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

[Genie]

The percentage of people who know more than 5% of what the EU was must be tiny. 
If you don’t know what the EU is but are told they are holding us back and we can leave without any downsides then you can guess what the outcome will be.

My memory of 2016 is lots and lots of messages from pro leave politicians and media outlets about how great everything would be if we left the EU. Even when risks were flagged they grabbed them and turned them around as “project fear”. Remain campaign (I use the term loosely) was a shambles.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Genie

[Stevo985]

The last few pages are utterly bizarre.

A lie doesn't stop being a lie because it's stupid.

[chrisp65]

33 minutes ago, romavillan said:

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/vote-leave-director-admits-won-lied-public-39967/

Why not take Dominic Cummings word for it? 

It's pretty clear that NONE of what was promised was in any way anything other than total bullshit aimed at manipulating people to vote leave.

So, two things here:

Firstly I presume the statement ‘why not take Cummings word for it?’ Is some sort of joke? I wouldn’t take Cummings word for it that water is wet.

Secondly, have you actually read that article? It’s an opinion piece and the ‘lie’ it quotes doesn’t actually contain an actual lie.

 

[HanoiVillan]

52 minutes ago, blandy said:

Tbh I think that applies to more than just the Labour party. Plenty of tories were pro remain, too. The extremes - hard left and hard right were more "leavey" and the less extreme were more "remainy", is maybe a generalisation, but I think it's supportable - the right wanted sovereignty and tax dodges and worker exploitation and the left wanted nationalisation and some kind of socialist utopia unconstrained by EU rules on budget deficits and so on.

Whatever, though, Brexit wasn't a thing that divided along party lines in terms of voters, particularly. It was more North and Countryside v London and metropolitan and young v older, though there are obviously exceptions to those generalisations, too.

Some truth in what you say, though I think it's quite 2016-focused (ie, on the arguments around the vote, rather than on Where To Go From Here), but the reason I focus on Labour is simply that the remain vote was massively more concentrated than the leave vote, and so very suboptimal in first-past-the-post terms. If similar demographic patterns remain on polling on the issue, then Labour are likely to face a large group of supporters demanding action in realignment/rejoining, while needing to win or retain seats in leave areas. 

That being said, I do think that if we get a Labour majority at some point, they will pursue some form of dynamic alignment to EU rules while ruling out rejoining the club. 

[bobzy]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

I would still say that I don’t know of anyone that voted leave that had previously had ‘no opinion’ my suspicion would be that they were natural leave voters for whatever reason.

Just because you don't know anyone that voted that way, it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

As a very brief example, I never had discussions about the pros and cons of leaving the EU in my entire life.  Literally, never... up until the point that this decision went to a referendum.  The "no opinion" (better translated as "I don't care") view would have been absolutely **** vast.  I pretty much only voted Remain because I had no clue what leaving the EU would bring and was perfectly happy as things were.  That was basically as passionate as I felt.

Now if you're being promised a whole load of money in to the NHS (per week!) and you basically "don't care" whether the country is in the EU or not, that's a hell of a plus point to leaving the EU.  It wouldn't make you a "natural leave voter".

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

Just because you don't know anyone that voted that way, it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

As a very brief example, I never had discussions about the pros and cons of leaving the EU in my entire life.  Literally, never... up until the point that this decision went to a referendum.  The "no opinion" (better translated as "I don't care") view would have been absolutely **** vast.  I pretty much only voted Remain because I had no clue what leaving the EU would bring and was perfectly happy as things were.  That was basically as passionate as I felt.

Now if you're being promised a whole load of money in to the NHS (per week!) and you basically "don't care" whether the country is in the EU or not, that's a hell of a plus point to leaving the EU.  It wouldn't make you a "natural leave voter".

I do know that just because I don’t know of any examples, it doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. That’s why I’ve asked for examples. So far, nobody has offered one.

You’ve given your own example, and it’s very similar to my circumstances, I was undecided, i voted remain, as did you.

There was no ‘lie’ in that article was there? It said there was one, then didn’t produce it. It produced an opinion. Which is fine.

 

I’m amazed that all these years later people still want to argue the point. It’s done, we cannot re run the same set of circumstances. If people have hard evidence of election fraud this is probably not the correct forum to raise it. However, I would like to see a list of actual lies categorically provable as lies before the referendum. That we could spend more money on the NHS if we weren’t sending it to Brussels isn’t a lie. 

 

[ml1dch]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I’m amazed that all these years later people still want to argue the point. It’s done, we cannot re run the same set of circumstances. If people have hard evidence of election fraud this is probably not the correct forum to raise it.

And even if they do, said hard evidence became completely irrelevant as soon as Parliament legislated on the matter.

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

And even if they do, said hard evidence became completely irrelevant as soon as Parliament legislated on the matter.

But it would still be interesting to see it, given we’ve had a few pages of people insisting it exists.

[meregreen]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

I do know that just because I don’t know of any examples, it doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. That’s why I’ve asked for examples. So far, nobody has offered one.

You’ve given your own example, and it’s very similar to my circumstances, I was undecided, i voted remain, as did you.

There was no ‘lie’ in that article was there? It said there was one, then didn’t produce it. It produced an opinion. Which is fine.

That we could spend more money on the NHS if we weren’t sending it to Brussels isn’t a lie. 

 

Most of that money was distributed towards the poorer areas of the EU. A good proportion of those areas, indeed some of the most deprived areas in Europe, are in the UK.So it was always disingenuous to quote the figure as available in its entirety for the NHS. In other words, it was a lie.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

That being said, I do think that if we get a Labour majority at some point, they will pursue some form of dynamic alignment to EU rules while ruling out rejoining the club. 

I agree with the whole post, but this bit in particular. I think also that any kind of non-Tory coalition would do the same - I don't think just re-applying/joining would happen "in one go" - there would be a join the SM first, then the CM, then apply to rejoin the actual EU. I think that would also allow the EU to kind of settle down again, too, feeling (hopefully) that the UK is back from the weird Tory-brexity wilderness.

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, meregreen said:

Most of that money was distributed towards the poorer areas of the EU. A good proportion of those areas, indeed some of the most deprived areas in Europe, are in the UK.So it was always disingenuous to quote the figure as available in its entirety for the NHS. In other words, it was a lie.

But they could have couldn’t they. They could have taken the £350 million and redirected it in its entirety, abounding perfectly good projects around the UK. Stopping the money for projects in Ebbw Vale and Edith and Exeter and chucking it at the NHS.

You’re right, in my opinion, it was disingenuous. You’re wrong, in my view, it wasn’t a lie.

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

They could have taken the £350 million and redirected it in its entirety

No, because there never was 350 million a week going to the EU. The number was a lie. It was a useful lie, because it kept the "issue" of our contribution to the EU in the News, via the subsequent (correct) argument that the amount was a lie.

The government could at any time before or after Brexit spend more on the NHS - it was a complete red herring, but people were influenced by its simplicity of message.

[Risso]

Why would anybody want to rejoin the EU, or align to their rules in a sort of soft realignment? They’ve proved time and time again what a set of absolute ass hats they are. They’re only interested in the EU as a project, and it’s utterly messed up as such. Whatever the short term pains are, I remain convinced that we’re far better off out of it.

[Genie]

The man behind the £350m bus has said it was a lie. £100m of the £350m comes back to us so it wouldn’t be possible to give £350m to the NHS instead of the EU (without being £100m a week down).

[Genie]

I did list about a dozen lies from the leave campaign a few pages back.

[chrisp65]

8 minutes ago, blandy said:

No, because there never was 350 million a week going to the EU. The number was a lie. It was a useful lie, because it kept the "issue" of our contribution to the EU in the News, via the subsequent (correct) argument that the amount was a lie.

The government could at any time before or after Brexit spend more on the NHS - it was a complete red herring, but people were influenced by its simplicity of message.

Our gross contribution in 2018 was £20 billion. The abatement was to be renegotiated every 7 years and had to be agreed unanimously. The next review was due in 2021. You cannot guarantee that from 2021 we would still have the abatement. Highly highly likely, but absolutely not a proveable fact. If the whole of the abatement was paid (there is still a strong argument within the EU to do this for other states) then we would have been paying in £20 billion per year, or £380 million a week. Yes, it was unlikely the 2021 renegotiation would totally remove the abatement. Yes we get some back, but for EU projects and road widening and knitting art bombing projects. Without the EU, those funds didn’t have to go to arts installations they could (in theory) go to the NHS. (I got all of that from the ONS).

Yes, the government could at any time spend more on the NHS, that doesn’t make the bus advert wrong.

 

[sidcow]

3 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Yeah, I can see that’s a much stronger argument on the issue of lies.

I would still say that I don’t know of anyone that voted leave that had previously had ‘no opinion’ my suspicion would be that they were natural leave voters for whatever reason. As you suggest, probably a few decades of newspapers hating the French will have done as much damage as anything during the actual campaign.

But that long slow burn of Farage half truths, I still struggle to categorise them as straight lies. Beholden to unelected EU officials? Well, I certainly didn’t get to vote for lots of the people deciding lots of the policy direction, and they are European, so it’s not a big fat lie. I know we can argue I voted for the people that voted for the people that selected the policy makers AND a proportion of them would have been Europeans from the UK AND its also true I haven’t voted for anyone in the House of Lords or for Queen Liz. 

I guess I just don’t see slogans about a projected future as ‘lies’. It’s why I’ve never bought a car in order to become more sexy. I guess some people that bought Ford Capri’s were lied to by Ford.

You can't shake off this advert thing.  You've got to see the difference between subtle suggestion and blatant out and out lies.  It's why they can no longer say that Guinness is good for you or that fudge is full of Cadbury’s goodness. 

[sidcow]

24 minutes ago, Risso said:

Why would anybody want to rejoin the EU, or align to their rules in a sort of soft realignment? They’ve proved time and time again what a set of absolute ass hats they are. They’re only interested in the EU as a project, and it’s utterly messed up as such. Whatever the short term pains are, I remain convinced that we’re far better off out of it.

You're going to have to convince me exactly how we're going to be better off because right now I'm not seeing any benefit whatsoever and quite a few negatives. 

And in what weird universe have the leaders of our own country regardless of which party being anything less than set of absolute ass hats. 

[chrisp65]

15 minutes ago, sidcow said:

You can't shake off this advert thing.  You've got to see the difference between subtle suggestion and blatant out and out lies.  It's why they can no longer say that Guinness is good for you or that fudge is full of Cadbury’s goodness. 

Out of curiosity, when in the UK were Guinness told they can’t advertise ‘Guinness is good for you’ because its a lie?

Genuine question, I just went down that rabbit hole and couldn’t pin anything down saying it was banned because it was a lie.

 

Off to listen to a bit of music for a while…

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

40 minutes ago, Risso said:

Why would anybody want to rejoin the EU, or align to their rules in a sort of soft realignment? They’ve proved time and time again what a set of absolute ass hats they are. They’re only interested in the EU as a project, and it’s utterly messed up as such. Whatever the short term pains are, I remain convinced that we’re far better off out of it.

The answer is 'because of the political difficulties being caused by having a de facto customs border in the Irish Sea'.