4 ms·

Well, they would have loved to stop migration and voted in droves for brexit for that. Cant have that though, democracy or not, can vote for any party, but cant

Well, they would have loved to stop migration and voted in droves for brexit for that. Cant have that though, democracy or not, can vote for any party, but cant have that result they all promise before the vote closes and never deliver once the vote is in.

MrBuddyCasino 1mo ago
Almost as if democracy isn't real and all statecraft is driven by intra-elite conflicts.
- foldr 1mo ago
  Britain leaving the EU purely because a majority voted for it in a popular vote is a pretty bad example to use in support of the claim that democracy isn't real. It's probably this sort of vague cynicism about democracy that led Cameron to call the referendum in the first place, only to discover that people can actually vote however they like!
  - lores 1mo ago
    Democracy requires an informed electorate. Just having the right to vote isn't enough.
    - logicchains 1mo ago
      No it doesn't, democracy means rule by all the people not rule by some educated elite.
      - spacedcowboy 1mo ago
        Two things: - Education is not "elite", it's open to all. - Informed is not "educated". Forcing political speech to be truthful (or at least have a reasonable expectation of being truthful) with serious consequences (jail time) for knowingly lying would go a long way to counter the misinformation that caused Brexit.
      - lores 1mo ago
        "Educated" and "informed" aren't the same.
    - foldr 1mo ago
      It works better with an informed electorate. However, one of the reasons that voters don't bother informing themselves is the campaign of cynicism aimed at convincing them that all political parties are the same, that their vote doesn't matter, etc. etc. One might just as well say that an informed population requires democracy: why bother keeping track of national policy if you have no control over it? In the days after the Brexit vote, it turned out that a significant minority of 'leave' voters had been convinced that their vote would be an ineffectual protest with no actual influence on Britain's membership of the EU. Lazy and cynical anti-democratic rhetoric just feeds into that cycle of ignorance and stupidity.
      - pjmlp 1mo ago
        Which is how autocracy governments get hold of countries without military action, it only needs enough patience and uninformed electorate to win the election. They can even argue it was the will of the people to get a dictorship.
        1718627440 1mo ago
        > They can even argue it was the will of the people to get a dictorship. Is there an example where "they" have not done that?
        pjmlp 1mo ago
        Plenty, ask AI friend about military coups.
        1718627440 1mo ago
        Aren't they still claiming, that they do it for and represent the people?
        pjmlp 1mo ago
        Maybe, however with elections they did in fact asked for it, which was the whole point.
    - 1718627440 1mo ago
      Yeah, but you can't legislate people to care.
  - inigyou 1mo ago
    It happened because it was voted for and the elite wanted it. Several counterfactuals are plausible: either the elite only allowed the vote because they knew how it would go, or they would've brexited even if remain won, or they don't care either way. What is not possible is that the elites wanted to remain but were forced to leave by the vote, because in that case they simply wouldn't have left.
    - foldr 1mo ago
      That can only be true for a definition of 'elite' that excludes the Eton and Oxford educated Prime Minister of the day and the majority of his government. So I mean, yeah, some people wanted Brexit. If those people had some sort of sinister behind-the-scenes power to bring it about, you have to wonder why Brexit only actually happened after the referendum vote and not in the decades prior, during which those very same people had been continually agitating for it. >the elite only allowed the vote because they knew how it would go Clearly not, in this case. Remain was forecasted to win, and David Cameron called the referendum because he felt confident that remain would win. >they would've brexited even if remain won This also is obviously not the case. David Cameron would have remained Prime Minister. He was always in favor of EU membership, remaining in the EU was part of the policy platform of his party, and he would have been under much less pressure from Brexiteers than he was before the referendum. >What is not possible is that the elites wanted to remain but were forced to leave by the vote This is in fact what happened. David Cameron resigned after losing the vote and was replaced by someone committed to implementing Brexit.
jen20 1mo ago
Absurd to suggest that anyone voting for Brexit knew what they were voting for - by design of the pro-Brexit shysters.
- nannal 1mo ago
  Not sure that's an argument that shines good light on brexit voters.
  - spacedcowboy 1mo ago
    To be fair (a) I don't think he was trying to do that, and (b) I'm struggling to think of an argument that would shine good light on brexit voters ? Perhaps that they're wonderfully trusting people who believe whatever politicians that Gary down the pub thinks are the best ?
    - tialaramex 1mo ago
      To take my mother as an example she hadn't thought about it properly at all. She was surprised that her daughter (my sister) had voted Remain because apparently my mother who knows about the EU funding which enabled what my sister did, hadn't connected "EU funding" to the EU she was voting to Leave. "Oh" was basically all she had to say about that. In the broader scheme of things you could also see this in the response of Brexiteers who were stunned that, as non members they now weren't able to travel freely across borders. Voters aren't very bright because they're people, you've met people. I used to think that FPTP was a good idea because it's so simple that "The candidate who had more votes won" means the idiots won't be confused by the outcome. We saw that they're confused anyway, so, fine, since apparently simplicity wasn't achievable we should use a more complicated voting system with better outcomes.
      - DangitBobby 1mo ago
        If voters can't understand ranked choice voting or similar, how could we possibly expect them to understand the impact of what they are voting on? It's a self-defeating argument.
bsian 1mo ago
Not only the Brits. Take a look at this, especially the charts, and compare it to what us Europeans are getting - that's democracy for you. https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-05-07/seven-out-of-10-europeans-believe-their-country-takes-in-too-many-immigrants.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-05-07/seven-ou...
mattlondon 1mo ago
The sad thing of course was that the people coming across on boats or clinging to the underside of lorries etc are not EU citizens arriving legally. Plus it's not like EU is the only source of migration (hellow commonwealth). I think that the Brexit vote landed at a time when there was increasing general alienation within society, a general feeling of growing wealth inequality, of social injustice etc. We saw it with Trump's election, we saw it with Brexit. We'll probably see it with a reform majority in the UK parliament next election too. There are global trends that the PM of the UK cannot change, but we live in a world of instant gratification so if the current PM can't make things change literally overnight, people are angry and annoyed. Go read the comments section on any UK newspaper (left or right, tabloid or broadsheet) and the comments are really eye-opening (recommend doing this to at least get a flawed and partial cross section of what the vibe is). People are quick to anger and quick to point fingers. Might explain why we've had so many PMs these past few years.
- gib444 1mo ago
  > I think that the Brexit vote landed at a time when there was increasing general alienation within society, a general feeling of growing wealth inequality, of social injustice etc Hmm GDP was growing well, inflation was down, real household income was on the rise, annual wage growth was on the up, it was a long time since the great financial crash, unemployment was crashing in 2013/2014, and things comparatively were quite cheap. Though I can't recall the general sentiment at the time. Net migration did have an historic spike (part of a longer term rise) for a couple of years. Perhaps the Brexit campaigners capitalised solely on that? Crazy to imagine that economically things were doing great, by many metrics, but so many people got duped into thinking some foreigners were going to tank everything (Personally, it was a fantastic period. Wages were good, jobs were good, things were cheap. I know many people who bought their first house during that period)
  - mattlondon 1mo ago
    While the economy may have been doing ok and all that, I think its still a lot to do with the feeling that everyone around you is doing _better_, and the increasingly prevalent need for instant-gratification. A lot of this probably comes down to cheap-credit. I am by rights in the top 1% of national income in my senior-ish BigCo job, yet I look around at the traffic lights and I am surrounded by Range Rovers, Teslas, Porches SUVs etc. I dont think I could afford one of those (I tend to buy 3 or 4 year old cars outright), yet the stats say I earn more than 99% of people ... either most days I am surrounded by the 0.1% club, or people are spending a lot of their income in PCP etc. Is it a matter of "keeping up with the jonses"? Are people thinking "Well these people around me are driving nice cars and I am not, so clearly I am getting dicked over here somehow and everyone else is earning boatloads and I am not." Replace nice cars with expensive holidays, house renovations, latest iphone, latest shoes/handbag or whatever. And all amplified and magnified by social media. Its all the same: conspicuous status baubles making people feel like they're on the loser end of the spectrum. See enough of that over and over (and you will if you use social media) and it'll shift your world views.
dofm 1mo ago
FWIW, Brexit was never, ever, ever about stopping migration. It was about right wing elites deciding which migrants they wanted, and at best about regaining control of that policy from the EU. It was sold in a racist and bigoted way. The reason we have less control over illegal migration is exactly Brexit, which, as people were warned at the time, torpedoed our actually cushioned position with respect to "first safe country" asylum rules, and meant we had no cross-border agreements with France. The "Brexit" that people thought they were getting was always in their own mind because it had no definition. It was an imaginary victory which only has downsides, just as was pointed out.
- kingleopold 1mo ago
  no it was %90 about that finance and regulation thing for sharing banking and finance data to EU and related, I even fully forgot what was it. It was well hidden and among years it got lost but this was mainn reason. They will not tell you this unless you really deeply read it and see it.

MrBuddyCasino 1mo ago

Almost as if democracy isn't real and all statecraft is driven by intra-elite conflicts.

foldr 1mo ago
Britain leaving the EU purely because a majority voted for it in a popular vote is a pretty bad example to use in support of the claim that democracy isn't real. It's probably this sort of vague cynicism about democracy that led Cameron to call the referendum in the first place, only to discover that people can actually vote however they like!
- lores 1mo ago
  Democracy requires an informed electorate. Just having the right to vote isn't enough.
  - logicchains 1mo ago
    No it doesn't, democracy means rule by all the people not rule by some educated elite.
    - spacedcowboy 1mo ago
      Two things: - Education is not "elite", it's open to all. - Informed is not "educated". Forcing political speech to be truthful (or at least have a reasonable expectation of being truthful) with serious consequences (jail time) for knowingly lying would go a long way to counter the misinformation that caused Brexit.
    - lores 1mo ago
      "Educated" and "informed" aren't the same.
  - foldr 1mo ago
    It works better with an informed electorate. However, one of the reasons that voters don't bother informing themselves is the campaign of cynicism aimed at convincing them that all political parties are the same, that their vote doesn't matter, etc. etc. One might just as well say that an informed population requires democracy: why bother keeping track of national policy if you have no control over it? In the days after the Brexit vote, it turned out that a significant minority of 'leave' voters had been convinced that their vote would be an ineffectual protest with no actual influence on Britain's membership of the EU. Lazy and cynical anti-democratic rhetoric just feeds into that cycle of ignorance and stupidity.
    - pjmlp 1mo ago
      Which is how autocracy governments get hold of countries without military action, it only needs enough patience and uninformed electorate to win the election. They can even argue it was the will of the people to get a dictorship.
      - 1718627440 1mo ago
        > They can even argue it was the will of the people to get a dictorship. Is there an example where "they" have not done that?
        pjmlp 1mo ago
        Plenty, ask AI friend about military coups.
        1718627440 1mo ago
        Aren't they still claiming, that they do it for and represent the people?
        pjmlp 1mo ago
        Maybe, however with elections they did in fact asked for it, which was the whole point.
  - 1718627440 1mo ago
    Yeah, but you can't legislate people to care.
- inigyou 1mo ago
  It happened because it was voted for and the elite wanted it. Several counterfactuals are plausible: either the elite only allowed the vote because they knew how it would go, or they would've brexited even if remain won, or they don't care either way. What is not possible is that the elites wanted to remain but were forced to leave by the vote, because in that case they simply wouldn't have left.
  - foldr 1mo ago
    That can only be true for a definition of 'elite' that excludes the Eton and Oxford educated Prime Minister of the day and the majority of his government. So I mean, yeah, some people wanted Brexit. If those people had some sort of sinister behind-the-scenes power to bring it about, you have to wonder why Brexit only actually happened after the referendum vote and not in the decades prior, during which those very same people had been continually agitating for it. >the elite only allowed the vote because they knew how it would go Clearly not, in this case. Remain was forecasted to win, and David Cameron called the referendum because he felt confident that remain would win. >they would've brexited even if remain won This also is obviously not the case. David Cameron would have remained Prime Minister. He was always in favor of EU membership, remaining in the EU was part of the policy platform of his party, and he would have been under much less pressure from Brexiteers than he was before the referendum. >What is not possible is that the elites wanted to remain but were forced to leave by the vote This is in fact what happened. David Cameron resigned after losing the vote and was replaced by someone committed to implementing Brexit.

jen20 1mo ago

Absurd to suggest that anyone voting for Brexit knew what they were voting for - by design of the pro-Brexit shysters.

nannal 1mo ago
Not sure that's an argument that shines good light on brexit voters.
- spacedcowboy 1mo ago
  To be fair (a) I don't think he was trying to do that, and (b) I'm struggling to think of an argument that would shine good light on brexit voters ? Perhaps that they're wonderfully trusting people who believe whatever politicians that Gary down the pub thinks are the best ?
  - tialaramex 1mo ago
    To take my mother as an example she hadn't thought about it properly at all. She was surprised that her daughter (my sister) had voted Remain because apparently my mother who knows about the EU funding which enabled what my sister did, hadn't connected "EU funding" to the EU she was voting to Leave. "Oh" was basically all she had to say about that. In the broader scheme of things you could also see this in the response of Brexiteers who were stunned that, as non members they now weren't able to travel freely across borders. Voters aren't very bright because they're people, you've met people. I used to think that FPTP was a good idea because it's so simple that "The candidate who had more votes won" means the idiots won't be confused by the outcome. We saw that they're confused anyway, so, fine, since apparently simplicity wasn't achievable we should use a more complicated voting system with better outcomes.
    - DangitBobby 1mo ago
      If voters can't understand ranked choice voting or similar, how could we possibly expect them to understand the impact of what they are voting on? It's a self-defeating argument.

bsian 1mo ago

Not only the Brits. Take a look at this, especially the charts, and compare it to what us Europeans are getting - that's democracy for you. https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-05-07/seven-out-of-10-europeans-believe-their-country-takes-in-too-many-immigrants.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-05-07/seven-ou...

mattlondon 1mo ago

The sad thing of course was that the people coming across on boats or clinging to the underside of lorries etc are not EU citizens arriving legally. Plus it's not like EU is the only source of migration (hellow commonwealth). I think that the Brexit vote landed at a time when there was increasing general alienation within society, a general feeling of growing wealth inequality, of social injustice etc. We saw it with Trump's election, we saw it with Brexit. We'll probably see it with a reform majority in the UK parliament next election too. There are global trends that the PM of the UK cannot change, but we live in a world of instant gratification so if the current PM can't make things change literally overnight, people are angry and annoyed. Go read the comments section on any UK newspaper (left or right, tabloid or broadsheet) and the comments are really eye-opening (recommend doing this to at least get a flawed and partial cross section of what the vibe is). People are quick to anger and quick to point fingers. Might explain why we've had so many PMs these past few years.

gib444 1mo ago
> I think that the Brexit vote landed at a time when there was increasing general alienation within society, a general feeling of growing wealth inequality, of social injustice etc Hmm GDP was growing well, inflation was down, real household income was on the rise, annual wage growth was on the up, it was a long time since the great financial crash, unemployment was crashing in 2013/2014, and things comparatively were quite cheap. Though I can't recall the general sentiment at the time. Net migration did have an historic spike (part of a longer term rise) for a couple of years. Perhaps the Brexit campaigners capitalised solely on that? Crazy to imagine that economically things were doing great, by many metrics, but so many people got duped into thinking some foreigners were going to tank everything (Personally, it was a fantastic period. Wages were good, jobs were good, things were cheap. I know many people who bought their first house during that period)
- mattlondon 1mo ago
  While the economy may have been doing ok and all that, I think its still a lot to do with the feeling that everyone around you is doing _better_, and the increasingly prevalent need for instant-gratification. A lot of this probably comes down to cheap-credit. I am by rights in the top 1% of national income in my senior-ish BigCo job, yet I look around at the traffic lights and I am surrounded by Range Rovers, Teslas, Porches SUVs etc. I dont think I could afford one of those (I tend to buy 3 or 4 year old cars outright), yet the stats say I earn more than 99% of people ... either most days I am surrounded by the 0.1% club, or people are spending a lot of their income in PCP etc. Is it a matter of "keeping up with the jonses"? Are people thinking "Well these people around me are driving nice cars and I am not, so clearly I am getting dicked over here somehow and everyone else is earning boatloads and I am not." Replace nice cars with expensive holidays, house renovations, latest iphone, latest shoes/handbag or whatever. And all amplified and magnified by social media. Its all the same: conspicuous status baubles making people feel like they're on the loser end of the spectrum. See enough of that over and over (and you will if you use social media) and it'll shift your world views.

dofm 1mo ago

FWIW, Brexit was never, ever, ever about stopping migration. It was about right wing elites deciding which migrants they wanted, and at best about regaining control of that policy from the EU. It was sold in a racist and bigoted way. The reason we have less control over illegal migration is exactly Brexit, which, as people were warned at the time, torpedoed our actually cushioned position with respect to "first safe country" asylum rules, and meant we had no cross-border agreements with France. The "Brexit" that people thought they were getting was always in their own mind because it had no definition. It was an imaginary victory which only has downsides, just as was pointed out.

kingleopold 1mo ago
no it was %90 about that finance and regulation thing for sharing banking and finance data to EU and related, I even fully forgot what was it. It was well hidden and among years it got lost but this was mainn reason. They will not tell you this unless you really deeply read it and see it.