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I think that if you spoke with people who voted to leave, rather than relying on the interpretation of media outlets that opposed them, you would find that the

I think that if you spoke with people who voted to leave, rather than relying on the interpretation of media outlets that opposed them, you would find that the decision was much better informed than you believe. Also consider that people on all sides of large democratic votes have complex motives. It is just as likely that people who voted remain wished to "send a message", or were "tricked" by PR, or "didn't understand" the implications. This is my point about trying to reinterpret the meaning of a vote after the fact; it is always tainted with the bias of the person doing the interpretation.

atoav 7y ago
To be honest, I listened to a ton of interviews of people voting for Leaving and none of the arguments really held up under close scrutiny. Most cited reasons that didn’t even have to do with the EU, but with the actions of the UK government. Like migration — I currently live in Germany which has far stricter migration policies than UK has. So saying the UK needs to leave the EU to take control of the border is a bit silly, when you could do so beforehand too. There were some very minor aspects where I could follow, but let’s not fool ourselves here: most people rationalized their feelings here. And the feeling was that the EU is somehow at fault for all things that went wrong within that austerity ridden nation and that only if they get rid of all that outside influence, the UK will become great again. This is totally a position you can hold, and I can understand how one gets there — but it is not a rational one. In the 70s the UK were the poor man of Europe — Thatcher had a reason for wanting to join and the nation profited immensly in economic terms. One could discuss whether some nostalgic values of britishness got lost (like every nation’s identity morphed into something else due to globalization), and how leaving the EU could be a start of the hermetic journey of restoring that identity. I don’t believe it can come back — if that is one’s reason to vote Leave, I understand it — but again one cannot claim it is rational. National Identites change constantly, and in a globalized world ever faster so. Befoming isolationist like North Korea could be some sort of solution, but the cost is a little bit high. On the topic of the referendum my argument was: - it wasn’t legally binding so it wasn’t meant to be taken as a winner-takes-it-all-vote - because the public opinion on the issue was nearly halfway split, this meant there could be no extreme solution without splitting the nation socially - therefore uttering extreme plans on both sides, as well as misrepresentations of some imaginary unified will of the people were simply unforgivable - the result is a lack of consensus, that splits the nation And this lack of consensus isn’t there because the one side misinterpreted the vote in the one and the other side into the other direction. This lack of consensus is there simply because there is no real consensus in the public and in the referendum result. When 5 people in a pub want to leave while 5 other people want to stay, there is not a steong consensus about the further actions in this pub. 6 versus 4 would be much stronger already.

atoav 7y ago

To be honest, I listened to a ton of interviews of people voting for Leaving and none of the arguments really held up under close scrutiny. Most cited reasons that didn’t even have to do with the EU, but with the actions of the UK government. Like migration — I currently live in Germany which has far stricter migration policies than UK has. So saying the UK needs to leave the EU to take control of the border is a bit silly, when you could do so beforehand too. There were some very minor aspects where I could follow, but let’s not fool ourselves here: most people rationalized their feelings here. And the feeling was that the EU is somehow at fault for all things that went wrong within that austerity ridden nation and that only if they get rid of all that outside influence, the UK will become great again. This is totally a position you can hold, and I can understand how one gets there — but it is not a rational one. In the 70s the UK were the poor man of Europe — Thatcher had a reason for wanting to join and the nation profited immensly in economic terms. One could discuss whether some nostalgic values of britishness got lost (like every nation’s identity morphed into something else due to globalization), and how leaving the EU could be a start of the hermetic journey of restoring that identity. I don’t believe it can come back — if that is one’s reason to vote Leave, I understand it — but again one cannot claim it is rational. National Identites change constantly, and in a globalized world ever faster so. Befoming isolationist like North Korea could be some sort of solution, but the cost is a little bit high. On the topic of the referendum my argument was: - it wasn’t legally binding so it wasn’t meant to be taken as a winner-takes-it-all-vote - because the public opinion on the issue was nearly halfway split, this meant there could be no extreme solution without splitting the nation socially - therefore uttering extreme plans on both sides, as well as misrepresentations of some imaginary unified will of the people were simply unforgivable - the result is a lack of consensus, that splits the nation And this lack of consensus isn’t there because the one side misinterpreted the vote in the one and the other side into the other direction. This lack of consensus is there simply because there is no real consensus in the public and in the referendum result. When 5 people in a pub want to leave while 5 other people want to stay, there is not a steong consensus about the further actions in this pub. 6 versus 4 would be much stronger already.