DH voted leave but can't articulate why

[DifferentViews]

Sorry if this has been done before, but i need to get this off my chest and perhaps get new insight or come to a better understanding, so i can discharge some of the anger i feel.
So, i voted remain and he voted leave. Up to a point, i am prepared to accept we have different political views and can move on.
Talking to him last night, i asked, knowing what he knows now, would he still have voted leave and he said yes.
Cue a long discussion as to why and really he has no real idea what he was voting for, or what he wanted. Its just so woolly...he wanted change, but can't articulate what that would be.
It was just a knee jerk reaction to not liking the current situation and wanting things to be 'different'.
Its just made me so angry that he would still vote that way again in spite of all the evidence that things wont be 'better' out the EU.
His argument is that we don't know whether it might be better, so that gamble is worth it, but i am really struggling to see his point of view.
Please, can someone give me some idea how i can come to terms with this, so i am not consumed with impotent anger at him? Thank you.
Ps this is not meant to be a goady post against those that voted leave, if you have a well thought out argument and honestly believe it, that's great.

I'm a remainer, but I despair at the polarization of views that is so destructive and the idea that someone else's views are only valid if they can robustly defend them.

This. What gets me is the strident 'you're an idiot' tone I've got from Brexiteers who seem to think it's all very straightforward and we just have the wrong people in charge of making it happen. Oh, and of course it won't impact the economy because the whole world appreciates how great Britain is. It isn't so much the opposing view to mine, but the vitriolic way it's expressed. It's as if their view is so fragile, it can't stand discussion.

I am yet to meet a leave voter with a coherent argument.

Then it's fair to assume that you associate only with thick, inarticulate people.

Either that or you are allowing your confirmation bias to get the better of you.

I've heard loads of very well reasoned and nuanced arguments from people on both sides. I have met people who have had stupid, poorly thought out, poorly expressed, selfish and short sighted reasons for leaving....and the same for staying.

I've met people who are right wing who want to leave/stay and people who are left wing who want to leave/stay. Bright people, rich people, poor people, naive people, stupid people, bigoted people....ditto to all of it, leave or stay.

This 'leavers are all thick and racist' rhetoric is lazy and insulting and just plain wrong on so many levels. The more hysterical the pitch of the cry gets as we approach a leaving date, the less respect and sympathy I find myself feeling for those who screech it.

@FriarTuck Remainers on Mumsnet only seem to be happy to be rude about Leavers. And there's no discussion - it's 'I'm right, you're racist / thick / uninformed...

Have you read Redtoothbrush's posts? Detailed , articulate and thoughtful, fully referenced and informed. Lots of discussion on detailed technical issues relating to parliament and trade.

Lots of discussion. Pop over to the Brexit thread.

Exactly. Furious, OP I still tthink what you did is abusive and if you feel guilty it's because you have sometthing to feel guilty about.

I struggle to see why the UK has to be distant, in terms of closer collaboration, from near countries. If you go to the USA, news is frames as Europe. It is not about the UK. We are a tiny cog in a much more powerful wheel. In this way the EU can negotiate for all of us. We do need to join with Europe in coherant ways that work for all of us.

I do not think we can every put the clock back to the deluded glory of pre EU. Those of us that lived through it did not feel the UK was great at the time! We still had slums, poverty and poor working conditions. The EU has helped many escape from that because we were able to learn better manufacturing strategies and build up the City of London for example, which in turn boosts our tax take. We became attractive to businesses. Turning back the clock and thinking we had sunny upands in the past is simply ludicrous. Just look at old films of Liverpool and London if you want to see poverty in the 1960's on a large scale.

I think older peope thought they enjoyed a gilded past. Some think we have problems now which are worse than before. They are not. The EU has helped us develop as a nation. No small country is given much time on a world stage and negotiating with the EU shows us just how limited we are in terms of strategy and expertise. We have years and years of this to come. We are poor at it because we rarely need to do it. We are not a great world power and we need to get used to it. It is all very sad.

@Ellen Totally agree. The Brexit situation has turned our nation into a really embarrassing shambles , mainly for the way we talk to each other, never mind the rest of Europe.

miljah that's because the few Leavers who can articulate their reasons are all too easy to take down!

It's a socio-political discussion, not trial by combat.

Hence why educated Leavers refuse to engage in petty point scoring circular arguments.

I'm very much a remainer but he has given you a reason which is that in his opinion the 'that gamble is worth it and everything will work out better in the end.
It's not an opinion I agree with but it is his vote to use as he chooses. All you can do is present the evidence that actually we do have a pretty good idea of what leave will look like and the odds for the gamble are extremely poor. If he doesn't accept this then that is his right.

He doesn't have to explain nor justify anything to you. Seriously, who do you think you are?

It was a discussion, not an interrogation. If you hold a certain opinion about something, you should be able to explain why you think that way. Whether the other party agrees with it or not, makes no difference. That’s how discussions work. No need to put up the barriers as soon as somebody asks you a question. If you believe in something you should stand by it. When you get all defensive people will know that they’ve rattled you.

I can't get over the idea that having a political debate and getting angry is abusive.

Debate and opposition are vital to democracy.

Passive acceptance and refusal to engage in discussion is the road to dictatorship.

Discussion is not abusive. As long as it is polite! People need to be able to understand what is going on or we fail as a nation.

As someone who voted to join the (then) EEC in the 1970's I feel annoyed that the public in general were not "educated" or "informed" as to what leaving or remaining would mean.
There were too many politicians with their own agendas involved (Farage, Johnson etc)
In the 1970's we all knew how much it would cost the country, the effect to our laws etc.
in 2016 I had to read up on the opinions of the head of the CBI, Bank of England, TUC etc.thought. They all got minimal air time compared to others and therefore people did not realise the effect it would have on jobs and the economy.
I only know of one person who can give me a coherent reason why they voted leave and I respect their opinion and reasons.

I actually feel sorry for Teresa May (I'm not a Tory) I wouldn't blame her if she just walked away!

Hannah Arendt did talk about unthinkingness as the root of evil, where evil then has to be action/events more than thought (so it's not a case of bad decisions reflecting on the person but rather proving lack of personhood if anything), but as someone else said upthread, people sleepwalk into good decisions all the time too and no one hounds them for reasons why they did that.

We have a state school system which teaches to the test. That trains your mind in a particular way. You want an educated population who can quote the set texts, not a thinking population who writes them. Then in a case where there is no set text, and you don't have good research skills and you wouldn't know where to start anyway since the library shut due to cuts, you go with self-interest and vote for who's promising you the most. Who doesn't get that? I think most Remainers will have taken their cue from their own direct self-interest, as Leavers will have (if Leavers can feel protective of nebulous potential gains after Brexit of course you'll feel just as protective of any current & concrete benefits gained as an UK-EU citizen), and then looked for other arguments which supported Remain. Nowt wrong with that but it's not independent thinking either.

People also don't think for nothing - there has to be a need. Why did some Leavers not feel that need? Possibly no one asked them what they thought because they were surrounded by other Leavers. Possibly they thought nothing would come of it and so they felt no accountability. Possibly they felt that the legitimacy of Brexit was confirmed by there being a referendum at all, and that this was justification in itself (& in all likelihood it probably seemed a bit of a hare-brained scheme for many crucially only until it was actually being framed as a serious Q in the form of a referendum, nice one Cameron mate). And referendums give citizens the confidence to trust themselves as they are, where in other situations perhaps they would feel the need to make a case for their opinions. It suggested that you didn't need expert knowledge to come to a conclusion, the govt. was trusting your instinct (surely they wouldn't hold a referendum on such an important matter if they didn't trust their citizens?) & your authority was your citizenhood. There was more at stake for Remainers (there's more at stake in losing something problematic but workable (remaining) and the unknown being terrible (leaving) than keeping something problematic but workable and the unknown being possibly great, well maybe if all the stars line up) and they were not the ones initiating this potential sea-change, which meant they did need to be able to defend themselves verbally.

Voting remain or leave has no bearing on intelligence. I know a number of very articulate people who voted leave who can explain clearly, concisely and persuasively why they voted leave. I also know a number of xenophobic people who voted leave and a number who just wanted change.

On the other hand, I know many many people who didn't vote at all because it was just too confusing, and I know a couple of remainers who decided which way to vote by tossing a coin. Most remainers I know voted to remain simply because they didn't know what else to do. However, these people don't really have a good grasp of what it is that the EU does. In no way does that make these people superior or highly intelligent for deciding randomly to remain.

No one needs to justify to anyone else why they voted the way they did and reasons that may have seemed valid at the time of the vote may seem less relevant, forgotten about and/or not worth mentioning now considering it's generally accepted that we were lied to and deceived in the run up to the vote. The reality is that we should never have been given a serious vote at that point. It should have simply been an opinion poll. The actual remain/leave vote should have been given once deals had been made and we knew what we were actually voting for.

FuriousCheekyFucker
Maybe Leave voters are tired and bored of justifying their choice to a sect of people who dismiss their viewpoints, refuse to accept their reasons, and minimise their concerns, whilst pouring vitriolic hate speech on them by calling them bigoted uneducated racists?

I can't imagine why, can you? I guess to give any response to the usual outpouring of dislike, if not hate and name calling from remainers, us Leavers would have to be masochists and that's not my thing at all, or at least I thought it wasn't - I'm beginning to wonder after the last two years

@Windows it's fine to have a reasoned debate. Of course it is. But calling people 'thick' and throwing insults at those who do no share your political opinions is abusive.

No advice, OP, sorry - I'd feel the same. I have this ' you lost, shut up and get over it's mentality.

Of course everyone's entitled to their own vote. I'm not advocating a dictatorship it stripping them of their voting rights. But a large proportion of the country voted for something which will leave us all economically worse off, and personally could lose my husband and/or I our jobs. When I hear reasons like 'I fancied a change' it makes me pretty annoyed

The other day I got a load of abuse on a local Facebook page after challenging someone who claimed over half the population of the UK voted for Brexit. I pointed out that if he thought that 17 million was half of 66 million then he should go back to school.

To be fair though, this is just a question of semantics and playing around with the presentation of statistics, and you know it.

More than half the people eligible to vote, who bothered to vote, voted for Brexit. However clumsily or inaccurately that is expressed, it's still the only thing that matters.

I've recently seen a meme going round on FB saying something like 'Only 37% of people want Brexit - how is the minority allowed to trample over the wishes of majority?'

Something tells me you wouldn't be taking on the person sharing that meme to point out inaccuracies, irrelevancies and bad maths.

The education system teaches the concept of Point -Evidence - Explanation.

This is what we expect of 16 year olds.

Example:
I think this. This is the evidence to support my opinion. I will now explain why this is the case.

The OP was hoping her DH could put together the type of argument we expect 16 year olds to make.

I voted to leave. I voted to leave based on these facts. I will tell you why I think they are important.

Without going into too much detail our business has already been damaged by the Brexit process ( we import and supply European companies that operate in the Uk ) . It was actually younger members of our staff who voted leave . We explained how it would affect our company in the short term and possibly long term . And obviously respected their opinion . In fact we have had to reduce staff and their jobs have been in peril . But they also could not explain why they voted leave . They did think it might be to do with immigration but were not entirely sure of how the system currently works or their rights if they wanted to work in Europe. We also had a lot of staff who did not understand Brexit and actually did not vote at all . The fact is small businesses are suffering now and to be honest. I have got to the stage I just want it all over and done with. I don’t blame the prime minister she is trying to negotiate with a body who have no interest in negotiating. I am more annoyed with MPs who can’t even articulate what is wrong with the deal which makes me think they are voting to disable the government not to respect democracy. Even though I also believe the population never should have been asked to vote in the first place.

No one needs to justify to anyone else why they voted the way they did and reasons that may have seemed valid at the time of the vote may seem less relevant, forgotten about and/or not worth mentioning now considering it's generally accepted that we were lied to and deceived in the run up to the vote. The reality is that we should never have been given a serious vote at that point. It should have simply been an opinion poll. The actual remain/leave vote should have been given once deals had been made and we knew what we were actually voting for.

Totally agree

I am yet to meet a leave voter with a coherent argument.

You should meet my DH then. He’d happily sit down with anybody and explain his reasons for voting Leave. Whatever counter-argument you throw at him, he’ll tell you his views on it. Because of this, I respect his decision to vote Leave, even though I voted Remain.

Interesting Storyville documentary about the people that clean up the internet. Ex Facebook employees discussing the fact that social media sends you stuff that validates your right or left wing views and therefore we never establish common ground or listen to views anymore we just get out own views validated. With this in mind democracy is knackered!

SevenSeasofRye but the OP didn't call her DH thick. She had a "discussion" with him and it made her angry. That is not abuse.

I have got to the stage I just want it all over and done with. I don’t blame the prime minister she is trying to negotiate with a body who have no interest in negotiating. I am more annoyed with MPs who can’t even articulate what is wrong with the deal which makes me think they are voting to disable the government not to respect democracy. Even though I also believe the population never should have been asked to vote in the first place.

And with this