It's interesting how the "Leave" campaign are furiously rewriting history. It seems that leave voters did so because they knew exactly what was on offer.
I heard the following reasons for voting leave from people's own mouths:
- "I'm getting on a bit and I thought it would be fun to see what happened"
- "I'd had enough of Dave"
And on here (I'm paraphrasing but the truth is in there):
- "I couldn't decide so I tossed a coin."
There was a fourth barking reason but I seem to have expunged it from my memory.
Then add in every single racist in the country (like my ex-mate Tim who just HATES foreigners in all forms and at all times).
Which of those was voting leave because they felt it would be beneficial to leave the Single Market?
I'm not saying Remain voters were perfect either but, in general, their argument for that vote is that they were pretty happy with the way things are so why change it. That seems reasonably coherent to me. Voting for no change is pretty straightforward
Make all the claims you want about the future and how wonderful it will be when we get that trade deal with Burkina Faso, kick out every single foreigner, have bobbies back on the beat and enter the sunlit uplands of life. However, the claim that all leave voters were well-informed and that their vote was a choice to leave the Single Market is utter, utter tripe.
Vin
No-one is claiming that "all" leave voters were well-informed, that is you being disingenuous trying to generalise. Equally it ignores the fact that an equal number of remainers will have been ill informed as seen by many young like the one who in a single interview (I assume a student) holding her SWP placard outside Downing street gave the NHS as No1 of her 3 favourite things about the EU.
Her 2nd choice was an eye opener with
"Its about everyone being united together and having the same opinion." This notion of everybody"having the same opinion" is one of the real problems we have at the moment because no-one seems to be able to understand that people do have differences of opinion. Some notional, some very different that don't matter much and some on key issues that really do matter but there will never be a day where everybody "has the same opinion" until we are replaced by robots.
She also stated that she would have to pay to go to France now, somehow thinking that travel across Europe was free in the EU and followed that nugget up with
"I can't see my world which i live in without paying a lot of money, which I shouldn't have to.the world is free" as if she thinks those of us who have travelled haven't had to fork out a lot of money. Costs me a fortune to take my wife and 3 kids to Portugal just in airfare. She seems to have confused the idea of free market or a free world with not having to pay for something here.
She stated that
"Nigel Farage had said that the NHS was going to get £350m" when it was nothing to do with Nigel and even then it is the remain side's false interpretation filling in the gaps to suit that has ignored the fact that it says "let's fund the NHS instead" and not spend the whole EU amount on the NHS.
This statement alone shows that she has got her facts from the skewed narrative on TV or social media where they pushed this narrative with even the gorgeous Susanna Reid having a go at Nigel for something he never said.
Back to the same young voter with her SWP placard she then went onto say
"think about our food, it's European. Everything is European and they're going to stop that trade." So she clearly here has bought the line (or imagined it) that trade will stop with Europe.
She stated that
"they want to kick people out" which no-one other than some on the remain side ever stated. Nicola Sturgeon for one because that is one of her key tactics to throw a lie and take up her opponents talking time defending themselves.
To cap it off after all this information on why the EU was "great." She was asked to give 5 words to describe Great Britain to which she ummed and ahhed and said
"Proud" and then couldn't think of anymore words to describe the country she lived in.
Of course not all remain voters were as "ill-informed" as this student was but you can;t blame many for being ill-informed when the media and remain side seemed determined not just to encourage misleading ideas but in many cases purposefully assisted in promoting them.
So yes I think we can all admit that voters on the leave side may have been ill-informed just as there will equally be as many on the remain side were ill-informed.
Being ill-informed cannot be judged by the use of what the remain side "say" the leave side said when half the time (just like Sturgeon does on every issue) the remain side continually threw misinformation around about what leave people had said. It is a tactic that has been used for a while now where these sort of activists, campaigners and politicians throw out a lie about their opponent in order to make their opponents defend themselves against the lie which then reduces their time to actually give out information.
And now we have the remain side continuing their clutching at straws stance which can easily be cleared up:
1)
"It wasn't binding:"
In the government leaflet that was sent to 29 million homes at a cost of £9m to the taxpayer it stated under the heading
THIS IS A ONCE IN A GENERATION DECISION"
This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.
29 million homes got that nugget through their letterbox let alone politicians continually stating it on the TV.
Add to that they are in there to represent us using their judgement however they didn't use their judgement. They passed that honour on to us to advise and they can;t take the result of that back.
2)
"People did not vote to leave the single market"
Well if they watched any news program, watched any debate, watched any of Cameron's and remain's dominance of the TV covering all the major TV channels or read the leaflet that went through 29 million letterboxes then it was pretty clear. The remain side emphasised the point over and over again.
3)
"If remain had won they would have been moaning too"
I totally agree but you would not have had the enormitude of entitlement and hatred that is on the streets from those who talk of "peace." It would just be a continuation of what has been going on for the past 40 years with campaigning to leave the EU and not this hatred being spewed out towards leave voters towards their own compatriots. Should we start reporting all these offending statements as hate speech?
Farage would still be moaning, People would still be moaning but they wouldn't have been as "vocal" as the remain supporters are at the moment and the BBC would most definitely not have been reporting on it in a supportive way as they constantly do at the moment. They would have ridiculed the leave side and made sure that leave protestors were nasty 'orrible people to be ignored and derided.
Of course there would be moaning but the "remainiacs" or "remoaners" (who makes up these silly names) are doing much more than moaning. They are throwing their name calling around at anybody who dare not agree with no realisation of the irony in that seeing as they normally spend most of their time complaining about anything that anybody might be offended by (whether anybody actually is offended or not) and yet here they are name calling people because they didn;t agree with them.
So Vin. I accept SOME leave voters as well as SOME remain voters were ill informed or just plain didn't know what they were voting for. However it is disingenuous to continually try to sweep up large parts of the vote under that banner and even more disingenuous to ignore that the other side equally had a portion of ill informed voters within it. It is disingenuous to say people did not know they were voting to leave the single market when it couldn't have been repeated any more than it was by the very side (remain) that now claim that no-one voted for that. How can they say people weren't voting for leaving the single market when they themselves told us that was what a leave vote would mean?
And it is disingenuous to talk of the referendum not being binding when it was made clear that the result of the referendum would be implemented BY THE REMAIN SIDE!!!!
We need to move on with this, not keep arguing about the result. We've done that bit. There will be no replay. Public poliing suggests by a large margin that no-one wants a second referendum not even after the deal despite what Tim Farron, Nick Clegg, Ed Milliband or Ken Clarke say and we need to move forward and make it work not try to undermine a decision that has already been taken.
