Boris Johnson was chastised yesterday for the misuse of data. He claimed, again, that £350 million a week could be saved by the UK as a result of leaving the EU. The head of the UK Statistics Authority has described this as a 'clear misuse of official statistics'. I agree, but what he should actually have said is that Johnson was bullshitting.
In a newly published academic article entitled Post-truth Politics, Bullshit and Bad Ideas: ‘Deficit Fetishism' in the UK Jonathan Hopkin and Ben Rosamond expand on the academic concept of bullshit that has existed since 2004, saying:
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If we do pay £350m a week to the EU (as current statistics suggest), why couldn’t we use that money for the NHS and then just create new money to spend on those activities for which the UK receives a rebate from the EU.
You’ve previously said that the government can create money for this type of spending.
I’m not sure that is what Johnson means, but the maths works, surely?
Boris is trying to create a kind of conditionality in the minds of voters – that we can ONLY have a well funded nhs IF we leave the EU. The two have nothing to do with each other. The government could fund the NHS properly now as you point out if it wanted. The decision on leaving the EU should have been made on objective analysis of the long term pros and cons of EU membership on our future social and economic progress. Instead they used psychology and mind games to manipulate an uninformed public with emotionally powerful messages like this, which were fundamentally untrue.
For God’s sake Gerald,
This blatant £350M lie and the NHS ‘promise’ that went with it were clearly, famously identified as bullshit during and after the Brexit referendum.
And no, “the maths” don’t work because the £350M claim is a dishonestly facile and selective figure that only considers one side and one aspect of the money flows involved in EU membership.
Put simply it is not a complete, net figure.
A broadly considered net figure, assuming that one can be reliably estimated, would include:
a. The money coming back into the UK from Europe that is being directed into agriculture and into relief for some of the poorer parts of the UK such as Wales.
b. The private sector commerce and customs benefits of being an EU member. The reason that so-called “net-contributor” EU members belong to the union is that it is they that conduct more trade by virtue of their size and wealth. As such, they receive the greatest advantage from being in the single market and the customs union.
If we really wanted a proper net figure we could also look at some of the disastrous costs of Brexit and begin with the current cost-push inflation rate that has flowed from the falling value of the pound sterling. At that point one might at least begin to realise that the £350M that has allegedly been “saved” doesn’t even begin to cover broad losses that have flowed and will continue to flow from Brexit.
“And no, “the maths” don’t work because the £350M claim is a dishonestly facile and selective figure that only considers one side and one aspect of the money flows involved in EU membership.”
It doesn’t even consider ‘one side and one aspect of money flow’ honestly.
Approx £80 million of the £350 (the rebate) never leaves the government coffers. It is not paid and then returned by the EU. It is never paid to the EU. The UK government has 100% control over how that money is spent. The EU has 0% control over how that money is spent. The formula for calculating the rebate is enshrined in law and cannot be changed without the consent of the UK government.
How is it possible to “take back control” over something we never lost control of?
@Gerald Soper
As you can see here
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-expenditure-statistical-analyses-2017
and here
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-expenditure-statistical-analyses-2016
and here
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67030/1/Begg_EU%20budget.pdf
All the way back to 2009 we have not paid anything even close to £350m per week to the EU. Our gross contributions as per HM Treasury statistics account for the rebate as the rebated money never leaves Treasury accounts. The highest gross in those years was £271 in 13/14.
For that period, Boris is bullshitting by inflating the actual number that “we lose control of” by a third at best, by more than double at worst for 08/09 and for our most recent completed gross payments by half.
With the best will in the world, the man cannot to be trusted on this.
The thing is that government statistics are worth nothing (GERS) unless they are worth something (Boris). Or something.
As perhaps the biggest bullshitter on the internet, you are of course well placed to comment.
That was your first and last comment here
It’s time this important term was used in national news headlines.
Spot on. (Though if used as a technical term, it must be used accurately or it becomes itself)
Years ago at work I used to get wound up by bureaucrats telling lies, and said so. I was admonished for using a one-syllable anglo-saxon word. Then I read Harry Frankfurt’s essay [https://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf] and stopped using the word. The two-syllable anglo-saxon word, as defined by the Professor, I found much more accurate. And much harder for the perpetrators to defend against.
Its obviously bullshit. But Johnson is an unprincipled chancer who habitually lies.
What the 350M nonsense has done is to divert us from the kind of hard Brexit Johnson favours. Lower taxes and less regulation, which is what Brexit has been about from the outset. Its on these issues, and the kind of place we want to live in after we leave the EU, that we should really be focusing on.
I think you are suggesting that a Johnson has uttered an untruth without regard to whether it is true or not. So it is not a lie, because he has not uttered the untruth knowing it is false, but rather reckless as to its truth or falsity. To draw an analogy, it is manslaughter not murder, because he lacks the necessary intent.
The £350m figure is entirely notional. Given the fuss about the figure in the Brexit debate, he must know that we do not “send” that amount to the EU each week, and it is not true that it is available to spend on something else. Even Farage will not stand behind that figure. He knows it is not true. If Johnson know that his words are not true, that makes it a lie.
He would be on much safer ground saying that we send about £250m per week to Europe, of which a fair chunk comes back to the UK, so if and when we leave the EU, we can decide how to spend the piece that we do get back – do we continue to fund academia, and environmental projects, and infrastructure projects in Wales and Cornwall and Scotland and Northern Ireland and so on, or do we cancel all those projects and put a bit more into schools and hospitals (respectively, about £800m and £2 billion per week) – and also the fairly large amount that we don’t currently get back. Offsetting that will be, for example, the cost of funding pensions to be paid to former EU civil servants who come from the UK.
Added to that is the rather fanciful notion that a country the size of UK can become an offshore tax haven, and increase trade with people on the other side of the world while erecting obstacles to trade with our European neighbours.
It’s worse than you think. Some portion of the £350m (or £250m if you like) which doesn’t come back is spent by the EU on functions which benefit the UK. Trade agreements, customs and aviation regulations are just a few pertinent functions.
The work done by the EU on the UK’s behalf will have to be replicated by the UK post-Brexit. This will necessarily be at a much higher cost in the short-term (the systems must be set up from scratch), and will probably be at a higher cost in the medium- and long-term (because of the absence of an economy of scale comparable to pooling the function with 27 other EU members).
In other words, there aren’t even going to be scraps left over for the NHS. To be fair, Johnson doesn’t actually claim there will be anything for the NHS. He just says it would be a “fine thing” if there was money available for the NHS. It’s a bit like saying it would be a fine thing if there was world peace, health and prosperity for all. If not for Johnson’s high profile, and likely ulterior motives (deregulation, low tax UK, privatisation of UK government functions), I doubt the Telegraph would publish such homilies.
I doubt that he doesn’t know. He should have been briefed by his civil servants, and in that case he is saying something he knows to be false.
Part of the advantage of being in the customs union is the streamlined access to import/export procedures. This saves money. As I have heard it, even in a free trade area without tariffs, there are costs above the customs union arrangement so there would not be the savings he says.
On 22nd May, the Guardian ran a feature headed “Bullshit is a greater enemy than lies”, in which it stated:.
“Thanks to — among other things — the democratising effect of the internet, the resultant decline in deference to experts, rising scorn for the political establishment, the tendency of social media to lock us in our echo chambers where our ill-founded opinions are confirmed rather than challenged, the blurring of fact and fiction online (a problem recognised in 1995 by the late journalist John Diamond who wrote: “The problem with the internet is everything is true”), we live in a post-truth era.”
That, in a nutshell, is where we are, and why Boris has been getting away with it. There is something immensely depressing and wrong about the post truth era. In earlier times, Boris would have been outed and dismissed from office for repeatedly telling porkies. He is manifestly unfit for high office. Of course, his latest outburst of fantasy is little more than a statement to the European Research Group that he is their man. This week he will probably stress to the moderate Remainers that he is also their man. There is no limit to the number of men Boris can be, even if his most fitting role would be Mr Toad in Wind in the Willows.
Brexiteers would do well to read the recently published IPPR Economic Commission on Justice report: “Time for Change: A New Vision for the British Economy”, in which the glaring fault lines in our current economic model are identified and examined in detail. The Commission is widely welcomed by MPs across the political, business and academic spectrum. If the UK must leave the EU, and so many of us believe such a step is complete folly, it should do so only when it has reinvented its economic model. The time has come to end the obsession with free markets yielding short term returns for a narrow group of people, a model which continues to exacerbate gross inequality, whilst lack of investment in our industry guarantees a lack of productivity compared with peer countries. The consequences of focusing on short term shareholder return are evident in our economic performance. We need long term strategy and long term thinking. A new model will involve a great deal of discussion, debate, and restructuring. There must be a significant change of culture and attitude because we can’t go on the way we are without eventual civil unrest. All of this should feed into the Brexit debate.
It would be difficult enough to prosper as a single trading nation if the UK economic model were fit for purpose, but given that it isn’t, we would be crazy to proceed with it.
Whatever Theresa May is intending to say this week had better be good. Her track record of getting everything wrong doesn’t present a promising start. I am already wondering how she intends to limit the role of Parliament, this time. She has brought the sovereignty and supremacy of Parliament argument into disrepute, by persistently attempting to override it, albeit the argument was deeply flawed in any event.
Keep your commentary coming, Richard.
Thanks
Nice one, Adrian.
He is not fit to be a politician.
The £250 million, per week, will be used to pay-down the “deficit”.
The EU spending that was used in local regression/farming/etc, will be cut back, and the EU blamed.
The Great British Public will wail about the EU, and ignore the tory elephant busy pooping in their corner..
Brexit is an interesting lesson in how seemingly intelligent people can react with such ignorance when called to be “patriotic”.
Although the lessons of many wars should have informed us that people are easily led.
The worst part…….is that our “leaders” KNOW this is going to be a tragedy. For the poorest. For the richest, it’s Print Money time…
On the patriotism front here is an interesting clip from Richard Wolff on Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, classical divide and rule – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qaJbfRmDKg
Very good
Martin Kilgarrif. Thanks for that link.
For “regression” read “regeneration”
Note to self: read before posting. Auto-correct should be renamed “auto-cockup”
I am not the person to tell that too!
If the Government wanted to increase spending on the NHS by £350m per week, it could start to do so this very morning, regardless of whether or not the UK remained in the EU, or any eventual Brexit budget settlement.
The ongoing pretence that it can’t – rather than simply won’t – that’s the real bullshit!
Concisely put, Mr Shigemitsu.
And by the way, good on the the head of the UK Statistics Authority for calling Johnson out on this one.
Credit where credit is due.
Ahh……….but did you see what they did this morning on Radio 4?
They wheeled out nice but dim John Redwood to suggest amongst other things that the £350 million was very close to a true figure and that the problem was that the EU decides where it is spent and whether it is £350 million or not it is the control of that money that matters.
So – according to Redwood, we need to leave the EU because they are deciding on how/where to spend ‘our’ money. It’s as if we are not part of the treaty. There was no mention of any recent EU projects which have benefited this country and I can think of at least 1 or 2.
This is a false portrayal surely of the fact that we are in a treaty where we have actually agreed to contribute funds to that treaty. The way Redwood portrayed it is that we are being strong armed to pay – not that we agreed to pay as part of joining. It creates a false impression that is frankly………bullshit.
And as for John Humphreys – well, he never questioned this once. He just let Redwood sound off and misinform millions of listeners. Disgraceful.
Give the BREXIT bunch their due however – they know how to consistently undermine the truth.
It was a most bizarre interview
I’m afraid I missed the interview with Mr Redwood, but I tend to be very sceptical of anything he says. I think he sees everything in rather simplistic terms which bear little resemblance to the real world most of us inhabit.
“And as for John Humphreys — well, he never questioned this once. He just let Redwood sound off and misinform millions of listeners. Disgraceful.” Are we surprised? No! It happens on BBC Scotland all the time, where Unionist politicians are given a free ride to make statements that are never dissected – as long as they get in the regulation number of SNP Bad comments.
But the clue is in the name: B(ritish)BC. Tom Mills’ book “The BBC Myth of a Public Service” exposes the B(ullshitter)BC as a creature of the establishment and the governing elites from its very inception, even inviting the security services to screen applicants. “From the Today Programme to Newsnight, Nick Robinson to Robert Peston, Mills shows why we are only getting the news that the establishment want you to hear.” (book description)
Johnson knows damn fine the £350 million figure is nonsense, and the leading Brexit spokesmen (they seemed to be mostly if not exclusively men) went to some lengths to dissociate themselves from any responsibility for having it painted on the Brexit battle bus on the morning after the count.
Perhaps the interesting question is why he chose to bring it back into play now.
I suspect it’s a figure being used to continue the obfuscation of issues. If ‘we’ are fooled into discussing it we won’t perhaps notice some other piece of more sinister nonsense. Theresa May hasn’t fired him yet so she can’t be all that upset about it.
I smell complicity. It puts me in mind of the phoney war between Blair and Brown which exercised the media for years in vacuous speculation on the lines of ‘good cop bad cop’.
Johnson’s ravings makes even May look strong and stable.
On the general topic of ‘bullshit’, can I commend this week’s excellent ‘Thinking Allowed’ (BBC R4/iPlayer) wherein –
‘Laurie Taylor explores the origins and purpose of ‘Business Bullshit’, a term coined by Andre Spicer, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University of London…’
Jonathan Hopkin, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the LSE, to whom you refer in the blog is one of the contributors. The debate ranges far and wide and touches on many points dear to all those looking anxiously for Bullshit-Free Zones.
Whoops – link! Sorry…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0939gm2