Useful Ideas Project

A website about examining the stories we're supposed to believe

The Vote Leave #Brexit Con Trick

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The Sun supports Britain leaving the EU
The Sun supports Britain leaving the EU. Why might that be?

The Vote Leave #Brexit Con Trick:

  • Voting is a decision.
  • Decisions are based on information.
  • Informed decisions require information.
  • Lacking the tools, time or inclination to gather and critically examine information from multiple sources, many voters are relying on emotion.
  • Emotion is easily manipulated.
  • The Leave campaign is the most popular with the least educated, says Financial Times research.
  • Leave campaign is targeting the least educated, the people with the least control over their lives.
  • Leave campaign says to the people with the least control: “Vote Leave and regain control of your lives”.
  • Leave campaign says: “You have little control over your lives because of EU, so vote Leave”.
  • In other words: Leave campaign appeals to voters with least amount of control over lives, by promising more control.
  • However…
  • Some of the politicians who are leading the Leave campaign are being dishonest.
  • Many Leave campaign politicians wish to preserve hierarchy, inequality & their rich benefactors.
  • Many of these Leave politicians use neoliberal ideology as a cover story, to help them justify inequality.
  • They do not want the least educated to have more control over their lives.
  • They want the least educated to “know their place” and to make low-paid work even more precarious.
  • They see leaving EU as a way to gain more control over the weakest British people.
  • In other words: Lying Leave politicians are manipulating the voters with the least amount of control over their lives. But because most of us (and especially the least educated) don’t know what neoliberalism is, and have not critically examined the arguments around Brexit, we’re unaware of how we are being conned.
  • The scam is:
  • Leave campaign politicians are pretending that EU is the problem, not their neoliberal story & rich patrons.
  • So:
  • If you’re intending on voting in the Brexit referendum and want your vote to be based on facts, then you need to critically examine the arguments. Learning about neoliberalism may help too.


See also

Michael Gove’s appeals to anti-intellectualism: The problem with Gove’s appeal for the British public to “trust themselves” when it comes to the EU referendum is that huge numbers of people are deeply misinformed about the absolute basics of the debate.