The Play Book

I'm currently reading a book by Jennifer Jacquet called The Play Book (how to deny science, sell lies, and make a killing in the corporate world).

It's a tongue-in-cheek manual for big business in how to evade regulation by using lies, deceit and misinformation, thereby gaining valuable time, which enables companies to make billions until the evidence is overwhelming, or they're caught having suppressed truths they already discovered through their own research.

The story starts with Big Tobacco, which denied the link between smoking and cancer for decades, despite knowing of the link themselves - which is what tripped them up.

It then moves on to the billions spent by the fossil fuel industry to muddy the waters on climate change, which is still going on.

The tactics used by these industries are:

1. Challenge the problem,
2. Challenge the causation,
3. Challenge the messenger, and
4. Challenge any policy to curb the activity.

In achieving these aims, industries use PR firms, mysteriously funded Think Tanks, impecunious scientists outside of the field of interest and journalists who want to raise their profile.

It struck me that this is exactly what the High Priests of Brexit are engaged in - the clue being to follow the money.

Brexit is the brainchild of those who didn't want EU regulation of their fortunes, how they make them and where they keep them. If anything, the Global Financial Crisis was proof positive that regulation is indeed necessary.

If the Brexit High Priests - the very wealthy and the hedge funds - can delay regulation for as long as possible, then they will be free to make billions and salt it away without scrutiny by regulators, just like Big Tobacco and the oil companies. It's no accident that the person who sponsored the Leave campaign is a millionaire and is backed by other millionaires. 

There's no way educated MPs like Jacob Rees-Mogg and his ilk are so thick as to say many of the things they do with any firm belief - they say them while not believing them, as they're necessary to maintain the fiction that Brexit is good. 

Getting the electorate on side was achieved, against the odds, by the brilliant tactic of latching prejudices onto the main objective or ditching EU financial regulations - hence the sovereignty and immigration canards that the far right and far left could hang their hats on to as proxies.