AIBU To wish that the media would ask which way people voted in the EU referendum when reporting problems of the farming and fishing industry caused by Brexit?

[Kendodd]

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-59748581.amp

Because if you voted Leave you are too stupid to be in business and don't deserve my sympathy.

Would you give it a fucking rest? How about you learn from your mistakes, in the same way as you are demanding Leave voters do, and try and understand human nature a bit? People who are backed into a corner, told they’re stupid and berated and harangued about WILL YOU ADMIT YOU WERE WRONG AND STUPID? don’t back down, they double down. You’re giving them no graceful exit, you won’t be satisfied until you get complete and total capitulation. Which you won’t get. And this is the reason we lost the referendum, and the reason we lost more resoundingly every time the question was asked again in subsequent elections. You, OP, and the people like you, are as much responsible for the position we’re in now, imo. Your intransigence and smugness isn’t a virtue, it’s a liability.

I think there can be a real difference between those who voted Leave in 2016 - because No one is talking of leaving the Single Market, remember, and a commitment to it was a 2015 Tory Party Manifesto. So those who thought we would retain the trade benefits were not unreasonable.

Those who voted for Johnson in 2019, knowing that he is a liar and a cheat and knowing that he wanted a hard Brexit and that moderate Tory MPs had been chased out of the party, well, I do wonder exactly what they thought they were voting for.

As for the Kirkella - Norway isn't part of the EU, but Johnson's wonderful negotiators never seemed to think that they needed an agreement with Norway.

Not a believer in democracy then OP.

And both May and Johnson for putting incompetents in charge of Brexit.

Current politics require that ministers must be drawn from a pool of people who either actually believe, or are prepared to pretend, that brexit is anything other than a monumental mistake. Everyone within the conservative party with ability or integrity has been frozen out. We're left with a shower of shite. It really has poisoned the well, and I think it will be another political generation before we can begin to normalise anything in politics.

YABU
I voted Remain.
But both sides lied and behaved horribly towards each other. It was a vicious and nasty campaign leading up to the referendum. I actually have sympathy for most who voted to Leave because the lies and misinformation was really bad and not everyone has the time or education to accurately fact check things before voting. Many people I know who voted Leave are angry about the lies they believed in, especially those who believed the “give £350m a week to the NHS” or the “Brexit won’t affect the Good Friday Agreement, it will actually benefit Northern Ireland” or the “U.K. will stay in the single market, we wouldn’t give up our zero tariff trade with the EU” Those seem to be the top 3 lies the people I know fell for hook line and sinker. And to be fair, these were promises with no way to know they would not be kept during the Brexit negotiations and the Parliament votes for hard Brexit vs Soft Brexit.....we had no referendum on that subject! And ended up with an abrupt hard Brexit in the end despite many Leave voters envisioning a soft Brexit where we just dissolved political links and not all the economic, research and trade links too.

@MajorCarolDanvers

Not a believer in democracy then OP.

I don’t think anyone would call an illegal campaign based on lies ‘democracy’.

@TrishM80

I see your point but your anger should be aimed at Nigel Farage and Kate Hoey and Michael Gove and Jacob Rees Mogg and all the other Brexit conmen who couldn't give a shit about the fishing industry but shamelessly used it as an emotional football in the referendum, then ditched it as soon as they got the result they wanted.

Agree with this. Except you forgot to name and shame Johnson.

Not a believer in democracy then OP

The referendum should have required a supra-majority as it was clearly a very significant change in direction for the country. It was also presented as “advisory” rather than binding, many have suggested this was to skirt around the rules wrt funding.

Let’s face it, it was binding.

Leave also used social media in a very targeted way to basically spin lies to the people likely to swallow them. Russian influence was probably in there too. And the referendum was only called because DC needed to silence a small but vocal minority in the Tories, rather than something the country as a whole was calling out for.

Ten years ago the country wasn’t bitterly divided by membership of the EU. Most hardly gave it a thought.

So no, it’s not a particularly shining example of democracy imo, it’s an example of how democracy can be manipulated and abused.

@Pumperthepumper I don’t think anyone would call an illegal campaign based on lies ‘democracy

Does that make you feel better.

Can I ask what the remain side lied about? Genuine question.

George Osbourne claimed each household would be £4300 (approximately) worse off by 2030 if the country voted leave. That figure was based on a best guess about how many households would exist in the UK in 2030, we still have no way of knowing how many households there will be in this country by 2030. The treasury select committee advised against using that figure to speculate about household wealth in 2030 because it would be "misleading" but he did it anyway.

[quote MajorCarolDanvers]**@Pumperthepumper* I don’t think anyone would call an illegal campaign based on lies ‘democracy*

Does that make you feel better.[/quote]
How do you mean? Do I feel better knowing people fell for a pile of lies and won an illegal referendum under the guise of ‘democracy’?

I actually have sympathy for most who voted to Leave because the lies and misinformation was really bad and not everyone has the time or education to accurately fact check things before voting. Many people I know who voted Leave are angry about the lies they believed in

It might help if they had the good grace to accept that they are responsible for the decision, because that's how direct democracy works, and that the rest of the country is angry with them because we have to suffer along with them for their, errm, lack of wisdom, rather than somehow making out that they are the victims.

The adverse impact on the fishing industry were raised many times by the Remain side in the run up to the referendum, and were dismissed as "Project Fear" by the Brexiteers.

If people chose not to educate themselves as to the likely impact, they have only themselves to blame.

And you don't have to be a fucking genius to see that the deals a nation can get by being part of the world's biggest trading bloc are bound to be better than those you can get as a small nation standing alone.

I very rarely mock others. Nor do I often come to AIBU. I am not sure how often I mentioned Erasmus either.

However, making it difficult for EU scientists to come here is a big loss to the UK. This was one area we were strong in.

But thanks for mentioning me.

@Boood

Would you give it a fucking rest? How about you learn from your mistakes, in the same way as you are demanding Leave voters do, and try and understand human nature a bit? People who are backed into a corner, told they’re stupid and berated and harangued about WILL YOU ADMIT YOU WERE WRONG AND STUPID? don’t back down, they double down. You’re giving them no graceful exit, you won’t be satisfied until you get complete and total capitulation. Which you won’t get. And this is the reason we lost the referendum, and the reason we lost more resoundingly every time the question was asked again in subsequent elections. You, OP, and the people like you, are as much responsible for the position we’re in now, imo. Your intransigence and smugness isn’t a virtue, it’s a liability.

The referendum was lost due to a well funded misinformation campaign and emotional appeals to latent nationalism as well as rampant entryism into the Tory party (that has only got worse since) as well as an exceptionally poor remain campaign run by people who weren't prepared to truly explain the benefits of EU membership.

It was not anything to do with the supposed smugness of normal remain voters. This is just a lie peddled to try and allow leave voters to save face from what was a patently disastrous decision that has caused real harm to many parts of our economy that it was claimed it would help.

I have been told repeatedly by leave voters that they knew exactly what they voted for. I have been subject to abuse, I have seen xenophobic abuse and violence against my friends from EU countries including one Romanian friend being spit at in the street and told "we voted now you can fuck off back to where you came from" and another polish friend who was the subject to an attempted arson attack and graffiti of their home related to the vote in the days after the results were announced.

I have no sympathy to give to people who were told this was a bad idea and still pressed ahead and voted for it, siding themselves with people who think it is okay to treat other human beings in the ways I have described above.

It is not for you or others to demand that people who voted remain suppress their justifiable anger about this and somehow take responsibility for healing this country of the wounds inflicted by others. If we want to see real rapprochement on Brexit then we need to see even a tiny inkling from the other side that they are willing to learn from what is happening and seek a more moderate way forward. I have not seen one iota of that at all. As such I have absolutely no time for people who try and blame me for Brexit.

@Peregrina

I very rarely mock others. Nor do I often come to AIBU. I am not sure how often I mentioned Erasmus either.

However, making it difficult for EU scientists to come here is a big loss to the UK. This was one area we were strong in.

But thanks for mentioning me.

Far bigger problem than Erasmus is the lack of progress on the UK's membership of Horizon. That is a seriously damaging situation to UK science.

It is not for you or others to demand that people who voted remain suppress their justifiable anger about this and somehow take responsibility for healing this country of the wounds inflicted by others. If we want to see real rapprochement on Brexit then we need to see even a tiny inkling from the other side that they are willing to learn from what is happening and seek a more moderate way forward. I have not seen one iota of that at all. As such I have absolutely no time for people who try and blame me for Brexit.

Well said, @Eleganz

Leave voters asking remain voters to learn from their mistakes (because of their "poor attitude" or whatever it may be) is truly extraordinary!

I don’t at all blame the people who voted to leave. I only blame the person, David Cameron, and members of his party who were so desperate to win an election that they gave the decision to the masses who, on the whole, had absolutely no idea of the implications of their decision. Absolute shit show.

I have been told repeatedly by leave voters that they knew exactly what they voted for. I have been subject to abuse, I have seen xenophobic abuse and violence against my friends from EU countries

I have been subjected to anti-gay and racist verbal abuse and violent abuse and they have all been from people from non-UK EU countries (who may or may not be “your friends”). What is the point of your anecdotal stories? We all have them.

^^ @Eleganz

I certainly have some sympathy for those who wanted to see more money for the NHS. It's all very well the Leave campaign trilling, as they did post result, 'Oh we only said we could spend the money on the NHS, we didn't say we would'. People saw that as a promise, as indeed Johnson promised 40 new hospitals and 50,000 more nurses when he won in 2019. I will agree that to some extent this has been derailed by Covid, but where exactly are the planning applications for the new hospitals? Covid shouldn't have derailed that process.

BrexitTears