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.

It’s like watching a country commit to cutting its own throat because of a referendum that only occurred because of Tory internal politics, and whose outcome was as it was because of poor understanding of the issues, lamentable misinformation, and a complete indifference to NI

This nails it.

We're in such a truly appalling situation.

Not RTFT so apologies if PPs have said this, but the assessment of the EU as 'A band of rich, predominantly white countries' is not completely accurate and also changes over time. If you remember the 70s and 80s, the UK was the poor man of Europe. Joining the EU has helped it become better off, yes (remember Auf Wiedersehn, Pet?), but a) it was struggling before and b) it has been a long game.

There's also the 'Never again' philosophy that partially drove the founding of the EU; the idea that a bloc that trades and works together will not allow something like WW2 to happen again.For pragmatic as well as moral reasons.

And, on the racism point, hasn't it just been found that the Leave campaign actively targeted people who were more likely to hold racist views? That doesn't make every Leave voter a racist, of course, but it gives a broad indication of the general demographic.

There's a fairly staggering interview/phone-in from James O'Brien's LBC show in which a Leave voter claims he didn't want out of the EU because he's a racist but, when questioned as to why, repeatedly cites the Indian and Pakistani people working in his local supermarket. I know this show no doubt picks some of the most swivel-eyed contributors they can find but, again, this does indicate that there are people out there who voted Leave for those kinds of reasons.

The most racist people I know are Remainers!!

ffs.

Let's all look forward to a few more years of these reasoned, well-thought out comments, eh?

That’s my experience “FFS”, like it or not!

What sort of reasoning do you want? The profile of the Leave voter as some uneducated and thick troglodyte just isn’t helpful

I agree we ARE in an appalling situation and it’s hard to know how far down the rabbit hole goes.

But I disagree on the cause. People here and all over are quick to blame racism, the intelligence levels of those who voted leave.

I blame a total lack of care and consideration for the fears and concerns that were raised again and again by the working classes.

You can say ‘oh but that’s not how it is’ but that’s just doing the same thing that caused this. Not actually LISTENING to what people are saying.

If we’d listened to the working class, supported them, offered them more than a bloody subsidy to not farm the fields their families have worked for centuries, or offered them some more information, or stopped the flood of tradesmen from Eastern Europe, rather than ignoring their pleas and opening the gates to other Eastern EU countries, when we wouldn’t bloody be here.

Any leave voters who want to refute the point that leave voters are ignorant have plenty of opportunity to do so.

But. They. Don't.

They tell us they are clever, they quote their many degrees and then fail to put forward evidence based arguments.

And when I say evidence I don't mean 'the girl that works in my hairdressers is Polish'.

The far larger impact was the repeated lies and half-truths made by the leave campaign and then repeated by the press.

One of the biggest it that immigrants take jobs. The economy is not a zero-sum game, more people actually means more jobs. As quoted earlier immigrants pay £20 billion more in tax than they take in welfare and Healthcare.

The tragedy is that it is going to be the leave areas which will be worst affected.

The concerns of the working classes absolutely have been ignored by successive British government.

I am on the left and agree the working classes have been hung out to dry and who are the people doing that? Well BJ, JRM and NF do not have the concerns of the poor at heart, that's for certain.

The EU has been one of the few organisations that, to a limited extent, has tried to implement workers rights: health & safety, working time directives etc.

When the Tories are freed from the (limited) efforts of the EU to protect workers then you will know what it feels like to be fucked.

My friend owns a very successful car repair business. He was employing a manager. He was informed by several qualified Eastern Europeans that they only wanted £200 per week from him because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to get housing benefit, tax credits and child benefit.

Unfortunately when you have created an ‘us and them’ Society, it gives space for things like the leave campaign and for people like Nigel Farage.

What we need to start doing is listening to people before it gets to that point. Not expect them to all act rationally when they’ve been fucked on for years.

The European Union was originally the Common Market and my working class but successful businessman father fully supported it. However, the current European Union is no longer, in any shape or form, the Common market. People voted Leave because we had given away too many rights over the years

I'm not clear how our government not listening to xyz group in the past was the fault of the EU. Nor am I clear how listening to xyz group now, in the specific situation whereby xyz group are supposedly blaming the EU for pqrs problems which were not the fault of the EU, is going to be fixed... by leaving the EU.

(And, I'm sorry about my convoluted sentence which has made me entirely not clear.)

Mother

Perhaps if our government had listens to those fears, elliviated them and supported the working class, they wouldn’t have felt the need to do something so drastic?

Honestly I don’t know why people aren’t understanding this.

This is why people chose to leave Europe. You can say you disagree with them but the issue here is that the ONLY reasons given for leaving the EU, is racism, which is not why most people voted leave.

Mousemousse - my fears entirely and yet any time I mention legislation and what the Tories might do with it after brexit, people don't seem to have any response. Certainly noone has refuted it. Scares me to think what we could turn into after brexit.

Governments should absolutely have listened more. Totally. Successive governments have failed to adequately help poorer areas. Totally.

This is not the fault of the EU.

Honestly, I don't know why people don't understand this.

Are general elections not the best way of expressing dissatisfaction with the government?

How else were they supposed to do it?

We have a system here where even your vote counts more if you live in London.

Ffs it’s not fair or equal and no body has been listening to this (huge) demographic of people. So when someone like Farage comes and says they ARE listening and DO hear the words people are saying, people flock to that.

We need to assess what we all did wrong rather than judging half the country as ‘ill educated, not worth it racists’

Rather than just ACTUALLY LISTENING because that might have stopped this sorry mess.

1457017537
People voted Leave because we had given away too many rights over the years

Do you have any examples?

SoloD sorry I didn’t think I was back in school

You can't make a sweeping statement about how the EU stole my rights and then refuse to explain it.

CantankerousCamel

So you listen to a group of Multi Millionaires who tell you a pack of lies.

Can you see why some might question the gullibility of Leavers?

I totally agree that the people have been badly let down by the government but we will still have the same government after brexit and there's nothing that suggests to me that they will do anything to help the masses after brexit. Moreover, if they start introducing legislation that removes worker protection (or red tape as it will probably be called) I can't see how that would be improving the lives of a lot of leave voters.

user1457017537

No one forcing you to, but I rather suspect that you don't know what you are talking about.

Solo

No, I don’t have a tendency to look at half the country and think the worst of them.

I try and see why that decision has been reached and how we could prevent such a mistake happening in future.

Awful shit that I am.