Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Article 50 - Exit of EU

They did - Daniel Hannan has been on Daily Politics and other progs many times as a leading spokesman of the leave campaign.

Enter his name on YouTube

Happy to be corrected that it wasn't just the northerners. Perhaps fairer to say those outside the affluent south. Those who thought they'd be better of without the wealth creators bank rolling their benefits!

IMHO

A wide spectrum of voters had cause to vote leave. I was surprised to see that most of the West Country also voted leave.

This was a perfect storm of disenchantment amongst the voters for many different reasons.

Caroline Flint (Labour Doncaster) was on local news last night still arguing that Labour politicians should have done more to educate Labour voters into voting Remain.

Since when was it the role of politicians to lobby voters which way to vote? The Labour party should have listened to its core vote and recognised that the party was out of step with the reality.

Surely that's exactly the job of politicians?

Many people vote out thinking that this would enable immigration to be controlled and reduced. Now we find out it won't.

Many people voted out because they felt that the money we spend on the EU would be better spent on public services like the NHS. Now we find out that the leading Brexiteers have no intention of doing so.

Many people voted out because they thought that the EU would give us an easy ride and allow us to carry on pretty much as before. Now we find out that isn't going to happen.

Many people voted out because they thought they'd be better off - and in this case event the Brexiteers were warning beforehand that this isn't going to happen.

The only people warning of this before the referendum were politicians and political activists, and they clearly didn't do a good enough job, being dismissed as scaremongering.

People for whatever reason chose to ignore the warnings and the evidence, and now it is they, not the politicians, who will bear the brunt of the increasing unemployment, increasing inflation, and recession which even the most optimistic Brexiteers accept will happen unless someone manages to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

One potential scenario is that the Conservatives will be unable to find a leader who has sufficient commitment to trigger Article 50, and we'll end up with a General Election being called. Both Conservatives and Labour (after binning Corbyn) will campaign on the basis of remaining in the EU, UKIP will campaign on the basis of leaving, and will get roughly the same level of support that they did in the last GE.

I could easily be argued that voters have been mislead on both sides. There is a very interesting parliamentary petition asking for a revote that now has 3.1m names and gaining more at quite a rate.

May I respectfully remind you that the poll on this forum was 50% out and only 35% remain

I found this page the best summary of the situation I've seen so far.

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brex...t-institutions/
Nick

Whichever way you look at it, 17.4 million voters voted out. Were they all misinformed or loonies?

When Politicians use threats and bullying to persuade voters, this will never turn out well. Politicians are seen as dishonest by many. The millionaires and wealthy who rolled out to lobby are generally not taken seriously, certainly not by "Northerners", and many others by the look.

The EU operate a bullying style of management - this is clear from what has emerged in the last couple of days, and I think that what lies ahead is likely to be difficult.

Politicians should represent their constituency, and at the very least the sitting MP should listen to their core voters. How many sitting MP's I wonder held meetings with core supporters to establish their true feelings. That's where influence can be applied.
Labour totally misjudged the mood.

Excellent read Nick. Thanks for posting.

Clearly not. Evidently many were well-informed about the likely outcomes of an exit from the EU and felt that the negative economic and social impacts were worth the perceived benefit to the nation. Presumably these people have in the past and will continue to vote for UKIP - assuming it doesn't dissolve itself.

We have seen that the Conservative Brexiteers were more in it for their own interest rather than that of the country - witness Johnson and Gove's frantic backpedalling on triggering Article 50. All the other political parties were committed to remaining in the EU.



Couldn't agree with you more. The problem for Labour is that with the hard left in ascendancy, the attitude to EU was always going to be lukewarm at best.

But the fact remains that, however strong the groundswell of public opinion, the decision to leave the EU was probably not objectively the best strategy in the circumstances from an economic perspective - which is why so many experts were advising that remain was the best course of action.

One can easily imagine that if there was a referendum on whether the government guidelines on drinking alcohol were relaxed, there would be a clear majority in favour - but one would hardly expect the medical profession to agree that ad-lib alcohol consumption is beneficial to one's health.