While we bicker over a bus, Leavers win the political argument - and drag us ever-closer towards a no deal nightmare.
“It is a grave error to try and use legal process to settle political questions.”
It’s not often I agree with Jacob Rees-Mogg, but on this one he’s right. The legal campaign against Boris Johnson is a mistake and a distraction.
The case hinges on Mr Johnson endorsing the claim on the side of a bus during the EU referendum that ‘We send the EU £350m a week”.
As Full Fact and basically every Remainer pointed out at the time (to little effect, apparently), it was a clear misuse of official statistics, given the large rebate the UK gets from the EU.
“The closest—not perfect—analogy is that £350 million is like the amount a supermarket till displays before the discounts are applied. You never pay it and you never owe it. The number is just one step towards the final bill.
“The UK actually pays around £250 million a week. We also get some money back from the EU, but that isn’t fully under our control,” said independent fact-checkers Full Fact at the time.
Was Johnson’s claim misleading? Yes. Would the referendum result have been any different had the bus said £250m a week? Probably not.
While Remainers bickered over the bus, Leavers continued to get their message of ‘take back control’ and (implicitly) ‘there’s too many immigrants’ out far and wide.
It is easy to forget now that while the Treasury Select Committee called Vote Leave’s claim that Brexit would save £350m a week “deeply problematic”, it also rapped the Remain campaign for saying families would be worse off by £4,300 a year if Britain quit the EU. The claim was branded “mistaken” with the Committee arguing it had “probably confused” voters.
Why? The £4,300 figure related to annual British GDP divided by all the households of the UK. Of course, most voters will have read the figure as referring to disposable income, not the total value of goods and services in the economy.
Referendums are a tricky business, for a number of reasons. Once the campaign is over, it’s over. Campaigners who have misled the public can generally walk away without repudiation.
But that is a problem with both our political culture and our campaign regulations. There is no legal body that can check or correct claims made during a referendum (the Advertising Standards Agency gave up that job in the late 1990s). The best way to punish charlatans in politics however is through the ballot box, not the magistrates.
Meanwhile the spotlight on the Johnson case has simply emboldened his supporters. More than that, it has rallied even his opponents behind him – even liberal Rory Stewart condemned the legal action. Leavers’ bizarre victim complex grows stronger by the day – while Remainers position Johnson as the martyr to represent it.
His whole party have shored up behind him, while the media have had a field day over lead litigant Marcus Ball’s £50,000 of spend of public donations on ‘cupcakes, self-defence classes and a luxury flat with private gym.’
And it has baited Remainers into spouting some dangerous rhetoric, with Labour’s Andrew Adonis saying: “There is a strong case for the BBC to be in the dock alongside Johnson, since it provided the platform for his promises to become common currency.” This is not only absurd, but an overt attack on press freedom by someone in a position of influence.
It was heartening to see the People’s Vote campaign express some sanity over the court case, saying on Thursday: “Our campaign has always been careful to avoid getting dragged back into the disputes of 2016. We’re fighting for a People’s Vote now that we all know so much more about Brexit than in the last referendum.” That is entirely the right approach.
Sadly the case reflects a technical tendency among centrists and Remainers – nit-picking while Rome burns.
As openDemocracy’s Adam Ramsay wrote about the MEP election campaign: “The arguments made on leaflets and doorsteps – and in Tweets and Facebook posts – have largely been about how to game a complex voting system in order to stop someone you don’t like. They haven’t been about people’s lives. They haven’t been about how to transform society…Meanwhile, Nigel Farage is free to take to the airwaves and talk about actual issues, with his simple message: “defend democracy”. And so, while he won’t get a majority of votes, he’s already won.”
Replace Nigel Farage with Boris Johnson, and you get a fair picture of what’s happening now.
There are many reasons to oppose Boris Johnson. He is an egotistical chancer whose politics are deeply pernicious. But we can’t litigate our way out of this quagmire. Remainers have to win the political arguments. That won’t be done fighting old battles in court, but in presenting a positive, emotive vision for why we should stay in the EU.
Until we do that, we will be a merely responsive force, forever on the back foot – while Leavers drag us ever-closer towards a no deal nightmare.
Josiah Mortimer is Editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter.
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6 Responses to “The Boris Johnson court case – and why we can’t litigate our way out of this mess”
Patrick Newman
It is what you said – “The referendum vote does not deserve to be respected because, as an outgrowth of English narcissism, it is itself disrespectful of others, of our allies, partners, neighbours, friends, and, in many cases, even relatives. Like resentful ruffians uprooting the new trees in the park and trashing the new play area, millions of English, the lager louts of Europe, voted for Brexit in an act of geopolitical vandalism.” That passage alone makes your post worthless!