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Post by bernythedolt on Jun 26, 2021 15:53:58 GMT
First of all bernythedolt thanks for taking the time to reply  . I think some of your criticisms are valid. I also think that some of your criticisms also apply (or applied) to the leave side. Where I disagree with you it's normally of degree or interpretation rather than absolute. I had to look up "geniocracy", so thanks for pointing me in the direction of a word new to me . I waver so much on this, often finding myself thinking only those capable of understanding the issues should be permitted a vote, but then realising how utterly unfair that would be on those who don't make the cut. Attractive as it is in a way, in the end I have to come back to democracy as the best of a bad lot.
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keitha
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Post by keitha on Jun 27, 2021 8:50:45 GMT
Interesting, mostly because I see the leavers as being demonised by the mainstream media, and the left wing intelligentsia.
I was surprised how many EU citizens have applied to stay, and how many more that are in receipt of benefits haven't. It seems yet again Government figures don't add up, it would also appear that perhaps the fear of some of the indigenous population of being swamped by immigrants may have been nearer the truth than the left who constantly pooh poohed their concerns figure.
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Post by captainconfident on Jun 27, 2021 12:56:41 GMT
It is unfortunate that the only response you got to this was a petulant dissection of particular phrases, rather than a reasoned response showing any sense of understanding the issue being raised, that half the country was treated as 'losers', no longer worthy of having their views considered. In fact, it reinforced the essential message of the piece, that there has been no sensitivity or attempt to bridge the deep schism torn in the country by Brexit 'believers'.
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Post by bernythedolt on Jun 27, 2021 17:41:55 GMT
It is unfortunate that the only response you got to this was a petulant dissection of particular phrases, rather than a reasoned response showing any sense of understanding the issue being raised, that half the country was treated as 'losers', no longer worthy of having their views considered. In fact, it reinforced the essential message of the piece, that there has been no sensitivity or attempt to bridge the deep schism torn in the country by Brexit 'believers'. I'm sorry if you felt my response was petulant and not well reasoned. Personally I consider the highlight above (which was the the whole tenor of the blog, as you say) to be the very essence of petulance, but there we are. Of course, after any political upheaval, change of government, etc, there are bound to be winners and losers, in simple black & white terms. And of course the 'losers' on this occasion (and I hesitate to use that pejorative term) comprised nowhere near half the country as you're continuing to suggest. The absolute upper bound on their numbers is 35% as I described above - and most of that subset will not be considering themselves 'losers' either, I suspect, and probably never did. I would suggest the vast majority have accepted the democratic result and are getting on with their lives. As for having their views considered, I'm afraid all the opinions I've read from that subset seem to be unconstructive whinges and moans about how terrible everything is. Remainers should by all means feel free to lay out their constructive views for consideration and I'm sure reasonable people will take them into account. But on that note, which of us is worthy of having our views listened to and taken into account, irrespective of which side we voted for? All the power lies with our elected representatives. You are free to lobby them, as all of us are. Having voted Leave hasn't magically imbued 'half the country' with some kind of 'power' over the other half, as the author is suggesting. If anything is petulant here, it is his article suggesting half the country are lording it over the other half, like some adolescent schoolgirl playground tiff. I've never read such childish nonsense. If you believe there's a deep schism torn in the country, I'm interested in how would you go about attempting to bridge that, as you suggest Leavers ought to be doing. What influence and control do you think Leavers at large have at their disposal?
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Post by captainconfident on Jun 27, 2021 18:30:30 GMT
Thanks for the reasonable reply bernythedolt . The root of the problem is not the 52:48 vote itself, but the way Brexit was subsequently interpreted, in its harder and more extreme form each time. This makes the dream that those against Brexit will just shut up and learn to eat sovereignty for breakfast impossible. The government's subsequent deceitful actions over the NI Protocol are symptomatic of why none of this farce will ever be acceptable to modern liberal people. I notice that the statistics on voting provided by Lord Ashcroft and quoted in the blog ring completely true for this forum, and I suggest that demographic change will eventually make rejoining the EU inevitable. |
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littleoldlady
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Post by littleoldlady on Jun 28, 2021 7:34:01 GMT
I notice that the statistics on voting provided by Lord Ashcroft and quoted in the blog ring completely true for this forum, and I suggest that demographic change will eventually make rejoining the EU inevitable. Maybe not so inevitable for several reasons: Younger people were more likely to vote remain, but as they grow older (and hopefully wiser) will they retain those views or will they tend more to the views of older people in 2016? I was a left wing socialist when I was 16. If I had still been one when I was 30 it would have been a poor reflection of my intellect. Younger people had only known life inside the EU and leaving it looked like a leap into the unknown for them. There is no guarantee that the EU will continue to exist, certainly not in a form anything like its current configuration
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jun 28, 2021 8:00:23 GMT
I notice that the statistics on voting provided by Lord Ashcroft and quoted in the blog ring completely true for this forum, and I suggest that demographic change will eventually make rejoining the EU inevitable. Maybe not so inevitable for several reasons: Younger people were more likely to vote remain, but as they grow older (and hopefully wiser) will they retain those views or will they tend more to the views of older people in 2016? I was a left wing socialist when I was 16. If I had still been one when I was 30 it would have been a poor reflection of my intellect. I'll try to find the figures, but there was a five-years-on comparison of Leave/Remain by age group the other day. The figures were staying with the age groups... The 45-54 group was leave, it's now remain - both by north of a 10-point margin. 55-64 (leave) is closer than it was, and the split in the younger groups (all remain) has widened. The leaviest group was the oldest, and they're dying off. The only age group that got leavier is the over 65s. Brexit is something the old inflicted on the young. No, they don't buy into the whole rose-tinted-memories-glorious-past-empire/commonwealth bull, and know that the world requires internationalism not isolationism. The ENTIRETY of Brexit is predicated on "I liked being young. I'm now old, and I don't like it. I want to be young again. Europe was "them" when I was young."Of course it'll change. "Change" isn't a swear word, any more than "profit" is. But the UK has voluntarily thrown away our chance to have ANY kind of influence in that change, let alone continue to be one of the three major influencers... yet we still have to work alongside our next-door-neighbours, the single biggest economic bloc in the world.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jun 28, 2021 8:10:17 GMT
Found it...  comresglobal.com/polls/brexit-five-year-anniversary-polling-23rd-june-2021/Also - those who did not vote in 2016 are now twice as likely to support remain as leave. 13m people didn't vote, 28% of the electorate, in 2016. Even 40% of Brexit voters think the referendum has divided the country. Remember - only 37.5% of the electorate in 2016 actually wanted Brexit enough to get off their arses and put an X in a box. The other 62.5% ranged from quite content to stay in to actively wanting to. |
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Post by mrk on Jun 28, 2021 8:48:22 GMT
Also - those who did not vote in 2016 are now twice as likely to support remain as leave. 13m people didn't vote, 28% of the electorate, in 2016. There were also a few million EU citizens in the UK that did not have a right to vote in the referendum. (5.6M applied for settled status.) Some of those will get UK citizenship and will be able to vote in the future. Labour and the LibDems are in favour of giving them voting rights in any case.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jun 28, 2021 9:17:10 GMT
Also - those who did not vote in 2016 are now twice as likely to support remain as leave. 13m people didn't vote, 28% of the electorate, in 2016. There were also a few million EU citizens in the UK that did not have a right to vote in the referendum. (5.6M applied for settled status.) Some of those will get UK citizenship and will be able to vote in the future. Labour and the LibDems are in favour of giving them voting rights in any case. My mother in law was Swedish - she moved here in the very late 50s, after marrying a British guy she met on holiday in Norway. She retained Swedish nationality to the end of her life, a decade ago. The rules around voting eligibility are utterly barking. It should be based on residence, not nationality. (And when she moved here, the rules were very strict - she had to report to the police station every fortnight as a "resident alien". She would probably not have been able to move here under today's rules.)
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Post by captainconfident on Jun 28, 2021 9:18:41 GMT
Thinking about the blog post linked by registerme, I ask myself, could there have been a Brexit that the country could have come to terms with, found peace with? This is the hope now of Brexit supporters link bernythedolt, and it's a perfectly proper thing to hope, that the country comes together to back Brexit/Global Britain. I think the answer is 'yes', the future course of Brexit, out of the Single Market, in the Customs Union, Norway-Swiss style EFTA whatever, and I have seen Adrian provide all the links to people in the Leave campaign selling these formats as Brexit, and I'm sure, had Theresa May not redefined Brexit as out of the SM and the CU, the country could now have moved on, out of the EU, with broad agreement of the population. However, the government mishandled Brexit at every turn, turning it into a populist culture war which defines the "Woke", a term chosen by the American Right, into a baton to beat anyone with modern liberal views, while ludicrously distorting Brexit into the most distant, fractured relationship with out partners possibly, while signing treaties it does not intend to honour. That's where you lost me. That's why the polls do not move in favour of Brexit. Instead of working to find consensus in the country about how Brexit should be done, the worst possible sort was defined and dictated as how it shall be, dosed with culture war Patroitism of the most un-British kind that defines people who take a wry and ironical, slightly embarrassed view of their nationality as unpatriotic, woke traitors to the new Great Britain. |
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jun 28, 2021 9:25:33 GMT
Thinking about the blog post linked by registerme , I ask myself, could there have been a Brexit that the country could have come to terms with, found peace with? I would suggest "No". Pre-referendum, it was all about staying in the SM and EEA - "Norway". Four months after the referendum, May drew up her "red lines" which ruled out both - simply by saying no ECJ, which is inherent to both. At the start of 2019, May's deal was thrown out by the ERG as being not hardline enough. The ERG then went on to stage a coup on the parliamentary Tory party in September 2019, and the resulting "BlueKIP" then went on to gain a large majority in the December 2019 election. The electorate said in 2019 they want this hard-line Brexit. They may not have done so knowingly, but they did. EEA simply would never have satisfied the headbangers who were quite happy to lie to the 17 million willingly gullible. EFTAish was never really on the table from the EU side, because of the ongoing ballache of managing such a pick-and-choose relationship. Look at Switzerland, and they aren't half as contradictory and awkward as the Brexity elements of the UK.
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Post by captainconfident on Jun 28, 2021 9:53:27 GMT
Thinking about the blog post linked by registerme , I ask myself, could there have been a Brexit that the country could have come to terms with, found peace with? I would suggest "No". Pre-referendum, it was all about staying in the SM and EEA - "Norway". Four months after the referendum, May drew up her "red lines" which ruled out both - simply by saying no ECJ, which is inherent to both. At the start of 2019, May's deal was thrown out by the ERG as being not hardline enough. The ERG then went on to stage a coup on the parliamentary Tory party in September 2019, and the resulting "BlueKIP" then went on to gain a large majority in the December 2019 election. The electorate said in 2019 they want this hard-line Brexit. They may not have done so knowingly, but they did.
EEA simply would never have satisfied the headbangers who were quite happy to lie to the 17 million willingly gullible. EFTAish was never really on the table from the EU side, because of the ongoing ballache of managing such a pick-and-choose relationship. Look at Switzerland, and they aren't half as contradictory and awkward as the Brexity elements of the UK. "Four months after the referendum". OK, so what I've said holds true for the chance that could have been taken in the four months after the referendum to formulate a form of Brexit that could have broadened the consensus for leaving the EU. What the government has done instead, with 'extreme Brexit', is to change nobody's mind who voted to remain. Instead this portion of the population sits on its hands saying, OK then, make it work, and mocks poor Liz Truss and the yacht and goes on about chlorinated chicken. It didn't have to be this way. If it had broadened the support for Brexit, it could have been made permanent. As it is it is likely to be a ten year aberration. Unfortunately the government having ploughed ahead with its 'Captain Brexit knows best' attitude, means that it owns the treaty it dishonestly signed, while being increasingly being dragged down by own corruption, thus sinking the Brexit ship along with itself.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jun 28, 2021 9:56:40 GMT
The electorate said "We don't want Jeremy Corbyn" They (rightly!) said that in 2017, too, resulting in May's minority government propped up by the DUP. How on earth did we get to a point where the choice was BJ Piffle or Corbyn...?
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keitha
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Post by keitha on Jun 28, 2021 11:23:12 GMT
The electorate said "We don't want Jeremy Corbyn" They (rightly!) said that in 2017, too, resulting in May's minority government propped up by the DUP. How on earth did we get to a point where the choice was BJ Piffle or Corbyn...? I was thinking the other day, what sort of upbringing did Mr & Mrs Corbyn give their Kids raising:- Jeremy a Marxist anti Semite who IMHO hates all that is good about the UK Piers an Anti VAX, anti lockdown nut case who thinks he doesn't need to obey any law he doesn't like BJ Piffle or Corbyntherein lies the problem Personally I know people who are normally Liberal Democrats that voted tory, they felt the democratic decision of the Country right or wrong should be respected.They were also in some areas worried that Labour might win, and thought it would be more of a disaster than Boris. As I've said before though I think Cameron and the "high ups" in the EU commission underestimated the feelings of the people of the UK, they thought a few minor tweaks would be enough to appease people when clearly we wanted a more fundamental change.
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