I’m a nostalgic sort of fella. I yearn for those times when our politicians used some degree of rational argument to influence the electorate. The era where politicians appeared to hold some transparent values and principles that they would use to inform policies that were – purportedly – in the national interest; the era where politicians were obliged to listen to the views of ordinary people (or risk being displaced at the ballot box); where explicit policy proposals could be meaningly debated and criticised in the run up to an election.
Alas, things are not what they were.
We now have a homogenous batch of political parties all broadly following the same agenda, an agenda seemingly set largely by global elites who operate outside of any democratic system. And behavioural scientists – commonly referred to as ‘nudgers’ – play a pivotal role in levering the compliance of the masses with this top-down authoritarian mission. By means of their (often covert) deployment of psychological strategies that weaponise fear, shame and scapegoating, they facilitate the control of ordinary people. And to perform this essential role requires a huge resource of behavioural science expertise. Consequently, nudgers are everywhere.
As part of an ongoing research initiative to explore the U.K. Government’s deployment of behavioural science during the Covid event, I have scrutinised official documents and made a series of Freedom of Information requests. These reveal the scale of nudge activity being routinely utilised to secure the public’s compliance with top-down diktats. The findings are remarkable.
For ease of comprehension, I will divide the state’s behavioural science resource into five categories:
- Government advisory groups
- In-house employees embedded in Government departments
- The Behavioural Insight Team (aka ‘Nudge Unit’)
- The ‘Government Communications Service’
- Private advertisement agencies
1. Government advisory groups
When global elites announce that there is a world-wide ‘crisis’, governments typically respond by gathering a group of experts to advise them on relevant actions to take. Early in the Covid pandemic, the U.K. relied on the recommendations of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and its subgroups. One such subgroup was the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), whose membership was mainly comprised of behavioural scientists and prominent psychologists who have expertise in the deployment of nudge techniques.
A key element of the SPI-B’s remit was to advise on “strategies for behaviour change, to support control of and recovery from the epidemic”. At the start of the Covid era, the group was asked to “provide advice aimed at anticipating and helping people adhere to interventions that are recommended by medical or epidemiological experts”.
High profile behavioural scientists Professors David Halpern and Susan Michie also participated in the full SAGE forum, as did co-chairs of the SPI-B (Professors Ann John, James Rubin and Lucy Yardley).
All-in-all, it is clear that the Government’s expert advisory groups during the Covid event were well stocked with professionals who specialised in the craft of behavioural science.
2. In-house employees embedded in Government departments
While the pandemic advisory groups offered a wealth of nudge expertise, a far greater behavioural science resource was embedded within Government departments. The size of this permanent in-house resource has been revealed by a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
In 2019, the Department of Revenue and Customs had 54 employees in its Behavioural Research and Insight team, while the Department for Work and Pensions employed 16 people in its Behavioural Science Team. A more recent FOI to the Department of Transport found that, in 2022, it had the equivalent of six full-time behavioural scientists at a total annual cost of £299,000 per annum. And – more pertinent to the Covid pandemic – an FOI response in November 2023 confirmed that the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) hosts a Behavioural Science and Insights Unit that employs 29 people (24 of whom are behavioural and social scientists) with an annual budget of £958,000. Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) recently acknowledged the existence of a Behavioural Science Team, as did the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.
Professor James Rubin, a SPI-B Co-Chair, referred to this departmental behavioural science resource in his evidence to the current COVID-19 Inquiry. Bemoaning that his own group had insufficient influence on Government communications, Rubin stated:
We were one group within the Government system looking at behavioural science of which there were many other groups… there were teams within UKHSA, there was the DHSC.
3. The Behavioural Insight Team (a.k.a. ‘Nudge Unit’)
In 2010, the Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) was conceived in the Prime Minister’s Office of David Cameron as “the world’s first Government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy”. According to the BIT website, its team rapidly expanded from a seven-person unit working with the U.K. Government to a ‘social purpose company’ operating in many countries around the world. From 2014, the BIT was collectively owned by the U.K. Government, Nesta (an innovations charity) and the BIT’s own employees. In December 2021, the BIT was wholly acquired by Nesta for £15.4 million.
The BIT routinely receives requests from a wide range of Government departments to provide advice to communicators about how to maximise the power of their messaging. Throughout the Covid pandemic, the BIT produced multiple advisory documents, some of which encouraged the use of fear, shame and peer pressure as a means of enhancing the effectiveness of the Governments pandemic communications.
Strikingly, during the Covid pandemic, the BIT was awarded two lucrative contracts with the Government. The Cabinet Office allocated up to £4 million to the BIT for a three-year contract (2019-2022) to provide “Behavioural Insights Consultancy and Research Services” so as to furnish this heart of Government with “frictionless access to behavioural insights to match central priorities”. As for the Department of Health and Social Care, it paid BIT £1 million for a 13-months contract (March 1st 2020 to March 31st 2021) for “Various work for Test, Trace, Contain and Enable agenda”.
4. The Government Communications Service
As if the collective nudging might of the SPI-B, BIT and in-house behavioural scientists was not enough, there is also the Government Communications Service (GCS). Operating within Whitehall, this group of civil servants is led by Chief Executive Simon Baugh and boasts employing “over 7,000 professional communicators across the U.K.”
The GCS incorporates a Behavioural Science Team based in the Cabinet Office. In a recent document, Alex Aiken (Executive Director of Government Communication) celebrates how the GCS Behavioural Science Team has accelerated progress towards the “goal of embedding behavioural science expertise across the Government Communication profession”.
5. Private advertisement agencies
In April 2020, the Cabinet Office approved spending of £216.8 million for “Advertising, Marketing and Communications” in relation to a “Covid campaign 2020-21”, with the bulk (£194 million) of it dedicated to Covid-related advertising between April to December 2020. However, a FOI from March 2022 indicates that – in actuality – the Cabinet Office spent far more: over £5 million in 2019-20 and £370 million in 2020-21. A range of advertising companies have benefited from this spending, but the two major recipients of state funding have been Manning Gotlieb and Mullen Lowe. These large, Government-favoured agencies employ their own behavioural scientists to determine the content of their adverts and videos – for example, the powerful (and ethically dubious) ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign.
An advertising agency insider has confirmed the high profile of nudgers within their creative world. Julia Bainbridge – a founder member of the Freuds agency, one of several advertising companies commissioned by the U.K. Government – recently stated: “Behavioural science is now mainstream and high profile, particularly in my field, which seeks to change people’s behaviour for their own, and the social good.” In the same article, Bainbridge goes on to say: “Behavioural science is now being deployed, at the highest level to address ‘wicked’ problems, from vaccine hesitancy to tobacco consumption, throughout the world.”
In conclusion, behavioural scientists – these paternalistic overseers of right-think – reside in every cavity of the state’s infrastructure, nudging our thoughts and actions to align them with globalist goals (for example, digital IDs, Net Zero carbon, a meatless society and less travel for the masses). Rather than rational argument and open debate, we are being furtively nudged, on an unprecedented scale, to obey the doctrines of the world’s elites. Regrettably, for ordinary people, conscious deliberation prior to decision making is rapidly becoming a rare commodity.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign. This article was first published on his website Coronababble.
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I dont pretend to understand psychology but this is a brilliantly written piece that makes it very understandable! And of cause, you don’t need to be a doctor to know that all this is indeed true! I can almost taste the changes in politics since I was younger
Read “A State of Fear” by Laura Dodsworth. It lays out, in crystal clear fashion, exactly what our treacherous government did to psychologically batter us into compliance. It’ll fascinate and enrage you in equal measures. If there was ever a time in history to remove tyrannical oppressors it is now.
You only have to look at election campaigns there’s never any heckling anymore they all hide behind factory gates with carefully orchestrated meetings organised by their own supporters. Politicians (bar one or two rare birds) are absolutely s… scared of meeting ordinary people in case they’re challenged too much.
I’m still so traumatised by those dreadful adverts that I’ve had to change my route to my nearest supermarket, to avoid ‘Nam’ flashbacks of the rows of buses and a big screen depicting those gaslighting images and words. And the knowledge that we the tax payer, paid for the bloody things! In my world, heads would roll for this.
In mine, necks would be stretched. To breaking point.
An excellent piece of research – thank you. Clearly we, the ‘awake’, deplorables, great unwashed or whatever, need to deploy our own cadre of behavioural scientists to counter the onslaught and exert some influence on Joe Public.
I’d chip in for that one.
“Nudge” not only takes agency away from people in making their own decisions and reaching their own conclusions, smothering their ability to think for themselves, it also takes responsibility away from the people who making decisions on their behalf. Having successfully gaslit the population on any number of fronts, they can claim the resulting degradation in morale and behaviour was nothing to do with them.
It’s nothing new – it used to be known as propaganda, and the effect described above is destructive, if not deadly. The moronic, narcissistic and entitled establishment have enthusiastically latched onto the idea of ‘nudge’ as it allows them to have their cake and eat it – to exercise potentially unlimited control over a population without needing to be held accountable for the mess they make. They’re like a bunch of children playing with matches.
Dr Sidley, if you read these comments, it would be great to know how you approached submitting the FOI’s. What sort of questions did you ask, and where they were submitted? It’s likely the next government will have been ‘nudged’ themselves into seeing this foray into mass psychological operations as a great success and double down on it, so it might be useful for average Joes like me to learn how to get to the root of it.
jburns, your last point is good. Perpetrators of propaganda are in the end its biggest victims.
They start by believing that their goals are correct, and get the relevant propagandists to employ the nudges.
Then they do their polls and focus groups and find that Hey Presto! A majority agrees with their goals. They then believe they are vindicated by public opinion and double down on rubbish policies, and the fact that a deluded public votes them in again gives them a democratic mandate to boot! The only problem is that the whole country (other than the wise fools) is living a destructive lie.
Examples abound – think any current government policy or MSM talking point. Ask intelligent people on the street for examples of dictators and they will first think of Trump and Putin, rather than Biden or Zelensky. As will the average MP, cabinet minister or (of course) nudge unit psychologist. Dangerous extremists? Tommy Robinson, not the chancellors of woke universities. Etc.
First comes the nudge, then comes the push. —–We get the opportunity do voluntary do as we are told first. Then when 40% still are not doing it out comes the coercion team. ————-“Ah, so you don’t have a smart meter or heat pump yet, well we will soon put a stop to that. We will make your gas so expensive that you will be clamouring for a silly heat pump”. —————“Ah so you are not taking the vaccine, well we will soon put a stop to that. No holidays to Tenerife for you”.
Ultimately the only tools they have are age-old threats and violence. Once the fear of that goes, they have nothing.
the donation information turned to French .is it some sort of spying by french speaking agents?anyone else notice things like that?
Once you recognise a nudge, you then see them all, and then the technique potentially has the opposite effect. At least it does for me, I get “the rage” to the extent that if one of these lying, conniving barstewards was in the room with me, one of us would be leaving on crutches or in handcuffs. Why can’t people in positions of government or “authority” be honest? The marketing of behaviour and approved thoughts, ie lying, is endless and I am weary of it.
But as somebody observed, the end-stage of propaganda is when the manipulators know that nobody believes them any more, but they have the power to tell lies anyway, because everyone is weary and disenfranchised. That’s how it was in the USSR, and how it seems to be in Iran – it’s fortunately a temporary phase before the lies collapse, one way or the other.
“Nudge” came up against the Awkward Squad, of which I’m one.
After 3 years of their blatant scaremongering and “nudging” which became shoving, I strongly suspect that the Awkward Squad is now far larger than it was ….and they won’t get away with it so easily next time they try it.
The state has no business trying to influence people’s behaviour. The state is there to perform functions that it makes sense for it to perform, for convenience/logistics purposes, primarily essentials.
So many nudgers! To me, the question is who and when made the decision to train so many nudgers?
It is no wonder young people seem so afraid and neurotic all of the time. They appear nervous and unsure. They are constantly being manipulated using fear as one of the main tools. I was like that early on in the covid psyops until I figured out the constant fear-mongering with the daily tolls of the covid dead as if it was the black plague or ebola spreading. I never watch main stream media anymore as it is the largest tool used by the government psyop groups. Governments have become your enemy today.
“And – more pertinent to the Covid pandemic – an FOI response in November 2023 confirmed that the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) hosts a Behavioural Science and Insights Unit that employs 29 people (24 of whom are behavioural and social scientists) with an annual budget of £958,000.”
There’s also the section that was privatised. Who, when I tried an FoI no the were gleeful in their response that they had no obligation to do so.
<expletive deleted>
I always thought that journalists did “due diligence” checks on our politicians, and others in control, and brought to light any evidence of transgressions. However, in my opinion, they haven’t been scrutinising Registers of Interests and Companies House effectively. Often civil servants and politicians are directors of companies that they fail to declare, because they are a conflict of interest. For example The company Behavioural Insights Ltd, with David Halpern amongst the directors, is registered in Companies House, BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS LTD people – Find and update company information – GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk). From the company website. we can see that this company uses the copyright name Behavioural Insights Team (BI Team) and in December 2021 they became “wholly-owned by innovation charity Nesta“,(Who we are | The Behavioural Insights Team (bi.team)). The BI Team biography for director Ravi Gurumurthy provides no information on his other interests, Ravi Gurumurthy | The Behavioural Insights Team (bi.team). His biography on the Nesta website is more forthcoming:
“Joined the International Rescue Committee in 2013, Director of Strategy at the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change and as a strategic advisor to the Foreign Secretary. Across many departments, Ravi led a number of major social and environmental reforms including the development of the world’s first legally-binding carbon emissions targets and the integration of children’s services. Ravi has also worked as a researcher at the think-tank Demos and in local government in London.”
Cross-referencing this with his appointments in Companies House, Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY personal appointments:
Total number of appointments 3 Date of birth May 1977
BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS LTD (08567792) Company status Active Correspondence address 58 Victoria Embankment, Temple, London, England, EC4Y 0DS Role ACTIVE
Director Appointed on 10 December 2021 Occupation Chief Executive Officer
THE HEALTH FOUNDATION (01714937) Company status Active Correspondence address
8 Salisbury Square, London, England, EC4Y 8AP Role ACTIVE Director Appointed on 12 March 2021 Occupation Chief Executive Of Nesta
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND UK (09217493) Company status Active correspondence address 3rd Floor, 41 Eastcheap, London, England, EC3M 1DT Role ACTIVE Director Appointed on 19 November 2020 Occupation Chief Executive Officer.
Ravi Gurumurthy fails to declare that his is an active director of Behavioural Insights Ltd, The Health Foundation and the Environmental Defence Fund UK. However, there is more. If you search on his name in Companies House, Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY you see that he has 3 identities registered with the same name and date of birth. Multiple identities are the result of an error in the deduplication process, you can call them synthetic identities or clone identities. Lawyers and accountants, in the know, have been keeping quiet about the illegal use of multiple identities since Companies House opened. They corrupt audits and due diligence by concealing interests. In identity 2, Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY personal appointments he is an active director of NESTA ENTERPRISES LIMITED (08580327) and NESTA PRI LIMITED (08232090), appointed on 21 May 2020. In identity 3 Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY personal appointments: NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR VOLUNTARY YOUTH SERVICES (04385383) Director Appointed on 17 October 2002 Resigned on 2 November 2006. Ravi Gurumurthy fails to disclose active directorships of NESTA Enterprises Limited, NESTA Pri Limited and his background with National Council for Voluntary Youth Services. To create three identities we can deduce that he used three different spellings on his usual residential address, since identities are established using name, date of birth and usual residential address. If there is any variation in any of these it causes a non-match error and Companies House creates a duplicate identity, by mistake. If the individual has failed to declare interests held in another identity, I allege that this is evidence that he created the duplicate identity deliberately, to conceal the interest. Therefore multiple identities and failure to declare interests is evidence of fraud by false representation and fraud by failing to disclose information, because he fails to disclose all his interests on the BI Team and NESTA website. He has corrupted audits since he established his second identity for his directorship to Nesta Enterprises and Nesta Pri Limited on 21 May 2020 because multiple identities conceal the other interests from audits + due diligence software.