To blame Have I Got News For You for the mess we’re currently in?

[BertrandRussell]

None of this would have happened if Johnston, Farage and Rees-Mogg hadn’t been invited on and been allowed to present themselves as “good sports”.

My image of the typical leave voter isn't the oik that many people seem to hold. Whilst I'm sure you'll find plenty of ill-informed opinion on the EU in low-education locations, I'd be surprised if they're the ones who turned out en-masse.

Instead, I see a generation that replaced supported education, full employment, and accessible housing with tuition fees, gig economy, and a housing ladder inaccessible to the under 30s; who are now reaching retirement and want to die not being surrounded by different skins and funny accents. The white middle-class latent racists who've kept politics as their personal tool to extract maximum personal benefit and left everyone else to pick up the bill.

I think marine let pens party very much want out of the EU. When you have political parties that gain electoral success based on very clearly stated policies, to sit back and say "oh, it's ok they don't really mean it" is what's stupid.. fingers in the ears stuff.

As for the claim that euro scepticism is intellectually base, the wider argument is that high immigration will lead to the balkanisation of Europe and the break up not just of the EU but of nations. It might well all be nonsense but there is a wider conservative philosophy at play.

Try watching 'Spitting Image' on Youtube
Political satire from a time when politicians had real character.
I watched episode 5 or series 5 the other night and it had 'last night of the proms' as a sketch, saying that Britannia does not rule the waves. This was 30 or more years ago and now seems quite prophetic.

Surely Question Time is as much to blame, but less fun to watch. When the BNP leader was on a few years ago despite widespread condemnation of his party and opinions by the rest of the panel there was a significant spike in membership afterwards. My Leave voting mum and stepdad watch it and work themselves up into such a frenzy you'd think they were watching football. The news isn't helping much either clamouring to report on far right politics to due to its association with the Nazis, which always grans peoples attention. Recently an election result in Europe was reported on as the far right party finishing 3rd, rather than who had actually won the election. If you wave something in people's faces for long enough they will start assuming it's perfectly not and acceptable.

Adam Except the analysis of who voted leave does not support that view.

Perfectly normal and acceptable.

{I think marine let pens party very much want out of the EU.}
More likely they just want to be in power and winding the public up on an anti EU ticket looks an attractive route. Rather similar to Cameron.

adam that is a bang on description of the leave voters where I am, lots of people who have done very well at the expense of younger generations and poorer neighbours who like to point the finger elsewhere.

Agree the news coverage is ridiculous. So called "far" right is any anti EU rhetoric. Notice how they don't report labour as having "links to Hezbollah and the IRA" every time they mention them. The Hungarian govt though are practically advocating the lynching of all non whites by the way it's reported.

At heart the whole thing is anti establishment, so it's fascinating to see how the political left are now suddenly all for the status quo. Globalisation is bad, yet when trump introduces tarrifs suddenly it's good again etc etc. The whole shit show really puts me off politics.

I blame Gordon Brown and the USA for the disaster of 2008 - without that we wouldn't be here.

Sometimes, there are no words . . .

The problem with people like you longwayoff is that you're too clever by half...

It is very cheap as a 'campaign tactic' to get some vandals to smash windows and set fire to cars etc to get attention to your 'cause'. The trouble is you have to have a plan of what to do if/when you get elected.
Cue Mrs May and the fuckwits of Westminster who didn't have a plan or even a guide as to what a plan should look like. The EU have had to write a significant amount of the WA agreement as for some reason D Davies 1 sheet of A4 paper and a stale chicken sandwich wasn't enough.

Abacucat
Except the analysis of who voted leave does not support that view.

Perhaps. But after a couple of decades in academia and teaching of politics, I'll not derail the thread by shredding the methodology used to disentangle who voted for what in a secret ballot.

I agree that TV has a hell of a lot to answer for by giving a platform to corrupt ideas that then get normalised and enter the mainstream.

You have a good point.

But I also blame Cameron for getting us into this mess.

The white middle-class latent racists who've kept politics as their personal tool to extract maximum personal benefit and left everyone else to pick up the bill.

I agree with this. I live in another EU country and the mindset is just the same. As an immigrant (albeit of the white middle class sort, so I actually get to hang out with them in an undercover way) I am constantly flabbergasted by the self serving attitudes of my generation and above.

Why would anyone blame Gordon Brown for 2008? He actually saved us from most of the damage. The crash started in the US and because banks are international, the impact quickly spread. How is that Gordon’s Browns fault?

I don’t know if the oiks are to blame, but I did see one of them on television in a street interview who, when asked why he supported leave, said, “I want to send all them Muslims back where they came from.” Clearly not an intellectual force.

I blame the people who voted leave.

So not the MP's who's sole purpose was to work together and come up with the best possible deal for the whole UK? No blame for them at all given that their entire purpose in life is to take unformed desires from the Great Unwashed and turn them into policy & law?

They couldn't stop playing their fucking games for long enough to work for the good of us all.

As a result, no one is happy.

But I also blame Cameron for getting us into this mess

Cameron had to acquiesce to holding a referendum. The alternative was for UKIP to continue to grow until they disrupted every election, and possibly forced themselves into a coalition spot.

What Cameron did wrong was to sit in the Westminster bubble and assume the country'd never vote leave. For constitutional change of that scale, there should have been an insistence on 50% approval of the voting age public (not just 50% of the turnout). But no, they were all caught with their pants down.

Cheers limited. Better ban the news too, far too influential. Fahrenheit 451 here we come

I blame remainers who assume everyone who voted leave is a “thick ignorant oik”.

I blame remainers who, rather than accepting the result and getting behind a robust Leave policy, kept bleating and yowling to the detriment of the country.

I blame every single Remainer that has been trying to overturn the decision and undermine any agreement.

{I agree that TV has a hell of a lot to answer for by giving a platform to corrupt ideas that then get normalised and enter the mainstream}
You are supposed to use your brain and question things, work out if what is being said is either true or possible.
Granted with the pure dross on UK TV with strictly/Love island/and the various soaps it does encourage the electorate to slouch in front of the TV and dribble.
Fast approaching the 'humans' on the Arc in the Wall-E film, bloated blobs of nonthinking nothingness.

I agree but Boris was writing about bendy bananas and cucumbers in the Spectator and The Torygraph for years before he appeared on HIGNFY.

The right wing press has a lot to answer for I think. Endless anti-EU articles were published that were factually inaccurate and went unchallenged.

'I duuno, I would estimate that ...' is hardly an endoresement of any kind of view.