnout increased dramatically from 2010 to 2015, after all, the world was still reeling from the financial crash of 2008, the Tories were riding high on austerity and anti-immigration laws. But it definitely helped to set the stage up for what was to follow.
The 2016 referendum on EU membership saw 72.2% of the 46.5million registered voters turn out to express their opinion on the matter, that’s 33.3million people. It goes without saying that we know what the result was. That’s not up for contention.
The boulder didn’t stop rolling there either, the 2017 General Election called by Prime Minister May saw a turnout of 68.8%, 33.9million voters. What was the hot topic of this election? Naturally, it was Brexit.
Clearly, Brexit has done something very powerful in capturing the passions of the general public. Voter turnout hasn’t been this strong in a long while and it’s from here that the next point emerges: the ballot paper question.
I find it incomprehensible that such an important part of being a UK citizen was asked in such an incompetent manner. The question:
“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”
Yes or No…Yes or No.
On the surface it’s a relatively banal and unassuming proposition. Leave or remain. The problem, which has become apparent, is that the winning vote, to Leave, has raised even more questions that are so complex that it’s hard to imagine why they weren’t asked in the first place, or even what the actual consequences in either situation (leave or remain) would mean to the UK. We now live in a political nightmare.
Let’s say that the original result is honoured, the question has now become “do we leave with or without a deal?” This question wasn’t on the ballot paper, so it’s fair to assume that either scenario is correct. Parliament is neither right nor wrong to pursue Brexit with the outcome of deal or no deal, it’s even united all members of all political parties in one thing: confusion.
The point that I’m making here is this: politics in a democracy has no room to be so vague on matters of extreme importance. The issues presented by Brexit should have been very deeply thought out before a question was even printed onto the paper. It also shows how naïve our politicians are, they second guessed ‘the will of the people’ by showing that they are out of touch with people, and that goes for both sides of the argument. Democracy is only effective if everyone who is a part of it has the power to express their opinions on well informed reasoning, after all, it is a discourse of all people (and before anyone says “did you just call the Leavers thick? I really didn’t).
Now it’s time to address the hooded spectres in the corner of the room, the fates of politics. There are two elements that I think it worthy to speak about now, as they are critical to modern day democracy and show how easy it is to manipulate a system in the hope that nobody is looking. Firstly, the breach of electoral law by the Vote Leave campaign. Secondly, the danger of data analytics as highlighted by Carole Cadwalladr and her exposure of Cambridge Analytica.
Electoral Law during the referendum dictated that campaigns for Leave or Remain were confined to a £7million spending limit. This is to ensure that neither side has an advantage over the other regarding spending power in the months leading up to the referendum vote in 2016. A complaint was launched against the Vote Leave campaign to the Electoral Commission who found that their total spending had reached £7.4million. The breach indicated that Vote Leave had attempted to funnel extra funds through a Leave youth organisation called BeLeave which had ties to members of the official Vote Leave campaign. The same party was also fined for breaching data protection laws. In the run up to the vote the Leave campaign sent out over 190,000 text messages with propaganda to influence people’s votes, this was done without the party being able to prove that the recipients had consented to the initial contact.
Inevitably, the Leave campaign was fined £61,000 for their breaching of electoral law. Laws which are designed to create a fairer campaigning platform in a free-market democracy. But it highlights something more sinister, that despite this there has been no serious ramifications for those who broke the law and that the result of the referendum still holds sway. Have we allowed democracy to simply be bought even after such exposure? If you’re not convinced, then maybe the power of data analytics will persuade you.
In 2017, Carole Cadwalladr wrote a very chilling report into the shaded world of data analytics and its influence on democracies across the globe, focussing on the Trump administration and Vote Leave.
As part of its £7.4million spending spree, Vote Leave spent £3.9million employing the services of a data analytics company from Canada called AggregateIQ. Upon further investigation, it became apparent that AggregateIQ was merely a shell company under the umbrella of Cambridge Analytica, the US based firm responsible for running parts of the Trump campaign. The implications are serious, a part of electoral law forbids the involvement of foreign powers to influence domestic politics. In this case, it was that Vote Leave and Trump were using the same companies to help manage their campaigns, Trump was also overtly anti-EU regarding the UK’s relationship. Cadwalladr also uncovered Nigel Farage and Robert Mercer (former CEO of Cambridge Analytica) had been seen together on the Trump campaign.
This, of course, doesn’t explain the role with which AggregateIQ played in the Vote Leave campaign. Data analytics companies such as AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica use aspects of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to collect information from as many individuals as possible. This can range from basic information such as your name, sex, age and location to the very things which you identify as a person, like your ‘likes’, interests and search history. In the age of data this is a very powerful resource, Cambridge Analytica had realised through years of experience that this information could be weaponised to influence politics. By employing AggregateIQ Vote Leave intended to use the data which millions of UK citizens stored on their social media to influence people’s voting habits. This was achieved through the creation of fake accounts, fake news and targeting individuals to follow certain politicians and political groups that they were most aligned with, in this instance, with those dedicated to leaving the EU.
At that point in time there were no rules in electoral law that said this was in any way a breach of policy. The implications, however, are far reaching and dangerous. By subversively using people’s data, companies have been able to create algorithms which target the psyche. Without realising, millions of people (500 million people had their data breached by Cambridge Analytica globally) have potentially had their minds made up without them consciously knowing.
We live in a very dangerous time of politics. Although Brexit has rekindled people’s passions to express their democratic will, it is fair to say that democracy has never been quite so volatile in my own lifetime. Simply put, Brexit is a Molotov cocktail. Politicians filled the bottle with a highly flammable question and asked the people to ignite it, what we didn’t know is that for the whole time there were other individuals throwing petrol on the ground from the shadows. Data analytical companies have shown how in the wrong hands our information provides valuable resources to help win elections without breaking the law, but for want of a better alternative, have broken our moral trust in democracy. As I stated at the beginning, this writing hasn’t been intended to throw in refute the referendum result, it was to cast some light on our relationship with democracy since the 2016 vote.
All I could hope, is that from this point onwards we all take more responsibility for the decisions we make politically. Check the sources, question beliefs and don’t let the money talk for us.
If you wish to read or watch some more material on the matter, then check out:
The Great Hack on Netflix
Vote Leave breach of Electoral Law
The Great British Brexit Robbery: how our democracy was hijacked by Carole Cadwalldr for the Observer
Election Results and Turnouts
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums
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