I was scrolling through my social media feed today, and I came across a post from the hacker-related leftist page Anonymous, which confused me. It contained a British UKIP politician called Godfrey Bloom, on a right wing rant (in the European Parliament), about the problems with fairly conventional economic policy. This particular version of the speech has been seen 34 million times, shared by 794,000 people and ‘liked’ by 224,000. Other copies on YouTube have been seen 50,000 times each. It’s fair to say that this is a video which went viral, and given it’s source, it’s fair to say that it is largely shared by people on the left. It has been a source of ‘education’ to more people on the left than will ever read a good economics book, which is a slight concern.

 

The situation in the video is nothing new, you might think. UKIP MEPs spend most of their time ranting in Europe, whilst leftists spend a lot of energy decrying various forms of economics (as they should – Pikkety, among others, have conclusively disproved the theory of trickle down economics which rules western democracies). However, it was strange to see the two mix; they are normally on different sides of the argument.

 

After watching, it became immediately clear that this was a video of an ultra-right wing, extremely muddled speech on economics. It slated the ability for banks to lend money they don’t have in reserve, the control central banks have over the money supply, and even referred to quantitative easing as fraud. How has this speech garnered the support of a multi-million leftist audience?

 

It might, at first glance, seem socialist to critique a bank’s ability to lend money it doesn’t have. After all, an initial assessment might say that a bank is making money from selling assets that it has no capitalistic ownership of. But this isn’t how banks work; a bank is a unique business that can provide funds and capital to small business as loans, or individuals as mortgages, in order that they don’t have to be homeless/lose money renting/be unable to start their own business.  If we were to stop this lending, or reduce it to a level where banks were only able to lend what capital they have in reserve, then we greatly reduce the ability for the poorest – those who don’t have immediate tens of thousands of pounds in the bank – to access the same kind of advantages as the richest, who do have this kind of capital laying about.

 

Allowing banks to lend money they ‘don’t have’ is a way of allowing access to wealth for those who don’t currently possess it, or aren’t ‘safe bets’ for lending like rich business owners. Yes, bank managers make money from it, but it works. As a leftist you might want to campaign to rearrange the system slightly, perhaps having the government doing the lending directly rather than making money for bankers, but you wouldn’t want to end or greatly reduce this system if equality was a legitimate aim. And even campaigning for the government to run banks themselves is iffy; it basically merges the central and corporate banks into one, which could be unwise as a matter of safety (a central bank can be the fail-safe to bail out poorer citizens who invest in failing private banks, so who bails out the central bank if it fails?)

 

Secondly, where is the hatred for central banks coming from? Central banks are an often independent, else government run, way to rule how the banks work by changing things like interest rates, in the public’s interest. It’s vital in order to keep employment figures high, for instance, as by changing an interest rate you can increase or decrease the value of the currency, and thus make the small businesses in your country better able to import or export services or goods, or the consumer less or more willing to buy them.

 

The lack of a central way to do this in the Eurozone, due to the currency being spread around so many countries and thus not being able to change the interest rates relatively to help each country (so the Euro has to have the same value in each country), has been catastrophic. Had Greece or Ireland had this ability to change the domestic currency interest rate to help themselves, we might be looking at a very different and more functioning Europe. Had Spain or other countries had such control, we might not be looking at such a weak and ineffective European parliament, full of dissent and vitriol, and, who knows, we might not have suffered a worried EU-exit vote from the UK. Poor economic planning with the Euro has been a breeding ground for right-wing hatred; they, wrongly, spout anti-government and anti-equality vitriol as the answer.

 

So to the final subject of this rightist rant on economics: quantitative easing. Quantitative easing isn’t, as many claim, where governments (or central banks, more accurately) simply ‘make’ money. Though this is the understanding from the ranting politician in the video mentioned above – he believes QE to be a process of ‘counterfeiting’ money. This is highly bizarre, even for a right-wing propagandist, given that the central bank control and print the currency anyway. It’s thus only ‘counterfeiting’ as far as Apple is ‘counterfeiting’ by producing more of its own iPads.

 

To believe QE is counterfeiting, one must have such little understanding of how economics and the financial system works that it is surely untenable to hold any elected office. One must believe that there is a set amount of money in society, which perfectly represents all of the products and services in society, like some medieval bartering system. If that concept were true, the trillions hidden away in tax havens, citizen’s savings accounts and businesses operating accounts would surely account for most of the products and services in the world. Given that there are an infinite number of services we could invent, and thus an infinite of potential ‘value’ which could be created – and the amount of money in society isn’t infinite – then this theory must be outdated or highly mistaken. The amount of money in circulation – whether physical or digital – represents nothing, in particular, other than the amount of money in circulation. That’s it.

 

QE is nothing more than another way to affect inflation by introducing more money into the economic environment (usually by buying bonds or debts – thus freeing up capital). The difference is that it is rarer than changing an interest rate, but it’s just as vital when interest rates are low (as they are in many countries right now) as it’s not always a great economic idea to go into negative interest rates; especially not in societies where you want to encourage savings as a general matter.

 

The UK is a great example of somewhere that might want to use QE; there is a growing pension crisis here as the elderly sector grows substantially. To discourage people from saving, and have them charged for doing so (which is what negative interest rates involve – charges rather than interest accruals), focuses on short term economic improvement – and not very hopeful short-term improvement at that, given you’ve tried everything and still had to start punishing people for not spending – rather than long-term prosperity.

 

What’s more, guess what? If you start charging people for their savings, guess which section of society has the wealth to buy things like property, great works of art and expensive diamonds, in which they can hoard wealth in the meantime without losing money by paying to store it in bank accounts? And which section of society can’t afford such ever-increasing luxury, and will instead lose yet more money by having to put it in accounts, else buy depreciating object for their homes? Yes, I’ll let you work that mystery out. QE isn’t generally helping the rich, it’s helping the poor.

 

QE has its flaws, as I explained in this article about the problems with the Positive Money ideology; mainly that if you introduce really significant amounts of capital, you can create as much of a problem as you are solving, by reducing the value of the currency (through inflation) in a way which off-sets any value you have added by introducing the extra money. But, so long as it’s done carefully, sparingly and with as much foresight as possible, it can be a vital and useful tool.

 

It doesn’t say much for politics that we have so few people, as a whole, who understand even the basics of economics – be it the clueless right wing politicians who spout this kind of drivel, or the social media sites who think it represents revolutionary leftist honesty. But this lack of understanding damages the left more than it damages the right. In times of uncertainty, people will flock for the simplest explanations, and economics is not a simple subject. As a result, people hang to tales of viewing economics as a business, and thus opt for the right’s business-like explanations and concerns, rather than the left’s more nuanced and effective understanding.

 

If it wasn’t bad enough that the mainstream press promotes and supports the ideology of the richest in the society, we now have many on the left holding so little understanding that they are doing their job for them. We have to avoid this mistake, as we can’t afford to send videos which preach this nonsense viral. But we also need to be able to tell the story of how economics actually works in order to convince other voters that we know what we are doing. As a result, we can’t ignore it any more: the left must begin to understand economics better than anything else in the political arena.

2016 was the year in which fake news, spread by poor quality media sources, became a global concern. But what studies can you do to accurately, honestly tell you which big newspapers are truly lacking in journalistic standards?

 

A good standard of journalism, for instance, will always look for two sources, or one certain source, before confirming a story because human bias is so pervasive and problematic. Bad journalism will print whatever they can find which proves their own biases or tells readers what they want to hear. But how do you check which papers actually have this kind of quality journalism?

 

Well, the surprising answer is by using sports journalism, specifically football/soccer transfer rumours. These are a big thing in British media, and every major newspaper indulges daily transfer news. What’s more, you can judge the accuracy of this kind of news very easily: you can look back in a few months and judge whether each piece of news was true or false, because the player either will or won’t have transferred.

 

Because transfers involve human characters – players, agents, managers, families – you can’t ever expect to be 100% accurate, but you can analyse to see if some news sources are doing a lot better than others. And the results – from a BBC study of their own daily column of collated ‘transfer rumours’ – provide evidence which back three important points which I have been making for a while.

 

 

Fig 1.

Which is the most reliable media source?

Percentage of reported deals that did happen

*Only includes sources which featured 10 or more times

 

The first point, as the above chart shows, is that the Guardian has journalistic integrity which is wrongly deemed as ‘left-wing bias’. They don’t print false news, they check facts, and they hold people in the public eye to account when they are wrong. Telling the truth is deemed a political choice, and as a result, the Guardian are labelled left-wing. However, on matters where there is no right/left wing, like in sport, you can see that it is about something more than political choices – it’s about honesty.

 

As you will note, the Guardian leads the field, ahead of even the popular sports-specialist sources, which are famed for their sports journalism and specialist networks, such as Goal and Sky Sports.

 

 

Fig 2.

Which daily newspaper is the most accurate?

*Only includes sources featured more than 10 times

 

The second thing of note is the other side of the story. Despite being one of the most popular newspapers in the world – with click-bait figures to match the best – the Mail gets the facts right less than half of the time. That is less successful than flipping a coin (which you would still have a couple of if you didn’t buy this particular paper).

 

You will note that the BBC, in its ever ‘neutral’ position, fails to include the rest of the click-bait tabloids, but you can bet papers like The Sun would be here if they had managed to get above the Mail, and you will note their conspicuous absence.

 

A final point to note is that this kind of study should question what we deem as ‘press neutrality’. The BBC is one of the most widely read and trusted media sources in the world. The longer it pretends that it and other media sources are all the same, and simply a matter of personal taste – regardless of how little emphasis other sources place on fact-checking and honesty – the longer it will be silently contributing to that lie.

 

It is a political stance to decide not to criticise poor journalistic standards, as we know certain standards lead to better, more accurate and more honest news. And, as we are all aware, the BBC should not take political stances, it should take only rational, independent stances of integrity. If the BBC will not investigate and report facts like this, how is it neutral?

The things that happened in 2016 are not irreversible, nor are they catastrophic, but they did see humankind begin a remarkable and almost universal descent from the reason and intelligence which we have spent centuries improving upon. That computer you’re reading this on, the clothes you’re wearing, the house you sat in…all of it came from the progression of enlightenment values which allowed science to improve society.

 

This year we became suspicious of those values and decided – perhaps without realising – that these values were over-rated. So we used the technology it gave us to voice our support for right-wing politicians who decried it, in what can only be described as some ironic political choices.

 

Whether it be Brexit, Donald Trump’s march to president-elect, or the rise of right-wing populism across Europe, 2016 has seen a turn away from the values of the enlightenment. Why?

 

The popular explanation for why people turned to Trump, Farage, Le Pen and their associates, is mainly economic. The media tell us that people are ‘fed up’ with the status quo. It’s difficult to tease out exactly what people are ‘fed up’ with, but there are two main theories.

 

 

Politicians.

 

Especially in Trump’s case, people appear to be annoyed with classic politicians. Yet, it’s not clear why. People with little or no interest in politics, which appears to be the norm, believe there is no difference between left and right parties, and thus believe all politicians are as bad each other. But this, itself, is a myth created by a media who don’t know how to analyse claims and present policies. So of course they ‘seem’ the same to the people reading this media.

 

In 2015, the UK were offered a choice between a Labour party who said they would dramatically change the media – take on the media barons who only present news which furthers their own interests – and begin to distribute wealth more equally. Whilst the Tory party offered no such promises, but instead spoke about tax cuts for the rich, again, and cloaked these less popular policies in a promise for a referendum for leaving the EU. These policies couldn’t be more different; they are at opposite sides of the spectrum, people fighting for completely opposite beliefs and values. To paint them as ‘all the same’ is like painting black as white. Our hatred of politicians is entirely created by our poor forms of click-bait media, who see no value in providing real political news so much as populist scare-mongering.

 

The US were offered a similar, vastly different choice. Hilary may have been right-wing by UK standards, but Trump is verging on fascistic. Mocking the disabled, promising to overturn human rights progress such as on abortion of climate change, and offering absolutely no method of distributing the unfair inequality of wealth which poor and middle class Americans have suffered over the past 30 years. Rarely, in fact, does life present us with such different choices. That we see them as ‘all the same’ should be a warning sign that something is wrong in how we get our news.

 

 

Inequality

 

Which of course, brings us to the second theory of why people are ‘fed up’: inequality. Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum have promised that the lower and middle classes will be ‘dragged up’ over the last few decades, and nothing of the sort has happened. We’ve all felt it, and academics such as Thomas Piketty have proved it with all manner of statistical breakthroughs that show our current economic policies are vastly unfair, counter-productive and generally not fit for purpose.

 

However the economists who have worked hard to investigate this also came to very clear conclusions: the reason why inequality has grown much bigger than ever before is because our trickle down economic policy – that which Conservative and Republican thought is based upon – is deeply, rationally flawed, and is entirely causing the increase in equality.

 

This is important: these studies do not show that Conservative economic though is just contributing to inequality, they show it is entirely causing inequality. Piketty’s work, in particular, has been so ground-breaking, influencing the economics community so greatly, that it is being made into a feature film. How many feature films do you know that talk about modern economic theorists? Yet do you know his name? Do you hear this economic consensus in the media? Or do they tell you of the opposite; that Conservative economic policy is sensible, and that those wish to change it – such as Corbyn in the UK – are weak, crack pots who would run the country into the ground? Can you hear those alarm bells ringing again?

 

Conservatives always defend trickle down economics. Of course they do, their entire party is built upon this argument; people would not vote for policies which only benefit the minority (millionaires), so the Conservatives need to be able to argue that it is economically counter-productive to vote otherwise. They argue, for instance, that it is better to ‘drag up’ the poor, rather than ‘dragging down’ the rich with higher taxes. This is a fine argument, but evidence now shows it is entirely incorrect. If you create more and more wealth at the top, even slight increases at the bottom will be off-set by inflation. So as the price of goods – like bread, or bigger buys like houses – rise faster than the wages at the bottom, the poorest actually become poorer. The media report this as ‘growing’ wages for the poor, but, of course, it’s nothing of the sort if inflation has decrease the value of money this way. Trickle-down economics is a provable, obvious myth. That our media doesn’t report this is a travesty. If we were concerned about inequality, and wanting to do something about it, we would always vote against Conservative or Republican economic policy. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

 

 

So why are we really ‘fed up’ and choosing desperate political representation?

 

The media’s inability or else unwillingness to talk about the great thinkers of our time – the great advances of our time – mean our political decisions are increasingly ill-informed and unfit for purpose. Whereas previously human beings embraced enlightenment values – truth, science, progress, technological advancement – we now ignore it, and look inwards instead. We gang up on ‘foreigners’, ‘politicians’ or other irrational ‘group-think’ ideas instead.

 

In the US this means we now have a president dedicated to ignoring climate change, reversing women’s rights, destroying black communities, increasing economic inequality and appointing billionaires to create policy and help the rich to get richer.

 

In the UK, it means that we think all of our politicians are equally bad, and thus that a strong, business-like Conservative party are better than a ‘weak’, ‘lunatic’ Labour party. And, more to the point, we are taught to think that foreigners – by creating crowding, stealing our jobs and stealing public services – are the reason why things aren’t working, rather than looking at the evidence and seeing why things are actually getting worse.

 

All of the evidence points to the problem being our economic favouring of the rich. Yet it is ignored constantly. Why? Because the media is largely run by the wealthy, who lobby governments, and who won’t spread economic developments, or breakthroughs in thought, if these breakthrough oppose the interests of the rich owners. And with important issues like this, they do.

 

This is not rocket science, or any kind of conspiracy theory, it’s basic human nature rearing it’s head in the media: if you pay someone to go and find out what is happening across town, but their ability to get paid depends on them giving you a certain answer, you will get that answer – regardless of its truth – 9 times out of 10. From 9 people out of 10. That 1 person who will give you the right answer will look like they are in the wrong, and the consensus will be faked in the favour of the lie by the other 9. This is what is happening in our media, and it’s making most of us poorer, withholding opportunities from our children, and gradually turning us back to the dark ages.

 

There are ways out: support that 1 in 10 media source – those owned not by billionaires, but by committees who have charters of truth to work to. Avoid, as far as you can, clicking on the ‘bait’ offered by sites like ‘mail online’, or buying the Daily Mail, the Sun, or any gutter press like it. If you want celebrity stories, buy glossy magazines instead – they don’t claim to be telling you the daily news, at least.

 

Read papers or apps like The Guardian. They are labelled a ‘left wing’ paper, but realistically they print different stories, or different perspectives, because they are obligated to tell the truth and not just sell papers. These are the 1 in 10. They have to indulge journalistic integrity like fact and source checking, as well as covering important topics. As a result, it is no surprise to see regular articles and mentions about Piketty in The Guardian, and regular stories about bias and ignorance of evidence within the wider press.

 

Make it your new year’s resolution to be part of the solution; this system can’t continue without our support. We must wean ourselves off it.

As you drive to work, you likely listen to your radio, and hear songs written by well-known singer songwriters. When you arrive, maybe you check social media and learn the newest trending stories. When you go home, you watch the latest reality TV, punctuated by trailers for the next Hollywood blockbuster. This is real life; I didn’t write this article to try and convince you that we’re all living in the matrix.

Yet whilst there is an outcry that fake news – which is full of lies about whoever is paying for it, in order to increase the popularity of their opinions – is unduly influencing our opinions, it’s nothing new. Our lives have been ruled by fake, sterilely polished and unachievably aspirational media for as long as I can remember.

Remember those reality TV shows you watch? Young, beautiful people, often wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, living lives where nothing matters except the next night out or the next date? That shouldn’t be interesting, but it is, because we believe it’s possible for us to live like that: care free, hedonistic , a new definition of ‘idyllic’. It absolutely isn’t possible for us to live like that, though, and that we are glued to our TV screens watching other people live it stops us from being truly angry about our inability to do so. Rich, beautiful people are given status well beyond what they earn because we consume the media which justifies their doing so. We’re looking at them and saying ‘that’s okay’.

How about the current big thing, singing songs on the radio about heartbreak. Strumming their guitar or caressing their piano as they sing tales which touch our hearts. It sounds so authentic, until you realise these were written by six people searching for rhyming words in some mansion, tested on focus groups for buzz words and potential, before being polished so perfectly in a recording studio where even my voice could be made to sound angelic. They are then thrust into eye-wateringly expensive marketing campaigns, so they show up all over your newsfeeds (just like that fake news we’re all so angry about), and pushed to every major radio station so you hear it enough times that you like it (that is, unless it was written to be immediately catchy, and thus need less marketing spend on it).

And those movies you watch – most of the money doesn’t go on scripts, or casting, but on buying the most famous faces to star in it, and the most expensive explosions and/or marketing so as to ensure it sells tickets.

This isn’t a conspiracy, but rather how media works in a world where markets rule. Authenticity and genuine talent is obscured by companies who know how to trick you into seeing talent and authenticity, using whatever resources that are currently to hand. This is how the world looks when independent media is dying out, and when handfuls of big companies own the means to create media, as well as the means to market it.

The philosophy of aesthetics asks that we question ‘what truly is art?’ Does authenticity and talent really matter, or are we mostly interested in the pure pleasure of the end product, and so happy to live with the deception? That’s not for me to answer. It’s a subjective thing that we each must ask ourselves. However shouldn’t we be given the choice to ask it of ourselves? Shouldn’t some media source, somewhere, be giving us the resources to see what authentic and talented musicians and film-makers actually sound and look like? We haven’t opted in to this system, as far as I can tell, and that’s important; you wouldn’t accept if you were forced to watch the Evangelist Christian TV channel all day, so why do you accept that you’re given such a limited, market-led scope of media?

Our ‘fake lives’ are an entirely acceptable way for us to choose to live. But we have to be given the choice in order for it to be right.

Whilst I am far from being free of unauthentic media, I have learned a great deal about the range of talent that exists outside of what big companies want you to buy from them.  In particular, a wonderful record company called One Week Records, where the musician Joey Cape scours the US for singer-songwriters to live in his house for seven days, in which they write, perform, record and produce ten-song albums. It’s a beautiful idea; a solution for people who do long for authentic, genuine music.

My Christmas and end of year present to you is a song recorded during a One Week Records session. It is by a brilliant singer song-writer called Chris Cresswell.

When I hear the songwriters on the radio, it feels so forced: these perfect verses, matched seamlessly to a polished guitar playing underneath it, that seem to be written purely to make you feel sad/nostalgic, etc. There’s no building story or emotion, just catchy and…well, empty music. Which is why I love listening to this album. This song, ‘stitches’, builds from the beginning, and just erupts alongside the guitar toward the end. So much passion, energy and emotion. It doesn’t feel like you’re being sold an idea, it sounds like you’re listening to someone who has written something deeply meaningful and passionate. That, to me, is art; not written to make you want to buy it, or to hook you from the opening sentence. This is real music and I love it. I guess I took the red pill, and whilst I’m far from enlightened, I feel better for it. Enjoy a taste of freedom.

For years now, the split between left and right has been blurred. The left has classically tried to improve the lot of the poorer in society, and the right is classically focused on the economy – often said to help the richest. But the line, in the eyes of the electorate, has always been blurry.

Never has that been more true than today. Whilst the US fought the economic collapse with more sensible, Keynesian economic policy – investment – the UK simply gave in and tightened up. They cut spending, introduced ‘austerity’, and left the poorest clinging onto society by their fingertips. Physically disabled and chronically unwell people suddenly having benefits ripped away, and a fight for jobs so aggressive that big corporate employers have been the only beneficiaries. The poor shouldn’t have borne the brunt of the collapse, but they did.

Why did we put up with it? Well, the media told us that tightening the finances was the only way – economists disagree, so the politicians and media embarked on a crusade against experts. And for those of us who disagreed even then, they started pulling at our fear of outsiders instead. ‘You may not like our economic policy’, they argued, ‘but surely you are scared of foreigners – they stole your jobs’? And so, a part truth – immigrants are also applying for jobs, so of course some of them get jobs – mixed with the economic lie triumphed. Politicians were not interested in truth, but followed their own dogma, and convinced us to follow it by appealing to our most basic of human fears – of outsiders, of losing our jobs.

This week, of course, we learnt that the US is in fact no different. Donald Trump successfully divided a nation, turned out white men, and many white women, to vote against everyone else. 92% of black voters voted against him, which tells you all you need to know. And his arguments – on immigration, on corruption, even attacking the media, which is one of his biggest assets – were diversions from the truth. So, once again, a political leader managed to get people to vote against their own interests – in favour of free market capitalism instead of employment rights and investment in jobs – by appealing to almost completely irrelevant fears in the electorate. He also did it largely against the machinery of his own political party, which tells you how greatly politics has changed in the past few years.

The left, as always, fought back by tempering their message. They say they want to help the poorest, but they temper their message to get more favourable media coverage. As a result, we see the left give in on immigration in the UK – we saw the Labour party host merchandise with slogans about immigration controls – we see the left in the US give up on gun control, something that evidence from everywhere else in the world is very clear about. And we see the leaders on the left – people like Hilary Clinton – need so much financial and media backing, that they basically have a people-friendly public personality, and a fund-raising private one. Donald Trump needed to not worry, as he wasn’t toeing such a tight line between fiction and reality, donors and private. People were not surprised by his personal scandals, because they believed in his message and never based support on being people-friendly.

The left, thus, is fatally broken. We have gotten to a stage where even the lowest of tactics didn’t work. Even the most compromising of positions didn’t work. Depending on the country, we have given up on immigrants, we have given up on minorities, we have given up on women’s rights, we have given up on all of these things because they aren’t popular with the electorate. How will they ever become so if we give up on them? And how we will ever progress them if we step back on something new every year. That’s not progress, it’s fast becoming a twisted, ineffective attempt at pragmatism.

So I’m done with the political left, we now need reason in politics. We don’t need Hilary Clinton telling enough people what they want to hear to stop Donald Trump ruining the country for 4 years. We need someone telling the truth – all of the truth – listening to experts, debating and explaining honest, rational policy. We don’t need politicians, we need reason. We need scientists, philosophers, people with common sense and an ability to see logic – we don’t need to appeal to people’s basic fears, or people who test well with voters (we have the most voter-unfriendly president in history!). We need to voters to understand how their fears are being manipulated, and what the government are actually doing. How the media works, and how it’s inability to remain neutral fails democracy.

The left can’t do it anymore. They have been the establishment for too long, they’ve compromised too much, and even the far left – the likes of the Greens – take on so many anti-rational issues (like opposing GMOs, or economic growth) to appease their own supporters that there really isn’t any point.

The future is in reason and progress, and that can only come through honesty and education. In schools and workplaces, to the media and through social media. On the day after Lego became the first company to refuse to fund ads in the Daily Mail, as a way to stop the hate in our media, the ground is becoming fertile for politically successful reason. We desperately need a second enlightenment and now is the time.

My suggestion? The Party of Reason and Progress has gained 11,000 supporters over 4 days. We have quickly set up groups and pages in each country, and already amassed a massive 5,000 volunteers. We are already more active on social media than the greens. That’s after 4 days. People are desperate for something new, something to unite the political and non-political classes; change that doesn’t involve discrimination or regression to darker days. That change can only be with reason, and it has to be us. All of us.

The first enlightenment didn’t need the media, or political machinery. Trump just proved that you don’t need it today either. We have been going for 4 days, imagine what we can accomplish in 4 years, where we will be in 8.

Join us, volunteer with us, be in the first wave to help change the world.

A lot has happened in the last decade. Labour took a hammering for the war in Iraq, the Conservatives (with the help of media moguls) have cleverly blamed the entire global financial crash on the left – despite it originating in the neo-Conservative policy of deregulation of banking – and the media have been willing to help UKIP polarise every political issue into a story about immigration. Whilst, in Scotland, exactly the same media moguls have helped the SNP to push out Labour, through an almost exact opposite of what they have been printing in England. Governments across the UK have, as a result, swung right.

There have been little intricacies to this story; the SNP’s out of character willingness to accept the polls at the last election, helped paint a story of them as controlling the UK parliament, and as a result pushed further votes from the left in England. And the Conservatives fear of losing seats to UKIP has meant they adopt as many UKIP policies as they can; the far right influencing what has previously been the centre ground.

The above table has been the result: if we ignore Northern Ireland, which appears to be entirely separate, the political sphere is roughly split toward the right: 49.5 of eligible voters are voting right every time. When mixed with unfair splits of votes to seats, this leads to a huge right-majority in parliament.

The reaction of Britain’s biggest left-wing party has been to oppose the wishes of its supporters. Whilst Labour’s supporters continually elect a leftist leader, in Corbyn, the members of parliament see the swing to the right and say we should be fighting not just for a share of that 39% of left votes, but also for the 7.9% in the centre, and a wedge of that 49.5% on the right.

However, things aren’t quite that simple. Short of the Labour party hugely switching its stance to become anti-immigration (and alienate their current voters), or pro-tax evasion (which again alienates their own voters), then most of those winnable centre and right votes are completely unachievable.

There are, though, several things which Labour can do to stop the British swing to the far right.

 

See the public’s concerns on the EU.

Whilst it is the right of the Labour party who are most willing to accept the UKIP-narrative of British politics – that everything is the fault of immigration – Corbyn is actually their strongest weapon on this point. Corbyn is widely seen as having been lukewarm about the EU, and having opposed it earlier during his career. So to actually publicise that Corbyn wasn’t sure, and that he sees the concerns and the benefits, would do wonders for Labour. It allows the public to trust them on Brexit, in a way which current polls do not allow.

This is something which the anti-Corbyn Labour MPs, which is most of them, ignore: they try to paint Corbyn’s lukewarm attitude as a negative, as something which is problematic for Labour and led to use leaving the EU. Yet, realistically, he was a party leader with no support from his MPs – what he said meant little, and he trod the middle line well. Labour MPs need to get behind this and see the pragmatism he has given them, to support certain aspects of the EU, whilst being able to see people’s problems with it rather than simply eulogising for it.

I agree with the economists – Brexit will be a disaster – but unless Labour does something other than whinging, they are going to lose even more seats at the next election.

 

Quit the rebelling; deselect MPs standing in the way of unity.

Corbyn and his team have been desperate to unify all wings of the party, whilst it’s not quite clear how the rebels are actually appealing to any section of the public. These MPs are now often opposed by their own local parties, and week after week are providing a narrative to turn attention away from the Conservatives failures. The Conservatives wanted to stay in Europe, failed, and had to hastily kill off Michael Gove’s political career, whilst making some bizarre political decisions (Boris Johnson as foreign secretary, anyone?). Similarly, UKIP have finally reached their natural end.

These were Labour’s best opportunities to win back core support in years. Yet, they instead used it as a way to vilify Corbyn to try and get rid of him. Thus turning easy opportunities into yet more troubles. It really is not clear how Labour can win whilst the MPs oppose the leader, and thus do not allow focus on the governments problems. It’s not pragmatic, it’s not politically smart, it’s childish and it’s losing Britain to the far-right. Deselection is not something the MPs want, it’s not something Corbyn seems to want, but it’s now necessary. Either they continue for another 3-4 years as an ineffectual left, as the government slides further to the right, or, Labour MPs go up for deselection. The left needs the Labour party to be united, and it needs to provide a consistent narrative.

 

See how society and politics actually works.

As an ethicist, I have spent a great deal of time looking at the great social movements of the past. The suffragettes didn’t wait until society was ripe for change, for instance, they ripened it. Martin Luther King didn’t postpone the march until the political right was on board, he made them get on board. So why on earth is the discussion on the left about how best to slot themselves into the narrative on the right?

In fact, Tony Blair seems to be the only example the political left give of how leftist parties can appeal to the right in order to change things. It’s seems to be otherwise non-existent in history. Yet, think about Blair for two seconds, and it becomes apparent that the keys to his success were very much elsewhere. He was the first leader that took advantage of modern, stylised politics – opposing old, grey leaders with young, more culturally aware people. That was a huge change in politics.

Secondly, the Tory party were in absolute tatters – Europe split them in the 90’s in the same way that Corbyn has split Labour today. They were seen as a shambles. As a result, the media had no choice but to plump for Labour, because the Tories were giving absolutely no opposition at all (listen up, Labour rebels…)

Thirdly, and most importantly, Blair was the architect of Labour’s late downfall by mistakenly thinking the key to his success was mixing left with right. He allowed the right to control the narrative: toward the end he allowed immigration, foreign policy and economics to veer right, by playing centre-right policies, thinking that it would keep the left in power. It didn’t, and he jumped ship when things were going very wrong. Blair’s massive victory in the late 90’s gave him the opportunity to change the narrative – people genuinely believed he would do things differently, and he had a popular mandate to do so – yet in many areas he failed to do so. And rather than fight for elections after this, from a leftist base, he told people what they wanted here, getting as big a majority as politically possible, before eventually finding that the left had again completely lost its influence.

There is, in fact, nothing simpler than explaining how social change works. Talk about things that are rational and just. Keep talking about them. Don’t stop talking about them. Don’t compromise if something is right. Had Blair done this about immigration in the 00’s, there is no doubt that UKIP would still be unknown. Labour need to get behind their leader who, as problematic as his image and some of his views are (opposing trident is logically ridiculous if you see the evidence about how it has stopped war), is actually doing the right thing: trying to ripen for social change away from the right.

 

Or…take a divisive else explicitly pragmatic view on the EU.

The EU referendum was a hugely divisive issue, which split the UK right down the middle. Latest polls show Conservative support up and UKIP down, which says the Tories are taking the hard-line voters – they are trying to appeal to that 52% who voted for it.

The Lib Dems, on the other hand, are trying to ‘do an SNP’. The SNP lost the independence referendum, as the majority of Scot’s opposed it, yet they ride to power in Scotland in every subsequent vote as that same 45% of the electorate appear to keep voting for them. The Lib Dems think that this is their way to unlikely power: make the 48% in large part vote for them, which will give victory in almost every constituency, as it does for the SNP.

It has yet to be seen if the EU was as divisive as the independence referendum, or if the Lib Dems previous trust issues are as far in the past as the SNPs – the SNP have been anti-Europe and all kinds of things which they are currently a polar opposite to, but long enough ago that people have forgotten. But the Lib Dem’s may have lost many voters forever when they propped up the Conservatives in government, and that tuition fee promise just never goes away…

Labour could beat the Lib Dems to it, as it’s certainly worked for the SNP in Scotland, and they would surely beat Lib Dems to the vote if that was the choice in most constituencies. But, perhaps there is a smarter way to do this. The Conservatives are desperate to win over UKIP supporters, and be the party of Brexit. The Lib Dems are desperate to be the party of the 48%, the party of Remain. Maybe Labour need to make the case that ‘there are other issues as well as the EU – sensible exit, but open to other possibilities’.

Again, Corbyn laid the ground work for this during the referendum campaign. He stayed pro-EU yet concerned. I can’t say how smart that is. He thus has the position with which to agree with Brexit, but on safe terms, yet to point out all of the issues on which the rest of us think are equally important. The failure of funding the NHS, the championing of the economy and the failure of the Conservatives to run it, the delaying of important decisions, the messing up of the sensitive child abuse inquiries.

The Cons and the Lib Dems can massively overplay how important people think the EU is, by failing to campaign on anything else, and boring people to tears. Similarly, if we leave the EU, within 3 years our economy will be in tatters, and we can tell that narrative of it being the Conservatives fault, in the same way they did for Labour and the economic crash. Similarly, once we’ve left the EU, the Lib Dems have lost their only trump card anyway.

There are ways of winning the next election, but so long as Labour rebels remain, I’m not sure any of them can be successful, as they all weaken and potentially eliminate any narrative that can be weaved. You can’t talk about issues seriously when your friends keep acting like children and pulling your pants down; at some point you have to keep different company.

If you ask any employee what they think of their boss, you might get a different answer depending on all kinds of things. If you asked them just after an appraisal, in which constructive criticism was offered with regards to their phone manner, you might find it to be an awful lot more negative.

The same, it seems, goes for the British public as a whole. If polls are to be believed, at almost every stage up to the EU referendum we preferred to remain. But, given months of the remain view being labelled ‘negative’, or ‘unpatriotic’, not to mention months of scare-mongering about immigrants (the entire population of turkey was on the verge of moving here, apparently), we swung just before election day. It didn’t hurt that the experts who foresaw the crash in GBP (along with the weakening of the ability for UK companies to compete abroad), were labelled liars or idiots. We were marketed at and convinced to change our mind, and we did.

Ever since, of course, the price of GBP has crashed to its lowest point in decades, and we’ve begun receiving stark warnings of price rises in basic products. If you believe some sections of the media, a re-run vote today would easily return a victory for remain.

This is an example of what we know through basic common sense: people’s opinions change on all kinds of things in life, but they can especially rock back and forth on political issues. So whilst we hear referendums being labelled as ‘great exercises in democracy’, that’s true only if you ignore what democracy is. Are referendums democratic at all?

 

People voting

In a very basic definition, a referendum is of course an exercise in democracy. Democracy means people being represented in the decisions their governments make, so when the government directly asks them a question, in order to enact their decision, it is – all other things being equal – democracy. The problem is those ‘other things’.

 

Actually representing the opinions of the electorate

To be democracy in any meaningful way, the processes of democracy have to actually end up with the will of the people being represented. If 60 million people spend 30 years agreeing with A, but for two weeks in the middle change their mind to B, it is undemocratic to take the fleeting opinions during that two weeks to be their opinion. It wasn’t their opinion for 15 years before, it won’t be there opinion for 15 years after, so to take their opinion during that set 2-weeks you’re acting undemocratically. Especially if you’re the one creating that turbulent two week period! That’s like allowing people one vote in their life, but only letting them have it when you know they will vote for you. That, in fact, is called fascism, not democracy.

This is true, at least, for referendums which have lasting effects. The EU referendum was once such instance: people voted to leave, and if we do leave, there is no easy or quick way back. So to base a decision about a countries’ future on temporary opinions, if those opinions are not held for significant amounts of time prior to or after the vote, is not a democratic way to judge opinion. The EU referendum vote is a great example of this problem; this is a vote in which the view of the public may have changed back even before the government decides to enact the decision of the vote. This is a significant affront to democracy.

But this is a problem with all referendums, not just that of the EU. Scottish independence would have been exactly the same. Never had support for independence been the majority view, and only once in the lead up to the referendum did it become so. Similarly, never since the referendum has it been the majority, and now it is back to a lowly 39%. Yet for that week period when it was, Scotland could have been ripped from economic and social security in the name of ‘democracy’, when in nature it would not have been anything like democracy.

So, it is questionable that a referendum is democratic at all if it doesn’t represent the settled, long-term view of the population. However, there’s something else worrying about these referendums. They seem to be asking for the public to be manipulated.

If, in ‘normal times’, the people of Scotland have always preferred the union, but for two weeks in August during 2014 they preferred independence, why is that? The nationalists would say that they became educated on the subject so changed their mind. Yet, if the support dropped back following the campaign, did the public just become uneducated again, or is something else going on?

That ‘something else’ is likely to be that referendum campaigns are not ‘normal times’. If the subject of a referendum inflames passion, it is actually less likely to create a rational, representative result. In the same way that it isn’t accurate to judge people’s opinion on David Beckham by gauging it solely in the two weeks after he inflamed passions by getting sent off in the English World Cup campaign of 1998.

Referendums (at least the two we have spoken about here) have impassioned debates, conflicting news stories, peer pressure, flag-waving sentiment, accusations of treason, and just generally take us back to a time of primitive, aggressive battle. It is not representative of the civil, rational times we actually live, work and raise families in. And, similarly, the side that is not the status quo suddenly has a chance to make up almost anything they like to win new support and the guarantee of positive news coverage of it, as long as some small piece of justification (however questionable) backs it up. Remember that red bus? Remember Alex Salmond’s prediction of oil prices? In normal times these are scrutinised, if not ignored, but in referendum campaigns they are given the untouchable status of ‘official opinion’. That’s a huge problem for democracy; referendums allow for politicians to whip up enough passion and anger in order to counter rational understanding of issues.

 

What is the solution to make referendums more democratic? Well, to ensure the campaigns aren’t questionable, or manipulative, you’d need a shift change within politics. This isn’t going to happen. Similarly, to stop the non-status quo side from engaging any and all tactics they can think of to get their way also isn’t likely. Doing away with advocates for each side, disallowing press conferences, and allowing journalists themselves to do the reporting? Maybe, though good luck silencing the plucky and unofficial men of the people, like Nigel Farage.

Realistically there is no cure we can enact right now to solve the problem with referendums, which appear to be decidedly undemocratic, and a way for charisma, marketers and orators to play games with your opinions. So, unless polls consistently – annually – back an exit from the EU, or an exit from the UK, then forcing the population into a referendum on these issues is tantamount to legislating in favour of manipulating the will of the people. Democracy is about representing people’s opinions, not changing them for long enough to justify the political opinions of the leaders.

The argument against this, if someone like Nicola Sturgeon is forced to respond to it? ‘How can Rob Johnson say that allowing the will of the people to be heard is undemocratic?’ Because democracy is about listening to people when they are living their lives – representing their actual opinions – not just their opinions as soon as they agree with you, for however short a time that is. If the majority of Scots agree with independence consistently for 5 years, you have a case, and evidence will back you; to this end, I agree that independence should never be settled for a generation. But we should hear nothing more of it until that is the case, and instead allow activists to spend their resources on more worthy current causes. And indeed allow the SNP to see if they can amass support based on actual policies and performance, rather than polarisation of the electorate.

It’s just a shame that UKIPs mad influence meant a measured approach could not be used on the EU too.

There were several obvious aspects to Thursdays vote: Wales and Northern England are more concerned about immigration than we thought, London, N. Ireland and Scotland were all aligned in their opinions, and big cities with the most immigration – like Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow and London – are less worried about it than more rural or less cosmopolitan areas. But here are 8 things that you may not have noticed.

 

Boris wasn’t planning for a Leave vote, and his future is arguably less rosy now.

So, Boris won. We knew that. And Cameron has quit. Things look quite rosy for Boris, right? Well, arguably not as rosy as they could have been. His signing of the letter urging Cameron to stay as PM, shortly after the polls closed, was the final tactic of a very different path that Boris was planning. Preceded by a rousing speech in Tuesday night’s Wembley debate, Boris was following the SNP game plan. He was almost banking on a Remain vote, and by both showing his leadership qualities with the Leave campaign, and mobilising a passionate Scottish style 45%, he thought he would not only sweep to Tory leadership victory, but also to an unprecedented election victory.

The maths behind his tactics were simple. The SNP constantly now clear up in Scottish regional and Westminster elections, and they even use proportional representation to elect MSPs. By mobilising a passionate and loyal 45% in the UK, he could sweep most of the constituencies under his control, even in Labour heartlands, where 45% would almost always be enough for victory.

The Leave victory, and Cameron’s resignation, means he is odds on to still get that Tory leadership role, and arguably even a good stint as PM. But the path to success at the next election is now far less certain, especially when we have 4 years for voters to realise that leaving the EU hasn’t really helped things. Perhaps only a fractured Labour party can help Boris become an elected PM. More on all this later.

 

The SNP got exactly what they needed.

If you are shocked to learn that Boris was actually one of the night’s potential casualties, you perhaps won’t be as shocked to hear that Nicola Sturgeon is arguably its biggest winner. Sturgeon did just enough to walk the fine line she needed to walk, to get everything she needed.

She was never going to be a big loser out of the whole thing, but a UK remain vote would have slightly dispersed with pro-nationalist feeling, and arguably motivated a small pro-unionist togetherness. Not enough to sweep the SNP out of power in Scotland, of course, but almost certainly enough to lessen the call for an independence referendum in the next decade. After all, being the establishment in Scotland is not doing them any favours, as their slight May election slide showed.

What she ideally wanted was for Scotland to back the EU, but for turnout to not quite be strong enough to actually keep the UK in. As it happened, England also did her a huge favour, meaning a slightly lower than expected turnout in Scotland was enough for her to successfully walk that tight-rope.

Independence is back on the cards, a referendum is likely in the next two years, and only a fool would bet on Scotland to remain in the UK this time. Similarly, she now has a way to get some sort of offer from the EU for some deal on market access. Something which was very unlikely whilst the rest of the UK was in the EU. The only remaining worry they have is that pesky currency. But will worries about the Euro be enough, this time, to stop Scotland leaving the UK, when the pound has crashed? Unlikely. Things couldn’t have gone better for the SNP. She did just enough with talking about a 2nd independence referendum during the campaign, but never too much so as to persuade pro-unionists in England to vote Remain. The canniest party leader we have perhaps ever had in Britain has once again gotten everything she wanted, without anyone realising.

 

Farage has done the Conservatives a huge favour in the long run.

It’s no secret that Nigel is fairly closely aligned to traditional, right-wing conservative views. But in the last few years, he has almost single-handedly spun the Conservatives a useful – and perceived independent – shield from attacks coming from the left.

Labour – especially Corbyn and McDonnell – have been vocal in their opposition to austerity, and many areas of England would arguably be swaying toward Labour, were it not for Farage blaming these problems of austerity on immigration. Whipping up hatred toward foreigners is fairly easy to do, and coupled with distaste for the establishment, it has found him fans. Enough fans to steal votes from Labour in 2015 that made a real difference in a tight election contest. And now enough support to cover any attacks on Conservative austerity, papering over the weaknesses in the minority Tory government.

His speech on Thursday night – which seemed to partly be designed to distance the Brexit vote from Jo Cox’s murder – was a similarly sneaky tactic of keeping Labour voters from sympathy with their traditional party. Despite what seemed like anti-EU terrorism unlawfully killing one of their MPs. He may keep that Labour support, and coupled with his covering of austerity, he’s one of the key figures that can help create a majority Conservative government in the next election. Ironic for a man who claims to be anti-establishment.

 

Media balance is creating closeness where it is not legitimate.

No-where in the UK will you find any media outlet who will teach the controversy on evolution – no-one will dignify “creationist science” with that respect, as it’s clearly nonsense. Even capitalism, despite being a system of economics with many critics, receives absolutely no debate in 99% of the British media. Yet, even though economists of all ilks were united in their condemnation of a Brexit vote, and all the major political parties opposed it, the media gave it a 50-50 balance in coverage. Nigel Farage – a man who holds no elected role in our society – was even given a hefty share of the media coverage. Whilst economists who work for the IMF or other independent economic think tanks were given no place in any debate. That’s balance in no rational sense. If science were taught in a ‘balanced’ way like this, you’d not be reading this, you’d be living in a mud hut.

So although we like to call it ‘media balance’, it’s actually nothing more than media bias toward the side which is wrong, in any given debate.

It is perhaps no surprise then that two UK referendums in a row – first for Scottish independence, and then for EU membership – have gone from foregone conclusions in the early stages to close calls at the end, swayed at the last minute, due to this ‘media balance’. We may as well flip a coin on matters of national importance from now on, as any fear of foreigners, hatred of experts or even heavy rain may otherwise end up deciding our most important national decisions.

 

Anti-intellectualism isn’t only in the USA.

You may have noticed this one yourself, but while we were busy condemning the rise of Trump’s ignorant and anti-intellectual views in the US, we allowed Boris, Michael and Nigel to do the exact same thing here. Trump’s arguments are poor. He claims, days after a domestic-born terrorist commits genocide, that the key to stopping terror is stopping them coming in to the country. All clear thinking and honest people – which should be 99% of people in a good democracy – would be negatively influenced by such comments, as it’s not accurately solving even the current issue (stopping foreigners coming in won’t stop domestic born terrorists). Yet Trump’s rise shows American democracy is increasingly useless, anti-intellectual and non-progressive.

While we were busy judging, Michael Gove was telling everyone within ear shot that the British people have had enough of experts. And that the experts were wrong, because he simply knew it. We should have seen a huge swing toward Remain based on that alone, not to mention all of the other anti-intellectual nonsense we heard from the Brexit campaign. That we didn’t, does not bode well for our democracy. As the pound crashed on Friday morning, ahead of what will be a turbulent and damaging time for the UK economy – which every economist warned us about – Gove has already been proved wrong. That he will be re-elected at the next election does not make us look good internationally, as it shows we will elect people with absolutely no knowledge, expertise or foresight on politics or economics, to run our country.

 

Labour backbenchers are now one of the biggest roadblocks to Labour success.

Corbyn played this referendum very smartly. He knew he needed the support of people voting Leave and Remain at the next election, and thus made a less scare-mongered, more separate and rational case from Remain. He also tried to connect with Leave voters, by being honest and not simply full of praise for the EU.

Some backbenchers, however, who could not fail to be aware of this, have immediately tried to spin it to be a failure of him to ‘persuade’ Labour voters by not being a smiley, stereotypical Europhile. At a time when the Tories are divided, and the future uncertain, this was a big chance for Labour to be the party who understood the concerns of everyone. The backbenchers have offered a serious assault against their own party, and against the interests of the British public, by spinning it into yet another opportunity for Blairite self-promotion.

Even those Labour voters who are most critical of Corbyn must surely now see the problem these MPs are causing. Labour needs a new tactic, and it finally has one, and yet these MPs are providing the roadblocks to its success. Can Labour really defend a failure to re-select MPs given these circumstances? Some Labour backbenchers are not currently serving the Labour party, or its voters, and are now supporting a Conservative party which is gradually running the country down. Time is running out to stop them, and Corbyn and his cabinet must consider re-selection if election in 4 years is a serious goal.

 

Farage might be on his last legs.

We return to Nigel. Good old Nigel. This referendum was his baby, even though we kept refusing to elect him to fight it, and refusing to offer him the public’s backing to even be on the Leave side. Yet it’s his career’s pinnacle.

What we know from Scotland, however, is that the referendum doesn’t always do away with the group whose entire point is the referendum. He may thus go on to become an MP yet. But given the amount of problems he seemed to think were caused by being a member of the EU, and by the time of the next election we won’t have been one for two years, he’s got a fight on his hands. How does he excuse the certain failure of the UK to curb immigration after independence? How will he manage to reframe the problem as being non-EU immigration, when he’s spent so long fighting for non-EU immigration? And how will he steal Boris and Gove’s thunder, to win UKIP the election plaudits? How will his arguments about the NHS, education, housing and everything else look when these are all still problems when we’ve left the EU?

Smart money will be on UKIP winning at least one MP at the next election – maybe more – but fading out in the years afterwards, when Brexit doesn’t turn out to be having the magic beans effect that he has preached for so long. But even this is optimistic without a huge campaign. And does he have it in him?

 

It isn’t always obvious what the status quo is.

One of the clichés of election night nowadays seems to be the late swing toward the status quo. It happens in elections, though not always enough to save the incumbent government (just ask Gordon Brown). It also happens in referendums – I’m still not convinced that the offer of further devolution had any effect at all on Scotland voting to remain in the UK, more likely a late swing toward the status quo of the union saved the day.

But in Thursday’s referendum, we thought the opposite had happened. Surely the status quo was to remain in the EU, wasn’t it? Well, partly, but this one’s a little more complicated. For places like London or Manchester – places with lots of immigration – the status quo is voting to remain in the UK. And that’s largely what these kinds of places voted for. But for the UK as a whole, EU membership might have been the political status quo, but white, British born people are the cultural status quo.

The late swing in different places thus went toward what each area seemed to consider the status quo. Manchester and London swung to Remain, less well integrated areas – which is most of the country – went Leave.

This also gives us a nice insight we don’t always use when predicting elections. Places in the North of England might well consider Labour to be the status quo, even if the Conservatives are the government, and thus swing toward them, whilst the country as a whole might swing to the status quo Conservative government. We might see this become more and more important as the country becomes more fractured and divided.

The world watched innocent Parisian’s slaughtered, in a land of refuge, liberty and equality. Bombs rained down in Syria, UK politicians applauded passionate calls for joining the war, and the United States again refused to agree stricter gun laws despite violent shootings in schools and cinemas. The US also unearthed one of the least kind, most violent presidential candidates ever – a man who believes women are inferior to men, and shows it at every opportunity.

Our media focused on these events in the countries where we feel akin. However, the Sudan, Iraq, Somalia and various other less Western places suffered attack after attack from enemies of civil discourse.

Let’s be honest, 2015 has been a tough year; an unending reminder of why people switch off to politics and world affairs. It’s almost too painful not to. And ethicists have few, if any, solutions. We generally tell people the best they can do is to offer 10% of their salaries to good causes, or some other desperate plea for charity. I don’t agree that’s what we should do. 2016 can be a better year, and it’s about more than funding good causes. Here are 6 things you can do that will help to change things:

 

1. Differentiate between people and ideas.

As we wallowed in the aftermath of one of France’s worst ever terrorist attacks, people, bereft of ideas, allowed themselves to be drawn into a game of demonising innocent people. Muslims within Europe and the US suffered the backlash, despite having nothing to do with the attacks. The right-wing Front National in France, and Trump’s presidential candidacy in the US, have both prompted and implicitly supported such attacks. They’ve also both benefited from it.

My suggestion isn’t just as simple as ‘oppose bigots’, though. People turn to these bigots for answers when they see none in mainstream politics. Leftists, moderates and centrists alike refused to criticise the religious ideals of ISIS, instead simply pretending they “weren’t real Muslims”. These are sincere people (mainly men) who will kill themselves for what they believe Allah wants. Of course they are Muslims, in the same way that Catholics who denounce birth control and raise rates of HIV in Africa are Christians. We need to accept this, accept it is different to the Islam that most Muslims in our country believe in, and begin opposing it.

Bigots refuse to differentiate between people and ideas, and oppress all people who are remotely similar in look, skin colour or faith. But the rest of us are also to blame by refusing to differentiate, stating these people basically have no religious ideas. Both sides are wrong and playing a dangerous game of propaganda. The solution is finding the truthful middle ground that everyone can understand and get behind.
2. Don’t always follow the crowd.

We’re human. We like to fit in. But to change things, we also have to keep our calm and disagree. Providing rational reasons why, when others are wrong.

Our tolerance of people – as mentioned in the first point – often becomes a tolerance of bad ideas, and that should never be the case. With terrorism, we should protect Muslims whilst attacking the illiberal ideology of Jihad. To avoid war, we should use democratic process to protect civilians of the dictatorships, whilst arguing against violence.

But disagreeing when people are wrong goes much deeper than that. We should disagree with people who are promoting anti-vaccination campaigns, or pseudo-scientific medicine like homeopathy. These might seem harmless, but when practiced on a sincere level, bad medicine can persuade people to ignore life-saving treatment, and failing to vaccinate your child can endanger everyone who can’t get the vaccine (as well as your own children). If we allow this kind of suffering, we are doing no better than allowing for terrorist ideas to flourish. Suffering is suffering.

This is the most difficult thing of all to do. The people who promote these latter kinds of ideas tend to be caring, genuine people, and disagreeing with their core beliefs will likely change nothing. But to know you respectfully and strongly believe otherwise can change their minds. It can also change the minds of others in society, who might otherwise have followed their path. A strong movement for truth is often separated from the fight for justice, but the two are likely intimately connected.

 

3. Avoid discontinuous beliefs.

Disagreement means having the bravery to stand up for what’s right or what’s true, no matter how insignificant. That’s important, as a world of people who speak the truth is a better world than one where people go along with what everyone else says. But for that world to have value, you also have to challenge yourself.

That belief you have in feminism, does it translate to respect for Trans people? The will you have to protect the innocent, does it apply also to people who don’t share your beliefs? And that strong belief in fairness and ending suffering, does it transfer to animals? Before you disagree with anything, make sure your own beliefs are right. Taking a stand for your own personal bias isn’t going to help anyone; that’s just imposing your own beliefs on other people. Make sure they are right first.

 

4. Remove the invisible line you draw between the suffering of humans and other animals.

Save that last paragraph in point 3, I’ve mentioned little about animals so far. Why would I? This year we’ve seen war, heartless terrorism encroaching on our doorstep in a way which chills the spine, and bigotry of worrying proportions. For me to mention animals at all might seem to be misjudging the feelings of my reader.

Whilst I too have a deep-seated belief that human suffering is more important to eliminate than animal suffering, there are two reasons why I disagree with myself. Firstly, because drawing invisible lines between different individuals based on physical or mental characteristics is rationally bankrupt. It’s old fashioned, it’s out of date, and the lack of ability that animals have to voice their opinion about our use of them shouldn’t make us silent about it.

Secondly, to see a dog being tossed into a dustbin lorry, or to take in a shelter cat who has never known a human touch other than a kick, is to experience an emotional journey that unearths your own hypocrisy. We eat pigs, cows, and recently probably a turkey, that suffer in a way which is just as real as dogs and cats. We justify our actions with all kinds of ridiculous excuses – ranging from comparing ourselves to Lions, to arguing on behalf of human ‘culture’. And, when we run out of excuses, we simply say “I couldn’t stop”.

Forget terrorism, forget war, if we have become a culture of humans who “can’t” buy different things in the supermarket in order to stop mass torture, I truly despair for what we have become. We surely aren’t the same species as Emily Davidson or Frederick Douglas, are we? The struggle for justice used to be a lot harder, and people back then not only “could“, they “did”.

Every year, without fail, we see celebrities – be they chefs or Hollywood actresses – conducting a campaign on behalf of farmed animals. They do little, because they think little of us, their audience. They think we need to eat animals, or that we have to eat all animals. As a result they promote questionable uses of those animals like ‘free range’ (which in 99% of cases doesn’t provide much of an improvement for the chicken, who knows nothing but the huge suffering she still experiences), telling us they are definitely better than how we currently kill and eat them.

I don’t honestly think most of us even buy this kind of reasoning. But we go along with it, as it’s a social excuse to continue doing what we do. We’ll give 50p to an animal charity on the street, another £20 at xmas maybe. That’s the moral equivalent of running foxes over all year, then donating to a fox sanctuary once a year. It’s not the actions of an honest, rationally capable person.

 

5. Act.

All of which brings us nicely to the final suggestion: do something!

Of course it’s important what you do. Those celebrities who promote ‘free range’ methods of farming are like the other republican candidates, being partially bigoted in order to win over more moderate Trump supporters. It does nothing to buy free range, just like it does little to support Carson rather than Trump. Acting itself is not enough, it has to be rational.

But you do have to act. Giving money isn’t enough. Charities do good, but they can’t do much if you don’t. They exist against a constant barrage of opposition, because our apathy allows their opposition to thrive. Vote for political parties that actually do good things, rather than paying for food banks to undo some of the Tories evil. Those are the same Tories you voted for in the first place, or the same Tories which you refused to debate your friends about, or refused to campaign or even write Facebook posts against, last May! Stopping causing problems is the key to a better world.

When we’ve lived through a year like 2015, there is of course a feeling of apathy. It’s painful to keep watching what is going on. There’s also a culture of fear, and as a result we vote for unscrupulous, unkind politicians to protect us from our enemies. But we must remember that doing this is how we got to where we are.

We must also remember that things aren’t actually that bad. They could be a lot better, but things have gradually improved over the last few centuries. As the wonderful Better Angels of our Nature, by Steven Pinker, points out, there has never been a safer time to be alive around the world, despite how it feels.

That’s thanks to reason. People being less violent, more rational, valuing reason over prejudice, and valuing conversation over war. The media wants to tell us all of the bad things that are happening – and they should – but they should put them in the context of hope, rather than hopelessness. Things are getting better, but that won’t happen if you stop trying to make it better and instead settle back into a medieval feeling of hate, fear or bigotry. Similarly, the real path to progress is not in a tolerant pacifism alone, but a persuasive and passionate promotion of reason as well. A protection of all innocents, and the creation of a global culture of tolerant, secular politics.

I don’t think that if you go out and do the 5 things that I have written above, then the world will be a peaceful utopia this next time year. But I do believe that a year is a long time, and things can get an awful lot better in that time. This is how you make it happen.