Brexit and the British press: which reality to believe?
Reading the tabloid newspapers over the last week is like jumping between parallel universes, writes Raymond Snoddy
There is a perfectly respectable, if controversial, scientific theory that ours is not the only universe, that there are parallel universes.
Newspapers are seen by the digerati as an old-fashioned backward looking medium heading for a particular sort of exit.
Not so, it is only through newspapers that you can live in a parallel universe in the here and now and read exactly what you want to read and believe precisely what you want to, far away from the reach of facts or experts.
By comparison broadcasting, and indeed the internet, can be so confusing. In that world universes collide and bleed into each other, different views compete, and facts are checked even though broadcasters adhere too crudely sometimes to inappropriate concepts of impartiality when due impartiality might have served better.
On the day after the 52-48 vote, many of the 52 per cent were able to bathe in a sunny, uncritical universe where the real plucky Britain had summoned up enough courage to stand up against the toffs, the experts and the Eurocrats who had ganged up on we the people to make their lives a misery.
In this parallel universe the Daily Mail was obviously in celebratory overdrive: “Take A Bow Britain! It was the day the quiet people of Britain rose up against an arrogant, out-of-touch political class and a contemptuous Brussels elite.”
Then it was on to speculate, positively, on whether Boris would grab the Crown. You had to wait until page nine to find out what would happen after “the UK’s long awaited great escape.”
The answer, parallel universers were told, was that the Leave campaigners had already drawn up detailed plans for the UK to withdraw from the EU to avoid the need for long and complex negotiations.
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In another universe there appeared to be no such plan at all and indeed the Mail on Sunday claimed that Boris and Michael Gove had not only not expected to win, but didn’t want to win.
They merely wanted to enhance their political reputation as plucky losers in a coming Tory leadership battle but the PR stunt had gone spectacularly wrong.
For The Sun, Britain was arising from the shackles of EU membership – So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, ADIEU. After the celebrations – and Cameron, resigning because “he didn’t want to do the hard s***t” – you still can’t say shit in The Sun – you get to collapsing markets, also on page 9.
But in this parallel universe, don’t worry there is a Brexit economist, one of a 5-10 per cent economist minority, to claim there was no need to worry, the future was positive.
The Daily Express went one step further and claimed credit: “World’s most successful crusade ends in glorious victory for your Daily Express” and suggested that 23 June should become a Brexit bank holiday.
Vainglorious certainly, but at least the Express has been consistent across the decades. Its former Canadian owner Lord Beaverbrook was notoriously anti-European and pro-Commonwealth.
In this universe the celebrations continued until page 21 where there was an “outcry” from the UK supporting Express that Scots might want independence to stay in the EU and Spain was told to “back off” on its demand to share the future of Gibralter.
As to the economic consequences, apart from keeping calm, carrying on and thriving and prospering, readers had to turn to page 77 to find out that a “market fightback had followed meltdown.”
In that other tabloid universe the front page of the Daily Mirror was asking: “So what the hell happens now?”
Then of course there was “Cameron resigns and Corbyn fights mutiny in ‘worst crisis since WW2′” and “World leaders stunned as shares plummet by £1.2 trillion.”
Inside you could find “fury over Farage’s ‘£350m a week for healthcare’ con trick” and warnings that it could take years of talks to seal a UK exit deal.
The parallel universes of the tabloids obviously reflect deep divisions in British society but to what extent – if any – has either been influencing each other?
In the second universe, essentially the Remain universe, there is a view that the underlying cause of unhappiness about EU migrants in areas of concentration, was more about spending cuts and failure to make sufficient provision to support local services than about migrants per se. But that too may be a fantasy.
Precisely because of the parallel universes it is possible to argue that the Brexit tabloids may have had a very significant impact on the outcome.
In general elections newspaper claims of influence over the result are almost always over-cooked. There are too many other factors at play.
But here, with no coherent party affiliations involved and a large number of people undecided on how they were going to distil a mass of facts and competing contradictory claims into a simple OUT or IN choice, newspaper influence may have been much greater than realised.
That role would have been about validating, giving permission for cautious people to take the risk, rather than causing the vote in any simple way. Go on do it – everything will be fine in this parallel universe.
There is no doubt that The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express laid down emotional carpet-bombing year after year with their stories against the unelected Eurocrats – some true, many exaggerated – and a relentless diet of anti-migrant stories.
One small example when hundreds could be cited:
On the morning of the poll the Daily Express published a correction about a front page splash that the bill to the NHS for EU migrant births was £1.3 billion.
Not quite: it was the cost of births where at least one parent had been born in a non-British EU country. Such a group would have included Nigel Farage’s children.
Evidence for newspaper’s greater-than-expected influence?
It can’t be proved of course, but there are some interesting associations.
Newspaper readers tend to be older, none more so than those of the Mail and Express and they were the group most likely to vote Brexit.
Liverpool was one of the few northern industrial cities to stay loyal to Remain by 58 per cent. Remember The Sun, Kelvin Mackenzie and Hillsborough?
Ah Kelvin. Physicists will note evidence that it is possible to move between parallel universes.
A week before the vote Kelvin set out 10 reasons why Sun readers must all vote Out – mainly to take control of our destiny.
Then came the reverse ferret four days after the vote.
The former Sun editor was now suffering from “buyer’s remorse,” fearful of what lies ahead and became the leading member of the Bregret camp.
But at least his old boss Rupert Murdoch is happy. Murdoch described the vote as “wonderful” and also described Donald Trump as “a very able man.”
Murdoch clearly lives in a different universe.