Robert Kimbell is a Brexit fanatic, Ukipper and Twitter celebrity. He's regularly lauded as an economics expert by the hard right, but in this article I'm going to expose the cynical cherry-picking trick he keeps using to create utterly misleading EU-bad narratives.
A quick browse through Kimbell's Twitter feed reveals his extreme Brexit bias, with links to fanatically right-wing Brexit propaganda sites like Westmonster and Brexit Central strewn amongst links to the pro-Brexit right-wing corporate media (Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph, S*n) and Retweets of numerous hard-Brexit celebrities and commentators.
Kimbell's favourite Twitter trick is to pick a country in the EU that has fallen down the global GDP ranking a little bit since their entry to the EU, and then compare them to a random country from the developing world that has risen slightly in the global GDP ranking over the same period (see screenshots).
Beware of crude GDP figures
Anyone with a bit of basic economic nous understands that relying on crude GDP figures is a surefire way of creating misleading economic narratives.
Take the talk of the so-called Tory "economic recovery" between 2010-2015 that helped them win their unexpected majority at the 2015 General Election.
It is true that the UK's GDP grew a bit between 2010 and 2015, but what the Tories omitted to mention was that nearly all of that economic growth was generated by the rising population caused by Theresa May's all-time record breaking increases in the net immigration rate.
Between 2010 and 2015 our economy was only really growing because of the all-time high levels of immigration, with the amount of economic activity per person (GDP per capita) remaining well below the level it was before the economic crisis.
Reworking the crude GDP con for Brexiteering
Kimbell's approach is that if the Tories could win a General Election by pushing a shockingly misleading crude GDP narrative, he can use the same trick to make the ongoing Brexit shambles look like a fantastic idea.
Thus he's repeatedly used comparisons of crude GDP figures on Twitter to make EU countries look like failures compared to growing economies in the developing world.
I'll go through five examples of him using this trick to show how utterly misleading his little anti-EU propaganda tropes are.
Hungary vs Bangladesh
Since Hungary joined the EU in 2004 it has fallen from 44th to 58th in the global GDP ranking. In the same time Bangladesh has risen from 57th to 46th.
What Kimbell has omitted to mention is that Bangladesh has a population of 163 million people (the 8th most populous country on earth), while Hungary has a population of 9.8 million (the 92nd most populous).
A look at the International Monetary Fund's GDP per capita figures reveal that Hungary is the 45th most prosperous country per person ($27,482), while Bangladesh is 139th ($3,891 per person).
Additionally, since 2004 the GDP per capita in Hungary has increased by over $4,000 per person (more than the entire current GDP per capita of Bangladesh), while GDP per capita in Bangladesh has increased by less than $1,400 per person.
The idea that Bangladesh is now surpassing Hungary thanks to the failure of the EU is based on a crude statistical trick that completely ignores the fact that the population of Bangladesh is over 16 times the size of Hungary, and has in fact grown by over 20 million (double the population of Hungary) since Hungary joined the EU just 13 years ago!
Luxembourg vs Oman
Since 1960 Luxembourg it has fallen from 55th to 76th in the global GDP ranking. In the same time Oman has risen from 97th to 75th.
What Kimbell has omitted to mention is that Oman has a population of 4.6 million people (the 125th most populous country on earth), while Luxembourg has a population of below 600,000 (the 166th most populous).
The question shouldn't be why has Luxemburg fallen behind Oman, but why has it taken Oman so long to catch up given their population is over seven times the size, and the large oil and natural gas reserves they've been exploiting for decades.
The International Monetary Fund's GDP per capita figures reveal that Luxembourg is the 2nd most prosperous country per person ($104,003), while Oman is 21st ($46,698 per person).
Omitting to mention the fact that Oman has a population seven times the size of Luxembourg, the fossil fuel bonanza that has fuelled Oman's climb up the GDP rankings, and the fact that the people of Luxembourg are actually the 2nd most prosperous on earth to create an EU-bad narrative are all indications of the lengths Brexiteers will go to in order to con people into supporting Brexit.
Austria vs Nigeria
Since Austria joined the EU in 1995 it has fallen from 21st to 28th in the global GDP ranking. In the same time Nigeria has risen from 57th to 27th.
Again Kimbell is using the same trick of ignoring population growth, ignoring GDP per capita, and ignoring a huge fossil fuel bonanza going on in the cherry-picked developing nation. Here are some of the stats.
Austria has a population of 8.8 million (the 96th most populous nation). Nigeria has a population of 193.5 million (the 7th most populous).
A look at the International Monetary Fund's GDP per capita figures reveal that Austria is the 19th most prosperous country per person ($48,005), while Nigeria is 126th ($5,942 per person).
Nigeria has a population over 20 times the size of Austria's, yet they've only just climbed to one place ahead of them in the crude GDP statistics, and the amount of economic activity per person in Nigeria is one eighth of the amount per person in Austria.
In fact, since 1995 the population of Nigeria has grown by 85 million people, so in order to surpass Austria by one place in the crude GDP rankings, Nigeria has had to increase its population by over 9 times the total population of Austria!
In the same period GDP per capita in Austria has grown by over $10,000 per person, an increase of almost double the current total GDP per capita in Nigeria!
The idea that wealthy Austria is somehow being held back by the EU because their economy has fallen one place behind a poverty stricken developing nation country with over 20x the population is exactly the kind of hopelessly delusional drivel that hard-right Brexiters thrive on.
Slovenia vs Angola
When Slovenia joined the EU in 2004 it had the 65th biggest economy, now it's 85th. In the same period Angola has risen from 81st to 63rd.
It's exactly the same trick again.
In 2005 (one year after Slovenia joined the EU) Angola had a population of 16.5 million, now it has a population of 28.4 million (48th in the world). In the same period the population of Slovenia has changed from 2.00 million to 2.06 million (146th).
One country has almost doubled its population in the period, whilst the other has remained almost completely static. Is it any wonder that a country which now has a population eight times the size of the other has edged above them in the crude GDP ranking?
A look at the much more informative GDP per capita rankings paints a very much less misleading picture. According the the IMF, Slovenia are 37th in the world at £32,085 per person, while Angola are 120th at $6,844 per person.
The effort to attack the EU by painting Slovenia as some kind of failing dump and Angola as a thriving success story based solely on crude GDP figures is clearly the work of a person who takes their audience as a pack of absolutely gullible idiots.
Malta vs Zambia
Kimbell asserts that Malta has fallen from 124 to 132 in the crude GDP rankings, while Zambia has climbed from 126 to 107.
Between 2004 and the present the population of Malta has increased slightly from 401,000 to 437,000. In the same period the population of Zambia has increased from 11.4 million to 16.4 million.
In 2004 Zambia had a population over 28 times the size of Malta, and now it has a population over 37 times the size of Malta. It's not a surprise that the Zambian economy is now bigger than the Maltese economy at all. What is surprising is that they were still behind the tiny island of Malta just 13 years ago.
Let's compare the GDP per capita of failing Malta and booming Zambia:
Zambia are 140th in the world with $3,880 in economic activity per person per year. Malta are 28th with $39,834.
Only the most agenda driven fanatic could try to paint wealthy and stable Malta as some kind of failing economic basket case compared to poverty stricken Zambia, which has less than a tenth of the economic activity per person as the former-British colony in the Mediterranean.
Beware of Brexiter statistics
I'm sure most of us remember the disgraceful £350 million for the NHS lies promoted by the Vote Leave mob, but it's still worth remembering that these same dishonest Brexiteers are still out there programming people with warped narratives, cherry-picked statistics, and downright lies in order to con them into continuing to support the hard-right anti-democratic Tory Brexit shambles.
The really sad thing is that the UK education system has failed so spectacularly that huge numbers of people have not been equipped with the critical thinking skills to even see through such crude and manipulative statistical cherry-picking.
What to do about people who have been let down by the education system and left with such weak critical thinking skills that they don't even question such ludicrously cherry-picked stats is a question for another time, but what to do about Robert Kimbell and his ilk is easy: Call them out on their shockingly deceptive idiot fodder whenever we see them spewing it.
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We've all seen right-wingers howling with outrage at the idea that the empty investment properties of the mega-rich could be temporarily requisitioned in order to house the homeless survivors of the Grenfell tower fire.
In fact we've seen them engaging in dishonest emotional manipulation by describing these empty investment properties as "homes" as if the absent billionaire owners actually live there, rather than leave it empty in order to cash in on the price inflation caused by the utterly negligent Tory attitude to the housing sector.
The Tories who express outrage at the idea that empty investment properties could be temporarily requisitioned for the public good are clearly demonstrating that they believe that the property rights of absent billionaires are infinitely more important than the suffering of disaster victims.
This sick property rights above all attitude would be bad enough in its own right, but then you get to the shocking hypocrisy of these people when it comes to the Tory policy of permanently requisitioning public assets in order to distribute them to their super-rich hedge fund mates (like they did with Royal Mail), private health profiteers (the ongoing NHS carve-up), unaccountable private sector pseudo-charities (thousands of publicly owned schools given away, for free to these education profiteers) and even foreign governments (in 2016 the Tory government handed our publicly owned aviation fuel distribution network directly to the governments of Oman and the UAE).
It's extremely telling that these people care more about property rights than they do about people, and it's telling that they care more about the temporary inconvenience to (mainly foreign) billionaire property speculators than they do about the permanent Tory theft of infrastructure and services that belong to all of us.
These people have become so indoctrinated by radically right-wing propaganda that they really can't see the shocking hypocrisy of spewing faux outrage about the idea of temporarily requisitioning empty investment properties for the public good, whilst supporting a political party that permanently requisitions our public property in order to distribute (often for free) to whichever of their mates want a slice of it.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Nobody likes to think of themselves as a traitor, but unfortunately many people are tricked into doing treasonous things.
I mean it's obvious isn't it? If someone wants people to act against the interests of their own community, region or nation they obviously need to trick them into doing it don't they?
Hardly anyone is going to commit treason willingly are they?
So in order to sell people treason, a grand deception needs to be constructed to make members of the public imagine that they're doing the right thing, when in reality they've been tricked into terribly betraying themselves and their own people.
Additionally the party that is attempting to get people to act against their own national interest is likely to focus heavily on attacking the reputation of anyone who opposes them. And what better strategy than to reverse reality and accuse their opponent of the very thing they themselves are guilty of?
The people selling you treason aren't going to come at you with a glossy prospectus with the word "treason" emblazoned on the cover. They're going to come at you wrapped in the flag, and constantly questioning the patriotism of anyone who stands in the way of their objective of tricking you into supporting their treasonous agenda.
This is the situation now. In Britain. In 2017.
The treason has been going on now for almost four decades and it's often wrapped up in slick sounding words and phrases like "globalisation", "privatisation", "free trade" and "foreign investment", but when you boil it down, it's blatant economic treason.
The groundwork for this economic treason was laid during the Tory privatisation mania of 1979-1997, when huge chunks of national infrastructure were sold off on the cheap, or simply given away for free, to the mega-rich.
The objective of course was to transfer ownership of the most prized parts of the UK economy to private individuals, who could then gorge themselves on the wealth they extracted from the British public.
In 1989 the water supply was privatised, in 1990 the National Grid was broken up and privatised, in 1994 the rail network was privatised, in 1995 Britain's nuclear energy infrastructure was privatised.
All of this stuff that was built up and maintained by the British taxpayer was hastily flogged off on the cheap, leaving the British public no longer stakeholders, but customers to be milked as hard as possible in order to maximise the private profits.
Many of the investors who ended up with chunks of public property were themselves treasonous individuals who used complex tax-dodging schemes to extract the wealth they were milking from the British public into offshore tax havens like Panama.
David Cameron's father was one of the people who made a pretty packet. Not directly from the infrastructure the Tory government were handing out, but by helping the private owners to siphon their profits overseas in order to avoid making a contribution to British society by paying their fair share of tax.
The rate of sell-offs declined significantly between 1997 and 2010 under the Blair-Brown government, but they did nothing to reverse the damage; they continued selling off bits and pieces like Air Traffic Control and the HMRC property portfolio; and they introduced PFI economic alchemy schemes to lumber the cost of current infrastructure spending onto future generations.
One important thing did happen during the Blair-Brown era that set the tone for what was to come. In 2008 the British nuclear power stations that were flogged off in 1995 were brought up by EdF, which is just a front for the French government.
It turned out that the private investors who gobbled up our nuclear industry in 1995 had so little loyalty to Britain that they literally handed the whole lot over to France when they realised it was more profitable to offload it to a foreign government than it would have been to keep running it themselves.
In 2010, when the Tories sneaked back into power with the help of the Orange Book Liberal Democrats, the rate of sell-offs and giveaways skyrocketed again. They flogged off the Royal Mail at way below market value, they privatised the police forensic science service, they privatised literally thousands of the schools that our kids study at, they privatised the universities, and the Government Pipeline and Storage Systems (the underground aviation fuel distribution network that was created during WWII).
By this time huge chunks of former national industries were falling into the hands of foreign governments.
The Chinese and Qatari governments were particularly keen to get their hands on what used to be our nationally owned infrastructure. China bagged a huge stake in Thames Water in 2012, they teamed up with Qatar to win a major stake in the National Grid in 2016, and in 2017 the Tory Transport Minister Chris Grayling handed the Soutwestern rail franchise over to the Hong Kong government with barely a murmur of protest (apart from in a few left-wing blogs).
One of the most shocking things of all was the sell-off of the Government Pipeline and Storage Systems. This time the Tory government didn't sell it to private investors who then sold it on to foreign governments a few years down the line.
No. In this case the Tories cut out the middle-man and transferred ownership direct from the British public to the foreign governments of Oman and the United Arab Emirates who own significant chunks of the nominally Spanish company it was flogged off to.
When they flogged off our aviation fuel distribution network to the governments of Oman and the United Arab Emirates, the Tory party committed direct economic treason.
They decided that our aviation fuel network was better being run for the benefit of the governments of Oman and the UAE than being run by the British government, for the benefit of the British people, and the British economy.
Theresa May has wrapped herself up in the Brexit banner and poses as if she's a patriot who loves Britain, but she was part of the government that handed our vital national infrastructure directly to foreign governments, and she's planning to carry on too.
In March 2017 she grovelled before the Qataris to beg them to buy up even more of our infrastructure.
Qatar is a country that is so dodgy they've even been accused of supporting terrorism by Saudi Arabia (the global epicentre of Wahabi Islamist fanaticism), but Theresa May actually begged them to come and buy even more of our national silver that she's intent on flogging off.
You might think nothing can be done to stop this Tory treason because "aren't all political parties more-or-less the same?"
Well you'd be wrong to think that.
Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-establishment outsider who has managed to wrest the Labour Party out of establishment control, and he wants to break up this decades long Westminster obsession with globalisation and privatisation.
Corbyn is planning to repatriate some of the most vital public infrastructure.
Our rail franchises are now 74% operated by foreign governments. Jeremy Corbyn wants to renationalise them and run them for the benefit of the British people.
Corbyn also wants to take the national grid back from the Chinese and Qatari governments and run it for the British people.
And he wants to nationalise the water companies too, putting an end to Chinese government control over our water supplies.
The choice is a stark one. You can either believe the right-wing campaign of smears against Jeremy Corbyn and allow the Tories to con you into supporting their economically treasonous strategy of flogging our national infrastructure and services off to foreign governments ...
Or you can look past the barrage of propaganda from the economic traitors and their mainstream media bully boys who shill for the billionaire-owned newspapers, look at Jeremy Corbyn's actual policies, and understand that he's actually the patriotic one.
Jeremy Corbyn is the one who is saying that Britain is strong enough and wealthy enough to run our own infrastructure and services.
While Theresa May and the Tories are saying that we're so weak and broke that we have to continue flogging our national infrastructure off to China, Qatar, Oman, the UAE, or whoever else wants a slice, because in the warped Tory mind, foreign governments are so much more capable of running our infrastructure and services than our own country is!
Make no mistake about it. If you swallow the relentless Tory campaign of anti-Corbyn smears and vote the Tories into power again, you'll be committing an act of economic treason.
And what's worse is that you'll not be doing it because you've been duped into it, because you've read this article now, and you've had the grand deception pulled apart in front of your eyes.
If you vote Tory after reading this article, you'll be committing an act of economic treason in the full knowledge of what you're doing. Which is infinitely worse than doing it because you don't know any better than to be tricked by Theresa May's deceptive charade of fake patriotism.
If you vote Tory after reading this you'll be committing economic treason willingly and in full knowledge of what you're doing.
Don't vote Tory.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
