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* Because "leave" involves untangling the UK from the EU, which is ridiculously more complicated than never having joined at all. * Because Scotland overwhelmi

* Because "leave" involves untangling the UK from the EU, which is ridiculously more complicated than never having joined at all. * Because Scotland overwhelmingly voted "Remain", and are already talking about another independence referendum so they can stay in Europe. * Because a large chunk of the "Leave" voters (I don't have percentages, I expect they'll show up soon) are regretting it already. They're the dogs that chased a car and caught it and don't know what to do. * Because everyone who has any idea what "leave" would imply thought it was such a bad idea that they didn't take the idea seriously. * Because the "Leave" campaign didn't expect to win and had (seriously) no plan at all for how to achieve this. * Because everything the "Leave" campaign promised was literally lies, and now they have to explain this to the people who voted their way. * Because David Cameron originally said that if "leave" won, he'd invoke Article 50 the next day - and instead, he went "you know what? bugger this" and resigned, punting it to whichever unlucky bozo takes over as Tory leader and will thus be personally responsible for visiting a disaster upon the UK. * Because all of the details of the above, and plenty more besides. It's a cluster of clusterfucks, each of which contains another, smaller, clusterfuck.

Joeboy 10y ago
> Because a large chunk of the "Leave" voters (I don't have percentages" are regretting it already. Clearly those people exist, but is there really any reason to think they are "a large chunk"? It's possible, but I would be surprised if millions of people had done a complete political U-turn overnight.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  Yeah, that's why I'm waiting on numbers (per edit).
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  A lot of people in the UK's more deprived areas have been relying on EU money to keep some semblance of economic activity going. These areas literally have nothing. There used to be industry, but the Tories killed most of that and sent it abroad because they could make more money by selling and/or offshoring it. There's some tourism. Maybe some food production. A little light industry. And that's pretty much it. These areas had some of the strongest leave votes. Today they've woken up and demanded that the UK government continue to give them the same level of funding they got from the EU. Which is never going to happen. So - regrets - they have a few. But then again, certainly not too few to mention.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Just to be clear in case someone thinks this is exaggerated: Cornwall voted Leave. Cornwall Council immediately started begging Westminster to plug the 60 million pounds/year funding hole that Brexit will leave as a result of lost EU funds. From [1]: > John Pollard, the leader of Cornwall council said: “Now that we know the UK will be leaving the EU we will be taking urgent steps to ensure that the UK Government protects Cornwall’s position in any negotiations. > “We will be insisting that Cornwall receives investment equal to that provided by the EU programme which has averaged £60m per year over the last ten years.” [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-cornwall-issues-plea-for-funding-protection-after-county-overwhelmingly-votes-in-favour-of-a7101311.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-cornwa...
    - Joeboy 10y ago
      To me, that just suggests the kind of wishful thinking that won the referendum is still alive and well.
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      but where did the money come from? The EU doesn't just randomly dole out capital, right? The UK must pay into some sort of central fund? I have heard they pay as much as 3%(of GDP, taxes I am not sure) but the money must come from somewhere, of course. What capital flows out of UK and into the UK based on the old (or current) model?
      - vidarh 10y ago
        The EU doesn't "just randomly dole out capital", no, but Cornwall is one of the most deprived regions of the EU, and so got development funds from funding mechanisms earmarked for under-developed regions. Notably, it was/is this underdeveloped because pre-EU British government had not bothered to invest much in Cornwall. In terms of payments, the UK is a net contributor overall, but part of the issue is that the UK could have funnelled money into regional development whenever it wanted to, but hasn't, so for Cornwall to think that the government will prioritise them now is quite comical, given that the government will have to prepare for extensive reductions in treasury income that's likely to make the EU contributions seem cheap. This has been a recurring theme: The wishful thinking that a post-Brexit UK government will suddenly change priorities and allocate lots of money to things they have been mercilessly cutting so far, even in the face of massive economic uncertainty. Many of the areas voting Leave will be in the same boat as Cornwall of having substantial EU funding stripped, while facing an uphill battle to convince the UK government to replace it.
- wool_gather 10y ago
  It's a fair point, but it wouldn't take _millions_ of them to change the result. "Leave" won by about 1.3 million votes (about 4% of the approximately 35 million votes cast). So if there's 700k people who voted "Leave" but wouldn't have if they knew it would win... I'd like to think that's still too many, but I don't know.
caf 10y ago
Because all of the details of the above, and plenty more besides. It's a cluster of clusterfucks, each of which contains another, smaller, clusterfuck. I believe you call that fractally clusterfucked.
wool_gather 10y ago
> Because a large chunk of the "Leave" voters (I don't have percentages, I expect they'll show up soon) are regretting it already. They're the dogs that chased a car and caught it and don't know what to do. This was the one that really blew my mind when I started hearing about it. Your vote does not contain the information that it was cast "in protest" of something!* It's not "Yes LOL because fuck the man (j/k)", it's just "Yes", and it still counts as "Yes" the next day. Please, for Pete's sake, vote honestly! --- *Unless you actually cast a protest vote, i.e., spoiling your ballot.
- conistonwater 10y ago
  There really isn't enough to go on to say that there were a lot of such people (beyond, like, "some" idiots). Have they based this on actual polling? It is probably more relevant to note which promises the Leave campaign pushed forward, and which promises are being withdrawn only a few days after the referendum (e.g. this bit from Newsnight by Daniel Hannan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5jTRoySFfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5jTRoySFfo). Then you could argue that people voted for a different thing that wasn't real. The whole "I didn't think my vote would matter" crowd might turn out to be kind of irrelevant, more like a curiosity.
  - wool_gather 10y ago
    > The whole "I didn't think my vote would matter" crowd might turn out to be kind of irrelevant, more like a curiosity. I sincerely hope so. But like I said above, it's only about 700,000 people to swing the vote to "Remain". A little more than 1% of the population/something like 2% of those that voted.

Joeboy 10y ago

> Because a large chunk of the "Leave" voters (I don't have percentages" are regretting it already. Clearly those people exist, but is there really any reason to think they are "a large chunk"? It's possible, but I would be surprised if millions of people had done a complete political U-turn overnight.

davidgerard 10y ago
Yeah, that's why I'm waiting on numbers (per edit).
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
A lot of people in the UK's more deprived areas have been relying on EU money to keep some semblance of economic activity going. These areas literally have nothing. There used to be industry, but the Tories killed most of that and sent it abroad because they could make more money by selling and/or offshoring it. There's some tourism. Maybe some food production. A little light industry. And that's pretty much it. These areas had some of the strongest leave votes. Today they've woken up and demanded that the UK government continue to give them the same level of funding they got from the EU. Which is never going to happen. So - regrets - they have a few. But then again, certainly not too few to mention.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Just to be clear in case someone thinks this is exaggerated: Cornwall voted Leave. Cornwall Council immediately started begging Westminster to plug the 60 million pounds/year funding hole that Brexit will leave as a result of lost EU funds. From [1]: > John Pollard, the leader of Cornwall council said: “Now that we know the UK will be leaving the EU we will be taking urgent steps to ensure that the UK Government protects Cornwall’s position in any negotiations. > “We will be insisting that Cornwall receives investment equal to that provided by the EU programme which has averaged £60m per year over the last ten years.” [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-cornwall-issues-plea-for-funding-protection-after-county-overwhelmingly-votes-in-favour-of-a7101311.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-cornwa...
  - Joeboy 10y ago
    To me, that just suggests the kind of wishful thinking that won the referendum is still alive and well.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    but where did the money come from? The EU doesn't just randomly dole out capital, right? The UK must pay into some sort of central fund? I have heard they pay as much as 3%(of GDP, taxes I am not sure) but the money must come from somewhere, of course. What capital flows out of UK and into the UK based on the old (or current) model?
    - vidarh 10y ago
      The EU doesn't "just randomly dole out capital", no, but Cornwall is one of the most deprived regions of the EU, and so got development funds from funding mechanisms earmarked for under-developed regions. Notably, it was/is this underdeveloped because pre-EU British government had not bothered to invest much in Cornwall. In terms of payments, the UK is a net contributor overall, but part of the issue is that the UK could have funnelled money into regional development whenever it wanted to, but hasn't, so for Cornwall to think that the government will prioritise them now is quite comical, given that the government will have to prepare for extensive reductions in treasury income that's likely to make the EU contributions seem cheap. This has been a recurring theme: The wishful thinking that a post-Brexit UK government will suddenly change priorities and allocate lots of money to things they have been mercilessly cutting so far, even in the face of massive economic uncertainty. Many of the areas voting Leave will be in the same boat as Cornwall of having substantial EU funding stripped, while facing an uphill battle to convince the UK government to replace it.
wool_gather 10y ago
It's a fair point, but it wouldn't take _millions_ of them to change the result. "Leave" won by about 1.3 million votes (about 4% of the approximately 35 million votes cast). So if there's 700k people who voted "Leave" but wouldn't have if they knew it would win... I'd like to think that's still too many, but I don't know.

caf 10y ago

Because all of the details of the above, and plenty more besides. It's a cluster of clusterfucks, each of which contains another, smaller, clusterfuck. I believe you call that fractally clusterfucked.

wool_gather 10y ago

> Because a large chunk of the "Leave" voters (I don't have percentages, I expect they'll show up soon) are regretting it already. They're the dogs that chased a car and caught it and don't know what to do. This was the one that really blew my mind when I started hearing about it. Your vote does not contain the information that it was cast "in protest" of something!* It's not "Yes LOL because fuck the man (j/k)", it's just "Yes", and it still counts as "Yes" the next day. Please, for Pete's sake, vote honestly! --- *Unless you actually cast a protest vote, i.e., spoiling your ballot.

conistonwater 10y ago
There really isn't enough to go on to say that there were a lot of such people (beyond, like, "some" idiots). Have they based this on actual polling? It is probably more relevant to note which promises the Leave campaign pushed forward, and which promises are being withdrawn only a few days after the referendum (e.g. this bit from Newsnight by Daniel Hannan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5jTRoySFfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5jTRoySFfo). Then you could argue that people voted for a different thing that wasn't real. The whole "I didn't think my vote would matter" crowd might turn out to be kind of irrelevant, more like a curiosity.
- wool_gather 10y ago
  > The whole "I didn't think my vote would matter" crowd might turn out to be kind of irrelevant, more like a curiosity. I sincerely hope so. But like I said above, it's only about 700,000 people to swing the vote to "Remain". A little more than 1% of the population/something like 2% of those that voted.