It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that “fake news” is primarily a right-wing problem, a convenient narrative that gained traction about a decade ago when terms like “post-truth politics” and “misinformation” became buzzwords. This happened as the political establishment grappled with the rise of movements like Brexit and MAGA, trying to understand how such seemingly radical ideas could garner so much popular support, especially when they challenged established norms and tastes. Many panels were convened, and books were written, all dissecting the supposed disconnect between the right and reality. However, while all this attention was focused on one side of the political spectrum, something similar, and perhaps even more insidious, was quietly taking hold on the other side, largely unnoticed. Thanks to the growing influence of social media in shaping political engagement, certain political “truisms,” often of questionable accuracy, have become incredibly widespread and deeply ingrained within much of the Left.
What makes these left-leaning misinformation ideas particularly potent is their ability to fly under the radar. Unlike the often-mocked, “déclassé” tropes associated with the Right, these falsehoods largely escape serious scrutiny from both the media and society at large. This allows them to be freely shared and accepted by people who genuinely see themselves as politically aware and engaged – whether they’re colleagues exchanging ideas, friends discussing current events, or even, increasingly, politicians themselves. A major reason for their widespread acceptance is their catchy, soundbite-friendly nature. They often boil down to simple slogans, freeing them from the inconvenient burden of needing actual evidence or data to support their claims. They simply sound intuitively plausible, offering a straightforward, satisfying explanation for why things feel so broken in society. Take, for instance, the oft-repeated lament, famously articulated by Jeremy Corbyn, that “there’s always money for war, but never for our public services.” On the surface, it sounds very convincing. We do spend tens of billions on defense, and our public services are undeniably struggling. It provides a simple, almost elegant explanation. Yet, a quick glance at the numbers reveals a very different picture. Britain’s defense spending hovers around £60 billion annually. This is roughly half of what we spend on education and a mere quarter of what goes into healthcare each year. Clearly, a significant amount of money is consistently found for our public services, far exceeding anything the defense budget could ever hope to command. The comforting narrative, it turns out, just doesn’t hold up to reality.
This misunderstanding about where government funds actually go, particularly the relatively small proportion allocated to defense compared to public services, might be fueled by another pervasive myth: the idea that NHS spending has been drastically cut, leading to its chronic underfunding. The truth, however, is precisely the opposite. NHS spending has consistently risen, not just in nominal terms (the raw numbers) but also in real terms (accounting for inflation). NHS England now spends over £200 billion annually. To put that in perspective, it’s double the roughly £100 billion it spent just a decade ago (which would be around £150 billion in today’s money). This represents an increase in funding for NHS England of approximately £1 billion per week – a figure three times higher than what Vote Leave famously boasted on their red bus during the Brexit campaign. Remarkably, despite this substantial surge in funding, the perception of the NHS as a perpetually struggling, “pauper” institution persists. This leads to a painfully circular and unproductive debate about healthcare in Britain, constantly stuck talking about funding rather than daring to explore the other, more complex issues that contribute to the NHS’s consistent challenges and struggles. It seems that the narrative, once established, is remarkably resilient, even in the face of starkly contradictory evidence.
Sometimes these convenient “truisms” serve a deeper purpose: simplifying complex phenomena by shoehorning them into an easy-to-digest moral narrative. This not only makes them more understandable but also makes certain political actions appear more justifiable. Economics, for instance, is notoriously difficult for the average person to grasp due to its many abstract concepts. So, in place of nuanced economic understanding, we get morality tales: prices are rising because of “greed,” and inflation is nothing more than a corporate conspiracy designed to fleece the rest of us. These narratives conveniently bypass the intricate realities of complex global supply chains and sophisticated monetary policy, replacing them with a far more intuitive and emotionally satisfying story about humanity’s perennial vice – greed – being the culprit behind a slightly more expensive weekly grocery bill. It’s an explanation that resonates because it taps into a fundamental sense of injustice, even if it completely ignores the actual mechanisms at play.
Beyond distorting our understanding of the present, these myths have also begun to fundamentally reshape how many on the Left perceive Britain’s past. A prime example, as documented by Wilf Solfiac, is the common misconception that Britain was an insignificant backwater before colonialism, and that its wealth and power were solely a product of its colonial exploits. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, it was precisely because Britain was already wealthy and powerful that it possessed the capacity to build and maintain a global empire. Another foundational myth often touted is that post-war migration single-handedly “rebuilt” the country, creating everything from the NHS to our modern transport system. This historical reading, too, is largely a fantasy. It’s a convenient, inclusive fairytale crafted by the British state to foster a sense of belonging for new arrivals, often overlooking the uncomfortable truth that the same state frequently sought to prevent them from settling here in the first place. These historical distortions serve to bolster current political arguments, painting a simplified, morally charged picture of the past that aligns with desired contemporary narratives.
While a few isolated misunderstandings about government finances, a slight misapprehension of how prices work, or a somewhat muddled view of history might seem individually forgivable and relatively harmless, the real danger emerges when these individual threads of misinformation are woven together. When they form the bedrock of an increasingly popular worldview, creating a system of irrational grievances that steers people towards exclusionary and overly redistributive solutions, we find ourselves in our current troubling predicament. Voters end up making demands that are ultimately self-defeating, and politicians, themselves often detached from reality, concede to these demands. It’s this widespread acceptance of unverified, often “kooky” conspiracies – like prices rising purely due to corporate greed – that leads to political parties governing Scotland pledging unenforceable supermarket food price caps. It’s how we see parties like the Greens, with manifestos full of tried and discredited ideas, surprisingly surge to second place in the polls. As we’ve consistently been warned, misinformation carries a dangerous cost. Our society’s collective reluctance to acknowledge and challenge the numerous examples of widely held leftist misinformation is undoubtedly set to burden us with some very hefty costs indeed. Yet, ironically, one suspects that this particular brand of misinformation won’t trigger the same moral panic and hand-wringing about “Russian bots” or “social media algorithms” that typically accompanies discussions of right-wing falsehoods. The blind spot, it seems, is stubbornly persistent.