E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

I hadn't read that article before, and I do like challenging my own preconceptions and biases.

I accept the premise that we shouldn't dismiss those who voted leave because they voted according to their values, even knowing full well that it will probably make them worse off; however that article completely fails to address the point that people who voted to remain also voted according to their ideals.

I firmly believe that the EU has done far more good than harm. I firmly agree with the original premise of the EU as an institution: to bring European countries closer together in order to foster peace and reduce the chance of another devastating war. I firmly believe that our sovereignty is in no way harmed or affected by being part of the EU. Those are some of my values - I'm fairly certain that these are not values that are unique to me alone. But apparently this makes me a traitor, a whining remainer, a threat to our democratic values, worthy of contempt.

If we actually had a functioning democracy which could countenance even the merest hint of a compromise then we might have a chance of making this work. But we don't have that. We still wouldn't have that if Labour, any other party, or even a grand coalition of parties were in power. Our party politics and archaic voting system is inherently divisive, adversarial, and leaves little room for compromise. As the Tory party have handily demonstrated over the last few years, it doesn't even matter if the party with the most seats can't command an outright majority and has to enter into an agreement with a minor party in order to make up the difference. The divisiveness of Brexit has only exacerbated this inability to compromise - heels are digging in harder than heels have ever dug in.

It makes no difference which "side" comes out on top at the end of this game: nobody is going to win.

 

That is fine, as long as those who voted according to their values knowing full well that it will probably make them worse off, are prepared to live with the consequences and don't expect me to support them.

EDIT: more taking back control!

 

Everything it touches, dies.

 

That's a good article by Gary Younge. That's the thing, the mainly middle-class remainers still cannot understand why some voted for Brexit despite standing more to lose than the more well-off. But instead of trying to understand we get a lot of mocking on both sides, unfortunately a lot of remainers as well as leavers. I am a remainer but I am becoming more disillusioned with some parts of the remain camp and the way they're behaving. I read a lot of comments in the Guardian by remainers that paint brexiters as bigoted, Farage lovers, thickos etc, painting all of them with the same brush and we're falling into the same trap all over again by arrogantly dismissing them as fools, not learning the lessons after losing the 2016 referendum. And then the same cycle repeated all over again every time a factory, a plant, shops get closed down, smug cacophony of "Oh look, what did we say, we warned you!" We got to stop it.

 

That might have something to do with their loudest advocates and spokespeople being bigots, Farage, thickos etc. I mean, Mark Francois.

This was inevitable. Brexit is going to incur costs. Leavers may be OK with that; it may be a price they are prepared to pay. But Remainers will be paying those costs also, and they didn't vote for that. So they are pissed off, and want to see Leavers suffer the costs too.

Moreover, many of those middle-class Remainers are just the sort of people who have been sticking up for the disenfranchised poor who voted Leave; they're the teachers, social workers, NHS workers who idealistically pour their heart and soul into stressful, under-resourced jobs, often fighting for the rights, welfare and wellbeing typically of the disenfranchised in society. And then the people who they try to help vote against those ideals, and to become poorer. Those middle-class Remainers kind of feel betrayed.

Remainers perceive themselves to be the victims here, so they are not going to feel noble about it.

 

remainers are also the ones being called traitors, sabotours, enemies of the people, told to go home and all of that...

...but according to leavers, they're supposed to just sit there and take the abuse becase 'people voted, get over it'.

**** that.

 

Well I read that Guardian article and all I could think of was how much it sounded like anti-vaxxers.

Acting according to your ideals isn't some moral high ground, doubly so if your ideals are centred on self destruction, xenophobia and the suffering of others. On that note, I'm sure that like anti-vaxxers these people will be first in line demanding that the state protect them from their actions. Actually scratch that, they already are those people, I deal with them regularly and they're the ones who will act surprised when the various subsidies they don't receive directly but rely on to survive suddenly dry up (like say, NHS subsidies on eye testing, prescriptions, or government/local council subsidies on public transport).

Anyway, I can't help but feel remainers have been too nice. I don't remember seeing many remainers spitting at brexiteers, nor do I remember seeing many effigees of brexiteers being strung up. Maybe if Farage and chums had been met with the same wall of intimidation they like to point at others they would have crawled back under their rocks years ago.

 

Stooping to their level would be a bad idea. They'd beat people with decades of jingoistic ******** experience.

There is no "beating" the leaver mentality without a lobotomy of the loudest asshats campaigning for it. The fact that leavers still support leave politicians that don't live in the country, have said they'll leave the country if Brexit is a disaster, have moved their business headquarters.. yeah. They're idiots, and there's no winning arguments with idiots.

 

Did you even read my post? It wasn't a good article, his arguments fail to stand up to scrutiny. It completely fails to try and bridge the gap between remain and leave supporters because it only addresses one side - and frankly it comes off as more than a little patronising in many places.

 

Well it is bloody hard to understand the leavers, because if you find one who doesn't reduce Brexit to vague ideas and cheap slogans then you can be sure a second leaver will turn up to tell the first leaver that they are doing Brexit wrong.

On an another note, this is rather funny:

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If there was an early GE that would result in the Brexit Party having to form a government, but they wouldn't have enough MPs to run the show...
forcing them into a coalition with the Tories and DUP, while Labour and Lib Dems would be at each others throat over which one of them is the real opposition (plus the SNP being the SNP).

The resulting chaos wouldn't be fit to run the snadbox in a remote village of some banana republic.

Of course the whole thing is hypothetical as the Tories won't bring down their own government so they can prop up the Brexit Party after an early GE.

 

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Yeah, dodged a bullet there.

But look at what it took:
The Party in 2nd has no manifesto beyond Brexit
The Party in 3rd has no leader and is responsible for a decade of austerity
The Party in 4th is a staunch remain party running in a leave constituency

So despite winning Labour really ought to try harder to get on the side of voters.

 

Considering the mess of Labour this result surprises me. I thought in a staunch Tory seat, and angry Tories go to the 'new' Brexit Party (it's not new, it's UKIP 2.0 as UKIP become EDL 2.0), that the Brexit Party would have taken it.

 

Cue tories running with 'vote farage, get corbyn'...

Cue labour trying to convince people this 'victory' is a validation of their strategy to date.

 

And that it had nothing to do with Brexit...

 

Peterborough is a flip flop seat that's always been about half Tory half Lab. It looks like Labour have lost about a third of their vote to Brexit, whilst the Cons have lost more than half, turning Peterborough into a three party town. It's says a lot of the state of the Cons right now that even Labour can do better at the polls than they can.

 

You're quite right.

Just had a quick check, Tories and Labour tanked didn't they. Interestingly, no matter the "we're a new party" nonsense, the Brexit Party has taken the UKIP vote. They took 2-2.5k more than the last time UKIP ran and the Lib Dems are up a similar amount.

No wonder everyone is reading how they want to read it.

 

Plus being a hig-profile byelection you had all the crazies and minor parties chanching it and shaving off votes here and there...

 

Lol, aye. Common Good catches my eye, Dick Rodgers surely has to be a made up name?

 

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