'I think people in this country," Brexit's Michael Gove insisted, "have had enough of experts." In one form or another the disparaging of expertise and even of the notion that "truth" matters became leit motifs of the UK's Brexit campaign. Political scientists have spoken of a "post-truth" society – for many truth has become "truthiness", entirely fluid, a matter of opinion; for others, prepared to accept that it may still exist, the challenge, thanks in part to the likes of Gove, is authority – who to trust. The answer during the referendum was "fewer and fewer".
A new report on the Brexit referendum by Britain's Electoral Reform Society (ERS), It's Good to Talk: Doing Referendums Differently After the EU Vote, argues that the "dire" EU referendum debate was dominated by "glaring democratic deficiencies" that left voters disengaged and confused about contrasting claims. And polling by the group found that only 16 per cent of voters felt well informed when the campaign started in February, and that figure had only risen to 33 per cent with a week to go.
The problem, as we know all too well from referendums here and similar polls measuring voter “knowledge”, is not the dearth of information available but the very profusion. The problem is how to distinguish truth from fiction, who to believe. Not unlike the response of many to the profusion of online “fact” sources, the alienation of voters from politics and politicians is increasingly feeding self-reinforcing tendencies only to believe facts from those who you already agree with.
Among nine reforms of the British referendum process that the ERS recommends are the tasking of an official public body to intervene when misleading claims are made by the campaigns, and asking Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, to conduct a review of an appropriate role for broadcasters to play in referendums. Been there, got the t-shirt. Neither, as we know, is a panacea.
What is needed is more profound and difficult, a cultural counterrevolution – finding a means of restoring a degree of faith in politics, and, God help us, the word of politicians.