Brexit

What's next?

Theresa May's Deal
8
17%
No deal
13
28%
People's vote
22
48%
Something else (pls specify)
3
7%
 
Total votes: 46
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dosxuk
Posts: 673
Joined: Thu 07 Feb, 2008 21.37
Location: Sheffield

Newsthump actually abandoning the sarcasm for a minute and getting things spot on.

"The genius of the Donald Tusk "special place in Hell" insult is that to be offended by it, you have to admit to having no plan for delivering Brexit, despite being full-throated in your support of it. You can't be offended without proving yourself ignorant at best, fraudulent at worst."

Krisnan Guru-Murthy was obviously thinking the same when he asked brexiteer Peter Bone on C4 News last night:

"Mr Bone, are you one of these foolish people who urged people to vote for something without any idea what it was about?"

"No, of course not!" he replied.

"Then what are you upset about? He obviously wasn't talking about you then was he?"
thegeek
Posts: 858
Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 12.35

I think I'm starting to lose the will to live.


Meanwhile, my staunchly Remain Labour MP has come round to the idea of some sort of second referendum.
all new Phil
Posts: 1965
Joined: Sun 13 Feb, 2005 00.04
Location: Next door to Hell

If there’s one thing that causing me to lose the will to live, it’s the constant mud-flinging going on between people who have differing opinions to each other. It feels like every commentator is trying to discredit anybody they disagree with and desperately searching for inconsistencies in things they may have said previously, rather than discuss what is in the here and now.

A good example of this is people bringing up things said by members of the Independent Group previously, without any consideration for how they may have been toeing the party line. People are too focused on ‘ZOMG THEY SED SOMETHING ELSE PREVIOUSLY THE HYPOCRITES’ rather than accepting that a) opinions can change and b) situations can change. I’d much rather people were actually debating ideas and looking for consensus.
cdd
Posts: 2607
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 14.05

To be honest, I don’t blame anyone who voted “Leave” in 2016 - I nearly did myself. With the information we had then, it might as well have been a coin flip.

But I find it astonishing that, in the face of all this evidence, the opinion of those who were strongly in favour of Brexit has become even more strongly in favour.

I’ve noticed this not only from the caricatures in the media, but from my “Leaver” friends. I’m not one to let politics come between friendships and I have no intention of allowing this to be any different, but I do not sense any meaningful discourse between those in favour of remain and those in favour of leaving.

To be clear, I’d have been very keen on a “Salad Bar Brexit” where we keep the CU, no thanks to FoM, some legislation, Ireland “stays the same” etc. But that has been categorically ruled out, and 1) I feel pretty naive for not recognising this in 2016 (many of these outcomes, Ireland especially, are mutually exclusive by definition), and 2) the Remain campaign should really have made a stronger case out of these facts.

Signed, Mild Remainer Turned Strong Remainer.

Of course, my shift wouldn’t affect the outcome of a second referendum, which is an issue if people are, as I suspect, simply becoming more polarised in their original directions. Moreover, in the event of a Remain win, I can already hear the calls of the ERG that this antidemocratic exercise has disenfranchised the silent majority who are in favour of Brexit but decided not to vote in a “re-run”. I don’t think a second referendum, even if by some miracle it happened, is the easy answer it is made out to be.
james2001
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 23.10

Who cares what the ERG think anyway? They're a bunch of loons.
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Jamesypoo
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue 22 Jan, 2008 13.36
Location: Norwich
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cdd wrote: Mon 25 Feb, 2019 13.31 the Remain campaign should really have made a stronger case out of these facts.
The remain campaign, otherwise known as "the agents of project fear"...

They tried to (evidently not very successfully) but just got accused of scaremongering by the leave side, who would of course never do such a thing!
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Pete
Posts: 7589
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

I suppose it depends on what happens with the people who didn't vote.

So Corbyn moves an inch. But will it pass, and will remain be on the ballot?
"He has to be larger than bacon"
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dosxuk
Posts: 673
Joined: Thu 07 Feb, 2008 21.37
Location: Sheffield

Jamesypoo wrote: Mon 25 Feb, 2019 16.48
cdd wrote: Mon 25 Feb, 2019 13.31 the Remain campaign should really have made a stronger case out of these facts.
The remain campaign, otherwise known as "the agents of project fear"...

They tried to (evidently not very successfully) but just got accused of scaremongering by the leave side, who would of course never do such a thing!
I said in the aftermath of the referendum that I thought the leave campaign, with its lies, mistruths, dog whistle slogans and plain old ignorance of the real world was only the second worst political campaign ever. After the remain campaign. The remain campaign either didn't bother to turn up, or focused on all the what-if negatives. They never mentioned any of the good things the EU do. They never mentioned all the things we take for granted that the EU provides. And they never once managed to get a way of pointing out that leave had no plan without that being immediately hushed over by their opponents.

If remain had even bothered to talk to the public, rather than trying to come up with something more extreme every time they got accused of creating project fear, brexit would have been forgotten by now. Instead, Cameron and Osborne thought it was unloseable so let everyone have a day off rather than go out to battle.
Alexia
Posts: 2999
Joined: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 17.50

cdd wrote: Mon 25 Feb, 2019 13.31 But I find it astonishing that, in the face of all this evidence, the opinion of those who were strongly in favour of Brexit has become even more strongly in favour.
Comes down to one thing. Or rather two : people won't admit they've been duped, or rather people won't admit that even though they have been duped they're still not wrong. People hate belonging to the wrong, losing side.
cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

dosxuk wrote: Mon 25 Feb, 2019 20.15
Jamesypoo wrote: Mon 25 Feb, 2019 16.48
cdd wrote: Mon 25 Feb, 2019 13.31 the Remain campaign should really have made a stronger case out of these facts.
The remain campaign, otherwise known as "the agents of project fear"...

They tried to (evidently not very successfully) but just got accused of scaremongering by the leave side, who would of course never do such a thing!
I said in the aftermath of the referendum that I thought the leave campaign, with its lies, mistruths, dog whistle slogans and plain old ignorance of the real world was only the second worst political campaign ever. After the remain campaign. The remain campaign either didn't bother to turn up, or focused on all the what-if negatives. They never mentioned any of the good things the EU do. They never mentioned all the things we take for granted that the EU provides. And they never once managed to get a way of pointing out that leave had no plan without that being immediately hushed over by their opponents.

If remain had even bothered to talk to the public, rather than trying to come up with something more extreme every time they got accused of creating project fear, brexit would have been forgotten by now. Instead, Cameron and Osborne thought it was unloseable so let everyone have a day off rather than go out to battle.
Like x 1000. The only peep I ever got out of the remain campaign was the official government leaflet and broadcast announcements from them. Didn't see one single bit of local activism from them at all where I lived at the time. And as you say, the message was nothing other than 'we're fucked if we leave'. Not one single positively spun argument about anything good about the EU at all, just a simple message that we should accept them because we're fucked without them. Not exactly going to turn the little Englanders is it?

Yet the leave campaign were actually out on the street distributing their material, holding rallies, making their arguments on the ground...and proclaiming that we had a better future ahead outside of the EU, making leave sound like something positive.

Given that the ultimate leave result was only a very slight majority, one can only imagine how it might have gone if Remain actually campaigned rather than assuming a foregone conclusion that we'd never actually vote to leave anyway and so they didn't need to bother.
Martin Phillp
Posts: 1469
Joined: Wed 11 May, 2011 01.28

The official Remain campaign campaigned in my local area on the Saturday before the referendum, handing out leaflets. There were also mailouts from them and the official government booklet.

There was nothing from the official Leave campaign, although we did get mail from them.
TVF's London Lite.
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