5 ms·

Interesting way to look at it. A different way is that Britain (through the mealy mouths of the Boris and Nigel show) is massively conflicted; the ever-popular

by __jal 10y ago

Interesting way to look at it. A different way is that Britain (through the mealy mouths of the Boris and Nigel show) is massively conflicted; the ever-popular (Wo)man on the Street is confused and angry from a decade of being bled by "conservatives", and, as often happens, responded to their pain by symbolically punching down. It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. This is unfortunate, but often happens, especially when there are opportunists looking to ride anger to power. The problem is that that anger is dangerous and unpredictable. I think the little weasels never expected to actually win, and now they've had their bluff called. Just watch little Boris try to jib and dance around all their lies on his recent appearances - it would be great comedy if this weren't all so dangerous. My bet is that England (I'm not talking about Britain) doesn't leave; Scotland, however, does eventually get a divorce, and I don't yet know what I think about Ireland. And the Boris and Nigel show ends like a lot of these little fits - they both learn to not care about their reputations and make out just fine after demonstrating their incompetence at running a proper insurrection.

marcoperaza 10y ago
>It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. Just because they don't approach it from some high-minded constitutional-philosophy or European-project perspective doesn't mean that it wasn't about the EU. The biggest issue was immigration, because the EU doesn't allow the British to control immigration into their own country. If you wanted lower immigration, the EU gave you one option: leave the EU. When the continent totally rejected David Cameron's reasonable (and I think insufficient) list of reforms, they confirmed that. For the Tories who voted Leave, it was also about economic growth because the EU has forced all member countries into a high-regulation (and in my opinion, low-growth) model that's more about protecting inefficient French businesses from competition than about raising the fortunes of the British people. It didn't matter how many elections Conservatives won, because socialism was imposed at the EU level. The EU even ganged up on Ireland for daring to have a low corporate tax rate. No change in the composition of the British delegation to the powerless European Parliament, where they were severely outnumbered anyway, had any chance of ever changing any of this. Again, the only way to even get the chance to vote for free market policies was to leave the EU. Now the British people can decide for themselves what path they will take, a choice which is by no means predetermined. Many Scottish people feel the same way about their membership in the UK. I think that autonomy within the UK is the answer for them, but they really should leave if they think it's the only way they can control their own destiny. They definitely deserve a second Scottish independence referendum once the Brexit instability calms down.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters." I'd recommend thinking twice when it comes to blanket statements like that. The only thing I'd be willing to make a blanket statement on is that the mainstream news media has been very manipulative when it comes to pushing their own agendas, and this applies both to the Remain camp and the Leave camp. With that in mind, I couldn't honestly put my finger on what mattered most to the 30,000,000+ voters, though I'd suspect the reasons for Remain and Leave were a lot more diverse than the mainstream media wanted to suggest.
- __jal 10y ago
  You are welcome to think as many times as you like. I'll be sticking with the impression built so far until I see evidence that contradicts it. And that points strongly to a lot of folks wanting send an "FU I'm angry" signal. I will note two things: I'm not talking about 30m+ voters; I'm talking about a significant block of them. 'Huge' != all; which you even quoted. A little hard to tell, but you seem to be arguing with a rather stronger claim than I made. Second, I have zero interest in anyone's "mainstream media" bashing. Fine, whatever, they suck. But unless you're willing to point to specifics and make specific allegations, I consider MSM bashing to be content-free; the political pontificaticator's equivalent of bitching about the referee in sports. (To be clear, of course media actors have agendas. Always have, always will. Depending on what lens you choose, they're people, they're loosely-coupled political operations or they're corporations, and the notion that you'll find impartiality there is either a utopian pipe dream or a cynical, selectively-employed critique made to delegitimize reporting the critic doesn't like.)

by __jal 10y ago

marcoperaza 10y ago

>It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. Just because they don't approach it from some high-minded constitutional-philosophy or European-project perspective doesn't mean that it wasn't about the EU. The biggest issue was immigration, because the EU doesn't allow the British to control immigration into their own country. If you wanted lower immigration, the EU gave you one option: leave the EU. When the continent totally rejected David Cameron's reasonable (and I think insufficient) list of reforms, they confirmed that. For the Tories who voted Leave, it was also about economic growth because the EU has forced all member countries into a high-regulation (and in my opinion, low-growth) model that's more about protecting inefficient French businesses from competition than about raising the fortunes of the British people. It didn't matter how many elections Conservatives won, because socialism was imposed at the EU level. The EU even ganged up on Ireland for daring to have a low corporate tax rate. No change in the composition of the British delegation to the powerless European Parliament, where they were severely outnumbered anyway, had any chance of ever changing any of this. Again, the only way to even get the chance to vote for free market policies was to leave the EU. Now the British people can decide for themselves what path they will take, a choice which is by no means predetermined. Many Scottish people feel the same way about their membership in the UK. I think that autonomy within the UK is the answer for them, but they really should leave if they think it's the only way they can control their own destiny. They definitely deserve a second Scottish independence referendum once the Brexit instability calms down.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters." I'd recommend thinking twice when it comes to blanket statements like that. The only thing I'd be willing to make a blanket statement on is that the mainstream news media has been very manipulative when it comes to pushing their own agendas, and this applies both to the Remain camp and the Leave camp. With that in mind, I couldn't honestly put my finger on what mattered most to the 30,000,000+ voters, though I'd suspect the reasons for Remain and Leave were a lot more diverse than the mainstream media wanted to suggest.

__jal 10y ago
You are welcome to think as many times as you like. I'll be sticking with the impression built so far until I see evidence that contradicts it. And that points strongly to a lot of folks wanting send an "FU I'm angry" signal. I will note two things: I'm not talking about 30m+ voters; I'm talking about a significant block of them. 'Huge' != all; which you even quoted. A little hard to tell, but you seem to be arguing with a rather stronger claim than I made. Second, I have zero interest in anyone's "mainstream media" bashing. Fine, whatever, they suck. But unless you're willing to point to specifics and make specific allegations, I consider MSM bashing to be content-free; the political pontificaticator's equivalent of bitching about the referee in sports. (To be clear, of course media actors have agendas. Always have, always will. Depending on what lens you choose, they're people, they're loosely-coupled political operations or they're corporations, and the notion that you'll find impartiality there is either a utopian pipe dream or a cynical, selectively-employed critique made to delegitimize reporting the critic doesn't like.)