Michael Gove had plenty of air time
this morning on the BBC's Radio 4 to rehabilitate himself and try to appear more reasonable. His message during the brexit campaign could be summed up -"We don't need
experts, they always get it wrong, forget the experts and just believe what I tell you and everything will be fine".
Today he tried to qualify his rejection of expert opinion by saying that we shouldn't accept what experts say without question and what he wanted was fact based discussion in which experts could justify themselves by presenting their evidence. So I wonder why this was not how the campaign was conducted? Gove knows very well that any attempt to present complex evidence was rejected by him and his colleagues during the campaign in favour of the lies that were so much easier to promote. Evidence and facts went out of the window. The Today Programme presenter chose not to challenge him robustly and repeatedly on this point, like they usually do with politicians on this programme, why not?
Today he tried to qualify his rejection of expert opinion by saying that we shouldn't accept what experts say without question and what he wanted was fact based discussion in which experts could justify themselves by presenting their evidence. So I wonder why this was not how the campaign was conducted? Gove knows very well that any attempt to present complex evidence was rejected by him and his colleagues during the campaign in favour of the lies that were so much easier to promote. Evidence and facts went out of the window. The Today Programme presenter chose not to challenge him robustly and repeatedly on this point, like they usually do with politicians on this programme, why not?
I'm sure that Gove would be happy to
accept the advice of medical experts, or even a plumber, should he have need of
such trained and experienced people, but not "experts" who provide
opinions which inconveniently contradict his own political beliefs. It's so
much easier to rubbish the expert's advice, like he did during the brexit campaign, than to counter it with facts and expertise; but beware of following Gove down that road or you will end up in a morass of
lies propagated by people like the brexiteers and Donald Trump.
Go a little
further in that direction and you will find yourself with autocratic leaders
quite prepared to set up fake news websites, commit voting fraud, arrest
journalists, judges and opposition politicians, or change the constitution to
keep themselves permanently in power.
If you don't want that to happen,
challenge every lie or sweeping statement that unscrupulous politicians of the post-truth
generation, like Michael Gove, make when they rubbish people who disagree with
them. Don't let them get away with a shrug of the shoulders or a humorous quip
as a response.
This is the new front line in the
fight to preserve western democratic values and if you think that I'm
overstating the case look at the story
of Turkey and its slide into dictatorship over the last fifteen years.
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