Leave voters were conditioned and encouraged to 'take control' and form their own opinions about what leaving meant. This was an exploitation by experienced political campaigners and it is not something that I actively blame on Leavers. Nor do I think them stupid in any way. Who doesn't want hope? There is a human need for hope that we hold on to right up until death.
It was also very difficult against that for the Remain campaign to get people excited and have confidence about 'an on balance' argument for Remain especially when the EU DOES have a lot of flaws even if you are an ardent pro-European.
The leave campaign was a hugely positive, hopeful and optimistic beast. Of course that's how people would like to see the future. Good people act in good faith. The trouble is that politicians don't always.
Remain conversely was trying to promote something that was tainted by this idea of corruption, the disaster of the greek crisis and the migrant crisis. How do make something positive out of that? Its easy to vote against it quite reasonably and logically.
There are positive things in the EU, but its a much tougher sell especially to people who are actively looking for a positive and hopeful future. This is a quality that is not a bad one. And the negative possibilities and practicalities of Brexit merely fell through the cracks of a desperate need for hope.
Nationalism has a history of being sold as the cure and solution to every mans problems. People by nature want things to get better and if everything else has failed will be sway by it. It is not because they are bad people themselves. They just see the need and case for change.
I think the real failing was always the inability of Remain to promote liberal ideas of democracy and human rights as being central to the European Project in the right way. How NI was thrown under the bus with that in mind, utterly disgusts me, and it utterly disgusts me how Theresa May's government has continued to do that since the result. Equally so, the situation of EU nationals living here and British Citizens living in the EU. They fell through the cracks.
In terms of 'what do they expect would happen if they ?' the simple answer is they expected that things would improve both economically and socially. Its in every study about how people voted it comes back to this optimism and positivity about the leave vote. They did not vote to get poorer. They did not vote to kick people out. They just voted for things to 'get better' somehow. Remain voters totally fail to understand this properly most of the time.
So when Remain voters go on about how bad Brexit is, they are seen to be trying to take away that hope and that optimism. No wonder it gets such a hostile reaction.
Immigration has created problems but it is not the root cause of them. It goes much deeper. No one has adequately challenged this view. They just drag out rather dry statistics over how money immigrants bring to the country or how many doctors we need. But there is no alternative explanation of why things are like they are - in part because they requires an addition from all three of the major parties about how they have all contributed to fucking the country up over the last 25 years in some way. No one want to take responsibility for that, and instead just want to point the finger of blame.
'Mayism' so far has been characterised as a strategic placing of blame on one group and then the next and the next to shift focus from who is really responsible. It has happened with how May is handling Brexit, but its perhaps easier to see in how May shift blame from patients miss using the service, to gps, to the head of the NHS etc etc on a daily basis.
If May manages to get away with blaming the collapse of the NHS on everyone but herself, she'll do the same for everything else she touches.
I don't know what the answer is, because no one is holding anyone to account properly. The press and politicians are all intent on their point scoring rather than focusing on the issues and actually working - and working together - to improve things in the national interest.
Reality will hit eventually. It has to, simply because every single person who voted to Leave has a different vision of what it means because that's what they were supposed to do and were encouraged to do. It therefore can not ever match reality, but its a fiction and people will slowly have hopes crushed bit by bit. Many Leavers in their heart know this to an extent, but that's not the point. They want to believe and have hope. Who doesn't? Equally Remainers really don't want to crush anyone's dream, they just want an honest and frank conversation on what is going to happen now. Something no one is willing to do on the leave side, because to do so is to give up on the dream.
The only question remains who will be blamed for the removal of the dream - will it be those who are charged with delivering Brexit or those who have merely pointed out the reality of the situation. That's ultimately anyone who does not agree or support Brexit wholeheartedly and without question because its a belief system rather than a policy.
I fear that what happens in the US in the next few months has the potential to make people start to realise how precious those ideals that the EU were founded are. I hope I am wrong, but I think things will get very nasty there.
Its so depressing. No one can ever really 'win'. And I wish people from both sides would stop seeing it all in such Black and White terms. We ALL lost the referendum.