The UK Parliament was blamed for delaying Brexit – but in reality, says Meg Russell (UCL), that was down to internal splits in the Conservative party. Nonetheless, we now urgently need to rebuild trust in the institution that represents us.
The scrutiny of government by Parliament is always crucial to the health of the UK’s democracy, but it is even more essential amidst the present Covid-19 crisis – with a need to hold ministers to account for use of their current extraordinarily wide-ranging emergency powers. But Parliament’s performance of its proper role depends on public trust. Without that, key links in the chain of accountability break down, and democracy cannot function.
That’s why it was so troubling that Parliament and government appeared to be at loggerheads last year over Brexit, feeding a rhetoric of ‘Parliament versus people’ among media commentators, and even senior ministers. This may now feel like old news, but it left scars on British politics which badly need to be healed.
In a newly-published paper in the journal Parliamentary Affairs I review in detail what went so wrong in Parliament’s handling of Brexit, and what lessons we can learn. These lessons are important if we’re to rebuild Parliament’s reputation, and to face the many potentially difficult policy decisions ahead.
Four factors can be identified which contributed to the parliamentary ‘perfect storm’ over Brexit. The first was the nature of the 2016 referendum. Referendums are relatively uncommon in British politics, and by their nature challenge our tradition of parliamentary sovereignty, injecting an element of ‘popular sovereignty’.
This particular referendum was held not because David Cameron supported change, but because he wanted to crush the arguments of his opponents (including those in his own party) – through what the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee later referred to as a ‘bluff-call’ referendum.
When the result was an unexpected win for Leave, Parliament was left to sort things out. Cameron resigned, and no detailed prospectus had been prepared – by either government or the Leave campaign – for what should happen next. Issues which would become central later – such as the Northern Ireland border – had barely been discussed.
The second factor was again unusual in British politics – the advent of minority government, following the calling of the snap general election in 2017 by Cameron’s successor, Theresa May. Again an unexpected result, this required responses that May was simply unable to give. She could not, as overseas experience of minority government would recommend, drop all controversial and divisive policies. Having triggered Article 50, she had to deliver Brexit. She was also temperamentally unsuited to minority government. Famously rigid, and politically tribal, she continued to woo her hardline Eurosceptic backbenchers, rather than seek to build a broader parliamentary majority for a softer Brexit.
The third, and probably most important, factor was the divided nature of the Conservative Party. A key cause in the initial triggering of the referendum, these divisions scuppered May’s chances of an agreement. Despite the minority situation, the Commons would have approved her Brexit deal but for the mass rebellions on her own benches.
The rebels, of course, were not simply ‘remoaners’: they included key Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel – themselves now at the heart of handling the current crisis.
Yet when May lashed out angrily at ‘Parliament’ over Brexit her tribalism – and determination to cling to a failed tribal strategy – prevented her ever pointing out the extent to which these recalcitrant backbenchers contributed to her woes. With May playing for time, and delaying key decisions, the fourth factor was the failure of parliamentary rules to offer a way out.
Even in a minority situation, government retains central control over time in the Commons, and despite parliamentarians’ attempts to ‘seize the agenda’, without adequate leadership (on either side of the House) brokering a compromise proved impossible.
These were the precursors to Boris Johnson’s premiership, which began in July 2019. Far from seeking to mend the damage done to the government-Parliament relationship during May’s leadership, he ramped up the anti-parliamentary rhetoric to new levels. His attempt to prorogue for five weeks, struck down by the Supreme Court, divided the nation along by now well-established Brexit lines over the question of Parliament’s very right to sit. The December 2019 Conservative manifesto accused MPs of ‘thwarting the democratic decision of the British people’.
The full story, of course, was more complex. Parliament is never a monolithic institution that speaks with one voice – its whole point is to represent a plurality of voices. Fundamentally, however, the MPs upon whom a Prime Minister should usually be able to depend are those in their own party.
Whether Theresa May failed to deliver an acceptable Brexit, or her MPs failed adequately to compromise, may depend on your point of view. But fundamentally the disagreements over Brexit were disagreements within the Conservative Party. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of successive Conservative leaders saw Parliament get the blame.
Now, at a time of national crisis, it is incumbent on all political leaders to prioritise rebuilding Parliament’s reputation. The Covid-19 environment brings home the importance of politics itself, and of the need for a clear chain of political accountability between government and citizens.
Parliament exists to provide that: representing constituents’ interests, asking tough questions of ministers, and demanding on-the-record answers before giving assent to policy. Instead, Westminster has sadly been engulfed in an angry argument about the government’s ending of the ‘hybrid’ House of Commons, and rights for MPs who are ‘shielding’ from the virus to fully participate.
In time, learning both from the Brexit clashes and from the current difficulties may require reviewing the rules. Most urgently, however, we need a reversal of the rhetoric, and a recognition that Parliament is central to securing the quality and public accountability of ministerial decisions.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor LSE. It first appeared at the Constitution Unit and UK in a Changing Europe blogs.
Only when the final outcome at the end of 2020 is known will it be possible to reflect fully and honestly upon the complex factors which have shaped that outcome. I was one of the many who were horrified by the June 2016 referendum result and felt that the over -simplification of the in/out question, the closeness of the vote and the obvious failure to address the situation in my native Northern Ireland fully justified a campaign for a final public vote when the full details were known. However it was always hazardous to rely solely on that campaign without a plan B if it were to fail. As Professor Russell says the role of parliament is crucial and there are times when the issue under consideration is so important that it rises above party politics. I reckon that when Theresa May took over as PM the Commons contained a majority firmly against “no deal” – in other words if brexit had to proceed it should be one which maintained a close relationship with the EU, possibly including membership of the single market and/or the customs union. However when the “indicative votes” were offerd in early 2019 those on the opposition benches who would have preferred the UK to remain in the EU voted solidly against these options. In effect most of them really opted out and left it to the Tories. Even then, Ken Clarke’s motion to stay in the Customs Union failed by only 3 votes.
If we crash out at the end of this year with no deal, can those on the oppostion benches for whom this would be the worst possible option feel they have a completely clear conscience?
The UK left in Januarry, so there is nothing to ‘crash out’ of.
All that ends this year is the current trading arrangements, and if they ‘cease to exist’, then that isn’t ‘crashing out’.
The Referendum question was about EU membership, which entailed everything about…er…..EU membership. Access to the SM is still being sought by the UK as we speak, but the EU is placing unreasonable demands upon the UK that our government is rightly standing up to.
The Parliament elected in 2015 voted to grant the Referendum, and it subsequently voted to enact the result. The Parliament elected in 2017 was composed of MPs who were elected on a platform of finishing the job of leaving, but as we saw, too many MPs fought a rearguard action not only against their own party (whetehr Tory or Labour) but against the democratic fabric of the nation.
Democracy depends on the acceptance of the losers.
It was very unclear that Leaving the EU meant “everything to do with the EU”. Remember that the Leave campaign promised continued access to the Single Market. We could “Be Like Norway”. Polling from the time showed that those who voted Leave were made up of a mixture with a significant portion trusting that our trade relationship would continue.
The referendum was advisory. The advice was split. The “will of the people” rhetoric and playing to populism (playing to the tabloid press?) has been divisive and damaging.
“Democracy depends on the acceptance of losers” – no. Democracy is continuous. Acceptance of losers applies to definite actions at a point in time. Johnson is in power now. It does not apply to ongoing debate. Brexit was undefined. Working out what Brexit is or whether to continue once more was known requires ongoing debate.
(Aside for LSE: The UI on this site is not easy. I had to use the debugger to find the submit button as it looks like a form header here. I got no confirmation that it did anything so will try again this time looking at network traffic to see if a post attempt is made.)
@Richard Corfield: After nearly 4 years of what I would like to christen a period of staunch and continuous “remaindering”, few Leavers and other democrats would take exception to a comment such as this from Richard Corfield.
The events, relating to this and correlated issues, from a time well before the Brexit referendum, and what was said, wrote, claimed and so forth, since, has had a going over again and again ad infinitum. Since not only democracy, but politics and human affairs generally, never stop, it is true to say that democracy is continuous. However, to suggest, imply, infer and/or claim that in a democracy the losers do not accept a majority vote is to overturn and pervert the principles underpinning democracy.
There is a world of difference between accepting a decision, verdict, majority vote, etc., and starting the struggle anew to achieve certain political goals, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, not accepting such a clear-cut majority vote as in the referendum in question and sabotaging in any which way and by all means the implementation of such a vote. To suggest that the latter is a course of action within the democratic field of political endeavour under the circumstances of time and place is to change the rules post-facto. In this case, we can be assured that this notion that the losers need not accept such an outcome is advanced because the losers lost, not as a principle which was already accepted practice or as a proposition that such become accepted practice henceforth. From the sentiments expressed by Remainers who have not accepted the result of the Brexit referendum outright, or who have sought and still seek to water Brexit down to Brino, one may reasonably conclude that if the boot was on the other foot, if Remain had won the referendum, Remainers would not argue that Leavers were under no obligation to accept the referendum result.
How a democracy works, and how it should work, even in just one jurisdiction such as England, will always be a bone of contention. Indeed, innovation in political manoeuvres, methods, tactics and strategies, etc., etc., would exclude nothing. One need not be surprised to find, therefor, that one party or other contending an issues will aver, vehemently and persistently, that a certain ways or means, a certain mode of action, is not only part of the process and legitimate procedures, but has been such all along, and must be accepted by the other side as unassailable and so on. And there we have it. Democracy is a process, even in a country with such a long and august tradition in statecraft, civil rights, Common Law, constitutionality, etc.
Nothing is static. Politics, especially in a time and place where brute force and the right of might are subdued, is a game of bluff, bluster, threats, blackmail, greenmail, manipulation, indoctrination and so on and so on. Of late, nothing in that regard should surprise. Richard Corfield, hence, is well within the bounds of political gaming, gaming the politics of democracy, but…, is it cricket? Altogether, it is not. In fact, it makes a nonsense of what, in the Western, European, 21st Century context, in the British tradition, the majority believe to be the rules by which parliamentary democracy works in practice, or even in theory.
After all that was said and done by the government of the day, by David Cameron, by so many other worthies, before the vote, the notion that the Brexit referendum was still advisory only on the day and after, is risible. Democracy is a sham if the rules can be changed post-hoc by the losers. In another world, the losers would have accepted the result and start again. Now, however, the western-based forces of globalisation, the EU and its supporters and most of the British establishment, are aligned and arraigned against a majority in Britain, and against a sizeable majority in England. True, there are now waverers amongst the Brexiteers, and yes, various claims and hopes expressed by people claiming or purported to be Leavers during the debate leading to the referendum suggest that a soft version of Brexit is not out of keeping with the wishes of most of those who voted Leave. That, however, is no reason to pretend that Brino is Brexit, other than to try and fool the public. At any rate, WTO or no, in the real world, trade goes on. A so-called no-deal Brexit will not stop trade between the UK and Europe. If the EU top were to try that on, stop all trade between the EU and the UK, if no deal were struck, the EU would sign its own death warrant.
I endorse the entirety of the contents of this blog, including the above comment. But I do think a significant factor may have been overlooked. And that factor is the calibre of politicians now representing us in the UK. In 2019, I published a little blog in which I suggested that there had been a shift in British politics, and the critical feature of that shift was in my view, evidenced by the poverty of our political class. Under the sub-heading of ‘A major shift in British politics’ I wrote thus:
“I believe the British people were short-changed by the poverty of political leadership which, as I have suggested above, emerged in the British Parliament, in the years subsequent to the great reformers who held sway in British politics before and soon after the Second Great War. It will remain a matter of conjecture as to the precise particulars in which the Britain people were let down, we must leave the details to scholars of history who are better qualified than I will ever pretend to be. But as it is often said: coming events cast their long shadows before them. The events that followed the Second Great War cast a heavy shadow on British politics. They still do today. An incident that should have acted as a clarion call for better British leadership as a whole may now be told. The clarion call in question was the controversial address by one Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968, the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. The speech remains controversial to this day because of a deep seated fear which resides in all of us, namely, that those who act injurious to others have reason to expect that they may one day be repaid back in the same coin. I must place it on the record that I do not endorse Enoch Powell’s speech in any form or shape, but I am persuaded that the British people were robbed of an opportunity to engage in a grown-up debate on the fundamental terms of the dissolution of the British Empire and what those terms actually meant to them – be they native born Britons or members of the emerging British Commonwealth at the time. Misguided though the speech was, it exposed for the first time the poverty of leadership at the heart of the British establishment. The reaction to the speech heralded a major shift in British politics, namely, putting an end to the traditional politician; that is, a politician whose life was marked out with a specific calling to public life, as defined by Max Weber, a German political economist. This change ushered in the age of a career politician.”
In our effort to rebuild trust in our parliament, it is critical we take a look at how best to improve the quality of our political leaders. Else we shall forever go round in circles – entrenching the sense that we’re being short-changed – the very sense of injustice that gave us Brexit. You may kindly look up the remainder of the blog by visiting, https://thekamugasachallenge.com/immigration-poverty/
Enoch Powell was a giant in post-WWII politics. His speech foretelling the problems the country would face due to unbridled immigration from cultures quite at odds with British society was not misguided in the least. Enoch Powell was an iconoclast and he had his quirks, but he was highly gifted politically. He lived and worked, and spoke, on the premise that the British people had every right to defend their civil rights, their culture, their nation and the various issues pertaining to immigration.
The days of empire were long gone then, ancient history now. The notion that, in effect, the autochthonous British should pay for the days of empire by allowing their country to be changed beyond recognition by unbridled immigration is a non sequitur. Powell had his say on that and was disregarded. That’s the choice the electorates in the UK made, again and again.
As to Brexit, in 1975 the UK electorates chose to stay in the EEC/EC and in 2016 elected to get out of the then, and now, EU.
As to a deep-seated fear on the part of the British in relation to injuries done to others, if you are referring to karma, I rather doubt that the British, even now, are much bothered about karma, even unconsciously. If, on the other hand, you are referring to a deep-seated fear of unbridled immigration, that must have been applicable to a minority only, because the majority has all along voted for parties which, despite some noises about controlling immigration, left the door wide open to legal and illegal migrants. This suggests that, until the Brexit referendum, the UK electorates were not sufficiently exercised by the issue, let alone ready to let a deep-seated fear translate into voting massively for, first UKIP, and then TBP. Again, since this referendum, the UK electorates have consistently voted for parties which, one way or another, support unbridled immigration in practice, whatever political propaganda these parties trumpeted to the contrary.
The poverty of British politicians is nothing new, either pre- or post-WWII. This poverty is largely in relation to the task of looking after the interests of the country and the population at large, unlike the task of managing the interests of a personal, sectional, partisan and international/transnational/corporate nature. One would have thought, as with the rest of the western democracies, bar a few nordic ones, the British Establishment has done a sterling job looking after the interests of the new establishment and the globalising neoliberal hegemoniacs. Though Britain had a residual responsibility towards those of the Commonwealth who might conceivably have expected a leg-up from the erstwhile centre of power in the old Empire, it was and is unrealistic to suggest that immigration from the Commonwealth countries should have been allowed to continue unchecked.
Parliament, in relation to the HoC, is as yet a matter for the electorates to determine the quality of. Until Parliament decides to allow only MPs vetted, approved and licensed by the incumbents or some modern version of a Star Admission Chamber, then one would think the voters still have a choice as to what quality of representative they will have-in the HoC, at least.
Your response is certainly interesting. And in the interest of debate, perhaps you might like to look at an article I saw in the Guardian today, “Lying about our history? Now that’s something Britain excels at” by Ian Cobain. No doubt you will dismiss it out of hand. But I think you too will find it interesting. Kindly look it up by visiting, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/18/lying-history-britain-statues-slave-trade
Gently said, Stephen, but well said. I’m afraid you rather asked for it by mentioning Enoch Powell in a somewhat out of context fashion if I may say so. The Guardian article to which you refer emphasises the point that should be obvious to the Jacob Jonkers of this world i.e. you cannot expect to run around the world interfering with countries and peoples who are none of your business in pursuit of what you see as your interests and then when the going gets tough retreat behind your stockade and keep out all those you tried for so long to subdue and to convince that they were sort of British. They all too soon discovered that their Britishness was of a rather inferior form. Thank goodness at last the (mainly) younger people of this country are now beginning to recognise these realities.
No need to dismiss it, but what is the point? Last year, China was the flavour of the month, it could do no wrong. Next year, you are saying India deserves to suffer. Both you and Denis here have a strange way to argue for what seems like unlimited ingress into the UK because what the British did to other countries in the past. Is this on karmic grounds? Why not read my comment properly? It looks as if you both think that the British people should bow their heads in shame and allow their nation to be destroyed because the British did what almost all peoples and nations were doing in the past.
It makes no sense, unless you have it in for the British to the exclusion of all other peoples. It is as if you are ignorant of history. The slave trade in Africa was started by Arabs and before that African tribes captured people as well to keep slaves. So I read the article by The Guardian. What’s new? Politics is lying to the nth degree by all concerned, every country does it, almost every politician does it nowadays and the media is the worst offender. Enoch Powell, of all politicians, was in his time probably the most honest in his political outpourings. That’s why he was unpopular. The British people have every right to defend themselves.
The comments above are vastly interesting, where Brexit and the British Empire have become entangled (and not for the first time). There is no particular reason why they should be entangled, except this is an example of what political scientists call a ‘reinforcing cleavage’. This means that the people who strongly supported Remain also tend to think the empire was a Bad Thing.
I happened to support Leave, but I think questions about the Goodness or Badness of empire is a damn silly question. (Read “1066 and All That”, and you’ll understand why.) I also think the idea that the British have amnesia about empire is a left-wing fantasy, based on some loose talk by Brexiteers, and not much more. But that’s by the by.
I read Meg Russell’s full paper with interest. She tries heroically hard to be impartial, and I thank her for that. It’s not remotely easy, when strong passions have been in play for so long.
I would offer three comments:
1. The fundamental Brexiteer objection to Mrs. May’s agreement was the backstop: not the backstop per se, but the dawning realisation that the backstop could only be escaped if the EU agreed. The EU had zero incentive to do this: they wanted Britain to remain, de facto if not de jure. We would have been in the backstop forever, leaving us worse off than if we had just stayed.
2. The lack of no-confidence votes had, I suggest, nothing to do with Corbyn. Labour wanted Brexit stopped or crippled, but it also wanted to leave no fingerprints. That explains the tortuous process, whereby Parliament tried to do the Government’s job for it – extending the Article 50 date, and so on. Manoeuvring the Tories was preferable – that way, the voters would blame the Tories for an unsatisfactory Brexit. Cunning, but it didn’t work.
3. Russell is a little disingenuous about the second referendum. The only think its proponents could agree on, was that ‘remain’ should be an option. Brexiteers quickly worked out that the aim was to divide the Leave vote, so Remain would win. It was a stitch-up.
I must thank you for saving me an awful lot of typing.
You are entirely correct, and all I would add is that if Hilary Benn had done with the Benn Act 500 years ago, and prevented the UK government from having any chance of a strong negotiating position, he would have found himself facing the axe in a very real sense.
Just a detail for David McKee. The much vaunted deal done by Boris Johnson did in effect resurrect the backstop or something extremely like it i.e. an arrangement whereby Northern Ireland will have special provisions linking with the EU customs union and to some extent the single market whatever the trading arrangements negotiated or failing to be negotiated between the EU and the UK. The objective is to avoid a hard border in Ireland. There is provision for the Northern Ireland Assembly to reconsider this every 4 years but no provision for the UK government or parliament to do so.
Surely the problem is our electorial system? All recent UK governments are actually minority governments in that FPTP means that Parliament, that goes on effectively ‘elect’ the government, is actually an unrepresentative electorial college. Johnson has a stonking majority with only 43% of votes that were cast.
FPTP Is unethical, wrong and clearly no longer works.
A majority no longer want Brexit, but the extremes of the Labour and Cons parties are unable to acknowledge this fact.
PR would drag Parliament (and by extension any Government formed) back to somewhere much closer to the centre and consensual politics.
“PR would drag Parliament (and by extension any Government formed) back to somewhere much closer to the centre and consensual politics.” Like they typically have in Israel, you mean? A PR that would give more seats to the Lib Dems would also give more seats to the Brexit Party, and other parties to the right of the Conservative Party a lot less pleasant.
I don’t want to say that FPTP is the best possible electoral system in all circumstances. I live in Germany where there is a form of PR that works fairly well and I would be opposed to Germany changing to FPTP. But I find it perplexing how PR advocates persist in making claims for PR which are simply not backed by the evidence. A lot of the time their attitude looks like smashing up the current system in the hope that what will replace it will be better. A lot like what one hears from certain Brexiteers.
“FPTP Is unethical, wrong” I believe the basis for this claim when made by PR’s advocates is that it is unfair that a party should have a higher or lower proportion of MPs than votes cast. Well maybe. But surely it is much more important to the voters that every voter except the extremists gets a roughly equal share in running the country. And the British system is not so bad at that. If you vote Labour, LD, DUP or Conservative, your party has been in government, or at least pretty close to it, in the last 20 years. Even if you vote SNP your party’s chances of being involved in a government coalition at Westminster after the next election are not so small.
Another point I expect to hear made is about all those masses of Labour voters who spend all their lives living in one of those county seats where the Tories would get in even if they put a blue rosette on a chimpanzee. Actually I’ve never met one of those. People tend not to spend all their lives living in just one constituency, and even those who do find their constituency changing. There are really not that many constituencies which have been safe for the last 40 years.
Every electoral system is perfect if it is certain to deliver control to they who are in power- usually the establishment. Every electoral system is also perfect for they who want to acquire power and control if it does deliver the desired result. The ongoing argument since Remain lost the referendum is due to the fact that the result was not accepted by the establishment. As we know, the Cameron government which called it did not refrain from trying to influence the result towards Remain. That’s why Cameron and his supporters said the government had lost the referendum. It shows how lost the entire political establishment is these days. Parliament and the government should work for the country and its citizenry as a whole, in theory, in democratic theory and in practice. That is not how it works. It was never, except in times of war, the case that the establishment were in power and in control to rule for the good of the country and its citizens, but people never had much of a choice, except when Labour was still genuine opposition. A referendum is one way of finding out what the people really want and, depending on the wording of it, a majority verdict is a good basis to proceed or inconclusive.
In the Netherlands, referendums were outlawed by act of Parliament, but, curiously, or not so curiously, general elections and polling to find out what people think are not. Well, elections and polling can be influenced by the media and government to a large degree, and in the case of elections, it matters little what the outcome is these days, and in the case of taking opinion polls, och, that too can be taken as the establishment sees fit, either acted upon or ignored/downplayed.
Democracy allows the voters in a general franchise to influence the kind of representative the country will have in Parliament, but only to a degree. By the same token, the government, the bureaucrats, the entire political, financial, economic, religious, academic and sociocultural world nationally and internationally is engaged in a struggle to influence the voters, the electorate in question, particularly in how and what the electorate, and the young who will be joining the electorate in due course, think. It’s a struggle for people’s minds. This is part of an evolving democratic system but also, due to the increasing sophistication of corporate-owned and controlled MSM, hugely undermines the basic principles upon which the current political edifice is built.
Remainers have been emboldened to not accept the Brexit referendum result by the consistent efforts of the media and Parliament and the succeeding governments since Cameron to sabotage the result and even try to overturn it by calling for another referendum. One can be certain, if Remain had won the referendum, Remainers would not be calling for another referendum. Remainers are divided on this, one suspects, with some accepting the result, others wanting a soft Brexit-in other words, sovereignty to still be shared between the UK and the EU- yet other Remainers, the most vocal, have never accepted the result of the Brexit referendum. What has in fact happened is that amongst the general population, the electorate, the consensus needed to make democracy work has broken down. Again, in fact, the ease with which the current government, aided and abetted by the HoC, and in concert with almost all other democracies in the world, has made a mockery of civil rights in the Covid-19 emergency, in addition to the steady erosion of civil rights over a period of decades, is proof that democracy as understood in the tradition of the free western, European civilised, world has ceased to exist.
The challenge for the electorates is to find a way to regain their purchase on the political process to the extent of once more decidedly influence the outcome in terms of national governance. That means being able to effect a result if it goes against the interests of the financial-corporate political establishment. That means that the protagonists amongst the general voters need to find and vocally support the narrative which allows for a democratically-based resolution of diverging opinions. At the moment, people have been conditioned by the MSM, over a long period of MSM dominance in political debate, to argue with a view to influence the inner narrative and weltanschauung/world view of those who hold opposing opinions. This means, when an argument is put forward, the interpretation of events/the issue/the problem is constructed in such a way as to support and re-enforce the narrative/the story which, if accepted, leads one to logically choose the outcome argued for. In politics, this seems a natural thing to do. In academia, education, cultural matters, even in science now, the facts are bent or completely overturned to serve the argument of the moment with a view to manipulate the thinking of the opposition in the matter of contention. This was not always the case. Where the general franchise holds, or has a major influence upon the ruling political class, the ways and means by which the voting ‘public’ is being influenced at national and international levels of information, of the public being informed, has become a matter of exerting influence by total media exposure to get the result desired by the influencers, not as used to be the case to a considerable degree, upon the facts as they are, or honestly interpreted by the observer, and upon generally agreed and/or accepted principles of political, intellectual and sociocultural engagement.