Abstract
This paper examines one key aspect of Brexit, the link between Brexit and anti-politics. I shall argue that anti-politics led, in large part, to Brexit, but, crucially, that the latter will increase the former. In my view, anti-politics is rooted in distrust of the political elite and an almost total rejection of the idea, which, historically, was at the core of the British democratic settlement, that ‘government knows best’. This rejection was obviously, to a significant extent, based on successive governments’ failures to deal with complex contemporary problems; for example, climate change and immigration. However, the key point is that, while these issues are very complex, too often, for electoral reasons, governments claim to have ‘answers’. In this sense, they don’t, for various reasons, tell citizens ‘the truth’. In this context, Brexit is likely to make the situation much worse because it was offered as a simple solution to complex problems, problems which clearly it is unlikely to solve (immigration being a prime example). As such, an increase in anti-politics is very likely and this will pose a major threat for the future of democracy in the UK. The first step to address the problem is to recognise its nature, but in the last section of the article I explore possible ways forward.
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Notes
I use this term as a shorthand way of referring to a period marked by increased complexity and increased reflexivity; so, the problems government faces have increased, at a time when citizens are more sceptical about the capacity of politicians to deal with them.
There is an argument that, rather than dumbing-down political coverage, the media is simplifying discussion so that those less interested in politics can relate more easily to the material presented (Temple 2006). This is an elegant argument, but it neglects at least two points: first, there is an obvious distortion, and I would argue bias, in the way ‘politics’ is presented in the media; and, second, it perpetuates the view that the majority of people are not interested in politics, but rather apathetic, whereas much contemporary research would see citizens as alienated from politics as it is practiced, rather than apathetic about politics more broadly defined.
There is an interesting question for future research here. Historically, newspapers may have been critical of some politicians, usually those who questioned the existing order, but they were generally supportive of what Almond and Verba (1963) termed the ‘civic culture’ and contributed to the deference which they saw as characteristic of British politics. The key question is: when did this change and why?
There is a wider point here, which has resonance for Political Science. For many, these type of emotional issues are not rational, because rationality is defined in terms of a narrow, economic cost/benefit analysis. This seems to me to be misguided. It is not irrational for someone to be concerned that the street or town in which they are living is changing before their eyes as a result of immigration, with accompanying stress on local services. I’m grateful to Paul Furlong for this point.
I do not use this term in a Foucauldian sense, although I do think that the BPT can be seen as part of a ‘regime of truth’ that was ‘produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses’ (Foucault 1984, 73), and, as Hall and I argue (Marsh and Hall 2015), served their interests. Rather, I examine the need for politicians to tell the truth about the complexity of much modern policy-making. As such, in some ways what I am concerned with is closer to elements of Foucault’s (2011) discussion of parrhesia.
This raises an increasingly important issue, the balance between slow and fast policy-making and issue briefly touched on below.
Of course, one interesting development here is ‘nudge’, which is certainly an ‘evidence-based’ approach (Thaler and Sunstein 2008). However, the techniques involved, rooted in behavioural economics, are used to influence individuals’ behaviour, without them being aware that this is happening, an excellent example of ‘government knowing best’. The nudge approach has been incorporated in UK Government policy implementation, rather than policy-making, although of course that is a difficult distinction, through the work of the Behavioural Insights Team, in their own words partially owned by the Cabinet Office (http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/ (accessed 28/11/2016).
I would be very interested in cases in which politicians have told the truth, in this sense, and have been electorally successful.
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Marsh, D. Brexit and the politics of truth. Br Polit 13, 79–89 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-018-0076-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-018-0076-x