to be glad that the Guardian is making enormous losses

[longfingernails]

www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-losses-reported-to-have-escalated-by-a-further-10m-to-68-7m-for-the-last-financial-year/

Great stuff. Their chatterati condescension, Islington moral vacuum and politically correct echo chamber has been a malignant blot upon our society for decades.

Let it wither upon the Viner.

and telling them afterwards (or before) that they are wrong is futile.

Remain's emotion was never contempt

"We're keen young graduates talking to Northerners who didn't even go to university".

Source for that quote please?

Please also address the contempt of the leave campaign.

You know they made £100 bn worth of spending claims, that they could never enact, you know not being in charge of the government, but also all with the "saved" money from our EU contributions?

On your stuff about "parties" not listening, this was not an election. Which is what allowed the leave campaign to make all of the promises and to mislead the electorate so much. Its a case of moral hazard, the leave campaign risked nothing, but those that they got to vote out did.

"Telling them that they are "wrong" is for losers: you need to make them right"

Is fine when you are dealing with two sides that are making factually based policy claims and have a chance of getting into power. This was not the case in the referendum which allowed the leave campaign to mislead the people that voted for them so much.

Also discussing the "electorate" in the case of the referendum is not accurate, there was no election, there were no policies to which an elected party could be held.

In essence this was a mass opinion poll, which won on a very small majority for one side.

It allowed the leave side to be incredibly mendacious in their campaign and to mislead those who backed them.

It's a paraphrase of the Toynbee article we've previously discussed, which was dripping with contempt. You don't agree. But we lost.

You know they made £100 bn worth of spending claims,

Yeah, they were liars. We needed a campaign which clearly exposed those lies. This is perfectly possible: the Tory "Labour's Tax Bombshell" campaign failed, for example. Instead we basically said "they're wrong for reasons we can't articulate clearly but you would be able to see they're wrong if only you were as clever as us".

Alan Johnson telling everyone they'd need visas to go to Spain just like in the 1970s is hardly the basis for claiming that we (a) didn't lie (b) didn't talk crap (c) were led by competent politicians.

This was not the case in the referendum which allowed the leave campaign to mislead the people that voted for them so much.

Yes, that's probably true. But as the Remain campaign refused to even discuss the issues the electorate wanted to talk about (immigration: you're racist and every single immigrant is a complete benefit to the country and we will have no discussion about it, Turkey: you're racist and anyway it isn't going to happen even though we have said we want it to happen, etc) and instead just talked technocratically, Leave were with hindsight going to win anyway. I've quoted this from Ann Black before, but it bears repetition:

On the referendum campaign I believed that this had been lost over decades. For the last three Euro-elections, under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, the NEC was told not to mention Europe because it turned voters off. In 2005 Tony Blair said that thirty-four per cent of strawberries were picked by Poles, and migrant workers helped to prevent inflation by keeping wage rises down. More recently we were assured, despite protestations, that UKIP would take votes only from the Tories and not from Labour. My view remains that no leader could have made up more than a million votes in a few short months.

It was a shit campaign. Are you claiming that Remain fought a campaign whose only problem was the lies of Leave? Surely not?

"We needed a campaign which clearly exposed those lies"

The lies were clearly exposed, by the remain camp, the fact checking sites, by the debates.

I'm not saying that the campaign was great, but its hard to go against a campaign that is so disingenuous and one that tells people exactly what they want to here, yet with no responsibility to carry out any of the actions it campaigns for.

The lies were clearly exposed, by the remain camp, the fact checking sites, by the debates.

That's echo chamber stuff. Only the wonkiest of wonks looks at fact checking sites, and telling which ones are actually factual is a problem. Only political obsessives watch debates as anything other than blood sport. The electorate aren't taking notes.

The lies weren't exposed, as people continued to believe them. The lies were pointed out so that people who were going to vote Remain anyway could shake their heads and lament the dishonesty of the Leave campaign, but that's a different thing.

"Only the wonkiest of wonks looks at fact checking sites, and telling which ones are actually factual is a problem. Only political obsessives watch debates as anything other than blood sport. The electorate aren't taking notes."

Who is being contemptuous of the electorate now?

The lies were exposed, people chose to continue believing them, who would blame them after immigration and the EU have been blamed for all sorts of things effect people's lives but in actuality have very little to do with them.

The lies were not pointed out so people who were voting remain could shake their heads.

You are the one who is contemptuous of the electorate, you've just slandered both sides.

I don't believe you were a remain campaigner either, I think you've adopted that position in order to add weight to your claims

I don't believe you were a remain campaigner either

And on that charming note, good night.

Interestingly the Guardian (might be Observer, I don't know how you tell which on the website) has an article today about how political debate and discussion is becoming increasingly violent and aggressive in its imagery and language (not a very good article, and the authors couldn't resist using it to denigrate the usual suspects). And then this piece from Nick Cohen

Extremism thrives because of cowardly collaborators www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/30/donlad-trump-republicans-us-elections-dictatorship

I have been shocked and upset by many articles in the Guardian recently but the penultimate paragraph of this made me gasp at the ugliness of what Cohen has written and the depths to which the paper is prepared to sink. Essentially, Cohen likens Corbyn supporters to the murderer of Jo Cox. More smear tactics. More division. More lowering the level of debate. I think I am going to stop reading it again as I just feel it is degrading to be exposed to this type of writing.

I would be interested in any suggestions anyone has for good sources of online news. The Independent isn't much better and I don't find the BBC news site very inspiring. Any ideas?

You're being really rude to Cub

Caught out eh?

Oh fuck off. It's impossible to proceed: I was out on doorsteps and on stands with Labour, but obviously I can't prove that. You appear to have all the answers, and you're very proud of your role in a winning campaign. I'm ashamed of the fact that we lost, and horrified about the future. But there is no point in turning over the events, and trying to find what might happen in the future (for example, if we did by some miracle get a second referendum, we'll lose it, because people like you aren't willing to try to understand why we lost the first one).

But I'm happy you to be content in your knowledge that you have all the answers. Why did we lose, with geniuses like you on the campaign?

I don't see any problem with the Nick Cohen article, what depths does it stoop to? To call out extremism ?

"Why did we lose, with geniuses like you on the campaign?"

Because, if we did have you on the campaign, you couldn't articulate your argument for well enough. My borough voted in, and I'm proud of that, because when we started campaigning it certainly didn't look like it. We were told by lots of people that we'd changed minds by destroying the lies of the leave group.

also: " because people like you aren't willing to try to understand why we lost the first one"

The reason we lost the first one is that we couldn't offer all things to all men as the leave campaign did.

They'd stop immigration.

They'd make services better by spending more on it.

Fishermen would be able to go back to what they did prior to the EU ( and of course the Cod wars).

Regulations that stifle business would be slashed ( negating that it would be mainly employment regulations).

Your point earlier about people not watching debates shows how much you underestimate the electorate,as does your points about "convincing" them.

Of course the remain campaign couldn't convince those who were blatantly lied to, many of whom now realise it.

It actually exposes how bad a referendum on this issue was, one side were constrained by what is actually possible, the other were able to make promises of rainbows and unicorns, and essentially devisevly and deliveberately played on people's grievences and blamed them all on the EU.

My native north east, and my DPs native Cornwall are all hoping that they get the same funding that they would have done from the EU. In no way will this happen, the referendum has made a massive gap appear in our country and in the way we think about our nation as a collective, those that voted out because they don't want to "pay" for the EU, won't want to pay for other parts of the country either. The leave debate brought it down to the lowest common denominators of how to win an election, nationalism, xenophobia, fear of the unknown and the reluctance to distribute wealth.

"The lies weren't exposed, as people continued to believe them. The lies were pointed out so that people who were going to vote Remain anyway could shake their heads and lament the dishonesty of the Leave campaign, but that's a different thing"

This was demonstrably untrue, at least on MN.

I know, because I challenged specific things I had some knowledge of.

I found that often people had taken a position and were simply completely unmoved by anything factual. They would acknowledge or not disagree that the thing they'd been told (or were actually repeating) was factually untrue, but either way simply glide over it and pop up with unchanged views as if nothing had been said.

That's post-truth politics. When it's not that people don't have facts; it's that they don't care about facts.

And BTW you do realise with much of that post you're pulling exactly the same crap we got so bored of during the campaign, from both sides? Endlessly claiming to speak for other people and assigning them motivations all the better to slag them off?

This behaviour IS PART OF THE PROBLEM.

Ditto your bile about inward-looking, London-dwelling, out-of-touch, whoever-your-hate-list was, etc. While you have to be reminded there is UK outside cities.

Honestly, reading your posts gives me the same feeling as reading the Leave astroturfers on MN: relentless energy coupled with continual generation of half-truths, projections and strawmen: makes a good story, who cares if it's sodding true.

Something you demonstrated in particularly ugly manner upthread with your eager seizing of the terrorist murder of a priest as a Jolly Good Point for your Media Studies Thesis. And not even a squeak of acknowledgement you were wrong.

The irony of doing that on a thread about inaccuracy and omissions in reporting just adds to it.

I have you down now as "Very loud, but factually unreliable." Which is a shame, because I've got a lot out of reading the experiences and analysis of a lot of MNers during the current political shenanigans. I suspect you and I may even agree about some issues - but I don't get much out of your posts because of your continual setting fire to strawmen.

Strewth. Irony overload in a discussion about politicos presuming to tell other people what they think...

OK, MN problems, so have just refreshed before posting. Honestly, if you came across on doorsteps like you have on here, then blaming the leaflets from London... well, it's not the only issue. And I say that as someone who may well agree with you about a lot of stuff, and would like to listen to your actual experiences without your continual sodding recitation of what according to you I must be thinking.

I agree with Cuboidal's analysis of the problem of the Remain campaign. They weren't honest about Turkey who the UK have been campaigning to be allowed in to the EU for some years, about the punishment budget, about uncontrolled immigration having negative consequences for many people, about the waste and OTT bureaucacy of the EU.
I voted remain but think people who think it was an easy decision didn't look at the issues properly.
Large influxes of people prepared to take low paid jobs doesn't affect the middle classes (apart from those working in schools, housing and primary care who struggle to absorb them especially if they don't speak English) but does affect less well educated people who struggle to get those jobs and are more likely to complain if not given contracts, minimum wage etc..

Well its funny that the LSE and BOE proved that immigration doesn't cause British Nationals to be in unemployment then isn't it.

Its funny that Turkey, they were honest about, isn't going to join for many years, not the "fast track" dishonesty of the leave group. The UK may have been campaigning for years, but every country has a veto and they need to meet 32 conditions of which they have met 1.

The impact of immigration on the NHS and schools has also been proved to be fairly low, however it has been politically expedient to blame immigration for the effects of austerity.

PausingFlatly

Smallfox isn't interested in anything other than hearing her own opinions reflected back to her. Anyone who disagrees is not only wrong, but acting in bad faith. As you stated, she's basically identical to the people she despises.

No sorry even in the curse of this debate I've admitted that things I've previously thought were wrong.

I will however engage in debate as much as I like.

Not much of an intellectual challenge are you dearest?

But I'm certainly never going to admit that the remain campaing had disdain or contempt for the electorate.

Its yet another example of post truthism.

Ah, CuboidalSlipshoddy was the poster I was quoting and replying to. She is the one behaving like that.

Sorry, MN problems delayed posting.

The effect of immigration on schools and primary care has been very localised as many Eastern European immigrants tend to stick to certain towns and cities, so if you look at the UK as a whole the effect may be small but it has been large in some areas. In my GP surgery there has been a large influx of Poles, Rumanians and recently Bulgarians that the GPs complain about as they need double appointments to allow time for Languageline which the NHS pays for.
It is impossible to "prove" that Eastern European immigrants cause British nationals to be unemployed because employers will blame other factors. A large food factory near by has 3/4 East European workforce and is known for being a poor employer and preferentially recruiting East Europeans.
Ardent remain campaigners, particularly those who are London based just ignore these sorts of issues and accuse people who raise them as liars and then wonder why people vote based on what they experience not what people tell them they should be experiencing.
The same with Corbyn. People who have recently joined the Labour party know they are not all Trotskyites and ignore the media telling them that is who they are and that the best route for Labour is the Red Tory way.

Sorry about this not read the whole thread but am I wrong that essentially Cuboid and Small are both remainers but are arguing about the nuances of why the campaign went wrong?

Have to say that I agree with parts of both your arguments - that probably doesn't help but may illustrate that it is complex and multi stranded