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The original Brexit result was pretty much endorsed when the Tories were re-elected in the election after the referendum. MPs, largely Labour ones, who refused

The original Brexit result was pretty much endorsed when the Tories were re-elected in the election after the referendum. MPs, largely Labour ones, who refused to accept the Brexit result were chucked out by their electorate. Unless you intend to argue that the Russians also swayed that too.

ed_elliott_asc 6y ago
They certainly stoked the fireplace that is brexit and kept winding people up about it
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Are you saying the electorate are somehow unable to cope with an idea being mentioned online? Ridiculous.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Of course they did. They stoke issues that already exist, they're not invented. Just like how the Russians have been stoking race-issues in the US for decades. Are Antifa and BLM Russian plots to destabilise the US? They certainly have that signature [0], that doesn't mean they aren't valid movements. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q
  - harry8 6y ago
    Just quietly, many of us find this view that "the russians did it" pretty comical. Putin must have killed George Floyd and videoed it. Why else would anyone be bothered by anything? But yeah, Hillary says "The Russians" rather than she was beaten because her brand of Washington insider corruption is stunningly electorally unpopular. People buy it. Her faction has kept control of the Deomcrat party and that's a well they keep on going back to succesfully. The mind boggles. Remember the "Putin puttin' bounties on US soldiers!!" story, it's only a week or two ago. It was huge. It focused politicans with a great justification for stopping the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It's now been as exposed as vapor-news. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-officials-say-intel-russian-bounties-was-less-conclusive-n1233199 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-offic... You can loathe Trump among many, many other things and still look at the "Russians under the Bed" and ask questions about whether the CIA and FBI are playing domestic politics in ways they should not be. In ways that are more dangerous to freedom in the USA than any foreign adversary could be. Needless to say there's no WMD in Iraq either. Maybe Putin hid those too. Why not? People seem to believe anything when you use Putin as the scapegoat. In all truth, he does actually seem to be as horrible a human being as Saddam was. So if we're going there let's go. Hilary Clinton and the establishment democrats are all, just like the establishment Republicans a Putin plot to undermine freedom by making americans give up on cleaning up the endemic Washington corruption. That corruption is about the only thing to which the USA really is vulnerable. So yeah, blaming everying on the Russians is really doing Putin's work for him. Putin wants you to blame him for everything with no evidence as a distraction. You're doing Putin's work by doing it. :S
    - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
      Since it is still working to great effect, it looks like we will never have internal enemies within our government(which makes sense you don't want to look divided/weak). It will always be The Russians or the Chinese of the day. All too convenient, I hope someone on the inside can gather resistence but it feels like the machine is well oiled and programmed. We can only hope/work towards better education in content consumption.
  - harry8 6y ago
    I have a reply to this that is "flagged" because I strongly doubt the russian bogeyman story offered without evidence that keeps on falling apart. Now why would that be flagged? Must be Putin.
scatters 6y ago
By their electorate. The Tories won a majority of seats on considerably less than a majority of the vote; the election wasn't an endorsement of Brexit any more than Trump's win off a collapse of the Democratic vote in the rustbelt was an endorsement of sexism and xenophobia.
- danielmg 6y ago
  But UKIP split the vote. From memory, the combination of UKIP and Conservative total votes was > 50%.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The Conservatives got 43.6% and UKIP got 0.1% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_el... NB You perhaps meant the Brexit party, who got 2%, rather than UKIP
    - danielmg 6y ago
      I was referring to the 2015 and 2016 elections - i.e the election to get the referendum and the election following the referendum.
      - arethuza 6y ago
        In the 2017 General Election the Conservatives got 42.3% of vote and UKIP 1.8% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election#Results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_el... Note sure how a Yes/No referendum can have a split vote?
        danielmg 6y ago
        a) I meant 2017 - the post referendum election as I wrote b) I said from memory - my memory was obviously wrong. Please forgive me oh great one.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
appleflaxen 6y ago
I think the allegation is that Russia manipulated social media, etc. Influence does not need to be direct, such as stuffing ballots, to be able to change the outcome. I think the real lesson of the last 10 years is that the electorate in any democracy needs to be smart, which is... a tall order.
makomk 6y ago
Russia definitely tried to interfere in the 2019 election - the trouble is that they seemed to do so in the wrong direction, trying to help out the anti-Brexit side: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53433523 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53433523 (People spotted this quite a while ago but the government hasn't commented on it previously.)
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  It's not clear that Labour were on "the anti-Brexit side": "If the Labour Party win the General Election they want to renegotiate Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and put it to another public vote alongside the option of Remain."[0] Perhaps if you think that the public would have voted to Remain, then that's an anti-Brexit policy, but perhaps Putin just liked the idea of the chaos that such a referendum would bring (and possibly the supposed benefit of having Corbyn as PM). [0] https://home.bt.com/news/latest-news/what-is-labours-brexit-policy-11364412910563 https://home.bt.com/news/latest-news/what-is-labours-brexit-...
Traster 6y ago
Fact check: The first election after the referendum was fought on the basis of executing Brexit and the Conservatives lost their majority.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Yes, you're right. I got my election timeline wrong.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
The original Brexit result was pretty much endorsed when the Tories were re-elected in the election after the referendum. If Labour had competent leadership then you could argue that, as it was they were run by somebody completely out of his depth (and who wanted Brexit).

ed_elliott_asc 6y ago

They certainly stoked the fireplace that is brexit and kept winding people up about it

cameronbrown 6y ago
Are you saying the electorate are somehow unable to cope with an idea being mentioned online? Ridiculous.
secondcoming 6y ago
Of course they did. They stoke issues that already exist, they're not invented. Just like how the Russians have been stoking race-issues in the US for decades. Are Antifa and BLM Russian plots to destabilise the US? They certainly have that signature [0], that doesn't mean they aren't valid movements. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q
- harry8 6y ago
  Just quietly, many of us find this view that "the russians did it" pretty comical. Putin must have killed George Floyd and videoed it. Why else would anyone be bothered by anything? But yeah, Hillary says "The Russians" rather than she was beaten because her brand of Washington insider corruption is stunningly electorally unpopular. People buy it. Her faction has kept control of the Deomcrat party and that's a well they keep on going back to succesfully. The mind boggles. Remember the "Putin puttin' bounties on US soldiers!!" story, it's only a week or two ago. It was huge. It focused politicans with a great justification for stopping the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It's now been as exposed as vapor-news. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-officials-say-intel-russian-bounties-was-less-conclusive-n1233199 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-offic... You can loathe Trump among many, many other things and still look at the "Russians under the Bed" and ask questions about whether the CIA and FBI are playing domestic politics in ways they should not be. In ways that are more dangerous to freedom in the USA than any foreign adversary could be. Needless to say there's no WMD in Iraq either. Maybe Putin hid those too. Why not? People seem to believe anything when you use Putin as the scapegoat. In all truth, he does actually seem to be as horrible a human being as Saddam was. So if we're going there let's go. Hilary Clinton and the establishment democrats are all, just like the establishment Republicans a Putin plot to undermine freedom by making americans give up on cleaning up the endemic Washington corruption. That corruption is about the only thing to which the USA really is vulnerable. So yeah, blaming everying on the Russians is really doing Putin's work for him. Putin wants you to blame him for everything with no evidence as a distraction. You're doing Putin's work by doing it. :S
  - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
    Since it is still working to great effect, it looks like we will never have internal enemies within our government(which makes sense you don't want to look divided/weak). It will always be The Russians or the Chinese of the day. All too convenient, I hope someone on the inside can gather resistence but it feels like the machine is well oiled and programmed. We can only hope/work towards better education in content consumption.
- harry8 6y ago
  I have a reply to this that is "flagged" because I strongly doubt the russian bogeyman story offered without evidence that keeps on falling apart. Now why would that be flagged? Must be Putin.

scatters 6y ago

By their electorate. The Tories won a majority of seats on considerably less than a majority of the vote; the election wasn't an endorsement of Brexit any more than Trump's win off a collapse of the Democratic vote in the rustbelt was an endorsement of sexism and xenophobia.

danielmg 6y ago
But UKIP split the vote. From memory, the combination of UKIP and Conservative total votes was > 50%.
- arethuza 6y ago
  The Conservatives got 43.6% and UKIP got 0.1% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_el... NB You perhaps meant the Brexit party, who got 2%, rather than UKIP
  - danielmg 6y ago
    I was referring to the 2015 and 2016 elections - i.e the election to get the referendum and the election following the referendum.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      In the 2017 General Election the Conservatives got 42.3% of vote and UKIP 1.8% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election#Results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_el... Note sure how a Yes/No referendum can have a split vote?
      - danielmg 6y ago
        a) I meant 2017 - the post referendum election as I wrote b) I said from memory - my memory was obviously wrong. Please forgive me oh great one.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

appleflaxen 6y ago

I think the allegation is that Russia manipulated social media, etc. Influence does not need to be direct, such as stuffing ballots, to be able to change the outcome. I think the real lesson of the last 10 years is that the electorate in any democracy needs to be smart, which is... a tall order.

makomk 6y ago

Russia definitely tried to interfere in the 2019 election - the trouble is that they seemed to do so in the wrong direction, trying to help out the anti-Brexit side: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53433523 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53433523 (People spotted this quite a while ago but the government hasn't commented on it previously.)

dane-pgp 6y ago
It's not clear that Labour were on "the anti-Brexit side": "If the Labour Party win the General Election they want to renegotiate Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and put it to another public vote alongside the option of Remain."[0] Perhaps if you think that the public would have voted to Remain, then that's an anti-Brexit policy, but perhaps Putin just liked the idea of the chaos that such a referendum would bring (and possibly the supposed benefit of having Corbyn as PM). [0] https://home.bt.com/news/latest-news/what-is-labours-brexit-policy-11364412910563 https://home.bt.com/news/latest-news/what-is-labours-brexit-...

Traster 6y ago

Fact check: The first election after the referendum was fought on the basis of executing Brexit and the Conservatives lost their majority.

secondcoming 6y ago
Yes, you're right. I got my election timeline wrong.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

The original Brexit result was pretty much endorsed when the Tories were re-elected in the election after the referendum. If Labour had competent leadership then you could argue that, as it was they were run by somebody completely out of his depth (and who wanted Brexit).