When people convince themselves that black is white
The capacity of the human mind for convincing itself that what it most wants to believe is true can be quite remarkable.
For example. in the immediate aftermath of the May 2015 UK general election, several articles were published online suggesting that the result was, quote, "a smashing victory for the left."
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-uk-election-was-a-smashing-victory-for-the-left-2015-05-15
http://uk.businessinsider.com/uk-general-election-vote-statistics-how-the-left-gained-2015-5
The links above are two articles by business commentators who convinced themselves that the published results can be interpreted in this way. There have also been completely deranged posts on Youtube and elsewhere suggesting that the election was supposedly rigged.
I hope that most people reading this will appreciate the links to these articles and posts as examples of how completely people can convince themselves of something ludicrous if this enables them to hold on to their precious beliefs.
As noted here before, it is sometimes suggested that political parties seeking to recover from a catastrophic defeat, or a series of defeats, often go though four phases:
1) We were robbed
2) Blame the communications
3) Blame the leader or candidate
4) Find a leader or candidate who can win.
The first three stages often include an extraordinary degree of denial.
The classic example is Tony Benn's view that voters elected Margaret Thatcher because Michael Foot was insufficiently left wing.
This has often been mirrored on both right and left. In the last decade some Tories insisted that Tony Blair had been re-elected because William Hague or Michael Howard were not right-wing enough; in the present day a chunk of the Labour party, particularly but not confined to those now lining up behind Jeremy Corbyn, and some of the left-wing media, think that David Cameron was re-elected because Ed Miliband was not socialist enough.
CONCLUSION
History suggests that any party whose leadership believes in such delusions is likely to remain unelectable until it wises up.
But each of us would do well to ask ourselves which of our most cherished ideas might look equally silly to others.
POSTSCRIPT
I assume that most of those who read this will consider the articles I linked to at the start of this post as amusingly bonkers as I do and will not wish or need to read any detailed demolition. Those who do not need to have explained to them that two plus two equals four can stop reading here.
But in case this blog post should find its' way to someone who is not familiar with British politics in the early 21st century and actually wants to know why I consider the articles linked to above to be beyond silly and borderline insane, here is an explanation.
Darrell Delamaide, the American equivalent of a socialist who wants Hilary Clinton to run on a left-wing platform, was searching around desperately for evidence to make the British election provide support for that narrative, a conclusion which he admitted might strike many people as straight out of "some parallel universe."
He ended up quoting Diane Abbott, one of the Labour MPs referred to above who thinks people voted for David Cameron because Ed Miliband was not left-wing enough. You can just about make that case in Scotland, where a party to the left of Labour won a landslide (though I suspect that the SNP win had at least as much to do with support for Scottish independence among a very large and highly organised and motivated minority of Scots as with right or left wing politics.)
But in England the idea that Labour lost because they were not left wing enough makes no sense whatever.
For example, if voters had really wanted Labour to have a more socialist agenda like the one put forward by the SNP, the possibility of a minority Labour government being pushed in that direction by the SNP would have been welcomed by such voters. Yet one of the few things that EVERY commentator of every party and news organisation is agreed on was that this prospect was one of the things which crucified the Labour party in England by solidifying the Conservatives' own vote and sending potential UKIP switchers back to the them in droves, along with lots of tactical and floating votes.
Jim Edwards argues that "The 2015 general election was a huge gain for the British left."
He goes on to confess that
"Admittedly, this is not obvious given that the Conservatives won 331 seats in the House of Commons, giving them a working majority over the Labour Party, which lost seats, only holding 232."
You're telling me!
His argument is that the Conservative, Lib/Dems and UKIP are right-wing parties, and Labour, SNP and Greens left-wing.
Between 2010 and 2015 the Lib/Dems lost more than half their support, while the Conservatives, UKIP, Labour, Green and SNP all gained by different amounts.
In Mr Edwards' fantasy world the right had a majority of nearly two-to-one at the 2010 general election = 18.5 million votes to 9.6 million votes - but lost 828 thousand votes in 2015 while the combined left put on 2.6 million votes, and the "huge gain" is that the right "only" won by 17.6 million to just under 12 million.
The flaw which makes this type of analysis almost useless is that parties cannot so easily be characterised as "left" and "right."
UKIP tried much harder in 2015 than 2010 to go after left-wing, mostly WWC votes which would previously have been Labour. They appear to have won many such votes. There is no doubt in my mind that some of those ex-Labour voters who switched to Nigel Farage's party bought into UKIP's claim to be the new "party of the working man."
While Jim Edwards is right to point out that the Lib/Dems in 2015 had just spent five years in coalition with the Conservatives, he omits to consider that they had been perceived in the 2010 election as a centrist party of protest which at that time had a lot of centre-left votes.
Most of those voters who changed their allegiances at the 2015 election - particularly those who shifted away from the Lib/Dems to other parties - cannot reasonably be described either as having previously voted for a party they then considered left wing and switching to one they now considered right-wing, or vice versa. (The main exception is some of those switching from Labour to UKIP.)
It is reasonable to assume that many of the voters who switched from the Lib/Dems to any left-wing party were either annoyed about tuition fees, or had been left-wing all along and switched not because they had become more left-wing but because they saw the Lib/Dems as having moved away from them.
Similarly some centre-right 2010 Lib/Dems voted Conservative, not because they had moved to the right, but because they were concerned at what sort of policies might be adopted if a minority Labour government were dependent on the SNP.
Hence to argue that the 2015 election represented any fundamental shift to right or left is extremely dubious: the one thing we can say for certain is that on this occasion parties of the centre-right and right received a lot more votes than parties of the left.
As for the suggestions on Youtube and elsewhere that the election was rigged, most of them amount to little more than an evidence-free zone populated by much swearing about how everyone hates the Tories and therefore they could not possibly have won.
However, as "Annie Logical" did manage to string together what just about qualifies as an argument, if a totally ridiculous and implausible one, about how the election was supposedly rigged, I will answer it.
Her argument is that a vanload of 200,000 postal vote forms headed for the marginal seats of Eastbourne and Hastings was stolen, and that enough of these stolen votes were filled in as Conservative votes by MI5 and just enough of them introduced into the counts in 30 marginal constituencies to enable the Conservatives to win them.
Anyone who has ever attended a parliamentary election count knows that this would be pretty much impossible, but let me explain.
Issue number one - how could anyone know in advance which seats were going to be that close and how many stolen votes would be needed to make the difference? One feature of this election was that almost all the published polls were rubbish.
Issue number two - how could the stolen postal votes be introduced into the count with none of the observers noticing problems reconciling them to the postal voters on the register?
I'm a postal voter myself: I had to provide a signature when I registered to vote, and the council has my date of birth. When I filled in my postal vote I had to sign a declaration that I was the person the ballot paper had been sent to, and put my date of birth, so that my signature and professed date of birth could be checked against council records. Postal ballot papers are opened and those declarations checked in the presence of observers from all the political parties.
For a couple of hundred thousand stolen ballot papers for two constituencies to be introduced into the count in thirty constituencies, half a dozen council staff would have to be part of the conspiracy in every one of those constituencies and all the observers from the political parties the election was being rigged against remarkably unobservant not to pick up that thousands of postal votes did not match anyone on their constituency's register.
Issue number three - how come nobody picked it up at verification?
There are usually well over a hundred people at a typical constituency general election count: dozens of council officers and volunteers who count the votes, and counting agents observing from every political party.
The first thing done at every count is "Verification" which means checking that the number of votes in the ballot boxes matches the numbers issued in the relevant polling district. For 200,000 stolen ballot papers to be introduced into the count at thirty constituencies and nobody to pick this up at the Verification stage right at the beginning of any of the counts and complain, several hundred senior council employees would have to be either incredibly incompetent or more likely part of a conspiracy, and again, the observers from the political parties would have to be pretty unobservant.
Let's suppose you can swallow a couple of hundred council staff are voluntarily, or under coercion by MI5, rigging the election in this way. There is an even more serious problem with the theory which, to anyone who isn't in a total state of denial, should conclusively disprove it.
Issue number four - why did none of the defeated candidates notice wrong names on the ballot papers?
Can anyone in their right mind seriously argue that none of the volunteers who counted the votes in the other 28 of the 30 seats where it is being suggested that these 200,000 supposedly stolen votes were used, nor any of the defeated Lib/Dem or Labour MPs, nor any of their counting agents, would have noticed that thousands of ballot papers in the Conservative piles at the count had the name of the Conservative candidates in Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) or Hastings (Amber Rudd) instead of those of their opponents?
Do you really imagine that none of Ed Balls' team would have spotted the fact, and be screaming their heads off about it, had thousands of ballot papers in Andrea Jenkyns' pile (she was his successful Conservative opponent in Morley and Outwood) borne the name of Amber Rudd or Caroline Ansell instead of Andrea Jenkyns?
Similarly do you imagine that not one of Vince Cable's team would have noticed and started yelling blue murder if thousands of the votes in Tania Mathias's Conservative pile had, on inspection, listed the Conservative candidate as Amber Rudd or Caroline Ansell?
Anyone who imagines MI5 could and would prevent any of literally thousands of volunteer vote counters or "counting agent" observers from parties other than the Conservatives in 28 seats from noticing this, or keep every one of them quiet if they did, must think that the security services have Godlike powers.
Last word
No matter how silly an idea is, some human being will convince themselves that it is true.
For example. in the immediate aftermath of the May 2015 UK general election, several articles were published online suggesting that the result was, quote, "a smashing victory for the left."
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-uk-election-was-a-smashing-victory-for-the-left-2015-05-15
http://uk.businessinsider.com/uk-general-election-vote-statistics-how-the-left-gained-2015-5
The links above are two articles by business commentators who convinced themselves that the published results can be interpreted in this way. There have also been completely deranged posts on Youtube and elsewhere suggesting that the election was supposedly rigged.
I hope that most people reading this will appreciate the links to these articles and posts as examples of how completely people can convince themselves of something ludicrous if this enables them to hold on to their precious beliefs.
As noted here before, it is sometimes suggested that political parties seeking to recover from a catastrophic defeat, or a series of defeats, often go though four phases:
1) We were robbed
2) Blame the communications
3) Blame the leader or candidate
4) Find a leader or candidate who can win.
The first three stages often include an extraordinary degree of denial.
The classic example is Tony Benn's view that voters elected Margaret Thatcher because Michael Foot was insufficiently left wing.
This has often been mirrored on both right and left. In the last decade some Tories insisted that Tony Blair had been re-elected because William Hague or Michael Howard were not right-wing enough; in the present day a chunk of the Labour party, particularly but not confined to those now lining up behind Jeremy Corbyn, and some of the left-wing media, think that David Cameron was re-elected because Ed Miliband was not socialist enough.
CONCLUSION
History suggests that any party whose leadership believes in such delusions is likely to remain unelectable until it wises up.
But each of us would do well to ask ourselves which of our most cherished ideas might look equally silly to others.
POSTSCRIPT
I assume that most of those who read this will consider the articles I linked to at the start of this post as amusingly bonkers as I do and will not wish or need to read any detailed demolition. Those who do not need to have explained to them that two plus two equals four can stop reading here.
But in case this blog post should find its' way to someone who is not familiar with British politics in the early 21st century and actually wants to know why I consider the articles linked to above to be beyond silly and borderline insane, here is an explanation.
Darrell Delamaide, the American equivalent of a socialist who wants Hilary Clinton to run on a left-wing platform, was searching around desperately for evidence to make the British election provide support for that narrative, a conclusion which he admitted might strike many people as straight out of "some parallel universe."
He ended up quoting Diane Abbott, one of the Labour MPs referred to above who thinks people voted for David Cameron because Ed Miliband was not left-wing enough. You can just about make that case in Scotland, where a party to the left of Labour won a landslide (though I suspect that the SNP win had at least as much to do with support for Scottish independence among a very large and highly organised and motivated minority of Scots as with right or left wing politics.)
But in England the idea that Labour lost because they were not left wing enough makes no sense whatever.
For example, if voters had really wanted Labour to have a more socialist agenda like the one put forward by the SNP, the possibility of a minority Labour government being pushed in that direction by the SNP would have been welcomed by such voters. Yet one of the few things that EVERY commentator of every party and news organisation is agreed on was that this prospect was one of the things which crucified the Labour party in England by solidifying the Conservatives' own vote and sending potential UKIP switchers back to the them in droves, along with lots of tactical and floating votes.
Jim Edwards argues that "The 2015 general election was a huge gain for the British left."
He goes on to confess that
"Admittedly, this is not obvious given that the Conservatives won 331 seats in the House of Commons, giving them a working majority over the Labour Party, which lost seats, only holding 232."
You're telling me!
His argument is that the Conservative, Lib/Dems and UKIP are right-wing parties, and Labour, SNP and Greens left-wing.
Between 2010 and 2015 the Lib/Dems lost more than half their support, while the Conservatives, UKIP, Labour, Green and SNP all gained by different amounts.
In Mr Edwards' fantasy world the right had a majority of nearly two-to-one at the 2010 general election = 18.5 million votes to 9.6 million votes - but lost 828 thousand votes in 2015 while the combined left put on 2.6 million votes, and the "huge gain" is that the right "only" won by 17.6 million to just under 12 million.
The flaw which makes this type of analysis almost useless is that parties cannot so easily be characterised as "left" and "right."
UKIP tried much harder in 2015 than 2010 to go after left-wing, mostly WWC votes which would previously have been Labour. They appear to have won many such votes. There is no doubt in my mind that some of those ex-Labour voters who switched to Nigel Farage's party bought into UKIP's claim to be the new "party of the working man."
While Jim Edwards is right to point out that the Lib/Dems in 2015 had just spent five years in coalition with the Conservatives, he omits to consider that they had been perceived in the 2010 election as a centrist party of protest which at that time had a lot of centre-left votes.
Most of those voters who changed their allegiances at the 2015 election - particularly those who shifted away from the Lib/Dems to other parties - cannot reasonably be described either as having previously voted for a party they then considered left wing and switching to one they now considered right-wing, or vice versa. (The main exception is some of those switching from Labour to UKIP.)
It is reasonable to assume that many of the voters who switched from the Lib/Dems to any left-wing party were either annoyed about tuition fees, or had been left-wing all along and switched not because they had become more left-wing but because they saw the Lib/Dems as having moved away from them.
Similarly some centre-right 2010 Lib/Dems voted Conservative, not because they had moved to the right, but because they were concerned at what sort of policies might be adopted if a minority Labour government were dependent on the SNP.
Hence to argue that the 2015 election represented any fundamental shift to right or left is extremely dubious: the one thing we can say for certain is that on this occasion parties of the centre-right and right received a lot more votes than parties of the left.
As for the suggestions on Youtube and elsewhere that the election was rigged, most of them amount to little more than an evidence-free zone populated by much swearing about how everyone hates the Tories and therefore they could not possibly have won.
However, as "Annie Logical" did manage to string together what just about qualifies as an argument, if a totally ridiculous and implausible one, about how the election was supposedly rigged, I will answer it.
Her argument is that a vanload of 200,000 postal vote forms headed for the marginal seats of Eastbourne and Hastings was stolen, and that enough of these stolen votes were filled in as Conservative votes by MI5 and just enough of them introduced into the counts in 30 marginal constituencies to enable the Conservatives to win them.
Anyone who has ever attended a parliamentary election count knows that this would be pretty much impossible, but let me explain.
Issue number one - how could anyone know in advance which seats were going to be that close and how many stolen votes would be needed to make the difference? One feature of this election was that almost all the published polls were rubbish.
Issue number two - how could the stolen postal votes be introduced into the count with none of the observers noticing problems reconciling them to the postal voters on the register?
I'm a postal voter myself: I had to provide a signature when I registered to vote, and the council has my date of birth. When I filled in my postal vote I had to sign a declaration that I was the person the ballot paper had been sent to, and put my date of birth, so that my signature and professed date of birth could be checked against council records. Postal ballot papers are opened and those declarations checked in the presence of observers from all the political parties.
For a couple of hundred thousand stolen ballot papers for two constituencies to be introduced into the count in thirty constituencies, half a dozen council staff would have to be part of the conspiracy in every one of those constituencies and all the observers from the political parties the election was being rigged against remarkably unobservant not to pick up that thousands of postal votes did not match anyone on their constituency's register.
Issue number three - how come nobody picked it up at verification?
There are usually well over a hundred people at a typical constituency general election count: dozens of council officers and volunteers who count the votes, and counting agents observing from every political party.
The first thing done at every count is "Verification" which means checking that the number of votes in the ballot boxes matches the numbers issued in the relevant polling district. For 200,000 stolen ballot papers to be introduced into the count at thirty constituencies and nobody to pick this up at the Verification stage right at the beginning of any of the counts and complain, several hundred senior council employees would have to be either incredibly incompetent or more likely part of a conspiracy, and again, the observers from the political parties would have to be pretty unobservant.
Let's suppose you can swallow a couple of hundred council staff are voluntarily, or under coercion by MI5, rigging the election in this way. There is an even more serious problem with the theory which, to anyone who isn't in a total state of denial, should conclusively disprove it.
Issue number four - why did none of the defeated candidates notice wrong names on the ballot papers?
Can anyone in their right mind seriously argue that none of the volunteers who counted the votes in the other 28 of the 30 seats where it is being suggested that these 200,000 supposedly stolen votes were used, nor any of the defeated Lib/Dem or Labour MPs, nor any of their counting agents, would have noticed that thousands of ballot papers in the Conservative piles at the count had the name of the Conservative candidates in Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) or Hastings (Amber Rudd) instead of those of their opponents?
Do you really imagine that none of Ed Balls' team would have spotted the fact, and be screaming their heads off about it, had thousands of ballot papers in Andrea Jenkyns' pile (she was his successful Conservative opponent in Morley and Outwood) borne the name of Amber Rudd or Caroline Ansell instead of Andrea Jenkyns?
Similarly do you imagine that not one of Vince Cable's team would have noticed and started yelling blue murder if thousands of the votes in Tania Mathias's Conservative pile had, on inspection, listed the Conservative candidate as Amber Rudd or Caroline Ansell?
Anyone who imagines MI5 could and would prevent any of literally thousands of volunteer vote counters or "counting agent" observers from parties other than the Conservatives in 28 seats from noticing this, or keep every one of them quiet if they did, must think that the security services have Godlike powers.
Last word
No matter how silly an idea is, some human being will convince themselves that it is true.
Comments
Its never the lack of policy that is to blame with them, they cant see that, and if you argue before you know it you are are a "lefty, paid by either the tories or the eu, to support immigration"
so there.
One was actually farsighted enough to accuse me of being a hypocrite, because I am kicking up a fuss about the change in Purdah rules for the referendum, thus I am saying "the referendum was rigged" whilst calling them for saying the GE was.
of course it took a while for it to sink in, that i am calling the rules of the referendum whilst the referendum bill is being debated, I am not entering a general election for which the rules are quite clearly set and were before I ever joined in. i will actually add a copy paste of my reply here:
"For the referendum, I am arguing the case for the new rules to a new sport, long before the first ever game of it begins. I am not trying to change the rules of cricket because I lost a cricket match (which is what you are doing about the elections FPTP system. The two circumstances don't even come close."
Sadly that didn't work and I am an "Anti UKIP EU paid troll".
so there you go, just a little more evidence for you.
Of course, there are also people on the pro-EU left who have been complaining about how the election proves the existing voting system unfair. What most of them do not appear to have done, however - unlike members of UKIP - is work out what a PR election would have produced. If they had, they would realise that if the May 2015 election had been fought on most systems of PR, the nearest thing to a stable government which could be formed would be a Conservative & UKIP coalition, possibly also including the DUP.
Such people talk as if a "fair election system" would have magically banished the Conservatives not to mention the need for "austerity" and produced a high-spending, left-wing, pro EU government. The expression "cloud cuckoo-land" comes to mind ...
I actually discovered the art of Zen whilst painting my garden fence, Its a long fence and due to its nature i could not spray it, it took me forever, but had to do every part bit by bit using a brush.
Its there you learn patience, and its there you discover just how to deal with very silly ideas indeed.