The Political Brain[dead]

What are we to make of Labour? The latest polling shows it falling well behind the Tories. True, there is a "vaccine bounce", but Labour looks weak and demoralised. We could look at the quality of its frontline MPs, or Starmer, or its tactics. But there seems to be something more fundamentally wrong. Does Labour even understand modern politics?

Given that there is clearly a growing chasm between what Labour fought for in the past, and what modern workers now believe in, it is easy to see why its traditional rhetoric might fail, particularly with social conservatism so deeply embedded. That attack line has clearly passed its sell by date. But Labour shows no sign of knowing what to replace it with.

The problem is, Labour does not seem to understand politics in any other way than a numbers game. It correctly understands that there is a big problem outside the metropolitan areas, thanks to FPTP. And its one discernible strategy flows from that: to appeal to those voters. Even with this simple reckoning there is a lack of numeracy. What about its core voters who live in metropolitan areas, or voters who live in Scotland? It is a one-dimensional approach leftover from the days when politics was driven by policies and there was at least a sense of fair play. Those days are gone. 

The Right have spent the last few decades reinventing politics to ensure only right-wing parties can take control. Brexit was the apotheosis of this messy process. The principal trick was to invert what it meant to be working class. Using all the tools available it encouraged the idea that the individual is "sovereign". This was done through propaganda and the brute force of legislation. It probably began with Thatcher attacking the unions and selling off social housing. The press has done the rest.

What seems lost on Labour is that the conversion of the working class into an atomised group of individuals with aspirations of home ownership and doing better than their neighbours, was a methodology. It was all done quite knowingly. Right-wing thinkers like James Buchanan set the ball rolling with his innocent-sounding public choice theory,  and subsequent right-wing think tanks have refined the concepts and tactics ever since. Even though the resulting propaganda can be crude and repetitive, there is a high degree of sophistication in the overall programme.

To challenge this government Labour needs to understand the methodology being used. It can be understood by reading books like The Political Brain (Westen, 2008), or papers on extremism, or wondering how 1930s German propaganda worked so well. With the working class now broken down to the level of the individual, a psychological understanding of the voter becomes just as important as a social one. The work of Drew Westen, is revealing.

He examined the role of psychology in US elections by first describing the brain itself, which divides into two main areas. Towards the rear is our ancient brain, which includes the brain stem. This reacts to threat, and meets our basic needs. Then, added much later, is the cerebral cortex, located towards the front. This is responsible for language and communication and higher level processes. The two-part arrangement evolved during times when tribes fought to survive by making quick and brutal decisions.

Westen went on to describe the role of the cerebral cortex in building systems of ideas. The key point is that the brain links together ideas if they are similar. Think of word association. One word will trigger another and so on. The cerebral cortex is linked to the back of our brain through mediating structures (the amygdala, for example). By such means our ideas are given emotional force.

Westen proved beyond doubt that our political decision-making is an emotional experience. Politics can be seen as a question of managing idea networks to produce emotions. With constant repetition, the ideas constituting these networks get ground into our brains so hard that in the end we cannot think any other way. Notice how closely this fits with the social science notion of ideological hegemony?

With this in mind, Brexit becomes explicable. So does the 2019 general election. To  win, Vote Leave went straight for the emotions at the back of our head. It focussed on those networks already established that produce anger and resentment. The most ugly of these relate to racial identity. A "horde" of Turkish immigrants was promised, which was enough to trigger an outpouring of racist sentiment. A well-worn network of ideas, cultivated over many years, had been activated. When you hear, "bloody foreigners taking all our jobs", or "this place has gone down hill since they turned up", you are hearing the voice of a negative idea network.

Experiments prove that group membership - decided by nothing more than the flip of a coin - will trigger these divisive emotions [1]. Forget rational debate. Forget economic forecasts. Our ancient brain will override them. Vote leave did everything it could to stir up division and anger to give free rein to our tribal instincts.

We can see how ideas link together too. Sovereignty, for example, will automatically link with notions of patriotism, militarism, the queen, exceptionalism, and so on. It will resonate with the ancient brain to produce ready-made arguments that echo with emotional force. With the sustained complicity of the media our mental networks can effectively be reprogrammed.

The Tories have intensified their Brexit tactics by making every issue divisive. Their derisory pay offer to the NHS of 1% was an ugly declaration that they can do anything they like. Be under no illusions, this was the first move in a plan to shift public opinion against the NHS. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill showed how much  contempt the Tories have for freedom of speech, unless of course, the speech in question is their own. As Haque put it (2021):

The problem with nationalism is that it doesn’t fix anything. It erupts because countries grow poorer - but it doesn’t solve the vicious cycle of poverty. And so the search for enemies to scapegoat just goes on and on. And that way, nationalism becomes fascism: the enemy without becomes the enemy within.

Labour must learn quickly that we are not facing a normal government. Each time Starmer fails to oppose, the Tories will take another step to the right. When they do, their core supporters will move with them. Brains will be reprogrammed to make ever more authoritarian associations. It is not that difficult to understand, nor are the methods of opposition. Networks of ideas can be exploited in good ways as well as bad. We need Labour to understand this.

Notes 

[1] It is even possible to witness the brain perform some of this work. Neuroscientists such as Jay Van Bavel (The Roots of Extremism in Your Brain, 2019) have used brain scanning techniques to study patterns of activity when volunteers are put into groups.

References

Haque,  Umair (2021) Britain is Showing the World How Nationalism Implodes Into Fascism [Online]. Available at https://eand.co/britain-is-showing-the-world-how-nationalism-implodes-into-fascism-43a30917da91 (Accessed 18 March 2021).

Westen, D. (2008) The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, Hachette UK.

World Science Festival. The Roots of Extremism in Your Brain, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLNrNWBsDnc.