A prominent think tank has called for a Ministry of Truth-style watchdog to police elections and ensure the events of the Brexit campaign can “never be repeated”.
The Electoral Reform Society think tank attacked the conduct of the EU referendum, indirectly calling into question the validity of the result.
In a stinging report, the think tank derided voters as “ill-informed” and branded the campaigns uniquely negative.
Academic hogwash! 10 wks #EURef was Informative, Argumentative, Engaging. World class exercise in democracy #BeProud https://t.co/S7LpyAQNYr
— Diane James (@DianeJamesMEP) September 1, 2016
At the same time they hailed the Scottish referendum – which had its own prominent Project Fear – as an example to be emulated.
Heat Street cannot help but notice another difference between the two – in 2014 the Establishment won, and kept the status quo in place. When it came to Brexit, they were sent packing.
Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said: “This report shows without a shadow of a doubt just how dire the EU referendum debate really was.
“There were glaring democratic deficiencies in the run-up to the vote, with the public feeling totally ill-informed… It offered a stark contrast to the vibrant, well-informed, grassroots conversation of the Scottish independence vote – a referendum that left a lasting legacy of on-going public participation in politics and public life.”
Ghastly Ghose ensures the poodle Electoral Reform Society backs Establishment loading dice of future referendums https://t.co/1y5aIv1QrM
— Frank Fisher (@frank_fisher) September 1, 2016
To counter this, the ERS suggests creating an official body with powers to intervene if campaigns make claims they deem misleading.
They also want a public body to control the facts allowed in the debate, by establishing “minimum data sets” which they expect everybody to use – which would have proved enormously contentious in the Brexit debate given how fallible and partisan supposedly neutral organisations like the IMF were shown to be.
Surely, nothing can go wrong when the information is controlled and the validity of facts is decided solely by the public bodies?
