AIBU To ask what lies did the Remain side tell pre referendum?

[Hobbyhorse345]

People keep saying that lies were told on both the Leave and Remain side in the run up to the referendum.
What lies were told on Remain side? I am not aware of any.

Bloody feels like it! (I know that's hyperbole, but then I don't think the end of WC was actually claimed so I'm responding in kind.)

www.euractiv.com/section/uk-europe/news/tusk-and-junker-see-brexit-as-threat-to-western-civilisation/

If British voters choose to leave the European Union on 23 June it could be the beginning of the end for the bloc and for western political civilisation, Council President Donald Tusk said.

A spokesperson said Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker thought the same.

In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Tusk said a vote for Brexit would provide a major boost to radical anti-European forces who he said would be “drinking champagne”.

“Why is it so dangerous? Because no one can foresee what the long-term consequences would be,” Tusk said. “As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilisation in its entirety.”

Fresh fines for Remain campaigners after referendum expenses breaches

Thanks familyq.

It's ridiculous. Utterly bizzare!
Both 'campaigns would have had elements of exaggeration like any bloody campaign.

But they would have swayed small proportion of electorate. Most people have wanted leave for many years, as those who want to stay.

I don’t think they did. A lot of them seemed to be under the misapprehension that we would suddenly loose all of the EU legislation overnight and would no longer have human rights . But that wasn’t a lie, they were just confused. Most of the misinformation (on both sides) seems to have been a result of confusion rather than outright deception (the EU is very very complicated to be fair).

@familycourtq many Europeans genuinely believe that the EU is the height of civilisation though. Is it stupid? Yes. But is it a lie? No, it’s sharing an opinion rather than stating a fact. Words such as fear (not to mention the sheer arrogance and ignorance) would encourage that interpretation.

“This is a dangerous fantasy. The idea there’s going to be a European air force, a European army… it is simply not true.” [Clegg]
Look up PESCO

“If the British people vote to leave, there is only one way to bring that about, namely to trigger article 50 of the treaties and begin the process of exit, and the British people would rightly expect that to start straight away.” [Cameron]
It took a year or so to trigger it. Most of the Treasury's predictions assumed that it would be triggered immediately, without any time for preparation.

“If we come out, we are out. That’s it. It’s not politically credible to go back and say we’ve reconsidered, or let’s have another referendum. If we vote to stay out, then we are out, and we will have to get on with it.” [Major]
Well, he changed his tune...

Remember that booklet the government sent out (how much did it cost, and was it included in the Remain spending accounts?). Look at the middle paragraph on the first page which outlines the UK's "Special Status" negotiated by Cameron. Is it really an accurate reflection of the concessions Cameron gained? A bit of an exaggeration, no? Let's look through the rest of the booklet:

^EU membership means you
and your family have the right
to live, work or study abroad
in any of the 27 other member
countries.^
So there was no such thing as an international student or foreign travel before the EU?

^It also guarantees
many employment rights.^
Employment rights in the UK go well beyond the EU minimum. I'm pretty sure that we stopped sending kids down mines well before 1973.

^the EU is leading the world on tackling
climate change.^
That would be why Germany is burning so much brown coal then...

I'd like to leave you with this:
“There will be some people who like those Japanese soldiers who continued fighting the last war because no-one had told them it had ended in some Pacific island, who will carry on arguing and arguing and arguing. The rest of us, will just move on. Carry on, with the rest of our lives.” [Clegg] This prediction has come true. Not for the side he thought it would though.

@BogglesGoggles If you read the thread you will notice that I didn’t cite the end of western civilisation as a lie, for the reasons you gave and because it’s too soon to say. My post was simply to inform a previous poster who doubted anyone had made the claim; in fact they did, as I pointed out.

BTW I am not claiming Turkey is joining the EU but -
Cameron: 'UK strongly supports Turkey EU membership bid' BBC 2010
And yet
EU referendum: Turkey joining EU 'not remotely on cards', says PM BBC 2016

You can’t blame people for not entirely trusting him.

How does pointing out that EU membership means we can live, work and study in 27 other EU countries mean there was no such thing as an international student or foreign travel pre EU?

How does pointing out that EU membership means we can live, work and study in 27 other EU countries mean there was no such thing as an international student or foreign travel pre EU?
It doesn't. But the implication that travelling and studying in the EU will somehow end if brexit happens is false. People will still want to do that as they did pre-EU; and they will.

Read the thread on here about why posters like the EU. It shows the confusion about its functions and services. Many of these stem from deliberately misleading statements around the referendum which encouraged people to think that the functions of the UNHCR, NATO, etc, were dependent on or actually provided by the EU.

There was also a lack of scrutiny over TTIP which implied only a Leave vote would threaten the future of the NHS.

There was a perception that Remain was a vote for a static membership without referencing the possible changes and debates within the EU about how membership should develop.

Yy an educated electorate should have known the correct information about all of the above. But if Brexit has shown us anything it's that many, many people prefer soundbites from Twitter than reading history and politics.

Both sides were disingenuous. That's not unusual for any election. What I have found enlightening, is how many people failed to notice the misinformation on both sides.

No such implication is made by stating those words familycourthq. It is a fact that we can do those things as of right now, due to EU free movement laws.

However, you do not know if people will still be able to travel and study as they did pre-EU, to use your words, and this certainly wasn't known during the referendum. There is absolutely no guarantee that the pre-EU legal landscape will return unchanged. The immigration laws of the UK are very different to those pre accession, after all.

And actually that's a very important point. These rights are guaranteed now, we do not know how it will work on departure and what restrictions may exist.

Why is it so dangerous? Because no one can foresee what the long-term consequences would be,” Tusk said. “As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilisation in its entirety

That wasn't a lie, it was his opinion.

Whereas the bus claim was a lie.

I agree the statement about needing the emergency budget was stupid, but I guess if we'd had an immediate no deal Brexit it might have been needed (though Art 50 allowed for the 2 year period first).

And I've said all along, that the first chance the Tories get, they will dismantle employment rights.

Yes, we need to distinguish between clear and provable lies and predictions that turned out to be wrong and may have been daft. We also need to not say things are lies when we can't see whether they've actually happened yet anyway.

the implication that travelling and studying in the EU will somehow end if brexit happens is false. People will still want to do that as they did pre-EU; and they will

I disagree. At the moment you can just up sticks and go.

From 1 November, or whenever, you won't be able to. And it's highly unlikely that British citizens will be given visas to work in the EEA when employers can choose from all the EEA states. You'd have to have very specialist skills.

Students will be ok, although they'll probably have to get visas.

We already know that we can travel to the EU for up to 90 days without a visa, so tourists and business travellers alike will be ok.

I'm not sure Cameron's was a lie so much as a mistake.

Well, if it were a mistake it was one of gargantuan proportions. As to whether or not he 'lied' I'm not competent to judge, as it's very difficult ti dissociate fact from fiction in a scenario where no one (and that includes the politicians) has the first fucking clue of the potential implications.

Cameron's referendum pledge was an enormous, wholly self-serving political gamble that backfired spectacularly and has an excellent chance of permanently fucking up this country in the process. It was nothing more than a cynical ploy to appease his party's longstanding, hardline Eurosceptics, and to shut them up decisively by putting the question to the country and receiving a 'stay' vote in response.

I don't believe anyone - leaver or remainer - gave serious thought to what might happen in the event that the country returned a vote they were not expecting.

[slow hand-clap of applause for Cameron]. I thought it would be difficult ever to find a PM who could leave the UK with a more disastrous legacy than that of Blair.

Congratulations, David, you've succeeded admirably.

That's if we leave without a deal, or if we have no deal after the transition.

Cameron did not lie. He was too stupid to manage it.

Caucho, familycourtq
If British voters choose to leave the European Union on 23 June it could be the beginning of the end for the bloc and for western political civilisation, Council President Donald Tusk said.

So it was western political civilisation, not western civilisation then?
So literally no-one actually said it would be the end of western civilisation?

So:
Tusk claims that it could (that's could, not would) be the beginning of the end for the bloc and western political civilisation.
@Caucho claims that the remain campaign said " leaving would lead to the end of Western Civilisation".
Let's just consider which of these two claims is actually the lie.

I'm certainly not suggesting Cameron didn't fuck up! But there's a distinction between lying and stupidity. Too often, we see them conflated in attempts to argue that Leave and Remain both lied similarly.

This thread is pointless unless people are pointing to their sources. As the PP upthread proved with their comment about Jeremy Corbyn and workers' rights, if it's just a vague recollection of a point which was misunderstood in the first place, it's a bit pointless trying to have a discussion about it.

(I'm not trying to claim that there were no lies or hyperbole on the Remain side - just that a lot of people will say things like 'I remember hearing X saying Y on the radio!' and it's about as useful to reality as a Barbie jeep)