BY PAUL T HORGAN

There have been three by-elections and the spoils have been shared between the three main English parties, one apiece. What is strange is how the results have been reported. Rather than provide both the number of votes of candidates, and also the percentages, major media organisations, and the BBC in particular, have just been providing percentages:

There is no good reason for this.

Compare this to the actual results:

Previous results have always included the candidate numbers (as Sky News showed yesterday when the results came through), and yet these are now wilfully concealed. Instead, it does seem as though the British public is being primed for elections to be measured only in percentages, rather than numbers of votes.

Is there – and there seems to be – a tacit media campaign under way to introduce the concept of Proportional Representation (PR)? It is in these PR contests that percentages matter more (the clue is in the name) than the underlying numbers of votes cast , as there would be in our current first-past-the-post system.

The BBC leads the way on this. Its main coverage of the results made zero mention of the number of votes cast, and also did not include the turnout figures, which would have shown that less than half of the electorate turned out in Uxbridge. In 2019, almost 70% of the electorate cast a vote.

The absence of key information suggests Labour has had a huge surge. The truth may be that Conservative voters stayed at home.

It is misleading by omission, deleting certain facts to change people’s thinking through an acceptance of a new status quo, hoping no-one will notice.

Of course we now know that complaining to the BBC is a waste of time, after it was conclusively proved that even the most serious complaints are treated in an off-hand fashion.

The Long March Through The Institutions seems to have been completed, and the marchers are displaying the arrogance always associated with power acquired by less-than-acceptable means.

The problem is that the disappearance of certain details is normally ignored by commentators and the public unless they are blatant. And yet this chipping away goes on all time, only halted when people notice and there is resistance, after which there is a pause before it is resumed.

This is how progressivism functions. It is a quiet but relentless erosion that only occasionally experiences pushback.

Currently the whole trans debate seems to have been halted by certain reverses, but this does not guarantee it will retreat. Rather, the trans lobby will just outwait the critics, hoping that focus will shift elsewhere or demographic change and a rising tide of suitably indoctrinated children deliberately kept ignorant of alternative values will outlive the opposition.

This may not come about.

East Germany lasted for precisely half a century and no amount of indoctrination could prevent its people demanding its collapse. But the East Germans were well aware that they were captive in their own country and that emigration was a capital crime. They could watch West German TV and see that everyone was driving a VW Golf, while East Germans had to make do with the appalling Trabant. The state propaganda was blatant and vocal opposition was the subject of state prohibition.

In a free-ish society, the progressivists have to be more subtle than their Teutonic analogues. In this case they are attacking democracy by hiding part of the outcome of a vote and projecting this as normal.

It isn’t, and it should not be.

I never thought I would live to see public institutions in a democracy slide towards subtle mass manipulation. But is is happening. And not enough people in authority seem to care.

Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.