The Illusory Truth effect

Repeating a lie ad nauseam in an interview does not make it true. It's called the Illusory Truth Effect, whereby you appear to make assertions true by repeating them at every opportunity, which appears to be government strategy at present. Dominic Raab was doing it yesterday on TV, several times, unchallenged, and Boris does it at every PMQs, rather than answering tabled questions.

 

- Fastest growing economy in G7 (actually 5th of 7 now, and the initial fast growth was a factor of being the hardest hit through late lockdowns - this was Raab's unchallenged assertion yesterday).

- Got Brexit done (and look at the damage, both nationally and internationally. The intent of Brexiteers is to destroy the EU - that also happens to be Putin's intent. Putin, however, doesn't necessarily want to destroy the UK - Brexiteers seem fixated on it).

- Fastest vaccine rollout (no longer, but then there's one of the highest death tolls in the world due to lamentably late reaction to compensate for that).

- Tackling the cost of living (you must be joking - prices are rising the fastest I've seen in my life, and I'm 66. The poor are being priced out of food!).

- Coming out of lockdown faster than anyone (we're not in lockdown, for God's sake. A mask is not an IED, it's a piece of cloth. Pure recklessness and not based on any scientific consensus. A mask does not harm you or the economy in any way, shape or form. You should have seen the ones your parents and grandparent had to wear - no doubt you'd have complained about your precious liberty being infringed while begging for a gas attack. I do believe we've reached herd stupidity in government).

- We're building 40 hospitals (giving a hallway a coat of paint is not building a new hospital, for heaven's sake).

- What the people are interested in is [insert something the government promised but is making a hash of] (no - we're interested in getting you charlatans out on your arses. Don't presume to tell me what I or the public is interested in).

- The Prime Minister has been working hard (don't make me laugh - he's notorious for slacking and having no capacity for grasping the essentials, let alone the detail. He evidently doesn't even seem to recollect the majority of 2021. I suspect that when Dominic Raab penned; "The British are the worst idlers in the world," he had Boris Johnson specifically in mind).

- I've never experienced bullying from party whips (that's because you've voted along with the government all your political life - loyal slaves who defend the indefensible aren't whipped. I'd guarantee a Venn diagram of the overlap between those MPs always voting with the government and those maintaining they've never experienced any bullying or blackmail from the party whips shows 100% overlap).

- Tackling voter fraud (the last, single, documented case was in 2017. What they've done is disenfranchise 2m of the poorest voters to their advantage. I'm waiting for Trumpian allegations of massive voting fraud to materialise and for Boris to assert he's actually got a 100 seat majority).

Some MPs are doing this unwillingly and you can see their souls leaving their bodies as they repeat the above mantras. It's straight from the Trump playbook.