Original published in The Guardian here. What follows is a slightly extended version.
‘None of us has a crystal ball.’
It was July 2019. I was in Wigan, northwest England discussing Brexit with 40 or so ‘leave’ voters as part of the People’s Vote campaign. We were seeking a second referendum following the controversial result three years earlier.
They were right, of course. We did not have a crystal ball. But we had the backing of the vast majority of credible economists, supportive analysis from the government’s own independent budgetary office, almost 300 MPs onside, a couple of million-strong marches under our belt, and enough time to explain what felt like an inalienable truth: Brexit would damage the UK.
‘Yes, but none of us really know what is going to happen next,’ was the response. Oscar Wilde said he liked talking to a brick wall because it never contradicted him. He had not met this brick wall.
So what happened? How could a compelling and fact-based argument, which has since come to fruition, be dismissed? Why am I seeing familiar patterns between People’s Vote and the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum? Are there lessons that could help the Yes campaign turn things around?
What follows are three broad perspectives on what went wrong with People’s Vote and what I hope will go right for Voice to Parliament.
Logic matters but it is not enough.
When we meet someone for the first time or find ourselves in a new place, we make an instinctive assessment as to whether it is safe and rewarding or dangerous and threatening. If the latter, cortisol is released into the bloodstream, producing heightened alertness. We are more receptive. It’s why fears relating to immigration and identity were used during the Brexit campaign; why fears relating to a ‘breakaway black state,’ ‘indigenous only beaches,’ and ‘separate laws, separate economies and separate leaders’ are being propagated by the No campaign; and why Dutton is using words such as ‘suspicion’ and ‘deceive.’
So the Yes campaign should respond with fear? No. It never worked for us. When the government’s contingency planning document for No Deal Brexit, Operation Yellowhammer, was leaked to the press, it was packed with horror stories. Yet whilst factual, it was labelled as Project Fear (as would be the case in Australia) and was quickly forgotten about.
Maybe a more balanced approach is correct then? Well no also. As I experienced in Wigan, balanced presentations fuel unbalanced views. It’s called biassed assimilation. People take what information supports their original view and dismiss information that does not.
What about the logical argument? Well yes and no. When I started at the People’s Vote we had a strong logical argument, but we were up against emotive phrases like take back control, the will of the people, leave means leave, enemies of the people, get Brexit done.
The Yes campaign must maintain the logical argument, but focus on the safety and rewarding aspect of the instinctive mind, place greater emphasis on what Aristotle would call pathos (the emotive argument) and ethos (the trustworthiness of the person delivering it). The latter can matter more than the message itself.
Bursting the bubble
I remember how good it felt to receive thousands of retweets, welcoming coverage in already supportive newspapers, and seeing social media focused on the quantity of likes, not where those likes were coming from.
We had built a bubble.
Paul MCartney said he knew The Beatles had made it when he heard the milkman coming up his path whistling ‘From Me To You.’ Someone outside his immediate circle. At times, it seems we were happy with Epstein tapping his feet.
Bubbles are dangerous. There is a distinct possibility of adding to polarity by talking only to your supporters, predominantly about yourself and what you are doing. On a dating website, what makes people interesting is not what they say about themselves, but what they don’t say about themselves. It’s the same with campaigns. If you have formed a bubble and are only attracting your supporters it is likely you are not interesting to those outside.
Clarity of leadership
At People’s Vote, I worked with renowned strategic communicators Alastair Campbell, former Director of the 10 Downing Street Communications, and Tom Baldwin, former Director of Communications for the UK Labour party.
Both were acutely aware of the importance of leadership, strategy and teamwork yet neither could prevent factions forming within the campaign. Ultimately it was the calling of a general election (and predictable victory by Boris Johnson) that ended it, but internal and external division were a big part. When you are up against populists seeking to polarise and who are strategically using confusion (If You Don’t Know, Vote No) and post-truth, leadership and clarity of message is vital.
This applies to the media too. ‘Politics has changed, but we as journalists have not yet caught up,” said former BBC journalist Emily Matliss in her 2022 McTaggart Lecture. Describing the impact of populist rhetoric on her profession, she said journalists are ‘becoming anaesthetised to the rising temperature in which facts are getting lost, constitutional norms trashed, claims frequently unchallenged.’
In 2014 I interviewed then Senator Nova Peris for a book on leadership by Alastair Campbell. Something she said has remained with me ever since. “In sport, I climbed mountains. That was the feeling. Reaching the top of the mountain and screaming out a big ‘Yeah!’ In politics the challenge is not about climbing the mountain, it is about moving the mountain, especially in aboriginal affairs.” Her voice crackled with emotion.
“Due to what has happened in the past, the systemic policies that have failed aboriginal people, I find I am confronted with a mountain, but it is not about climbing it. It is about moving it, and [asking] can I do this? I believe I can, but I will do it stone by stone.”
Stones are moving but it will take an emotive argument, in addition to the logical one, a focus on those outside the bubble, and clarity of leadership to move the mountain. There is still time.
Kevin Keith 
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