To be delighted That Leave Have Lost

[donotcovertheradiator]

I know it looks as if Brexit have won but in every single case, if you add up all the votes secured by the other parties then together they have more votes than Brexit. That means more people want to remain in Europe than Leave.

If you look at it purely from number of votes by party then BP won. But if you look at what all the parties stand for and their stance on brexit etc it's not as clear.

Fwiw, it's amazing how many people are willing to sacrifice everything at the altar of brexit. I have no doubt that if we had a GE next week and BP was running with just one single thing on their manifesto ie brexit they'd get huge numbers. So many leavers seem absolutely determined to "get brexit" despite what the cost of it may be.

@OP
"let's include everyone over 10-our children are intelligent and better educated than any other generation."
Up until the mid 70s the educational qualifications used to be GCE 'O' levels and CSEs with a grade 1 CSE being worth a grade C or middle grade 'O' level. There were far more grammar schools. The qualifications were then amalgamated (effectively dumbed down) to become GCSEs. 'O' level denoted Ordinary level so I believe that speaks for itself.

10 year olds are not equipped to make informed decisions on political choices and would probably vote in accordance with their parents' or Teacher's indoctrination methods wishes and choices, especially if an x-box game was involved.

What is interesting is the amount of spin that is being played.

Even to the extent of removing two parties because their mandate is leave but their party members can't possibly be voting for leave.

I too would like to know why leaving is a good idea? If pro Brexit politicians are saying it will take 30 to 50 years before we reap any benefits from it, why would you vote for something that would be so detrimental for your children’s lives?

I voted Green because I wanted to vote an explicitly remain party, which they are.

I would accept the result of the original referendum except for the insistence on no deal brexit. My nightmare scenario at the referendum was brexit, with severe economic consequences and a hard right Tory leadership. Its obvious where the consequences of an economic crash under that kind of government will hit. Which is why I have a low opinion of the understanding (not intelligence) of the poorer voters who make up one section of the passionate leave voters. The poster on here who wants brexit because she can't imagine things being worse and wants the government to stop being able to blame the EU. When the price of everything goes up, because we are on WTO terms that no one else uses, when unemployment rockets and welfare is stretched, when the NHS hits an even worse crisis because its dependent on EU labour (the nursing crisis was getting critical without this) will a Tory government raise taxes on people like me, or will she find her benefits cut and her kids schools shifting to a 4 day week?

Why does there have to be a winner and a loser? Why can't we say the majority is split between two extremes so we go for the compromise?

Gigglinghysterically
The qualifications were then amalgamated (effectively dumbed down) to become GCSEs. 'O' level denoted Ordinary level so I believe that speaks for itself.

You can't compare "O" levels to the first GCSEs as they where completely different.

As for the OP wanting 10 year olds to be allowed a vote - given that many of the ten year olds I know (work in a school) consider being a contestant on Love Island a valid career choice, and are more likely to follow their chosen football team than to have any interest or understanding of how our country is run, I would rather not have my, or their future dependant upon their current choices.

I could say the same about a lot of adults.
This isn’t a decision that should ever have been put to referendum. People just don’t understand the issues involved and the implications.

Up until the mid 70s the educational qualifications used to be GCE 'O' levels and CSEs with a grade 1 CSE being worth a grade C or middle grade 'O' level

Regardless of anything else this statement is factually incorrect. I sat O levels in 1986,

@Prosecco, I agree re referendum, and for the same reason I hope we are never asked to vote on ‘no deal’. I’m still fairly pleased that 10 year olds don’t have the vote though!! Perhaps there’s a case for lowering it to 16.

To those speaking up for Farage; he is not an intelligent man. He has nothing to offer beyond Brexit. He cannot tell us how he would do it, analyse the consequences, or explain coherently why it’s in the national interest. When challenged all he can do is insult his challengers.
After the referendum he was left gasping like a stranded fish on a beach and retreated to talkshow hosting, his true metier I think. The current situation has given him oxygen. His success is not because he is clever; it is because we are stupid.

While people may have made protest votes in the past and then reverted to type to vote in a General Election, I think something has changed in politics.
I used to do the same but not any more. Politics needs to change and I now feel I have the courage to vote in a GE for the party I have used in lesser elections as a protest vote. I think the tide has turned with the European Elections.

Labour are happy to have a GE asap so that the Brexit party do not have time to formulate their manifesto and get enough candidates to field to stand a chance of a majority. Ditto for LibDem's who probably don't have enough candidates.

I don't believe Labour or the Tories would be capable of winning an election outright any time in the next couple of years and maybe never again. I fear we may be entering a period of coalition governments like quite a few other countries.

What disappoints me is how hugely ineffective the remain camp has been in trying to convince the leavers to change their minds. Overall split is probably more or less unchanged over the past three years. Those are the politicians who have let us down. And Labour of course whose job it was to provide challenge and balance but failed so miserably.

The other thing is the turnout - 36% so quite high for an EU election - but if 64% don't know or can't be bothered, isn't there still a lot for the remain camp left to play for?

It was always inevitable that leave supporters would spin this as a vote for leave, remain supporters would spin it as a vote for remain. The truth is we don't know. It depends how the Tory and Labour votes split. Someone up thread did the sums based on the Tory vote being 100% leave, which is unlikely but not impossible. It is also worth noting that turnout was low (as is normal in European elections). Who stayed at home - leave voters or remain voters? We don't know.

Citing Alistair Campbell as authority on this is ridiculous. He has a long history of spinning votes as being somehow in favour of remain.

The only thing I think we can say for sure from this election is that the country seems to be polarising between those who appear to believe that the only true Brexit is leaving without a deal and those who want to remain at any cost. Support for a compromise that sees us leaving with a deal that minimises disruption appears to be vanishing. That is worrying.

Theresa May was right back in 2017 when she asked for a bigger majority so that she could be sure of delivering Brexit. Unfortunately she turned out to be rubbish at campaigning and ended up without a majority at all. Once parliament decided to insert itself into the process by demanding a meaningful vote on the deal we were always going to end up in this mess. There is no majority in the Commons for anything, as we have seen with all the indicative votes.

Full disclosure - I voted to remain. However, I accept that the country voted to leave. I am therefore of the view that we must leave. We may rejoin at a later date but we should not, in my view, try to undermine the result of the referendum.

My DH voted remain in the referendum but thinks the idea of a second referendum is folly.
Not all remain voters are unwilling to follow through on the results.

As for the ageism, surely this cant be serious?

I hope I'm missing the contextual humour..

I am not speaking up for Farage as in I support him

For years I have been saying he is a concern he is a master political manipulator as are many involved in politics. For too long he was given a platform he became the lefts pantomime villain how many times was he on QT and someone form the left would think they are smart and attack him and he would just sit there grinning and saying see I told you they are not listening. Totally played into his hands time and time again and now with the two main parties being in indecisive their lose is his gain - from both sides which has actually always been the case

Farage is the reason we had a referendum I don’t think he has enough political clout to get the result that was down to Boris but he has enough to make both the main parties change policies and that is foolish to ignore

prh47bridge

If people are going to say that the votes for SNP, Lib dems and green are all being voted for because they are remain parties and no other policies, then logic would suggest that both labour and conservative votes are for leave. Otherwise there are massive holes in the argument.

Everyone has lost.

This country is in a massive mess. I blame David Cameron. I hope history will judge him very harshly.

We had a referendum which resulted in the majority voting to leave, therefore we need to leave to uphold the result of the vote - that's democracy. MPs need to get their heads out of their arses and get on with it.

But the referendum didn't settle the (hugely important) matter of post-Brexit arrangements. It's the manner of leaving that has paralysed parliament. There is no clear parliamentary majority for May's deal or for no-deal (and no-deal is fraught with problems, not least the huge one of the Irish border) so the process has stalled.

May fucked up big time by not having cross-party talks at an early stage to establish where the common ground lay. Given that both the main parties are split (albeit by varying degrees), and that we have a hung parliament, she knew she would need support from both sides of the house to get any deal through.

@PostNotInHaste
I stand corrected on when 'O' levels changed to GCSEs. (I was getting mixed up with when my school changed from a Grammar to a Comprehensive school). Oops!

When people say “we should just get on with it” what eactly do they mean, in practical terms?

Sorry I've not read the full thread yet but this is the bbc

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48403131

It shows 40.4% of votes to remain parties and 34.9 to leave then labour and conservatives are separate.

So yes on the face of it there are more remain voters - I'm not sure if it's enough to make a difference though....

to my mind nothing much has changed since referendum

leave without deal brexit party and UKIP
leave with a deal most of the conservatives and probably about 60+% of labour

definitely remain ChangeUK, Lib Dem
almost certainly remain Greens, Plaid C, SNP ( their manifesto is remain) but approximately a third of SNP voters want complete independence and voted for Brexit
so I still think it is still hovering at around 50/50 give or take 2--3 % points and if the referendum was re run the result would still be very close which way exactly I don't know and to be honest neither does anyone else

A fair summary Teacup.

Those votes are unlikely to translate to a GE. At the last EU elections UKIP topped the poll, and got one seat in the GE, won by a Tory defector. Big important man Farage failed to win a seat at the seventh time of trying. A lot of voters I would expect to go back to their original parties. But last time we had it spun as 80% vote for Leave, so that might not happen, and last time we hadn't had a melt down in the two major parties.

I wonder just in passing, how many of Farage's supporters would be more than happy to take just 1/3 of his MEP salary for doing absolutely nothing? Why they haven't called him out as a charlatan is beyond me.

The cross party talks would not have made any difference because labour want a deal that is almost identical to staying in . I think 🤔 because they keep changing their minds.