,
16 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
Lots of people correctly pointing out that I should have mentioned Russia and campaign spending violations in my Brexit ‘megathread’. Think I didn’t because, while it clearly matters, I don’t think it changed the result. Bear with me. 1/
We know two things for certain. Russia interfered and Vote Leave spent over its limits by channelling money to a front campaign called BeLeave. 2/
So we have evidence of criminality from two parties that had motive, means and opportunity - Russia on one hand and the Leave campaign on the other. 3/
While both shared a strategic aim - get Britain out of the EU - their motives were different. The Leave campaign represents a longstanding tradition of rejecting ever closer political union with Europe. Putin wants to disrupt an alliance that opposes his rampant kleptomania. 4/
But that doesn’t mean Leave and Russia didn’t collude. @Arron_banks’s “largest political donation in British history” has a distinct whiff of stale vodka about it. What is undeniable is that if Russia interfered, they interfered for Leave, whether Leave endorsed it or not. 5/
So what about the means? Mainly money and influence. Or more precisely, money to buy influence. Looking at the money first - even with @Arron_banks’s offshore largesse and all the cheating - it was an uneven contest. 6/
Remain had much larger resources than Leave. Up to the period of ‘purdah’ pre-vote, the govt deployed the civil service, the offices of state, new research and campaign materials, like the infamous £9m mailshot backing Remain. These dwarfed anything Leave had at its disposal 7/
What about influence? Didn’t Leave swing it with hooky Facebook data and fiendishly clever microtargeting? Here’s the thing. Microtargeting doesn’t really work, or certainly not in the way dodgy bastards like Cambridge Analytica claim it does. 8/
Consider this. Consumer goods giant P&G recently took $200 million out of its digital advertising budget and its reach actually went UP. Now tell me that microtargeting has magic, transformative powers. Like all comms, it has an effect, but let’s keep it in perspective. 9/
And if, as we are led to believe, everyone who voted Leave is a racist, octogenarian cave troll, that’s not the traditional constituency you reach through social media. I don’t for a minute believe this does represent Leave voters, but you can’t have it both ways. 10/
What I think *really* happened was that Vote Leave ran a more effective campaign. They had a clear message - “Take back control” - tailored to a very specific audience - swing voters who felt disenfranchised - which they delivered with impressively single-minded discipline. 11/
Leave tapped into an ancient British tendency to a) be Eurosceptic and b) stick two fingers up to overweening authority. By contrast, Remain’s campaign consisted of people who were seen as the problem - the ‘elites’ - lecturing voters on the virtues of the status quo. 12/
The other thing Remain failed to do was overturn decades of neglect. Prior to Brexit, who was making the case for Europe? Where were the ardent Europhiles? It’s genuinely brilliant that so many people have now woken up to their political beliefs, but *timing*, people, timing 13/
Crucially, polling data doesn’t support an anomalous swing to Leave. Polls were split 50:50 and never really moved. In fact, the times Remain was up, there were more phone than online polls. This is likely because people feel the need to justify their opinions on the phone. 14/
So Leave cheated and Russia interfered, but it didn’t swing the result so it doesn’t matter, right? Wrong. It debases our democracy and emboldens our enemies. Elements of the campaign radically coarsened our political discourse, which has only become coarser since /15
It matters because of who ultimately benefits from the current situation, i.e. Putin. His strategic aim is to disrupt and sow discord - Europe / Britain divided against themselves, not united against Russia. And like the mugs we are, that’s exactly what we’re giving him. /16
