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Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

bbc.com

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Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#51

Post by CaptainZapp »

awjr wrote: post #30
lordnacho wrote: post #7

I can say the vitriol after the result has been crazy. My FB has dozens and dozens of posts from Remoaners decrying the idiots, racists, and old people who dared to vote against their righteous interest. At least there's a bit of humour now that England have been booted out of the European Championship. And it's all come out AFTER the result. Before the result, I suppose people thought it would go to Remain, but also…

Although I voted remain, I almost voted leave. There are good, very good reasons to leave. There are very very good reasons to remain and 'fix' from the inside. However a friend on FB unfriended me after he declared all leavers were racist idiots. I suggested we need to understand why people voted leave. I tried to point out that the rise of the far right within Europe might be down to EU policies. I think there are…

  However a friend on FB unfriended me after he declared all leavers were racist idiots
That is certainly wrong and pretty much bullshit. What is true, though, is that virtually all racist idiots voted leave.

John Scalzi put it much more succinctly:

(from http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/06/22/hey-scalzi-do-you-have...) :

"Two, while not everyone who might vote “Leave” is an appalling racist and/or low-information nationalist, it’s pretty clear that nearly every appalling racist/low-info nationalist is voting “Leave,” and that the people engineering the Leave vote are perfectly happy to leverage those folks to get what they want. If you find yourself on the same side as appalling racists/ignorant “patriots”, you might ask yourself why, and additionally whether you might be more appalling and/or ignorant than you’d like to admit."

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#52

Post by Oletros »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #11
airesQ wrote: post #6

Leave says that the EU in undemocratic. But the EU is a democracy. It is certainly much more democratic than the British first-past-the-post and the house of Lords. Saying that the EU in undemocratic is just a meme. Then there is the question about the UK contributions. The UK does get its money worth, by the profit made trading in one of the biggest markets in the world (and with the countries that have trade deals…

> "is just a meme" Yeah, it's just a meme... just like we couldn't possibly trade in the EU without a trade deal is just a meme... or that all Leave campaigners are racist/stupid is just a meme...

> just like we couldn't possibly trade in the EU without a trade deal is just a meme

This is not what has been said, what has been said is that UK can't have the same trade deals they have right now without the duties they have right now.

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#53

Post by 7Z7 »

IshKebab wrote: post #18
lordnacho wrote: post #7

I can say the vitriol after the result has been crazy. My FB has dozens and dozens of posts from Remoaners decrying the idiots, racists, and old people who dared to vote against their righteous interest. At least there's a bit of humour now that England have been booted out of the European Championship. And it's all come out AFTER the result. Before the result, I suppose people thought it would go to Remain, but also…

> And it's all come out AFTER the result. The is actually a very good point. People are acting like it was all incredibly obvious that voting Leave was a terrible thing to do. But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to the average voter. A lot of the blame for that has to go to the media who printed anything the Leave campaign said even if it wasn't true (the £350m thing especially). I don't think it's fa…

>> And it's all come out AFTER the result.

>The is actually a very good point. People are acting like it was all incredibly obvious that voting Leave was a terrible thing to do. But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to the average voter.

I cannot disagree with you hard enough. All of the things that are "coming out" now were refuted during the lead up to the referendum, not only by the Remain campaigners, but by the experts the Leave campaign was so clever to disqualify. The was a handful of people/companies/economists that sided with Leave, while the lion's share was solidly with Remain - and they all said it was a terrible thing to do.

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#54

Post by nickserv »

jstanley wrote: post #28
simonh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland held a referendum on stopping freedom of movement with the EU, which passed. The EU refused to even discuss it and the borders are still open and that's not going to change unless Switzerland wants to cancel all it's EU deals. Which isn't going to happen. Legally, referendums in the UK are advisory only.

> the borders are still open I'm not sure where you draw the line for this, but last time I went into Switzerland I had my passport checked at the border.

If you're not a citizen of a country in the Schengen area then you'll need a passport.

And random checks at the border are permitted (i.e. contraband, people trafficking).

Also a country is allowed to re-implement border controls in case of crisis.

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#55

Post by throwaway049 »

switch007 wrote: post #10
ZenoArrow wrote: post #3

I'm starting to think that the book Manufacturing Consent should be part of our school curriculum. I'd suggest seeing through media spin is a very useful life skill. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

The corrupt have already got their hands on education - 40% of schools are acadamies. I don't see Noam Chomsky being included in the curriculum, ever!

I don't have any fondness for the Academy system, but I don't think Noam Chomsky was on the National Curriculum in LEA schools either.

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#56

Post by jkot »

> some of those who campaigned for Leave are now distancing themselves from this claim. Some have gone as far as admitting that it had been a mistake.

So some people said something, and some other said something else, and some other changed their mind. I would really expect better journalism from BBC. Amateur bloggers are doing better job.

If BBC did their job in the first place, Brexit would never win. It would be very simple to debung £350m figure and explain how EU works. Instead they pushed their own political agenda.

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#57

Post by nickserv »

sgift wrote: post #47
jstanley wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the borders are still open I'm not sure where you draw the line for this, but last time I went into Switzerland I had my passport checked at the border.

That's because Switzerland isn't part of the Schengen area, not because of the referendum. The referendum was about immigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...

"All four European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member states – Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland – have signed agreements on association with the Schengen Agreement, even though they are outside the EU"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#58

Post by ZenoArrow »

abpavel wrote: post #17

That mandate of the EU is, and always was, to prevent WW3. That is its raison d'être, and all decisions branch out from not wanting to repeat past mistakes, and end up like Serbia/Croatia in 1996. You can point out Swiss all you want, but Switzerland is as special is the City of London (not London city).

> "That mandate of the EU is, and always was, to prevent WW3."

Sort of. Many see that start of the EU was the ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community). Robert Schuman proposed it in 1950 to "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...

However, the ideas behind the EU started before the ECSC. Jean Monnet is regarded by many to be the 'father' of the EU. Here's a quote from a speech he gave in 1943...

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Monnet

"There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection…. The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit."

Furthermore, there have been other groups that have promoted peace in the region, namely NATO and OSCE. The agreement that led to NATO was signed in 1949, and OSCE was started in 1975, well ahead of the formation of the political union of the EU (the ECSC and EEC were mostly trade deals).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_...

It's also worth noting that there was a failed attempt to build a pan-European military in 1952, and that Jean-Claude Junckher has indicated the EU may want its own army in the future:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Defence_Community

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/08/jean-claude-ju...

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#59

Post by crdoconnor »

Brakenshire wrote: post #22

People are critical of the flagrant dishonesty of the Leave campaign, the way that all concerns were dismissed with the 'Project Fear' or 'the British public has had enough of experts' thought terminating cliches, and now the refusal to admit that the public have been lied to, and the new tendency to blame Remain voters and the EU for 'talking down the economy', or for requiring now what everyone knew would be the ca…

>People are critical of the flagrant dishonesty of the Leave campaign

It's not like the remain campaign was much more honest, and the level of scaremongering was absurd.

Beyond the pale is the number of complaints that the sky has, in fact, fallen in because the FTSE has plunged and the pound has dropped.

As if people from Sunderland or rural Wales were concerned about the cost of holidaying the Riviera or taking a hit on their non-existent stock portfolios.

>He has also effectively promised major restrictions of immigration alongside access to the single market, which everyone knew was impossible

Case in point. We'll continue to trade with Europe even without unrestricted immigration - it just won't be tarriff free trade. Nonetheless, the tarriff level will be throttled by WTO rules anyhow. Average tarriffs with the US is I think something like 2%. Not a sky falling figure that.

Re: Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds?

#60

Post by CaptainZapp »

sgift wrote: post #47
jstanley wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the borders are still open I'm not sure where you draw the line for this, but last time I went into Switzerland I had my passport checked at the border.

That's because Switzerland isn't part of the Schengen area, not because of the referendum. The referendum was about immigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...

  That's because Switzerland isn't part of the Schengen area
That's wrong. Since 2008 Switzerland is definitely part of the Schengen area. While the UK is not.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area)

So if you fly in from the UK (or any non-Schengen country) you need t show a passport. As is the case in any other Schengen country.

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