Remainer 'moral superiority'

[coffeeaddict]

I voted Remain but I dithered and I can see both sides of the argument. (Am I the only one?! Everyone else seems to be so polarised.)

What gets me, especially when I've read discussions on here, is all the very vociferous Remainers who talk as though they have a claim to the moral high ground.

I find the accusation that Brexiteers are 'racist' particularly weird. Europe is mostly white like us. How does race play a card? If anything, letting our borders open to all and every European (majority white) means necessarily less room for other people from different countries and therefore different races.

In fact, what is the EU? A band of rich, predominantly white countries banding together to be more powerful. Fine, this might be best for our trade and prosperity. It might be pragmatic. We might like feeling we could go and live in Spain one day. But that's not the same as being morally 'better'.

But a lot of Remainers behave as though they are inherently 'virtuous' and Brexit is inherently 'evil.'

I don't get it.

"two teachers particularly concerned about the strain on the NHS; "

Thick. Not statistically evident and a myth perpetuated by the leave campaign. EU immigrants do not have a negative effect on the NHS and a fall in immigration will mean less tax revenue without a corresponding fall in demand, so a poorer NHS. This was evident from the start.

"an art critic/curator worried about ‘blunt instrument’ legislation from Brussels ignoring local needs,"#

Thick. Do they have the same concerns about Westminster? Or were they able to articulate which particular legislation they think will change? Very little apart from employment legislation will change, and that will be to their deteriment.

" small business owner who wants more economic independence for the UK."

Thick. The economic impact of leaving will be felt far more by small businesses and the Minford model of economic indepence causes increase ( by his own admission) in unemployment and the destruction of British manufacturing and agriculture.

"I know a smart leaver" no you don't. you don't know anyone who has a valid reason for voting leave.

Cause there are none.

"The champagne socialists talking about how the ‘ill educated shouldn’t vote’ did it for me at the time. "

Not talked abut before the debate and mostly a strawman raised by leave voters after it.

" because all our heavy industry and successful production lines have moved abroad, mostly to Germany. "

No British economic policy from 1979 onward was to move into services. Name me one successful British firm that moved to Germany?

German economic policy was to build its manufacturing base, ours wasn't. You can't blame that on the EU

Topcat

All the steel production in Europe used to be in the uk, it is now in Germany.

Was a nazi policy I believe (to quote Tony Benn)

I SAW and HEARD good ex ‘friends’ of mine discussing how those who weren’t educated enough shouldn’t have had a vote, you might of avoided it (lucky for you) but trust me, it happened.

Remainers seem to ignore the fact that several countries in the EU are on the verge of bankruptcy. Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland are not doing well economically. If more poor Eastern European countries join the EU along with Turkey and all take out instead of putting in, these countries will be further in debt.

Calling people who see things differently to you thick gets you nowhere and merely entrenches their opinions more deeply.
We need intelligent debate and an honest look at why so
many ordinary people voted Leave. Very few knuckle-dragging Nazis among them, really.

The government are probably happy to let freedom of movement take the blame for its impact on services as it deflects from the clobbering that they have taken from years of austerity. Austerity being a great cover for Tory policy of shrinking the state. Brexit and any reduction on immigration/freedom of movement won't stop the cuts but it will I fear allow a lot of legislation that we rely on to protect us from being removed under the guise of 'cutting red tape'. I am just concerned that the very people who have put their faith in brexit to improve their lives will end up being betrayed. I have never wanted to be proven wrong in my life more than that.

Are we still doing the "Turkey is joining" scare story?

That Turkey story was always ridiculous. Turkey have never met more than a few conditions required for joining the EU in all the years that they have been attempting to join.

Didn't Gove just apologise yesterday for misleading people about Turkey?

I think we're at the stage where discussing Brexiteer lies is unacceptable moral superiority.

voting leave to stop foreigners taking their jobs and school places etc., backed up by statistics about how many Indians and Pakistanis there are in the UK and wanting to see fewer brown faces on the street

Calling people who see things differently to you thick gets you nowhere

Are you seriously telling me people voting leave to keep the Indians out aren't thick? How exactly am I supposed to debate reasonably with them? When I gently pointed out that India is not and never has been part of the EU and that voting leave could open the doors to more arrivals from India, I was met with abuse or silence, not rational counter arguments - because there are none in this case. I'm sorry but people like this are thick - and racist. There is no defending it.

The freedom of movement issue was never just about public services. Look at the trade communities and hear their stories. Of growing up in manufacturing cities and towns before watching their fathers livelihoods ruined, then working hard to becoming tradesmen only to be undercut by young, Eastern European tradesmen who lived in cramped conditions and sent all the money they made abroad.

Whether you agree with their opinions (I actually believe that it’s more to do with tax credits and overinflation) these are not the words of awful, aggressive people but of proud and sad people who are scared of what they remember from their youth and fight to stop that from happening to their own children.

The city of London may have been very wealthy in the EU but much of the country was not.

Ffs it was a British government’s decision to move away from manufacturing towards a service economy. Nothing to do with the EU. Read a history book.

Whilst I have many concerns about brexit, I will be much more comfortable if post brexit legislation includes decent labour laws that ensure quality of working conditions and don't allow a culture of 'easy hire / easy fire', that provide for decent hourly rates and generally don't exploit many of the very people that voted brexit.

I also hope that a good standard of product quality is maintained and that we don't allow a stream of low quality goods to be imported because that was the only way to secure trade deals as quickly as promised by brexit supporting politicians. The issue of product quality is going to be a big one as the EU won't want low quality goods to go streaming across the border Ireland. Still a lot of issues relating to the border question.

Remainer here who blames the vote outcome solely on the remainers who chose to push the message "vote remain or be a racist" (am looking at you, BBC).

By polarising the situation so greatly they essentially gave out a strong message that they were not open to criticism of the EU or our place in it, thus pushing many undecideds to vote leave because they felt there wasn't another way to review and make changes to the membership.

The Remain campaign carries a large amount of blame for this shit show, imo,

Ghost

Another example of the government not listening to the working class.

miss

I think the remain campaign carries a lot of blame too, having Toffs at its helm, calling everyone racists, I also blame them for the riots afterwards, what we didn’t need is them to tell the (few) racists in this country that half of us were racist. It did NOT help

Yes, your government not the EU. I think leavers forget who their beef is actually with.

Ghost

You seem a bit blinkered.

Obviously the fact that the UK was part of a bigger wheel that contained heavy industry elsewhere was part of the decision making process.

Doubletrouble99 - absolutely right.

I cannot see how people who support trade and immigration policies that favour rich, predominantly white, christian countries , (some with very right-wing tendancies), can call everyone else racist!!

Poland, Hungary, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Cyprus (but only the non-Muslim half of Cyprus)

I think people like to think of speaking French and holidays in Tuscany and the right-on Swedes rather than the reality of Europe.

Racism is a very European thing indeed.

I find the 'leave voters are racist' line really odd. It's the opposite.

One of the reasons I voted leave was because I'm hoping for a more global economy and more global movement. Possibly naive but my thoughts were from a good place. When in the eu, the freedom of movement from the eu means that we have to limit the numbers from other parts of the world. Hopefully when we've left, we'll have more control and be able to choose people from all over the world for their skills. That's MORE non whites than when in Europe, who are white. So, the racist thing makes no sense to me whatsoever.

missbattenburg - completely right.

I think you are right to be concerned Isitsixoclockalready.

To take one example, James Dyson (whose admiration for the Singapore business model knows no bounds) was quite open in his Andrew Marr interview that he wanted to take advantage of more "flexible employment markets" post Brexit (or words to that effect - the transcript can be found on the BBC website) and we all know what that means in terms of job stability, working conditions etc. I don't think he is the only one.

Mother
I am explaining REAL reasons with why large swathes of the population became disillusioned with the EU and our governments involvement in it. If you don’t believe me, go and seek out the stories of the actual people who voted