UK Referendum Thread [Moderator Sanctioned]

[CoraSpia]

I'm still stunned by it.
They honestly can't see it's going to be a recurring problem for them and their rule is over.
The public will continue to hand them absolute lemons like this until they give up and relinquish power.

The public is powerless to do anything about it. Let's not let the public go either, I hate the political cowardice being demonstrated by UK politicians now but the only reason we are all in this mess is a group of xenophobic Leave voters decide to let Project Hate win by voting based on their racist, vitriolic emotions to put the whole UK economy in dire catastrophe just to spit in the face of non-white migrants.

Please don't attempt to claim that that was the only reason people have for voting leave, because it really wasn't.

[Divitaen]

The public is powerless to do anything about it. Let's not let the public go either, I hate the political cowardice being demonstrated by UK politicians now but the only reason we are all in this mess is a group of xenophobic Leave voters decide to let Project Hate win by voting based on their racist, vitriolic emotions to put the whole UK economy in dire catastrophe just to spit in the face of non-white migrants.

You don't actually know anything about why we reached this point, and are just exemplifying the attitude that allowed it to get this far.
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/bre ... titutions/

I've read the 'echo chamber of the elite establishment' argument before, and of course that's a long-term underlying cause but it doesn't change the fact that racism and racial hatred also helped to motivate the Leave vote to triumph as it did. Simply put, the catastrophic economic consequences of Leave should have been enough to sway reasonable voters to vote Remain. The fact that it didn't is a testament to both the fact that average citizens distrust economic elites, as you said, but also that the average voter was willing to prioritise racist vitriolic hatred, and their identification with Johnson and Farage's disgraceful dog-whistling campaign, over sound economic wisdom.

[Divitaen]

The public is powerless to do anything about it. Let's not let the public go either, I hate the political cowardice being demonstrated by UK politicians now but the only reason we are all in this mess is a group of xenophobic Leave voters decide to let Project Hate win by voting based on their racist, vitriolic emotions to put the whole UK economy in dire catastrophe just to spit in the face of non-white migrants.

Please don't attempt to claim that that was the only reason people have for voting leave, because it really wasn't.

It wasn't the only reason, but it was clearly the dominant reason. The nature of the Leave campaign's hateful emphasis on non-white immigration is more than enough evidence of that, not to mention the surge in hate crimes and harassment against Poles and Welsh Muslims after the Brexit vote went through.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-news-updates-remain-twitter-muslim-racist-abuse-a7101491.html

[Ostroeuropa]

You don't actually know anything about why we reached this point, and are just exemplifying the attitude that allowed it to get this far.
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/bre ... titutions/

I've read the 'echo chamber of the elite establishment' argument before, and of course that's a long-term underlying cause but it doesn't change the fact that racism and racial hatred also helped to motivate the Leave vote to triumph as it did. Simply put, the catastrophic economic consequences of Leave should have been enough to sway reasonable voters to vote Remain. The fact that it didn't is a testament to both the fact that average citizens distrust economic elites, as you said, but also that the average voter was willing to prioritise racist vitriolic hatred, and their identification with Johnson and Farage's disgraceful dog-whistling campaign, over sound economic wisdom.

That's a consequence of the nationalists being the only people to talk about the issues.
And just going "Thats racist!" over and over is no longer going to work.

I've spoken to lots of remain voters who view the collapse of the financial sector as a good thing.
This tone was prevalent throughout the campaign that the brexit voters legitimately do not give a fuck if the rich lose their money anymore.

The problem isn't racism.
It's neoliberalism.

"Economic wisdom." to continue a system that doesn't work for them. These are the same experts who push the status quo. ofcourse they're going to be ignored.

[Ifreann]

If I didn't know better I'd say it was the Leavers who were getting upset, not the Remainers.

Because there are less people in the Remainers who regretted their decisions.

I wonder if there's anyone in the UK looking at the state of affairs and thinking "Gosh, I wish I'd voted leave"

[The Archregimancy]

Other people have addressed this as well, so apologies for repetition, but a few points:

1) Cameron backed the Leave camp into a corner by immediately resigning. It seems likely that prominent Leave supporters - many of whom signed a letter the week before the vote asking Cameron to stay - were expecting Cameron to stay on and lead the negotiations on their behalf, which would have spared them from taking the blame for any negative consequences. Cameron's reaction to that was a fairly blunt 'why should I do the hard shit?' on their behalf. None of the leading Leave campaigners on the Tory side seem prepared to grasp the poisoned chalice that Cameron deliberately bequeathed them, leaving us with a difficult power vacuum in the middle of our worst constitutional crisis in living memory. That the official opposition is now simultaneously tearing itself apart over dissatisfaction over its own leadership - I've previously noted that this referendum presented Corbyn with a serious problem - is only making that power vacuum worse.

In other words, we don't really have anyone who's functionally capable of taking charge right now. Cheery thought, that.


2) It's now readily apparent that Leave didn't really have any contingency plans in place for winning the vote. The fact that Leave was a campaigning group drawing from several political parties with often mutually incompatible goals is likely a contributing factor, but one would have thought that those Leave campaigners who are members of the cabinet - and thus could have reasonably expected to influence the course of negotiations - might have thought this through. But apparently not. It's also abundantly clear that senior Leave campaigners always realised that several of their eye-catching campaign promises were undeliverable.

This raises the prospect that senior pro-Leave Tories didn't bother planning because they always expected to lose, in which case they are irresponsible, or that they simply didn't think that any planning was necessary because they assumed that someone else would lead the negotiation process (see point 1, above) and/or that Britain would muddle through regardless (as we often do), in which case they are incompetent. Again, a cheery thought.


3) While many voices within our soon to be erstwhile European partners are understandably calling for the UK to sort itself out and initiate Article 50, there are parties within both the UK and the EU who are looking to avoid implementing the referendum result. There's no coherent campaign here, but there are individuals on both sides of the Channel who haven't given up on keeping the UK in the EU. Whether they are in any way sensible or realistic in holding this position is an issue for separate discussion, but given that there is a significant body of opinion in favour of Remain - including within Parliament, where pro-Remain MPs hold a safe majority. So in addition to the current power vacuum at the head of the twitching corpse of the British body politic, there's no real pressure from our political institutions to move forward with implementing the consequences of last week's vote given the extent of opposition to the vote result within those political institutions.


Summed up, while I can fully understand the utter exasperation in Europe right now over the failure of the UK government to follow through with the referendum result, we don't have anyone in charge who wants to take responsibility for doing so, the Leave campaigners with the ability to do something about it seem to have been utterly unprepared for doing so, and there's no real internal pressure for doing so.

In other words, parliament is going to be doing some expert muddling.

I mean, I know this all. I am not surprised.

I just need to voice my disgust and displeasure.

I offer no prediction on the issue of 'expert muddling'; I merely note that significant factions within the British body politic are unhappy with the result. Whether any of their suggestions stemming from their unhappiness are either sensible or realistic is, as I note, an entirely different issue. I see no reason to make any predictions of outcomes at this point.

On the point about your disgust and displeasure about how the issue has been handled since Friday morning, however, I can assure you that a fair - though hard to quantify - number of British citizens share in your displeasure.

[CoraSpia]

Please don't attempt to claim that that was the only reason people have for voting leave, because it really wasn't.

It wasn't the only reason, but it was clearly the dominant reason. The nature of the Leave campaign's hateful emphasis on non-white immigration is more than enough evidence of that, not to mention the surge in hate crimes and harassment against Poles and Welsh Muslims after the Brexit vote went through.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-news-updates-remain-twitter-muslim-racist-abuse-a7101491.html

Pretty much every leave campaigner started anything about immigration by saying how they were pro immigration.

[Divitaen]

I've read the 'echo chamber of the elite establishment' argument before, and of course that's a long-term underlying cause but it doesn't change the fact that racism and racial hatred also helped to motivate the Leave vote to triumph as it did. Simply put, the catastrophic economic consequences of Leave should have been enough to sway reasonable voters to vote Remain. The fact that it didn't is a testament to both the fact that average citizens distrust economic elites, as you said, but also that the average voter was willing to prioritise racist vitriolic hatred, and their identification with Johnson and Farage's disgraceful dog-whistling campaign, over sound economic wisdom.

That's a consequence of the nationalists being the only people to talk about the issues.
And just going "Thats racist!" over and over is no longer going to work.

I've spoken to lots of remain voters who view the collapse of the financial sector as a good thing.
This tone was prevalent throughout the campaign that the brexit voters legitimately do not give a fuck if the rich lose their money anymore.

The problem isn't racism.
It's neoliberalism.

Yes I understand, and I would love to overturn the fundamental problems of neoliberal economic institutions and capitalist exploitation, and in many other threads I've expressed views about the greed of capitalism and the excesses of the fraudulent financial industry, and the insularity of wealthy capitalist elites, so trust me you have no disagreements from me here about the subject matter. The problem is obviously and realistically we know British society was never going to fundamentally upend a neoliberal economic system. So, in the context of the economic establishment that does exist, we have to tackle other non-economic problems, like racism, xenophobia and blatant intolerance for people of different cultures. And Brexit is a clear, resounding testament of just how racist so many British voters are, and how susceptible they were to a dog-whistling campaign.

[Ostroeuropa]

That's a consequence of the nationalists being the only people to talk about the issues.
And just going "Thats racist!" over and over is no longer going to work.

I've spoken to lots of remain voters who view the collapse of the financial sector as a good thing.
This tone was prevalent throughout the campaign that the brexit voters legitimately do not give a fuck if the rich lose their money anymore.

The problem isn't racism.
It's neoliberalism.

Yes I understand, and I would love to overturn the fundamental problems of neoliberal economic institutions and capitalist exploitation, and in many other threads I've expressed views about the greed of capitalism and the excesses of the fraudulent financial industry, and the insularity of wealthy capitalist elites, so trust me you have no disagreements from me here about the subject matter. The problem is obviously and realistically we know British society was never going to fundamentally upend a neoliberal economic system. So, in the context of the economic establishment that does exist, we have to tackle other non-economic problems, like racism, xenophobia and blatant intolerance for people of different cultures. And Brexit is a clear, resounding testament of just how racist so many British voters are, and how susceptible they were to a dog-whistling campaign.

No, it isn't. It's a clear statement that they are unhappy with this economic situation and mass migration, as well as pandering to Islam.

The status quo cannot solve issues of racism or xenophobia when it is what is fermenting those attitudes in the first place.

[CoraSpia]

Someone seriously needs to get Johnson, Farage and Stewart in a room together and make them thrash out a plan.

[Divitaen]

It wasn't the only reason, but it was clearly the dominant reason. The nature of the Leave campaign's hateful emphasis on non-white immigration is more than enough evidence of that, not to mention the surge in hate crimes and harassment against Poles and Welsh Muslims after the Brexit vote went through.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-news-updates-remain-twitter-muslim-racist-abuse-a7101491.html

Pretty much every leave campaigner started anything about immigration by saying how they were pro immigration.

Definitely not Nigel Farage, and even Boris Johnson who tried to argue that he was pro-amnesty and pro-immigration used the same xenophobic arguments about how immigrants were a drain on welfare and the NHS (reinforcing racial stereotypes about Bulgarians and Romanians) and how they were mostly unemployed criminals (specifically that many had 'no jobs waiting for them'). But I'm not even talking about that, I'm referring to the more overt racism throughout the campaign that I've cited earlier, the racist 'Breaking Point' poster showing non-white migrants, the Leave.eu cartoon showing Muslims throwing white people off a ship with an Islamic crescent flying on top, all the talk by Johnson and Farage and the pro-Leave media outlets about Turkey entering the EU, Turkey's high birth rates and Muslim population, video reel of a fight breaking out in the Ankara parliament, Johnson's factually untrue comments that immigrants were a fiscal drain and burden, Farage's comment about Islam as a "fifth column" that "hates us and wants to kill us", his comment about a "Romanian crime wave", his reiteration of "British jobs for British workers" and so on and so forth, there's an orgy of evidence that the Leave campaign was, from start to finish, about attracting racists to the ballot box to vote with a hateful heart.

And, if anything, the surge in hate crime and the Jo Cox murder more than prove how intertwined racially-charged feelings were with the Leave campaign.

[Cymrea]

The NHS seems pretty dear to most Brits; to have dangled £350 million a week for NHS only to have it evaporate almost before the votes were finalised is immeasurably reprehensible. I hope Nigel Farage gets the figurative crucifixion he deserves.

[CoraSpia]

That's a consequence of the nationalists being the only people to talk about the issues.
And just going "Thats racist!" over and over is no longer going to work.

I've spoken to lots of remain voters who view the collapse of the financial sector as a good thing.
This tone was prevalent throughout the campaign that the brexit voters legitimately do not give a fuck if the rich lose their money anymore.

The problem isn't racism.
It's neoliberalism.

Yes I understand, and I would love to overturn the fundamental problems of neoliberal economic institutions and capitalist exploitation, and in many other threads I've expressed views about the greed of capitalism and the excesses of the fraudulent financial industry, and the insularity of wealthy capitalist elites, so trust me you have no disagreements from me here about the subject matter. The problem is obviously and realistically we know British society was never going to fundamentally upend a neoliberal economic system. So, in the context of the economic establishment that does exist, we have to tackle other non-economic problems, like racism, xenophobia and blatant intolerance for people of different cultures. And Brexit is a clear, resounding testament of just how racist so many British voters are, and how susceptible they were to a dog-whistling campaign.

I'd say that racism was a motivator for a tiny minority of leave foters. I think many of them were either swayed by normal, reasonable points, or just wanted to kick the establishment.

[Dejanic]

Wow if Corbyn really doesn't resign (I'm shocked he hasn't already) it'll probably spell the end of the Labour party.

[Divitaen]

Yes I understand, and I would love to overturn the fundamental problems of neoliberal economic institutions and capitalist exploitation, and in many other threads I've expressed views about the greed of capitalism and the excesses of the fraudulent financial industry, and the insularity of wealthy capitalist elites, so trust me you have no disagreements from me here about the subject matter. The problem is obviously and realistically we know British society was never going to fundamentally upend a neoliberal economic system. So, in the context of the economic establishment that does exist, we have to tackle other non-economic problems, like racism, xenophobia and blatant intolerance for people of different cultures. And Brexit is a clear, resounding testament of just how racist so many British voters are, and how susceptible they were to a dog-whistling campaign.

No, it isn't. It's a clear statement that they are unhappy with this economic situation and mass migration, as well as pandering to Islam.

The status quo cannot solve issues of racism or xenophobia when it is what is fermenting those attitudes in the first place.

It doesn't mean we can't condemn racism when it clearly rears itself in political campaigns. Even if there are unaddressed underlying causes of that racism, racism still needs to be condemned and pointed out nonetheless. Its not 'painting over the cracks' to point out an actual intolerance and bigotry that exists.

[The Archregimancy]

Because there are less people in the Remainers who regretted their decisions.

I wonder if there's anyone in the UK looking at the state of affairs and thinking "Gosh, I wish I'd voted leave"

Actually, yes.

This was covered in this morning's Today on Radio 4.

According to a Survation poll, 7% of pro-Leave voters regret their decision, and 4% of pro-Remain voters regret their decision.

Assuming these levels of regret were to result in those votes changing, then Leave would still win, but this time by the much smaller margin of 400,000 votes.


Separately, the same polling exercise shows that while Boris Johnson is currently the favoured candidate among Conservative Party voters, he would currently lose to Theresa May in a head to head contest between the two if Johnson and May were to be the two candidates selected by the Parliamentary Party for the subsequent vote by the membership.


https://www.politicshome.com/news/europ ... rexit-poll

[CoraSpia]

The NHS seems pretty dear to most Brits; to have dangled £350 million a week for NHS only to have it evaporate almost before the votes were finalised is immeasurably reprehensible. I hope Nigel Farage gets the figurative crucifixion he deserves.

Where did he promise it?

[Ostroeuropa]

No, it isn't. It's a clear statement that they are unhappy with this economic situation and mass migration, as well as pandering to Islam.

The status quo cannot solve issues of racism or xenophobia when it is what is fermenting those attitudes in the first place.

It doesn't mean we can't condemn racism when it clearly rears itself in political campaigns. Even if there are unaddressed underlying causes of that racism, racism still needs to be condemned and pointed out nonetheless. Its not 'painting over the cracks' to point out an actual intolerance and bigotry that exists.

Yeh yeh, spend endless hours talking about the smoke and waving it away and refusing to do anything about the fire, i'm sure that's productive.

Meanwhile, the racist factions are pointing out the actual problems the country has and saying "It's because of minorities."

Why do you think this is a winning strategy of yours, when it's just lost and is losing ground ALL over the western world?

[CoraSpia]

Wow if Corbyn really doesn't resign (I'm shocked he hasn't already) it'll probably spell the end of the Labour party.

The labour party is far too big and old to die from that.

[Divitaen]

Yes I understand, and I would love to overturn the fundamental problems of neoliberal economic institutions and capitalist exploitation, and in many other threads I've expressed views about the greed of capitalism and the excesses of the fraudulent financial industry, and the insularity of wealthy capitalist elites, so trust me you have no disagreements from me here about the subject matter. The problem is obviously and realistically we know British society was never going to fundamentally upend a neoliberal economic system. So, in the context of the economic establishment that does exist, we have to tackle other non-economic problems, like racism, xenophobia and blatant intolerance for people of different cultures. And Brexit is a clear, resounding testament of just how racist so many British voters are, and how susceptible they were to a dog-whistling campaign.

I'd say that racism was a motivator for a tiny minority of leave foters. I think many of them were either swayed by normal, reasonable points, or just wanted to kick the establishment.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/20/britons-on-europe-survey-results-opinium-poll-referendum

Poll on most important issues in EU referendum. 49% of respondents considered immigration the most important issue in the referendum, a number that shoots up to 72% amongst those intending to vote Leave. Those voting Remain, however, were more likely to cite international trade (35%) and the UK economy (34%) as the most important issue.

There, its clearly not a small minority, and Leave voters weren't primarily motivated by the more technocratic arguments about how EU bureaucracy stifles job creation for small businesses and what not. It was about kicking out immigrants.

[Cymrea]

The NHS seems pretty dear to most Brits; to have dangled £350 million a week for NHS only to have it evaporate almost before the votes were finalised is immeasurably reprehensible. I hope Nigel Farage gets the figurative crucifixion he deserves.

Where did he promise it?

Here, and here.

Apparently it wasn't just Farage, and I guess if you spread out the blame to Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, and BoJo it's easier to dissipate?

[Divitaen]

I wonder if there's anyone in the UK looking at the state of affairs and thinking "Gosh, I wish I'd voted leave"

Actually, yes.

This was covered in this morning's Today on Radio 4.

According to a Survation poll, 7% of pro-Leave voters regret their decision, and 4% of pro-Remain voters regret their decision.

Assuming these levels of regret were to result in those votes changing, then Leave would still win, but this time by the much smaller margin of 400,000 votes.


Separately, the same polling exercise shows that while Boris Johnson is currently the favoured candidate among Conservative Party voters, he would currently lose to Theresa May in a head to head contest between the two if Johnson and May were to be the two candidates selected by the Parliamentary Party for the subsequent vote by the membership.


https://www.politicshome.com/news/europ ... rexit-poll

Ahh interesting, so in a second ballot it is theoretically possible for Theresa May to triumph as the next British PM, which will of course through the whole UK leave process into even more ambiguity.

EDIT: "throw"

[The Archregimancy]

The NHS seems pretty dear to most Brits; to have dangled £350 million a week for NHS only to have it evaporate almost before the votes were finalised is immeasurably reprehensible. I hope Nigel Farage gets the figurative crucifixion he deserves.

I am about to type words that I never thought would come from my keyboard, which are 'in fairness to Nigel Farage'.


In fairness to Nigel Farage, that £350 million a week claim didn't come from his campaign. There were two separate 'Leave' campaigns: Vote Leave (primarily drawn from Conservative Party Eurosceptics, but with differing levels of support from individual members of other parties) and Leave EU (primarily drawn from UKIP supporters, including Farage). Both asked to be designated the official Leave campaign, but this designation was eventually given to Vote Leave.

The £350 million claim was, I believe, made by Vote Leave, not by Leave EU.

So while there are other parts of the Leave EU campaign that may have been open to criticism, the '£350 million for the NHS' one wasn't Farage's responsibility.

[Eirin]

Wow if Corbyn really doesn't resign (I'm shocked he hasn't already) it'll probably spell the end of the Labour party.

It's sympomatic of how out of touch the Blairites are. Even when they were in power they ignored their voter base and allowed the void to be filled by first the BNP and then UKIP.

Corbyn was put there by a vast majority of the party members. Hell, that leadership election itself just drove up membership so people could endorse Corbyn. He hasn't played the nasty politics or the usual Westminster game and the Blairites threaten to oust him. It's not Corbyn they're damaging with that, it's their party. They could unite behind him but they have chosen not to. Yet again, they're out of touch with the very people they're supposed to be listening to!

I don't think Corbyn should go. The party members put him there. Yeah, let's have the leadership challenge and I bet the membership put him there again. Then the Blairites and 'blue Labour' can go off and join the Tories because Blairism is just Thatcherism with a red rosette.

[Mad hatters in jeans]

It doesn't mean we can't condemn racism when it clearly rears itself in political campaigns. Even if there are unaddressed underlying causes of that racism, racism still needs to be condemned and pointed out nonetheless. Its not 'painting over the cracks' to point out an actual intolerance and bigotry that exists.

Yeh yeh, spend endless hours talking about the smoke and waving it away and refusing to do anything about the fire, i'm sure that's productive.

Meanwhile, the racist factions are pointing out the actual problems the country has and saying "It's because of minorities."

Why do you think this is a winning strategy of yours, when it's just lost and is losing ground ALL over the western world?

So you're saying the racist elements of the leave campaign are correct in vilifying all immigrants?