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.

Yes when I vote i worry about my moral superiority and what other people think in the secret ballot.

I don't worry about, jobs, trade, security - nope it's moral superiority all the way.

Ffs - the fact that you can consider that reflects upon you and not the people you are trying to insult.

I voted 'remain', but that was a last minute change of mind in the polling booth. I have multiple sides of my family who either live abroad or are immigrants in the UK themselves, so none of the reasons I had to vote 'leave' was to do with immigration.

I can see both sides of the argument. I understand why some would vote to leave and why some wouldn't. I understand a lot of people are very unhappy with the outcome. But ultimately we live in a democracy. Your opinion isn't always going to 'win'. I don't see much point in throwing a major strop about things when they don't go the way you want.

What annoys me are the 'remainers' who accuse all those who voted to leave of being racist. A small minority may be, but I find it incredibly ignorant to tarnish a whole group of people as being racist with no real understanding as to why each individual voted that way. I find that kind of bigoted attitude toward a whole group of people ironic in the extreme.

Unfortunately, I have become somewhat apathetic to the whole situation of Brexit. I do think there should be a vote on the final deal, otherwise the general British public have voted for a complete unknown. But until we get to that point, we don't know what's going to happen.

"May you live in interesting times..."

Ffs - the fact that you can consider that reflects upon you and not the people you are trying to insult.

It is rather ironic

It's one of the weird things about people who like to call out others for "virtue signalling." Really, virtual signalling has to a) be public, b) not be sincere, c) all about status rather than substance.

So, you're not virtue signalling if you are worried about poverty and actually volunteer at a food bank. That's actual, real virtue.

You're not virtue signalling if you vote with your conscience. You are voting in a private ballot, so there is no status display opportunity.

You are virtue signalling if you try telling people you imagine they hate the English football team based on no evidence, but wish to set yourself up as some sort of English super-patriot in comparison to them.

rocketpocket - I really don't think that was the case at all. More likely is that people who voted remain, even those who did it whilst metaphorically holding their noses did so through fear that to exit a system that functioned into the unknown with all the concerns over the economy taking a hit and the threat of job losses was a bigger driver.

I honestly don't think that people were as concerned with looking morally interior when jobs and livelihoods are at stake.

"By doubling down on it you make a compelling counterpoint to the idea that people have pressed on with the same thing as if they have learnt nothing."

No, when people have spurious concerns, like the poster who thinks industries shut down and moved to Germany ( they didn't) and that people's lives are being taken over by Eastern European's ( they aren't) then you can listen to them, but you can't actually do anything about it.

Lots of people are irrationally scared of zombies, should we have anti zombie policies ?

For me, it's not so much a case of throwing my toys out of the pram because of being on the wrong side of the outcome of a vote. It's more of a legitimate concern for the future of myself, family and the country as a whole because we've all got to live in it and rub along together. Now, seeing my football team lose would be reason to throw my toys out of the pram but this referendum is more important than just sulking from losing.

The leavers I know are openly racist and not well educated .

Actually that is where the leave campaign were successful.

They created an EU boogieman based on misinformation and half truths ( actually done over decades by the right wing press) and then told people that if we left all the ills in their life would be cured by this panacea.

Actually leaving the EU is the project of the hard right neo liberals who see the EU's moderate sociallly democratic policies as hiolding them back.

Good luck leavers, you will get everything you didn't want and nothing ( other than juist leaving the EU) that you did.

well maybe that is a reflection of the people you know, seasure.

Oh and stop criticisng those that are carrying on the debate.

Your side did this for 41 years, I know its hard for you to present logical arguments, but being massively hypocritical doesn't help either.

I too find the concept that because I voted leave I must have racist tendencies and have a huge problem with immigrants “taking our jobs” which is a preposterous claim as Immigration is a fundemental and needed part of any country.
There are extremely valid and good points on both sides of the argument once you get past the sensational headlines and this is certainly reflected by the very narrow result when the country voted. No one side is clear cut and completely right.
For me my decision simply came down to my gut feeling when weighing up all the arguments and looking at all the sides.
In the end that is all any of us can do as none of us have all the information, facts and figures that is free from the spin each side are touting.

Actually we are starting to get some figures - gov figs on hard brexit 8% loss on GDP, 2.8 million jobs gone. All due to “gut feeling”

Ruscoex2 I sort of get that and would like to have been able to weigh up arguments on both sides. Except I genuinely can’t see anything positive about the leave campaign.

I await an unemotional critique of the benefits of leaving based on fact.....anyone?

I don't trust any politician at all, they are only out for themselves, no one else. This change won't affect them, guaranteed. The rest of us? God knows. Yes. David Cameron, Boris Johnson etc. and especially Jean Claude Junker

topcat at no point have I stated that I believe industry has moved to Europe as some sort of master plan, but that was an issue for many of the people who actually voted leave. This thread is about reasons people voted leave. I gave some.

Do try and read properly in future

ghost how many of those jobs are bankers in London?

Frankly I, nor the rest of the working class, give a shiny shit about bankers losing their cushy office jobs in London.

England had become a land of two halves, London and the rest of it.

Damn even Londoners are now being forced out of London.

CantankerousCamel the deindustrialisation is down to Thatcher not the EU. I don't live in London, I live in Manchester.

I'm not part of some upper class conspiracy. If you want examples of posh southerners selling you shite look no further than BJ, JRM and NF.

You may well be giving reasons why people voted for Brexit, but unfortunately those reasons are unsound and will not bring the wished for results and may well make the poor significantly worse off.

"Frankly I, nor the rest of the working class, give a shiny shit about bankers losing their cushy office jobs in London. "

You will when the tax take from London goes down and services in your area are cut because of it.

"This thread is about reasons people voted leave. I gave some. "

They aren't valid reasons though.

BTW as a Londoner I'm now really behind the campaign to get London to keep more of the tax raised here.

I thought Liverpool and Manchester were massively pro remain.

I guess they don't fit into the (made-up) narrative.

Yep Lpool, Manchester, Newcastle,Leeds, Glasgow, belfast all full of elitist bankers

Topcat

Yes they ARE valid reasons because without heavy industry moving to Germany, there would still be place for it here.

These things aren’t done in a vaccum whether you believe they are or not.

When people have watched their fathers sink into poverty because of heavy industry moving to Germany where it prospers, only to then have Eastern Europeans come and take their trade jobs away, they have A VALID REASON for not wanting to be part of the wheel that continually stops their cog from turning.

READ what I’m writing.

Services are being bled as it is, we need to stop focusing on false economies like banking and focus on real industry like making things and farming our own fields again (rather than being paid more not to)

The people of the UK have stood up and said they don’t want to be subsidised anymore, they want their centuries old trades to not have been destroyed under the shadow of ‘Europe’

‘Not valid’

Pompous. Nothing more.

I love how you make this a class thing though.

The working class then voted against their own interests.

Those in manufacturing will lose their jobs if JRM et al get their way, those in agriculture and food industries too. Because their jobs will be undercut by cheap foriegn firms. Its all in the proposals that the Brexit camp want to follow.

The people who led the campaign think the working class are lazy and feckless ( read Britania Unchained). They think you should be stripped of your rights and protections to make you work harder and longer for less. They want to spend less on the public services that support the working class and make you pay for more of them.

They manipulated the working classes into voting for their project knowing that the promises they made weren't true and their reasons for leaving the EU were spurious. They knew that things would not get better for your man on the Clapham omnibus, or JAMs, but they couldn't tell the working class that, so the pandered to prejudices, played on fears and emotions, promising rainbows and unicorns for all.

They manipulated the working class for their own ends and have already discarded them, they were useful idiots, pawns in a grand game to which the end goal is the increase in the wealth of their own class.

And you voted for them, those that despise you and have treated you as such, whilst doffing your cap.

You’re a Londoner?