Long and very bleak but very important piece from The Guardian: Information Trap. My jaw was dropped for most of it.
This blew my mind.
In the case of the vote to leave the EU, Borwick, who seems to approach such challenges like a Rubik’s Cube, claimed that the most successful message in getting people out to vote had been about animal rights. Vote Leave argued that the EU was cruel to animals because, for example, it supported farmers in Spain who raise bulls for bullfighting. And within the “animal rights” segment Borwick could focus even tighter, sending graphic ads featuring mutilated animals to one type of voter and more gentle ads with pictures of cuddly sheep to others.
Tbe Vote Leave campaign were well informed (and open) enough to spot massive contradictions like this in the data, and use it to power their campaign.
We must never underestimate the sophistication of our enemies in the information war.
Interesting. I do remember the animal rights thread to the campaign and it did strike a chord. But my view is Remain failed rather than Leave won.
The reason Leave failed was because they focused too much on money and how much worse off everyone will be outside the EU. George Osborne has to go down as the architect of that approach.
For millions of Leave voters it wasn’t about money. It was something deeper and bigger than their bank balance or their wallets.
Dominic Cummings offered a vision to those voters which appealed more than Project Fear’s scare warnings.
Remain should have campaigned much harder on a vision of our future inside the EU rather than playing on monetary fears.
People want to be led. They want their leaders to set out a vision they can march towards.