The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[Straggler]

6 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Worcester News 'letter of the day':

I think I found the offending "lady".  I give you Mrs P Stewart...

[peterms]

29 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

My "Nonsense" comment was more aimed at him seemingly blaming remainers for the "small-print". Presumably he's referring to people pointing out that leaving with no deal is a **** disaster and al the consequences it has.

In effect he's blaming remainers for pointing out the lies we were told by leave campaigns, as opposed to blaming the people who told the lies.

Yes, I suppose he's taking a shot at people who he sees as trying to unwind it by means of setting out what looks like a complicated package.

On the point about lies, while it's true lies were told, eg £350m, the ease of entering other trade agreements and so on, I think most of the debate was couched in fairly vague terms, and perhaps abstract notions of control were more important than specific details.  There's something here on the main reasons for people voting as they did.

Quote

What reasons do people give to justify their vote choice for Leave or Remain? And, what are the reasons they think the other side voted as they did? New briefing note CSI Brexit 4: People’s Stated Reasons for Voting Leave or Remain. Summary of the findings:

• Several different surveys and opinion polls have asked Britons why they voted the way they did in the EU referendum. The two main reasons people voted Leave were ‘immigration’ and ‘sovereignty’, whereas the main reason people voted Remain was ‘the economy’.

• Analysis of data from the Centre for Social Investigation’s longitudinal survey on attitudes to Brexit bolsters these conclusions.

• Among four possible reasons for voting Leave, ‘to teach British politicians a lesson’ is ranked last by an overwhelming majority of Leave voters, contrary to the claim that Brexit was a ‘protest vote’.

• Among four possible reasons for voting Remain, ‘a strong attachment to Europe’ is ranked last by a sizable majority of Remain voters, consistent with the claim that Britons have a relatively weak sense of European identity.

• When asked to rank the reasons why their counterparts voted the way they did, Leave voters characterise Remain voters more accurately than Remain voters characterise Leave voters. In particular, Remain voters underestimate the importance that Leave voters attach to the EU having no role in UK law-making.

 

[Risso]

I liked this BTL comment though:

Red Faced Man In His 60s 1 hr ago

God bless Princess Diana. She was the people's Princess. You would never hear her swear, not like that potty mouthed American imposter Meghan Markle. I stood for 12 hours to see Harry and Meghan last year. I even brought her flowers, as did many of the children who turned up to see the new Princess.
Harry was immaculate and polite as usual, but Meghan swore non stop at her assistant nonstop. "Yo, take these motherf****ing flowers from me".
Disgusting. In front of children and war hero's as well. Despicable.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

I'm not sure it is nonsense.  I'd have thought people would have assumed it meant not being subject to any EU rules.  I doubt whether all that many could have explained the stuff about customs unions, what it meant for the practical implications of trade and all the rest, but the idea that they thought it meant a clean break is a reasonable suggestion.

No. I don't agree. Some (leave) people might, but there was a much wider range of opinion.

"I want to leave because there are too many immigrants"

"I want to leave because I hate Cameron and Osborne"

"I want to leave to save billions of pounds and spend it on the NHS"

"I want to leave, because we'll get all the benefits and none of the costs"

and yes "I want to leave because I want us to make our own rules"

For the Sun (or anyone e.g. politicians) to claim they know what people thought and detail that as a single line "people voted for not being subject to any EU rules" is deliberate simplification to make a self interested point. I don't think  echoing or repeating that kind of simplification is wise, myself.

[bickster]

37 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Worcester News 'letter of the day':

If the link didn't exist, I'd think it satire

[snowychap]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

If the link didn't exist, I'd think it satire

Part of me still hopes it is - Joe Orton/Edna Welthorpe style.

[tonyh29]

43 minutes ago, peterms said:

On the point about lies, while it's true lies were told, eg £350m, the ease of entering other trade agreements and so on, I think most of the debate was couched in fairly vague terms, and perhaps abstract notions of control were more important than specific details.

i agree with you , the vast majority of voters won't read a manifesto ,they don't care about the detail ... even yesterday on the radio (five)  they had a leaver trot out the "bendy bananas" line ... he saw that headline in the Heil 12 years ago and nothing since then has convinced him otherwise

we live in a world where how you eat a bacon sandwich is more important than what you say

[peterms]

50 minutes ago, blandy said:

No. I don't agree. Some (leave) people might, but there was a much wider range of opinion.

"I want to leave because there are too many immigrants"

"I want to leave because I hate Cameron and Osborne"

"I want to leave to save billions of pounds and spend it on the NHS"

"I want to leave, because we'll get all the benefits and none of the costs"

and yes "I want to leave because I want us to make our own rules"

For the Sun (or anyone e.g. politicians) to claim they know what people thought and detail that as a single line "people voted for not being subject to any EU rules" is deliberate simplification to make a self interested point. I don't think  echoing or repeating that kind of simplification is wise, myself.

Of the five reasons you suggest, four were asked about in the polling info I quoted, and the results are shown below.  The fifth, all the benefits and no costs, is not something I recall much being discussed at the time, except as a way of remainers parodying their opponents, or perhaps implicitly by Johnson et al suggesting in fairly vague terms that membership carried a net cost and therefore leaving would carry a net benefit.

Yes, the way the Sun present it in the article quoted earlier is a simplification for self-interested reasons.  At the same time, "taking back control" and not being told what to do by the EU is also not an unreasonable simplification of the expressed motives that the leave voters polled have given in reply to the pollsters.

The thing that wasn't very clear at the time of the vote, and is still only now becoming clearer, is the actual practical implications and costs of a no deal departure.  That is of course also the argument for another referendum - you wanted this as a general principle, here's what it looks like in real life, is this still your choice?  Which is the cost-benefit question you mention.

[Demitri_C]

David lammy hits the nail bang on the head with his comments about brexit being a lie.

Some honesty in politics at last

[Genie]

5 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Not just a lie, but a particularly obvious one, told as usual in the Scum's standard 'there there, don't worry your heads about the details, just remember you're the embodiment of Britain' patronising tone. 

As usual, nobody thinks less of Scum readers than their editorial team. 

If we go “no deal” and some businesses go to the wall I’d bloody love it if it was the Sun and the Mail first. 

[Stevo985]

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

If we go “no deal” and some businesses go to the wall I’d bloody love it if it was the Sun and the Mail first. 

Me too.

But in reality they'll probably sell more papers. Leavers will blame the EU and the government for everything being terrible and these papers will fan the flames.

[Davkaus]

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

If we go “no deal” and some businesses go to the wall I’d bloody love it if it was the Sun and the Mail first. 

I can't imagine it would affect them much, we've got enough duplicitous words removed of our own without importing them from the EU.

[sharkyvilla]

11 minutes ago, Genie said:

If we go “no deal” and some businesses go to the wall I’d bloody love it if it was the Sun and the Mail first. 

The Hate Mail is a weird one, the Mail on Sunday backed remain and their editor has recently taken over the Daily Mail.  I don't know whether there has been much of a change in their coverage in the last couple of months and whether that's enough to alter the views of enough of the pro-Leave demographic to make a difference in another referendum.

[Genie]

I agree @Stevo985 and @Davkaus, they’ll just change tack and start fuelling some hate somewhere else. “It would have been ok if the useless politicians had done this and that” and keep preying on the stupid and the gullible.

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

The Hate Mail is a weird one, the Mail on Sunday backed remain and their editor has recently taken over the Daily Mail.  I don't know whether there has been much of a change in their coverage in the last couple of months and whether that's enough to alter the views of enough of the pro-Leave demographic to make a difference in another referendum.

It has changed.... a bit ... not enough

Only on Brexit though, it's still a hateful rag regardless

 

[ml1dch]

17 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

The Hate Mail is a weird one, the Mail on Sunday backed remain and their editor has recently taken over the Daily Mail.  I don't know whether there has been much of a change in their coverage in the last couple of months and whether that's enough to alter the views of enough of the pro-Leave demographic to make a difference in another referendum.

Unlikely. It's basically pivoted from being squarely behind the Johnson / Mogg faction to backing the Government position.

The recent talk of saboteurs and traitors has been at the likes of Mogg for trying to undermine the Government.

Edited January 11, 2019 by ml1dch

[HanoiVillan]

15 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

The Hate Mail is a weird one, the Mail on Sunday backed remain and their editor has recently taken over the Daily Mail.  I don't know whether there has been much of a change in their coverage in the last couple of months and whether that's enough to alter the views of enough of the pro-Leave demographic to make a difference in another referendum.

None whatsoever. 

[bickster]

Quote

The most often-heard argument against a second vote on British membership of the EU is also the least plausible. By this account, revisiting the issue would be “divisive”. Old wounds would never close. Deal or no deal with Brussels, the sooner the barricades are thrown up across the Channel the sooner a spirit of national unity can be restored.

This relies on the outlandish assumption that the 48 per cent of Brits who voted in 2016 to remain part of the EU are now content to hum the English nationalists’ tunes. Those who saw the country’s fortunes as inextricably bound up with Europe are ready to shrug their shoulders at the prospect of a poorer, less secure, closed Britain.

In the real world, revisiting the decision taken in 2016 would be divisive only in the sense that the Brexit vote was itself divisive. Plebiscites are exercises not in democracy but in crude majoritarianism. The institutions and norms of liberal democracy are there to protect the rights of minorities. Referendums afford no such respect to the loser.

In two of the nations of the union that comprises the United Kingdom — England and Wales — a majority backed leaving the EU. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the greater number wanted to remain. Opinion across all four nations was divided around just about every demographic axis.

England’s great metropolitan cities — London most notably — produced big pro-European majorities. They were outvoted in provincial cities and towns and rural areas. Across Britain, young people backed staying in the EU by a hefty margin — only to see a different course set for their lives by those whose futures are mostly behind them. The university-educated affluent were solidly Remain. The less advantaged mostly joined the Leave camp.

Two-and-a-half years after the referendum the chasm looks, if anything, deeper. Traditional left/right divides have been rubbed out by the Brexit faultline. Opinion pollsters say the numbers suggest that a second referendum most likely would see a shift just sufficient to produce a Remain vote. Brexiters warn in one breath that a second referendum would be dangerously divisive and in the next claim, curiously, that it would hand them a landslide. A dispassionate view would probably judge the outcome too close to call.

It is safe to say that, whatever the fortunes of prime minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal when parliament votes on the package next week, the costs and consequences of leaving the EU will be felt and fought over for years to come. Brexit is a process, not an event. Untangling the closely woven threads of integration will be not be easy. The arguments could rage for a decade. Along the way the young will not be applauding the old for denying them a future in Europe.

More likely the fractures will widen. The UK union is the likely victim. When the people of Scotland voted in 2014 against separation, they were opting for an open over a closed future. Scotland’s unique ties with the other three nations of the UK sat alongside Britain’s place in the EU. Brexit changes fundamentally this calculus. For all the nonsense spouted by some Brexiters about “Global Britain”, the road out of Europe leads back to little England.

What else does “taking back control” of borders mean except closing the door to outsiders? Leaving the single market and customs union is an act of protectionism. It will restrict exchanges — personal as well as economic and political — between Britain and its neighbours.

At its root, Brexit is an expression of English nationalism — a rejection of “Britishness”, the ingeniously expansive identity invented to embrace UK union and empire. The next time they are given the chance, the people of Scotland will surely choose Europe over England.

Northern Ireland’s place in the union is no longer beyond question. For the moment Mrs May depends for her majority at Westminster on the votes of the Democratic Unionist party. But the implacable stance on the Irish border that has seen the DUP hold the prime minister to ransom in the Brexit negotiations also marks out the distance between unflinching Ulster unionism and broader opinion in Northern Ireland. Demography is on the side of those seeking a united Ireland. Brexit pushes in the same direction.

It is too soon to say what parliament will come up with if, as expected, Mrs May’s deeply flawed Brexit blueprint falls to heavy defeat next week. Nothing can be ruled out in a nation suffering what can only be described as a collective nervous breakdown.

Hardline Brexiters call themselves champions of parliamentary sovereignty. Yet they rail against John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, for giving MPs the opportunity to exercise that sovereignty. These Brexiters also whisper that “the people” (they mean angry nationalists who have been trying to intimidate pro-European MPs) will take over the streets if the MPs dare to challenge the outcome of the 2016 referendum. When last did the House of Commons bow to fear of the mob?

This is what happens when parliamentary democracy falls victim to a demagoguery that decrees that once voters have taken the “right” decision they cannot change their minds. It would be naive to think that a second referendum would close all the fissures opened up by Brexit. It might save the UK from the break-up of the union.

By Philip Stephens, associate editor of the Financial Times, director of the editorial board, and chief political commentator

FT - Paywalled (Article quoted in full - as far as I'm aware)

[ml1dch]

29 minutes ago, bickster said:

FT - Paywalled (Article quoted in full - as far as I'm aware)

Assuming we do leave, I expect the campaign to rejoin will begin in earnest the following day.

I, for one am quite looking forward to blaming countless things that have nothing to do with it on our lack of membership, much as the europhobes have spent 25+ years doing with our membership.

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

It has changed.... a bit ... not enough

Only on Brexit though, it's still a hateful rag regardless

 

hasn't changed that much it's still championing "Mosley's"