Yes, the British love to chortle at the peculiarities of the U.S. general election. But now Americans have a good reason to fight back. It's called "Brexit." Britain's referendum on leaving the European Union, due to take place this Thursday, touches upon important and real policy debates. Yet even those who strongly supported the calls for a referendum may cringe when they think of what exactly has happened over the past few months. [...]
The backlash against "experts" may be understandable after the 2008 financial crash, but it's still alarming. “What we’re seeing is a rise in the number of people who are dissatisfied, disapproving, distrusting of political institutions, political parties, the establishment, the media and, wrapped up with that, the experts,” Joe Twyman, head of political and social research at the polling firm YouGov, told The Washington Post. “A certain proportion of people don’t believe a word of what they hear from those they consider part of the metropolitan elite.” [...]
In the fierce campaign ahead of the vote, Britons have been bombarded with facts and statistics from both sides.
But both sides have been accused of misleading or sometimes even outright lying to the public. For example, the pro-Brexit camp has repeatedly said that Britain is forced to send $514 million a week to Brussels, even emblazoning it on the side of buses. However, as Sky News's Faisal Islam explained, this wasn't true. "It is demonstrably untrue," Islam wrote. "Or to put it another way, it is a lie."
The "remain" campaign has also been called out for misleading the public, although it appears to have happened less frequently. The Telegraph recently called claims that two-thirds of British jobs in manufacturing are dependent on demand from Europe "wrong," reporting that they are based on flawed estimates that have since been revised.
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