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>This whole brexit thing happened by ignoring researchers and listening to whoever spoke louder :) When it goes the way someone wants they call that "democracy

>This whole brexit thing happened by ignoring researchers and listening to whoever spoke louder :) When it goes the way someone wants they call that "democracy" ;)

swores 3y ago
Democracy isn't a magical word that automatically makes every decision made democratically good, nor does it stop being democracy if people are lied to and tricked into voting against their own interests.
- gadders 3y ago
  You could say that about any election, ever. The Brexit Referendum was no more or less honest than any general election.
  - a_humean 3y ago
    Except the leave campaigns lied and/or mislead about the consequnces of leaving or their own intentions for the exit negotiations and post-brexit policies for everything from single market access, fishing rights, to net immigration reductions.
    - gadders 3y ago
      Citation needed.
      - AlexandrB 3y ago
        The claim that Brexit would redirect 350m/week to the NHS was a particularly egregious example. https://archive.ph/D2Yq4 https://archive.ph/D2Yq4
        FiniteField 3y ago
        Did that not happen? [0] shows an increase of £47bn on the department of health and social care from 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. That's £900m/week. If you compare to post-covid years then it's more like an increase of £28b or £540m/week. From the article linked in your comment, it seems to make a overly large "smoking gun" out of the fact that a referendum campaign website changed their website to reflect the fact that the referendum was now over. [0] https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-w...
        vain 3y ago
        Nope. The 350 million was supposed to be from money saved from not being in the EU.
        FiniteField 3y ago
        How can you say it's not? Money is fungible.
        Retric 3y ago
        No it didn’t, inflation alone is a poor adjustment for health spending when the populations keeps increasing. Thus explaining the net increase every year from 2010 to 2019. There’s many ways to calculate what that expenditure should be but looking at the most recent pre Brexit numbers, 2018 was 150.7B, 2019 was 158.3B. Extrapolate that trend and 2023 would be 7.6 * 4 + 158.3B ~= 188.7, where the real number is projected at 186.7B. PS: That link only specifies 2020 and 2021 as seeing COVID specific spending but the UK health system was still being slammed in 2022 while also trying to catch up on delayed procedures etc. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
        DanBC 3y ago
        The DH&SC isn't the NHS. How much of that money went from DH&SC to the NHS, vs to Tory pals selling defective PPE? Or private hospitals?
      - inamorty 3y ago
        The Big Red Bus is difficult to miss.
        gadders 3y ago
        The Big Red Bus wasn't a signed contract. It was a statement of possibilities that the UK could spend their savings on. And it looks like the NHS budget went up by that amount anyway.
        swores 3y ago
        If "signed contract" is your requirement then we can agree that no politician has ever lied in their campaign promises, because they don't make them signed contracts... that seems irrelevant? The lie was that we save that much by leaving the EU, the fact that our health service was underfunded and has had budget increases in line with inflation and population growth doesn't change that it was a lie - we could've (and would have) increased NHS spending regardless of the Brexit vote.
        bemusedthrow75 3y ago
        The big red bus was a lie in a crucial way: the £350M per week they were talking about (from our contributions to the EU) could not have been funded the way the bus slogan claimed. Because the net contribution to the EU was (significantly!) less than £350M. It wasn't a suggestion to spend more money on the NHS. It was a suggestion to spend the money they claimed we gave the EU every week. So it was actually a lie on a bus. The figure was closer to £250M (after the rebate), but when they were given the amicable opportunity to restate the original claim around the correct figure, they doubled down on the £350M lie.
      - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
        See my other reply about Turkey being "set to join" the EU. Turkey has never been "set to join" the EU. They'd like to join, sure. There are significant criteria they would need to fill to join, and everyone knows they won't do it any time soon; they were going backwards on some at the time of the campaign and are arguably further back eight years on. If Turkey met all the criteria they'd be a perfectly viable member of the EU. But then if I had the physiology, brains, feathers, gait and quack of a duck, I'd be a duck.
        logifail 3y ago
        > There are significant criteria they would need to fill to join, and everyone knows they won't do it any time soon; they were going backwards on some at the time of the campaign and are arguably further back eight years on. https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-policy_en https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-p... "On 13 December 1999 the Helsinki European Council adopted the Commission proposal to grant Turkey the status of an applicant for EU membership." Coming up on 24 years ... and counting. Great job, everyone involved.
        bemusedthrow75 3y ago
        It actually goes back further than that -- they wanted to join the EEC in '87. 36 years. This is actually higher than the median age of Turkey's population.
      - a_humean 3y ago
        Sorry, I don't need to provide citations for the non-stop BS peddled for years and years in UK politics or list all of the policy positions of the last 5 conservative governments we have enjoyed for the past 8 years.
    - FiniteField 3y ago
      It sounds like most of what you've listed, especially immigration reductions, are in the general sense things that the government now has the power to change, it just chooses not to. I'd put complaints about post-brexit policies at the government's feet rather than the leave campaign. That's not to say that prominent leave campaigners didn't mislead people with certain statements, but I also remember the Cameron-Osborne remain campaign saying that merely voting to leave would instantly plunge the country into a huge recession. People like Nick Clegg also dismissed and scoffed at (IMO) legitimate concerns from the leave side, like saying that the prospect of an EU army was a conspiracy theory, when in fact there have since been lots of higher-ups in the EU pushing for this.
      - a_humean 3y ago
        Sorry, I just assumed that if the leaders of the main leave campaign were to shortly become the government then they might share some responsibility. Apparently Johnson, Gove, Cummings and Sunak have no responsibilities for the things said and done for their cause in 2016. My bad.
  - eptcyka 3y ago
    I believe that foreign actors had a far greater influence than most other elections in British history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
    - Iwan-Zotow 3y ago
      "and remains unproven"
      - vain 3y ago
        Probably because the then PM decided to not follow the recommendations of the Russia report and order an investigation. Would have been good to know either way.
        Iwan-Zotow 3y ago
        Probably because PM understood this was complete garbage?
    - gadders 3y ago
      I was more interested in facts that conspiracy theories, especially as those claims were found to be libellous: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/20/observers-carole-cadwalladr-facing-heavy-legal-costs-in-arron-banks-case https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/20/observers-caro...
  - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
    > The Brexit Referendum was no more or less honest than any general election. Sorry, no. It was profoundly* dishonest. I have a leaflet that was dropped through my door talking about Turkey joining the EU as if it was something imminent and guaranteed (it is neither). It featured a map that prominently suggested this was a gateway to all things nefarious by showing Turkey as a coloured region without a label, surrounded by Iraq and Syria, which were. It's the single most dishonest thing I've seen in politics in my life. * I'm actually not sorry. This claim is ludicrous.
    - gadders 3y ago
      "Turkey is negotiating its accession to the European Union (EU) as a member state, following its application to become a full member of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the EU, on 14 April 1987.[1]" It's officially classed as a candidate. That doesn't seem consistent with "Never joining" unless the EU knowingly lied to Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...
      - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
        Did I say "never joining"? I said it was not imminent (it isn't) or guaranteed (and it isn't). Nobody lied to Turkey. They know there are economic, political, social etc. targets that they have to meet before they progress to EU membership. I've been a candidate for lots of things I didn't get. Haven't you? They first applied in 1987, 29 years before the Brexit vote. It has been more than seven years since that vote. The very Wikipedia page you're pointing at shows how badly it is going for Turkey after we left. Basically, the process is as close to ended for good as it can be. Turkey is less likely to succeed in joining the EU than the UK is to rejoin. And everyone knew how serious those problems were, particularly regarding human rights, and the direction of travel. The Leave campaign absolutely lied about Turkey's chances of joining, because only the spectre of Turkey being a member soon fit with the idea of Syrian refugees fleeing across the border into, thus, the EU, from their very current conflict. It was never close to true.
  - mcintyre1994 3y ago
    I'd argue that it was less honest on the basis that the Leave side didn't have the equivalent of a general election manifesto. Cameron had his negotiated deal and Remain was continuity his government. But Leave didn't present any concrete document of what they wanted to happen next if we left, and if they had created such a document the referendum wouldn't have given them the power to put their plan into practice. The whole referendum design made it impossible for them to be honest IMO even if they wanted to. The Scottish referendum in 2014 didn't have the same problem because the SNP campaigning for independence were in power in Scotland and had negotiated the referendum with the UK government.
    - gadders 3y ago
      I take your point - it wasn't like Labour was Remain, and Conservatives were Leave - in reality all major parties and much of the establishment was remain. But I'm not sure that's dishonesty in that people were deliberately saying things that were not true - people were instead saying "These are the things made possible if we leave the EU and you vote for a party that wants this in a general election."
      - n4r9 3y ago
        The point as I understand it is that there was no unified vision for what leaving the EU would look like. There was instead a multitude of voices making (in many cases) grandiose and outlandish promises. For example: "So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU." - David Davis [https://conservativehome.com/2016/07/14/david-davis-trade-deals-tax-cuts-and-taking-time-before-triggering-article-50-a-brexit-economic-strategy-for-britain/ https://conservativehome.com/2016/07/14/david-davis-trade-de...] Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be "one of the easiest in human history" - Liam Fox [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40667879 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40667879] Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border "absolutely unchanged" - Boris Johnson [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35692452 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35692452] This meant that even when Leave won, there was a great amount of confusion and turmoil over what that actually implied. That's why the Chequers deal fell through despite fulfilling the outcoem of the referendum.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    To be fair, some people ought to be jailed for this sort of blatant lies. It was not dodgy interpretation of facts or anything like that. It was pure disinformation. The fact that some other elections are also bad is beside the point. Democracy depends on people being well informed and engaged. Disinformation and disenfranchisement are crimes against democracy.
- makingstuffs 3y ago
  Democracy is just a word. True democracy as people like to think of it does not exist.
- simonh 3y ago
  Remainer here, but we lost fair and square. Politicians and campaigners definitely have a responsibility to be honest, but equally the electorate have a responsibility to inform themselves and make a reasonable judgement on the arguments made to them. Correcting for mistakes is what new elections are for.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    > elections are for. Making an effectively irreversible decision after single vote won with a slim majority seems like not the brightest idea. They should’ve had a referendum to approve the negotiated deal and if that failed started the entire process all over.
    - simonh 3y ago
      I completely agree, the referendum was deeply misconceived from the start. I'm just pointing out that the electorate also have a responsibility to evaluate that and factor it into their decision. I certainly did. Blaming politicians, other than as individuals, doesn't work. The electorate put those politicians in their positions in the first place. The responsibility always lies with us. If a voter votes for an arsehole who lies and deceives them, yes the arsehole is responsible for the lies and deception, but ultimately the decision to trust them with power is on the voter. It's on us to do our homework.
- Zenst 3y ago
  Democracy is not a binary question. Is limited choice democracy? But democracy today is reduced to a limited choice with limited input of just a simple X in a box of those limited choices once every so many years/decades/lifetime.

>This whole brexit thing happened by ignoring researchers and listening to whoever spoke louder :) When it goes the way someone wants they call that "democracy" ;)

swores 3y ago

Democracy isn't a magical word that automatically makes every decision made democratically good, nor does it stop being democracy if people are lied to and tricked into voting against their own interests.

gadders 3y ago
You could say that about any election, ever. The Brexit Referendum was no more or less honest than any general election.
- a_humean 3y ago
  Except the leave campaigns lied and/or mislead about the consequnces of leaving or their own intentions for the exit negotiations and post-brexit policies for everything from single market access, fishing rights, to net immigration reductions.
  - gadders 3y ago
    Citation needed.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      The claim that Brexit would redirect 350m/week to the NHS was a particularly egregious example. https://archive.ph/D2Yq4 https://archive.ph/D2Yq4
      - FiniteField 3y ago
        Did that not happen? [0] shows an increase of £47bn on the department of health and social care from 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. That's £900m/week. If you compare to post-covid years then it's more like an increase of £28b or £540m/week. From the article linked in your comment, it seems to make a overly large "smoking gun" out of the fact that a referendum campaign website changed their website to reflect the fact that the referendum was now over. [0] https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-w...
        vain 3y ago
        Nope. The 350 million was supposed to be from money saved from not being in the EU.
        FiniteField 3y ago
        How can you say it's not? Money is fungible.
        Retric 3y ago
        No it didn’t, inflation alone is a poor adjustment for health spending when the populations keeps increasing. Thus explaining the net increase every year from 2010 to 2019. There’s many ways to calculate what that expenditure should be but looking at the most recent pre Brexit numbers, 2018 was 150.7B, 2019 was 158.3B. Extrapolate that trend and 2023 would be 7.6 * 4 + 158.3B ~= 188.7, where the real number is projected at 186.7B. PS: That link only specifies 2020 and 2021 as seeing COVID specific spending but the UK health system was still being slammed in 2022 while also trying to catch up on delayed procedures etc. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
        DanBC 3y ago
        The DH&SC isn't the NHS. How much of that money went from DH&SC to the NHS, vs to Tory pals selling defective PPE? Or private hospitals?
    - inamorty 3y ago
      The Big Red Bus is difficult to miss.
      - gadders 3y ago
        The Big Red Bus wasn't a signed contract. It was a statement of possibilities that the UK could spend their savings on. And it looks like the NHS budget went up by that amount anyway.
        swores 3y ago
        If "signed contract" is your requirement then we can agree that no politician has ever lied in their campaign promises, because they don't make them signed contracts... that seems irrelevant? The lie was that we save that much by leaving the EU, the fact that our health service was underfunded and has had budget increases in line with inflation and population growth doesn't change that it was a lie - we could've (and would have) increased NHS spending regardless of the Brexit vote.
        bemusedthrow75 3y ago
        The big red bus was a lie in a crucial way: the £350M per week they were talking about (from our contributions to the EU) could not have been funded the way the bus slogan claimed. Because the net contribution to the EU was (significantly!) less than £350M. It wasn't a suggestion to spend more money on the NHS. It was a suggestion to spend the money they claimed we gave the EU every week. So it was actually a lie on a bus. The figure was closer to £250M (after the rebate), but when they were given the amicable opportunity to restate the original claim around the correct figure, they doubled down on the £350M lie.
    - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
      See my other reply about Turkey being "set to join" the EU. Turkey has never been "set to join" the EU. They'd like to join, sure. There are significant criteria they would need to fill to join, and everyone knows they won't do it any time soon; they were going backwards on some at the time of the campaign and are arguably further back eight years on. If Turkey met all the criteria they'd be a perfectly viable member of the EU. But then if I had the physiology, brains, feathers, gait and quack of a duck, I'd be a duck.
      - logifail 3y ago
        > There are significant criteria they would need to fill to join, and everyone knows they won't do it any time soon; they were going backwards on some at the time of the campaign and are arguably further back eight years on. https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-policy_en https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-p... "On 13 December 1999 the Helsinki European Council adopted the Commission proposal to grant Turkey the status of an applicant for EU membership." Coming up on 24 years ... and counting. Great job, everyone involved.
        bemusedthrow75 3y ago
        It actually goes back further than that -- they wanted to join the EEC in '87. 36 years. This is actually higher than the median age of Turkey's population.
    - a_humean 3y ago
      Sorry, I don't need to provide citations for the non-stop BS peddled for years and years in UK politics or list all of the policy positions of the last 5 conservative governments we have enjoyed for the past 8 years.
  - FiniteField 3y ago
    It sounds like most of what you've listed, especially immigration reductions, are in the general sense things that the government now has the power to change, it just chooses not to. I'd put complaints about post-brexit policies at the government's feet rather than the leave campaign. That's not to say that prominent leave campaigners didn't mislead people with certain statements, but I also remember the Cameron-Osborne remain campaign saying that merely voting to leave would instantly plunge the country into a huge recession. People like Nick Clegg also dismissed and scoffed at (IMO) legitimate concerns from the leave side, like saying that the prospect of an EU army was a conspiracy theory, when in fact there have since been lots of higher-ups in the EU pushing for this.
    - a_humean 3y ago
      Sorry, I just assumed that if the leaders of the main leave campaign were to shortly become the government then they might share some responsibility. Apparently Johnson, Gove, Cummings and Sunak have no responsibilities for the things said and done for their cause in 2016. My bad.
- eptcyka 3y ago
  I believe that foreign actors had a far greater influence than most other elections in British history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
  - Iwan-Zotow 3y ago
    "and remains unproven"
    - vain 3y ago
      Probably because the then PM decided to not follow the recommendations of the Russia report and order an investigation. Would have been good to know either way.
      - Iwan-Zotow 3y ago
        Probably because PM understood this was complete garbage?
  - gadders 3y ago
    I was more interested in facts that conspiracy theories, especially as those claims were found to be libellous: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/20/observers-carole-cadwalladr-facing-heavy-legal-costs-in-arron-banks-case https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/20/observers-caro...
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  > The Brexit Referendum was no more or less honest than any general election. Sorry, no. It was profoundly* dishonest. I have a leaflet that was dropped through my door talking about Turkey joining the EU as if it was something imminent and guaranteed (it is neither). It featured a map that prominently suggested this was a gateway to all things nefarious by showing Turkey as a coloured region without a label, surrounded by Iraq and Syria, which were. It's the single most dishonest thing I've seen in politics in my life. * I'm actually not sorry. This claim is ludicrous.
  - gadders 3y ago
    "Turkey is negotiating its accession to the European Union (EU) as a member state, following its application to become a full member of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the EU, on 14 April 1987.[1]" It's officially classed as a candidate. That doesn't seem consistent with "Never joining" unless the EU knowingly lied to Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...
    - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
      Did I say "never joining"? I said it was not imminent (it isn't) or guaranteed (and it isn't). Nobody lied to Turkey. They know there are economic, political, social etc. targets that they have to meet before they progress to EU membership. I've been a candidate for lots of things I didn't get. Haven't you? They first applied in 1987, 29 years before the Brexit vote. It has been more than seven years since that vote. The very Wikipedia page you're pointing at shows how badly it is going for Turkey after we left. Basically, the process is as close to ended for good as it can be. Turkey is less likely to succeed in joining the EU than the UK is to rejoin. And everyone knew how serious those problems were, particularly regarding human rights, and the direction of travel. The Leave campaign absolutely lied about Turkey's chances of joining, because only the spectre of Turkey being a member soon fit with the idea of Syrian refugees fleeing across the border into, thus, the EU, from their very current conflict. It was never close to true.
- mcintyre1994 3y ago
  I'd argue that it was less honest on the basis that the Leave side didn't have the equivalent of a general election manifesto. Cameron had his negotiated deal and Remain was continuity his government. But Leave didn't present any concrete document of what they wanted to happen next if we left, and if they had created such a document the referendum wouldn't have given them the power to put their plan into practice. The whole referendum design made it impossible for them to be honest IMO even if they wanted to. The Scottish referendum in 2014 didn't have the same problem because the SNP campaigning for independence were in power in Scotland and had negotiated the referendum with the UK government.
  - gadders 3y ago
    I take your point - it wasn't like Labour was Remain, and Conservatives were Leave - in reality all major parties and much of the establishment was remain. But I'm not sure that's dishonesty in that people were deliberately saying things that were not true - people were instead saying "These are the things made possible if we leave the EU and you vote for a party that wants this in a general election."
    - n4r9 3y ago
      The point as I understand it is that there was no unified vision for what leaving the EU would look like. There was instead a multitude of voices making (in many cases) grandiose and outlandish promises. For example: "So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU." - David Davis [https://conservativehome.com/2016/07/14/david-davis-trade-deals-tax-cuts-and-taking-time-before-triggering-article-50-a-brexit-economic-strategy-for-britain/ https://conservativehome.com/2016/07/14/david-davis-trade-de...] Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be "one of the easiest in human history" - Liam Fox [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40667879 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40667879] Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border "absolutely unchanged" - Boris Johnson [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35692452 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35692452] This meant that even when Leave won, there was a great amount of confusion and turmoil over what that actually implied. That's why the Chequers deal fell through despite fulfilling the outcoem of the referendum.
- kergonath 3y ago
  To be fair, some people ought to be jailed for this sort of blatant lies. It was not dodgy interpretation of facts or anything like that. It was pure disinformation. The fact that some other elections are also bad is beside the point. Democracy depends on people being well informed and engaged. Disinformation and disenfranchisement are crimes against democracy.
makingstuffs 3y ago
Democracy is just a word. True democracy as people like to think of it does not exist.
simonh 3y ago
Remainer here, but we lost fair and square. Politicians and campaigners definitely have a responsibility to be honest, but equally the electorate have a responsibility to inform themselves and make a reasonable judgement on the arguments made to them. Correcting for mistakes is what new elections are for.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  > elections are for. Making an effectively irreversible decision after single vote won with a slim majority seems like not the brightest idea. They should’ve had a referendum to approve the negotiated deal and if that failed started the entire process all over.
  - simonh 3y ago
    I completely agree, the referendum was deeply misconceived from the start. I'm just pointing out that the electorate also have a responsibility to evaluate that and factor it into their decision. I certainly did. Blaming politicians, other than as individuals, doesn't work. The electorate put those politicians in their positions in the first place. The responsibility always lies with us. If a voter votes for an arsehole who lies and deceives them, yes the arsehole is responsible for the lies and deception, but ultimately the decision to trust them with power is on the voter. It's on us to do our homework.
Zenst 3y ago
Democracy is not a binary question. Is limited choice democracy? But democracy today is reduced to a limited choice with limited input of just a simple X in a box of those limited choices once every so many years/decades/lifetime.