Detoxifying Brexit

The Brexit debate has become ever-more fraught, and whatever happens next it is likely to remain so. Which poses the question: what can we as individuals do to dial down the hysteria and civilize the debate? Here are some suggestions.

Draw the right inference from the media.

Whenever I hear a Brexiter on the BBC, I’m inclined to believe more strongly in the case for Remain. Be it Mark Francois thinking he’s re-enacting the Battle of Britain, or the cynical bad faith or Raab and Patel’s claim that Johnson’s deal is great for Northern Ireland because it gives it “frictionless trade” with the EU, their arguments are often counter-advocacy.

But we should not infer from this that all arguments for Brexit are nonsense. Instead, they tell us more about the media and politics than about Brexit. They tell us that selection mechanisms are broken – that MPs are selected for fanaticism not competence and that the BBC wants “good TV” and “senior sources” rather than to enlighten its audience.

Construct a counter-argument for yourself.

If you support Brexit, ask: what is the strongest case for remaining? And if you don’t, ask: what is the best argument for leaving? For me, the strongest argument is not so much that the EU is a barrier to trade with the rest of the world – high tariffs (pdf) might instead be a sign of the difficulties of striking free trade deals – but that it suffers a democratic deficit and, in its treatment of Greece and tolerance of fiscal austerity, is insufficiently pro-growth.

Also, we should ask: what are the weaknesses of our side? Those who favour remaining should ask why their campaign failed in 2016, especially with the “left behind.” And those who support leaving should ask why all reputable economists think that doing so will make us poorer. 

Ask: why would intelligent people support the other side?

The 52% who voted Leave are not all fools, any more than are the 48% who voted Remain. As Simon Kuper says in a different context, “treat every situation as a learning opportunity.”

Forget conspiracy theories.

Leave supporters are not disaster capitalists. And Remain supporters don’t support EU membership because the EU pays them.

Ask: what type of democracy do we want, and how can we sustain it?

Of course, Brexit is no longer just (or even mainly) about the EU. Some who support Leave, I suspect care more about respecting the “will of the people” than about the details of Brexit. The conflict, therefore, is about whether we want direct or parliamentary democracy.

Both sides should scrutinize their own position here. Leave supporters should remember that the “will of the people” will not always be on their side. Would Jacob Rees-Mogg or Iain Duncan Smith be so keen on the will of the people if it were used - as polls suggest it could be - to justify widespread nationalization? They should therefore ask what sort of filters should be applied to the will of the people. And remain supporters should ask: why has parliamentary democracy become so unpopular, and what can be done to reverse this? 

Avoid cognitive biases.

It’s easy to see cognitive biases in the other side. I suspect that Brexit supporters are prone to a form of halo effect and wishful thinking in believing that Brexit will be good for the economy.

It’s harder, though, to see them in ourselves But this is all the more reason to try. I fear I am prone to groupthink and deformation professionnelle (the tendency for ones’ professional training to distort one’s perspective: I tend to agree with the mass of economists who oppose Brexit, and I perhaps overweight economic considerations and underweight ones about identity. I might also be guilty of asymmetric Bayesianism: I’m so revolted by Farage and Francois that perhaps I become more militantly pro-Remain than the evidence might warrant.

Dial down the fanaticism

Millions of people are wrong about millions of things all the time. Being wrong is the human condition and is forgivable. What matters is that our errors be corrigible. And this requires that we not be fanatics, that we stand back from our beliefs – that we adopt what Richard Rorty called liberal irony.

You might object that a 6%+ hit (pdf) to GDP is something to be worked up about. Up to a point. The distributional impact of this (to an extent) is a matter of political choice – a choice separable from Brexit. And I suspect that Christoph Merkle’s finding about the financial crisis applies to losses caused by economic policy as well: the anticipation of them hurts us more than the actual experience.

Take identity out of it.

So far, I’ve avoided the terms “Brexiter” and “Remainer”. There’s a reason for this. The nastiest disputes are those about identity: if you think you are underpaid and your boss doesn’t, you can negotiate but if you think he’s an arse and he thinks you’re a serial whiner, things will be more fraught.

For example, Simon says he is angry about Brexit because Brexiters are denying that economics can be knowledge. From one perspective, his anger is understandable: they are denying his (well-earned) identity as an economic expert.

But we can change the perspective. Brexiters don’t really support Brexit because of its economic benefits: belief in them is, as a I say, a halo effect rather than a rational or even sincere belief. Instead, they see Brexit as an intrinsic good, an expression of national sovereignty; this is why Sajid Javid thinks it “self-evidently” in the national interest. What we have (or should have) therefore is a dispute between two different conceptions, of intrinsic versus instrumental goods.   

The Leaver-Remain divide is so bitter because it’s become not about our relations with Europe but a battle of identities, with the two sides now being proxies for other things. Remainers see Leavers as social conservatives; Leavers see Remainers as elitists.

 Remember: identities can change.

Herein, though, lies a reason for optimism: political identities can change. If I’d told you a mere four years ago that I was a Remainer, you wouldn’t have known what I was on about. Back then, relations with the EU were a low-salience matter: only around 10% of voters (pdf) thought them the most important issue. And we could have had a civilized debate about them, had we been bothered to do so.

Our political identities can therefore change. It’s for this reason that a lot of the most passionate disputes in the past now seem hard for us to understand – for example “wets vs dries” in the Tory party or the battles over Clause IV or nuclear weapons in Labour. This gives us hope that a return to sanity is possible

There is, however, a problem here. The people who most need to know all of the above are those who are least likely to read it. The mainstream media seem keener to inflame passions than to dampen them.

A bit of me thinks the reason for this isn’t just to do with winning clickbait – something which the BBC, unforgiveably, seems as concerned about as the commercial media. Whilst we are divided about Brexit, we are not divided about something else – class. In this sense, Brexit hysteria suits our rulers just fine.

Comments

[Jim]

"And those who support leaving should ask why all reputable economists think that doing so will make us poorer. "

Because economists (reputable or not) are sooooooo good at predicting the future............

[Jim]

"You might object that a 6%+ hit (pdf) to GDP is something to be worked up about."

Fair enough, it (the potential for some loss of wealth we otherwise might have had) is a reason to be in favour of Remain. However if you are also in favour of Greta Thunberg and her campaign to make us all poorer, perhaps a little consistency might be in order? I suspect that the split between Leave and Remain is the parallel of the split of Global Warming/Climate change, in that those in favour of Remain are more likely to support the requirement to decarbonise the economy, and vice versa. As such its a bit hypocritical to complain on the one hand that Brexit will make us all poorer, and on the other that we all need to be poorer in order to reduce our carbon footprint.

[Dave Timoney]

@Jim,

Decarbonising the economy is not an end in itself, any more than making ourselves poorer is. The goal is to avoid global warming causing greater loss. As such, it is a strategy of prevention. Likewise, many advocating remain are arguing that we should prevent an avoidable loss to GDP. Whether you agree with them or not, these positions are perfectly consistent.

[Jim2]

Plainly you are the voice of sweet reason. We all take a step back and look again at Brexit.

But that is not the game at all, the game is a takeover by apex predators who want power - all of it. The idea that there might be some advantage or no advantage to Brexit seems irrelevant, the name of the game and the objective is power. A few or more than a few percent GDP will not affect those who have the power, only the little people and they don't matter.

That this game has run into the sand for the moment is a temporary setback. There seems no political advantage to be had whining 'this was a bad idea', the only way now is to leave on lousy terms or even lousier terms. Reasonablness will be seen as weakness by the MSM.

[paul]

I think this is great, yet it's another incisive, thought-provoking piece that makes no mention at all of the millions of people being left in the shit because of Brexit. There isn't one mention of us in Johnson's agreement. They barely bring us up in the Commons - yet there are Brits in Europe in all sorts of complex family and work situations who are absolutely shitting themselves. And that, I'm afraid, is why it's very, very difficult to have sympathy for the other side. I'm supposed to be okay with real people's lives being ruined because somebody in the UK wants a different 'identity'. It's not going to happen. I'm never going to understand them or wish them well. I'm only going to find it blindingly selfish, stupid and reckless.

[Guano]

I may have said this before, but I was at a talk by Stefan de Rynck (an assistant to Barnier) at Chatham House in December 2017. He was explaining the position of the EU in negotiations and he pointed out that the EU is an association of states - the member states have created the EU and its associated institutions in order to work together and to trade. The rules and processes are there to allow that cooperation. The EU does not tell the member states what to do - the member states have created the rules and the EU applies them to all member states on behalf of those member states. If the UK doesn't like the rules it can withdraw, but that means that it won't have a close relationship with the other member states, because the various EU institutions were created to facilitate close relationships - working together means rules and processes. He thought that it was surprising that the UK appeared to think that the EU was imposing rules on the UK - the UK has agreed to the rules that the EU enforces and in many cases took the lead to create them (such as Thatcher and the Single Market).

In the subsequent questions to de Rynck (mainly from journalists), it was clear that about half the questioners understood what he had said and about half did not (or pretended not to). The latter's questions were of the form "why can't we have X?" which shouldn't need answering if the questioner understood what de Rynck had been saying.

This divide in understanding about the nature of the EU (association of states versus evil empire that imposes on the UK)makes detoxification difficult. In my view, almost 30 years of stuff in certain parts of the press have convinced parts of the population that the EU is an evil empire and that makes any kind of coming together very difficult. The UK may require outside conflict-resolution assistance, because those who understand what the EU is are never going to accept the false premise that the EU is an evil empire. It is quite reasonable to discuss what relationship the UK should have with the rest of Europe and change it, but it isn't possible to cooperate with Europe and not the EU (as the Vote Leave slogan suggested) - the UK has helped to give Europe institutions and it isn't now possible to have a relationship with Europe without those institutions.

Recently on Flip Chart Rick's blog, Dipper (who sometimes comments here) has commented that Johnson's deal allows the UK to have a close relationship with Europe without being ruled by the EU. Should I have desisted from pointing out that the UK has never been ruled by the EU? Should I have desisted from saying that leaving the CU, EEA and CJEU etc means that the UK cannot have a close relationship with Europe?

What does the panel think?

[georgesdelatour]

Detailed polls have shown for some time that:

1. ≈ 40% of voters dislike the EU and would vote to leave under almost any circumstances.
2. ≈ 30% of voters think the EU is awesome and would vote to stay under almost any circumstances.
3. ≈ 15% of voters dislike the EU but think leaving might be too economically risky.

In other words, even when there’s a poll majority for Remain, it’s still a majority tinted with Euroscepticism (The only Remainer who actually seems to understand this is Jeremy Corbyn, but it hasn’t done him much good with Remainers to date). If there’s a repeat Referendum and some fresh European crisis occurs during the campaign, parts of the 15% will peel away to Leave again and the vote may be lost.

Here’s what I think Remain should do if they want to win:

1. Promise mandatory UK-wide referenda on all future institutional changes to the EU.
2. Make all the leaders of the Remain campaign say - to camera - that they oppose the creation of an EU Army. Politician-style equivocation, saying it’s all in the future, and voters can apply the brakes when the issue arises, won’t cut it. The 15% interpret that as “I really want that army now if not sooner. But you’re paying attention now. I’ll sneak it in when you’re distracted by some other issue”.
3. Make all the leaders of the Remain campaign say - to camera - that they disagree with Guy Verhofstadt’s speech to the LibDems, in which he said that empires are awesome, and the EU should become an empire too. Of all the EU figures who regularly show up in the UK media, Verhofstadt is the most repellent to the 15%. They see him as a psycho-federalist ideologue. Junker seems like the cliche of an EU pork barrel sleaze bag, and Barnier is our negotiating opponent. That leaves Tusk. If he learns to be more circumspect, Tusk could actually be the EU politician the 15% could warm to. He feels the least ideological, the least obsessed with “the project”.
4. Find an issue - any issue - where Remain can pledge to fight for the repatriation of powers already centralised. The point is to demonstrate that the ratchet of centralisation is reversible. There’s a good case for devolving the control of fishing grounds to coastal communities, for instance. If you don’t like that, find another issue with the same logic of reversing centralisation.

[dilbert dogbert]

Over here to the west I sometimes wish we had your problem rather than the one we have.
We did sort of have it back in 1860. We are still living with the consequences.
You will survive your agony. I am not sure we will survive ours. Good Luck.

[georgesdelatour]

@Guano

I think de Rynck is engaging in sophistry. He’s basically saying that if a previous government of an EU member state has agreed to centralise certain powers at the EU level, in terms of sovereignty that’s just the same as if that state had retained those powers for its national government in perpetuity. There’s no “ratchet effect”. So if a previous government of Greece has agreed to replace the Drachma with the Euro, the current Euro Greek government cannot be told what to do by an EU-wide organ like the ECB, any more than the previous Drachma Greek government could. Is that a fair summary of his claim?

Isn’t it obvious that EU membership requires more loss of self-government than, say, NAFTA membership? It seems you don’t think so. The thing is, I honestly can’t remember anyone proposing a NAFTA currency or central bank, never mind a NAFTA army. Have I got that all wrong?

If you’re absolutely certain this is all a mistake, isn’t there a simple way to clear it up? Let’s have a treaty specifying the sovereign-state-type powers the EU is forbidden from acquiring. That would surely put all these fears to rest.

Many historians of the United States have pointed out that, before the Civil War, written documents would say “the United States are…”. After the Civil War they started to say “the United States is…”. Clearly some significant creeping centralisation had occurred.

[Ralph Musgrave]

"its treatment of Greece". Er - the plight of Greece stems from it's being in the Eurozone, not from its being in the EU. Greece cannot devalue so as to regain competitiveness, whereas the UK can: the UK has its own currency.

[georgesdelatour]

@Ralph Musgrave

Again, this feels like a Eurosceptic argument for Remain: that it’s the opt outs and equivocations that make our EU membership really worth retaining; that it all works well for us as long as we stick to being as half-hearted, dilatory and unenthusiastic about “the project” as possible. Remain, but continue to be the Eeyore of the EU.

I think this argument has a lot of merit. But it’s not one that comes easily to EU “true believers” like Jo Swinson or Dominic Grieve.

[Jim]

" the member states have created the rules and the EU applies them to all member states on behalf of those member states. "

Except when its France or Germany breaking the rules, then the rules don't apply.

[Bill Bedford]

>Except when its France or Germany breaking the rules, then the rules don't apply.

Or the UK, where EU directives were gold plated to HMG more control.