Several days ago I had an intersting conversation with Richard from England about Brexit.
With his approval I’ve sent his interview into the English library lingq.com.
Here is the link to it:
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Richard said: “…If it had been clear and we had actually lost an argument that would be one thing, but we don’t feel speaking personally, it’s my personal view, we don’t feel that we lost an argument, we feel that we were outmanoeuvred in a campaign…”
Yeah well, my personal view is rather different.
At the official level, the remain side had EVERYTHING tilted in their favour! There was a long period before the official campaign started where the whole machinery of government was working flat out to support the official government position (i.e. to remain in the EU) The government spent many millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money sending out a pro-EU propaganda pack to every household in the entire country - while the leave side had no right of reply to this.
During the campaign there was a relentless daily bombardment of untruthful scare stories - some of them especially designed to target elderly people by saying they would have their state pensions and other benefits cut if they defied the government and voted to leave.
People were told that leaving would be a grave threat to national security, that it would impede the government in fighting terrorism, would lead to war, genocide, etc - all of it a pack of cynical lies by a government and prime minister that took the voters for fools.
(No doubt there were plenty of exaggerations and half-truths from the other side too - but let’s not have any of this petty sore-loser narrative that people were somehow hoodwinked by the leave side. The remain side had a MORE THAN fair shot in this fight.)
The Remain campaign was a very poor one. The Leave Campaign, as I said, was cleverer. But please don’t deny that it played on the fear of immigration - the official Leave leaflet that I received a few days before the vote was more or less all about that, and very unpleasant. I don’t understand the charge of ‘sore loser.’ I don’t think that this was a game of cards or a football match. The emotions associated with ‘losing’ are not on that level. I’ll be pleased to see what leadership and plan emerge post referendum, and hope we don’t have to wait too long.
Well it would appear that Leave did have some marketing savy
Vote Leave woos British Asians with migration leaflets
Given the support by both the state and the media, I can see how it might feel a bit like a successful insurgency.
Although I suspect the inability of the erstwhile elites to see beyond their own noses was part of Remain’s problem. Opinion | The Myth of Cosmopolitanism - The New York Times
I never mentioned immigration in the above comment.
BTW I didn’t mean to imply you are a sore loser - or anyone here in particular. I was referring generally to all those folks out there who don’t seem to want to accept the result. (I genuinely don’t understand their mentality. I quite expected the remain side to win - and I for one would certainly have accepted that result as a democratic decision.)
I think there are two reasons for the bitterness. Firstly, although leavers were more passionate during the campaign, everyone on both sides assumed remain was going to win, so it was a bigger shock for them.
Secondly, the vote would directly and concretely affect remainers’ own future opportunities for studying, employment, relationships and mobility generally, while leavers (the ones involved in internet discussions) had taken into account this potential loss and decided it was worth sacrificing for more intangible benefits.
To try an analogy: the remainers were voting for “more cake now” while the leavers were voting for “be healthier”, so the shock would hurt the remainers more immediately.
“… while leavers (the ones involved in internet discussions) had taken into account this potential loss and decided it was worth sacrificing for more intangible benefits.” That’s a joke, surely?
You mean, intangible benefits = zero ?
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Some brutal tub thumping from Pat Condell:
(I don’t go along with everything he says, but he is always colourful and entertaining.)
Interesting perspective. I hope your example shows that this can happen in the US too. It’s pretty hard to shrug off the puppet masters. And in case anyone is interested, I’m not saying I want Trump elected, I’m saying I hope one day someone with Bernie Sander’s platform can get elected. I feared those in power would do anything, even destroy the country, to prevent this from happening. But if you can do it maybe we can too.
Agree with all of this. There were far more headlines supporting remain, and lots of scaremongering directed towards leave voters. I think that remain leaflet Cameron sent out actually backfired and people quickly realised it was pure propaganda. People who wanted to leave were branded racist, seen as old fashioned, narrow minded, not liberal etc. The mudslinging was out of control, yet leave still won.
Also, it was suggested that the only reason leave won was because the young people failed to show up to vote, yet I think it was something like 65% of 30 year olds and under voted, which was a massive increase from the last general election.
My own feeling is that if you were in favour of brexit you’d be more motivated to vote, since you’re carrying out an action to change the situation, whereas remainers didn’t really have that kind of motivation. It seemed like you were either a staunch brexiter or an impartial remainer who wasn’t really that bothered either way.
I was in that latter group fwiw, I kinda felt like remaining was preferable but I wasn’t all that bothered, and I didn’t feel like anyone was telling the truth about the consequences, and more likely, didn’t even know.
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Assuming that the folks at the EU (in particular the German government) behave in a reasonable way, I think there is a good chance that there will be a fair compromise settlement. It will most likely be an enhanced version of the so-called “Norway style deal” - a kind of “UK special associate membership”, if you will.
(I also predict that it will be sorted out much more rapidly and much less painfully than most of the political pundits and naysayers have been claiming.)
I’m going to be optimistic here: I think in two or three years time from now everyone could be happy
I’m ready to be happy and would be glad if everyone were soon happy … I just don’t understand what a Brexit package that will satisfy those who truly want to ‘leave the EU’ would look like. For example, my understanding of Norway’s package leads me to think that it would place at risk the Leave desire to see reduced net immigration and would require financial contributions that will erode some of the gains that were hoped for. Plus we lose our veto and our place at the table - Norway implements 5 EU regs every day into which it has had no input and over which it has no say, and all that. I have not been able to hear a real leader on the Leave side articulate what ‘leaving’ means, what it would look like, how what I understand to be the main Leave requirements can be achieved without so much compromise that we might as well have stayed in. Plus with every passing day we seem to have more Remainers and fewer Leavers in the top jobs, even though the referendum did do a good job of shaking up our political system. I may not have voted to leave but I’ll be delighted to be wrong, and I’m looking forward (I never stay despondent for long and don’t do a lot of negativity if I can help it …), but I am very curious, because I honestly don’t see how the course we’re on will be a satisfactory and real ‘exit’. A really bad scenario is that we might lose the benefits of being in while not being bold enough to grasp the benefits of being out.
That’s all very true. But I still say there are some grounds for optimism: we are (with all respect to our fine Norwegian friends) a considerably bigger and more muscular figure at the negotiating table than they were. It’s feasible that the EU would be ready (albeit perhaps through gritted teeth) to meet us halfway on the issue of freedom of movement.
But of course only time will tell…
We are all doomed!!!
… let’s compare our predictions in a few years.
Well, Austria may be doomed! :-0
(Seriously, how are the elections going there??)
Ask Robert. I have been in Scotland the last couple of weeks. Obviously there was little access to the internet there. The signals couldn’t get through the fog.
You make a sensible point - we’d have a half-decent shout with Captain Mainwaring right now …
After Brexit the thoughts of some people have moved towards “Nexit”, “Frexit” or the more optimistic sounding “Fixit”.
Okay. But this article is a new one - “Bayxit”…! :-0
(Admittedly it’s more about Bayern leaving the BRD than about leaving the EU, but still…)