Fast and loose

According to the new Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, he made it clear during the 2016 referendum campaign “that we should strive for a good deal, but if that wasn’t available, that we should go on and make a success of Brexit … I was questioned on it by the BBC almost every time I appeared and so was Michael Gove… There’s all sorts of interviews which said that of course we’d prefer a deal, but that there would be a risk.” In Raab’s telling of events, people knew what they were voting for three years ago and as a result the government now has a mandate for a no-deal Brexit.

When challenged in a BBC interview as to the veracity of this statement, Raab responded by suggesting that “the institutional memory of the BBC is a bit sketchy on this as a whole.” Fortunately, those who appear prominently in the media leave a digital trail that can be mined to check whether their claims stand up to scrutiny. Both the BBC and Channel 4 have fact-checked Raab’s media interviews, social media posts, newspaper articles, speeches and Vote Leave campaign material only to conclude that there are no clear examples of Raab’s stated position. His consistent position was that the EU would be likely to offer the UK a trade deal because “it’s certainly not in the Europeans’ interest to erect trade barriers.” Indeed, in February 2016 he wrote a newspaper article suggesting that “The Remain campaign assert the EU would cut off its nose to spite its face, vindictively defying its own interests by shutting Britain out of its markets altogether. That’s not remotely credible.”

There are those who accuse Raab of being a “morally vacuous liar” who shamelessly holds to the view that his government has a mandate for a no-deal Brexit, despite the fact that the evidence points to the contrary. Others have pointed out that those who lie in the course of their job get fired but Raab has been rewarded with a promotion. I couldn’t possibly comment! But in all likelihood, Raab will get away with such falsehoods because the political dynamic has changed. We live in an era of political beliefs, not facts, which makes life difficult for those of us who seek at least some fig-leaf of empirical cover for the positions we hold.

All this is very dangerous because it erodes the lingering basis of trust between politicians and the electorate. It is one thing for politicians to be perceived to be lying; it is quite another to actually do so, particularly when the consequences of politicians’ actions have profound economic consequences. Dominic Raab’s rewriting of history means that voters did not have a chance to inform themselves of the consequences of a no-deal Brexit. Indeed, the evidence suggests that this issue did not impinge on voters’ consciousness until well after the referendum.

In order to look more closely at this issue, I took a look at Google search terms in the UK for Brexit-related keywords, starting with “no-deal Brexit.” The data do not give the exact number of searches but is reported as an index based at 100 for the maximum number of weekly searches. The latest data suggest that the highest value occurs for the week of 10 March 2019. More revealing, however, is that the index registers its first non-zero value only in March 2017 – 9 months after the referendum – and does not start to become a more prominent issue until the latter months of 2017. That is not exactly what you would call an informed electorate. Similarly, Google searches for phrase “hard Brexit” do not start to become more widespread until September 2016 (chart).

In my view, the government will be taking a huge risk in triggering a no-deal Brexit given the extent to which many people seemed unaware of such an outcome at the time they cast their vote. This may not be a problem if there are no adverse economic consequences, but if there are I would not like to be the one explaining why the government has taken such a course of action. As it happens, I maintain that Boris Johnson’s government does not really want to leave the UK without a  deal and that its tactic is designed to appeal to the party faithful in a bid to dissuade voters from defecting to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Indeed, I suspect that Johnson hopes parliament will block his no-deal Brexit plan which in turn will allow him to call a general election.

It is, however, an extremely risky strategy. A no-deal Brexit could be triggered by accident if parliament does not play ball. And it might even be the case that Johnson means what he says. But a look at the evidence makes it clear that voters did not consider the prospect of a no-deal Brexit in 2016 and they may be reluctant to support a government that mismanages the UK’s exit from the EU. If Johnson wants to remain in office for any length of time, which surely is his aim, he either has to tone down the rhetoric or ensure that a no-deal Brexit does not result in the disruption that many fear. Unfortunately, he cannot guarantee the latter.