After the battle comes the psychological warfare. Nigel Farage, the luckiest of generals in the Brexit campaign, this week played on the fears of everyone still reeling from the UK referendum and Donald Trump’s election victory when he declared that the populist “revolution” of 2016 was going to continue into 2017.
At a party at the Ritz hotel in London, he said: “For those that are here that aren’t particularly happy with what’s happened in 2016, I’ve got some really bad news for you — it’s going to get a bloody sight worse next year.”
He didn’t need to spell it out: liberals are gripped by fear that the wave of anti-immigrant populism will sweep through France in next year’s presidential elections to hand the far-right victory. But before 2017 has even started, there is unfinished business for 2016: next weekend’s Austrian presidential election, in which the anti-immigration candidate Norbert Hofer has the lead.
Farage talks a good psychological game. Earlier this month, the UKIP leader said that “only a fool” would rule out National Front leader Marine Le Pen becoming president next year. Of course no one would rule it out, but it helps Farage’s cause to talk it up. The danger is that, based on the twin earthquakes of Brexit and Trump, his opponents are also talking up the populist revolution and the death of liberalism.
A pall of defeatism has descended over those who used to trust the status quo. It is easy to forget about hoping for the best when you are always expecting the worst. It is one thing for Trump, Farage, Le Pen and Hofer to try to fix a narrative which fuels anti-immigrant sentiment and normalises far-right populism; it is quite another for the left to go along with it. Liberals are talking themselves into apocalypse now.
Those who voted for Hillary Clinton or Remain need to take a step back and breathe. Yes, Trump and Brexit were major, seismic events, but they were based on very marginal results. Clinton won the popular vote with a lead of more than 2 million over the President-elect. Those who wanted Britain to Remain in the EU were 48% of the vote, not 4%. These results do not represent a comprehensive routing of liberal, tolerant views. Defeat on the day should not translate into defeatism forever.
After the UK Chancellor Philip Hammond delivered his annual Autumn Statement on Wednesday, which blamed Brexit for creating a £58 billion black hole in the finances, pro-Brexit figures immediately claimed he and senior British economists were talking down the economy. This is part of a clear attempt to blame the Remain side if the UK’s economy gets into serious trouble after leaving the EU. Already, the pro-Brexit narrative is being fixed, and the Remain side is doing little about it.
Instead of wringing our hands and beating ourselves up, we should be fighting back. And there are signs of this: Tony Blair’s decision to return to frontline politics, by setting up a group which will lead the anti-Brexit charge in the UK, will put steel in the spines of the Remain side.
I do not believe the former Prime Minister can stop Brexit from happening, despite his calls for a second referendum, but he has the power to give the 48% a strong voice, and the ability to distill the political challenges of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU into compelling language. Another former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, has joined the charge by declaring that the Brexit debate should not be dictated by the “tyranny of the majority.”
In the US, Jill Stein’s bid for a recount in Wisconsin shows that there is fight in the liberal cause. Even if it comes to nothing, it is a way of letting the Trump administration-in-waiting know that they don’t have the sweeping mandate they believe they have.
Let the psychological battle be joined.
