@3luckystars
I don’t think so. I know one very intelligent person who voted to leave. She felt the system ‘wasn’t working’ and voted to leave. She regrets it now but there is no point looking back before Brexit with rose tinted glasses. I think the UK did need a change, but not this. You were sold a pup. No point getting mad at the people who were lied to. Get mad at the liars.
The problem with this is that the people who were lied to will continue to be lied to, and many of them continue to believe those lies, with disastrous consequences not just for themselves but for me, my family and everyone else. Just look at their touching faith in our glorious prime minister who, after achieving some of the WORST results in the WORLD in response to the pandemic, on top of a decade of Tory austerity that has decimated living standards and exacerbated inequality to no particular advantage for anyone but the rich, looks like romping home in another election victory next time.
Brexit was not some isolated anomaly. It was just a particularly visible symptom of the poor political education, ingrained deference to the ruling class, xenophobia, small mindedness, kneejerk conservatism and selective gullability of the English electorate (which is not to say that every Leave voter was motivated by all those factors; but just that the combination of all of them delivered a majority across the electorate).
Leaving aside the many things this government have got disastrously wrong, no elector with any sense, access to information and ANY respect for genuine, fair, open democracy could possibly vote for them just on the basis of the inexorable slide into fascism that we're experiencing (voter ID bill; police crime and sentencing bill etc.). But they will, and it will continue to get worse.
Of course when the left point these things out, or when Remain activists pointed them out to Leavers, they're being "condescending". It's all the fault of the horrible Metropolitan Liberal Elite for showing their contempt of the patriotic working class you see - to which the natural response is two fingers up and a heroic "F.U."
Yet now that those decisions made on the basis of misguided, ill-informed patriotism DO turn out to be idiotic, it's suddenly terribly important that we don't SAY so, that we're all nice to each and understand that everybody was just doing their best.
F* that. Yes, I have to live with the consequences of other people imposing this crap on me. What I don't have to do is make them feel better about themselves be calling it anything other than what it is.