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Should the UK remain a member of the EU


Anny Road
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317 members have voted

  1. 1. Should the UK remain a member of the EU

    • Yes
      259
    • No
      58


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31 minutes ago, SasaS said:

Wasn't the victory margin over 1.2 million people?

Much smaller than the number of those prevented from voting  (despite the fact that their rights to live in their own homes depend on EU membership).

 

But, yeah, the margin of victory was less than 4% of those who voted: a bug's dick. 

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2 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

So...

 

 The campaign was run almost exclusively on lies; nobody who voted LibDem got what they voted for; the people most directly affected by .....".

Sounds a bit like the outcome of the 2010 general election.  So knighthoods all round for Banks Johnson,  Hoey, Gove and Farage and a seven figure gig for Farage advising the BBC on improving it's reputation if history is repeated. 

 

 

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10 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

So...

 

The campaign was corrupt; the campaign was run almost exclusively on lies; nobody who voted Leave seems able to agree on what they voted for; the people most directly affected by the vote (Brits living in other EU countries and EU citizens living in the UK) were barred from voting; and the margin of victory was a bug's dick... but STILL you can't go against "the will of the people".

So much like every GE then? politicians lying, I mean I just can’t get my head around that all. 

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11 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

So much like every GE then? politicians lying, I mean I just can’t get my head around that all. 

As one academic described the Leave campaign, "it was dishonesty on an industrial scale".  It was far, far less honest than any GE, in terms of the official campaign lies, the dodgy funding, the decades-long background of anti-EU lies in the press and the Russian social media interference.

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7 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:
4 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

As one academic described the Leave campaign, "it was dishonesty on an industrial scale".  It was far, far less honest than any GE, in terms of the official campaign lies, the dodgy funding, the decades-long background of anti-EU lies in the press and the Russian social media interference.

So your only told little biddy lies during a GE but big stinky whoppers during the Brexit campaign and you can trust me cos im an academic innit. 

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Worth a read even if it might not be want you want to read. 

 

The Remainers’ caricature of Leave voters is wrong and shows they still fail to understand why people backed Brexit

 
 

Matthew Goodwin is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, Senior Visiting Fellow at Chatham House and co-author of National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. He tweets at @goodwinmj.


 

The appeal of Brexit is routinely misunderstood. Ever since the referendum in 2016, many Remainers who were used to feeling like winners have felt like losers. As a result, while some have sought to discredit the referendum others have, either deliberately or through ignorance, misrepresented Leavers and their motives.

For the Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, Brexit represents a backlash among old people who were ‘driven by nostalgia’ for a world where ‘faces were white’. For many in the media, as reflected in countless vox-pops from Clacton, Boston and Stoke, it is mainly if not exclusively a backlash among the white working-class. Closely linked to these perspectives is what I call ‘The Economist Argument’; that Brexit, like populism across the West, is chiefly a by-product of angry old white men who will soon be replaced by new generations of socially liberal (and pro-Remain) graduates. It is this view that even led one analyst to calculate that if you assume that birth and death rates remain constant then Remain will have a clear majority by 2022. In short, just wait for the old people to die.

 

Many on the Remain side like these arguments because they assume that the ‘arc of history’ must necessarily bend toward them. Furthermore, the idea that this is simply rooted in generational change and a ‘last howl’ among old whites means that they do not really need to deal with the underlying grievances that led to Brexit. It simply becomes a waiting game.

 

Of course, all of this is deeply misleading. As Roger Eatwell and I show in our new book, published this week, the Leave electorate was far more diverse than many people would have you believe. You do not hear it very often but Leave was endorsed by one in three of Britain’s black and minority ethnic voters, large numbers of affluent conservatives, nearly half of 25-49-year olds, one in two women, four in ten people in London, and one in four graduates. We’ve heard much from Boston but nothing from Birmingham. We’ve heard much from retirement homes and working men’s clubs but nothing from university campuses or the cricket grounds.

 

The relentless focus on generational change also misses a few key points. As we show, recent work finds that all of us become 0.38 points more conservative each year of our lives. It might not sound like much but it adds up and these ‘life cycle effects’ are important. Also, even today, after two years of relentless anti-Brexit campaigns, still only 56 per cent of 18-24-year olds feel that the vote to leave the EU was the ‘wrong decision’. They certainly lean strongly toward Remain but there is no anti-Brexit revolutionary spirit in the air. It is also worth noting that a similar argument was popular during the 1950s, namely that because of the expansion of the middle-class and graduates, the Labour Party was destined to dominate elections. In reality, the next ten elections produced only three Labour majorities. The point is that social and political change does not always work out the way that many expect.

 

The evidence also undermines the popular notion that Leavers did not know what they were voting for. On the contrary, and as almost every study since the referendum has shown, they knew exactly what they were voting for. The two dominant motives were to return powers from the EU to the nation state and to lower the overall level of immigration into Britain. One recent study found that ‘protesting against the establishment’ was actually a distant concern. Rather than Leavers engaging in some kind of irrational protest, a popular idea in some circles, they were instead driven by clear and coherent preferences of their own; to gain independence from supranational institutions and to have greater control over their community and borders.

 

And Brexit was never exclusively a populist revolt. While seven in ten Leavers had at one point or another voted for the UK Independence Party, or said they would consider doing so, the vote to Leave was anchored in a far deeper (mainstream) tradition of scepticism toward European integration that can be traced back over decades. Last week, I joined Sir David Butler to celebrate his 94thbirthday and he reminded me of his observation at the first referendum in 1975, namely that support for joining the European Community might have been wide but it had never been deep – ‘There was no girding of the loins for the great European adventure’.

 

Those who oppose Leave have become utterly obsessed about what happened during a few short months in early 2016; what was written on the side of a bus; what has happening on Twitter; and who said what during the campaign. But what people often overlook, including in today’s talk about a possible second referendum, is that public support for either leaving the EU altogether or dramatically reducing its powers had almost consistently surpassed 50 per cent since 1996. The ‘fundamentals’ favoured Leave. In fact, I told Cameron’s people as much.

 

One of the major miscalculations by Remainers was that they focused overwhelmingly on the alleged domestic risks of Brexit while ignoring the fact that most of those leaning toward Leave were thinking far more about the external risksthat came with EU membership. Remain talked a great deal about the domestic economy but little or nothing at all about what was really occupying the minds of leaning or committed Leavers; distant institutions in Brussels; a pan-European upsurge in populism; a refugee crisis; terrorism; a sluggish Eurozone economy; fierce divides between East and West about identity issues and between North and South about economic disparities; and no clear desire to offer anything other than continued or accelerated integration. Remainers sought to make the case against Brexit rather than for the EU, largely because it was increasingly difficult to make the latter.

 

Today, an observer might look around the EU and conclude that little has changed. Or, they might argue that some of the concerns among British voters – about populism in the EU, divides between member states, gaping disconnects between elites and voters, and EU elites who appear dismissive of public opinion – have actually only intensified. Brexit has so far not been managed well at all, but in order for people to change their minds the counter-offer will need to become more appealing. So far, at least, there is little evidence that this has happened.

 

https://brexitcentral.com/remainers-caricature-leave-voters-wrong-shows-still-fail-understand-people-backed-brexit/

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The target audience is brexit central where the article was published and was written in that style but the points I highlighted are relevant. 

 

A lot of the 18-24 might be remain leaning but that doesn't mean they want to overturn the referendum result. When you then factor in the lower turnout of that age group compared to .... you are going to need more than just that group. Secondly for over twenty years there has been quite a amount of euroscepticism. 

 

 Thirdly saying we want a return to the status quo as an outcome without addressing the reasons why people voted seems foolish.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Denny Crane said:

The target audience is brexit central where the article was published and was written in that style but the points I highlighted are relevant. 

 

A lot of the 18-24 might be remain leaning but that doesn't mean they want to overturn the referendum result. When you then factor in the lower turnout of that age group compared to .... you are going to need more than just that group. Secondly for over twenty years there has been quite a amount of euroscepticism. 

 

 Thirdly saying we want a return to the status quo as an outcome without addressing the reasons why people voted seems foolish.

 

 

Nah, it’s toss.

“People voted for Brexit for a variety of different reasons.”

Big Shock!

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8 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

So little biddy lies during a GE and big stinky whoppers during the Brexit campaign, that’s ok then.

More honesty in GEs would be nice.  But if you compare the level of lying in a General Election to a touch of the sniffles, then the Leave campaign's lying was an outbreak of the Black Death. Neither is particularly pleasant, but one is much, much worse than the other. 

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20 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

More honesty in GEs would be nice.  But if you compare the level of lying in a General Election to a touch of the sniffles, then the Leave campaign's lying was an outbreak of the Black Death. Neither is particularly pleasant, but one is much, much worse than the other. 

I’m a remainer through and through and I think it’s going to be a disaster personally, that’s my view, I wasn’t remotely interested and nor did I listen to politicians of either side during the campaign, I guess my point is people (not you) should think for themselves and not be swayed by the persuasion of politicians. My view is that anything a politician says should be met with scepticism as its always agenda driven, lies are to be expected, I don’t trust any of them.

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Scepticism  ("they may be lying; I'll check the facts") is always healthy.

 

Too often, though, people  (not you) slip into cynicism  ("they are all lying, all the time, so I'll have nothing to do with the democratic process - except to support some Farridge or Trump who claims he's not a politician").

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I'm still in a quandary about the whole thing.

 

I voted out because I believe the EU will inevitably fall apart and we're better out of it when it does. Thing is, this could be 5, 10 or 50 years from now, i dunno. The ideal situation for me would be to leave a few years before it collapses but who the fuck knows when that will be?

 

I guess I think losing the stability of the EU until it collapses is better than the shitstorm if we were still in it when it does.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

And death is inevitable so why not get it over with now? 

 

Your holiday cottages won't last forever so why not burn them all down today? 

Yes, I see your fair and valid point

 

Thank you for mentioning my well appointed, top rated and exceedingly good value cottages and farmhouse.

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Anyone else hoping for absolute carnage, just to see if the powers that be show their true colours?

We might see what the army is really for - protecting those in authority from those who have little to loose.

 

A bit of anarchy might not be such a bad thing. A move away from this current dystopian nightmare is urgently needed.

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