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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

You could say that about any election, ever. The Brexit Referendum was no more or less honest than any general election.

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> The Brexit Referendum was no more or less honest than any general election.

Sorry, no. It was profoundly* dishonest.

I have a leaflet that was dropped through my door talking about Turkey joining the EU as if it was something imminent and guaranteed (it is neither).

It featured a map that prominently suggested this was a gateway to all things nefarious by showing Turkey as a coloured region without a label, surrounded by Iraq and Syria, which were.

It's the single most dishonest thing I've seen in politics in my life.

* I'm actually not sorry. This claim is ludicrous.

"Turkey is negotiating its accession to the European Union (EU) as a member state, following its application to become a full member of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the EU, on 14 April 1987.[1]"

It's officially classed as a candidate. That doesn't seem consistent with "Never joining" unless the EU knowingly lied to Turkey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...

Did I say "never joining"?

I said it was not imminent (it isn't) or guaranteed (and it isn't).

Nobody lied to Turkey. They know there are economic, political, social etc. targets that they have to meet before they progress to EU membership.

I've been a candidate for lots of things I didn't get. Haven't you?

They first applied in 1987, 29 years before the Brexit vote. It has been more than seven years since that vote.

The very Wikipedia page you're pointing at shows how badly it is going for Turkey after we left. Basically, the process is as close to ended for good as it can be. Turkey is less likely to succeed in joining the EU than the UK is to rejoin.

And everyone knew how serious those problems were, particularly regarding human rights, and the direction of travel.

The Leave campaign absolutely lied about Turkey's chances of joining, because only the spectre of Turkey being a member soon fit with the idea of Syrian refugees fleeing across the border into, thus, the EU, from their very current conflict.

It was never close to true.

Did the remain campaign point it out?

They did, repeatedly, at the time.

And the scurrilousness of the leaflet was pointed out, too.

But xenophobia sells.

It was the pointing out which was the problem, as it brought prominence to the lie. There were plenty of other lies too, the one about NHS funding was especially egregious.

So, here's the thing about lies.

If I start shouting to millions of people that you've been beating your wife, there's literally nothing you can say to undo this damage.

If you deny it, you'll just bring further attention to the lie.

If you ignore it, I'll keep bringing further attention to the lie.

Politics only works well when everyone follows some basic decorum.

You have to be ignorant on this topic or a liar to say that Turkey is going to join the EU for the foreseeable future. I accept that you might be ignorant (no shame in that), but the people that created that campaign material were lying because they did know better.

Even back in 2015 it was pretty clear that Turkey was probably never going to join the EU - at least a generation off if ever. They have nominally been trying to join since the 1980s and its going nowhere in large part because of a lack of progress on Turkey's side and also signficant skepticism of further expansion on the EU side.

There is a lot of talk about Ukraine joining for instance, but its far from clear despite the expressed political will on both sides that it will ever happen for various reasons. These include the question of Ukraine meeting entry thresholds or EU members willing to absorb a member the size of Ukraine and the funding implications its entry would bring. Despite that, Ukraine is signficantly more likely to join than Turkey was in 2016.

So you agree the EU lied to Turkey then?

No, and Yes and No.

No because there is nothing wrong with the EU telling Turkey these are the entry standards for membership. Turkey didn't meet those standards and were backsliding on lots of issues esp around human rights and political/media freedom. It also had unreasolved territorial issues with other member states namely Greece which completely block ascension.

Yes and No because the politics of this are complex both within the EU and in Turkey. Focusing just on the EU side:

There are lots of voices in the EU that want to see Turkey join the EU. Its an important (if sometimes difficult) NATO partner, and in many ways esp in its cities, a very European nation in its history and culture (Istanbul and Antalya are both great hoilday destinations btw - I recommend). We have a lot in common with Turkey. Its also a large econmy and an important bridge to central asia and the middle east. This is why Turkey was accepted as a candidate in the first place.

However there were real voices against Turkey's membership motivated from concerns over the impact to the balance of power within the EU, funding implication for bringing in such a large member with lots of regional depravation, doubts over Turkey ever meeting entry requirements, and the more ugly outright islamophobia and racism.

If you want to cut to the chase then yes the EU kinda sorta lied to Turkey because its officals know these facts, but Turkey's officals themselves are in on it for their own internal politics which I won't get into in part because I know much less about it. It suited both nations to play this ascension dance and technically it was possible that conditions might change and people's minds might be changed. Its a process not a binary.

> If you want to cut to the chase then yes the EU kinda sorta lied to Turkey because its officals know these facts, but Turkey's officals themselves are in on it for their own internal politics which I won't get into in part because I know much less about it.

An important missing piece is that not that long ago, when it officially became candidate, Turkey was seen as a secular, progressive state in the Middle East. Its recent backsliding into autocratic medieval theocracy pretty much ended the idea that Turkey would join without serious changes in government policy and constitution.

Not at the time. The situation changed, though.

I got in my mail box flyers warning about Syria ending up in the Schengen free movement area. It was not just some creative interpretation of facts about Turkey. Who had at the time (and still now) no prospects of finishing the integration process short of getting rid of Erdogan anyway. And that the UK could have basically vetoed anyway.

Don't forget the bus that promised 350 million extra per week for the NHS !

Turkey is joining the EU. All in progress now....

I'd argue that it was less honest on the basis that the Leave side didn't have the equivalent of a general election manifesto. Cameron had his negotiated deal and Remain was continuity his government. But Leave didn't present any concrete document of what they wanted to happen next if we left, and if they had created such a document the referendum wouldn't have given them the power to put their plan into practice. The whole referendum design made it impossible for them to be honest IMO even if they wanted to.

The Scottish referendum in 2014 didn't have the same problem because the SNP campaigning for independence were in power in Scotland and had negotiated the referendum with the UK government.

I take your point - it wasn't like Labour was Remain, and Conservatives were Leave - in reality all major parties and much of the establishment was remain.

But I'm not sure that's dishonesty in that people were deliberately saying things that were not true - people were instead saying "These are the things made possible if we leave the EU and you vote for a party that wants this in a general election."

The point as I understand it is that there was no unified vision for what leaving the EU would look like. There was instead a multitude of voices making (in many cases) grandiose and outlandish promises. For example:

"So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU." - David Davis [https://conservativehome.com/2016/07/14/david-davis-trade-de...]

Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be "one of the easiest in human history" - Liam Fox [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40667879]

Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border "absolutely unchanged" - Boris Johnson [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35692452]

This meant that even when Leave won, there was a great amount of confusion and turmoil over what that actually implied. That's why the Chequers deal fell through despite fulfilling the outcoem of the referendum.

As other people have pointed out in this thread, though, there were equally outlandish claims made by the opposition of what would happen after a vote to leave by the likes of George Osbourne and Mark Carney.

Sure, which adds further weight to the argument that it was a particularly dishonest process.

That's fine if you are saying both sides were equally "dishonest" but the implication seemed to be from the original post that only Leave lied.

I don't think the implication was that only Leave lied. The point is that there was a clear plan of action if Remain won, but nothing of the sort if Leave won. That means that no one really knew what they were voting for beyond the technicality of leaving the EU.

That's what happens when you all of The Establishment in favour of one policy. I don't think you can blame Leave for that. It's more the fact that the main parties were (demonstrably) out of touch with the majority of the electorate.

Well, Vote Leave was the official campaign. And they did set out a post-Brexit plan. They had the opportunity to define what Brexit meant, but they didn't do it.

I wouldn't have minded this so much if there was a continued democratic process to decide between various possible Brexits. There's an argument that the decision of elected MPs constitutes a democratic process, and I am sympathetic to that argument. I guess I would counter that this was such a momentous change and that very few people had elected their local MP on the basis of what their position on the EU was.

> wasn't like Labour was Remain, and Conservatives were Leave

I wouldn’t even say that Labour’s top leadership was really pro-remain at the time. Cameron was at least being honest (in this instance).

Except the leave campaigns lied and/or mislead about the consequnces of leaving or their own intentions for the exit negotiations and post-brexit policies for everything from single market access, fishing rights, to net immigration reductions.

Citation needed.

The claim that Brexit would redirect 350m/week to the NHS was a particularly egregious example.

https://archive.ph/D2Yq4

Did that not happen? [0] shows an increase of £47bn on the department of health and social care from 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. That's £900m/week. If you compare to post-covid years then it's more like an increase of £28b or £540m/week. From the article linked in your comment, it seems to make a overly large "smoking gun" out of the fact that a referendum campaign website changed their website to reflect the fact that the referendum was now over.

[0] https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-w...

Nope. The 350 million was supposed to be from money saved from not being in the EU.

How can you say it's not? Money is fungible.

No it didn’t, inflation alone is a poor adjustment for health spending when the populations keeps increasing. Thus explaining the net increase every year from 2010 to 2019.

There’s many ways to calculate what that expenditure should be but looking at the most recent pre Brexit numbers, 2018 was 150.7B, 2019 was 158.3B. Extrapolate that trend and 2023 would be 7.6 * 4 + 158.3B ~= 188.7, where the real number is projected at 186.7B.

PS: That link only specifies 2020 and 2021 as seeing COVID specific spending but the UK health system was still being slammed in 2022 while also trying to catch up on delayed procedures etc. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

The DH&SC isn't the NHS. How much of that money went from DH&SC to the NHS, vs to Tory pals selling defective PPE? Or private hospitals?

that did happen

NHS Funding Act 2020

The Big Red Bus is difficult to miss.

The Big Red Bus wasn't a signed contract. It was a statement of possibilities that the UK could spend their savings on. And it looks like the NHS budget went up by that amount anyway.

If "signed contract" is your requirement then we can agree that no politician has ever lied in their campaign promises, because they don't make them signed contracts... that seems irrelevant?

The lie was that we save that much by leaving the EU, the fact that our health service was underfunded and has had budget increases in line with inflation and population growth doesn't change that it was a lie - we could've (and would have) increased NHS spending regardless of the Brexit vote.

The big red bus was a lie in a crucial way: the £350M per week they were talking about (from our contributions to the EU) could not have been funded the way the bus slogan claimed.

Because the net contribution to the EU was (significantly!) less than £350M.

It wasn't a suggestion to spend more money on the NHS. It was a suggestion to spend the money they claimed we gave the EU every week.

So it was actually a lie on a bus.

The figure was closer to £250M (after the rebate), but when they were given the amicable opportunity to restate the original claim around the correct figure, they doubled down on the £350M lie.

See my other reply about Turkey being "set to join" the EU.

Turkey has never been "set to join" the EU. They'd like to join, sure.

There are significant criteria they would need to fill to join, and everyone knows they won't do it any time soon; they were going backwards on some at the time of the campaign and are arguably further back eight years on.

If Turkey met all the criteria they'd be a perfectly viable member of the EU. But then if I had the physiology, brains, feathers, gait and quack of a duck, I'd be a duck.

> There are significant criteria they would need to fill to join, and everyone knows they won't do it any time soon; they were going backwards on some at the time of the campaign and are arguably further back eight years on.

https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-p...

"On 13 December 1999 the Helsinki European Council adopted the Commission proposal to grant Turkey the status of an applicant for EU membership."

Coming up on 24 years ... and counting. Great job, everyone involved.

It actually goes back further than that -- they wanted to join the EEC in '87.

36 years. This is actually higher than the median age of Turkey's population.

Sorry, I don't need to provide citations for the non-stop BS peddled for years and years in UK politics or list all of the policy positions of the last 5 conservative governments we have enjoyed for the past 8 years.

It sounds like most of what you've listed, especially immigration reductions, are in the general sense things that the government now has the power to change, it just chooses not to. I'd put complaints about post-brexit policies at the government's feet rather than the leave campaign. That's not to say that prominent leave campaigners didn't mislead people with certain statements, but I also remember the Cameron-Osborne remain campaign saying that merely voting to leave would instantly plunge the country into a huge recession. People like Nick Clegg also dismissed and scoffed at (IMO) legitimate concerns from the leave side, like saying that the prospect of an EU army was a conspiracy theory, when in fact there have since been lots of higher-ups in the EU pushing for this.

Sorry, I just assumed that if the leaders of the main leave campaign were to shortly become the government then they might share some responsibility. Apparently Johnson, Gove, Cummings and Sunak have no responsibilities for the things said and done for their cause in 2016. My bad.

I believe that foreign actors had a far greater influence than most other elections in British history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

I was more interested in facts that conspiracy theories, especially as those claims were found to be libellous: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/20/observers-caro...

"and remains unproven"

Probably because the then PM decided to not follow the recommendations of the Russia report and order an investigation. Would have been good to know either way.

Probably because PM understood this was complete garbage?

To be fair, some people ought to be jailed for this sort of blatant lies. It was not dodgy interpretation of facts or anything like that. It was pure disinformation. The fact that some other elections are also bad is beside the point. Democracy depends on people being well informed and engaged. Disinformation and disenfranchisement are crimes against democracy.

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