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> they voted for something very vague and ill defined Utter tosh. The consequences of a Leave vote were hammered out by Remain-supporting politicians for weeks

> they voted for something very vague and ill defined Utter tosh. The consequences of a Leave vote were hammered out by Remain-supporting politicians for weeks and weeks before the referendum. The government spent 9 million GBP to publish a leaflet in support of Remain which went to every household in the UK, before the referendum. Claiming that no one knew what a Leave vote meant, is gaslighting in the extreme.

m-i-l 7y ago
"The consequences of a Leave vote were hammered out by Remain-supporting politicians for weeks and weeks before the referendum. The government spent 9 million GBP to publish a leaflet in support of Remain which went to every household in the UK, before the referendum. Claiming that no one knew what a Leave vote meant, is gaslighting in the extreme." You've talked about the Remain side, not the Leave side. The "no change" side doesn't need to provide a plan for how they would execute "no change" - it is the "everything changes" side that needs to define how they would change everything. My point was that the Leave side had nothing, just some vague largely unwritten appeals to emotion. Contrast with, e.g. the Scottish Referendum, when the "Yes" ("everything changes") side had a several hundred page document detailing all the steps that would be taken should they have won. You might agree or disagree with one side or the other, but having a plan gives people more opportunity to make an informed decision, and give people a reasonable degree of confidence that it could be executed relatively smoothly by people who knew roughly what they were doing, rather than have a process dragging on for years and years costing tens of billions with the people responsible still as clueless as they were at the start. If you fail to plan then plan to fail.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
So what you are telling us is that the leave side knew what they were voting for because they saw through the lies from the leave side which said that everything the remain side was saying was "project fear". Do you honestly think you can claim that is democracy working as intended?
- maehwasu 7y ago
  The common wisdom wrt democracy, for centuries, was that this was basically exactly how it would work, if actually implemented. These aren't unforeseen problems.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Of course not. Case in point: 1) One side of a political decision is considered "lies". 2) The people vote, but don't get what they voted for. 3) Only one side's arguments count as "min-information". 4) The people who voted a certain way are sneered at. 5) The situation is presented as remaining is a There Is No Alternative situation. Apparently the modern elites, and the 10%-20% richer substrates at the population are allergic to democracy and those "deplorable" 80% of their fellow citizens, and don't want anything to disrupt business as usual. And if things go well for the 10%-20%, obviously the rest have absolutely no basis to complain, they are just ignorant/vote against their interests (because the 10-20% know better than them)/etc... When a "democracy" gets in that stage, and the higher ups loose all touch, you get people like Trump and Johnson. But that's only because you deserve them...
  - darkarmani 7y ago
    > Apparently the modern elites, and the 10%-20% richer substrates at the population are allergic to democracy and those "deplorable" 80% of their fellow citizens, and don't want anything to disrupt business as usual. And if things go well for the 10%-20%, obviously the rest have absolutely no basis to complain, they are just ignorant/vote against their interests (because the 10-20% know better than them)/etc.. Only 10-20% of voters wanted to Remain? A direct vote on a complicated open-ended question is a horrible way to sample the intentions of the populace. No one makes decisions like this in their personal life. No one decides that they want to buy a car and then finding out that the only cars available are a millions of dollars decides that they have to pay that price. We make decisions that are bound by a bunch of implicit constraints and tradeoffs. It would have been much better to vote to have a study for how to exit. And then a follow-up vote on which OPTION to take for an exit. I'm sure the vote would have been different if it was for "Hard exit even if it means the break up of the UK" instead of a negotiated exit to protect our sovereignty. There are implications in the question.
pjc50 7y ago
There were multiple Leave campaigns. You can find plenty of leave campaigners saying they were going to keep the UK in the Single Market, for example.

m-i-l 7y ago

"The consequences of a Leave vote were hammered out by Remain-supporting politicians for weeks and weeks before the referendum. The government spent 9 million GBP to publish a leaflet in support of Remain which went to every household in the UK, before the referendum. Claiming that no one knew what a Leave vote meant, is gaslighting in the extreme." You've talked about the Remain side, not the Leave side. The "no change" side doesn't need to provide a plan for how they would execute "no change" - it is the "everything changes" side that needs to define how they would change everything. My point was that the Leave side had nothing, just some vague largely unwritten appeals to emotion. Contrast with, e.g. the Scottish Referendum, when the "Yes" ("everything changes") side had a several hundred page document detailing all the steps that would be taken should they have won. You might agree or disagree with one side or the other, but having a plan gives people more opportunity to make an informed decision, and give people a reasonable degree of confidence that it could be executed relatively smoothly by people who knew roughly what they were doing, rather than have a process dragging on for years and years costing tens of billions with the people responsible still as clueless as they were at the start. If you fail to plan then plan to fail.

VBprogrammer 7y ago

So what you are telling us is that the leave side knew what they were voting for because they saw through the lies from the leave side which said that everything the remain side was saying was "project fear". Do you honestly think you can claim that is democracy working as intended?

maehwasu 7y ago
The common wisdom wrt democracy, for centuries, was that this was basically exactly how it would work, if actually implemented. These aren't unforeseen problems.
coldtea 7y ago
Of course not. Case in point: 1) One side of a political decision is considered "lies". 2) The people vote, but don't get what they voted for. 3) Only one side's arguments count as "min-information". 4) The people who voted a certain way are sneered at. 5) The situation is presented as remaining is a There Is No Alternative situation. Apparently the modern elites, and the 10%-20% richer substrates at the population are allergic to democracy and those "deplorable" 80% of their fellow citizens, and don't want anything to disrupt business as usual. And if things go well for the 10%-20%, obviously the rest have absolutely no basis to complain, they are just ignorant/vote against their interests (because the 10-20% know better than them)/etc... When a "democracy" gets in that stage, and the higher ups loose all touch, you get people like Trump and Johnson. But that's only because you deserve them...
- darkarmani 7y ago
  > Apparently the modern elites, and the 10%-20% richer substrates at the population are allergic to democracy and those "deplorable" 80% of their fellow citizens, and don't want anything to disrupt business as usual. And if things go well for the 10%-20%, obviously the rest have absolutely no basis to complain, they are just ignorant/vote against their interests (because the 10-20% know better than them)/etc.. Only 10-20% of voters wanted to Remain? A direct vote on a complicated open-ended question is a horrible way to sample the intentions of the populace. No one makes decisions like this in their personal life. No one decides that they want to buy a car and then finding out that the only cars available are a millions of dollars decides that they have to pay that price. We make decisions that are bound by a bunch of implicit constraints and tradeoffs. It would have been much better to vote to have a study for how to exit. And then a follow-up vote on which OPTION to take for an exit. I'm sure the vote would have been different if it was for "Hard exit even if it means the break up of the UK" instead of a negotiated exit to protect our sovereignty. There are implications in the question.

pjc50 7y ago

There were multiple Leave campaigns. You can find plenty of leave campaigners saying they were going to keep the UK in the Single Market, for example.