On reflection, this was all pretty shoddy. I include myself in this tbh
Attempting to use legal tricks and technicalities to overturn the result at every point. No intention to ever respect the result as they thought they would win at a canter. Everyone who voted Leave was thick, uneducated, didnt know what they were doing etc…
I wonder what things would look like if the majority of Remainers had simply accepted the result and worked to deliver a painless Brexit. Instead we had the total clusterfook of May’s Govt, Boris and all the shenanigans we have now. Remainers like Jolyon, Gina Miller and thon liberal Tories must shoulder a significant portion of the blame.
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You hope.
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Simple statement of fact.
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The debate was always difficult to have precisely because of sentiments like "you don't want the country to prosper!!!!!!!' conveniently omitting that anyone who genuinely understands how the country prospers was opposed to Brexit. It's baffling how Brexiteers managed to paint the course of action that harms the UK's long-term prospects as the patriotic one.
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Ton up.
Honestly, I know that a united ireland would make the majority of irish people worse off economically. However, when i am in that polling booth there is absolutely no way I could ever vote for anything other than reunification. Some things are more important than money.
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‘It's baffling how Brexiteers managed to paint the course of action that harms the UK's long-term prospects as the patriotic one.‘
Not to mention breaking up the union, as WUHAN confirms
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Yeah, no-one has replied to my question about Scot Nats but it applies equally to Ireland. It is as clear as it was for the UK economy through Brexit that independence from the UK will have a negative impact on Scotland and NI.
Do remainders see those supporting separation from the UK as “thick, uneducated and don’t know what they’re doing”?
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I don’t think that there’s been a history of more than a small % of the population being anti Europe.
Prior to 2015 — The EU barely registered as an issue of complaint in opinion polls. (It was really only for cranks and the right wing of the Tory Party) It was the lies told along with some powerful campaigning that changed all that - Along with giving the establishment (the irony) a nosebleed.
Risky accuses FBPE types (I guess I am one) of not wanting the best for this country. Like most good lies/untruths there’s a hint of truth in that there’s plenty of people who want t hi s government to fall flat on its face (doesn’t need our help). That shouldn’t be confused with wanting us to fail - far from it - we have a much more inspiring view of the future of Britain than the likes of Risky (off shore I note)
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‘Do remainders see those supporting separation from the UK as “thick, uneducated and don’t know what they’re doing”?‘
can’t speak for all remainers but on the basis that they appear to be the only ones concerned about the Union then yes I suspect they do
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To answer Jim’s question - yes,
to a point , the economics of Scottish independence are also well against it in my assessment.
I’ve got more sympathy with them as they are genuinely oppressed by a shit government in Westminster.
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If they expect that there won't be any significant economic harm as a result of their choice then yes absolutely they don't know what they're doing
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If they say "yes this will make us x% poorer in the long term but that's well worth it mate" then it's a different thing. Like I say though I think this is giving Brexiteers too much credit. If that was intended to be the calculation then it was certainly never discussed openly
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Heh @ moo. So it went from a handful
to 52pc in a year… hardly. Ukip won the European elections in 2014 for example
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And before that? .2014-2015 - that’s all you’ve got - semantics - because there’s nothing else but empty rhetoric.
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Also moo, I was very proud to cast my offshore vote for leave.
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And what FF said about the union. I am very sorry to see the growth of Scottish nationalism. It's indisputable that Brexit gave it a massive boost. I expect that the UK as we now know it will cease to exist within my lifetime and that greatly saddens me. I don't think those who wanted Brexit were really considering this effect at all.
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In that case moo, it really was the most successful
political campaign ever, and shows how pathetic the remain campaign was. 50 years of pro eu propriganda and project fear routed
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I haven’t looked it up but as I recall it was also with 25ish% of the vote.
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Will you campaign for the union chimp?
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25pc is ‘barely registering’ moo which is what you said
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Finally a post I can agree with Risky (2000 in) Couldn’t agree more - it was pathetic.
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What would it mean for me to campaign for the union?
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You are just playing with dates - happy to change my post to 2014-2015 it wasn’t a big public issue.
All you’ve got is sniping - you’ve no positive vision for a country you don’t even live in.
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I only know my dad who voted for Brexit, but as far as he is concerned the benefit has already happened. He’s delighted that the U.K. is no longer in the EU. That’s what he wanted. He’s not bothered about GDP or supply chains.
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Chimp - that is possible and, in my view, would be very sad. However, it’s the same thing Brexiters say about the end of the EU. We won’t know until/unless it happens.
As most Brexiters I spoke to were very vocal about supporting the EEC but being against ‘ever-closer union’ as part of the EU (and were willing, in my experience, to take an economic hit to escape it) does that make them more acceptable to you? (As you accept the independence seekers from within the UK?)
Would you have been completely happy to sign up for ever-closer union had we stayed in? I have some major reservations in that regard.
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Not sure what your question means chimp. My question was, If you’re so bothered about the union are you going to campaign to keep it?
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That narrows your Dad down to about 98% of Brexiters.
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Moo’s inspiring vision
1. Rejoin the eu
thats it
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Moo - but Chimp is arguing that if they’d known and truly understood it would have had a negative impact economically then they wouldn’t have voted for Brexit. Do you disagree?
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Lol - as I said - sniping… all you’ve got - yesterday’s man with his money off shore…
We won’t be rejoining the EU (I would probably vote for it if it didn’t include Euro but accept it’s not happening)
We should be looking to undo the economic damage (current and future) by rejoining the customs union.
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My question is, why would anyone care what I think about keeping the union? I don't even live in Scotland so doubtful anyone I would be campaigning to would give a toss or be influential in any way.
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There were no valid arguments made for brexit at all. No evidence, no reasons. It was entirely emotional, tapping into hatred and ignorance and racism, backed with barefaced lies. On the back of years of the political class en masse patronising the electorate and failing to educate it, the classic British way of keeping the people down. Best hope is to leave the brexit voters to grim realisation in the safety of their own homes.
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I don’t believe that all things being equal and if the Leave campaign and those associated with it had been honest about the consequences of what Brexit meant that the outcome would have been the same.
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Really depends on how much an economic hit they expected and how long they expected it to last. There was a lot of stuff about "Project Fear" essentially saying that predictions of economic damage were overblown and probably wouldn't happen. I really do doubt many Brexiters genuinely believed that the UK would be long-term worse off as a result of Brexit. That wasn't really coming from them at all. The fact that a lot of people didn't really expect the present outcome is supported by polling data
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If on the other hand they did know and voted for it anyway, well that makes it an even worse decision IMO. More principled perhaps but I still don't agree with it.
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“that makes it an even worse decision IMO”
But Chimp, that’s what it comes down to, you opinion. Are you right to put money before principles? Not in their opinion.
At least if we genuinely listen and try to engage with other opinions (thanks for doing so, as I say, it’s rare on Brexit) we might understand them more, cut back on insults and build relationships to unite, rather than divide society.
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The initial outrage at Brexit was perfectly understandable.
But the continuous moaning about it is the work of very fine people.
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But the people who led the Brexit campaign didn't warn of an economic hit. The remain campaigners did and were labelled "Project Fear".
If the leave campaigners had said there would be an economic price to pay but it would be worth it and people had voted leave on that basis, fair enough. They didn't though. They said there would be no downside.
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Er yes of course. It's all my opinion. I wouldn't say "putting money before principles". Who would cop to that? I would say "avoiding actively making the nation poorer to no coherent purpose".
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Lucy - what about the predictions of immediate economic meltdown requiring an emergency budget? Not sure either side was guilt free when it comes to their predictions.
Chimp - but you’ve said they didn’t know what they were doing. Tbf you haven’t accused them of being thick and uneducated but many others have (and racist and xenophobic). My point is that different sides have different opinions about what matters and knew full well what they were doing but thought it was the right thing (you disagree, doesn’t make them wrong).
BTW: I deliberately wrote, “putting money before principles” to be provocative because that’s how the Brexit extremists are likely to frame it if they don’t listen to you.
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Lucy - what about the predictions of immediate economic meltdown requiring an emergency budget? Not sure either side was guilt free when it comes to their predictions.‘
this is still such a terrible point - the government’s own forecasts show that brexit will be a disaster for the economy, saying that it will be bad but not bad for exactly the reasons given by the remain campaign is a sh1t argument
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Heh.
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Look it's really obvious that brexit was a bad idea and the execution has been even worse. Anyone arguing otherwise is taking the piss.
It's a bit rum to be having a go at people who voted remain for not being magnanimous in defeat when the lead brexiteers have pursued just about the most destructive form of brexit imaginable, shut down the parliament of which they were 'reclaiming the sovereignty' in the first place and generally behaving like the posho twots they were born and bred to be. These are the people we need to blame for all the negative effects of the brex.
The vast majority of people who voted for brexit did so out of fear of the changing society we live in, primarily multiculturalism. My parents are in this group and I don't hate them or consider them thick. That said, they obviously distrust foreigners and think the EU was to blame for more of them being about.
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Yes, co-sign to all of this.
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No, I don't agree with you that they "knew full well what they were doing". If they knew that, why are large numbers of them now saying it's going worse than expected?
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Brexit voters probably were on average less educated. On average more of them probably did hold what many would describe as xenophobic views. This doesn't mean that they don't get a vote, but it's not like elitist Remainers just made this stuff up to discredit them.
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Plus +1 for ROF Royalties post - agree, it was that mistrust that Vote Leave and others exploited and abused.
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RR - “Look it's really obvious that brexit was a bad idea and the execution has been even worse.”
From your point of view and in respect of the things you believe are important. As I’ve discussed with Chimp above, as with Scots Nats and unionists, Brexiters may have different views and priorities. In their view, Brexit may have been a resounding success.
Apart from economically, in what way is the UK worse off now than pre-Brexit? Yes our relations with the French are poor but they always have been. The UK now decides it’s own immigration policy* and the highest court in the land cannot be overruled by another court. To many Brexiters this was far more important than economic growth.
As I said on the last page though, we’re hardly the poor man of Europe yet. The latest figures show we’re the 5th most successful nation economically and going to grow farther and faster than the others next year.
I’m NOT saying Brexit was great and a brilliant success but I think it’s a mistake to dismiss it as an unmitigated disaster, too. Let’s try to be nice to the other side and not immediately insult and dismiss them. It might be hard but it means we’re likely to heal the country quicker.
*Before anyone says it, I believe the mainstream Brexit view was not “Keep Jonny Forinner and the darkies out” but that we should have managed rather than unconditional immigration.
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https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/11/04/would-a-more-educated-population-have-rejected-brexit/
https://www.gold.ac.uk/news/xenophobia-brexit/
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You all seem to know why people voted for Brexit and it’s always a self-evidently bad thing or not because they actually wanted to leave. Can’t you allow even a modicum of doubt that you might not fully understand why they voted that way and can’t speak for all of them?
Chimp- “No, I don't agree with you that they "knew full well what they were doing". If they knew that, why are large numbers of them now saying it's going worse than expected?” Because some of them (many of them like Tommy Banana’s Dad) don’t give a shit about the finances, the principle overrides it. Therefore, if asked then yes it might be worse than they expected but ask them if this would change their vote in hindsight and you might be surprised.
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Sorry Jim. It’s a shitshow for culture, tourism, foreign policy. Just because those aren’t immediately obvious because of covid and our limited bandwidth doesn’t mean they’re not happening. File this post and report back to me in 2 years.
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Doesn’t make sense. If they voted in full knowledge, why do they now think it’s going worse than expected? Surely it should be going as well as expected, taking into account that they knew it wasn’t going to go well.
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I think a lot of the older people who voted brexit (like my mum) don't care much about the economic downside. They've got their pensions, they own their houses and it won't affect them. They're probably right.
in my mums case she's probably in favour of people travelling less, seeing/doing less snd generally having a narrower outlook. She's a pretty joyless sort and basically disapproves of people having opportunities she didn't. There's a lot of people like that
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If only they could articulate what this 'resounding success' looks like so we can keep an eye out for it.
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Like Royalty, some of my immediate family voted Brexit. I have never got a sense that they really truly knew what they were doing. They had a vague sense that the EU was doing bad stuff and probably letting a load of immigrants in. If you confronted them with the economic data they would probably claim that they knew all along and didn’t mind. However I doubt they would have been able to describe the downsides before the vote. Maybe you’ve met a load of unusually well-informed Brexiters, but it hasn’t been my experience
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Jim, there’s no point intrying with these fbpe loons. You’re trying to be completely reasonable but they’ll hate you unless you sign up to ‘all the brexit voters were stupid’ narrative
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Fluffy23 Jan 22 14:44
Reply | Report
I’m seeing the benefits… …no downside to life, career or standard of living and no EU.
You should probably tell that to your mates in the DUP. Might calm their manufactured rage.
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There literally is no sense with them.
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‘You should probably tell that to your mates in the DUP’
They knew what they were voting for. Apparently.
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I’m not claiming I know why all of them voted that way, but I would absolutely claim to have a general idea of why it happened the way it did. It’s probably one of the most talked-about political events of the last 50 years. It’s hardly inscrutable
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voted to leave
would do again
hth
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Cheers for that Gerry
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I know it's not really human nature to admit that you were wrong, but I find it difficult to respect people who voted leave citing the promises of the leave campaigners at the time, and are now pretending that they knew exactly what they voted for and this is all fiiiiiiine.
Part of the reason why Labour wasn't able to push for a milder form of Brexit is because nobody was willing to admit they were conned.
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I have to admit, as a remainer that behaved in the way OP references, I was very apologetic when I saw the numbers applying for settled status. It was very clear that the Home Office estimates were simply wrong - the numbers were just mad.
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I don’t hate him at all, but he is doing the “well both sides make some good points” thing and that’s just not always true
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To be clear, I didn’t agree with everything Remainers said. There was a lot of stuff about how the UK is just a pathetic little Godforsaken windy island that couldn’t possibly cope without the EU. That was always bollocks. I also didn’t agree with the various attempts to overturn the vote, though I did think a lot of Leave campaigning was breathtakingly cynical. Overall though it’s only becoming more clear that remain was right.
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What everyone is forgetting is that in a democracy it doesnt matter if the proposition on the ballot paper is (whether subjectively or even objectively) a “bad idea”. The people voted for it and a responsible polity should have respected it.
Of course, nobody cried about it being such a terrible idea when they were giving Cameron a majority based on his promise to hold a referendum. Because they arrogantly thought they would win. Based on this thread, that arrogance has yet to dissipate.
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Which is what happened.
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Just remembered that the second referendum was often referred to as the “peoples vote”
Like the 52% who voted for brexit aren’t included among the people?
It makes me furious even thinking about.
Imagine if Scottish independence had won by 52% and Westminster refused to go along?
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“Which is what happened.”
Hardly…
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Are you posting from an alternate universe where Brexit was voted for but didn’t happen?
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Only after Boris smashed all the Remainers out of parliament.
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Reasons that were cited as justification include campaign finance violations by Vote Leave and Leave.EU, the alleged use of data illicitly harvested by Cambridge Analytica,[4][5] revelations of Russian interference through fake social media accounts and allegedly through funding,[6] arguments that the "Leave" camp promoted misinformation,[7] a gradual shift in public opinion, fuelled in part by demographic changes such as adolescents who were too young to take part in the first referendum reaching voting age,[8] and that the eventually-arranged terms of Brexit were unknown at the time of the original vote.[9][10]
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Totally mental
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wuhan m7 I’m starting to think you were not actually a remainer
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just a hunch
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Totally true.
Anyway, just watch the country try to cope with the results. It’s utterly fvcked.
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😂😂😂 at wuhan pretending to have been a remainer
sure…
“The people voted for it and a responsible polity should have respected it”
this is the most dishonest of all the arguments raised by the whinging brexters. a democracy does not mean criticism is banned. in fact, a healthy democracy includes lots of criticism and pov
1 of the reasons y remoaners proudly and happily keep banging on about brexit is not cos they don’t “accept” the vote (wot is not 2 accept? it happened, and we’ve brexited); it’s cos brexters r so desper7 2 pretend brexit hasn’t been an absolute shambles that they (wuhan being a case in point) tyrannically and oppressively want 2 stifle dissent.
and they pretend that’s “democracy”. c.25% of the population voted 4 brexit. more ppl r alive who voted remain than brexit.
criticising brexit and the utter shambles of planning and implementation, laughing at brexters and the evaporation of their hopes and dreams, revelling in the fact that brexit has gone exactly as remoaners predicted: that’s our democratic right m7s. and u need 2 suck.it.up
i’m absolutely loving it. and snowflake whinge threads like this make me enjoy brexit’s predictable failure even more
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All of that stuff was true though.
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But even so, the vote was acted on so not sure what you’re crying about.
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Yes but what did the people vote for, exactly?
This is the problem.
Leave wouldn't have won without the people who thought they were voting for £350m a week for the NHS.
Leave also wouldn't have won without the soft Brexiters who listened to the leave campaigners who said there was no question of us leaving the single market and assumed we would end up with a Norway type deal.
The reason why we are in this mess is because nobody forced the leave campaigners to specify what Brexit would actually look like (a realistic version, which was actually negotiable, not the unicorn version).
There is absolutely nothing undemocratic about saying, OK, now we know what Brexit actually looks like and it's not really the same as what the leave campaigners said it would look like, let's have a confirmatory referendum to check whether the people do actually want it before we pull the plug on our EU membership.
As a remainer, I lost count of the number of times I was accused of "Project Fear", and yet the reality of Brexit is actually more of a clusterfook than I predicted. And yet the goalposts shifted in record time to, "We aren't eating rats to stay alive, therefore Project Fear has been debunked."
I rather naively assumed that Brexit would be a bit shit and a bit pointless because we would lose a lot of the perks of our EU membership but we'd have to concede on a few key things to avoid real economic hardship, so in the end it would be a damp squib and no one would really be happy with it but not much would actually change.
It was only later, when I realised how much money had been poured into it by people like Arron Banks, that I realised a soft Brexit could never have been allowed to happen. You don't invest that much of your own money into bringing about a particular political outcome, only for it to be implemented in such a way that not much actually changes. So of course, maximum disruption was always the goal for the people who paid for Brexit.
But they couldn't have done it without people stubbornly insisting that they knew exactly what they were voting for, rather than saying, "Actually, I'm not happy about the fact that most of these promised Brexit benefits don't appear to be materialising. This isn't the kind of Brexit I voted for."
So yeah. I don't respect those people. Sorry.
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true the hilarious thing is that brexit has been much much worse than “project fear” predicted but nobody wants to believe it
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It really hasn’t chill but you carry on dreaming.
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The roffers that voted for brexit or now claim they didn't but just want to ResPecT dA votE need to stop blaming remain voters for the consequences of the brexit they support, basically.
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and 4 calling out their shit
sorry brexter m7s, if u don’t want ur shit called out: don’t chat shit. don’t pretend brexit isn’t a shambolic disaster. laugh at how bad brexit has gone, join in the criticism in the hope that mayb criticising it might improve it
or
suck.it.up.
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I campaigned for Remain.
Fine to disagree with and criticise the way it is being delivered. That is constructive. But very few (any) remainer politicians did that? Their sole aim was to overturn the whole thing. Very anti democratic.
Overturning it would have been worse than brexit. Why vote ever again if the people in charge could just say “well no you are too thick to understand what you want, we will just do this instead. Sorry”
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But that didn’t happen, nor was it ever really in serious prospect. Getting all indignant about it several years later is a bit weird tbh
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Brexit has so far proved colossally wasteful of time, money and energy for benefits that are impossible to observe/define beyond trivialities presented as gains that on closer inspection turn out to have been things we were always free to do as a sovereign country.
And even people like Mystic Mogg think we won’t know whether it’s really worked for 50 years and Cummings isn’t sure it’s ever been a good idea.
The “Remainers” complained of were interested in ensuring proper governance (which was always the point of the Miller litigation) in compliance with the UK’s largely theoretical constitution and that MPs properly scrutinised what the government proposed as a deal and voted on it with some consideration of possible alternatives.
This ultimately happened, painfully slowly.
Do I think it was, is, always has been and always will be a self-defeating idea that was deliberately poorly defined in order to maximise appeal to differing groups with differing agendas?
Yes, I do.
Do I wish to rejoin in the near future - well, regardless of what I wish, practically speaking it’s not viable and the terms on which it might even be vaguely conceivable will likely not be great or command support.
Do I think customs Union and single market would be a better result than the current situation?
Unquestionably.
Do Boris Johnson’s fundamental failings as a human being, let alone as a supposedly serious political leader and prime minister and the abject, corrrupt, incompetent, flailing, demented, bigoted shitshow that can only jokingly be referred to as an “administration” constitute an international embarrassment at an appalling cost to the country they glibly pretend they serve whilst lining their donors’ pockets, regardless of Brexit?
Yes, absolutely they do.
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Oh great, Jack’s here. Perhaps Him and Anna could have an argument about something French while the rest of us tune out.
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😂 bollox
bollox. it is our democratic right 2 campaign 4 nething within the law. stop being such an oppressive tyrannical aunt and suck.it.up.
in ne event no1 really did campaign 2 overturn it
bollox. that’s speculation. if democratically voted 4, there can b no objection. u just want 2 silence dissent
😂 bollox. u clearly don’t understand the concept of parliamentary sovereignty. ironically, that’s supposedly wot brexit was supposed 2b taking back…
stop trying 2 silence dissent like a fascist, and suck.it.up.
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I think it’s possible had Gove or Johnson won in 2016 and not May that we’d have ended up not pointlessly abandoning single market and customs union in the name of “sovereignty” and taking control of immigration.
This would still have been a bad idea, but less damaging than what we’ve ended up with.
But it’s equally possible the Conservative Party’s fear of being outflanked on the right by Farage and its own vintage crop of crooks, nutjobs and clowns would have meant we ended up here anyway.
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Well, Risky, I knew you’d been missing me, you see… but just to annoy you I won’t do a triple post.
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Is that true though?
I don't think anybody was seriously calling for a second referendum in the immediate aftermath. Only really when it became apparent that we did not, in fact, hold all the cards in the negotiations, and Theresa May had painted us into a very shitty corner with her red lines.
Certainly a vast majority of MPs supported remain but neither the Tories nor Labour pushed for a second referendum, so I don't think what you are saying here is actually true.
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Or will I? I’m SUCH a tease…
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I think this is more likely.
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Wuhan, what oracle rails against in his own special language above is exactly what jo swimsok was promising at first, a second referendum which she said they’d ignore if it voted leave again. Then once they realized how bad that came across they switched to just outright rejoin.
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brexit was undoubtedly about the tozzas
theyve always been party over country
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ah, anti-democratic hanners. wot a surprise
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What? I wasn’t putting forward a position you moron! You’re the libdem!
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eh? plz make more sense
ur criticising more referenda or alternatively parliament deciding 2 rejoin. either way, that’s contra democracy
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‘ I wasn’t putting forward a position’
classic hanners
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