Look into my eyes: hypnotist helped Leave.EU campaign
The Leave campaign in Britain’s European Union referendum enlisted a popular TV hypnotist to advise it on some of its campaign broadcasts.
Paul McKenna was asked by the UK Independence Party-backed Leave.EU campaign to examine early edits of its promotional videos.
A source at the victorious campaign group told The Guardian that McKenna ‘‘understands the psychology of the mind’’ and helped Leave.EU ‘‘produce social media ads that resonated with people’’. But he added: ‘‘We didn’t hypnotise anyone.’’
McKenna’s role emerged at the end of a week in which several senior politicians backtracked on persuasive campaign messages from the EU referendum on immigration controls and how much money saved from payments to the EU could be redirected to the NHS.
The hypnotist is said to be a friend of Arron Banks, a Bristolbased multimillionaire insurance businessman who bankrolled the Leave.EU campaign with a £5.6 million donation.
McKenna became involved as Leave.EU spent millions of pounds building up its online following, partly through using short, dramatic campaign videos posted via its social media accounts. It claimed that it had a million followers and supporters on social media by polling day.
‘‘That was the key to winning wavering voters,’’ said Banks.
McKenna declined to comment in detail on what help he gave Leave.EU, but his spokesman said: ‘‘He is friendly with Arron Banks, and Banks showed him a few rough cuts of promotional videos they were considering using in their campaign. [Paul] was quite intrigued by the new style of political campaigning, which he thought was influenced heavily by American politics.’’
McKenna has previously described modern hypnotism as ‘‘giving you greater communication capabilities with somebody’’.
He has also said that being absorbed and engrossed in TV broadcasts is equally as hypnotic as a hypnotically induced trance.
Banks revealed that a central plank of the Leave campaign’s successful strategy emerged from advice taken from United States election strategists Goddard Gunster that ‘‘facts don’t work’’.
He said: ‘‘The Remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesn’t work. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.’’
Several commentators have said that the Republican candidate for the US presidency, Donald Trump, uses hypnotic techniques in his speeches. He uses repetition to make simple ideas stick.
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader and Leave.EU supporter, did something similar during the EU referendum campaign, repeating again and again the mantra ‘‘Take back control’’.