Changing the Minds that Matter

Is there any point in writing for an audience that already shares your views?

Much of my writing here at Progress & Survival over the next year or so will focus on how we prevent what’s currently happening in the United States being repeated here in Europe.

As you may have read in my previous post, there is now a real possibility that Nigel Farage will win the next election here in the UK, and while it’s not due until 2029, the fight to prevent this until very recently unthinkable outcome starts now. If elected, Farage will model his premiership on the presidency of Donald Trump with hellish consequences for Britain, and especially for those people naive enough to vote for his Reform UK party.

And it’s not just Britain that could end up with a far-right government before the end of the decade. France is due a presidential election in 2027 that could well be won by Marine Le Pen, if she succeeds in overturning her recent conviction for embezzlement. And there will be a federal election in Germany around the same time as Britons vote in 2029. With the far-right Alternative für Deutschland currently riding high in the opinion polls, the unthinkable could also happen there, only 85 years since the Nazi threat was extinguished at the cost of millions of lives.

Wither the mighty pen?

Current events in the US suggest the idea that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ no longer holds. While there are plenty of brave independent writers debunking the constant flow of lies and distortions from Trump, Vance and others, none of it seems to makes any difference. Trump has absolute power; power he uses with relish to manipulate the mainstream media into normalizing his authoritarian rule as if it’s a natural consequence of a properly functioning democracy.

But democracy in the USA is clearly not functioning normally. Turning out to vote once every four years is only one of several components that must be in place for a country to be able to call itself a democracy. These include:

1. free and fair elections - no attempt should be made to prevent any citizen from voting, nor to influence outcomes through administrative bias, such as gerrymandering;

2. the rule of law must apply equally to all citizens, including those elected to public office;

3. any citizen should be allowed to run for office regardless of whether they are affiliated to a political party;

4. there can be no limit on the number of political parties; and,

5. all participants in elections must accept the result.

On this basis, the United States is clearly no longer a properly functioning democracy. It may still satisfy criteria 3 and 4 above, but not the others. The Civil Liberties Union for Europe lists 14 such criteria, and again the US fails on nearly all of them.

When democracy fails

While the US falls at the first hurdle above, I’m not sure Britain counts as a properly functioning democracy either, as it fails in respect of a further ‘soft’ requirement: the ability of voters to think for themselves and make their choice based on a reasoned analysis of the policy programmes on offer from each party, and the chances of success for those programmes given the context in which they will be implemented.

This is a function of several things, including:

1. poor levels of education;

2. a widespread lack of serious engagement with politics, and

3. the capacity of the mainstream media to influence voting intentions.

A poorly informed and easily manipulated electorate is not a recipe for a successful democracy. And while it may be unrealistic to expect more than a handful of voters to possess all skills necessary to make a fully-informed decision at the ballot box, the extent to which so many people are essentially voting in the dark, and are frequently persuaded to vote against their own interests explains why, after a century of democracy, we find ourselves in such a mess.

Our democracies are today so well established that the only route to authoritarian rule is via the ballot box. If we are to avoid a Trump-like outcome here in Britain, we must persuade a large number of people, many of whom feel poorly served by liberal democracy, not to vote for a populist authoritarian who simply promises a different approach to politics, but is never likely to govern in the interests of most of those who vote for him.

It works both ways

Short of Keir Starmer taking his shirt off during a televised pre-election debate, Labour were always going to win last year’s election. They won by such a large margin because they ran an exceptionally well-targeted campaign, which delivered narrow wins in many seats to earn them a crushing majority. Just enough people voted for them in just enough places.

This outcome could easily be reversed at the next election. But the peculiarities of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system also suggests that the difference between a government run by serious people who respect the constitution and institutions of governance (even if they have no clue how to turn things around economically) and a government that will drag Britain down the Trump route, could amount to as little as a couple of hundred thousand votes.

While it is absurd that so few votes could mean the difference between a democratic government committed to protecting the rights of all those who live here, and authoritarian rule predicated on removing hundreds of thousands of economically crucial people from the country; it does suggest that not that many minds need to be changed.

Image: ILN / Mary Evans

Changing the minds that matter

There are many brilliant writers here on

Substack

producing thousands of words about the dangers of the far-right global insurgency and what it will mean for our fragile civilization. Most of these writers provide huge amounts of evidence for their arguments, most of which are incontrovertible by anyone who understands what’s at stake, is able to reason, and possesses any capacity to empathize with those less fortunate than themselves.

But most of this wonderful work is being read by people who already agree with the writer’s point of view. Now, I understand why people seek out affirmation of their own world view: when the future’s so uncertain it’s comforting to find people who share your concerns. But I’m not convinced all this effort is going to change a single person’s mind in respect of their voting intention at the next election.

Of the 30% or so of people who currently say they will vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform party, a good proportion will not have have their minds changed, whatever happens. But the rest are up for grabs. But if these people read anything, they certainly don’t read Substack. Nor do they read The Guardian, The Times, The Financial Times, The New Statesman, Prospect or any other publication that takes a measured and reasonable approach to politics and the future.

So why do we waste our time writing? Surely if we want to change the minds of the people who are going to make difference come election time, then we need to target those individuals. But how?

The Daily Mail is hardly going to commission me to write a piece about the likely consequences of a Farage government; nor the Express, the Telegraph or even The Spectator. But we have to find a way to counter the lies and distortions so frequently peddled by these organs.

We also need to do something about the BBC. Last year, TV was overtaken by the internet as the most commonly used source of news. The Press Gazette publishes monthly figures showing how many minutes people spend reading the top 50 internet news sources in the UK. With 8.3 billion minutes, the BBC News website and app received more attention than the ten next most popular online news sources combined.

If the people whose minds needed changing did read Substack, there might be cause to celebrate this platforms rise to no. 23 in the list (above the Financial Times, no less). But with just 36.8 million minutes compared to the BBC’s mammoth total, or indeed the Daily Mail’s 1.2 billion minutes, it’s clear that our efforts here are unlikely to save us from the threat of a far-right government.

The problem with the BBC is that it’s charter-driven requirement for editorial neutrality is interpreted by its journalists, editors and managers to mean ‘balance’ rather than ‘facts’ or ‘truth’. Now, compared to the likes of The Daily Mail, BBC News is a paragon of accuracy and good faith. Nonetheless, Nigel Farage would be nowhere today (and Britain would still be a member of the EU) had the BBC not decided to give him so much airtime over the last two decades.

Alas, the Press Gazette only measures the popularity of UK-based online news sources. Quite how Yahoo News get in at no.2 I’m not sure, given that it’s 90% owned by Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange. No matter, if Yahoo is doing better than the Daily Mail, you can be sure that if American news sources such as Facebook and Twitter/X were included, they would massively outrank the BBC. While Facebook and Twitter/X are not exclusively news sources, their role in manipulating public sentiment is widely acknowledged.

In any case, it’s difficult to see how we might use the likes of the BBC, Facebook or Twitter/X to get to the people whose minds need changing. Even if you had a huge amount of money to spend on Facebook ads, I doubt the algorithm would serve them to the people who need to see them. And we know Elon Musk controls what gets seen and by whom, and what doesn’t, as far as Twitter/X is concerned.

Where do we go from here?

Having argued that people like me are wasting our time writing on platforms like substack as a means to influencing electoral outcomes in the midst of a far-right insurgency driven largely by social media, I’m certainly not going to stop. I mean, what else can I do?

It’s crucial that we keep telling stories that offer a more positive and optimistic vision of the future; stories that explain what has gone wrong and how we might put it right. If those stories gain traction, then voter by voter, we might gradually begin to pull the rug from under the feet of the vile people who want to turn Britain into a minor satellite of Trump’s United States.

I’m sure that among that cohort of possible, but not yet fully committed, Farage supporters there are a great many who possess the ability to evaluate information, tell truth from lies, to reflect and reason, and come to the conclusion for themselves that a Reform victory would be disastrous for Britain. But for those narratives to take hold in the minds of enough people, it’s going to take more than fine words.

Success will also require the emergence of a visionary leader who is able to tell these stories in a way that people can relate to. If Reform UK does win in 2029, it won’t all be down to the charisma and cunning of Nigel Farage. It will also be a consequence of the Conservative Party having imploded; Labour having failed to deliver on any of their campaign promises; the Green Party having lurched too far to the left in the perception of many people; and the Liberal Democrats unable to conjure a story sufficiently different from that told by Labour.

Party politics works when political parties become vehicles for visionary leaders: Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair are perfect examples. But the next such leader, if they are to emerge at all, is going to have to be an individual of such rare character and qualities as to bear no comparison to what has gone before.

But what is the story?

I frequently argue that there will be no solution to our current problems until we have leaders who can tell a convincing story about what went wrong and how we can put it right. But what exactly is that story? In a nutshell, it has the following components:

• In its focus on growth and wealth creation, the form a capitalism we have operated for the last four decades has failed to distribute the gains of a dynamic economy equitably, with the result that many people feel excluded and left behind.

• This is because modern-day liberalism has a huge blind spot when it comes to the economy. It assumes that all we have to do is grow the economy and everyone will enjoy the spoils. It relies on the myth of ‘trickle-down’ economics. Wealth does not trickle down from rich to poor without government intervention to make it happen. In fact, as societies become more unequal, and a greater proportion of GDP consists of activities designed to consolidate the wealth of the already wealthy, the opposite happens: wealth that is generated by the labour of ordinary people gets captured via the rent-seeking activities of the rich.

• People don’t much like change, and recent technological developments have laid waste to the high streets that used to form the hub of many communities. While this is not something that is easily expressed, for most people, the sense of being part of a community, however unconsciously felt, is essential to their well-being.

• When people feel they are getting a fair crack of the whip, the better angels of their nature shine through. They are more tolerant of immigrants; and multiculturalism works. When people feel excluded, they look for someone to blame, especially when encouraged to do so by high-profile politicians. Under these circumstances the darker side of many people’s character becomes dominant. It’s much easier to blame immigrants for our woes than understand how decades of economic mismanagement is largely responsible.

In his reply to one of my recent posts in which I made a similar argument to the above,

Sanford S

wrote:

‘Don’t most of the electorate vote based on culture and values issues these days? A more sensible economic plan, no matter the success it may gradually have, isn’t going to suddenly snap a culture warrior out of some kind of fever dream.’

He’s right, of course. While long-term perceptions of economic injustice underlie increasing dissatisfaction with conventional politics, growing support for populist politicians quickly takes on a trajectory of its own. It stops being about economic failure and becomes wrapped up in what Sanford correctly describes as a kind of ‘fever dream’.

All of which adds levels of complexity to the story our putative visionary leader will be required to tell, if sufficient numbers of people are going to be persuaded not to support an authoritarian like Farage.

It also requires a convincing story about what kind of economy comes next, and how we make that transition when the interests of extreme wealth hold all the power. There will be plenty of posts on this challenge in the months ahead. None of it will be easy, but we can’t leave the field open to the likes of Farage, Trump and Le Pen. Our children, and theirs, will never forgive us.