This week I received one of the most inadequate pieces of writing I have ever encountered. The Electoral Commission has just sent a Referendum Voting Guide to every home in the UK (you can find the PDF here). Alongside the Guide’s painstaking explanation of how to fill in the ballot paper, the Remain and Leave campaigns were given a page each to present their cases. Given the vast resources of each side and given the enormous consequences of the referendum, you would hope that they had both crafted something lucid and incisive.
Vote Remain made a good effort, at least. Their page is bold and clear and colourful. Under three bracing headings (STRONGER, SAFER and BETTER OFF) they’ve listed a few brisk and specific points, points which they’ve backed up with apt statistics. Whether you think they’re right or wrong, you can tell what they think and you know why they think it.
Vote Leave’s pitch, however, is bewildering, moronically argued, and frequently illiterate. It begins with the heading Some facts, a heading as unhelpful as it is unpromising. This is the only heading on the entire page, and it introduces an ugly morass of paragraphs.
The first paragraph is written in a juvenile tone. It begins by warning us about the ‘extra people’ who’ve migrated to the UK:
More than a quarter of a million people came to UK from the EU in the last 12 months … If this continues for a decade, there will be over two million extra people. EU law means all members must accept ‘free movement of people’. Many migrants contribute to society. They also affect public services.
… they coughed, disapprovingly. Vote Leave could have reasoned that EU immigration has hurt the UK and crippled the NHS. Instead, they have condemned immigration so ambiguously and hedged their condemnation so effectively that they have made immigration look kind of appealing. Maybe they worried that a sharper attack on immigration might make them seem xenophobic. But I think they’ve settled for something worse: they’ve made no argument at all.
The next paragraph continues in the same vague vein. The EU is growing., it opens, with accidental positivity. It goes on,
When we joined, there were 9 member states, the most recent being Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. Five more countries are in the process of joining, including Turkey. When they join, they will have the same rights as other members.
So … what? Vote Leave could be implying that we shouldn’t be in the same club as backward and dangerous countries like Romania and Turkey. Or they might be complaining again about immigration. They could just be vaguely insinuating because they don’t know what else to say. But I can’t tell. Vote Leave should be advancing their most persuasive case, but I don’t even know what they’re saying. And whatever they are saying, they again undermine it, this time by making the reader feel glad for Turkey. When Turkey joins, it will get equal rights! Hurrah! Who isn’t for equal rights?
Two paragraphs down, and Vote Leave’s argument against the EU comprises a few half-hearted insinuations, and lots of strangely positive comments. This is ludicrous. Vote Leave is backed by CEOs, MPs, and cabinet ministers. They’re ardent, smart, and they have a lot of money. What in the world were they thinking?
More than a third of the remaining morass is devoted to explaining that we pay the EU £350 million each week. Vote Leave likes the sound of this so much that they state it four times, in four different sentences, repeating themselves almost word for word. They never, however, estimate whether our economy benefits from our EU membership—whether our money is well-spent. They simply seem to be against spending money. Should we stop investing £1.7 billion in education each week, just because £1.7 billion looks like a large number? Their case is just thin, too thin.
All that remains of their argument is a soup of eleven different points (and a grammatical mistake and a typo), slopped at random into two short paragraphs. This haphazardness makes the paragraphs baffling to read, and their contents impossible to remember. And while most of the paragraphs’ points are good, many of them are hurried, and none is backed up in any way.
And that’s it. That’s the case that Vote Leave’s £3m campaign has presented to every home in the UK: a fumbling mess that could pass for some year 10’s geography homework. I can’t understand how or why this happened. Michael Gove or IDS could’ve tapped out something more intelligent and more persuasive in 5 minutes flat. And if some able person wasn’t available, there must at least have been some decent campaign material that could have just been reused. It’s confounding.
I enjoy beating on unclear writing, but what really bothers me is the damage that it does. It turns people off and makes them feel stupid or bored or cynical. For the good of democracy, we the people need to hear clear and credible debates. In the Brexit debate, the Voting Guide was a unique opportunity. No other document will be sent to everyone in the UK in which both sides make their own case in their own words. Every home in the country might have seen Leave and Remain’s best points clearly stated side by side. What better chance could there have been for people to sit down and weigh things up? As it is, Leave has scarcely made any argument, to the disadvantage of us all.
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