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Brexit is a tangible outcome of rotten populism
The current Brexit proposal is a direct, tangible symptom of the current era of populist, low calibre, political discourse. It is influenced by Social Media, and an emphasis on bite-sized messaging versus in-depth debate. It is also a symptom of the information warfare being waged by Russia and the ‘alt-Right,’ which has created an audience expecting and believing inflammatory, untrue, but appealing messages.
All of this has done to information what fast-food restaurants do to food, leading people to consume food that is high in flavour and low in nutritional value. Tweets are the empty calories of the information age. People consume vast amounts of information, but very little of it informs them.
This political culture is the fault of opportunists who found they could win power through saying what people wanted to hear; of opportunists who realised they could influence the direction of a country by propagating inflammatory statements easily over Twitter and Facebook. It is the fault of people — voters — who allowed themselves to form deeply held opinions based on shallowly understood ideas.
The problem with populism is it doesn’t do well under scrutiny.
The current Brexit proposal is a bad deal. Nobody likes it. It pleases nobody. Theresa May has the audacity to claim it is in the…
