So, I finally watched
Brexit: the Movie.
To be honest I needn't have watched much more than the first minute, as it makes it clear what a load of propagandist crap you can expect from the next hour. "We, the people, are being cajoled, frightened and bullied into surrendering our democracy and freedom", it begins atop dramatic music. The first interview tells us "with general elections, it doesn't really matter who you vote for" nicely setting the tone for the kind of considered comment we can look forward to.
So, after a few soundbites, it begins with a section that purports to explain how the EU works but doesn't actually do any such thing. Instead, it just consists of a lot of saying "people don't know how this works" along with some public interviews that may, or may not, be utterly cherry picked; it's hard to tell. There's a few good points in here, the EU does have some issues with people understanding it and knowing about its structures and a bigger problem with getting media engagement, particular in the UK, and there are legitimate criticism of many of the EU's institutions. What
B:tM fails to do is make any kind of coherent argument out of all this. Instead it just plays music, shows up a spot of public ignorance, and repeatedly drops assertions about a lack of transparency, accountability and democracy into its narration without without ever really backing them up.
We're then treated to a spot of economic history, in which
B:tM harks back to that wonderful golden age of the industrial revolution in which the unfettered hand of the market led to wonders for all. The sharp decline in the average lifespan; epic increase in inequality; child labour; high rates of injury and death; stupidly long working hours; and so forth are apparently not worth a mention nor the levels of corruption and cronyism that actually marked the economy of the industrial revolution. Apparently, it all went wrong for Britain around WWI when we started regulating stuff, and even worse after WWII when we did things like introducing building regulations, cleared the slums and improved the quality of housing for millions. Following that disaster, the UK development in the UK stalled completely and we stopped enjoying any increase in living standards - oh wait, that's tosh, isn't it?
There's a section on fisheries that doesn't seem to have noticed that fish stocks were in decline long before we signed up to the common fisheries policy and, in fact, the decline of fishing probably has a lot more do with decades of overfishing than it does with the EU.
We're also given a long section about how awful protectionism and tariffs are, and how the EU has erected big trade tariffs blocking trade from the outside, which seems blissfully unaware that trade tariffs were much higher before we joined the EU. And some "hilarious" sketches about how all EU companies are totally inefficient unlike those of those nice Asians chaps that doesn't seem to have noticed that many EU companies that are global powerhouses. It does make some good points about protectionism but given that the EU doesn't, in fact, have particularly high trade barriers and the British reaction to the troubles of Port Talbot, I don't see much reason to think that the UK would become less protectionist if we left the EU - and, of course, we'd face new barriers if we didn't re-enter the EEA.
This theme of how terribly awful regulation continues for some time, and along the way we're treated to the greatest hits of the unfettered free market creed. At one point, there's a sequence in which it lists the number of regulations covering various products, 31 for pillowcases, 220ish for glasses, and so on. I don't know whether the numbers are correct, but the fact that they claimed to have sourced them from "various databases" provided by the EU puts the lie to their earlier claims about transparency. What's very telling is that they don't actually tell you what a single one of them are nor name a single one of these regulations they think we should be rid of. The fact is that you, I, and most other people are probably very grateful for these regulations. I like the fact that if I go and buy a pillow case that it comes in a standard size than means it fits my pillows, I like the fact that it's been fire, and allergy, tested and meets minimum standards of construction that make it safe to use. I like that fact that I can go into any shop and know that everything I buy meets these kinds of standards. Regulation makes our lives safer and easier, as welling as being the means by which we tackle collective ills such as air pollution, energy over-use, and climate change.
You'd have thought after poor regulation of the financial markets led to a global recession, people would be a little more thoughtful about displaying such full bore advocacy for slashing regulation, but there you go.
Next up, we have a long section on Switzerland which fails to mention the decade of stagnant growth that Switzerland had before it finally joined the single market and allowed free movement (see this video:
Brexit the movie - a Swiss reply). There's a claim that the largest companies in the EU are all Swiss which seems
very wrong on the face of it, and a lot of stuff about the amount of regulation with - again - the implication that the UK is being strangled by regulation. The truth, of course, is rather different. The UK ranks 10th in the
Economic Freedom of the World rankings, not far behind Switzerland, and well ahead of the USA, while we're in 6th place in the
Doing Business rankings, behind fellow EU country Denmark and some 20 places higher than apparently unregulated Switzerland. And, of course, the usual issue with post-Brexit comparisons to Switzerland applies: they have free movement of people as part of the single market whereas prominent Brexiters are saying we won't do that if we Brexit.
It finishes with the by-now well trodden Brexiter pretence to be anti-establishment when, in fact, the Brexit camp is just as packed with establishment figures as the Remain camp. In
B:tM we're treated to words from popular right wing establishment figures such as Kelvin McKenzie (former editor of
The Sun and the man behind their Hillsborough headlines) and Nigel Lawson (former Chancellor of the Exchequer who laid the foundations of the Credit Crunch with the 'Big Bang').
So, tl;dr:
B:tM is a naked propaganda piece which makes no attempt to inform its viewer but instead consists of a series of assertions and precious little in the way of argument. Save yourself an hour and just re-read scorza's posts a few times and you'll gain as much information.
